Part 24 (1/2)
”What do you do?” Quentin repeated.
”You do what you can.” She looked down at her bare toes. ”You wield your shoe as a weapon.”
Quentin laughed shortly and bitterly. ”You use that thing like a Chinese throwing star.”
She showed him the poker face. ”Did I hurt you?”
”Rio,” he said. He would not allow her to change the subject before he got the whole story.
”Rio,” she agreed. ”The hotel hears the commotion and calls the police. Of course, it's your job to go with Nine Lives and get him out of jail. But you're not going to take this, right?”
”Right,” Quentin said.
”And you can't stay trapped in Rio, right?”
”Right.”
”You know he can have all the charges against him dropped with a bribe and come after you again.” She looked at Quentin with her dark-fringed eyes. ”But not if you bribe first.”
Quentin blinked. ”You used your money to bribe the police in Rio to keep him in jail?”
”No,” she said. ”I used his money. I had access to his bank accounts because he gave me power of attorney one of the times he went to rehab. I set up payments so the police would keep him in jail indefinitely.”
She embraced her knees, curling into a ball again. ”If he gets back to New York and tells Manhattan Music what I did, I'll be fired from Stargazer for sure. And if Wendy knew about the whole thing, she'd try to cover for me. I can't ask her to do that. The truth would come out eventually, and she'd go down along with me.
”But if I get your alb.u.m first, and your concert goes smoothly, I'll have enough clout at Manhattan Music that they'll believe me over him. I can threaten to have him dropped from the label if he crosses me. He doesn't have a lot of friends there.” Her chin went back down onto her knees. ”And now he's out of jail.”
Quentin frowned. ”You don't know he's out, do you?”
She shrugged.
”Is there someone in Rio you could ask?”
She shook her head. ”I don't want to make a call like that from the States. His lawyers might trace it and use it to blackmail me. I'm acquainted with his lawyers.”
”It's a good thing you have a lot of hair,” a pa.s.sing nurse remarked to Quentin. By the time he turned around, the nurse was gone. He realized he had his hands in his hair again. He extracted his fingers with some difficulty.
Then he sat on the edge of the bed and hugged Sarah around the IV tube and the monitor cable. She didn't hug him back, but that was okay. He held her in his arms and kissed the top of her head.
”Sarah, I'm sorry,” he whispered. ”I'm sorry for being rough with you. When I worked here, I saw a lot of things that human beings shouldn't have to see. But today was the first time I ever panicked. Martin's so p.i.s.sed at me. You can't panic in this line of work.” He hugged her harder. ”People do die of shock from bee stings. Not often, but it happens. And I saw you were about to pa.s.s out . . . ” He pressed his lips to her silky pink locks again and tried to appreciate the reality of Sarah, and breathing, and Sarah breathing.
”I'm sorry, too,” she said into his s.h.i.+rt. ”I'm sure being threatened with a knife was an unpleasant surprise, especially juxtaposed with the hand job.” Something in his face prompted her to add, ”Don't you dare ask me what juxtaposed means.”
”Sarah.” He rubbed her knee, trying to rub some of the life back into her. ”You're not alone anymore. If something like this ever happens to you again, you can always call me, wherever you are in the world, and I'll come get you.”
”That's sweet, Quentin,” she said sincerely, looking into his eyes. ”But you'll move on. You'll get married and have kids and forget all about this day.”
Not likely, Quentin thought. He said, ”So will you. But if it's another one like that Harold Fawn jacka.s.s, how much good is he going to do you? I mean it. If you ever need help, call me. I'll bring Owen and Martin and Mad 'Red' Mud if I have to, and we'll come get you.”
He turned at a rattling behind him. The attending leaned past him with a tin, offering Sarah a homemade cookie.
”No, thanks,” Sarah said, putting a hand to her stomach.
”You should eat something,” said the attending.
”Kind of queasy,” Sarah murmured.
The attending offered the tin to Quentin as an afterthought.
”Do they have nuts in them?” Quentin asked.
