Vaporware (26 page)

I
watched her go, at least as far as dignity would allow, then just stared at the
wall thinking about what she’d said.

The
clank of a plate landing on table yanked me back to reality. Leah set down
silverware and a giant offering of what I presumed were potato skins, a
bubbling volcanic mass of day-glow cheese product and bacon and chives with a
thundercloud of sour cream in the center. “Your meals will be out in a couple
of minutes,” she said. “Eat fast.”

“I’ll
wait for her to get back,” I said. “Thanks.”

She
didn’t leave. Instead, she looked at the door to the restrooms, then down at
me, then away again. “That’s nice,” she said. “You’re waiting for your
girlfriend to start. Most guys wouldn’t do that.”

“She’s
not my girlfriend,” I corrected her. “Friend, coworker…ex… whatever.”

“Uh-huh.”
Leah’s eyes narrowed. “Does she know that?”

 “She’d
better. She threw a full can of Sprite at my head when we broke up. I had to
clean up the mess when it hit the wall.”

“Proves
nothing,” she said, picking up the empties. “Another round?”

“Sure,”
I said. “And honestly, we’re not together. We’re both with other people now. We
just had a rough day at work and wanted a beer.”

“That
must be why she drew your face on the table,” she said, then walked away.

By
the time Shelly came back, the bubbling cheese had stopped bubbling, the
singing rugby fans had stifled their noise, and I’d mostly managed to snap my
jaw shut. “Hey,” I said as she sat down. Her face was wet, like she’d been
splashing cold water on it. I said nothing about it.

“Hey.
Works every time, doesn’t it? I go to the bathroom and the food shows up.”

“Like
magic. I waited for you.”

“I
can see that. You didn’t have to.”

I
shrugged. “There’s a lot of ‘didn’t have to’ out there. It just seemed like the
right thing to do.”

“You’re
sweet,” she said around a mouthful of grease and starch.

“When
I forget I’m a bastard. And I think I’m good, Shelly. Thank you for suggesting
we get out of there for a while. I needed that.”

“We
both needed it,” she said, and patted my hand with greasy fingers. I didn’t
pull away. After a minute, she rested hers on top of mine. “And I’m glad we
talked.”

“About
that thing at work?”

“About
everything.” Her fingers tightened around mine. Mine did the same around hers,
as if by reflex.

I
looked around for Leah, but she was nowhere to be found. Words, I told myself.
Get the conversation on something else. “So about Blue Lightning….”

Shelly
sighed and brushed the hair back from her eyes. “God, you are obsessed with
work.”

“Yeah,
well, I’m more worried about work getting obsessed with me.”

“Very
funny. So what do you want to do about it. Her. Whatever.”

“Even
if she is what we think she is, she’s just a ghost. I don’t think she can show
up in the daytime or she would have done it already. So tomorrow, I’ll tell
Eric all about the black project and get it shut down, she’ll go away, and
everyone will be happy.”

Shelly
sighed, shifting her hand on mine. “Almost everyone,” she said. She leaned
forward to kiss me.

After
a moment, I said, “Shelly, we shouldn’t….”

She
put her finger on my lips. “We saw a ghost. I don’t know about you, but right
now I want to do something that makes me feel alive.”

“You’re
drunk,” I told her but didn’t pull away. “In the morning….”

“I’m
not drunk. I’m tipsy. And you’re driving.” She kissed me again.

It
was a good kiss, the pressure of her lips firm against mine, the taste of her
mouth overwhelming everything else. I could feel Michelle’s tongue tracing the
line of my mouth and then gently moving against mine, and I gave myself up to
the feeling. I’d missed this, I realized, without even knowing I’d missed it.
For all that I loved Sarah, for all that our lovemaking was sweet and gentle
and caring, this had always been lacking from it, the feeling of challenge met
and shared and passed back and forth to heighten the pleasure.

“Sarah…,”
I gasped when we broke for breath. “I can’t—”

“She
gets you back tomorrow,” Shelly whispered. “Not tonight.”

We
kissed again.

“The
ghost—”

“—Isn’t
here,” she finished for me. “And we shouldn’t be, either.”

