Sliding Past Vertical Read online

  He picked at the bandage as he waited for the light at Westcott to change. He’d planned on starting Dirk that evening, after meeting Daisy for coffee, but typing was going to be a bitch: a literal pain on the finger that handled most of the important hard consonants of the trade.

  Damn Sarah for leaving her stupid razor! As if she’d known about Dirk. And Daisy. He wanted to grab the plastic infidel out of the trash, drive it over to her apartment and tell her to stick it, along with all of her other things that had been assaulting him since she’d left.

  He hadn’t even reached the library, but he pulled his old Honda into a screeching U-turn and headed back to the house.

  Once there, and with a liberating sense of glee, Emerson snatched a brown paper bag from the pile of them beside the refrigerator and began filling it with Sarah’s things. First to go was the bottle of vitamins that had fallen from the top shelf and dented his forehead. Then a box of herbal tea, her favorite mug, and the book he’d stubbed his toe on. Then he stomped upstairs. In went the panties, the lipstick, the evil razor, the Penthouse T-shirt she’d slept in, a Rolling Stones tape, and a plastic tortoiseshell hair comb he’d found behind his bed, a tooth of which had jammed underneath his fingernail when he reached for it. Ditto an earring that might not have been hers but he didn’t care. And the silk pajamas he hadn’t given her for Christmas.

  He might as well be rid of those, too.

  The bag was full. The car died once. Twice. He started it a third time; it sputtered hopefully for a few seconds and then conked out.

  “Screw it,” he said, and decided to walk.

  It was an idiotically beautiful day for winter in Syracuse: forty degrees and all blue and sparkly, which made Emerson feel ridiculous, storming over to Sarah’s place with this bag of stuff, fury puffing off him like smoke. As if on a day this perfect, he had no right to be angry about anything, especially a piece of pink plastic, especially because he was the one who had told her to leave. The students he passed looked too damned happy—hatless, freshly scrubbed, ski lift passes dangling from open coats—and if he were another type of person he might have kicked one or two of them. Instead he shoved the feelings down deeper, where they would hurt no one but himself.

  Supposedly, she lived in the first house on the right after the second stop sign on Lancaster. It was brick red with black shutters. Her entrance was on the right side. He’d pointedly ignored the information when he’d first heard it, telling Rashid he didn’t need to know where she’d moved. He’d decided that the only way he could get Sarah out of his head and body was to have nothing to do with her for a good long time. But his brain, reptilian bastard, had neatly filed the directions away.

  It was a tidy house, freshly painted, the abbreviated front yard bracketed by whip-twigged forsythias poking out of the snow. It looked so normal, but still he was careful as he approached the walk and the stairs, on guard for broken paving stones and patches of ice or loose boards.

  Sarah lived there, after all.

  Reaching the porch unscathed, he rang her bell and waited. He forced a smile at the mailman, who eyed Emerson suspiciously, deposited a wad of envelopes in the box, and moved on. He rang again. He thought he heard noises from inside, but no one came to the door.

  As if I’m going away that easily.

  The front door—a windowless slab of oak—hung ajar, and perhaps, like her old apartment in Boston, this was an outer entryway and her front door was at the top of the stairs. Well, fine, he thought. He’d go up and pound and pound until she had to let him in. He refused to leave without telling her off, or, at the very least, without leaving the damned bag.

  He pushed on the door. As he’d suspected, it opened onto a small vestibule and a set of sagging wooden stairs. He caught an odd combination of aromas as he climbed the first stair, the second, and the third. It smelled like wet wood and cheap cologne, cigarettes and something sickeningly familiar…

  Then he heard a creak.

  He never made it to the fourth stair.

  “Who the fuck are you?” a male voice growled. Before Emerson could turn, he was yanked off his feet by the collar. He tried to yell but his shirt and jacket squeezed his windpipe and all that rushed out was an impotent huff of air. The bag flew from his hands. Items spilled out and landed with a series of crashes and thumps.

  As easily as a rag doll, Emerson was spun around and slammed against the wall, the end of the stair rail just missing a kidney. His foot landed on something plastic that crunched beneath his boot.

