T. Bunn - Winner Take All

“Son, I’d rather watch you tear a patch out of that man’s hide than sit ringside at a revival.” Deacon slapped the car into gear. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty sharp.”

Marcus ate a solitary dinner and stretched out on his bed. But the day had already been too full of sleep. He slipped into his clothes and padded back downstairs. Marcus arrived on the porch just as a concert of wind began singing through his pines. He eased himself down in one of the rockers, testing each joint in turn. There was considerable soreness, particularly around his neck and upper shoulders. But other than a general sense of bearing a body-sized bruise and having come far too close to that last cold breath, he was all right.

The wind’s recital was particularly sweet that night. He rocked in cadence to the tossing branches as thunder’s profound bass filled the hollows of his chest. It seemed to him that Charlie Hayes walked up and settled into the rocker alongside his own. The sensation was so strong Marcus felt a need to say the words aloud, that he was welcome here always.

Then the first sheet of rain swept in, forming a tight enclosure for all the night’s scents. The magnolia blossoms and bougainvillea sang a perfumed lament. The leaves tapped out the rhythm of absent friends.

But it was not merely Charlie’s absence that harried him that night. His need to hold Kirsten was a pain that dwarfed his physical discomfort. He ached as well for all she carried. There was no question but that she was judging him through spectacles formed by her past. Marcus sat and rocked and listened to the storm enclose him in his safe little island, and prayed that he could trust her and their love enough to hope she would not only return, but return because she was ready for him. He hoped Charlie Hayes had been right. He hoped he had done the right thing. This time.

Kirsten caught the midday flight to Washington and a late afternoon plane to London. She was plagued the entire journey by how her life’s rules were being tangled and respun in a web-like script she could not fathom. As she entered Heathrow’s Terminal Three, jet lag hulked in the back of her mind like the onset of a bad cold. She gathered her bags, passed through customs, and headed for the discount hotel counter. From the sparse high-season choices she selected a Best Western within walking distance of Paddington Station. On the express train into London, her jumbled thoughts chopped at the fineness of the sunlit morning with a blade honed from earlier times.

At Paddington she asked directions from an overfriendly porter and became lost a block from the station entrance. Jet lag and a plague of almost-familiar images pressed in from all sides. The sunlight was brighter than she recalled, the weather warmer. London to her mind was a place of cool nights and misting rain, even in July. By the time she finally found the proper road, the back of her shirt was clamped tightly to her skin.

The hotel receptionist was a slender Pakistani with soulful eyes and a manner that suggested he tried his wiles with every pretty woman. He pressed the key into her palm, then wrapped his fingers delicately about her wrist, pinning her into his grip. “Madame is being upgraded to one of the most newly renovated and air-conditioned rooms.”

Kirsten pretended not to notice either his tone or his clutch. “Can you tell me where I can find a good detective?”

The receptionist’s hand snapped away. “Please?”

“A detective. A large agency would be better. Someone with an international reputation.”

“I am certain I do not know.” A film descended over the liquid gaze. “Madame must excuse me now. Other guests are soon to be arriving.”

Kirsten hefted her own luggage and carried it up the narrow stairs. Her room was an Edwardian box, high-ceilinged and once probably the side parlor to a grand city house. Now it was carpeted in a depressing plaid, painted a shade somewhere between tan and putrid, and lit by the chandelier’s three remaining bulbs. Kirsten settled upon the bed, pulled out the proper phone book, and looked up the Royal Opera House. Every motion caused the unsprung mattress to sway like a boat entering harbor. As the phone rang she surveyed the room with tired satisfaction. If any place offered a total disconnection from her unwanted past, it was this.

The phone spoke. “Covent Garden.”

“I just wanted to ask about a singer performing tonight.”

“The name?”

“Erin Brandt.”

The response came too swiftly for it to have been the first time spoken that day. “Ms. Brandt does not accept any calls. But I am happy to relay a message.”

“No. No message.” She hung up, took a hard breath, then dialed the number for Marcus’ office. She endured Netty’s recorded message and tersely spelled out her London address. Her hands were shaking as she hunted through her purse for the card from Senator Jacobs’ aide. She dialed the senator’s Raleigh office and left a detailed message, asking for help in locating a London-based detective agency. As she spelled out her requirements, she found herself fighting a losing skirmish with her steadily descending eyelids.

She was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Familiar dreams rose in what she had hoped would be a sterile room. She danced to a chamber full of strangers, all smiling and waving, all shouting noises that created a screeching cacophonous din. She danced not to a melody, but chaos. The apparitions shouted at her in voices barely below full rage. Though she neither wanted to be there nor understood what they were saying, still she danced, alone and surrounded by enemies disguised with smiles.

The noise in her dream was so loud, when the phone rang she merely absorbed the sound and danced to that as well. Gradually the wordless clatter receded until the ringing was all she could hear, and the dance dimmed to where she had no choice but to open her eyes.

She lifted the receiver, cradled it to her shoulder, and pushed herself upright. “Yes?”

“Madame has a visitor.”

“Who-” But the receptionist had already slapped down the phone.

Kirsten slipped into clothes that still smelled of the plane’s recycled air. In the doorway she paused and turned back, inspecting the high-ceilinged room with its repainted hints of former grandeur. She saw no hint of her caper with frantic memories save the tousled bed.

She took the stairs in a dull melange of fatigue and dream tendrils. Which made her entrance into the lobby even more eerie.

Afternoon light made a brilliant splash upon the lobby’s white-tiled floor. To her squinting gaze, it appeared that a shadow separated itself from its owner and rushed over to find a more suitable host.

Then a face came into view, and eyes looked at her, and a mild yet breathless voice declared, “Beautiful, yes, that I can accept. But not like this. Not like a vision with the eyes of a shattered soul. Do you dance? Do you sing? You have the look of an artist, one whose cry is too great to be held trapped within.”

“Excuse me?”

A hand reached for her arm and pulled her toward the doorway. “Come, we must inspect you in the full light of day.”

The woman’s movements were too swift, the tableau too changing, for Kirsten to focus fully. She saw high-heeled suede boots dancing across the sun-splashed floor. They rose to join with rose-silk trousers, and they with a matching high-collared jacket. Hair like a black waterfall poured across the shoulders. The woman was not large. But when she turned back around, and drew in so close Kirsten could see the faint darker flecks within those chestnut eyes, she commanded . “Yes. As soon as I saw you moving down the stairs, I knew. We are sisters, you and I. Molded by the same harsh flame.”