Perfect Opposite (16 page)

“Yeah...
he’s known to have that effect.” I shrugged, “That's his standard ‘I hate the whole world’ look. The thing is, his mother fell coming out of some department store when he was just a baby. As I heard, he hit his head real bad on the sidewalk. He’s probably been wacky since then.” even though none of that was true, the words seemed to flow out of me.

“
Aaaah... that explains a lot.” Beth nodded, confused, and I had a hard time not letting on.

“Better get down to work.”

Looking across towards the other end of the apartment, I made sure we were alone , opened the bottle of pills and shook out three, lining them up like small blue soldiers. Then, with the back of a spoon, I carefully started crushing them up.

“The bottle says one per night for an adult.” Beth was standing on the other side of the table, looking worried, the large bowl of goulash between us.

“For normal people, maybe.
For Alex we need a horse’s dose. “

“Yes, but... what if we kill him?” she looked at me, nervously biting her nails.

“We’ll wrap his body in some old rug and call Paolo to help us bury him in the park over by the university. If you really want, we can plant some daffodils on the spot.”

“What?” Beth’s eyes moved frantically in their sockets and I had to control myself, or else fall into a hysterical giggling fit.

“Come on... I'm only kidding. Don’t worry about Alex. He’ll just have a good long beauty sleep.” I smiled, working what was left of the pills into an even finer powder.

“Don’t you think he'll notice something?”

“He shouldn’t. I guess we don’t really want to be around when he wakes up though.”

I swept the powder off the side of the table and into a clean bowl using the side of my hand, then ladled some of the goulash on top and gave the whole thing a stir, trying not to think about what might happen if
Alex did cotton on to the plan.

When I felt sure the specks of blue were mixed in well with the food, I dipped my finger into the sauce and marked the bowl with two red spots on its rim.

“We wouldn’t want his dose ending up in you or me, would we?” I explained when I saw Beth looking even more puzzled than before. “This is how we’ll know which is his.”

“Yes
, of course,” she mumbled almost too quietly to be heard.

“Alright then.
Now pass some bowls over for us. Alex went to take a shower exactly five minutes ago, so he might show up any second. Hurry.”

We’d just finished laying the table when he came through into the kitchen, looking like his thoughts were very far away and, without a word, sat next to me.

Whether it was because he didn’t look as pissed as
usual, or because of the long-sleeved t-shirt that covered his tattoos, he seemed like a different person. It made me wonder what he might have been in life if he hadn’t gotten tangled up with Nikolai and the rest. He acted like he was at home in that criminal underworld, but I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. The fact that not one honest-to-goodness smile of joy had crossed his lips since I met him, almost a month ago, spoke volumes.

I can’t do this! He’s just doing his job – protecting me, and I’m about to drug him.

A pang of guilt struck me out of the blue and it felt like I was flying into a panic for a split second. On impulse, I almost reached over and knocked his bowl to the floor so that it would smash, but he’d already taken up a spoon and started eating.

Damn. I
t’s too late now.

As we ate, I tried hard not to let my gaze linger on his bowl, but from the corner of my eye I could see that his goulash was disappearing pretty fast. The dose we’d given him ought to keep him asleep for at least twelve hours, which was more than enough time for us to see the concert, go to the after party and get home without him even
noticing.

There was an anxious moment a bit later when I noticed all the sauce he’d left at the bottom of his bowl, but I reckoned he’d ha
d plenty of the sedative by now and felt pretty sure things were all going according to plan.

After dinner, Beth disappeared to her room to start getting ready, while I settled myself on the couch in the living room, determined to look as miserable as humanly possible and stared blankly at the TV. A few minutes later, when Alex came through to sit near me, I shifted my position so that I was as far away from him as I could get, determined to play the poor victim down to the last. I pulled a blanket around me and somehow topped even my own expectations by letting go of two small tears that trickled down my cheek. They may have been down to the nervousness that was already prickling my skin.

“
Princess...”

“What?” I sniffed and wiped my eyes, my hand inside the sleeve of the old jumper I was wearing.

“I'm sorry it’s like this. Really I am.” he sighed and moved a little closer. “I know how much you wanted to go and… If you want, when this is all over I’ll take you to any concert you want.”

I buckled slightly
and looked at him, confused. The sleeping pills were obviously having some pretty weird side effects, and not the ones listed on the bottle, since he really looked like he meant it. This couldn’t be the real Alex. I knew he’d rather strangle me than take me to a gig like a normal person.

“Even a Miley Cyrus concert?”

“Don’t push it.” he spread one arm out behind me along the back of the couch and turned his attention to the movie.

I secretly glanced at the wall clock and realized it was a full half an hour since we’d had dinner, which meant the
pills should kick in soon. It was vitally important to make sure he stayed on the couch and didn’t get up and move around. If that happened he’d surely notice something funny going on.

I took the only course of action possible and snuggled up close to him, letting my head come to rest on his shoulder. The look on his face told me he wasn’t expecting it, but he made no comment as he brought his arm down around my shoulders.

“So, you're not mad at me anymore?” he whispered a little later, his lips just brushing my ear, and I just shook my head.

Though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, it had been quite some time since I’d really felt angry with Alex, and I didn’t like where that was heading.
Closing my eyes, the thought of going out suddenly lost its appeal, and I started to imagine what it would be like to spend the night in his arms again instead.

