Dues of Mortality (33 page)

“
The
bed?” Xavier responded.

“
I
checked. There’s only one bed in here.”

Xavier
did a quick walkthrough and returned, stopping in the bathroom
doorway. There were two bedrooms, but only one bed. “You're
right. There's only one bed.”

“
So
who gets it,” Glenda asked again, hoping he couldn't notice her
blushing.

“
Me.
I get cramps in my back real easy.” He dipped into the
bathroom. “We’ll wait until morning to shower so the tub
will be dry for you. You can have the pillows.”

Glenda’s
face was surmounted by a “what just happened here” look.

Xavier
then poked his head out of the bathroom and said, “Gotcha.”

Glenda
giggled. “You jerk.”

Xavier
smiled and drew his head back in. He gazed down at the tub like it
was a grave-site in a cemetery.

“
Oh,
well, just like old times,” he said. “Or rather, recent
ones.”

Glenda
eased into the doorway and leaned a shoulder on the jamb. “You
can have the bed if you want,” she said.

Xavier
smirked. He figured she wasn't serious, but the thought was nice.
“No, thank you. I’ll be fine. I’m used to sleeping
on cold flat surfaces. Hell, I almost married a couple of them.”

Glenda
laughed.

Xavier
stepped past her and into the furnished bedroom. He would have to
make mental notes of all the trailer's points of egress and there was
no better place to start. He inspected the window, securing its locks
and judged it to be big enough for Glenda to escape through should
the need arise. Hiding would be another option, but there was only a
small, single closet she would likely have little use for and would
be the first place someone would look.
No,
she'd be better off running for it if she could
, he
thought.
Her only other option
would be to fight
. Maybe he would have to do something
about that too.

As
Xavier went about his reconnaissance, Glenda parked her behind on the
single wooden dresser that sat away from the bed. She thoughtfully
plucked at her fingernails, gathering her courage. “Forgive me
for sounding silly, but for some reason I feel terribly selfish,
letting the person who saved my hide twice sleep in the bathtub.”

Xavier
almost looked at her and then thought better of it. He pulled a
quarter from his Dockers and held it up.

“
Do
you want to flip for it?” he asked.

“
No...I
mean...” Glenda looked embarrassed. “Okay, this is the
twenty-first century. Don’t you think it’s at least
possible
for two people of the opposite
sex to share the same bed without fear of something happening?”

Xavier
plopped down on the bed's edge. He fought off eye contact with Glenda
with everything short of the gun he still carried beneath the lapel
of his coat. How many centuries had it been since a gorgeous woman
had offered to share the sheets with him? Would he even remember how?
Glenda had already seen Xavier's soft dirty underbelly. She knew more
than enough to judge him as a person. If he crawled into bed with
her, and she threw him a mercy fuck, she'd have the ammunition to
judge him as a
man
.
No way in hell he was about to invite
that
verdict.

“
Honey,”
he finally said clownishly. “In the twenty-first century, it’s
not even possible for two people of the
same
sex to share a bed without fear
of something happening.”

Glenda
sniggered. “You’re something else, you know that?”

“
Well,
when you figure out what the something else is...let me know.”

She
hung on his request a second then softly said, “I will.”

****

Glenda tensed as Xavier pinned
her against the wall. He had taken her completely off guard. His
mannish hands felt like leather against her skin—they were
strong, but not nearly as rough as she imagined. He moved in so close
Glenda got woozy under the scent of the sandalwood soap, that clung
to his body so fresh from the shower. She could feel her pelvis
erupting, but hid her arousal like a champ.

“
What
do you see?” Xavier asked steely-eyed.

“
I
see you,” she answered, shaking.

“
What
parts of me?”

Glenda
paused, taking inventory of his head and shoulders. “Your
head.”

Xavier
said nothing.

Glenda
suddenly felt like a school kid taking a pop quiz. She wondered if
Xavier would feel a little silly if he'd seen Malcolm Block after
Glenda had finished with him. However, in that instance, nothing was
strategic and compared to the scum she’d run into since, Block
was rather sloppy. So, maybe a few extra pointers were well
warranted. Plus, it was a
hell
of an excuse
to have Xavier's swarthy paws all over her
goose-pimpled skin.
Mother of
mercy, this is so wrong
.

“
Your
eyes,” Glenda added, her voice becoming airy. “And your
mouth.”

“
Can
you move your arms?”

Glenda
wiggled her shoulders, but Xavier had a fast grip on her arms. She
had nowhere near full range of motion.

“
Not
really,” she answered panting.

“
What
can
you
move?”

She
thought for a second, then a ripple of electricity cascaded down her
body. “My legs.”

“
Now,
what
don’t
you see?”

Almost
instinctively, Glenda shot a knee straight up.

Xavier
naturally flinched. He had expected an answer from her
mouth
,
but it was just as well.

“
Good,”
he said. “You’d be surprised how many women don’t
get that right away. And I don’t care what you’ve seen in
the movies or on the web; no man recovers easily from a shot in the
marble bag. Half the time, they puke. Now remember how you noticed
everything above my neck?”

“
Yeah.”

“
All
right, well, always go for the low-hangers first, but if for some
reason you can’t, eyes, ears, and throat are good targets.”
Xavier let go and made a chopping motion against his Adam’s
apple. “Go like this, but not too hard.”

Glenda
made the same motion.

“
A
little harder,” Xavier said.

She
did it. “Uh.”

“
Feel
that?”

Glenda
nodded.

