Infamous (17 page)

Jamie sat down next to him. “The stage is set up on the
northern side of the building, the bar’s along the opposite wall. A lit-up sign in blue is flashing the word ‘Lite,’
l, i, t, e
—although why they spell it that way I could never figure out, even back when I was alive. There are three waitresses on duty and a female bartender with long red hair.” He paused, looking hard at A.J. “But all this is moot, because there’s no way I’m letting you go in there. We’ll just have to prove I’m real another time.”

“I’m okay,” A.J. said. “But it doesn’t matter. Your telling me all this wouldn’t prove anything, even if I did go inside.”

“It most certainly would!”

“Not for my mother. She’d point out that the door’s been opened plenty of times since I’ve been out here. Maybe I saw all that from this perspective.”

Jamie just looked at him. Then he disappeared again.

And again, A.J. was alone in the darkness. Still not drinking. Still just breathing. And still uncertain as to what he intended to do about Alison.

Maybe the pre-involvement speech he had to give her could be vague.
I’m not in a position to start something serious. You need to know that going in
.…

With the quietest of pops, Jamie was back, sitting exactly where he’d been.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s something you couldn’t possibly have seen. On the back of the door. There’s a poster. It says, and I quote: ‘Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.’ William Something, 1958. And there’s no way in hell you could’ve seen that.”

“Maybe there’s a mirror on the wall opposite the door,” A.J. said.

“Which means you read that,” Jamie retorted, his skepticism heavy in his tone, “backwards, from all those yards away, across the street and the parking lot
and
the breadth of the honky-tonk itself, in the short amount of time that door’s been open, with people coming and going, blocking your view?”

“The human brain’s a pretty remarkable thing,” A.J. told him.

“That it is,” Jamie agreed. “And heads up, kid. Alison Carter at twelve o’clock.”

Alison escaped the smoke and the noise of the roadhouse and stood for a moment in the relative quiet of the front parking lot, just filling her lungs with fresh air.

That
had been a total waste of time.

She’d thought that Winter Baxter, the actress playing Melody Quinn, had wanted to talk about historical accuracy. They were, after all, filming the scene tomorrow morning where Kid Gallagher rode into town. Where the outlaw noticed the marshal’s beautiful wife as she unknowingly went about her daily routine.

But instead of discussing the scene, Winter wanted to dance and kick back. She’d invited Alison to tag along because she knew that the older woman’s presence would make Trace Marcus keep his distance.

Alison had ordered a ginger ale and tried to engage Winter in a conversation, but Winter was more interested in flirting with Kevin the sound engineer, who
was
pretty cute, but who was no A.J. Gallagher.

And yes, she
had
just thought that.

And double yes, she’d
also
tried her best this afternoon, standing in her kitchen, to touch A.J.’s tonsils with her tongue.

And somehow, despite the Hugh-induced return of her sanity, she’d spent most of the afternoon and evening thinking about kissing the man again.

And then, as if she’d conjured him up, he stepped out of the darkness and into the street, heading directly toward her.

Heading toward the bar, more likely.

Because saving naked women from rattlesnakes could give even the calmest, quietest man a hankering for a drink.

But he didn’t seem surprised to see her. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” Okay, that was stupid. Her grandmother used to say
Hey, yourself
. Great, she was turning into her grandmother at
the
most inopportune time. She didn’t want to sound like a well-adjusted sixty-year-old. She wanted to be mysterious and sexy and youthful and desirable.

But the smile that A.J. gave her was as genuinely pleased as if she’d said,
Hi, come fuck me
, which made her wonder how he would’ve smiled if she
had
said,
Hi, come, et cetera
.

“You just taking a breather,” he asked, “or …?”

“What?” Alison asked, but then instantly understood that he was asking if she were going back inside. “No! No, I’m done. I’m not a big drinker and I’ve had enough secondhand smoke for this decade and the next, so …”

Great. All she had to do now was complain about the deafening volume of the music, and she might as well slap a sticker on her forehead saying
old
next to the one that already said
nerd
.