  Then a face appeared nose to nose with his. It was a man’s face, with hard edges like cut glass. His thick black hair looked stiff with some kind of unnatural goop. He had dark blue eyes, bloodshot and swollen, one of them luridly bruised.

  Emerson knew the other smell. The alcohol on the guy’s breath was as familiar to him as his mother’s perfume.

  “I asked you a question, blondie.”

  Then he grabbed the front of Emerson’s shirt and shoved him harder against the rail.

  The second impact made him nearly black out. Later he would have a bruise the size of a baseball. Emerson gasped out the first syllable of his name, two or three times. It was all he could manage with the pain and from being scared out of his mind. He saw a flash of something shiny inside the guy’s leather jacket. Obviously his assailant wasn’t guarding Sarah against intruders but had meant to rob someone.

  Emerson just happened along first.

  He thought about his wallet, fat with bills, and how he’d gladly work double shifts again for a week to earn the money back, if the guy would simply take it and leave. “It’s Emerson. I don’t want any trouble, just—I mean, I’ve got a little cash, it’s not much, but...”

  A leer spread across the man’s face and danced into his damaged eyes. “Emerson.” He drew the name out, as if he were tasting each syllable, and then sized him up with the remnants of that mocking smile. “No, I’m not after your grocery money, Emerson. I got bigger fish to fry. Gimme your key.”

  “Wh…what?”

  He snapped his fingers and held out his palm. “The key, ace. Lady’s got something I need.”

  “I don’t...” Emerson swallowed. “I don’t live here.”

  The man cocked an eyebrow. “No? I thought for sure you and her had that whole fucking happily-ever-after deal down pat by now.”

  This had to be Jay. He matched Sarah’s description. Minus the bruises, of course, but it would be fitting for a guy this obnoxious to get popped now and again. If not for the possible weapon in his jacket and that he seemed to have a pharmacy’s worth of chemicals in his bloodstream, Emerson might have tried it himself.

  “I don’t have a key,” Emerson said, eyes narrowed.

  Jay smiled, showing perfect, straight teeth. “So I’ll wait.”

  * * * * *

  An hour went by. Sarah didn’t return. Jay slouched against the same wall he’d slammed Emerson into, smoking the occasional cigarette and flicking the ashes into Sarah’s favorite mug, now minus a handle. He seemed to have fallen a couple of degrees from whatever high he’d been on, appearing to Emerson’s experienced eye more bored than dangerous, but still he kept his guard up, remembering the effects of drugs and alcohol, as well as the pain in his back.

  With the toe of a tanned leather boot, Jay poked at a box of herbal tea. “What’s all this shit, anyway?”

  “Nothing.” Whatever Jay had come for, it was between him and Sarah and none of Emerson’s business. He knew he could simply leave. He could have left an hour ago, opened the door and walked out into the stupidly blue afternoon, and said good riddance to the two of them forever.

  He just didn’t seem to be able to do it.

  Jay plucked the green panties from the carnage on the floor. He held them up by the sides of the waistband and wiggled them in front of his pelvis like a marionette hula dancer. “I remember these,” Jay said. “She was wearing them when we—”

  Emerson snatched them away. “Do you mind?�
�

  Jay shot him a hot glare. “No, do you?”

  Emerson glared back. If Jay wanted something in Sarah’s apartment and was as desperate as he’d first seemed, he could have broken in six times over by that point or intimidated Emerson into helping him.

  Obviously he’d come for something else.

  “Look,” Emerson said, “she doesn’t want to see you anymore. Why can’t you just accept that and leave her alone?”

  Jay smirked. “Why can’t you?”

  Of course, if all Emerson wanted was to get Sarah’s things out of his house, he could have thrown them away. Or given them to Rashid. “It wasn’t like that,” Emerson grumbled.

  Jay swept a hand over the wreckage. “Come on. I know what this stuff is. It’s the leftovers. All the stuff she left over at your place.” He guffawed at his own joke, until he saw something on the floor that seemed to interest him. He reached for the Rolling Stones tape, partially crushed when the sole of Emerson’s boot had landed on it. “Oh, man. I was wondering what happened to my Sticky Fingers.”

