Vaporware (39 page)

I
listened to her, her words muffled by the pounding of her heart and mine. I
listened to her, and tried to find a flaw in her logic, and found none. I
listened to her, and wondered what it said about me that this was the
manifestation of my creation, the inexorable end product of my imagination.

She
ground herself against me, just a little. “Tell me you love me,” she whispered.
“I already know that you do.”

I
thought about it, about Sarah on the floor, bleeding. About the additional time
I could win for whoever was pounding on the door downstairs if I played along.
About how true it might be.

“I
love you,” I told her. “God help me, I love you.”

“I
love you too,” she said, her voice nothing but gentleness now. “I was always
supposed to love you.”

I
listened to her and nodded and prayed she’d keep talking. And my right hand,
the one that had been holding me up against the counter, closed around the only
thing I could find—a heavy, ugly porcelain liquid soap dispenser.

Downstairs,
something broke, loudly. It was glass from the sound of it. Whoever had been
pounding on the door was tired of waiting for someone to answer.

Blue
Lighting jerked back, away from me. “Ryan!” she said. “Did you call the
-”

I
slammed the soap dispenser into the side of her face. She let out a
steam-whistle shriek and started toppling over, arms flailing as she tried to
regain her balance. In the background, I could hear the sound of the front door
opening, and a woman’s voice shouting my name.

Shelly,
I realized, even as I brought the soap dispenser around for another shot. Blue
Lightning was twisting away, bending impossibly as she strove to regain her balance.
If she got that, I was dead, Sarah was dead, Shelly was dead…

Like
a willow tree in a high wind, she leaned back and twisted. Her hands caught the
top of the shower stall, stopping her fall, and then pushed her forward.

She
wasn’t falling any more.

There
were footsteps on the stairs now, doubletiming it up with staccato insistence.

“Shelly!
Get out!” I tried to say, but the words weren’t there. I swung again, the soap
dispenser coming around in a wide arc that she ducked under easily. Before I could
stop, Blue Lighting reached up and grabbed me by the wrist. “I don’t think so,
Ryan,” she said, and squeezed. Something crunched under her grip and my fingers
were suddenly nerveless. My weapon dropped to the floor, miraculously not
shattering, but useless to me now.

Just
like I was useless to Sarah.

Who
chose that exact moment to wrap her arm around Blue Lightning’s ankles and
yank, hard.

She
didn’t make a sound as she went over. Instead, she fell to her right, her waist
hitting the top of the tub as she toppled into the scalding hot water. She let
go of my hand as she fell, and I staggered to my feet. Sarah stared up at me.
“Do something!” she croaked, and I did.

Bubbles
were coming out of Blue Lightning’s mouth—screams, no doubt, mixed with the
still-boiling water. Already her hands were reaching for purchase on the side
of the tub. In a second she’d be able to leverage herself back out.

I
wasn’t going to give her that second.

I
put my hand in the water, on the back of her neck, and shoved her down just
like she’d shoved my face down a minute before. Her hands slipped off the edge
and into the tub, splashing furiously. Drops of boiling water went everywhere,
hurting where they hit, but I ignored them the same way I ignored the screaming
agony of my hand, submerged to an inch below the elbow in the steaming bathtub.

She
felt the pressure and struggled harder, twisting left and right. I could feel
her slipping away from me, slipping out from under me. I grabbed for her hair
but it came away in my grip, spreading out in the water like dead pine needles
floating downstream. Another twist and she was suddenly free and on her back,
looking up at me, her arms reaching for me.

I
pulled away, but not fast enough. Her hands were claws now, sharp and hard as
iron, and they caught my arm hard enough to draw blood. She pulled, and I
realized that she was trying to climb out, to use me as a ladder.

Instead,
I let her pull me down. The triumph on her face turned to horror and she let
go, my face an inch above the top of the water. But now I wouldn’t let her go,
wouldn’t let her get away, and it was my hand clamped to her wrist.

