Phoenix Heart (19 page)

“Forget it.” He eased Andrew out of the elevator and carried
him, his feet dragging across the oily concrete, to a pillar back in the
shadows. With surprising gentleness he maneuvered Andrew around and eased him
down against the concrete post. I knelt down, drew my coat around Andrew’s
shoulders before taking him in my arms and cradling him against me. His head
rested in the hollow of my throat; I could feel his warm breath against my skin
and the fact that it continued steadily pulsing there helped ease the panic.

Harry wiped the blood from his hand with a large blue and
white handkerchief.

“What happened?”

I looked up at him. “Somebody, well, shot him.”

“You sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”

I shook my head. “We can’t… they have to report gunshot
wounds.”

He looked at me, considering something. “I might know
someone who could help, but it’s gonna cost you.”

“I’ve got travelers checks,” I said.

“People still use those?”

“My bank sells them… it’s a long story.”

“Well. I’ll make a call.”

I smiled and tried not to start crying again. “Thank you,
Harry.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged and walked back toward the
elevator.

“You know where you’re going yet?”

“No. Please just keep driving,” I said.

The cab driver shrugged and looked back at the road. “It’s
your money.” He blew air through his nose loudly, sniffed, snorted again then
pulled a handkerchief out and swabbed at his face.

I closed my eyes and shuddered. Since we’d left the hotel I’d
lost all sense of direction. The cab driver turned at random going up and down
endless hills, spectacular views of the city and the dark bay visible at one moment,
nothing but large, dark warehouses the next. And everything he said, each move
he made had to be punctuated with a snort, a sniff, and a blow.

He turned to look at me again. We passed beneath a
streetlight and the light flashed across his sharp chin and narrow lips but
left the upper half of his face in darkness. “You want me to head for the park
or something?” he asked.

“Anywhere, I don’t care.”

He lifted an elbow up on the back of the seat. We were
heading down the side of a steep hill toward a red stoplight at the bottom but
he seemed not to be the least interested. “Hey, you sure you got the bucks for
this?”

I pulled a sheaf of travelers checks from my purse and
fanned them at him. “Will this do?”

Even in the dim light in the cab I could see the sparkle in
his narrow eyes. “Yeah, I think that’ll about do it.” He turned forward again,
glanced at the streetlight, snorted, snorted again, sniffed, pulled the
handkerchief out and mopped his nose, and when we were within seconds of
running the light, and my arms were locked around Andrew and my lips were
parted to shout a warning, he put the brakes on. The cab came to a stop across
the crosswalk with the front end about four feet into the intersection. The
handkerchief had never left his nose, but as the cab rocked to a stop, he
pulled it away, inspected it carefully, then shoved it down in his pocket. “Yep.
That’ll just about do ‘er.”

I began to breathe again and looked down at Andrew. He lay
on his good side on the cracked vinyl seat, his legs drawn up, his head resting
on my lap. My coat lay over him, but it was too short to cover him completely
and he had begun to shiver. At my request, the driver had cranked up the
heater, and while completely efficient at blowing the odor of mildew and wet,
stale cigarettes around, it was doing nothing to drive back the chill of the
autumn night.

The light changed and the driver tromped down on the
accelerator. The taxi lurched forward through the intersection and bumped up
onto the steep hill on the other side. The car bounced and squealed on its
ancient springs and though I tried to hold him, I could see a wince of pain
cross Andrew’s face.

I bent over him and my hair fell forward and brushed across
his cheek. “It’ll be all right,” I whispered. He nodded slightly against my
thigh, but his eyes remained tightly shut.

I bit my lip and stared at the passing buildings as I tried
again to think of somewhere to go. No hotels. Always in the movies you avoided
hotels, and since I had no idea what was true and what wasn’t, I was going on
popular myth. I wanted desperately to take Andrew to a hospital, but that was
out, too. Back in the garage…

…sitting on the cold, oil-stained concrete, holding Andrew
against me while I was waiting for Harry to return, Andrew stirred and groaned.

“Andrew? Are you there?”

He nodded against my throat.

“Andrew, please. Please let me take you to a doctor. There
must be somewhere...”

