Baggage Check (11 page)

“He's in New York now,” Alex said proudly. “Music composer on Broadway—I go up to visit him every spring. Thanks, Kevin.”

The waiter set down two beers in plastic cups, and two shot glasses with a light brown liquid nearly spilling over the tops. “We're out of Bud Light in the bottle,” he said to Rebecca, as if this were the only important piece of information.

She gaped at him, and then looked at Alex, who sniffed a shot glass. “Whew! What's with the tequila, Kev?”

“Oh, that. That's from Grier and them.” He motioned with a jerk of his head toward the table where Alex had been sitting earlier. The guy with the jowls raised his own matching shot glass to them in a salute. Alex responded in kind, and downed the tequila in one gulp.

Rebecca smiled stiffly and left her glass where it was. She waited for Alex to chastise her for this, but he simply glanced at her glass and shook his head. “Crazy guys.”

“Work friends?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, some of them. Grier's a deputy and Kenny over there is a paramedic. He works in Gadsden part-time and then with the fire department here part-time. Earl drives a tow truck. So we all kind of intersect at work. Off duty tonight, obviously. Plus we all went to Oreville High at one point or another, just different years.”

“And the little blonde?” He had named the men but not the women in his company.

“Oh, yeah. Um, Bethany is one of our dispatchers. Kathy, next to her, is her friend; she's a bank teller, I think.” He pointed to each one in turn. “And the other brunette is Tanya; she works at the hair salon downtown. You two might remember each other. Actually, I think she was in your class.”

“Tanya Boozer?” Rebecca looked again at the brunette in the short-cropped hair with blond streaks, trying to recognize the cheerleader who had overlooked her in high school, even at the best of times. Sure enough, there she was, surrounded by a good bit of hair product and a gratifying extra layer of flesh. “Wow.”

“Time changes us all, I guess. I keep forgetting how long you've been away.” Alex was talking to her like they were old friends.

“So you go fishing with my dad?”

He nodded. “The post office was down the street from my parents' restaurant, and he used to come in for lunch a lot when I worked there in the summers. They moved the restaurant a while ago, next to the Winn-Dixie on Highway 9. Anyway, when your dad found out I went fishing at sunrise most days at Lake Ofeskokee, he decided to start tagging along. I guess you would say we're friends.”

“That's nice,” Rebecca said dully.

“He never shuts up about you, though. If I have to hear one more time how many exotic places you get to fly with your job…” He nudged her foot gently under the table. It was a boyish gesture. But he had a man's face—full eyebrows and dark, serious eyes. The wrinkles at the corners had been exacerbated, she guessed, by all the time he spent outside squinting in the sun, making his eyes look even more narrow and intense. He had a tiny scar over his lip. She glanced at the untouched tequila and took a fiery sip.

“You'd never know it from my end,” she said.

“What?”

“I almost never hear from Dad,” she said. “Except when I call him. And even then half the time
Sonia
answers.”

“I take it you're not a fan?”

“It's not her, really. Well, I guess it's partly her, but it's just … he and my mom aren't even divorced.”

“They probably never will be,” Alex said. “He loves her too much, even now.”

“How do you— You know what? I'd rather not talk about it.”

She quickly downed the rest of the tequila and slammed the glass on the table. There was something bubbling inside her—grievous and hollow. Something about Alex irked her—whether it was his presumptuousness to invade her space at every turn today, or the fact that he seemed to be trying—successfully—to replace her father's lost son, she did not know. Kevin the waiter was passing by, and she gestured for him to bring another round. Alex raised an eyebrow.

“Unless you need to get back to your friends?” she said. A challenge. “I mean, you did come all the way over here and start needling me for personal information that's absolutely none of your business. You don't even know me! But now you've got me drinking tequila and running my mouth. So don't tell me the big bad officer—”

“Deputy.”

“Deputy. What's the difference, anyway?” He started to answer, but she plowed on. “Don't tell me you're going to back away now that you're getting what you came over here for. Going to run back over there and get on the stage and sing?”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” he said lightly. He was laughing at her, she knew. “Unless you want to sing with me? A little ‘Islands in the Stream'?”

