Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

“It is?” His heart nearly leapt out of his chest, and his reaction did not escape Maria's notice.

“So,” she said, crushing the still glowing cigarette butt under one shoe, “before we have to drag in the police, the FBI, the INS, or whoever, maybe you want to tell me something?”

He had been rehearsing for this moment for days, wondering how he was going to tell her his story, but now that it was on him, all he wanted to do was throw open the doors of the van and rescue Eleanor.

“First of all,” she said, “I don't know who's in that bag-I haven't opened it-but I know it's not Erik. He's about a foot taller, and a hundred pounds heavier, than whoever that is.”

“You're right,” Michael said. “It's not Erik.”

Maria looked surprised at his immediate capitulation. “Then where is he?”

Michael lowered his head and said, “You're going to have to bear with me, because what I'm about to tell you is strictly prohibited by the NSF” And then he launched into his story, reminding Maria that she'd said Danzig-Erik-was never happier than he was at the Pole, and how he would have wanted to be buried there. Michael confessed that he had been. “But we would have caught hell for doing it, so I couldn't let you know about it until I could tell you here myself, privately, in person.” Then he reached under his shirt collar and pulled the walrus-tooth necklace over his head. When Maria saw it, her eyes welled with tears. “I know he would have wanted you to have this,” Michael concluded. “He always wore it.”

Clutching the necklace in her hand, she turned and walked a few yards away, her head down, shoulders heaving.

Michael waited, feeling his shirt sticking to his skin and his long hair plastered to the back of his neck. It was all he could do not to break into the van, but there were other people not far off- mechanics and a couple of baggage handlers-and he knew he needed to hold on just a little bit longer.

Maria composed herself and retrieved a clipboard from the dashboard of the van. The necklace was hanging around her neck when she returned.

“Okay, so thank you. Erik got what he would have wanted. I owe you one.” Handing him the clipboard, she said, “Sign at all the places I've put an X”-there were at least a dozen-and when Michael had finished, she tore off a couple of countersigned copies and handed them to him. “Now it's official. Erik came back.”

“Thanks.”

“But that still doesn't tell me who's in the bag.”

Michael knew that this was going to be the really hard part of the sell. Who would believe it?

“A friend of mine,” he said. “Her name's Eleanor.”

“You mean, was Eleanor.”

“No, she's alive.”

Maria stopped and looked at him appraisingly as if trying to decide if she should reconsider everything else he had just been telling her. “Not in that bag, she's not. Not all the way from the South Pole, in cargo holds.”

“She is,” Michael said, taking Maria by the hand and all but dragging her toward the rear of the van. “Please let me go in and get her.”

One of the baggage handlers looked over at them curiously.

“Mother of God,” Maria said, “are you nuts? What the hell happens to you people down there?”

But she didn't stop him when he opened the back doors, climbed inside, and pulled them closed again.

The bag was laid on a metal shelf and held in place by two canvas straps. Michael hastily untied them, whispering, “I'm here, I'm here,” all the while. But there was no sound from inside the bag.

He grabbed the zipper at the top-the one he'd mangled just enough so it wouldn't completely close-yanked it down and pulled the flaps to either side.

Eleanor was lying as still as death, her arms at her sides.

“Eleanor,” he said, touching her face with the tips of his fingers. “Eleanor, please, wake up.”

He put his head close enough to feel her breath on his cheek. Cool breath, not warm. Her skin was cool, too.

“Eleanor,” he said again, and this time he thought he saw her eyelids flutter. “Eleanor, wake up. It's me. Michael.”

A troubled look crossed her face, as if she resented being disturbed.

“Please…” he said, placing his hand on hers. “Please.” Unable to resist any longer, he bent down to kiss her. But then, remembering Darryl's warning, he put his lips to her eyelids-first one, then the other-instead. It wasn't how he would have chosen to awaken his Sleeping Beauty… but it was enough.

Her eyes opened, staring straight up at the roof of the van, then shifted toward Michael. For a second, he was afraid she hadn't recognized him.

“I was so afraid,” she said. “Afraid that if I opened my eyes, I'd be back in the ice.”

“Never again,” he said.

She lifted his hand from hers and cradled it against her cheek.

Maria Ramirez made him swear on all that was holy that he would never tell anyone how this strange woman had illegally entered the United States, and Michael made her swear in turn that she would never divulge the true fate of her husband's remains. Then, driving through the muggy night, Maria dropped them off at a little hotel she knew on Collins Avenue, a block from South Beach.

“When we need to bring in a forensics expert from out of town,” she said, “it's where we put them. Nobody's ever complained.”

Michael took Eleanor up to the room, turned on all the lights, and started filling the tub for her. The moment the bathroom door closed, he thought he heard a low sob from inside. He was torn between knocking and trying to comfort her, or simply letting her emotions run their course. How could anyone have endured all that she had endured-in the past day or two, or in the centuries that preceded them-without breaking down at some point? And what could he say that would be of the slightest help?

Instead, he went back downstairs and convinced the elderly woman at the front desk to open the boutique shop for him so he could buy a sundress-the most demure he could find, a gauzy yellow cotton with short sleeves-and some sandals. The woman, who'd looked at Eleanor like she was dressed in a Halloween costume, understood, and even threw a couple of other items onto the pile. “Bloomers won't work under that,” she said, laconically.

When he got back to the room, he rapped on the bathroom door, then inched it open and dropped the bag of new clothes inside. A cloud of steam billowed out.

“I thought you might like to dress for the climate here,” he said, before pulling the door closed again. “If you're hungry, I can go out and get some food.”

“No,” she said, her voice sounding almost sepulchral, “not right now.”

He went to the window, and pulled back the bright floral curtains. A few lights were still on in neighboring buildings. A street-sweeping truck lumbered past. How could he tell her the rest of what she needed to know? That it was not only ice she had to fear… but human contact. Intimate human contact.

How could he tell her that even though her craving was gone, her contagion was not? That she posed a threat to anyone she might wish to embrace?

How, for that matter, could he tell himself?

Once the rumbling of the street sweeper had faded away, he went back to the bathroom door and wound up spending the next half hour trying to assuage her shocked sensibilities. Eleanor was so appalled at the shortness-and sheerness-of the dress that she would not come out at all until he had sworn-repeatedly-that these were the latest fashions and that everyone dressed that way. “A lot of the time, they wear even less,” he said, wondering what she would make of the first bikini-clad rollerblader they passed. When she finally relented, and stepped, blushing madly, into the room, she took his breath away.