Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (41 page)

“I was upset with you,” she said. “I’m impulsive when I get upset. I told him not to harm you. Shake you up, maybe, and then send you back to me.”

I laughed but did not turn back to face her. She was smart enough to keep her distance.

“I get crazy when it comes to love,” she said.

“You’ve never loved a soul.”

“And you have?”

I started walking for the front door.

“Sure,” she called. “Run away. We both know you will be back, though. You always come back.”

My hand at the deadbolt.

“As intelligent and worldly as you are, you’ve got canine sensibilities, MSNBC. You run away but you always traipse back home. I’m
home
, sweetie. Go chase your bones, but you’ll be back.”

Turning the knob.

“Siobhan can’t hold your interest,” the last thing I heard before the door thudded closed behind me.

AN HOUR LATER I was back in Newark. Siobhan and I talked about everything and nothing into the deep morning. We made love and talked some more and made love again. I couldn’t sleep but eventually she drifted off into that momentary death. I watched the rise and fall of her chest until she opened her eyes on the new day. She spotted me and smiled.

I smiled back.

EPILOGUE

I HAVE LONG BELIEVED that the dead are often in a far better place than the living, that their souls find peace that proved all too elusive in life. Maybe that belief comes from all of the death I have experienced. Those I have ushered into that better place and did not mourn, as well as those I would have shed a tear over if I were a different man. Nevada once told me I would someday regret the animus I allowed to divide us. The animus I somehow thought it prudent to actually foster. As was the case with many things, she was correct. Regret is a stinging slap to the face, a hateful word between friends or lovers for which there is no retort. Sometimes in my dreams, I still see Nevada, and more often than not, I tell her I am sorry, that she was right, and that I have a healthy dose of regret. Even in my dreams, she never does respond.

“What are you thinking about?”

I turned at the sound of the soft voice. She was naked except for one of my dress shirts, the buttons undone and the shirt opened to offer a full view of the delights beneath.

“Nevada?” she said, walking out on the balcony to join me, placing her arms around my waist. Above us, the obsidian sky was sprinkled with a few stars I dared not wish upon.

“Regret,” I said.

I heard her sniff out a laugh. “You? Regretful? What date is it today? I must mark this box on my calendar.”

When I did not join in with her banter, she tightened her grip and laid her head against my back. We remained that way for a long while, silent, the sounds of the city below us a song I wished would end.

“It’ll get easier in time,” she offered.

I turned even though she didn’t release her grip and looked down at her, stared for a moment, taking in her beauty, the light in her eyes, and then I eased from her embrace.

I made it as far as the glass doors that led from the balcony to the hotel room before she called my name. The bigger part of me screamed that I should ignore her and continue inside. Yet somehow, miraculously, I paused and turned back.

“Your cell phone rang while you were out here,” she said. “It woke me up.”

I said nothing.

“Don’t you wonder who it was, this early in the morning?”

Still, no words would come.

“Siobhan,” she said, a wicked smile spreading across her face. “She left a message.”

And so we stood there, staring silently at one another, both of us much too comfortable in our regrets. Later when I made love to her, trailing kisses around the hearts-and-vines tattoo on her sweat-soaked skin I experienced a glimpse of a moment without any regret.

The moment did not last.