Sex (19 page)

If Josh could be fearless, then so could she.

She placed his face in her hands and devoured his lips with her own, giving him the longest, most passionate kiss she was capable of giving. Then she tugged on his hand and led him toward Washington Square Park. “Let's go,” she said, smiling.

“You're sure?” he called out as she began running for the park.

“Hurry up!” she shouted back as she pulled off her impossible shoes. She could run a few blocks in stockings. Sure, she could. Tonight she could do whatever she wanted to do.

“ED?”

Somewhere between sleep and waking, Gaia had convinced herself that she was back in bed with him. Back safely tucked away under his rumpled purple sheets, his arm wrapped around her waist and his breath ruffling her hair gently in the rhythm of sound sleep. Back when quiet had been a good thing and not just blank space to be filled up with all her loud, self-pitying thoughts.

The Clink

But of course, there were no arms around her. None of those soothing sounds of the street passing through his window. No shafts of light that cast blue
shadows on his ceiling. Nothing but dull airy silence and pitch blackness.

Until she heard the clink. It was almost inaudible. It probably wouldn't have even been heard by the average ear, but Gaia picked it up immediately. In fact, it was probably what had woken her up in the first place. A clink here and a clink there, barely even tapping her eardrums.

She got up off the carpet and moved to turn on a light. Unfortunately, she had never even been to the den in the daytime, let alone slept there at night, so finding a lamp was something of an adventure. After a minute or so of flailing her arms, she finally bumped into something lamp shade-like. She reached under and switched it on.

Not only was there no Ed in sight. But there was no Gen, either.

Clink.

There it was again. Coming from the living room. And there was the slightest paranoid buzz, nagging her like a cold that wouldn't quite die. Why were there quiet clinks in the living room, and where the hell was Gen?

Jesus, Gaia, relax. She probably just went to get a drink of water. Maybe Natasha finally came home.

She decided to take her approach to the living room very slowly. If it was nothing, then she could turn back before she got caught looking like a timid paranoid housewife. If it was something, then she'd be
able to catch that something red-handed. There was only one possibility that truly worried her. Something she'd totally forgotten to check on before falling asleep next to her new friend in the den.

Drugs. Gen probably still had a stash of her own, and Gaia had foolishly neglected to confiscate it.
Think next time, Gaia.
She was so new at this drug-counseling thing, maybe she was entitled to a few mistakes. But still, if she found Gen doing drugs in the living room, she was going to feel like a totally inept friend.

She stepped to the door of the living room and poked her head around. There was hardly any light to see by, but enough was coming from the open windows to see that something in the room did not look right.

Things were missing.

The silver bowl was gone from the coffee table, and there were no little green lights where the VCR had been. A thief? Was that what she was dealing with here? A goddamn petty thief?

Wait a minute. Casper.
It had to be Casper. Anything with the word
petty
attached to it had to be Casper. Of course. He'd been tailing Gen all day. He must have followed her straight to Gaia's house and just waited for all the lights in the apartment to go out before he moved in. But how did he break in? Maybe he was a better petty thief than she would have figured him for.

She stepped carefully through the doorway and searched the room, but it was still too dark to see
enough. She tiptoed to the lamp by the couch and reached to turn it on.

But it went on all by itself.

“Boo”
came the voice from behind her. Followed by a very self-satisfied giggle.

Unbelievable. Just absolutely unbelievable that he would want to mess with Gaia again. Was this asshole a glutton for punishment or what? She whipped around to face him. But instead she was facing the barrel of his gun pointed at the middle of her forehead.
Dammit. I knew I should have taken all three guns from the boathouse.

“Guess who?” He grinned, holding tightly to a laundry bag full of Natasha's belongings. “Yeah* He chuckled repulsively. “Thought you were never going to see me again, right? Yeah, gee, I guess I messed up your little agreement, huh? You
bitch”
The smile turned into something psychotic and vicious as he cracked the gun over the Side of Gaia's head. The impact was excruciating, but Gaia quickly bounced her head back up and gave him her most defiant stare. She was not going to show him an ounce of pain.
Her
pain, that is. She'd show him plenty of his own.

