Ice Lake (16 page)

One mistake had caused a slide. From a youthful dream of playing in a band, to dying of
AID
s. Lucy felt the sorrow, the regret, of the man’s life. She climbed off his bed and kissed him gently between the eyes, letting her lips linger there, consoling the very depth of him. After that, she fluffed his pillows, turned out the lights, and returned to her own room.

Just as she was closing her door, a foot was thrust in the jamb. Lucy gasped and jumped six inches. Instantly, she flung herself against the door and caught the intruder’s knee in the gap. She propelled her weight against the door repeatedly, ramming the knee. The intruder cried out, “Lucy!”

She stopped a moment, keeping the knee pinned with her weight. “Andy?”

“Lucy, you’re hurting me.
Jesus!”
She opened the door for him. He was holding his injured leg, while nodding to the room where she’d just been. “Are you sleeping with Luc now?”

“What’re you doing here?”

“Are you cheating on me?” He looked like a wolf with his long wild hair and his dark eyes and the shadows of the night around him. He was wearing his usual
bomber jacket but also a baseball cap she hadn’t seen on him before, with the famous
NY
symbol of the New York Yankees.

“Ah, cheating? Like you don’t cheat on me? Luc’s sick. I was helping him out, that’s all.”

He closed the door behind him, as though he had needed that explanation first. Andy took her in his arms and kissed her.

Lucy had to reach up and move the peak of the baseball cap out of her way. Suddenly, the misery and sadness of the past days welled up inside her. Her work was exciting, but the endless kindnesses and the stream of suffering men took a lot out of her, more than she had thought she had to give. And now a man, whole and healthy, rocked her in his arms and his kiss plundered her senses and she hung onto him with all her might. The instant Andy broke away Lucy peeled off her dressing gown, and he was reaching under her top and she kissed him wildly, then yelped, as he lifted her off the floor and they tumbled onto the bed.

“Heaven help me,” Lucy pleaded.

“What for?” He bounced right down on top of her. The bedsprings made a racket and Lucy laughed. He still hadn’t taken that silly cap off and she did it for him, tossing it across the room. His hair, as black as her own, nearly as long, fell across both sides of her face as he peered down upon her. “What for?” he asked again, quietly.

“I always fall for bad boys.”

“Am I a bad boy, Luce?” He worked himself up to a crouch, his mouth moving down to her thighs and legs quickly until he’d kissed her ankles, then grazing up her body, nibbling her like a beast on all fours, kissing her shins, knees, thighs, hip.

“You’re so bad. The worst.” Inner thighs. Her waist. He pulled her panties off.

“Yeah? You going to save me, Lucy? You going to reform me?”

“That depends.” Her body twisted, and she cried out under the fury of his kisses.

“On what?” He gave her pubis a quick, teasing lick.

She was breathing harshly now. She didn’t want to talk any more.

“On what?” he asked her again, and he licked her again, just as quickly.

“On how bad you are.”

He laughed. He came up on his knees and turned her around on the bed. “You already said I’m the worst. You going to reform me, Lucy? Me, I got that to look forward to?”

“No,” she whimpered.

“No?” He held her wrists behind her back in one hand, and leaned over to kiss her neck. She bucked under his grip, and thrashed her head around.

“No.”

“You want me bad as I am.” He turned her over again. “Huh?”

“Unhunh.”

“Was that a yes? You want me as bad as I get?”

“Stop teasing me!”

“Answer me.”

“Yes!”

He pushed her little top up and roughened her breasts with kisses, his whiskers scratching her, and then he returned to her mouth as he pressed his weight down upon her. She interrupted him by punching his back.

“What? Lucy?”

“Get out of those damn clothes!”

While he was doing that she peeled her top off, and kissed his flesh wherever it suddenly appeared, his chest, back, neck, stomach. Then thighs. And finally
she devoured his penis and hugged him. All the while he infuriated her with his little laughs and salacious chatter, and then they were kissing again, body to body, and she wanted him as much as she had ever wanted a man.

“Condom!” she instructed breathlessly. “Condom!”

“Oooo, maybe yes, maybe no.”

He took his penis and rubbed the head against her sex, and she fought him and squirmed underneath him. “Andy, no!”

He laughed that maddening laugh again and rubbed her pubis and that felt so good, but no, she couldn’t. “Andy! No! Andy!” His laughter so infuriated her that she could just kill him, and then he was reaching into his cast-off trousers and retrieving his wallet. She watched as he pulled the condom over his penis and asked him again, “What are you doing here?” Then suddenly there was no time for talk and he entered her and held her arms pinned, and she moved with him. She let him do the work for a while, until he squatted above her and said, “Your turn,” and now she was responsible for the movement, twisting and bending and humping her body against him, against his penis, until suddenly he slipped out and in the same movement he flipped her over, clutching her legs at the right moment and entering her from behind. She loved this attention and realized how much she had missed him, or this, or anyone, health, life, any respite from sickness and death, and her orgasm was upon her, and she reached back with one hand behind his muscled thigh and pulled him deeper, harder into herself, and when she came she knew that she was waking up the motel guests but she didn’t care, she wanted to be loud and she could not help herself anyway.

She flat out yelled.

Andy wasn’t done with her. He teased her to desire again, and made love to her again, more violently the
second time, with her head pounding up against the wall, and this time when her release overwhelmed her he immediately followed. They lay in one another’s arms, warm and spent and delighted.

“Andy,” she asked after they had both napped awhile.

“Mmm?”

“What are you doing here?” She could hardly tell where her body ended and his began.

“What do you think? We got the word. You needed more product. So I’m here. Your delivery man.”

