even the dead are warm in tucson
by
fatladysing
Yesterday,
a tiny bald-headed boy asked me if I was the Angel of Death.
He told me that
he'd
seen me, tall and dark and quiet, in his dreams and he wanted to know if I
had come
to
take him. There was no fear,
just tired and sad eyes in a too-pale face.
But before I
could
answer him, an apologetic mother had already whisked him away.
From
the mouth of babes…
*
* * * *
For
the last three days I have been watching her.
And I play my game: trying to place her
serious
and elegant looks into an appropriate setting.
On the first day I thought her a
lawyer
in her dark wool-crepe suit, deep in conversation with the chief
attending. On the
second
day, she was a reporter stopping doctors and nurses in the hallways
questioning
and
pressing. But today I know
she is a doctor by the way cerulean eyes barely register
as
a teenager is wheeled into trauma holding his guts in his split belly with
bare hands.
Of
course I didn't flinch either.
So
maybe she's a writer.
*
* * * *
She
approached me today.
I
didn't see her coming, my attention fixated on a bickering couple in the
waiting room.
"Do
I know you?" A single
perfectly-shaped brow arched in question.
"No,"
I reply, for it is the truth.
"I've
seen you here" a slender hand gestures at the room.
"Watching and writing in your
book.
You look as if you know me."
"I
don't know you. And I watch
everyone." The words
come out colder than I intend.
She
pauses and gives me the once-over. It's
not sexual but still predatory, dangerous.
"You
shouldn't watch like that. Somebody
might get the wrong idea."
"You
know," I smile, "you are quite paranoid for a doctor."
She
stiffens. Hard eyes the color
of cold steel eclipse soft blue.
My
smile fades.
"Who
sent you?" She takes a
step closer, her right hand snaking out to grip my forearm
tightly.
"Nobody."
Again, the truth.
"Don't
lie to me" her left hand flicks open her suit coat and I see the
black protrusion of a
Sig
Sauer nestled in a shoulder harness.
"How do you know who I am?"
"I'm
not. And I don't."
I force myself not to take a step back.
"I'm a writer and I
observe.
I just figured. You didn't even flinch when that stab wound came in
yesterday."
She
lets her suit coat fall back over the gun but she doesn't remove or lessen
her grip.
"Who
are you?"
I
nod over my shoulder, indicating a plaque on the back wall.
"Gabrielle
de Haviland Lowell?"
"You
can call me Gabe."
"Gabrielle,"
her tongue rolling over my name with incredulity, "aren't you a
little too
alive
to have a memorial wing named after you?"
"Just
Gabe." My eyes lock onto hers. "And technically, I'm named after
the wing. We're
both
named after my paternal grandmother."
She
holds my gaze and I'm not sure if I want to cower in fear or kiss her.
And then, she
releases
my arm. Two steps later and
she's brushing past me. I
look down over my
shoulder
as she passes, the top of her auburn head inches from my lips.
"You
shouldn't stare," she whispers, just loud enough for me to hear,
"it's rude."
And
then she's gone.
*
* * * *
I
wait for her now. As the
injured and the dying walk by me like so many flashes of
color
in my peripheral vision. Sometimes
I think I see her. A flash of
fire, a glimmer of
ice,
the light-drinking drape of an Italian suit.
But she doesn't come to me. And
so I, in
turn,
do not go seeking her.
*
* * * *
When
she comes to me again, there is a pen in my hand and dialogue in my head.
Quiet
as
a wake, she settles in the molded plastic seat beside me.
I look up, into old eyes, and
the
voices are gone.
"I
don't want to disturb." Her
voice is rough and tired.
I
smile. "No matter now,
they've stopped talking to me."
A
pale brow crinkles in confusion. I
laugh at her expression.
"A
girl needs to have some secrets."
I explain.
"I
see," the weariness in her tone smothers me like a cloak. "So
where does a girl with
secrets
go to get a decent coffee in this ward?"