She ignored that. “So, let's talk about you, Deputy Chen,” she said, as Kevin put two more tequila shots in front of them. She hardly knew who this woman was, talking with her mouth, but she could not seem to stop. “What skeletons are in your closet?”

“That would take a while,” he said, still wearing a smile that no longer reached his eyes. “And maybe a few more of these.”

He lifted the shot glass and waited for her to clink hers against it. Even though they both drank at the same time, he did not move his gaze from her, even when he put the glass on the table. “You're right,” he said. “I was intruding and I'm sorry. I just assumed you and your dad were in touch more. I can tell you don't remember me, which is understandable, given your move to Atlanta and … everything. Plus, to be honest, I wasn't that memorable in high school. When you're one of three Asian kids in a basically white town, you try to fly under the radar as much as possible.”

“I guess I didn't think of that,” Rebecca said.

He shrugged. “It's a little more diverse these days. We minorities are up to like almost four percent or something. At this rate, we'll have a Taco Bell in fifteen years. Fingers crossed.”

Rebecca was not sure what to say. She thought he was kidding but wasn't sure. Was he making fun of her?

He grinned, getting up from the table. “Come with me and say hi to everyone. They're all curious about you.”

Rebecca had never known anyone to be curious about her. Tonight she had no particular interest in meeting “everyone,” or getting closer to the karaoke stage, but Alex stood with his hand extended to her and she could not think of a polite refusal. Her head swam a bit when she stood, but he bolstered her with his outstretched arm.

“Cool?” he asked.

A combination of warmth, giddiness, and utter panic rose in her chest. But between Alex Chen's inviting eyes, guilt about her rudeness, and the smoothing power of tequila, she allowed herself to be led toward whatever disaster awaited. “Cool,” she lied. “I'm cool.”

 

12

In the dream, she was swimming. A pool, in the middle of her mother's living room, grown to the size of a football field. She was wearing a cheerleader's uniform, the wet weight of it pulling her down. Giant roaches hissed around her, skittering across her arms and up the back of her neck, through her hair. A man's voice boomed in the distance, like a loudspeaker, but the man was muttering, and she could not understand him.

She tried to reach the side, follow the echoing voice, but she could not move and it faded. An airline mask hung above her, just out of reach. A familiar voice—Valerie, maybe?—was close by now, reciting the safety features of the DC-9-50. Rebecca screamed, but Valerie just got louder. It was all going black. A tiny circle of gray sky was all that remained above her and she gasped desperately for air. It would not come. She was suffocating.

Rebecca sat bolt upright, throwing the pillow from her face halfway across the room. It took a beat to realize that she was back in her hotel room, and that it was 6
A.M.
Another beat to realize that she was not alone. He was standing by the door, silhouetted so that she could see he was wearing jeans but no shirt, hunched over and talking softly on a cell phone. She gathered the sheet around her, realizing in the process that she wore only underwear herself. Ugh. The granny panties.
Dear God, what have I done?

Alex Chen put the phone in his pocket and pulled on a white undershirt before he crossed to her, smiling. She tried to ignore the lovely way the cotton clung to his muscled chest. “Anybody ever tell you that you punch and kick like an Ultimate Fighter in your sleep? It's like trying to sleep in a boxing ring.” He handed her a glass of water and a couple of small brown pills from the nightstand. “Take these. You'll thank me later.”

She did as he suggested, awkwardly trying to keep her body covered with the sheet at the same time. Her head was splitting and her mouth tasted like a drunk possum had died in it. Alex took the glass back and handed Rebecca her bag. “Here,” he said. “I know better than to dig through a woman's purse. Can you get your keys out for me, please? Grier's outside and I'm going to go back and get your car.”

Shame filled her as she realized she had almost no memory of what had happened the night before. “I didn't drive?” she said tentatively.

“God, no,” he said. “Or me either. I would hate to have to arrest myself for DUI. Bethany dropped us off.”