  Emerson smiled. At last, a little bit of justice.

  Jay plopped onto the floor in the middle of all the junk, folding his long legs under him, a seemingly impossible feat in skin-tight jeans. He popped the tape out of the broken box and evaluated the damage, staring at it as if it held the secret yet unattainable solution to all of his ills. “You know, just once I want a bag like this. I never get any of my shit back. Babes, they keep it, you know? Like fucking trophies or something.”

  Emerson also stared at the tape, thinking. He wouldn’t mind if a woman wanted something of his as a trophy. Even that Sarah had kept the copy of Dune he’d given her because she hadn’t read it yet had touched him. But a guy like Jay wouldn’t understand. “So that’s what you drove all the way here for? Slamming me around was just a bonus?”

  Jay rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Gomer, I’d drive fucking hundreds of miles to the middle of nowhere in January and get in your face for a Rolling Stones tape. Sorry to burst your ego balloon, but it wasn’t anything personal.” He got up and slapped dust off his jeans. “Guys are after me. I think one of them followed me here. I can’t be too careful.”

  “Then you’re both wasting your time,” Emerson said. “Aside from that tape, there’s not a damned thing here that belongs to you.”

  Jay shot him a threatening look and blew smoke out both nostrils like a bull. Emerson swallowed. “Oh, I beg to differ.” He pointed to his shiner. “How do you think I got this beauty?”

  Your charming personality, Emerson thought, but only shrugged.

  “Because our little girlfriend fucked me over, that’s how. She took the goods and ran. Yeah, I was able to buy some goodwill with these guys, told ’em I was on the verge of a signing with the band and had to do some gigs out of town for a while. Then one of them gave me this as a reminder. Next time it’s my hands. My hands, man. That’s my career. So I’m here to get what’s owed to me. Or the equivalent in cash and prizes.”

  “And what makes you think Sarah’s got either one?”

  “Spent a little quality time with Nurse Dee Dee.” He leered like Emerson was supposed to understand, and of course, host organism to Dirk Blade, he did. “Let’s just say that after a few shots of tequila there’s nothing she won’t give up.”

  Letting out a long breath, Emerson wrestled with his beliefs about friendship, loyalty, and Sarah’s judgment. Had she told him the truth about flushing the coke? “I gather that was how you found out where Sarah was living.”

  Jay made his fingers into a gun and shot them at Emerson. “Bingo.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t even know where to begin telling you how wrong that is. To use someone that way.”

  Jay shrugged a shoulder. “Sorry, Mom. These are desperate times. And hey, it’s not like she didn’t enjoy herself. I’m not a total jerk.” He smiled affably. “No matter what Sarah says.”

  Still, Emerson shuddered. Sarah had actually thought about spending the rest of her life with this man? Seeing him through rehab, living with him, and having his babies?

  Jay lit another cigarette. “So how’d she do it to you?”

  “Excuse me?” Emerson said.

  “How’d she dump you?”

  “She didn’t dump me.”

  “Get real. You have no key, and you’re bringing her unmentionables back in a paper bag. I call that dumped.”

  “She didn’t dump me,” Emerson repeated, feeling heat rush into his face. “It was the other way around.”

  Jay laughed until he had a coughing fit and soothed it with a long draw from a flask he pulled from his jacket.

  Emerson wanted to pop the grin off his face. “It’s true, damn it. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “From what I’ve heard about you?” Jay carefully wiped tears of mirth from his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yes.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know enough. You’re all she ever fucking talked about.”

  Probably another lie, Emerson thought, before he could let himself start believing it.

  “Were you really going to stop writing porn just because she didn’t like it?”

  “She told you that?”

  “Is it true?”

  “No.”

  “You are so full of shit.” Jay drained the rest of the flask and smacked his lips. “You’d picket Playboy Headquarters if she asked.”

