Bulletproof (Healer) (10 page)

             
Chec returns with keys jangling around one of his sausage-like fingers, “Well this is where I love you and leave you, doll. I’d get some sleep if I were you. Rose should be here in the morning. She’ll be more use than this buffoon.” He pats Gabe’s knee roughly but the drunk boy doesn’t stir, “Isn’t that right, Gabby? You’re useless. Can’t do anything right.”

             
Chec gives me the room key and basic directions. He tells me not to worry about Gabe. That he’ll sort himself out and have a hellish hangover in the morning to make up for his misgivings. Finally, he tells me to charge anything I want to the room. Nothing is too much, he reminds me before patting me on the shoulder, giving Gabe a final look of distaste and turning away. I am ecstatic to see the back of him and pray it’s the last time I have to deal with such a grotesque man. 

             
I consider leaving Gabe asleep on the couch but from the repulsed expressions on the faces of the passers-by I guess this isn’t much of an option. He’s just too big, too heavy for me to support his weight up to my room. “God damn it, Gabe,” I feel frustrated at how little I can do. 

             
A pleasant worker offers to take my things up to my room and I nod, at least that’s one load off my shoulders, I think. I stand and stare at Gabe whose whole body is collapsed as if it has admitted defeat after a long struggle. Totally exhausted. It seems unfair to wake him but I don’t want the humiliation of asking one of the employees to carry him upstairs so I nudge his leg with my foot. The balls of my feet are numb from walking in the high heels. I’m glad physical pain isn’t an issue for me and I pity the girls who walk in these stilts every weekend and endure, what I imagine is, searing pain running from the tips of your toes to the top of your thighs. 

             
Nudging Gabe gently is futile. Eventually I am kicking him in the shins with a lot of force then punching his arm. “Come on, wake up you stupid smelly drunk,” I say, clenching my teeth together. “I’m trying to help you!”

             
It takes me ten minutes until his eyelids stiffly jolt open. His mouth is dry, saliva is building up at the corners of his lips, and he murmurs, “Where am I? What time is it?”

             
“We’re in the hotel. It’s almost ten now. Get up before you embarrass me any further,” I say, feeling the angry stares of the snooty women with their designer handbags and pocket-sized dogs. I want to add some blasphemous language, hiss horrible names at him for stressing me out like this but he looks so baffled that I think of Bruce again and my irritation melts away. 

             
Gabe leans on me in the elevator to our room on the fifth, and top, floor. I’m afraid he is going to be sick. He continues to retch and he smells so bad that I feel like if he doesn’t vomit then I will. His hair which was once slicked back like a movie star is sticking up on end. “You’re a mess,” I say, rolling my eyes.

             
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t say anything because he can’t speak for gagging. He manages the few steps to the door to my room. ROOM 201 is embossed on the dark wood. 

             
I unlock the door and he slides into the room, trips and face plants on to the floor. At least it’s carpet. I sigh and contemplate just leaving him there. “Where are you staying?” I ask but I’m not sure if he can even hear me.

             
With a mouthful of carpet, he mumbles, “I don’t know.”

             
“Well you can’t stay here with me,” I say and the thought of sharing the queen size bed in the centre of the room with him makes me feel dizzy even in his current state.

             
The room is flamboyant. The colour scheme ranges from rich mauve to flamingo pink to brash gold and I feel like I’ve stepped onto the set of a Marie Antoinette biopic. I feel like I will drown in the thousands of exquisitely decorated pillows that are stacked neatly across the massive expanse of space that the bed covers. I have never seen a bed so big. 

             
“I’m sure Maurice didn’t want you staying with me,” I close the door behind me and step over Gabe’s corpse. I perch myself on the edge of the bed which wobbles and shakes underneath me A water bed, I laugh. This is a first. I look down at Gabe’s lifeless body and my mind switches between praying he doesn’t throw up on the cream carpet and wondering how I can rescue this boy from becoming a complete train wreck. 