“How the hell did you get in here?” she demanded.

“How?” he asked. “I
told
you, I'm the friendly ghost. I can walk through walls”

“Where's Gen?” she asked, loosening her fingers in preparation to snap his neck once she got her answer.

“Oh, why?” he teased. “Are you worried about your little charity case? Isn't that sweet.”

Gaia could feel nothing but sadistic and violent tendencies at this point. The thoughts of what he might have done to Gen were bringing out the kind of rage he really didn't want to face. She had begun to think of the specific ways she would have to torture him before she killed him. Sick scenarios that simply were not repeatable. “You tell me where she is right now or—”

“Or what?” Casper challenged, shoving the barrel of his gun directly into the skin between her eyes. “Or you'll get shot in the head? Yeah, I think you may be right about that.”

“Tell me what the hell you did to her!” she howled, gearing up her limbs for a full-scale attack.

But before she could make a move, an arm crept over her shoulder and held a knife flat up against her neck.
More thugs? How many dudes work for this loser?

“Boo!” a girl's voice whispered in her ear.
A girl's voice?

Casper dropped his gun and started to laugh in Gaia's face. Just stood there, laughing, with his hand over his mouth. And then the girl with the knife to Gaia's throat began laughing as well—straight into Gaia's ear. Gaia already knew who was laughing; she just didn't want to believe it. She didn't want to believe this was happening. But she at least needed to confirm it. She leaned her head back slightly to try and get a glimpse of her. And get a glimpse she did.

Yep. That's what she had thought.
You idiot, Gaia. You unadulterated idiot.

She'd finally found Gen. Not another thug with a knife to Gaia's throat.
Gen
with a knife to Gaia's throat.

“Hey,
buddy,”
Gen whispered in her ear. Casper was nearly falling down laughing at this point.

“Gen, what are you doing?” Gaia asked. As if she didn't already know. She kept her head as still as possible since Gen had the knife nearly slicing into her throat.

“What am I doing?” Gen asked. “I'm
robbing
your ass, you idiot. What does it look like I'm doing?” She turned to Casper. “I told you she wasn't that smart,” she said with a laugh.

Yeah. That's what she thought she was doing. Gaia closed her eyes in the darkest kind of humiliation. The reality of the situation was very slowly beginning to seep from her pores, through her brain, and finally, most painfully, into her heart, where she'd found it the hardest to accept this despicable truth.

She'd made a mistake. She'd made a terrible, terrible, idiotic, stupid mistake.

“Oh, what's the matter?” Gen asked with mock concern. “Did someone ruin your little do-gooder project for the week? You poor little thing. Now you won't have your drug-addict charity case for show-and-tell tomorrow.”

Gaia didn't even bother responding. There was no point in adding to her humiliation.

“Yeah,” Gen went on, “here's your news flash, Kung Fu Barbie: I'm not your poor little dead rich girlfriend, and I don't need
saving.
What I need is all the Princess Prissy Bitch accessories in this apartment.
That's
what I need. So thanks for
finally
inviting me in. It took you long enough.”

Gaia felt abundantly sick to her stomach.

How could she have been so hopelessly gullible? She was trained to detect lies just from the shifting of the eyes or the staggering of breaths in a sentence. She was trained in every aspect of profiling, trained to detect what character elements naturally combined to make an untrustworthy person or a potential criminal. Yet here she was… totally suckered by a lying junkie and some two-bit dealer who looked like an ugly Backstreet Boy.
That's
how lonely Gaia had become. That's how desperate for some purpose in life. That's how much she loved and missed Mary Moss.

And Gen was sure as hell right about one thing. She was no Mary. That strip of fake red hair should have been the tip-off. She was a fake. A total fake.

“And you know what?” Gen went on. “I am so glad our little scam here is done, Gaia, because I am so sick of listening to your condescending crap. I don't even know where you get off, thinking
you're
going to fix
my
life? Your life's the most screwed-up pathetic shit I've ever seen.”

