The car jerked precipitously beneath them, and the lights dimmed.
Clare heard the sounds of the mortars in the distance as she looked frantically around the bunker. Dim emergency lights, and the smell of mouse shit and rotting wood, and where was the chem hazard locker and where was the bulkhead door and where was her mask and the blare of the klaxon and the thud of the shells getting nearer and the slosh of the river water rising higher and higher-
Clare found herself on the elevator floor, legs tucked, arms wrapped around her head. She opened her eyes. Trip Stillman was looking at her from exactly the same position.
The car jerked again, upward, quivered, and then began its descent. For a second, she couldn’t move. It’s getting worse. It’s supposed to be getting better, but it’s getting worse.
“Are you okay?” Stillman whispered.
She scrambled to her feet. Stillman got up more slowly. “Like I said. The foolish stuff.” His voice was thin and dry.
“Trip, I need sleeping pills and amphetamines and Tylenol Three.” Like falling into the duck-and-cover, the words came out without conscious control. “I had them when I came back and I’m almost out and I need more.” She looked at him. “I don’t have any good medical reason. I just need them. Will you help me?”
He stared at her. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. They got out. He glanced at the people walking past them; a pair of doctors, a technician in scrubs, a man toting a potted plant. He beckoned her around the corner, into a niche formed by a vending machine and a stainless steel crib frame. “What have you been taking?”
“I don’t know. They’re go pills and no-go pills. The only bags that had labels were the antibiotic and the Tylenol.” He frowned. “I’m cutting back on the sleeping pills. Really. With everything going on, I’ve been falling into bed at the end of the day. It’s just-” She swallowed. “When I wake up. If I have a nightmare. I need one then to get back to sleep.”
“Are you mixing them with alcohol?”
“Sometimes. Yes. Usually.”
He shook his head. “You don’t need more, you need to get off them. Amphetamines and sleeping pills just feed into each other.”
“I can’t!” To her horror, her voice cracked. “Trip, I’ve got nightmares and flashbacks and parishioners to take care of and a wedding to get through. I can’t talk to my spiritual adviser about this, and I’m not going to dump it on my fiancé. I just need to keep on an even keel for a few more weeks.”
Trip looked at the floor. Finally, he sighed. “I won’t give you any painkillers. Forget about it.” He pulled out his PalmPilot. “I’ll give you a two-week prescription for Ambien and Dexedrine. Here’s the deal.” He speared her with a look. “You take the Dexedrine as prescribed-no more than ten migs a day, to start. No booze when you take the Ambien and for twelve hours after. I’m going to call you for a blood test some time during the next two weeks. If I find you’ve been mixing, I’ll cut you off. If I find you have a higher concentration of dextroamphetamine than you ought to, I’ll cut you off. No second chances, no do-overs.”
She nodded.
He tapped something into his PalmPilot. “I’m e-mailing myself the instructions. I’ll give you the scrip Monday, at group. Can you hold out until then?”
She nodded.
“I shouldn’t be doing this.” He rubbed the scar along his forehead.
“Thank you.”
He sighed again. “I’ll see you on Monday.” He looked for a moment as if he were going to say something else. Instead, he turned and walked away. She stayed against the wall, half hidden, for a moment, turning the whole thing over in her head. Telling herself she was going to be okay. Wondering if this was her own before and after.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7
Clare hadn’t taken a sleeping pill the night before, and she hadn’t had a nightmare, but she was still sodden with fatigue when she rolled out of bed at 6:30 A.M. for the 7:00 Eucharist. She debated taking an upper for twenty seconds before popping one in her mouth. By the time she closed the rectory door behind her, she was feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, congratulating herself for making a smart choice.
She wrapped up the Eucharist in thirty-five minutes and was standing by the great double doors, bidding farewell to the communicants-all seven of them-when Russ wedged his way past Mrs. Mairs into the narthex.
“I didn’t expect to see you today. What are you doing here?” Clare asked.
Mrs. Mairs tittered. “Can’t wait to see the bride-to-be. That’s a good sign.”
Russ smiled patiently at the octogenarian before turning to Clare. “You said we had to go to the Stuyvesant Inn, remember? To okay the napkins or mints or whatever?”
Clare waited until the last of the congregation left the narthex. She kicked away the stand and let the heavy double-braced door glide slowly closed on its hydraulic hinges. “I said I have to go. I didn’t mean to drag you into this.” She headed up the aisle. Russ fell into step beside her. “If I hadn’t been sure my mother never would have spoken to me again, I would have just asked Julie McPartlin to do the deed in her office.” She opened the door to the hallway. “It’s still awfully tempting.”
He laughed. “You may be the only southern woman in existence who prefers elopements to white weddings.”
She went into the sacristy. “Me and every other clergywoman. Do you know how many weddings I’ve officiated at? And I haven’t been ordained five years yet.” She stripped her alb over her head and snapped it to get the wrinkles out. “Another five years and I’ll run screaming when I hear the opening strains of Pachelbel’s Canon .” She slid the alb onto a wooden hanger and replaced it in the closet. “Which reminds me. If you have any musical preferences, speak now or forever hold your peace, because Betsy Young has announced she and the choir will be providing the wedding music as a gift to us.” She removed the stole from around her neck, kissed it, and draped it over a padded dowel with the others.
“Hmn. I was thinking you could walk up the aisle to ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’”
She gave him a look.
“Then we could come back down to “Goody Two Shoes.’” He swiveled his hips in a surprisingly agile figure eight. “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?”
“I drink.”
“Who says the song is about you?”
She shoved him. “I’ll tell Betsy we’d like ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ and ‘Come Down, O Love Divine.’”
He laughed. “Chicken.”
She grabbed her keys and her coat from the hook inside the sacristy closet and ushered him out. “Seriously. You don’t have to do this. I know you’re flat out with Tally McNabb’s murder investigation.”
He let her lead him back to the narthex. “First, we’re nowhere near to calling it a homicide. Second, if my department can’t get along without me for an hour, I’m not doing my job right. Third”-he stepped into the early morning sunshine and stood to one side as she locked the great doors-“I put my work ahead of everything else when I was married to Linda. It didn’t turn out so well.” She turned to look at him, and he braced his hands against the wooden door, trapping her between his arms. “I want to do it differently with you. You deserve the best I can bring to the table.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “Thank you.”
“C’mon. I parked over in Tick Solway’s lot across the street.” It hadn’t been Tick’s lot since he died two years back and his son inherited, but that was the way things worked in Millers Kill. Clare was sure half the town still referred to the rectory as Father Hames’s house, and that paragon of virtue had been gathered into Abraham’s bosom six years ago.