Hidden Things (12 page)

Calliope looked away; in that position, Gluen's mouth was almost entirely concealed in the puffy expanse of his face. He could probably smother himself in his own flesh if he tried. After the laughing fit earlier, it was almost impossible to look at him without seeing his body misshapen and rearranged.

“Hi Calli.”

Calliope jumped and whirled toward the door, but there was no one there.

“I'm over here, ya goof.”

Calliope turned back to the desk, her mouth already opening to form the question, when she froze.

“Hey.”

The voice—Josh's voice—came from Gluen's mouth, clear and unmuddled in the way the fat man's usually was. Worse, the doughy expanse of his face had changed; shifted and re-formed around his eyes and nose and mouth to look like the man whose voice she heard. Her own mouth opened again, then closed.

“This isn't how I was hoping to talk with you next,” the voice—
Josh
—said, “but the phone was too . . . hard, and I wanted to make sure you got the message.”

Calliope reached backward, searching desperately for the edge of a chair. Her fingers brushed its edge, and she gripped it so tightly the wood creaked. She shuffled sideways and lowered herself to the seat, her eyes never leaving the familiar features surrounded by doughy flesh.

“Josh?” Her voice was a whisper even she could barely hear.

“I don't have a lot of time,” he said. “And I'm sorry. I'm really . . .”—his eyes closed—“really sorry, because you aren't going to like any of this.”

His eyes opened again and met hers. They were the same blue she'd always remembered.

The street was quiet. By Vikous's reckoning, it was at least four hours past midnight.

They stood in the street itself, near the curb, directly in front of Calliope's Jeep. Vikous looked first at the front grille of the vehicle, then at Calliope. Calliope was looking only at the grille. Her eyes looked through and far past the vehicle with the same expression of blank apathy that they'd had since the two of them had left Gluen's office thirty minutes ago.

They'd been standing in front of the Jeep for a quarter of an hour.

“It's getting late,” Vikous said for the third time. “We should get going.” He watched his companion, gnawing on his cigar. “Calliope—”

She pulled her keys from the pocket of her jacket and held them out to him. She didn't look at him or give him time to react, and they fell from her hand to the pavement with a small clash of metal-on-metal-on-pavement. “Drive for me.” She walked to the passenger side of the vehicle. Vikous followed her with his eyes. Finally, he bent and retrieved the keys, unlocked the doors, and started up the vehicle.

“Where to?” he asked once the motor was running.

“Home.”

Calliope stared blankly through the front windshield as they drove, hunched slightly forward against a cold Vikous couldn't feel. A silent hour later, he pulled into Calliope's empty driveway. There were no other cars there, or on the street. He turned off the engine, relaxed into the seat, and waited. Calliope continued to stare into the distance far beyond the garage door they faced.

“I want to kill him,” she finally said. Her voice was quiet, in the small cab of the vehicle at the darkest hour of the night.

“Gluen?” Vikous said. Calliope didn't respond but turned her head toward him and met his gaze. Vikous looked away first. “He's a messenger.”

“Yeah,” Calliope said. “And you're the guide.”

Vikous became very still. After a few moments, Calliope reached over and retrieved her keys, then opened her door and got out, standing in the opening. “Get out of my car. Come back at noon.”

He looked at her. “You blaming me for this?”

Her eyes finally focused on him, but instead of replying she turned and walked to the front door of her house.

“Fair enough,” he said to himself once she had gone inside. He climbed out of the Jeep, pulled up the sweatshirt hood that concealed his face from the nearest streetlight, and walked away.

The light from the hallway fell across Calliope's bed, glistening on the old photographs scattered across the comforter, mixed with letters and notes and folded music scores. Numb with exhaustion and the meeting with Gluen, Calliope simply stood in the darkness of the room, staring at the scattered mess for several minutes, unable to process what to do next.

Finally, she shuffled to the side of the bed and pawed everything together as well as she could, lowered herself to her knees, and gathered the pile into both hands, turning and aligning the mass like someone straightening out a deck of oversized cards. It occurred to her that the reason the box had been such a disorganized mess when she'd opened it was because she'd done pretty much the same thing the last time she'd put it away, rather than sort things into any kind of order.

She managed to fit everything back into the box on the second attempt. This time, rather than the apartment note, the top item on the pile was a picture of Josh, driving. Afternoon sunlight lit up his face, shone on two days' worth of stubble on his cheeks. He was smiling.

Of course.

