Voice (13 page)

The guy sat up, and Case jumped again, this time cocking her arm back, ready to nail him if he so much as looked at her funny.

He
did
look at her funny, but not in the way she expected. Confusion clouded his eyes. He held himself upright, unsteady in the manner of drunk people everywhere, and that eerie, strangely boneless lolling was gone.

“I think I’m a little fucked-up,” he said. He slurred the words to near-unintelligibility. “Nah. I’m
really
fucked-up. Can I just . . . “

Case never found out what he wanted to do. He passed out, hitting the side of the small table and knocking it over as he fell to the floor.

“Anybody know this guy?” she asked, looking around the room.

Nobody would claim him.

“Christ,” she said. “This is not my problem.”

“I’ll get the bartender,” Danny said. “He probably deals with this all the time.”

“Yeah. Great.”

Danny walked off. The guy on the floor rolled over and made some muffled noises. He’d be all right, Case thought.
But remind me not to take whatever the hell he’s been taking.
She suppressed a shudder.

Over by the bar, Danny had managed to get the bartender’s attention, and back at the table, the crowd that had accreted around Erin happily chattered away. It seemed like a good time for Case to throw her things in the car and get out. Any pleasure she might have taken from socializing was gone.

She headed toward the storage room without waiting for Danny to get back and started moving things. She loaded the heavy stuff first—if some asshole decided to make off with her gear between trips, he’d look pretty funny trying to carry her fifty-pound speaker cabinet down the street.

On the third trip, she nearly ran into Danny on the way out of the storage room. He was a big guy, and he filled the doorway—she would have seen him coming if she’d been looking up instead of trying not to bang her guitar case on any of the clutter in the room.

“Hey,” she said. He was close, and his nearness made her stomach do weird things. She didn’t understand it—he wasn’t her usual type.
No tattoos, and he hasn’t even been to prison once,
she thought sarcastically. But when they were playing music, they shared moments that were so intense it made her face feel hot and her breath come in gasps. Lately, those moments had been coming even when they weren’t playing music.

This is stupid.
It wasn’t like she’d missed the gold band on the third finger of his left hand, the gold band that said
Keep off, bitch!
to everyone who happened to see it. She ought to avoid him when they weren’t onstage or practicing. This was like playing chicken, she thought, and she didn’t know if she was teasing him or teasing herself or just behaving like a stupid, self-destructive sixteen-year-old who didn’t care who got hurt.

Who would it hurt? He hasn’t mentioned his wife, and she doesn’t seem to be here tonight. You don’t know his situation.

She met his eyes and again felt that magnetic pull, that force that urged contact.

“The bartender’s got everything under control, but I gotta tell you—that guy kind of freaked me out,” Danny said. “You all right?”

“Yeah. I’m good. He’s not the first wasted creep I’ve ever met,” she said, though she’d never met one quite like that.

“I guess not.” Danny stood awkwardly, filling the doorframe. Was he waiting for her to say something? “Hey,” he said after a bit. “That was cool. What you did for John. I think you made his night.”

“He deserved it. He put it on the line for a change, you know? He played a kickass show.” She heard him talk, and she made the right words in answer, but the words were camouflage for the real conversation.

“So did you,” Danny said.

Oh boy. That warm, light-headed feeling rolled through her, and, sure enough, her face felt hot.
If this room had a door . . .
But the room didn’t have a door, and she wasn’t going to invite him out to the car, and this conversation needed to be over. She needed to get out of here right now. “We all played a good show,” she said. “See you at practice.”

She hurried to rush out, but of course there wasn’t much room in the doorway. She ended up squeezing past him before he had time to get out of the way. Most of the length of her body moved against him, one breast brushing his side, his elbow. That brief contact seemed to last a slow, agonizing hour, seemed to burn her body everywhere he touched her. She heard him gasp and thought dimly that she might have done the same.

Then she was past him, and she didn’t look back.

Danny woke up with the sun screaming through the curtains, battering its way into the room, clawing at his face. He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head.

Wait a minute
, he thought.
Something’s not right here
. His mind was sluggish, slow machinery moving on rusty rails. There was the light—God, the sun was bright!—and there was warmth, weight,
presence
next to him in the bed.

He pulled the covers off his head and checked the bed. Gina was lying there next to him, wide awake with her head propped up on her hand and a grin on her face.

“Hold on,” he said. “Thinking.”

“Take your time.”

“What time is it? It feels late.”

Her smile widened. “You’re getting warm.”

Then it clicked. She worked way downtown, and she usually left early to get ahead of the traffic and get some work done before the phone started ringing. She was
never
home when the sun was up this high. “You’re supposed to be at work.”

“I’m terribly sick,” she said. The smile didn’t leave her face, and now a wicked gleam in her eye joined it.

Danny picked his head up and blinked. “You don’t look sick.”

“
Terribly
sick,” she repeated. She coughed a few weak, bogus coughs into her hand.

The sun was much too bright, he realized. Too bright for her to be here, sure, but also too bright for him to be here.  “What time is it?”

“A little after ten.”

“Oh, shit. I gotta go.” He started to get up, but she barred his way with her arm.

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re terribly sick, too.”

“Oh? Does my boss know?”

“Yes indeed. He says to rest up.”

Danny laughed, finally understanding. “Oh, I don’t know if I’ll be doing much of that,” he said, and he reached for her.

***

He made breakfast afterward, French toast and eggs. He’d proposed eating in bed, but Gina had wrinkled her nose. “It smells like sex in here.”