“Band’s good, though,” she added. “Country’s not my thing, but the players are … proficient.” And great, now she sounded like a professor.
Proficient
. God.

But he was nodding. “Country’s not my thing, either.”

“But you have a cowboy hat,” she said, and as soon as the words left her lips, she realized how stupid she sounded. No—not that she sounded, but that she
was
.

But A.J. laughed, and the crow’s feet around his sparkling eyes crinkled charmingly as he teased her. “Contrary to what most Yankees believe, I didn’t have to pass a country music trivia quiz to get it. I just needed cash and a desire to keep my head warm in the winter and cool in the summer.”

“So what
do
you listen to?” And yes, her voice did sound a little breathless, a little girlish, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

“I’m a fan of the classics,” he told her. “Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones …”

“Ah,” she said. “I’m … more of an
American Idol
viewer, myself.”

“Eek,” he said, laughing.

She laughed, too. “And just like that,” she quipped, “it was over before it started.”

He was still smiling, but something changed in his eyes. They got warmer. And his gaze slipped briefly down to her mouth. “Not a chance,” he murmured. And he leaned in—she saw it coming, he took his time, giving her plenty of opportunity
to back away, which she absolutely didn’t—and he kissed her.

It was, quite possibly, the most gentle kiss she’d ever shared. While it was related to the inhalation attempt that had happened earlier, in her kitchen, it was far sweeter and much more tender and even almost reverent.

If kisses could carry messages, this kiss said,
I want to spend time with you, I want to get to know you
, as opposed to this afternoon’s kiss, which had been all about the immediacy of them jumping each other’s bones.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, either.

But Alison had been thinking about it, and thinking about it, and wondering about the best way to reconcile the conflicts between her personal and professional interests in this man. Safest thing would be to keep her distance, at least until she heard—and discounted—his version of the story. Which she was scheduled to do tomorrow night.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for … well, pretty much since I left your house,” he told her, his hand warm against her chin as he smiled down into her eyes.

And Alison knew, with certainty, that she had no clue what to do where this man was concerned. But she also knew that she wasn’t ready to say good night. Not yet. So she smiled back at him. “I know you were heading for the bar, but … Is there any chance I can talk you into walking me home?”

“Actually,” A.J. said, “I
wasn’t
going to the bar. I don’t … I don’t drink. I was just … kind of … out walking around. Honestly? I was hoping I’d run into you.”

“Well,” Alison said, with a smile, “looks like you did.”

The woman probably didn’t know it herself, but she was one giant green light.

Walk her home, my ass.

Sure, A.J. would walk her home, and then she’d say,
I’m going to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?

And he’d say,
That sounds nice
, and he wouldn’t be talking about the tea, which I happen to know he doesn’t care for. At all. In fact, what Alison was
really
saying, beneath all
the polite conversation, was,
Would you like to come inside and get both naked and horizontal in about thirty-five seconds after I shut and lock that door behind you?

And don’t get me wrong. I’m as open as the next man to the idea of consensual and mutual happy-fun between two sober, sane, and uncommitted grown-ups. And like I told Age, just a while ago, I’d originally been the conductor on board the get-A.J.-laid-now train. It had been years, after all, since he’d had that kind of companionship.

And I know what you’re probably thinking. After Mel passed, I spent the last thirty-one years of my life alone, so I probably shouldn’t offer an opinion on the subject. But that was different. I was already an old man, and getting older by the minute. I’d lived a good life.

But A.J. was still young.

And he was going to blow it, big time, with this woman, if he moved too fast, too soon.

The kid couldn’t see the way he looked at her, but I damn well could, and I was determined to do whatever I had to do, to keep him from making the mistake of his life.

They were talking about favorites as they quickly covered the ground between Mexicali and River Street. Books, more music, movies—they shared a love of a few in common, although I’ve yet to meet anyone who enjoys movies who thinks
Casablanca
isn’t one of the all-time greats.