She was right about that, too.

“Suggestion,” Gen added. “Instead of trying to turn me into some chick who's already dead… why don't you find yourself
one
real freakin' friend? 'Cause your shit is tragic. It's so tragic, I almost feel guilty scamming you. Except I don't.”

“Yeah, that's real sweet,” Casper said. “You done with your little speech? Because it is freakin'
payback
time. Where's the other one?”

“In there,” Gen said, motioning to the bedroom with her head. “Now, this…,” she whispered in Gaia's ear, “this, I think you're going to like.”

“YOU DIDN'T TELL ME SHE WAS SO
hot,”
Casper announced as he pushed Tatiana through the bedroom doorway, holding his gun to the back of her head.

Reverse Snobbery

Tatiana gazed coldly into Gaia's eyes as Casper shoved her toward a chair at the dining table. Gaia winced when she saw her face. She didn't look terrified. She didn't look angry. Not quite stunned, even. She looked almost
resigned
to this horrific fate. It was as if Tatiana had already known something like this was going to happen the moment Gaia
had brought Gen into their house. As if it had only been a matter of time before Gaia found some way to make an absolute mess of things—to get them robbed of all their precious family heirlooms and then to get them all killed. Tatiana had probably been expecting something like this from the moment she'd first seen Gaia in her bedroom, lying in a pool of sweat, hallucinating all kinds of paranoid murderous scenarios.

Gaia had despised Tatiana for every one of her offensive assumptions and lofty judgments. And they had all been correct. All Tatiana's holier-than-thou, high-and-mighty presumptions had been disgustingly, embarrassingly right on the money. Bringing this low-level hustler into the house had been a terrible mistake.
Terrible mistake
—there was the understatement of the century. Gaia's lousy judgment and reverse snobbery were about to get them both killed.

No, it wasn't even that. It wasn't just the reverse snobbery or the lousy judgment. It was the curse. The Curse of Gaia Moore. Apparently being in close proximity to Gaia was really the
only
necessary qualification to fall prey to the curse. Gaia didn't even have to like the person. Yes, she despised Tatiana. But she'd never wished something like this on her. Never.

“Oh, man,” Casper complained. “I can't believe I'm going to blow holes in this beautiful head.”

“Will you shut up with that?” Gen snapped, keeping
the knife secured to Gaia's throat. “She looks like she was made in a goddamn factory.”

“Yeah, well… either way, she's gone.”

Oh, Jesus. Find the way out of this, Gaia. What is the way out?
She could think of nothing. Not one viable option. Gen and Casper probably didn't even know how cleverly they'd placed themselves, but nonetheless it was practically foolproof. They were simply too far apart for Gaia to do anything. If she made a move on Gen, there was no way she could get to Casper fast enough before he pulled the trigger.

“This is ridiculous,” Gaia complained, trying to stall. “What does she have to do with any of this?”

“Oh, that's real simple,” Casper said, running his gun through Tatiana's hair. “You messed up my friends bad, so I'm going to mess up yours. Eye for an eye and all that.”

“She's not even my friend,” Gaia said coldly, searching desperately for the remotest inkling of a plan.

Casper shrugged. “Yeah, well, Gen says you don't have any friends, so she's going to have to do.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Gaia argued,
“I'm
the one who messed up your friends. You should kill me, not her.”

“Who said we weren't going to do you?” Casper spat, looking more and more pissed off. “I think it's time you shut your mouth and watched. Now you can see what it feels like when someone pops a bullet right through one of your friends.”

“I didn't even
shoot
your friends,” Gaia hollered. “They shot each other.”

“I told you to shut the hell up!” Casper growled, ripping Tatiana's head back by her hair and jabbing the gun into her left temple.

“Just shoot her already” Gen complained. “Gaia doesn't even like her. She hates the haughty bitch's guts. She doesn't give a shit whether she lives or dies.”