He couldn’t argue with that, and while the scent was pleasant enough, or if not exactly pleasant then pleasantly evocative, he could see why she thought it didn’t mix well with breakfast. She came out to the dining room in a robe. He plucked at it, trying to get her to take it off, but she wasn’t having any of that. “Later,” she promised, laughing. “I’m trying to eat here.”

Danny sat down at the table with her with a dopey smile on his face. He’d slept well, breakfast was served, and the sex had been fantastic. The release had been more than welcome, but the sense of togetherness, of actually spending some time with his wife for a change, was even more so, and if, for just one moment toward the end, he’d imagined Case’s athletic body instead of Gina’s curvier figure, he would push that as far down in his subconscious as he could manage and not think of it again.

He was busily not thinking of it again when Gina asked, “How was the show?”

He concentrated on cutting his French toast. “Pretty good,” he said neutrally. “Probably our best yet. If we’re not careful, we’re going to sound like a real band pretty soon. John really put his back into it this time.”

“He’s getting over his stage fright?”

Danny was touched by the question. He so often felt that she merely tolerated his nattering about the band that he was grateful that she remembered. “Yeah. He really is.” He popped a forkful of French toast into his mouth. “I’m proud of him.”

“Good for him,” Gina said. She’d met John on a few different occasions and had told Danny he seemed like a bright kid, though it was tragic the way he was wasting his potential. Danny got out of those conversations as fast as he was able, before he said anything to disparage his own nice, stable, well-paid, boring-ass employment in the cubicle farm. He half-agreed with Gina, and half-admired his brother for having the balls to check out of the whole tiresome system, but the one time he’d supported John’s position he’d gotten a surprisingly excoriating lecture from Gina on social and familial responsibility. John’s decision to squander his potential was apparently a big nasty loogie in the face of the entire social structure that supported his way of life, and he was refusing to hold up his end of the bargain by contributing in any meaningful way. Danny had listened, eyes round as bottle caps, while Gina unloaded on John and ungrateful deadbeats like him. Danny had backpedaled so fast it felt like he’d strained something, trying to get as far from that conversation as possible. There seemed to be an implicit judgment there on his own priorities—that they were only
just
in line, and he’d better not let them slip. He had avoided any conversations in the same vein ever since. It was enough that Gina seemed to like John okay, despite the fact that she thought he was one step above a tapeworm, and Danny had left it at that.

With that recollection firmly in mind, he decided a change of subject was in order.

“How come you decided to play hooky today?” he asked.

“You know. All work and no play.”

Danny smiled. “I thought all work and no play makes you partner by the time you’re twenty-eight.”

That drew a laugh from her. “It does, but it also makes you very, very tired sometimes.”

Danny looked at his wife in the sun through the kitchen windows. She
did
look tired—one good night’s sleep wasn’t enough to undo months of straining under the yoke—but she looked happy, too, and he felt a surge of emotion.

“I love you,” he said softly.

She reached over the table and took his hand. “I love you.”

Her hand was small and white against his own big, clunky hand, fingers narrow and straight where his were thick and squared-off. It was an odd-looking match, but it seemed just right to him.

“This was a good idea,” Danny said.

***

“Hey there, rock star! How ya doing?”

Case shook her head, but she grinned. “I don’t know how you can be so goddamn cheerful at this hour, Erin.”

“It’s ten-thirty!”

“It is, and you should be hungover and hating life right now.” Case pulled her apron off the peg and started tying it around her waist.

“Oh, I never get hungover,” Erin said. Case didn’t see how that was possible, but since nobody could be hungover and that loud at the same time, she supposed Erin was telling the truth. “I didn’t black out, either,” Erin added accusingly, “but I sure didn’t see you leave. What’s up with that?”

“That’s, um, a long story.”
Huh,
Case thought.
A month ago I’d have told her “none of your fucking business” and left it at that. Must be getting soft in my old age.

Erin raised an eyebrow. “Does it have something to do with your so-very-cute drummer?”

Damn.
That social radar or whatever it was that Erin had was a serious danger to others. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”

“Okay, but I’m gonna hold you to that. I know you’re planning to wear me out in training and hope I’ll be too tired to remember, but it’ll never work. You don’t stand a chance.”

“I believe that.”

“Good.” Erin clocked in.

“Hey, thanks again for bringing your friends out. That was cool.”

“No problem. We had a good time. Did you get enough people out to get booked for the weekend?”

“Not even close,” Case said.

“That sucks. Don’t worry, though—the word is out now. You just make sure to tell me when the next one is, and I’ll do the rest.”

***

The restaurant was crowded for lunch and then emptied out in a hurry, and Case’s shift seemed to fly past. She and Erin clocked out a little after three and headed for the gym where they practiced now, ever since the manager at Applebee’s had told them that a few patrons had raised questions, and he didn’t want to see them fighting in the parking lot anymore. As long as they got to the gym early enough, or late enough, there was always a room available. It didn’t always have nice cushy mats on the floor, but any floor at all was guaranteed to be a step up from the hot, dirty asphalt of the parking lot.

Despite Erin’s warning, Case worked her extra hard that night. Maybe she’d forget to follow up her earlier question, and maybe she wouldn’t, but Case had frustrations of her own to work out, and the exercise felt good. Movement and exhaustion had a way of clearing the head, and she could certainly use that.

They collapsed to the floor after about an hour. Case sat leaning back on her arms with her legs outstretched in front of her. Erin lay flat on the floor, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.