Suddenly,
there was another hand with mine, pushing her down.

Sarah.

I
looked at her, her face a mask of blood and rage. “We’re going to have a talk,
Ryan,” was all she said, and then we needed every breath and every ounce of
energy to keep Blue Lightning under the water.

It
took longer than I would have expected, considering the temperature of the
water and the fact that she hadn’t had time to take a breath before she went
over. Then again, I had no idea if she breathed, so I was prepared to call it
even. She gave one last, shuddering effort, her eyes wide and shining, and then
it was all over.

I
still love you, she mouthed, and then lay still.

I
held her there a minute longer, Sarah standing beside me with a look of grim
satisfaction on her face.

“Jesus,”
I said. “Oh, God, Sarah, what did she do to you?”

“I
was about to ask you the same question,” she said, and tried to smile. “Along
with a few others.”

“I’ll
answer them all, I swear,” I said. “But first, we’ve got to get you to a
hospital.”

“You,
too,” she said. “Maybe we should-”

“Please
tell me this is the amazing makeup sex Ryan is always telling me the two of you
have.”

We
both turned to look then. Michelle stood framed in the bathroom doorway, her
hand leaking blood onto the already-ruined carpet. “I’m sorry,” she said, “But I
just wanted to come over to apologize to Sarah, and then I got this awful
feeling, and then…” Her voice trailed off. “I am seeing a naked dead chick in
your bathtub, right?”

“Terry’s
ex-girlfriend,” I said, and then I started laughing. I couldn’t help it, great
racking sobs of laughter pouring out of me. “Oh, Jesus, you were here to
apologize to Sarah…”

“It’s
not funny,” Michelle said, visibly annoyed. “Sarah, are you all right? What
happened? Did he try to hurt you?”

“Not
like this,” she said. She sat there, shaking her head. “He didn’t do this to
me.”

“Sarah,
I’m so sorry—” I began, the laughter draining out of me.

She
shook her head. “I don’t want to hear sorry right now, Ryan. I want to go to
the hospital and get you and me and even Shelly looked at. We can talk about
all this later” She looked up at Michelle, pinned her with eye contact and
wouldn’t let her look away. “Thank you for distracting her,” she said. “I don’t
know if we would have made it without you.”

Shelly
opened her mouth to say that she was welcome, but lost the words somewhere
along the way.

“I
think I can drive,” she said. “Do you guys have any Band-Aids? And are we going
to call the cops about her?” She jerked a thumb, the non-bleeding one, at the
corpse in the tub.

“I
don’t think so,” I said. I could see her losing definition around the edges,
pixelating and falling apart, bit by bit. The water fizzed around her edges.
Soon, there’d be nothing left. “And the Band-Aids are in the medicine chest.”

“Of
course they are,” Shelly said, and that was the last thing any of us said until
we pulled up at the emergency room over at Rex Hospital, half an hour later.

*  
*   *

They
took Sarah first, a nurse wheeling her back into the ER in a wheelchair like
she was auditioning for the local stock car circuit. Her coworker at the desk
alternated between demanding our insurance info and demanding that we call the
police. I finally told her that it had been an accident with a light fixture in
our bathroom, and that I’d love to fill out the insurance forms if I had a hand
that wasn’t either well-done or sliced to ribbons. While she was sitting there,
her mouth wide in an indignant O, I made the agonizing mistake of pulling my
wallet out of my pocket and yanking out the insurance card. Small, crisped bits
of skin came with it.

I
flipped it to her. “Here. Take what you need. I’m going to go over into the
corner and bleed quietly. Let me know if there’s anything you need from me to
help take care of my girlfriend.”

The
nurse raised an eyebrow and flicked her pen in Michelle’s direction. “Her?”

I
laughed, and not in a good way. “Oh, no. Not her. The one you took inside
already.”