Calliope looked at the picture, her face as still and expressionless as it had been since she'd left Gluen's office. She reached for the lid, let her hand drop back to her lap, then reached out again and strapped it back in place, moving quickly. As soon as the box was closed, she shoved it and its companion under the bed in a rush, her eyes averted. The
NOT BAND STUFF
box hung up on the frame and she had to push it harder—almost punch it—trying to get it to move. Finally, she did punch it to get it to slide underneath—once, then again to finish the job. The frame left a gouge in the top of the lid.

She sat back on her heels, kneeling in the slice of light from the hallway, her eyes squeezed shut, her breath coming much harder than the effort had warranted.

“I think we ought to take a trip.”

“Nnn . . .” The sound was half groan, half growl. Her fist lashed out, thumping into the side of the mattress, then again. Again. The strikes sped up, both fists flailing at the bed as a wordless, rage-filled scream built up behind grindingly clenched teeth, tears spilling down her face.

The attack came and went like a summer storm; first the flurry, then a sudden cessation punctuated with a few final strikes. Her hands dropped into her lap, their knuckles red and abraded.

Calliope looked down at them, squeezed her eyes shut, and let her head fall forward until it rested on the edge of the bed.

The keys scrape and rattle against the outside of the apartment door, accompanied by a muffled laugh and giggling. After several tries, the bolt finally opens and Josh stumbles through, off balance more because Calliope is trying to climb onto his back than because he is drunk.

Which isn't to say he's sober—far, far from it. It's been a good night.

He drops his keys on the floor, his legs spread wide to catch his balance. Calliope, still hanging from his shoulders, makes another lunge upward. The motion pushes him a half step forward, but he catches himself, then reaches around and hitches her higher, hooking his arms under her knees.

They freeze, in shock that they've finally achieved the position they've been attempting for two blocks and three flights of stairs, then Josh kicks backward at the door, knocking it closed and almost sending them both crashing to the floor. Calliope lets out an abrupt laugh and kisses his ear. “Strong work, White.”

“Damn right,” he mutters. He lifts his head for a moment, sights in on the futon, and begins a slow stagger across the room.

“Very. Talented. Group.” He punctuates each step with a word as he crosses the room. “Label. Very. Interested.” Calliope gives him a squeeze that threatens to cut off his air. He coughs and takes the last few steps. “Where's. Your. Demoooo . . .” He overbalances toward the futon, falling like a chopped tree with a shrieking squirrel on its back. Josh turns to face Calliope where she lies. “Hi.”

“Hello.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Kees me.”

He does so. Calliope can feel him smiling against her lips. “It's a good night.”

“It's a very good night,” she agrees. Down deep, in a part of her that whispers about not getting hopes up, there is a bitter seed of doubt, but she squeezes it away, pushing it down as far as she can.

“You okay?” Josh asks. He pulls his head back, his face faintly shadowed. Calliope realizes she'd been shaking her head.

She smiles, nuzzling into his neck to hide her face.

He pulls back again, trying to catch her eyes. “Yeah?”

The fear wells up, coming at her from another angle. If he picks up on her mood, he might think she doubts everything that happened tonight, and it will be another fight about all the old things. That thought turns her fear into a self-disgusted kind of anger, and she looks up at him, her eyes bright with forced good cheer. “Yeah. You know what?”

He blinks at her mood shift, but his smile creeps back. “What?”

“I think we ought to take a trip.”

He looks at her, searching her eyes, then tilts his head, as though he hadn't heard her from all of two inches away. “You mean—” Calliope nods, biting her lower lip hard enough to make her eyes water. Josh misreads it as happy emotion.

“Yes!” He kisses her, hard, and leaps off the futon, swaying only slightly. “Tonight! We can leave tonight. I'll pack.”

His puppy enthusiasm makes her laugh despite her misgivings. “How about in the morning, baby?”

He shakes his head. “I don't want to give you time to change your mind.” A second later, his own words sink in and he stops. “I . . . just said that out loud, didn't I?”

Calliope pushes herself to a sitting position, and he kneels to meet her halfway. “It's okay.” She cups the side of his neck and strokes his cheek with her thumb. “I'm not going to change my mind.” She kisses him. “Promise.”

“Okay.” He leans into her. They stay that way as the cheap plastic clock on the wall ticks off second after long second. “But I'm still gonna pack,” he whispers.

She laughs again, quieter this time. “Fiiine.” She throws herself back on the futon. “Come take advantage of me when you're done.”

He looks back at her from the doorway to the bedroom. “Yeah?”

She rests her forearm over her eyes. “Oh yeah.”

“I'll hurry,” he murmurs, and leaves her smiling.