She found this curious. “Who sent you?”

“I’m probably not supposed to say.”

“You’re moving up the ladder pretty quickly.”

“I’ve got a nose for what’s going on. To tell the truth, I begged for the job.”

She liked the sound of that.

“So how’s it going?” Andy asked.

Snuggling into him, she made a few noises he couldn’t interpret.

“What does that mean?”

“Luc, for one thing. He’s sick. I’m treating him, and he thinks the fever he caught was caused by the cocktail I made for him—”

“You’re treating Luc?”

“He’s full-blown, Andy. He’s not just pos, he’s full-blown.”

“Shit,” Andy said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just, it must be crummy for you with Luc not feeling well.”

“It’s a drag, yeah. I’m sure he’ll be better soon. How long are you staying?”

“I’m allowed to make the delivery, that’s it.”

She lightly traced his arm with her fingers. “I’m glad you came,” she said.

“Is that some kind of pun?”

Lucy giggled. “No. Maybe. Yes! Why not? I meant, I’m glad you’re here.”

They kissed awhile before turning themselves to sleep.

In the morning, Lucy was disappointed but not surprised to find herself alone in the room.

After washing and dressing, she went in to see Luc. He related astonishing news. “Andy told me. Something’s wrong with the drugs. I’m not supposed to take them no more.”

She stood there, stunned, shaking. “What?” Lucy asked. “What?”

“They’re killing people,” Luc said. “The same as me, they’re dying.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Your drugs, they’re killing people. They’ve been killing me. Andy, he said he just came in from New York. Everybody’s dying there, Lucy, from this, everybody you treated. It’s a terrible thing that’s happening.”

She felt herself go light, woozy, faint. She could only dimly make out Luc’s face, only vaguely discern his voice. Seeing him, she tried to tell herself, she tried to convince herself, that she could not possibly have been killing him all along. Luc. Dying. Not just sick, but dying. Because of her. Then she thought of the others, so many others, and Lucy Gabriel slumped to the floor and folded her knees up against her chest, and she rocked herself, and no matter what Luc did or said, she would not stop rocking. She sat on the floor of the motel room in Baltimore and continued to rock.

Where?
she wondered.
Where’s Andy? Why did he go?

7
HOMECOMING

Ten days later, Sunday, January 30, 1999

Overcome with rage, and with a rumbling panic inside her, Lucy Gabriel had first cared for Luc Séguin before returning home. Erratic, distraught, she didn’t know if she should run or hide or confront someone, understood only that the world was not as she had imagined. Her instinct to forge passionate bonds, so long nurtured within her culture and her political experience, warred against a renewed conviction that no one could be trusted.

The assault weapon that she had defiantly deployed during the Oka crisis had been stripped from her the day the army had negotiated its advance onto the reserve, but she still owned a shotgun for hunting mallards in season. She had arrived home on a Friday, and when Andy Stettler called on Sunday and insisted on paying her a visit, she waited for him in her apartment above the garage, the shotgun across her lap, a finger crooked around one of the twin triggers.

When he knocked, she didn’t respond.

When he entered, she aimed both barrels at his belly.

“Easy, girl,” he said gently, raising his hands chest-high.

“Fast-talking man,” she warned him, “you better have something to say.”

“Don’t go off half-cocked. Aim the gun down, Lucy.”

“At your balls?”

“Where’s Luc?”

“None of your business.”

“He’s my friend,” Andy pointed out.

“Good thing you didn’t forget that. If you hadn’t told him he was dying I would’ve killed more people. Nice of you to let me know, Andy.” She crossed an ankle over a knee, and balanced the weapon across her calf, aiming now at the vicinity of his crotch, as promised.

“I let you know as soon as I found out.”

“How do you figure that? You said diddly-squat to me!

“Can I sit down, at least?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Will you put the gun away?”

“No.”

Andrew Stettler pulled up a wooden chair that long ago had lost its finish. Facing Lucy, he positioned himself the wrong way around on it, resting an elbow on the back and feeling more secure, perhaps, to have bits of wood between himself and the shotgun. Even now, she loved the way he moved his body, folding his long limbs with the easy confidence of a snake coiling itself on a rock. They confronted one another under the steeply sloped roof of the garage. At either end, the windowpanes were blotted with frost and windblown snow. Wind squealed around the walls.

“I’d been to New York. Luce, the news there was pretty grim. That morning with you, I called Camille for the latest report—the morning after we made love. I had to catch her early, before she went on her rounds. She gave it to me straight, and it was then, it was only then
we decided to face facts. Camille and me. We couldn’t call certain things coincidences, or accidents, any more. We couldn’t kid ourselves that some people were having a run of bad luck. The evidence was mounting. We had to face facts. I didn’t wake you. All right, maybe I should’ve. I went straight to Luc and gave him the word instead. Luc could tell you everything. I had a plane to catch. All hell was breaking loose.” Andy grimaced at the bad memory. “To be perfectly honest with you, Lucy, I chickened out. All right? I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. It was hard enough telling Luc. I was a wreck after that. Anyway, I had to shake a leg. I had to get home, find out what was going on.”

“What was?”

“Lucy—”

“Don’t Lucy me! I got
you
hired, not the other way around. The next thing I hear, you’re telling Camille I’d make a good doctor. Well, thanks! Like you’re giving me a pat on the back. How come is that? Since when are you directing things? You came in on this as a fucking lab rat, Andy, a lab rat. Suddenly, you’re in tight with Honigwachs? He sends
you
to New York? To
Baltimore?
For
what?
When did this happen, anyway? Who the hell are you? How come, all of a sudden, you know more about everything than I do? Explain it to me. I really want to know.”