And
when I looked up, Leah was standing at the foot of the table with my card, our
bill, and a look on her face that said “I told you so.”

Not
knowing the going rate for silence, I left her a large tip. Then Shelly and I
went back out into the night, her leaning on me just a little more than she
needed to, and me letting her.

Chapter 21

I
woke up staring at a familiar ceiling, my head on a familiar pillow.

“Oh,
Jesus.” The words came out like a prayer, a prayer that I wasn’t where I
thought I was, wasn’t with whom I had to be.

I
lay there for a moment, feeling the warmth of a body cuddled up to mine. The
regular, gentle pattern of her breathing told me she was still asleep, which I
took as a small blessing. The moment I moved, though, she’d be up. I knew this
from experience. After all, Michelle had always been a light sleeper.

So
I stayed there on my back and looked up at the night sky she’d painted on the
ceiling; deep blue sky and yellow stars that were supposed to glow in the dark
and sometimes did. I’d spent a lot of nights looking up at those
constellations, ones Michelle had done with painstaking precision. I knew this;
I’d helped her. Here and there, darker spots on the ceiling showed where I’d
misplaced Zeta Reticuli or Aldebaran, and she’d had to paint over my handiwork.

I’d
thought that after all this time, they would have faded.

Instead,
it looked like she’d been touching them up.

She’d
re-painted the walls. The last time I’d been here, they’d been a stark and
unforgiving white. Now, they’d been done in a gentler tone, the warmer color of
a late summer afternoon, and all around she’d done silhouettes of Chinese
bamboo, black brushstrokes standing out stark against the background. There was
nothing else there, no sun or sky or lone panda munching his way through the
scenery, just those long black stalks reaching up and out.

In
lesser hands, they would have looked like prison bars. In Shelly’s, they looked
like someplace you could lose yourself, someplace to hide.

“Mmm?”
I felt Shelly as much as I heard her, her body snuggling up next to mine.
Risking a glance over at her face, I could see that she was smiling. There was
a hard set to her jaw at work these days, but here and now it was gone. She was
relaxed, calm, even innocent. She was happy.

Frost
crawled all over my insides at the thought of it. I could feel her skin against
mine, smooth and soft and decidedly unclothed. We were naked, in her bed, and
in her sleep she looked happy.

When
she woke up, I was certain that would change.

Change
how, though, I didn’t know. For her, for me, for Sarah—for Leon, whom I thought
of belatedly—some kind of genie had been let out of the bottle.

“Hmmm.”
Shelly purred a bit, rolling onto her side. Her back pressed up against me, an
unconscious expression of trust. I felt like a heel.

Getting
back together with Shelly was out of the question. For one thing, I loved
Sarah. I thought about that, tested and probed the idea, and every answer came
back true. For all the sparring that we’d done over my work habits (and the
memory of last night was strong and sour), for all that she wanted me to get
the hell out of gaming and get a respectable job, for all that she was The Real
World personified in a blonde and impeccably dressed package, I loved her. The
thought of leaving her was a physical wrench, a tug on my insides that
threatened to tear me in half if I gave it too much play.

And
yet, here I was in Shelly’s bed. I liked Shelly, had grown to like her more as
a friend after we’d had our final detonation at work. I’d learned to respect
her more as well, her professional competence on constant display in everything
we did at the office. And, I admitted, I still wanted her on occasion in a way
that I never felt for Sarah.

I’d
just never expected to act on it ever again. Even when I’d caught myself
looking, I’d smacked the daydream down ruthlessly. I shouldn’t. It was wrong.
It would mess things up with Sarah. Shelly wouldn’t want to. It would mess
things up at work.

Work…that
was going to be a nightmare now, no matter what. How the hell could I sit
across from Shelly in a team meeting? How could we work together? How could I
look at her?

From
somewhere off in the wilds of the living room, something yowled. It was Marley,
most likely, Shelly’s cat. It sounded like he wanted his breakfast. I gave it
three minutes before he wandered in and started jumping up and down on the bed,
not to mention whoever was still in it. Marley was that sort of cat, a tuxedoed
drama queen.