“Oh,”
Her eyes got big again. “Sit tight, Mr.”—she paused to read the insurance
card—“Colter. We’ll let you know how she is as soon as the doctor has seen her.
You go sit down.”

I
nodded and turned to take the seat next to Shelly, whose hand was mummified in
Band-Aids and bloody paper towels. The nurse must have gotten a good look at my
back as I did so, because before I’d had a chance to sit down and get the
Naugahyde nice and bloody, another nurse—this one short, Asian, and built like
a dump truck—came through the swinging doors to pretty much bully me into the
patient area in the back.

“Sit
down!” she instructed, and nearly threw me onto the bed. “Don’t lay down. The
doctor will be here in a minute, and he’ll want to take a look at your back.
And don’t exert yourself, or you’ll tear it open all over again.”

With
those final words of admonition, she pulled the drapes shut and left me alone.
My little area was one of two tucked into that corner of the ER. It held a
hospital bed, a couple of chairs, a few pieces of nicely anonymous medical
equipment and a magazine holder bolted to the wall that featured six-month-old
issues of Sports Illustrated and Oprah’s magazine. I thought about hopping down
to get one, weighed the pain potential for my back from the jolt, and decided
to stay right where I was. Whatever secrets Oprah had for me, they could wait.

So
I just sat there and closed my eyes and listened. Phones were ringing, phones
were always ringing with harried nurses answering them in tones that were torn
between annoyance and compassion. Doctors barked orders, and occasionally
nurses barked right back. Curtains and doors opened and closed, and wheels
squeaked on the too-shiny floor.

And
over in the station next to mine, I could hear someone sobbing softly.

“Sarah?”
I asked. “Is that you?”

There
was a pause, and then, “Ryan?”

“Yeah.”
There was a lump in my throat that made it hard to speak. “Oh, God, Sarah, what
did I do. I am stupid and selfish, and I would rather have died than let her
hurt you.”

I
heard a sniffle. “That was the ghost you were talking about, right? The one you
said Terry…did things with?”

I
nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see me. Well, the hell with that.
Gingerly, I levered myself off the bed and shuffled out of my little area. The
curtain on hers was closed, so I drew it back just enough to let me in.

She
was barely recognizable. Some of the blood had been cleaned up but not all of
it, not by a long shot. Her arms were folded across her chest so I could see
the long gashes that Blue Lightning had made, and her face looked like I’d been
hitting softballs off it for a week.

“Oh,
Jesus,” I said, and collapsed into one of the chairs. “Sarah, I don’t know what
to say.”

“Then
don’t say anything,” she said. She slipped her hand off the bed in my general
direction. I took it, carefully, and didn’t make a noise when she squeezed.

We
sat like that for a minute in silence, knowing that there weren’t any good
places the conversation could go. Finally, she detached her fingers from mine
with more gentleness than I deserved. “How long were you awake,” I asked,
dreading the answer.

“Most
of the time,” she said.

“Ah.
Then you heard.”

She
nodded. “Most of it.” She stopped for a minute. “It wasn’t hard to keep my eyes
closed for that part.”

I
thought of a dozen things to say—that I hadn’t wanted to, that I’d been trying
to buy time, that she’s forced me—but none of them seemed even vaguely worthy.
“If there had been any other way….” 

She
turned her head and gave what might have been a half-smile. “I know why you did
it. That was hard, but it didn’t hurt. The stuff with Michelle, that hurt.” She
raised her hands. “More than this, almost. And this hurts a lot.”

I
laughed, which I think is what she intended, but only for a minute. With my
feet, I pulled the chair closer to her. “Two different screw ups, both of them
mine.”

“No.
Parts of one big one.” She patted my cheek. “Poor, stupid Ryan. You still don’t
see it, do you?”

“See
what?” I asked, not really wanting to hear an answer.

“Any
of it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m really tired, and I’m not up for any more
deep emotional moments right now. Besides, the doctor is coming.” She closed
her eyes and turned her head away from me.