"The
nurses' station on 3, of course."
I stand and offer her my hand.
She
takes it without hesitation.
*
* * * *
A
week passes before I see her again. This
time she is standing by the windows, her
slight
frame silhouetted against the streaming sunlight behind her.
She is arguing with a
man.
He is a contradiction: tall and strong like an athlete, but bald
and spectacled like a
high
school math teacher. She
turns to leave him, but he pulls her into an embrace.
She
struggles
briefly before succumbing and pressing into him. His hands move up to brush
tears
from her eyes.
They
pull away from each other after a moment.
And by the time she is heading down
the
hall toward me, the tears are gone.
"Coffee?"
I ask softly, ashamed to have witnessed the private exchange.
"I
think I need something…" she hesitates, searching my eyes
"…a little more."
"I
know just the place." I
put my hand on the small of her back and lead her out the door.
O'Bannon's
is a neighborhood pub just two blocks down from the hospital.
At this time
of
day, our only company besides the service is a wiry white-haired man
snoozing gently
in
the corner. I guide her to a
back booth where the waiter scratches down her order of
scotch
(neat) and my tall glass of iced tea.
"You
don't drink." It is a
statement colored with an emotion suspiciously like
disappointment.
"Not
any more." I lean back
as the waiter returns and arranges coasters and drinks on the
table.
"Religion?
Diet? Temperance?"
"It
doesn't go with my meds." I
take a sip from my tea.
She
pauses, her drink halfway to her lips.
I watch as a question flickers across her eyes
and
is gone with a blink. She
leans forward and clinks her glass to mine.
"Here's to
modern
medicine." She drains
her drink.
Two
scotches later and she's moved on to a beer chaser. The tension coiled and radiating
from
her eyes to her temple now placid. I
watch her, openly and defiantly. We
haven't
exchanged
words since her toast.
"It's
Dana." Tapered fingers
with manicured nails pick at the corner of a beer label.
"I
wasn't going to ask."
"But
you wanted to."
I
incline my head and acquiesce.
"That
one was a freebie. From here
on out, we trade." She
leans forward slightly,
elbows
on the table, beer bottle dangling negligently from her fingers.
"What are you
writing?"
"A
book." I swipe at the
condensation on my glass. "Who
were you talking to in the
hallway?"
"A
man." Blue eyes meet
mine and a challenge is issued.
"It's
a love story, actually. A
coming of age story. Epic and
grand. Sad and tragic."
I
sigh
and suddenly I am tired.
"I
see. Boy meets girl.
Boy loses girl."
"No,"
My eyes telegraph their own challenge.
"Girl meets girl."
Slender
fingers tense almost imperceptibly around the longneck bottle.
Almost.
I
sigh again. It was too much
to hope for. "Who is the
man? Doctor?
Uncle?
Accountant?"
Husband? Lover?
"Boss."
I
want to press further, but a recollection of black steel holstered in tan
leather stops me.
Instead,
I push away from the table and stand.
"Excuse me, I have an appointment." I
pull
my wallet out and throw a Franklin on the table.
She
doesn't stop me as I leave the bar. She
doesn't even look.
*
* * * *
There
really was an appointment. But
it is today, not yesterday. I
find myself standing in
the
public bathroom of the hospital, flexing my bandaged arm and staring at a
stranger's
face
in the mirror. I bend over
and splash more water on my face. Out
of the corner of
my
eye, I catch a glimpse of burnished red.
But before I can turn fully around, strong
hands
are on the nape of my neck and in my hair pulling me toward shuttering
eyes and
parting
lips.
I
don't feel the initial contact, my body having gone numb with shock.
But a heartbeat
later
and the warmth pressed tightly to my lips is spreading like a toxin
through my
blood.
Her tongue traces a single drop of water as it tracks down my jaw,
over my chin
and
along the quickening pulse of my neck.
I groan the pain of the dying as she pulls
away.
"Do
you have a place?"
"Yes.