I
missed the little bugger.

Something
brushed my thigh. I rolled over and saw Michelle, her hand groping at the air
over the sheets. It looked like she wanted something to hold.

I
kept my hands by my sides, my body rigid. It would be bad enough when she woke
up. Why make it worse?

Why
not give her a little comfort, a voice in my head asked. Why not take a little
for yourself?

Because,
I decided, I’d taken too much for myself already.

Besides,
I needed to pee.

I
eased myself out of the bed and padded across the floor to the bathroom. Behind
me I could hear Michelle spreading out into the space I’d vacated, taking up
the warmth I’d left.

Marley
greeted me in the hallway. “Hello, you little bastard,” I greeted him.

“Mwraor?”
was his response, along with a rub up against my ankles, so I detoured into the
kitchen. Gambling that Shelly still kept the cat food in the same place, I
rummaged through the cabinets as quietly as possible. A short stack of Nine Lives
in the cupboard over the sink told me I was right. The can opener was in the
same drawer next to the dishwasher. Marley, for his part, jumped up on the
counter and paced back and forth excitedly, meowing all the while.

“Hush.
You’re going to wake her up.” I opened the tin and plopped half the contents
into a bowl, then put some plastic wrap around the can and shoved it into the
fridge. Marley followed me down the counter until I put his food on the floor,
at which point he purred ferociously and jumped down. I got one last rub, and
then he dug in, the metal of his tag making tiny clanking sounds against the
rim of the bowl as he chowed down.

I
watched him, bemused, then headed back on my original mission. Everything in
the bathroom was lavender—the walls, the towels, the scented candles doing
their best to hold off the stink of Marley’s litter box—but I tried to ignore
it and take care of the business at hand. The toilet gargled loudly as I
flushed, cringing at the sound. I put the seat, down when I finished. It seemed
like the polite thing to do.

I
washed my hands as quietly as I could and dried them on one of the lavender
hand towels. I avoided looking into the mirror. This was not the time for long,
deep introspective moments or trying to find character in a face that clearly
lacked it. With luck, I could sneak into the bedroom before Shelly woke up.
Then, it was decision time—climb into bed and wait for what was coming, or try
to get dressed and sneak off, delaying the inevitable. I still hadn’t made up my
mind by the time I reached the bed. Both courses of action seemed to have their
merits, but both depended on Michelle still being asleep.

Which,
of course, she wasn’t.

“Was
it as good for you,” she said, and rolled over lazily so that she could lean on
one arm and look at me, “as it was for me?”

“Honestly,”
I said, cupping my hands in front of my groin, “I don’t remember.”

“Ah.
Lucky for you, I do.” She yawned. “And you really don’t need to do that. I know
what it looks like.”

“It
makes me feel better.” I did my best to look graceful while doing the
junk-in-hand shuffle.

She
shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Marley’s
fed,” I told her, not looking at her, but rather casting about for where
exactly my underpants had ended up. They weren’t immediately visible among the
other garments on the floor, most of which were hers.

Shelly
nodded. I snuck a glance over at her. Her face still had that calm it had
possessed while she was sleeping. She was just watching me, a little amused, a
little…something. It wasn’t love. Affection, perhaps, or nostalgia. Or
something. “I know,” she said. “I heard you.” There was a long pause. “Thank
you.”

“You
were up?”

She
smiled. “I’ve been up for a while. I was just enjoying the moment.”

“Oh,”
I said, and turned my attention back to the floor. Most of it.

“Oh,
you’re no fun,” she announced, but there wasn’t anything behind it. Instead,
she turned herself sideways to face me, propping her chin up on both hands like
a sphinx. The bedsheet slid halfway down her back as she did so, not that she
seemed to notice or mind. “So what are we going to do now?”

“I
don’t know.” I spotted my underwear on the floor at the foot of the bed, and
reached down to grab them. “This is…this is a big deal.”

“Yeah.
Yeah, it is.” Her glance flicked around the room. “I think your pants are over
there,” she added, pointing in the direction of the rocking chair. Sunbeams
peeked through the Venetians blinds and illuminated it in stripes, as well as
revealing my jeans wrapped around one of the runners. How they’d gotten there
was a mystery.

