Veneer (57 page)

“Stop being such a little bitch,” said Pierce. Then, as if nothing had even happened, “Well, this jacket is ruined.”

Russo opened his eyes and tried to spit out the blood that had collected on his lips. He looked down and saw his hospital gown had changed from gray to red.

“What are you doing down there?”

“Why... why did you shoot him?”

Pierce snorted. “He was asking a lot of questions. You know how I feel about questions.”

Russo sat up and looked at the carnage. Aguilar’s head was little more than a stump of pulsing flesh.

“Come on, my partner is waiting.” Pierce got out of the car and came around to Russo’s side. He opened the door and gestured.

There was no avoiding dragging his ass through the fragments of bone and flesh on the seat. When Russo was finally standing outside the cruiser, Pierce whistled at him.

“You’re gonna need a shower before we go.”

“Go where?”

Pierce started up the loading dock ramp without reply.

Russo tested the ground with his bare feet; the bits of gravel slowed his climb, but he made it onto the landing as Pierce approached a service door.

It opened before he could knock and a man stepped out with his gun drawn. “What the fuck was that?” When he saw Pierce, he put the safety on and holstered his weapon.

Russo didn’t recognize him, but he looked too lanky to be a detective. He looked like someone Russo would have beat the shit out of between classes.

“Little speed bump,” said Pierce.

The man caught sight of Russo. “Jesus. What did you do to him?”

“That’s nothing. You should see the other guy.” Pierce winked at Russo and then pushed past his partner.

Russo followed him inside to find a sterile apartment that lacked color but looked modern and comfortable. Three duffle bags sat on a table, along with multiple handguns and extra clips.

Pierce rummaged in the side pocket of one of the bags and then beckoned to Russo. “Come here so I can cut those things off you.”

“Who are you?”

“You haven’t told him yet?”

Pierce reached out and grabbed the ties. With the flick of his knife, he cut them loose. “Feel better?”

“Look at his face. He’s scared shitless.”

“Shut up, Fitch. I want to see if he figures it out on his own. What do you say, Rivera?”

Russo stared back at the smug face, but nothing in its lines or curves looked familiar. He ran it against everyone he had encountered in the last few weeks, but found no match. It took a glance at Fitch for him to remember the room and how everything lacked a veneer, even people. Comparing Pierce’s face would do no good, not if...

“The suspense is killing me,” said Fitch.

It wasn’t until Pierce smirked that Russo made the connection.

“Ruiz?”

The agent smacked Russo on his good shoulder. “What took you so long?”

“It was you the whole time?”

Ruiz shrugged and folded his arms. “I had to know if you were gonna fuck us. That was the last test.”

“How did he do?” asked Fitch.

“Fucking defiant to the end. We got interrupted, but I’m sure he would have kept his mouth shut. Right?”

Russo nodded. He didn’t have to ask what Ruiz would have done had he talked. Plug the leak. No loose ends.

Ruiz motioned to the bathroom. “Get cleaned up so we can get the fuck out of here. There are some clean clothes in your duffle bag.”

“Where are we going?”

“Sonora. You’re way behind on your training.”

“Is the veneer still working there?”

Both agents looked at each other and laughed. Fitch gave Ruiz a questioning look and got a nod in response.

Russo watched with wide eyes as they both began to shimmer, first their skin and then their clothes. Ruiz got there first, bringing up a full veneer in just a few seconds. Fitch followed close behind and soon both men were smiling at him and chuckling. Against the drab background of the room, they looked almost ethereal. Ruiz took a step closer.

“You don’t get it, Russo. The veneer can’t be stopped. It’ll always be here. And so will we.”

73 - Deron

Rosalia wasn’t wearing perfume, but Deron could smell her just the same. The scent he had become so familiar with over the last few months had been absent from the room for a long time while the doctors and nurses worked in vain to figure out why he couldn’t see. They argued sharply amongst themselves for a bit, which only made Deron more anxious. A nurse whispered into his ear that she was going to give him a sedative, blocking out the sound of the doctors as they talked in the hall. They were too far away, the sound too muffled.

They said something about a conversion disorder, whatever that was.

His senses dulled after that; moving from reality to dream without sight was an easy transition. It wasn’t until he smelled Rosalia that he realized he was awake again. For a few minutes, he said nothing and simply took inventory of his senses. There were all kinds of noises around him: a nearby heart rate monitor, a more distant rattling of gurneys being pushed down the hall, and most importantly, a quiet kind of sobbing he had heard too frequently in the past week.

It was Rosalia, of course; the sound was unique to her. Deron thought of the reasons why she might cry. His current physical state was certainly depressing. The fact that he almost died might have made her realize how important he was to her. Or maybe it was that he was confined to a hospital bed, echoing the last days of her mom from so many years ago. The tears he imagined running down her cheeks might not have been for him at all.

“What’s the matter?” His throat was dry, making his voice raspy.

Rosalia stirred, sniffled. “You’re awake.”

“You’re crying.”

“Maybe,” she replied, following it up with a forced laugh. “I’m just happy.”

“That I lived?” Of the reasons he could think of, it seemed the least passive-aggressive. He almost wanted to ask if she was happy he was blind.

“No.” Her voice got a little closer. “I’m happy they let me sit with you. Last time, they wouldn’t even let me in the room.”

Deron tried to swallow and coughed.

“Do you want some water?” She moved without him having to answer.

He followed her footsteps around the bed, listened to the change in the ambient noise as she passed in front of the door. On his right, he heard water being poured into a cup. A hand slipped behind his head, helping him up slightly.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

“Yeah.” There was no use being brave.

“Open.”