Any pair of maroons who wanted to knock knobs could use their mutual love for
Casablanca
as an excuse for impetuous sex with a near stranger.
But I thought we had so much in common. We both loved
Casablanca.…

Dogs or cats? They both preferred dogs.

Alison’s grandmother, whom she’d lived with for a large part of her childhood—and there was a lot of personal information in that brief statement—had had a golden lab named Sparky.

A.J. confessed that he hadn’t yet had the heart to replace his dog, Mac, whom he’d adopted from a shelter years ago. He’d brought Mac home on the one-year anniversary of his
sobriety, although he didn’t tell Alison that revealing little detail. He
did
say that Mac was already long in the tooth when A.J. got him, so it was no big surprise when the dog passed on, some two and a half years ago.

One of these days, A.J. told her, he’d get another dog, but it still felt too soon.

He changed the subject then to the lighter topic of oceans versus lakes—and oceans won, hands down. Beach people unite.

Favorite restaurant. Alison’s was some little French bistro in downtown Boston, at which point A.J. very strategically let drop the news that he was quite a good cook, which was a fact that, for some reason, always seemed to make a woman’s heart beat harder.

By then they were approaching Alison’s front steps, and A.J. slowed, because according to the rules of the game, he couldn’t pretend that he already knew he was going in.

“Say good night and walk away,” I said, but he didn’t so much as glance at me.

Until Alison starting digging in her handbag for her key, at which point he looked straight at me and shook his head, giving me a face that clearly said,
Get your ass out of here, ghost-man, because I am going in
.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. You want to get busy with this girl? Well, I’ll be there, too, sitting right on the edge of the bed. If you want, I’ll give you pointers.”

Now before you get all squirrelly and horrified, you should know that I was purely bluffing. There was no way that I would actually do such a thing. Private moments, no matter how misguided, deserve privacy.

But I’d already learned that A.J. was unwilling to so much as
discuss
anything having to do with sex with me, and I was counting on his strong reaction to my words.

Sure enough, he started to retort, but realized how that would sound to Alison and turned it into a cough.

She’d found her key and had put it into the door, but now she turned back, concerned. “Are you all right?”

A.J. nodded, still coughing. He was damn good at faking it—it sounded like he’d choked on his own spit. Which maybe he had.

“Come on in,” she said, “I’ll get you some water.”

And the look A.J. shot me then was triumphant, like
Look what you just helped me do
. He obediently followed her into her kitchen, shutting the door firmly in my face.

Which didn’t stop me from following them.

“Or would you like a beer?” Alison asked, but caught herself, saying, “You don’t drink,” even as A.J. repeated it, “I don’t drink.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, that’s okay. A glass of water would be great,” he told her, even though he’d stopped with the coughing. “Thanks.”

She had one of those fancy filter pitcher things, and she took it out of that ugly green fridge, then reached up into the cabinet to get a pair of drinking glasses down. And all the while, A.J. let himself watch her.

“At least tell her about Craig,” I said. But she brought it up first.

“You were in the army, right?” she said as she poured that water and turned to hand him a glass. “Maybe you can help. We’re looking for someone with sharpshooting skills who might be able to help us re-create the shoot-out. You know, at the Red Rock Saloon.”

The kid’s open body language was unmistakable, and the way he let himself look at her? It sent a message, too. His admiration was right there—he wasn’t trying to hide it or disguise it. He was telling her, with his eyes, that he found her beautiful.

And okay, yeah, I’m romanticizing it. I’m that kind of man. What he was really telling her was that he found her fuckable.

But she was a woman, so she probably thought the second meant the same as the first. Or maybe she was okay with it. Maybe she didn’t want more than a brief boy-howdy with a good-looking near-stranger.

Maybe I was the only one here who wanted these two to give a damn about what they were about to do.

“It’s been years since I’ve been in touch with anyone with that skill set,” A.J. admitted as she refilled the pitcher from the tap and put it back into the fridge. “But I could make some calls.”