I
shrugged myself into my boxers and walked across the room to rescue my pants.
The socks I figured for a lost cause; maybe Michelle could use them for paint
rags or something. I disentangled the jeans in silence, thankful that Marley
had chosen that particular moment for his entrance.

“Hey
there, kitty,” I said, and turned to scratch the critter behind his ears. He
yowled a hello, then jumped onto the bed.

Shelly
ignored him for the moment, causing him to march across the bed and present
himself for affection. I obliged as best I could while trying to slip into my
pants; from the angle of the sun, it was well past seven and heading toward
eight in a hurry. Marley, however, didn’t seem to care. He unleashed a
full-throated purr that threatened to shake my fingernails loose, and twisted
his head this way and that to afford the best angle to suit his whim.

“You
used to do this all the time, you know.” Michelle interrupted our communal
reverie. I looked over at her, while Marley let out a small yowl and jumped off
the bed near my feet.

“Do
what?” I finished tugging my pants on. The belt was still threaded through the
loops, so I thanked God I wouldn’t have to go hunting for it and buckled it
instead.

Michelle
sat up, one arm holding the sheet loosely over her breasts. She watched Marley
as he sauntered away, then looked back at me. “Use the cat as a distraction.
Every time we had a serious fight or I brought up a topic you didn’t want to
talk about, you’d start fussing over Marley.”

“That’s
not true,” I snorted. I pulled my shirt up from the floor. It was crosshatched
with cat hair, the black and white fuzz indicating that Marley had taken
ownership of it during the night. I sniffed it experimentally for the tell-tale
scent of pee that would indicate he really liked it, but there wasn’t any. “And
now is not the time to be bringing that stuff up, is it?”

“Oh,
please.” She swung her legs out and planted her feet on the floor, then stood
with the sheet wrapped around her like a toga. “Ryan do you want to get
married? Oooh, look at the kitty. Ryan, I think we need to talk. Listen to the
purring. Ryan, I don’t think I love you anymore. Sorry, I was looking at the
cat.” Suddenly, she was very close to me, angry. “You and Sarah don’t have a
cat. What are you going to do when she asks you where you were last night?”

“I
told you, I don’t know!” I spun away and stalked over to the window with my
t-shirt still bundled up in my fist. “It’s not like I had a plan for what to
tell my girlfriend when I cheated on her, you know?”

“First
time, huh?” Shelly kept staring at me. I turned around to slip the shirt on. I
could feel her eyes boring into my back. “Then again, you were never the
run-around type.”

“No,
and I never thought I would be.” I finished pulling the shirt on and tried to
dust some cat hair off. All that did was move it into different patterns. “I
never thought—”

“You’d
come back here?” She let the sheet drop.

“Yeah.”
I looked down at the floor, at the walls, anywhere but at her. “I never thought
I’d come back to you.”

“You
haven’t,” she said conversationally. “We just screwed. Now take a good look, if
you want. I think it’s probably the last one you’ll ever get.”

“I’ve
heard that before,” I muttered, my eyes still on the floor. “Look, Shelly, I’m
serious. I never meant for anything like this to happen—”

“I
know.”

“—And
I don’t know what I’m going to do next.” Automatically, I ran my hands through
my pockets. Wallet, check. Keys, check. phone, check and buzzing like crazy to
let me know I had unheard messages. Probably Sarah.

Definitely
Sarah.

“I
know what you’re not going to do,” she said, her jaw tightening into the lines
I knew from work. “You are not going to use this as a lever to pry yourself out
of whatever you’ve got with Sarah. You are not going to go to her and make a
lame-ass tearful confession. And you are not going to ‘accidentally’ let Sarah
find out so she gets to leave you because you don’t want to deal with what she
wants from you. If you decide this was a mistake, then fine, it was a mistake.
I had a great time, you had a great time, and apart from some laundry, that’s
the end of it. But I want you to ask yourself, Ryan, why you’re here. Why
you’re really here.”