Rebecca had a vague memory of climbing into blond Bethany's car, and laughing. So much laughing. The car had smelled like strawberry air freshener. Memories were coming back to her in snatches. “Did I … did we sing together last night?”

He answered her with a decent Elton John impression, perfectly on-key even at this rough hour of the morning. “Don't Go Breaking My Heart.”

Oh God. Not only did you sleep with a guy you haven't seen since you were fifteen, you were Kiki Dee. In front of people. Stellar night, Rebecca. Just stellar.

“Did we … um, I'm embarrassed to ask.” She glanced down at her clothes in a pile on the floor, feeling her cheeks burn.

“Afraid not,” he said. “Though you did suggest it repeatedly. You were … hard to resist, I'll say that. But I have a strict policy of not taking advantage of women who are more than four times past the legal limit. I slept on top of the covers, and I was a perfect gentleman. Well, mostly perfect.”

His grin made her feel even more naked. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “You should go back to sleep,” he said. “I'll get your car and call you later.”

With that, he slung his plaid shirt over one shoulder and went quietly out the door, carrying her car keys. She glimpsed the side of a black patrol car in the parking lot before he closed the door. Part of her wanted to get up and eat something, and maybe try to puzzle through what had happened the night before. But a bigger, stronger part of her knew this would be an unwise course of action. She took Alex's advice and lay back down to sleep instead.

When she woke again, she could see before looking at the clock that it was much later in the morning. Bright yellow sunlight invaded the room through the part in the curtains, and she was ravenously hungry. Her mouth still tasted horrible, but the headache was gone; she had Alex to thank for this small grace. On the table by the door, her car keys sat with her room key and a cup of Waffle House coffee that was already cooled to room temperature. A scrap of paper next to it held a phone number with a scrawled note. “Thought it would be less intrusive if I let you call me instead.—A”

The word
intrusive
had been underlined and there was a small smiley face next to it. It gave her a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach, or maybe that was just hunger and the remnants of last night's tequila. She studied the number blankly for a minute before tucking it into her purse and heading for the shower.

 

13

After her shower and a greasy, satisfying breakfast at Waffle House, Rebecca drove to the county hospital Monday morning. It was a tiny complex of small buildings, each painted the same institutional slate gray and surrounded primarily by pine trees. There were a few lonely flower beds flanking the front door, and she could see a couple of wooden picnic tables behind one building, where two men sat smoking.

She pressed the intercom at the front door and gave her name and her mother's name. After a moment, she was buzzed in and directed to a small waiting area with burgundy padded chairs and a single magazine rack. She thumbed through last year's Christmas edition of
Woman's Day,
flipping the pages without really seeing them. Soon a woman in hot-pink scrubs with large, poufy red hair came into the room. “For Lorena Williamson?”

Rebecca raised her hand. “That's me.”

“Hi, dear, I'm Kathy Winslop, the charge nurse. I was here when they brought your mom in.”

“How is she?”

“Well, you know, she's had a rough time. She is up and about today, a little more coherent, and did sign the paperwork giving us permission to speak with you about her treatment.”

“More coherent?” Rebecca did not know her mother had been incoherent.

“Yes,” Nurse Kathy said, nodding gently. “I'll let Dr. Sussman tell you more. Here's my card, though. We nurses are here more often than the doctors are, and this has my extension if you need to reach me with any questions. One thing your mom really needs is some clothes. Have you been to the house?”

“Yes,” Rebecca said. It was almost a whisper.

“Yeah, I heard about the house,” Kathy said with sympathy. “Maybe, if you know her size, it will be easier to just buy her a few things. She'll need comfortable pants and T-shirts, and a pair of plastic flip-flops for the showers. We give them slippers, but to tell you the truth, they aren't very nice. You can always bring her some softer ones if you want. She's got a toothbrush, but again, they're nothing fancy. No razors or floss are permitted, no mouthwash with alcohol, no belts or shoes with laces, and absolutely no medications. Not even Tylenol. If they transfer her to Mountainside, she can work her way up to the day unit and they will let her have some of that. But not here. Okay?”