Spitting Image (22 page)
Authors: Patrick LeClerc
SARAH BUZZED ME into her apartment.
“Hey, you,” I said.
“Hey yourself,” she said with a brittle smile.
“So,” she said, “are you unemployed, come to ask if you can crash on the couch?”
“Actually, no.” I told her about the miracle of my continued employment, and about Daniels’ wife.
“So you’re in the clear, but you owe that bastard.”
“I do,” I said. “But my services are limited to healing. And I’d do that anyway. I’m not going to lose my soul for Daniels.”
“That’s a relief.”
“So now, I have to ask. What about us?”
Sarah stood just out of reach, her eyes on the floor.
“I think it would be best if we just moved on,” she said.
I felt the cold knot in my stomach tighten further. Images of the long, lonely years that I finally thought were gone came flooding back. A cold, empty future where I had so briefly dared to dream of our life together.
She wasn’t the only woman in the world. I knew that. I, of all people, knew that. But she was unique. She was funny and quick and probably smarter than I was. She challenged me, and when she had been thrown in out of her depth, she adapted, she improvised, she made it work. And she was educated and well read, which made her fun to talk to, but she had nice, grounded working class roots, so she paired her broad academic knowledge with a solid, philosophical maturity that you can only get by working hard, and growing up with people who needed to work hard. That was a rare combination.
I knew I could find more women to date, but after her, I saw a long, disappointing series of waitresses, nurses, ER techs and EMTs who were far too young for me.
OK, so maybe “too young” wasn’t really the point. I mean, unless I took up necromancy, I wasn’t going to find a woman who wasn’t too young for me, speaking strictly chronologically, but there’s a huge difference between a smart, educated, mature thirty year old and a naive twenty year old.
I wasn’t ready to face that.
And, honestly, I don’t think she was either. In her circles, she would wind up dating men with too much education and too little experience. Men who read
The Iliad
and thought they knew war but had never bruised a knuckle in real life. Men who could recite
On the Road
from memory but couldn’t jump start a car. Men who wouldn’t appreciate what they had when they saw the new crop of lithe undergrads show up every September.
She deserved better. As arrogant as that might sound, she deserved better.
Something stirred inside me. A spark, thawing the dead, cold weight.
“No,” I said.
Maybe it was true. Maybe sometimes, all you need is a moment of reckless courage. Somebody famous said that. Probably while trying to get me killed. But maybe, just maybe, sometimes it was true.
I pulled in a deep breath, blew it out.
She looked up at me, startled. I strode across the room, as bleak and yawning and terrifying a gulf as No Man’s Land, and grasped her shoulders.
“I was at Stark’s stone wall at Bunker Hill and Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow and put my shoulder against the doors of the Hougoumont. I’ve traded one liners with Dorothy Parker and drunk bourbon with Mark Twain and champagne with Alexandre Dumas and anything within reach with Ernest Hemingway. I’ve stood and faced the French lances at Agincourt and the British bayonets at Culloden and screaming hordes outside the wire at Chosin. I’ve loved beautiful women and fought duels and spilled blood and borne scars. I even crawled out of the jungle night on Guadalcanal, dragging my legs through a trail of my own blood because a bayonet had severed my spine.
“But I have never seen beauty that has moved me as much as your eyes, nor felt joy as strong as I do when I see your smile. I’ve never felt fear like the cold terror at the thought of losing you, nor pain like that of your absence.
“I’ve moved on plenty of times. I’ve compromised. Settled. Survived. And I could do that now. I could survive. But settling for anything less than a life with you is too high a price for survival.”
I smiled then. Just an honest smile. Not one of the ones I’d spent ages perfecting. “And unless I’m very wrong, deep down you feel the same. I won’t live with the regret of walking away from you, and trust me, you don’t want that either. We’re perfect together. It doesn’t get any better than us. And I won’t give that up. There’s no mountain I won’t climb, no battle I won’t fight, no law or commandment I won’t break for you.”
I pulled her close, looked deep into those amazing green eyes and shot my last bolt. “I don’t want to do this life thing without you. Let’s live it together.”
I waited, not daring to breathe.
Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in perfect circle. She blinked a few times, shook herself and then stammered.
“Okay.”
I wrapped my arms around her. After a second, she melted against me.
It was a chance.
Like everything right now, it was a chance. Everything I cared about had been threatened, but had survived, if a bit shaken.
I felt the same relief I had on Little Round Top when the Confederate attack broke off. Or when we turned back the British light infantry at Bunker Hill. For the moment, the threat was over. Maybe we were bloodied and low on ammunition, but we had survived.
Until life threw the next assault at us.
I had my job, but management was suspicious. I wouldn’t be able to dodge the next bullet. Sarah had been shaken, even if she wanted to stay. And my security hung on the goodwill of a man whose hope was that I could do what was probably impossible. A man who was used to getting his way, and who might see my failure as deliberate, since he was the kind of man who worked that way.
But for now, I had a chance.
And that’s all you can ever really hope for.
PATRICK LECLERC MAKES GOOD USE of his history degree by working as a paramedic for an ever- changing parade of ambulance companies in the Northern suburbs of Boston. When not writing he enjoys cooking, fencing and making witty, insightful remarks with career-limiting candor.
In the lulls between runs on the ambulance —and sometimes the lulls between employment at various ambulance companies— he writes fiction.
You can find more of it at http://inkandbourbon.com/
Also by Patrick LeClerc
Healer Sean Danet is immortal — a fact he has cloaked for centuries, behind enemy lines and now a paramedic’s uniform. When Sean heals the wrong man, he uncovers a lethal enemy who holds all the cards. And this time he can’t run. It’s time to stand and fight, for himself, for his friends, for the woman he loves. It’s time, finally, for Sean to face his past — and choose a future.
Some 200 years before he became a paramedic in the Boston area, our immortal hero has hidden himself in plain sight in the ranks of Napoleon’s army ... stumbling backwards from the smouldering ruins of Moscow with his musket frozen to unfeeling hands and only hunger keeping him awake as the Cossacks swoop down from the unforgiving countryside to slash at the column's flanks and cut down stragglers.
Patrick LeClerc takes all the sharp wit, wry humor and intelligence of his urban fantasy back in time. Wounded and cut off from the rest of the army, our hero must rely on quick thinking, fast reflexes, natural charm and poorly accented Russian to survive a brutal winter in a hostile country.
Either that, or face a long, cold, lonely walk home.
On the ragged edges of civilization, Corporal Michael Collins has lived those words, taking on riots and evacuations, rebels and terrorists. Asteroid belt patrol is just another deployment. But soon the platoon of Marines find themselves entangled in the threads of a conspiracy of corporate greed, government corruption, piracy, and a band of war
Time to earn that combat pay, Marines. Welcome to the Suck.
The city of Laimrig, once a mighty hub of commerce and a seat of power sinks into corruption and decay. Slavers, crime lords and corrupt officials hold sway while the ruling nobility wallow in decadence. War rages beyond the borders, while within rebellion simmers and sinister plots unfold.
Trilisean is an acrobat turned burglar. Conn is a jaded former mercenary. Against the background of deadly blades, subtle schemes, glittering treasures, dark sorceries and fell servants of forgotten gods, fate has thrown them together.
Fate has a sense of humor.
Broken Crossroads is a fast paced, witty, swashbuckling modern pulp fantasy adventure in the tradition of Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard.
