Lullaby for the Rain Girl (11 page)

“Mitchell, I don’t have a
pulse.
My
heart’s
not beating.”

“Of course your heart’s beating. You wouldn’t be sitting there talking to me if it wasn’t. Do you feel all right or not?”

She scowled, chewing her lower lip. “I’m not sure. I feel okay, I guess. A little…weird, somehow. Something happened last night. I got up to pee and…something happened. It felt like my insides were coming loose. But just for a minute. Then it passed. I came back to bed. I even slept for a while. When I woke again I felt…just…weird.”

“Well, there you go. You’re probably sick or something.”

“That wouldn’t make my heart stop.”

“It hasn’t stopped,” he insisted. “That’s crazy. But maybe it’s weak or something. Maybe that’s why we can’t find the pulse. You should probably see a doctor,” he said with concern in his voice, though he felt no real concern at all.

“Probably,” she said thoughtfully, not looking at him.

“I have to be at work at eleven,” he said, glancing at the clock. He had plenty of time—the store was a five-minute walk from the apartment—but he really wanted to be rid of this girl, whatever her name was. “Time for some coffee, if you want it. Maybe we could make a couple of eggs before you go.”

She glanced quickly at him, smiled weakly. “Okay.”

He tried to mask his disappointment. He should have figured that she wouldn’t recognize a meaningless courtesy offer when she heard one. Well, he would have made coffee for himself anyway, and it wouldn’t kill him to fry her an egg. It
was
a strange thing. Who knows, she really might be sick.

Nude, he stood and made his way to the kitchen. He liked the feeling of walking naked in front of a girl the next morning. He would usually hold off putting on clothes as long as he could. He worked out at the Gold’s Gym off Wisconsin Avenue three times a week and was proud of his body, with good reason—lots of thirty-year-old guys had begun to let themselves go, but not Mitchell Noone. And he’d found that putting on clothing tended to end the event between himself and the girl, where if he stayed nude sometimes a quick morning romp might still occur. Not that he was sure that he would want to, with this girl. But if she were willing to have a final fast fuck, he’d be willing to let her stay long enough to do it. Let her earn her eggs and coffee.

When he had the percolator going he moved back to the bedroom again. “Hey,” he started to ask, “how did you want your eggs—?”

She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, arms around herself, shivering. In a moment he realized she was crying too, quietly, thin trickles of tears running down her cheek.

Aw shit, he thought.

“Coffee will be ready in a few,” he said, trying to sound casual, hoping she would take the hint and stop. “Listen, how did you want your eggs? I can scramble ’em, fry ’em…I guess that’s about it. I suppose I could hard-boil ’em if you want.”

She looked at him, her eyes red and ringed with tears.

“I’m scared, Mitchell.”

He shook his head, tried to smile. “I told you not to worry about it. You’ve probably got some virus or something. Just see a doctor, that’s all. You seem to be fine except for that.”

“Except for my not having a pulse.”

“Yeah, that.” He shrugged. “C’mon, you’ll feel better after some breakfast.” He sat down next to her, placed his arm around her. Her body seemed to melt into his, her head falling against his shoulder. “Don’t cry...honey.”

“Jane,” she said.

“What?”

“Jane. Hooper.”

“Well, I knew your name, Jane.”

“No, you didn’t. You haven’t used it once.”

“Well, I knew it. You must really think I’m a bastard if you believe I could go to bed with someone and not know her
name.”

She sighed, shakily. “It’s Jane Hooper, Mitchell.”

“Okay, Jane Hooper.” He really wanted her to leave, but with his arm around her and her body so soft, so pliant, he quickly found himself thinking of other possibilities. She let his hands roam across her shoulders, her belly, her thighs. He began to smell the coffee in the other room.

“Mitchell—I don’t—”

“Shh.”

“Really—not now, I’m—I—”

He covered her mouth with his own and her quiet protest stopped. There was still something odd about this girl, this Jane Hooper, an odd odor maybe, something unsettling. But what the hell. She was here, he was here, they were naked. He pushed her gently back onto the pillows, thinking both of her and of the coffee he’d be enjoying in only a few minutes.

“Mitchell—I don’t know if—”

But she didn’t resist as he opened her legs and moved to mount her, kissing her lightly on her face. She wrapped her arms around him and made small whimpering sounds as he settled himself atop her. But suddenly and with an overwhelming revulsion he pulled himself away, crying,
“Oh my God!”

“What?” she said, eyes wide. “What is it?”

He stared at her, aghast.

She was cold inside.

# # #

They sat at the breakfast table. He sipped his coffee slowly, hoping the hot liquid would calm his jitters. She stared silently at her cup, not touching it. He had put on his bathrobe; she was wearing her clothes from last night, a simple blue shirt and old jeans.

“You need to go to a doctor,” he said finally. “Do you have one? An HMO or something?”

It was some time before she responded. “No.”

“Your job doesn’t give you any health insurance?”

“I don’t have a job.”

“Oh. Well, I think there are some free clinics around. We’ll look online.” He still wanted nothing more than to get rid of this girl, but there was obviously something seriously wrong with her. He had to at least push her in the direction of some medical attention before he kicked her out. It would be easy enough to find a clinic and point her toward the subway.

“Drink your coffee,” he said finally.

She raised it carefully to her lips, then hesitated. At last she put the cup down again.

“I guess I don’t want it,” she said.

“Something wrong with it?”

“No. I just don’t want it.”

“Do you want those eggs?”

“I…I don’t think so. I’m not hungry.”

He frowned into his cup. No coffee, no food. He had done what he could do for this girl. It was time for her to move on. “Okay, then,” he said, standing, “let’s look up clinics.” He moved to his computer desk, sat, turned on the machine. As it was starting she stood and came up behind him, arms folded under her breasts.