Not far." I turn to go, knowing, yet hoping that she is right behind
me.
My
loft is just across the street from O'Bannon's although it seemed much
further
yesterday.
I take her hand as we cross the threshold, stepping back to allow
for her
inspection.
I am surprised when she pulls my head down for another kiss
instead. She
backs
me across the room until I feel my couch pressing behind me.
"Gabrielle"
she whispers.
"Just
Gabe." I reply and
surrender to her mouth on mine, sure fingers separating the
buttons
of my shirt.
Later
we recline on my bed, her cheek resting against the outside swell of my
breast, legs
intertwined.
Her fingers, anointed with the subtle musk of my passion, draw lazy
patterns
on my inner thigh.
"Is
it a memoir?" Her head
tilts up and teeth close gently over the pulse point at the
juncture
of my neck and shoulder.
"Some
of it." Desire
rekindling in the pit of my belly. "More
of it, now."
She
rolls her body back on top of mine. Her
questing hand slides closer to where she is
most
needed.
"How
will you write us?"
I
try to press my hips into her touch but she moves away, just out of reach.
"Please…"
A wish, my prayer.
"Give
me your words first."
I
close my eyes and will the voices to speak.
"They come together: one the inky
blackness
of night, the other the incandescent light of day. They touch but for the briefest
of
moments and the one is no more. For
the birth of light is the death of dark.
And
presence
alone is the end of void."
Her
hand stills and the voices fade. My
need is gone and tears well in my eyes at the
loss.
I shiver, prickles of sensation racing across my skin.
My nipples harden in
autonomic
empathy.
"You're
cold." Her hand reaches
across to draw the sheets.
I
stop her. "I'm always
cold."
"You
should live somewhere warmer." Her
head nestles once again against my breast.
"Perhaps
Tucson." I murmur into
hair like rusted silk. "Even
the dead are warm in
Tucson."
*
* * * *
It
is the morning after the night before and I sit at my breakfast bar with
her coffee (milk,
no
sugar) in one hand and mine (black) in the other. There is the rush of a toilet flushing,
and
then the brief hiss of running water from the tap. I feel displaced by the intimacy of
the
sounds. The bathroom door
opens and she is striding toward me, a vision in
yesterday's
rumpled clothes.
I
offer the mug to her and when she doesn't take it, I notice the capped
amber canisters in
her
hand and the question in her eyes.
"Imuran
and Inderal." I offer by
way of explanation. "Commonly
used to treat cirrhosis
and
portal hypertension."
"Cirrhosis."
Her eyes, indigo with desire just hours before, are now raking over
my body
in
clinical diagnosis. "How
far has it progressed?"
"Acute.
Possibly end-stage."
"I
see." She takes the
lukewarm coffee from my hand. "What
about a transplant?"
"And
she was the font for many but for her, alas, there was none."
I smile at the
confusion
etched into her porcelain face. "Forgive
the voices. It means that I
am Type-
O,
great as a donor, but shit-out-of-luck as a donee."
"I'm
a doctor. If you need to get
on a list…" It is my lover speaking.
For
a fleeting moment I see a gossamer thread between us. Spun from her light and
fastened,
taut and straining with tension, to the dark mooring of my soul.
"I
am Gabrielle de Haviland Lowell. I
don't need a list." The
thread breaks.
"Indeed."
The doctor replies, my lover gone.
"You're
going to be late for visiting hour."
I feel the illness radiating from my liver,
pulling
me down. I am heavy and slow.
She
slides her mug, coffee untouched, onto the bar. Two strides and she is scooping her
purse
from the floor. Three strides
later and she is at the threshold, her hand reaching out
for
the door.
"Dana."
I cannot look at her for she is too bright.
"Who do you visit when you go?"
"My
partner." The sound of
my heart breaking.
The
door opens.
The
door closes.
And
she is gone.
*
* * * *
THE
END
*
* * * *
To
the sequel: On a Clear Day You Can See Tomorrow