  Then Jay fired up another cigarette. Emerson was getting a headache from the smoke. “At least open the door if you’re going to keep doing that.”

  Jay cracked it a few inches and spun back on Emerson. “But you would have stopped if she really pushed you. Maybe if she did that thing with her tongue.”

  Emerson’s fists and jaw clenched, but over Jay’s shoulder he saw Sarah coming up the walk. He saw flashes of her as she moved: a blue-jeaned leg, the flap of a purple scarf, a flushed cheek, the toss of her hair. His face softened at the sight of her after so long. But then he tried not to see her. More accurately, he was trying not to show Jay that he’d seen her.

  “But Jay,” Emerson said, hopefully loud enough for Sarah to hear. “Making money isn’t worth hurting someone you care about.”

  “Oh, ouch, Mother Superior, you got me.” Jay staggered backward dramatically, holding his hands over his heart.

  And backed right into Sarah, who’d been pushing the door open with her shoulder.

  Jay turned. He gave Sarah a lopsided grin, the cigarette still dangling out the side of his mouth. “Hi, honey,” he said through the other side. “We’re home.”

  Chapter 30

  From Emerson’s experience with women in general and Sarah in particular, he knew exactly what was about to happen.

  Sarah would feel sorry for Jay. She’d take one look at his handsome, damaged face and rush into his arms. Just like in the movies, the girl was a deranged fool for the charming rogue, while the nice guy, who’d served as a convenient distraction until the object of his affection could attract another bad apple, walked off into the sunset with only his memories for companionship. And maybe, if he was lucky, a dog.

  But there was no mist in Sarah’s expression as she stood face to face with Jay. The soft brown gaze of his fantasies was pure flint, a sharpened thing that could cut worse than a plastic left-behind callus-shaving contraption.

  Jay polished his smile. “I missed you, baby.”

  “What do you want, Jay?” she asked, sounding tired.

  He swaggered up to Sarah and stroked the underside of her chin with an index finger that had an absurdly long nail for a man. There was barely a crack of daylight between the two. “You know what I want.”

  Emerson scrambled to his feet. “Leave her alone.”

  Jay backed off a step and turned toward Emerson, and he could swear he saw the taller man wink. “Oh, what are you gonna do, tough guy? Give me another one?”

  He didn’t want any part of this game. “I never touched you. Sarah, that
black eye’s at least two days old.”

  Emerson had gotten her attention. But instead of looking at his face, she stared open-mouthed at his hands. He was still clutching her green panties. Not knowing what else to do, he stuffed them into his coat pocket.

  Her face reddened. “Look. I don’t know what’s going on in here, but maybe you should both leave.”

  “Nice going, Dirk,” Jay said to Emerson, leaning nastily on his nom de plume.

  “Jay!” Sarah looked like she was getting a killer headache.

  “I want my stuff. I know you have it.”

  He was growing more agitated, talking louder and rubbing at his nose. Emerson’s heart raced. He’d had to restrain people before, at the infirmary, but no one this big, this young, or this wasted.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sarah said. “You know it’s gone. I told you.”

  Jay leaned in close to Sarah and pointed at his insulted eye. “Does this look like it’s gone? They’re coming after my hands next, Sarah. My hands!”

  He raised them both as if to cuff her ears. She flinched and Emerson shot forward.

  “Relax, Lancelot.” Jay let his hands fall. “I’m not going to touch your girlfriend.” A malicious smile crinkled his eyes. He addressed Emerson but was still looking at Sarah. “Oh, that’s right. She’s not your girlfriend. She dumped me and came all the way here ’cause it’s always been all about you, and you dump her. Boy. Pretty ironic, huh, baby?”

  For a second Sarah looked like she might cry but hardened again. “That’s enough,” she said. “Now you’d better leave, or…”

  “Or what, sweetheart? You gonna call the police? Maybe I’ll tell them what you got upstairs.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “That’s not what Nurse Dee Dee said.”

  Sarah’s brow furrowed. “Huh?”

  “Your roommate? Remember her? Or have you spent the last four months letting this one fuck you stupid, making up for lost time?”