Billy Summers

She looks at him, blue eyes wide, mouth moving. Then her head droops. ‘Was it Tripp? Did he put something in my beer? My g-and-t? Both? Is that what you’re telling me?’

Billy restrains an impulse to reach across the table and put his hand over hers. He’s gained a little ground but if he touches her he’ll almost certainly lose it. She’s not ready to be touched by a man, especially one with nothing on but worn workout shorts.

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. You were. So tell me what happened, Alice. Right up to when your memory drops out.’

So she does. And as she does, he can see the question in her eyes: if you didn’t rape me, why did I wake up in your bed instead of a hospital bed?

4

It’s not a long story, even with some background added in. Billy thinks he could tell it himself once she gets started, because it’s an old story. Halfway through it she stops, her eyes widening. She begins to hyperventilate, her hand clutching her throat while the air goes whooping in and out.

‘Is it asthma?’

He didn’t find an inhaler, but it might have been in her purse. If she was carrying one, it’s gone now.

She shakes her head. ‘Panic …’ Whoop ‘… attack.’ Whoop.

Billy goes into the bathroom and wets a washcloth as soon as the tap runs warm. He wrings it out loosely and brings it back. ‘Tip your head up and put this over your face.’

He would have thought it impossible for her eyes to get any wider but somehow they do. ‘I’ll …’ Whoop ‘… choke!’

‘No. It’ll open you up.’

He tips her head back himself – gently – and drapes the washcloth over her eyes, nose, and mouth. Then he waits. After fifteen seconds or so, her breathing starts to ease. She takes the washcloth off her face. ‘It worked!’

‘Breathing the moisture makes it work,’ Billy says.

There might be some truth in that, but probably not much. It’s breathing the idea that makes it work. He saw Clay Briggs – Pillroller, their corpsman – use it several times on newbies (and a few vets, like Bigfoot Lopez) before they went back for another bite of the rotten apple named Phantom Fury. Sometimes there was another trick he used if the wet washcloth didn’t work. Billy listened carefully when Pill explained both of these tricks to soothe the mental monkey. He’s always been a good listener, storing up information like a squirrel storing up nuts.

‘Can you finish now?’

‘Can I have some toast?’ She asks almost shyly. ‘And is there any juice?’

‘No juice, but I’ve got some ginger ale. Want that?’

‘Yes, please.’

He makes toast. He pours ginger ale into a glass and adds an ice cube. He sits down across from her. Alice Maxwell tells her timeworn story. It’s one Billy has heard before and read before, most recently in the works of Émile Zola.

She spent a year after high school waitressing in her hometown, saving up money for business school. She could have gone in Kingston, there were two there that were supposed to be good, but she wanted to see a little more of the world. And get away from Mom, Billy thinks. He might be starting to understand why she’s not demanding he call the police immediately. But the question of why ‘seeing a little more of the world’ meant coming to this nondescript city … about that he has no idea.

She works part time as a barista at a coffee shop on Emery Plaza, not three blocks from Billy’s writing nest in Gerard Tower, and that was where she met Tripp Donovan. He struck up casual conversations with her over a week or two. He made her laugh. He was charming. So of course when he invited her out for a bite after work one day, she said yes. A movie date followed, and then – fast worker, that Tripp – he asked if she’d like to go dancing at a side-of-the-road place he knew out on Route 13. She told him she wasn’t much of a dancer. He of course said neither was he, they didn’t have to dance, they could just buy a pitcher of beer and stretch it out while they listened to the music. He told her it was a Foghat cover band, did she like Foghat? Alice said she did. She had never heard of Foghat, but she downloaded some of their music that very night. It was good. A little bluesy, but mostly straight-ahead rock and roll.