Fortunately, the sound of the shower running in the bathroom brought me out of my daydreams and cast those ideas aside. L
istening to Alex’s breathing, which was obviously slowing down, I forced myself to lie still until his body relaxed completely. I finally lifted my head just a little and confirmed from his face that he was in a really deep sleep.

Cautiously, I slipped out of his embrace, lifting his heavy arm off my body and sliding underneath. With a little difficulty, I got him into a position that looked sort of normal for a human being.

“My God, you weigh more than a tank!” I groaned and took a deep breath.

I was half way
to my room when a new compulsion took hold of me. I moved back to the couch, took a pillow from a nearby chair and pushed it gently under his head. Turning once to make sure Beth wasn’t anywhere around, I crouched down in front of him. Feeling like I might be walking through the gates of a forbidden city, I reached out my hand and let the tips of my fingers move over the lines on his forehead, then his nose and finally his lips. It felt very odd to see him so peaceful and vulnerable and, not able to resist the temptation, I brought my face close to his and kissed him.

Realizing what I’d done, I got up quickly and took a few steps back. I wasn’t sure how, but it seemed like I’d completely blanked out the fact that this interloper on my couch was, in fact, a
tough criminal.

Maybe going to see
a shrink wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

By nine o’clock I was dressed to kill in tight black jeans, a shiny silver shirt and black boots with dizzyingly heels, ready to head hot to town. We’d just passed through the door of the apartment when one last idea popped into my mind.

“Just a minute,” I moved back through the doorway to the dresser in the hall, picked up Alek’s bike keys and dropped them in one of the ornamental floor vases full of old, dry reeds.

“You don’t think he'll wake up and come after us, do you?” Beth asked as we were leaving the building and walking toward Paolo's car.

“No way.
When we came out he was sleeping like a rock, but I thought just in case. And even if he does miraculously wake up before we get back, he won’t know where we are. There’s nothing to be afraid of."

The stadium where the band was playing was only seven blocks away, so we managed to get there just as the support act was finishing. After getting our tickets checked and passing through security, we made our way to the fan pit in front of the stage to get the best possible view. Finally, I let myself relax and got swept away by the atmosphere.

After four songs I’d almost lost my voice from singing along – screaming, Bethany said – but it didn’t stop me from shouting even louder when my favorite number came on, ‘My Life’s a Lie’.

I watched the girls around me yelling and waving their arms in the hope of attracting the singer’s attention, while he was giving every impression of making love to his mic stand, all long black curls and ripped leather pants. Behind me, Paolo was doing his best to attract the attention of a much taller girl, while Beth thrashed around to my right, moving pretty well to the rhythm but elbowing me in the ribs a little too often. The guitarist had just played the first few bars of a new song when Bethany grabbed my arm and started to shout, looking past me and back through the crowd.

“Oh, crap! We’re
gonna cop it now!”

“What is it?” I asked, following her wild look.

My heart sank through the floor when I made out Alex negotiating a path through the fans around fifteen rows back.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I quickly crouched down and pulled Beth with me, drawing a couple of confused looks from the
people around us.

“H... how?”
Beth looked at me, her eyes wide and shining.

“How the hell should I know?” I snapped, “He should have been far gone for twelve hours or more, and it’s not even been two!”

“What shall we do?”

“Run for it. Come on!”

I took her hand and, still crouching, dragged her in the direction of a glowing green exit sign mounted high up on the wall.

“And Paolo?” she asked as we were squeezed through the jostling crowd.

“We'll call him later. Hurry!”

After several minutes of pushing, elbowing and trampling on feet, we found ourselves in front of the exit. I turned to see if Al
ex was following us, and froze.

With a look like he’d reached breaking point, my protector-turned-pursuer was standing right where we’d just been enjoying the music, and looking right at me.
Our eyes met and for a few seconds I stood petrified, my feet turning to concrete. Beth shouted something in my ear and started tugging at my shirt. Snapping out of the trance, I grabbed her hand and pushed through the heavy doors. One dim corridor and another set of doors later and we were in the parking lot.

Running straight up to one of the waiting cabs, we shouted to the driver to go almost before we’d closed the doors. He turned the key straight off and pulled away, probably recognizing that we were nearly hysterical. I squeezed the seat behind me with all my strength as I kept my eyes locked on the doors we’d left by, expecting Alex to appear at any second. Only when the driver hung a left and the stadium fell from view did I breathe a sigh of relief and turn to face front
.

“We got away”, I declared, “I guess the crowd slowed him down.”

“So what are we gonna do now? Go home?”

“Of course not
.” I tried to sound firm and gave the driver the address of the club where the after party was going to happen.

“Are you sure? If he found us here... maybe he’ll follow us there too?”

“No way. He probably realized straight off that I’d gone with you to the concert, after he came round. He could easily have checked the venue on the Internet, but I don’t think it’d be as easy to find the party.”

“I hope you're right
, because he seemed really, really angry.”

“No wonder
.” I tried to laugh, “I can only imagine what kind of dent his ego got when he woke up to find me gone.”

“I don’
t even want to think about it. And how come he woke up so soon?”

“Maybe the ones Ryan gave you were out of date
.”

“No, I checked the bottle
.” she shook her head, “But isn’t all this little beside the point? OK, he said you couldn’t go to the concert, but how come he can even decide something like that? Ever since he showed up he follows you round and he never lets you out of his sight, like you two are joined at the hip or something. Why do you let it go on like that?”