             
“Do you want anything?” I ask when I notice the number for room service written on a piece of card on the bedside cabinet. 

             
“A beer,” he forces a laugh and it sounds choked and sore in his throat.

             
“You’re an idiot, you know that?” I say. “Sit up.”

             
“I’ve been told,” his words are merging into one. I help him sit and prop his back up against the bed but I have to hold his head up. He bats my hand away from his face, “Don’t touch me.”

             
“Why are you so against me touching you?” I ask maddened. I shouldn’t question him in this state. My dad always said it’s unfair to take advantage of drunk people. Drunk minds speak sober hearts, he would say. Not fair to let somebody spill their guts out when they don’t know if want to or not. I don’t know when he ever expected me to use this advice because he never let me go to clubs or parties with the other girls in my year. I never asked, I realised, but I knew he wouldn’t let me go anyway. 

             
“Because…” Gabe’s head slumps to the side, his shoulders sag. “Just don’t.”

             
“You think I’m a freak, yeah? Like everyone else,” I say and am surprised by the words when they come out of my mouth. They were unexpected and leave the air feeling a bit static. But Gabe doesn’t notice. 

             
“I’m so tired,” he says.

             
“Let’s go to bed then,” I say. I judge the room for a sensible solution to the sleeping predicament. One bed. It’s huge though. I look from the bed to Gabe’s drained face then back again. And without overanalysing it, I slowly help him up and into the bed. I lie him on top of the soft duvet, pull off his shoes and his leather jacket and feel satisfied when his eyes flutter shut and his face becomes very peaceful. “Night Gabe,” I whisper to him.

             
I open my suitcase and pull out a pair of silk pyjamas. I tear my heels off with great satisfaction. In the bathroom, which has a solid gold bath in the centre, I change out of my Melissa Curele clothes and the silky pyjamas feel wonderful against my skin. Travelling is exhausting. 

             
I find myself smiling at Gabe while I tuck myself under the heavy duvet. He looks angelic but it doesn’t completely erase the image of his sickly face mashed into the carpet or the sound of his gagging in the elevator. I turn off the light and the nightmares come.

              I dream I’m in a grand ballroom surrounded by people dressed in Victorian dresses. It is decorated like the hotel room with sickly sweet pinks and lurid gold trimmings. I am being swallowed up by a puffy lilac dress, squeezed into a corset, wearing an itchy wig of soft pink curls that are towered high upon my head. There is a tower of pastries filled with cream and covered in colourful icings, topped with cherries. Everything looks delicious. Elegant violinists are playing soothing music and people around me are waltzing around the room with their partners.

             
It seems like a delightful dream at first until the crowd of dancers part and the violinists disappear. Eerie thudding music like the screaming songs from Gabe’s car is blasting all around. Suddenly the pinks, lilacs and oranges begin to grow shadows and everything seems black, grey, brown. The brightly painted faces now become dark and gruesome. Where young smiles once were found are haggard scowls. 

             
In a narrow parting between the crowd of angry faces, a man appears. At first I don’t realise where I’ve seen that face. Then I realise this is the man tattooed on Gabe’s arm. Long fangs peering over the top of his lips. He is holding chocolate covered strawberries, takes a bit and the pink juice trickles down his pale, stoic face. But the liquid isn’t strawberry sap. It’s blood. Thick, red fluid. Like I’d seen being pulled out of my arm so many times at the hospital. 

             
The man opens up his mouth and sinks his teeth into my neck.

              I’m awake. I sit bolt upright in the bed. Fear has its icy hand gripped around my shoulder, digging its claws into my delicate skin. My heart is thudding. I’m panting. There is no way I’m going back to sleep. What if the man from Gabe’s tattoo returns to my dreams? With his lips and fangs dripping with blood. My blood? 

