John Lutz - Dancing with the Dead

“How’s Angie?” she heard Jake ask. God, he’d noticed her even slouched in her car parked among hundreds of other cars.

He’d opened the passenger-side door and was scooting in to sit next to her.

“I don’t know,” Mary said. “They’re not allowing anyone to see her till tomorrow.”

“Christ! She that bad from guzzling nothing but booze? Hey, you positive she’s not into serious drugs?”

Mary hadn’t thought of that, but she was sure nothing could come between Angie and gin. “Alcohol’s her drug of choice. She doesn’t need anything else.”

“Hell of a way to be, huh?”

“They wanna run some tests.”

“Hospitals love to run tests,” Jake said. “Keeps them in business. And that’s all they are these days, believe me, nothing but businesses.” He must have cleaned up before driving to get Fred; Mary could smell his deodorant, which was not unlike the admitting nurse’s perfume. It was making her nauseated in the car’s stifling interior. Panic was circling her like a vulture, eager to exploit any sign of weakness.

“I gotta go,” she said. She twisted the ignition key and the engine kicked and sputtered to life.

“Mary, you said nobody can see Angie now anyway. No sense staying here.”

“That’s exactly why I’m leaving.”

“I meant there’s no sense in me staying. So let me come with you, Mary. Please. For you. You need somebody.”

The future, like a trap. Either future. Some world. She was glad Fred was waiting inside. Fred, good for something.

“No,” she told him. “Anyway, you’ve gotta drive Fred home.”

“I can phone and tell him where my car’s parked, and where I got an extra key taped behind the license plate. Let him drive it to his place and we’ll pick it up later. This is no time for you to be by yourself, babe.”

He was right. They both knew he was right, so why fight it? Why pretend?

Reluctantly she embraced something deep in her. Then the trap, the cold future, seemed to recede. A person had what and whom they had, and she might as well own up to that fact.

She wished right now she were somewhere else, a place where there was music and dancing, a secure, predictable corner of her life that wasn’t threatening or ugly.

But she was here, in the hot parking lot of Saint Sebastian Hospital, talking to Jake in the sickly glare of the overhead lights. Like it or not, this was her reality.

He placed his hand on top of hers on the steering wheel and gave it a gentle squeeze that hurt slightly and pressured her heart. “Please, Mary?”

“Let’s go,” she said. “You can help me search for bottles.”

Mary clenched her eyes shut and felt what he was doing take her over. She was helpless, shameless and defenseless, and in a way it was a relief to relinquish control to someone, something, beyond her. No control, no responsibility, no fear.

She couldn’t have stopped herself even if that was what she wanted. Her stomach tensed and her upper body levitated off the mattress as she groaned and reached orgasm. She was someone else and she was no one at all. For an instant she felt as if she were soaring toward the ceiling. Then she was aware of Jake’s heavy hand between her breasts, pushing her back down on the bed.

He knew her so well, knew how to move in her and what to say, and when not to say anything. Within a few minutes she twined her legs around his thrusting buttocks and reached orgasm again, though this time not so violently.

Seconds later he moaned. She thought she heard his teeth gnash. Then his body arched trembling against hers and she felt him release inside her.

Energy went out of him as he exhaled against her cheek in a long, hot sigh.

“You okay, babe?” he asked. Despite the fact that he was supporting himself on his elbows, his perspiring body was a crushing weight.

“Yeah, I think so,” she said hoarsely. “Just get off, please.”

After he rolled off her they lay silently, listening to the hum of the air-conditioner and feeling a cool draft flow across their damp nakedness. It had all been so systematic, by now almost a ritual.

About half an hour passed before Jake kissed the side of her neck and moved his hand down between her legs.

“No, not again,” she said, and pushed the hand away. It lingered like a predator only temporarily discouraged. “Not so soon.”

“Aw, it’s not soon at all.”

“It is, Jake. Listen to me, please? Will you?”

“Shit!” The voice of a disappointed boy denied a toy.

“Jake…”

“Okay, I’m sorry, Mary. I missed you, is all. Hey, you oughta be glad I want you so much.” Deliberately rustling the sheets, he settled down noisily on his side of the bed, not touching her. “Maybe when we’re old and gray it won’t be like that, and you’ll be sorry.”

“No way I’ll get old and gray if you kill me first.”

He laughed, his vanity tickled. Mary could manipulate a little herself. No way to live with Jake and not learn something about it.

She said, “I’ve gotta get up early tomorrow so I can call into work and tell them I won’t be there till afternoon.”

“I’ll drive you down to the hospital to get Angie.”

“I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right. I gotta say your mother’s not crazy about me.”

“She doesn’t have to be,” Mary said, and rolled over and kissed Jake on the mouth. What if Angie stayed uncaring and distant from everyone, including Mary? Not like the old Angie? A lifetime of alcohol could do that; Mary had seen it happen. She scrunched closer to Jake and clung desperately to him.

“Hey,” he said, “I thought you were the gal that wanted to sleep.”

“Changed my mind.”

His hand slid between her thighs again and closed possessively on what he sought. Fingers began to massage. She wished he’d move them higher, and he did. Then he pressed his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “I own you, babe, you know that?”

She said she knew.

When Mary stumbled into the kitchen the next morning to put Mr. Coffee to work, the first thing she saw was the line of gin bottles on the table. Five of them, all taken from Angie’s apartment. Three less than half full, two unopened. They drew the morning light and recast it as a rainbow of color over the table, reality bent and filtered through a prism and made beautiful. Temporarily.

Mary sometimes wondered how she’d escaped the compulsion to drink. The illness that was so often hereditary. Angie was-let’s face it-an alcoholic. And Duke had probably been one. Mary told herself she could take or leave alcohol, yet she seldom drank anything stronger than wine. Maybe that was because she’d seen what hard liquor could do. What it had already done to her life, even though she hadn’t been the one who’d drunk it. She tapped one of the opened bottles lightly with her fingernail. The clear tone it emitted was bell-like and beautiful.

Angie had been ingenious in hiding her stash of booze. One half-full bottle had been in the kitchen cabinet, like a decoy. It had turned out to contain water instead of gin. The other bottles had been buried in a flour canister, submerged in the toilet tank, stuck inside the bottom of the sofa through a rip in the upholstery. And of course there was the bottle behind the vacuum sweeper in the closet, the one Angie had told Mary about. Only it had actually been tucked inside the sweeper’s zippered bag, lying there like something waiting to be born.

Mary and Jake had searched the apartment for over an hour; she was reasonably sure Angie would return to an alcohol-free home. Of course, nothing was stopping her from phoning out and having a bottle delivered from the corner liquor store, but at least there wouldn’t be alcohol already in the apartment, tempting her.