”What do you think I'm trying to do, kill you?” the attending asked. ”Don't answer that.” She moved around the curtain to the next bed.
Sarah stared after the attending, then turned to Quentin. ”Tell me what happened in Thailand.”
He'd known this was coming. ”t.i.t for tat,” he muttered. ”Well, it was the end of the tour. We were tired. We wanted a vacation. I should have known better, because everything went wrong that day. Martin found some heroin right away. Karen and I were getting on each other's nerves. I'm supposed to keep an asthma inhaler and an adrenaline shot-that shot Martin gave you-with me all the time. They were in Erin's purse. But Erin went in a market by herself and got her purse stolen. Owen and I tried to kill us a Thai guy, but he'd already pa.s.sed her purse to somebody else. I didn't think anything about the inhaler and the shot, which were probably halfway to Udon Thani by then.
”We gave up and went to the beach. It was this beautiful beach. Let's just say it put spring break at Panama City to shame. There were these enormous rocks jutting out of the ocean.”
”Like Chimney Rock?” Sarah asked.
”No. And then I felt myself start to pa.s.s out. I try to be careful what I eat, but sometimes when we're on tour, I slip up, because I don't know where all the ingredients are coming from.
”I pa.s.sed out. Then there was a motorcycle with a cab on the back for pa.s.sengers. They use them as taxis. A ride in that thing would've shocked anybody back into consciousness. At the hospital, I remember there were cats running down the halls, and the medical equipment looked like the computers in the first Star Trek TV series, very sixties.
”I was glad I'd had a nice day at the beach, because I was about to die. It got hairy in the ICU in Oklahoma City last January, but I never thought I was going to die. This time was different. This was it. The doctor told me they were inducing a coma until my lungs recovered. The way I felt, I did not expect to wake up. Erin will tell you that it got very weird. I took her hand, and then Martin's hand, and Owen's hand, and Karen's hand, and said good-bye to them one last time.”
He was back in the ICU. Karen clung to one hand and wailed, as if he was supposed to be strong for her, even though he couldn't breathe. Erin held his other hand firmly and chewed gum. That's what he concentrated on as they were putting him to sleep: the grip of Erin's hand, the sound of her gum smacking, and the strange concentric square pattern of the foreign ceiling tiles.
”And then, a few days later, I did wake up.”
Sarah pulled at him. She wanted him to lie down with her. He tried to settle beside her on the bed, but the IV tube and the monitor cable got in the way. He moved to her other side and lay behind her, his front to her back. Careful not to touch her stung shoulder, he put his arm across her chest. He inhaled the scent of her hair: shampoo and Sarah.
She asked him, ”Were you beckoned by the light?”
”Are you making fun of me for being near death?” he demanded. ”Why does everybody make fun of me for being on a ventilator?”
”Because you love it. It helps you cope.” She looked back over her shoulder to show him a genuine smile. ”Just trying to lighten the mood here.”
”Oh.” He forced a laugh. ”No, I was under heavy sedation. The propofol pretty much took care of anything like that.”
She smoothed her hand up and down his arm. He felt his hair stand on end, and the IV tube swayed. She asked, ”Why'd you fire Karen?”
The excuse he'd given himself was that he didn't want her to find out about Martin's drug use. There was more to it than that. ”I fired her because I broke up with her. I didn't think I could break up with her and still have her as a manager, because h.e.l.l hath no fury.” Instantly he was sorry for quoting Shakespeare. But idiot Quentin didn't have to read Shakespeare. It was a common expression. Albeit probably not one idiot Quentin would use.
Sarah let it slide. ”Why'd you break up with her?”
”Because . . . ” He wasn't sure of the answer himself. ”I don't know. I've been sick a lot. But before this, I never really expected to die at thirty. I thought I'd finish school and have kids. I thought I'd change the world with the research foundation we started. And I thought that when I died, I'd be with somebody I was in love with.”
Sarah's hand halted on his arm. ”What about Erin?”