Part 2 (1/2)
Blackness fell, sudden and complete. It took a second for Amber to get her mental bearings.
The power had gone out.
Fantastic.
Now she was alone in the dark with an unreasonably s.e.xy man who thought she was Mother Teresa.
Somebody's got to teach you how to misbehave.
She'd wanted to ask, How about you?
But of course she'd said nothing. She didn't know how to say stuff like that.
It was a trap, being good. You trapped yourself, and then even when you unlocked the door and walked out of the cage, you still felt trapped.
She sighed.
”You okay?” he asked.
”Why wouldn't I be okay?”
”Some people don't like the dark.”
His voice didn't sound right. It sounded as if it was pus.h.i.+ng back against the weight of something, but that didn't make any sense. Tony moved around the construction site like he owned all of Mount Pleasant and half the village of Camelot. He was never this ... strained.
”You wouldn't be one of those people, would you?”
She tried to give the question a teasing lilt, but it didn't quite fly, and then it didn't matter, because he said, ”I might be.”
Tony Mazzara, the Italian Stallion, was afraid of the dark.
She let it sink in for a moment, because it had such a long way to sink.
Part of her wanted to smile at the irony, but it was really bad news for him. The bas.e.m.e.nt wasn't just dim, it was pitch-black. An ocean of dark. There were no windows, and a heavy door at the top of the stairs blocked any light that might have filtered down. Poor Tony.
”Is there a flashlight down here, you think?” he asked.
”Not that I know of. How much of a problem is this for you, exactly? Like, you're not a big fan of the dark, or worse than that?”
”I'm not going to flip out and start smas.h.i.+ng things.”
”Okay. Good.”
But he didn't sound good, now that she was listening. She could hear him breathing, fast and shallow, as if he might be flipping out. Plus, would he even have admitted being afraid of the dark if he had only a minor aversion to it? Probably not. He was a man. Her younger brother, Caleb, would never admit to being afraid of worms, even though he'd pa.s.sed out when he had to dissect one in high school.
She needed to help Tony get his mind off the situation, but she wasn't sure what to say. They were stuck in a bas.e.m.e.nt together in the dark, in a tornado, and he was possibly having a panic attack. What next, zombies?
She said the first nonsense that popped into her head. ”You think this is what Y2K is going to be like?” January 1, 2000, was still months off, but she'd seen a ”personal survival guide” at the bookstore last week. ”Everybody huddled in the dark, fretting about the end of the world?”
”Nah. I think Y2K is a bunch of c.r.a.p.”
”My mother is obsessed with it. She reads every article in the newspaper, and when it comes on the news, she's always like, Turn it up! This is important!' ”
”Your mother sounds like a trip.”
Her mother was controlling, difficult, and uptight. But really lovely, if you could get past all that. ”She's unique.”
”You live with her?”
”No, I have an apartment.”
”Oh, right. You said that.”
”But she lives nearby,” Amber confessed. ”My parents own the complex, so they have a big apartment above the office.”
If he interpreted this to mean she was a loser who'd never properly left home, he was kind enough not to say so.
”My mom's having her New Year's party like she always does,” he said. ”All my family, plus the aunts and uncles and cousins. She figures if the lights go out and airplanes start cras.h.i.+ng, at least there'll be champagne.”
”Maybe we won't even survive that long. Maybe this is actually the apocalypse, getting a jump on us. By the time New Year's rolls around, the world will be empty, anyway.”
”If this is the apocalypse, where are the hors.e.m.e.n? They're supposed to have fiery swords. Then it wouldn't be so f.u.c.king dark.”
”You could ask to borrow a fiery sword to use for a flashlight,” she suggested.
”Yeah. Excuse me, sir? I know you're probably going to lop my head off with that thing in a minute, but in the meantime, could I hold it, you think?' ”
She smiled. ”Maybe he wouldn't let you have the sword, but there'd probably be a flaming T-s.h.i.+rt or something he could spare.”
”You're making out like the hors.e.m.e.n of the apocalypse are going to be nice guys. I'm not sure that's the way it works.”
”Good point,” she said. ”You'll have to find an angel.”
”Those won't be hard to track down. They'll be here for you.”
”I doubt it. I never go to ma.s.s anymore.”
”They're going to bring you a fancy chair to ride up to heaven in. A what-do-you-call-it, like in Vietnam movies? Where somebody pulls you through the streets?”
”A palanquin?”
Another huff of laughter. ”I've never even heard of that. Whatever it's called, you're getting one.”
He snapped his fingers. ”A rickshaw. You're getting a rickshaw.”
”I'm not sure I want a rickshaw.”
”Doesn't matter. Rickshaws aren't optional. But look, if you haven't left in your rickshaw yet when the Devil shows up and starts listing all my sins, you might consider sticking around to defend me.”