Cauchemar (5 page)

Tom rolled his eyes and tapped his beer bottle against Callum's. “Oh, fuck off.” He thrust his chin toward James. “Fill me in on the goings-on, man. Let Callum and Hannah get a bit better acquainted.” He winked at Hannah.

Hannah rolled her shoulders back. Leah still stood near Callum, mouthing the edge of her glass.

“How long have you lived by the water?” Callum asked Hannah. He leaned in close to her but gazed out at the crowd as they spoke.

“My whole life.” His skin smelled like moss and cool night air, and his breath was sweet with rum. “Born and raised.”

“So, are the stories true? Are y'all soothsayers, alligator hunters, and shut-ins?” Hannah smirked to hear the intonation of an old Cajun man. He was older than her. She could tell from the slightly tired look of his skin.

“Only if you're all chip-on-your-shoulder alcoholics.”

Callum laughed. “Judging by my grandpa, sure. Me, I'm Irish in name only.”

“Fancy that,” Hannah muttered. She noticed his hands, large-knuckled around the bottle's neck.

Someone bumped her from behind, and Callum pulled her toward him, shooting a stern glance at the underage boy who retreated with arms raised. “Some of these people aren't my ideal audience,” he murmured. “But you take what you can get, right?”

“I'll admit that I don't know much about music, but I thought you were amazing.” She said it quietly, evenly, although inside her the sentiment boomed.

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Leah was looking at them with a strange, rhapsodic intensity, pulling on her ropy strands.

“Why is she staring at us?” Hannah asked in a low voice. Immediately, she scanned the room for its exits. She felt like an intruder whose disguise was wearing off.

“Who?” Callum followed her eyes, and immediately took a step away from Hannah. “Oh, Leah. She's on E, habitually. It hasn't kicked in yet, or not enough for her. She's always a huge grump when she's sober.”

“You want some?” Tom appeared behind them.

James snapped his fingers. “I'm off duty, but I'm not deaf.”

“Brother, as I remember it, you might be a cop but you've never been a saint.”

James took a step forward, but Leah, her pupils dilated to a drowning black, grabbed his hand. “Come dance with me,” she said, sweetly. James hesitated, glancing at Hannah.

“Go on,” Hannah said. “I'm fine.” She felt Callum's hand rest gently on her shoulder, felt the heat pulse through her chest. Hannah's skin was beginning to crawl. Every female set of eyes seemed to be on them, and every girl that walked by cast her a chilly, considering look. Callum was unconcerned, but Hannah had learned long ago that anonymity was safest.

“You and Leah,” she began, and he shook his head, anticipating her question.

“Friends. Good friends, maybe, but if there's longing, it's not on my side.”

Hannah chanced a glance at his steady eyes. She wondered if she knew enough to recognize sincerity.

“You should drink it neat.” Callum gestured to her glass. “It's a waste of good rye, mixing it with that sweet shit.”

“I like the spice of it.” The music flooding through the speakers had a fast, thudding beat, and she felt her feet moving of their own accord.

“Drink it down quick,” Callum urged, his breath warm on her neck. Leah had begun to dance with James, her hips moving like a gyroscope. Her body, outlined in colored fluorescent lights, was mesmerizing in motion. Hannah wondered where the girl had learned to sway like that.

She emptied her glass.

“Your hair is beautiful,” Callum said. One finger traced her hairline so slowly she could feel each root flex at his touch. “Like the sky at dusk.” His eyes lingered thoughtfully on her lips.

“Lines like that work, I guess,” she whispered. She realized that they were working, and that she wanted them to. His fingers slid like drops of water down her sides, grazing her hips.

“It's not a line.” He drew his head away. “That's not what I'm bringing to the table.”

She tasted acid in the back of her throat. “Excuse me,” she croaked. She sensed him try to grab her arm as she fled toward the bathroom.

Hannah threw up until she was hoarse and spent, until the stench of it made burning tears pool in her eyes. A terrible pressure welled up in her cheeks and behind her eyes, and she felt close to bursting. She thought suddenly of hens' feathers packed into her throat, and could almost feel their tickle.

“Not a big drinker, then?” Callum's voice behind her, tinged in amusement, made a fresh wave of vomit crest in her.

“Hey, do you know that this is the women's restroom?” She dabbed at her face with toilet paper. Then she gave up and rested her forehead against the wall of the stall.

“At this time of night, people don't pay much attention to which restroom is which. There, now.” He rubbed circles between her shoulder blades. “Poor pet.”

“Is it over?”

He chuckled. “There's no way of knowing. You should enjoy this moment, though.”

To her mortification, she began to sob. “Oh God, why did I even come here? I can't face a boat right now.” The tiles beneath her knees were already rocking.

“I live five minutes away. You can clean yourself up there.”

Hannah let herself be hoisted up against his shoulder. “I have to get home to Mae,” she murmured, then stood up straight. Remembrance speared her.

“No. You don't.” He kissed her forehead and his lips were full and cool. “Come on.”

His apartment was the third floor of a walk-up. Hannah glimpsed a wooden balcony through glass doors in the back, its banister faintly lit by Christmas lights.

“Sit down. Put your legs up.” Callum cleared a gray sofa of clothes.

There were framed black-and-white photographs on the walls and upright wine crates brimming with books. It wasn't quite what she'd expected.

Hannah glared at a chipped Tiffany lamp on the glazed coffee table and groaned. “Even the light hurts.”

He threw a red silk scarf over the lamp and the living room became anatomical. “Better?” he asked.

Hannah nodded and lay down warily, aware that she barely knew this man and trying not to wonder if the scarf had once been wrapped around Leah's neck or her thin wrists. Trying not to wonder how often he found souvenirs between the cushions of his couch. Hannah let her eyes close for a moment, and she was instantly visited by the phantom sensation of Mae's palm on her forehead.