“It takes a minute,” he said, glancing at her and trying to smile. He hoped his voice didn’t sound as impatient as he felt; on the other hand, she didn’t seem to be taking the hint. Glancing down at her feet, he said, “Hey, better put your shoes on. You’ll want to get to the clinic as soon as you can.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then turned and dropped onto his sofa, tucking her feet up under her and keeping her arms tightly around herself.

“I don’t think I’d better go to a clinic,” she said finally.

“What?” He turned to her. “Why not?”

“I don’t think I’m sick.”

He stared at her. “Well…What are you, then? Are you okay?”

“I’m dead, Mitchell. That’s what I am.”

“Oh, crap. You’re not dead. You’re talking. You’re breathing.”

“I’m not.”

“What?”

“Breathing.”

“Of course you’re breathing.”

She looked at him, her eyes hurt, haunted. “C’mere.”

“Jane, don’t be stupid. C’mon, I don’t need to check if you’re
breathing.
If you weren’t breathing you couldn’t…Well, shit, you couldn’t
talk.
You have to have air in your lungs to talk. You get air in your lungs by breathing.”

“I didn’t even notice until a couple of minutes ago,” she said, staring at the carpet in front of her. “I only inhale when I need to speak. Otherwise I’m not breathing. Not at all. Look.”

“I’m not going to look,” he said firmly. “You’re acting crazy. Maybe you ought to leave, okay? I don’t know what your problem is. I tried to help. But maybe it’s just time for you to go.” He stood, resolved. It was time for him to shower and get ready for work, anyway. “The computer’s here. It’s online. Why don’t you look up clinics? I’ll give you a couple of minutes while I take a shower. Then you’ll have to go.”

The steaming water helped clear his head. This Jane Hooper was crazy enough to make him start thinking crazy things, too. No heartbeat. Not breathing.
I’m dead.
She was dead all right, he thought. A mousy little woman with no personality, nothing going for her. He remembered her from last night, sitting alone at a table with her hair pulled back so severely it looked painful. Later, when they were together in the apartment, she had pulled her top over her head and glanced awkwardly at him.

“I’m sorry, Mitchell,” she’d said quietly. “That they’re so small.”

She even turned out to be lousy in the sack, as far as he recalled; timid, shy, one of those girls who came to bed more for praise and reassurance than for fucking; the type that never responded, that just laid there and let you do it as long as you kept telling her how pretty she was, how much it meant to you that she would share herself with you, what an honor it was to be with her. Jesus Christ.

He knew he had to stop. He was thirty now. Thirty and his life hadn’t amounted to a damned thing—he was nothing but a floorwalker at Sears, selling TVs and VCRs and electronic gadgets to flabby middle-aged nobodies. It was hard to remember sometimes that he had an honest-to-God college degree. A fat lot of good it had ever done him. He had a few buddies, mostly guys from work, but they were really just people to drink with on a Friday night. What did he have in his life? A little eighth-floor apartment in uptown D.C., a small paycheck every two weeks. No family. Nothing.

That is, nothing but girls. He knew he was supposed to think of them as
women
but inside himself they were always girls. He was a good-looking guy, he knew that, but it was something more. Always had been. Girls went for him, that’s all. He didn’t really know why. They went for his looks, his line of chatter. They went for
him.
He rarely came home from a bar alone. They weren’t always the prettiest—increasingly, now that he’d reached thirty, they weren’t always the prettiest. College girls had become hard to get. But there was nearly always someone, and not some broken-down slut, either. Average girls with average lives, like this one now, this Jane Hooper. Nothing spectacular. But easy to meet, easy to take home, easy to get rid of.

Or
usually
easy.

Which was why—he shut off the water, toweled himself dry—he thought again, as he’d thought many times recently, that maybe it was time to stop this. Knock it off with the girls, look for a better job, maybe in another city. He was getting old for this life. And the weird ones he encountered along the way didn’t help. The ones who would call and call, leave tearful messages. And now this one. Jane Hooper, the dead girl. It was definitely time for her to go.

He turned toward the door, moving to put his towel on the rack, when he realized with surprise that she had come in, was standing there by the sink watching him.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”

Her dark eyes locked on his, she moved quickly forward, took his hand, and placed his palm in front of her open mouth. He realized immediately that she wanted him to feel for her breath. He pulled quickly away.

“Stop it, okay?”

“Just hold it there. Please.”

“No. I don’t want to.” This was just too bizarre; he was beginning to get creeped out. “Look, Jane, just put on your shoes and go. That’s all. Just go. I’m leaving for work as soon as I get dressed.” He moved past her, to where he had left shorts and T-shirt on the toilet tank. Suddenly he
wanted
to be dressed. He felt uncomfortable being naked in front of this girl. Who knew what she might try? She might very well be dangerous. Hell, she might already have stolen stuff from the apartment…But that was okay, he realized. She could have whatever she wanted as long as she would
leave.

He slipped into his underwear. “So…are you going to get your shoes?”

She put her hands together, wrung them nervously, chewed on her lip. She turned and left the bathroom, stood with her back to him on the main room’s carpet.

“Could I…stay here a while?” she asked in a tiny voice. “While you’re at work?”

“Better not,” he said, moving past her toward the bedroom. “Did you find the clinic?”

“I didn’t look,” she said, following him. “I…I don’t want to go to a clinic.”

“Well, look,” he said, pulling his shirt and slacks from the hangers in the closet, “you need to leave here. Go home. Do whatever. But I’m leaving.”

“I don’t have a home,” she said, sitting slowly on the bed, hugging herself tightly.

“What do you mean, you don’t have a home?”

“I don’t. I was evicted.”