             
Gabe is snoring softly beside me. There is a layer of sweat on his brow and his upper lip. He looks ill. But I don’t have time to care for him. I want to turn the lights on. The darkness is concealing things I want to see. The shadows and reflections of ordinary objects which right now look like sinister monsters. I hear Jana whimper. When she had a bad dream she would stand at the end of my bed, her tiny pink face crumpled up and damp with tears, crying for me to make the bad dreams go away. If only somebody could make my nightmares disappear.

             
I get up and go to the bathroom. I splash my face with cool water. The long sleeves of the pyjamas feel constraining now like a tight straight jacket. Handcuffs that I am bound in. I pull off the pyjamas so I’m standing naked in the bathroom. Staring, my chest heaving up and down laboriously, in the large mirror that covers the entire back wall of the bathroom. 

             
I am searching my body for two pinpricks as if somehow I confused my dream with reality and that man really was in my room, drinking my blood. But, of course, there are no bite marks to be found. My body is completely void of scars as it always is. A clean palette. No stretch marks from growing too quickly during puberty, no green or purple bruises glowing beneath my skin, no scars from the car accident or the numerous falls I’ve taken. Nothing. My body shows no evidence of history like I’ve been wrapped up in cotton wool since the day I was born. Carefully preserved like a precious artefact. I feel envious of girls with love bites on their necks from eager boyfriends, wispy silver marks on their thighs from when they became womanly at such a pace that their bodies couldn’t catch up, red marks on their chin where they popped a spot and it scarred. All of these things creating a map of memories on their skin while I remained a blank canvas. 

             
There is a soft pink dressing gown hanging on the back of the bathroom door on an ornate gold hook. I put it on and sit inside the empty bath. I’ve never been in a bath so large. It seems more like a swimming pool than the dingy teal bathtub we have at home. 

             
I wonder what time it is. Hoping morning will come soon. Night time holds new meaning to me. It’s when Maurice is awake. I’ll be meeting him soon. I picture him in my head but can’t shake the image of the man from my dream with the sharp white fangs dripping with my blood. I shudder.

             
After perhaps half an hour of silent contemplation in the bath, my nerves are calmed slightly. I can ward the nightmarish image away now. I can think of other things. I return to the bedroom.

             
Gabe is tossing and turning. Groaning. He calls out a name, “Claire.” At first I freeze in my place and hold my breath thinking he called my name in his sleep. Did he say my name? No, it wasn’t Cassie. It was definitely Claire. I watch him flop over on to his side, his black hair lying dishevelled across the pillow, and he shouts the name again. Claire. His voice is strained and croaky. He says it again. Then again. Claire. Claire. Claire. 

             
Who is Claire?

             
He stops eventually. He lies still and stops letting out that dry whimper of this mysterious girl’s name. I try to quiet the voices in my head who are causing a rabble. Who is Claire? A sister? A girlfriend? A lost love? She must mean a lot to him to make him call out her name in the dead of the night like that. Don’t think about it. It’s not important.

             
I decide, since I have resigned myself to not sleeping, to turn on my new laptop. It tells me it’s four in the morning. My eyes are groggy and don’t respond well the bright light shining from the computer screen. 

             
I connect to the hotel’s internet and my fingers hover above the keyboard, wondering what to search first. Without thinking, my fingers click on a C then an L then an A but I stop myself before I finish and feel ashamed for being so stupid.

             
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cassie,” I whisper to myself. My faint voice must be louder than I expected. Gabe moves and groans quietly. My ears prick but he goes back to stillness within seconds. 

             
I wish Rose was here. I thought she was meeting us at the hotel after travelling separately. She would make me feel secure. I feel like I’m going crazy. Nursing a drunk Gabe, listening to his midnight stirrings, frightening dreams about vampires. These could be easily soothed with her presence and easy smile. Maybe if she was here, I’d have somebody to talk to, somebody to stop the twisting knot in my stomach from appearing every time I look at Gabe’s serene, sleeping face.