“
Now
imagine giving somebody a good solid whack right in that spot.”

“
Can’t
you kill someone if you hit them there?”

“
Only
if you hit them too hard. And remember, most guys expect women to be
passive, and overcome with fear. So whenever you can, take the fight
to
him
.
Make it cost him. Make him earn every punch.” Xavier paused
suddenly, his eyes drifting to somewhere Glenda couldn't see. It was
a small two-bedroom apartment back in Old Brooklyn. He saw his mother
getting cracked in the mouth by a drunken Edward Hawkins.
She
bled. Fucking bastard made her bleed and I just stood there
.
Another voice that sounded more like his mother's chimed in.
You
were six years-old for God's sake. Six
.

“
Are
you alright,” Glenda asked.

Xavier
snapped back to reality. He backed off of her and labored a grin.
“Fine.” He then pinched her chin like a proud papa, and
turned toward the bed.

As
he walked away, Glenda mooned overtly at Xavier's toned back beneath
the fibers of his brother's sheer-white tank shirt. He wasn’t
nearly as scrawny as she had expected. Not big by any means, but not
small either. Glenda also noticed how his calves curved outward
ever-so slightly below his jogging shorts—that perfect hint of
bow in the legs that drove women wild. She was temporarily entranced,
but quickly blinked out of it.

This
made no sense.

These
guys with these...
things
about them were just too much. Sure, Xavier was different, tougher
than most, but his potential for making her miserable was as common
as it came. Men and all their gruffness and heroism, and
mysteriousness—how she hated them for being such a
turn
on!
It was
wrong
for women to appeal to those traits, and especially wrong to
encourage
them.
That was the point of the new women’s way of thinking—don’t
judge men as they would judge you.
A
real woman doesn’t bend to the archetypal male. And real men
don’t hold to those roles any more than we do.
Glenda mashed a hand to her face.
Get
it together, girl.
She tried picturing Xavier the way he
looked when she'd first met him: filthy, dressed in tattered clothes
and wrapped in the tantalizing aroma of cheap gin sweat. And it
worked...a little.

Detective
Marcus Northcutt picked his nose with impunity as he sat behind the
wheel of the unmarked car and daydreamed of spending his retirement
sailing along the sun-soaked coasts of Australia. He would laze on
the deck of his custom-built Triton with a fishing rod in one hand
and a cold beer in the other. The Aussies were supposed to brew great
beer. Every day would be filled with nothing but good food, women who
looked and talked like a young Nicole Kidman—not that she
looked bad now—and legal, full frontal nudity on broadcast net.

And
it was going to happen even if he had to sell the American nuclear
codes to communist China...which had to be a far faster method of
making money than his current one.

The
department's sting operations had just about sucked the guts out of
every cop with overdue alimony. The pace at which extramural
opportunities were presenting themselves had slowed to a turtle's
pace. Northcutt longed for the days back in narcotics when it was as
simple as picking up stray cash from the dealers and dopers alike.
Nothing too over-the-top, nothing that might keep him awake at night
and certainly nothing that would get the fed’s attention. He
wasn't going to end up like those dummies who had gotten caught
because they got greedy and lost perspective. But even
he
had to admit it was getting harder and harder to say no to people
like DapperDan009—the most pretentious email address in the
world if there ever was one. Northcutt drummed his thumb on the
steering wheel. This little rendezvous had better not be to twist his
arm about dissecting the video. Northcutt had already told that
overbearing asshole it was likely to come up dry, just like he’d
been telling Roberts. If this was about DapperDan flexing his
muscles, it would be a short meeting.

At
the descending end of his parking ramp, Northcutt heard the pithy
squeal of the Mercedes’s tires as it turned onto the same ramp
and coasted into an empty space directly across from his. He glanced
reflexively at his comwatch. He had to give him credit, Dapper never
kept him waiting. Northcutt watched in the rear-view mirror as Dapper
emerged from his fancy chariot with briefcase in hand and Armani coat
drapering his every step. However, all the Cashmere and Japanese silk
in the world couldn't hide the disquietude that was so apparent in
the reflection. The detective didn't know what was going on, but by
the time Miles Gabriel took the seat next to him, Northcutt was
primed to either shoot him or ask for double.

“
How
are things progressing, Marcus?” Gabriel asked, getting right
down to business. He wanted the meeting to end quickly; he didn't
much care for being in Northcutt's presence. The detective was one of
those people whose physical unattractiveness was such that it made
Gabriel's skin crawl. Northcutt was a light-skinned black man
approaching fifty with a head like a giant egg narrow end up. His
eyes and mouth both turned downward from the outer edges like his
face was half melted. And worst of all, his bottom lip was
perpetually moist, making anyone within spitting distance want to
take a step back. Gabriel couldn't
begin
to fathom the mental state of the
woman who had consented to marry him.

“
I
still don’t know what the point of this is,” Northcutt
said. “I told you it wasn’t likely we’d get
anything from the video. If that had changed since we last talked, I
would’ve called you.”

“
Oh,
I’m not concerned, Marcus. You’re a more than capable
detective; you won't let me down. I’m just here to help.”

Northcutt
watched Gabriel pop open his briefcase and remove a Ziploc plastic
baggie from inside. It contained a nickel plated revolver with a
crosshatch handle.

“
What’s
this?” Northcutt asked.

“
You
are still a detective, aren’t you?” Gabriel smirked.

“
I
know
what
it is. I meant why are you giving
it to me?”