“NO!” he said violently. He pushed up and away from me,
dragging his head up until his eyes met mine. They glittered with fever. The
skin of his face was drawn and grey; his red-blond hair dark with sweat. “You
can’t. I told you.” He twisted his hand in the angora near my neck, pulling the
sweater down. “Promise me!”

I nodded. “All right, I won’t. All right.”

He eased back against me, the stubble on his sweat-damp cheek
rubbing on my skin. I held him, just barely rocking him, saying over and over, “All
right, I won’t. All right.”

I had thought then that he was only resting, but when Harry
came back and the young woman accompanying him knelt down and started examining
the wound, Andrew didn’t even flinch.

I looked a question at Harry over the young woman’s back. “A
friend,” he said.

The young woman met my eyes and smiled. “Don’t worry. I know
what I’m doing.”

She pulled some things out of her bag and started snipping
away the makeshift bandage and cleaning away the clotted blood. “This doesn’t
look so bad,” she muttered.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And… you’re not going to say anything.”

“No,” she said. “Harry said you were all right and, well, I have
student loans to pay.”

When she finished bandaging him, she pressed a bottle of
pills into my hand. “Antibiotics. You make sure he takes them just as the label
says. He might get a fever, anyway, but these should knock it down.”

I nodded.

She sat back on her heels and studied my face. “You sure you
can’t go to the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“I think he’ll be okay. He bled a lot, but the bullet
doesn’t seem to have hit anything important on its way through. You keep him
resting, give him plenty of fluids, and make sure he takes those pills and he
should be all right. If he spikes a fever that wet compresses can’t help and
that persists longer than 24 hours, you get him to a hospital, no matter what.”

I closed my eyes and sent a prayer of thanks skyward. “Yes,
I will. Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.” She left a few minutes later
with several traveler’s checks in her hand.

I looked up at Harry. “I got a cab coming,” Harry said. “Guy’s
a jerk, but he won’t ask too many questions and he’ll keep driving as long as
you pay him.”

Andrew never stirred and when the taxi dropped down into the
garage and came to a stop beside us, Harry had to carry him to the car. After
Harry straightened, I turned to give him the seventy-five dollars.

He stepped back a pace and shook his head. “I don’t want
your money. B’sides, looks like you’re gonna need it worse’n me.” The driver
was craning his neck, looking from Andrew’s still form to the two of us
standing by the car. “‘specially saddled with a drunk like that.” The driver
sniffed, sneered and turned forward again.

Harry had lowered his voice and peered at me in the
semidarkness. “You sure you can handle this?”

I nodded, even though I was not sure at all. “I can’t thank
you enough,” I whispered before stretching up and kissing him on his broad
cheek. As we were driving away, Harry had still been standing in the dim yellow
light of the garage, watching us, and had lifted one large hand in farewell.

There are such good people in the world.

I shook my head.

Stop dreaming and think of
something.

I looked out the cab window at the passing buildings. At
that point we were driving through a residential neighborhood, the houses
snug-looking old Victorians. I looked at the lighted windows and suddenly,
violently envied the occupants of those houses who were safe and warm and
home
.

Home. Yes!

I leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Pull up
when you see a newsstand. I want to get a paper.”

“I know it’s late and I’m sorry, but I really am getting
desperate.” My voice quavered, and I didn’t need to try to make it so. It was
the eighth call I’d made, standing in the cold at what might have been the last
pay phone in San Francisco while the taxi idled nearby and Andrew shivered
under my thin coat in the back seat. “My husband’s company only gave us two
days to find a place to live and the furniture is coming tomorrow and my
husband ate something at the airport that’s making him sick and I don’t know
what else to do!” I stamped my feet and hugged myself, tucking my hand under my
arm. Though the day had been unseasonably warm, the night had brought an
overcast of thick clouds and a bone-chilling drop in temperature. Against it,
my little angora sweater was of little help.

“Lady,” boomed the voice of the man on the phone. “It’s nine
o’clock. You’re nuts if you think I’m going to show you an apartment at nine
o’clock. Besides, I really don’t think you and your husband would like it here.
Now it’s late and I’ve got to”

“Look,” I said. “Is it worth a $200 bonus, in cash, up front,
for you to show me the place?”

