I nodded.
“She saw a picture of you, on my phone. She thinks you’re devastatingly handsome.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“You’re not. But you’re handsome.”
“She thinks I am, which is apparently what’s important,” I said, so I didn’t have to agree. “Are you trying to set me up with her?”
“Sorta.”
“You know where I come from. You’re the one who got me from there to here.”
“Yeah.”
“You know I have… hang-ups. You probably know better than anyone.”
“Yep. I know. I have some too.”
“It presents an obstacle,” I said.
“She and I have obstacles too.”
She and I? “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Just putting it out there. We’re beautifully fucked up people, and sometimes it’s only the fucked up sorts who’re going to understand, you know? She has a thing for you. I know you had a thing for me, not so long ago.”
“Now I’m really not sure what you mean.”
She puffed on her cigarette.
“I’m not a therapist or any of that. But she needs to break out of her shell, and this is the first thing I thought of. I’m doing the relational equivalent of banging stones together until stuff works.”
“You want us to… bang?”
“I want- yeah. That sums it up. It’s up to you, with your hang-ups in mind, obviously. Knowing you’re going through a lot of crap. But if it’d help you unwind more than it wound you up, that’d be cool.”
“Me and her?”
“And me,” she said. “I figure she needs a bit of hand holding, and we’re reasonable, adult human beings. We put jealousy aside and… it’s so dark I can’t make out your face and I can still tell you’re blushing.”
I did what she was doing, folding my arms on the railing, except I rested my forehead against my arms.
“Fuck, aren’t you cold? Do you need to go inside and get a jacket?”
“I feel cold,” I said, “And my face is hot, and I feel awkward, and all of that’s a hell of a lot better than I’ve felt this past week, feeling numb and terrified.”
“Well, if you say it’s good, it’s good,” she said. She puffed, looking out over the city.
It dawned on me that I wasn’t within the boundary of tape, but that wasn’t enough to drive me inside. Being here was good.
“If I didn’t accept the deal, would you find someone else?”
“Probably not. I’d figure out another way to get her more comfortable with people, break her pattern.”
I nodded.
“You’re thinking no?” she asked.
“Hang-ups,” I said.
She nodded. “Damn. But you know yourself best.”
“I want to, I-”
“You don’t need to apologize or explain. I know where you came from. You know where I came from.”
“-I still like you,” I finished.
“Ah… crap. Now I feel like shit, offering you that, knowing-”
“No,” I said. “Putting it on the table. So believe me when I say I want to. If circumstances were different, I’d take that leap. I’d trust you to… if circumstances were different.”
“But they aren’t, and I’m piling more garbage on your plate,” she said.
“It’s fine,” I said. “The offer is appreciated, on a lot of levels. Maybe another time, if things somehow quiet down.”
“I dunno, knowing how you feel about me makes it weird.”
I turned to look at her, and I could see her in silhouette, smiling, holding back her laughs.
Not hiding her fucked up teeth from me.
I elbowed her, and she elbowed me back.
“Say the word,” she told me, “and it’s a done deal.”
“For once, it’s a deal I’m happy to have on the table,” I said.
“Hm?”
“Nevermind.”
“You really okay?” she asked.
“In terms of the big picture, I’m less okay than you can imagine. And-”
“You impugn my creativity.”
“Even with your amazing, brilliant creativity and your amazing tattoo abilities, I’m less okay than you can imagine. But this, right here, talking? It helped.”
“Yeah?”
I stood, stretching, and nodded, “Yeah. But I’m also cold, so I’m going back inside.”
“I’ll be in in a minute.”
I nodded, turning to the patio door.
Rose’s reflection, faint, was visible there. She was pointing, looking deadly serious.
I let myself back into the apartment, and then ducked into the bathroom.
“There are nine people in the apartment,” Rose said.
“And?”
“I watched people come in the front door, trying to commit names to memory, figure out who your friends were. Nine people came in.”
“And?” I asked.
“Ten people in all, if you count Alexis out there on the balcony. Every time I count heads I see nine, but when I go from person to person and count names, the total comes up eight, and I can’t find the person without a name.”
I nodded, stepping out into the apartment.
I did as Rose had done.
Joel, Goosh, Ty, Joseph, Amanda, Nick, Tiffany, and Stephen.
Then I counted heads.
Nine people, spread out through the apartment. Ten if I counted Alexis, smoking on the balcony.
I used the Sight, and I found the man with no name, sitting on a chair he’d turned around at the end of the dining room table. Older than anyone but Joel, light haired, wearing a white coat. A polished, silver-platinum gun rested in his lap, where he occasionally picked it up or turned it around.
I approached him slowly, then leaned against the table.
“I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Is now a good time? The Lord would like to see you. The other local powers will be in attendance.”
“Just give me one second,” I said.
He nodded.
“Tiffany?” I asked.
She looked up at me.
“How much for one of your paintings?”
“Two hundred?” she asked.
I thought of the allowance the lawyers had given me. “I’ll pay you five hundred for your best one, but I need one now.”
“Y-yeah,” she said.
I looked at Conquest’s messenger, “We can pick that up on the way?”
He nodded.
Tiffany at my side, oblivious to the man with the gun, we strode from the apartment.