When she was startled out of sleep, her nausea had subsided and the sky was lightening outside. Through the lingering headache, she didn't recognize the room at first. The smell of aftershave and unwashed laundry was foreign.

Callum was sitting in a nearby armchair with his ankles crossed, sipping slowly from a glass. She noticed that he'd taken his shirt off. He turned his head toward her sleepily. “Feeling a bit better?”

Hannah's foot bumped the coffee table covered with sheets of music and brandy snifters as she sat up. She nodded. “Thanks for letting me stay here.” A black knit blanket, flecked with crumbled chips, was spread over her legs. “I think I'm almost ready for the boat.”

“It's five in the morning,” he said, sounding amused. “All the boats are tied and docked.”

“Still,” she said, then trailed off. “I hate to ask, but you've got a boat, don't you?” Ribs showed through tanned muscles. “I'm missing my bed right now.”

“I've had a few too many drinks.” He shook his head. “Besides, certain animals prefer to ache on their own, but I'm a big believer in grieving in the company of others.”

“It's not how I was raised. I don't think there's enough comfort in the world for what I'm feeling right now.”

“This won't heal overnight, and you can't expect it to. It's going to take time, and you'll always miss her. But I promise that the sting of it, the feeling that you can't bear it, will fade. You just have to take it one step at a time, and the first of those is a bit more rest. Come on, I'll take the couch.”

Hannah smoothed the red dress over her thighs. Looking around the apartment, at the photographs, the greeting cards, and the water-stained magazines, she realized she felt comfortable. At ease. She took a deep breath.

Callum sat down on the couch. “What is it?”

“I'm not tired anymore,” she said, holding his gaze.

“It's really too bad,” he said.

“What is?”

“That we met like we did. The things I would do, otherwise.”

Hannah's breath sped up. The sense of being on the verge of something inevitable was almost pleasurable. “What would you do?” she asked in a small voice.

His face was an anchor, holding the spinning room in place. She saw desire in his dilated eyes, and unexpectedly, it made her feel powerful. “I'd like to say that I'd hold your hand, make you breakfast, pick up a handful of wildflowers,” he said, smiling. “And truth is, I'd like that. But those are daytime things, and we can still rightly call this night.”

“And what would you do, with this rightly called bit of night?”

“I'd lay you down,” he said, his eyes suddenly serious. He leaned in over her and his tongue touched her like a butterfly's, tracing nectar along the inside of her arm toward her shoulders.

She'd so rarely allowed anyone to come this close to her, because she'd learned early that after the initial burst of pleasure came pain, and doubt, and regret.

She hesitated but didn't move away.

He slid down the straps of her dress. She moved instinctively to cover herself but he blocked her gently. His tongue flicked along her clavicle, down the subtle dip between her breasts.

“I think I'd let you,” she said.

He pulled away to strip off his jeans, smiling, and she felt rudderless on the plush couch. He tugged at the bottom of her dress and she felt it slide down from beneath her. Inch by inch, her body was revealed, its hills and valleys. A terrain she hadn't had cause to examine for years was suddenly exposed. She sought his eyes for some sign of how she measured up, but they moved up and down her legs, her belly, and her shoulders like he was sating some thirst.

Slowly, he ran his hand over the pale peach cotton of her underwear. “Is this okay?” he breathed.

“I don't do this,” she said. “I haven't done this in a very long time. But yes.” She studied his body in the faint light. When she was seventeen, she'd had a brief flirtation with a boy from town. Toby, whose skin glistened in his parents' bed. His full lips and precious smile, his brown eyes peering expectantly up at her from between her thighs. That was before his parents had discovered them kissing in their boat. His mother's face had changed from confusion to anger to pure fury in seconds, and she'd chased Hannah down the street in bare feet. “You stay away from our boy!” she'd screamed. That was before Mae had discovered the condoms, and sat heavily, speechless, in a chair. Mae's arms crossed so tightly over her chest that her shoulders seemed to tremble with effort.

Hannah's legs wrapped loosely around Callum's waist. He pressed his thumb into her, and it felt firm and as sure as ringing a doorbell. Slowly, he pulled out his finger and licked it.

And then he moved into position and thrust, with a humming growl that elucidated every blues riff she'd ever heard. It rose to a fever pitch as she dug her short nails into his back. He answered by hoisting forward, his hand fitting against her neck. She let out a cry, suddenly panicked.

In that moment, she heard every nook and cranny of her windpipe. She thought again of feathers tangling in her trachea, and shadows began to stir at the edges of her sight, crowding in. Something flashed in the mirror, milk-white even in the room's red glow.

She tried to sit up, just as the creature disappeared behind the couch. “Callum,” she breathed, and thought she saw a chalky claw stretch toward Callum's foot. How had it found her?

“Something's wrong,” she tried to say as his fingers mapped the long cords of her neck, but a low vibrato started in her pelvis. He shoveled deeper, a steady spade. And then it happened. He struck ore, and they both wailed. An interminable note that made up for her many years of silence.

He stayed there, his arms trembling, gazing down into her eyes. With a tender smile, he licked her lips as she wheezed herself back to earth. Then he toppled to his side and nuzzled into her breasts, wrapping himself around her body. Beyond him, the room was empty.

“I'm going to hurt tomorrow,” she said.

His wide eyes turned to her, sheepish. With hair matted in scrolls to his forehead, he looked impossibly young. He looked wholly himself. “I don't know what came over me. I got swept up in the moment, I guess.”

She laughed, and pressed him against her shoulder. “Baby,” she murmured. The dizziness had left her, but already she knew she would never again be painless.