Jodi couldn’t recall much about what happened after the wedding, even when she really tried to. Nicole had been happy, smiling and chatty as a teenage girl after being asked to the prom by the school hunk, which was totally out of character for her. She was so happy. And Jodi had found herself drifting away to the far side of the room, trying to keep her pecker up, as they say, but also trying to shield the world from the fountain of jealousy that had sprung up within her. And that, of course, had only made her feel worse, because she loved Nicole and she adored Braddock. When the two of them had left the reception, Jodi knew that Nicole had been looking for her to say good-bye. But Jodi had hidden herself away in one of the hotel’s anterooms until Nicole and Braddock had finally had to leave. Jodi simply couldn’t bear to talk to Nicole just then, because she knew that she would do something, say something, that she would regret for the rest of her life. So she had made herself disappear. She had chickened out on her best friend in her hour of glory.
But not Reza, she remembered with sudden clarity. No, not poor Reza. She knew that he was trapped in his own little hell, letting himself be ripped apart by memories of whatever life he had known before, thoughts of the woman and the love he himself had left behind somewhere in the Empire. But he had let none of it show. No, not him. Not the Kreelan warrior priest trapped in flesh that was all too human. Jodi was sure he must have ground his teeth to nubs in his effort to mirror the happiness of his friends, dutifully playing out the role he had drawn in this particular play. He had even treated the two curious reporters with something like respect as they barraged him – this strange Marine who wore a Kreelan collar and had long braided hair – with questions, hoping to find some kind of interest angle in an otherwise smut-free VIP wedding.
No, she thought ruefully, Reza had been a pillar, while she had melted and flowed like sullen lead. At least he had been until Nicole and Tony departed and he had been left alone in a crowd of strangers, mingling like oil in water until the revelers headed home or to another stop on their party venue.
It was after they had all gone that Jodi had finally returned from her coward’s hideaway. She found Reza sitting alone in a corner of the great reception hall, with no company other than the cleaning bots that were disposing of the evening’s detritus. He was clutching a mug – no doubt filled with that evil brew he sometimes concocted – in his hands, and was staring silently into some other time, some other place. His face, which had never seemed to age since the first time she had seen him in Hernandez’s musty room in the church on Rutan, was now drawn, haggard. It seemed that he had aged fifty years in the course of an evening. His strong shoulders were rounded, as if he had been whipped, beaten into submission. Defeated.
He must have known that she was standing there, watching him, but he did not acknowledge her presence any more than he did the cleaning bots. Jodi was just about to walk over to him, to try to say something, anything, when he absently set the mug down and then staggered out of the hall. Jodi could not believe her eyes: Reza was drunk, or at least he acted like it.
After that, she surmised wearily, she must have gathered up some bottles of booze from a nearby table and wandered back here to her room. Fortunately, she and Reza were in the same hotel where the reception had been, so at least she had not had to publicly embarrass herself by finding some form of public transportation. Her private disgrace was quite enough, thank you very much.
She took another deep swallow, spilling champagne down her uniform, trying to make it all go away, trying to drown out reality. But her conscience was nagging at her enough now that the alcohol was no longer providing the yearned-for numbing effect. It just tasted bitter.
She slammed the bottle down in frustration, ignoring the fountain of foam that suddenly spouted from it like a gleeful ejaculation. She turned to the comm panel and ordered the ever-patient computer to connect her with Reza’s room.
“One moment, please, madam,” responded a pleasant automated female voice.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Jodi grated, not knowing how much longer her courage might last.
“There is no answer, madam,” the computer finally replied.
“Is Reza Gard in his room?”
“The room is currently occupied,” the machine answered, refusing to give out any other information on who might be there.
“Try again.”
“One moment…” There was a longer pause this time. Jodi figured the computer must have been programmed to try and accommodate idiots like her by trying longer the second time. Jodi wasn’t going to bother with a third. “There is no answer, madam. Would you like to leave a message?”
Jodi didn’t bother answering. She was already halfway to the door, a full bottle in hand.
She hadn’t bothered to check the time, partly because she wouldn’t have cared, and partly because she was too drunk to think of such a thing. But she was happy that it was late enough for the hallways to be empty. She knew she must look like hell – her uniform jacket gaping open, champagne spilled all over her blouse, her hair going wild – but she couldn’t have cared less. In fact, had she encountered someone who would have made so much as goo-goo eyes at her, she probably would have tried to whack them over the head with the bottle that she was working on even as she shuffle-staggered toward Reza’s room. They were on the same level, but in different towers, and it took her a while to realize that she had already passed his room twice.
“Christ, Mackenzie, you couldn’t find your ass with both hands and a compass,” she muttered to herself as she finally reached his room, number 1289. She pounded on the door, eschewing the more polite method of using the call panel. “Reza!” she shouted, heedless of the people in four adjacent rooms whom she had just succeeded in waking up. “I know you’re in there! Open this fucking door!”
She waited. Nothing. She was about to pound on the door again, when a sudden flash of inspiration brightened her alcohol-shrouded mind. She pressed her hand against the access panel, hoping that Reza had keyed her into his room’s access list.
Apparently, he had. The door hissed open to reveal nothing but darkness. Jodi staggered inside just as someone two rooms down poked his head out into the hallway to see what the fuss was about. The door whispered closed behind her.
She stood there a moment, leaning against the wall of the foyer, fighting against the sudden sense of vertigo that was a gift of the alcohol coursing through her system and the total darkness of Reza’s room.
No, she thought, it wasn’t totally dark. Toward the far side, through the ridiculously large – at least, it seemed that way to someone used to a warship’s spartan accommodations – living room suite, she could see some faint points of light: stars in the sky, showing through the sliding clearsteel door that led onto the balcony outside.
“Reza?” she called. No answer. The room was totally, almost unnaturally, quiet. “Reza, are you here? Answer me, dammit!” She groped forward in the darkness, not thinking to turn on a light. The silence in the room was unnerving, and she felt little pricks of fear along her spine. It didn’t feel as if no one was here, she thought. She just wasn’t sure who was, and suddenly she thought that she had made a bad move by coming here.
Her shin suddenly came in contact with something very hard-edged and quite unyielding, and she let out a yelp of pain that she was sure had somehow given her away, as if her earlier shouting had not.
She was just about to turn around and bolt for the door when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him. At least, she thought it was him: a dark figure kneeling in the middle of the expansive balcony. He was in his Kreelan armor, its black surface mirroring the stars in the sky above. But his head was not turned toward the stars; it was bowed as if in prayer.