The man hesitated. I could hear muffled words as he
discussed it with someone on the other end. I held my breath, praying.

He came back on the line. “Okay, but I’m not saying I’ll let
you have it. I’m only saying I’ll show it to you and you better have that money
in your hot little hand.”

“Yes, yes I will. And thank you. Thank you so much. We’ll be
right there.” I hung up quickly before he could change his mind.

“Here.” I ran back to the cab and shoved the paper over the
seat. “That’s where we’re going.”

The driver grabbed it, tilted it into the light and then
gave me an, are-you-nuts look. “What, this one?” He pointed at the last one
circled. “You wanna go there?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Just wouldn’t think it would be your kind of neighborhood,”
he said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! What possible difference...” I
glared at the man. “Just put it in gear and go, will you?”

“Try to help some people.” He knocked the transmission into
drive and the car lurched forward. A few minutes later we turned off on a
little side street and pulled up under a street light in front of a large, old
stucco house.

I leaned toward the driver. “Can you wait just a few minutes
longer?”

He shrugged and pulled out his handkerchief again. Snort,
snort, sniff, blow. “It’s your money.”

I watched the handkerchief get crammed back in his pocket
and suppressed a shudder.

Andrew didn’t stir as I eased out from under him. I tucked
the coat more tightly around him. “Hold on, just another couple of minutes,” I
whispered.

The house looked to be at least 100 years old, built when
plaster moldings of urns and wreaths were popular decor for porch uprights and
door lentils. Up the cracked concrete walk, four cement steps led to a wide,
dark porch that stretched across the front of the building. Bougainvillea grew
up over lattice mounted on top of the low stucco walls that framed the cement
porch. Robbed of their color by the darkness, the bushes created impenetrable
shadows at each end of the porch. My high heels tapped hollowly on the tiles as
I approached the front door. What was I getting myself into?

I looked back at the taxi. It idled at the curb, lit by the
streetlamp at its right front fender. I could see the driver, but the back seat
looked empty.

I took a deep breath and rapped sharply on the door. Almost
instantly it swung inward and a shaft of bright light stabbed out at me. I held
a hand up against it and squinted against the glare.

A man stepped into the wedge of light and stood, glaring at
me. He was a large man, not exceptionally tall but massive with muscle which
stretched the thin white material of his t-shirt and the worn denim of his
Levis to their limits. Though he had an enormous, bushy, black mustache, his
bare scalp glistened under the overhead light. He looked at me as if instead of
finding a human being facing him across the threshold, he had opened the door
only to find some alien life form that clearly disgusted him. “Well?” he asked.

I stepped forward. “I’m Melanie Brenner. I came about the
apartment.”

He rolled his eyes. “No kidding. Where’s the money?”

I pulled out the traveler’s checks.

His eyebrows went up and he began to shake his head. “You
said cash.”

“This is cash, or just as good.”

He kept shaking his head as backed through the door and
began to swing it closed. “No way, honey.”

I stepped forward, opened the booklet of fifty dollar checks
and thrust them into the light. I leafed through them slowly, watching his
face. “But they’re American Express.”

“Cash.” The door started closing again.

“Wait!” I pulled the seventy-five dollars that Harry had
refused out of my pocket. “I have seventy-five in cash.”

The door stopped and the man stared at the checks. “Two
hundred was the deal.”

“I know! But I only have seventy-five in bills!”

We stared at each other.

Another voice piped up from behind the door, a soft and
cultured voice. “Show her the place, Doug. The worse that happens is you end up
with seventy-five bucks.” A long-fingered hand reached around, grabbed the door
and pulled it back and I saw the owner of the voice--a tall but small-boned,
delicate man with a sweet, open face surrounded by soft, curling brown hair. I
thought instantly of cherubs—no, not cherubs since they were small and round. More
like cherubs who were older, perhaps in their early twenties, their faces
longer, thinner but still angelic. I smiled at the thought and at him. He was
simply beautiful. He responded with a dazzling smile and reached out to pat my
hand.