Deron tasted plastic on his lips and then relief as the water ran into his mouth. He swallowed enthusiastically until his throat was coated again. Rosalia was patient, holding his head and the cup until it was empty. When she lowered him back to the pillow, he sighed contently.

“Feel better?”

He turned in the direction of her voice as she walked around his bed again. It was as she returned to her chair that he felt a change in the warmth coming from the left. He recalled there had been a window there. If it was giving off heat, then it was still light out.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It looks like the sun is going to set soon.”

“It’ll get dark out there without the veneer,” he said, thinking about the tunnel leading out of Easton.

“Yeah,” she replied. Her voice sounded close by and Deron imagined her resting her chin on her arms and her arms on the bed.

“You’re not very talkative,” he observed, challenging her.

Rosalia huffed. “What do you want me to say?”

She could have said sorry, Deron thought. She could have apologized for abandoning him after what he considered the night that finally brought them together. But then he thought about what he would say in response. He would tell her that he forgave her, that he understood why she did it. So why the empty ceremony?

When she didn’t reply, Deron said, “I missed you.” He felt her fingers brush against the side of his cheek. Though the skin was tender, the pressure felt good.

“Me too.” Her fingers hesitated at the border of his bandages. “I wish we could start over, you know?”

The awkwardness of their first kiss flashed in his head. “From the very beginning?”

“Not like kindergarten. Maybe Valentine’s Day, remember? We had fun that day.”

Deron recalled a late night at Gillock Pond and a large coat that hid his hand as it fumbled under Rosalia’s shirt. But could they really reset? It was while waiting in the concession stand by the football field that he first wondered how they would ever reconcile the events of the past week. Even if he had beaten Russo, would she have run back into his arms? Would everything have been okay?

“It wouldn’t be the same,” he said at last. “Even if I could get your shirt off, I wouldn’t be able to see your boobs.”

She laughed and put her hand on his arm. Her fingers nestled around his bicep. “You don’t remember them from the other night?”

In truth, his memories seemed blurry, but that might have been from the medication. Telling his girlfriend that she didn’t have memorable tits probably wasn’t a good idea. He didn’t even know if he could still call her his girlfriend.

“I remember the other night.” The words came out more solemn than he had intended.

Rosalia’s fingers stopped moving. “If I wasn’t sorry, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I know.” He wanted to see her face, wanted to see the sincerity.

“If I didn’t love you...”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t easy getting down here, you know that? Everyone’s gone crazy without the veneer.” She took a deep breath and turned her head politely to exhale.

“They should try going blind.” Or being shot, he thought. Or having a tube in their nose blasting oxygen into their lungs. They didn’t know how good they had it.

“Nurse Hendricks is here, did you know that?”

He shook his head minutely.

“She said Dr. Blake said you have hysterical blindness.”

The laugher bubbled up through his chest and stung his wounds.

“It’s all in my head?” Since when did a doctor’s inability to diagnose a condition mean the patient was making it up?

“It’s not like you’re imagining—” She stopped midsentence. “Have you tried that? Reconciling in your head?”

“What do you mean?”

Her hand withdrew and he heard her stand up. He tried to follow the footsteps around the room, but lost her. Somewhere in the mix, the door closed and shut out the voices in the hall. In the resulting quiet, he locked in on the rushing of air through vents in the ceiling, the unintelligible grumbling from the streets below, and the movement of Rosalia’s body around the room. He heard her clothes rustle as she walked, as she swung her arms. Her footsteps returned to his side, blocking out the fading warmth of the window again.

“What do you see in your head?” she asked.

Her inflection suggested she wanted a specific answer, but Deron answered truthfully. “Nothing.”

“Okay. You’re in a hospital room.”

“I knew that—”

“Try to picture it. There are two beds about six feet apart. The other is empty. Yours is covered in white sheets. There is a thermal blanket rolled up by your feet. The mattress is gray, but the bed frame has some silver in it.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I just thought... I mean, you know all those paintings I’ve done? They’re all gone now, but I can remember them, so they’re not really. You can’t see me right now, but you could remember what I looked like and imagine me. It’s a start.”

“It’s not enough,” he told her. The images in his head were fuzzy. Just thinking about Rosalia standing in front of a window wasn’t enough to sharpen the lines.

She continued undaunted. “By the bed is a table with a pitcher of water on it. On the other side is a chair. Next to the chair is a pair of shoes. The owner of those shoes is a young girl in bare feet standing in front of the window. She has on that blue shirt you like and jeans.”

“I thought everything was gray?”

“Imagine it’s blue. Visualize her shirt and her chest. You can really see her boobs because she’s not wearing a bra.”

“Yeah right,” said Deron, unable to stop himself from seeing it in his head. Unlike the room, it was an image he wanted to reconcile. Somehow that made the idea more tangible.

“She’s wearing the kind of ponytail that makes you smile. She can’t keep her bright green eyes off of you.”

“Your eyes are blue.”

He heard rustling.

“Now she’s taking off her shirt. Can you see it?”

Deron wanted to respond negatively, but realized that his mind had been filling in the pieces as Rosalia spoke. He went back in his memory, to the night in his dad’s apartment, to the last image he had of her: the hair he knew well, the same for her eyes. But to imagine her topless meant remembering what he had seen in those brief flashes of lightning. He felt silly for trying so hard.

“You’re not really taking your clothes off, are you?”

“Why do you think I closed the door?”

Deron smiled. Because I can’t see, he thought. She was taking advantage of his handicap.

“She’s standing in front of the window. She doesn’t care who can see her. The sun is almost gone and the shadows are very long outside. The buildings are all gray, but the sky is full of pinks and purples.”

He recognized the sound of her jeans unsnapping.

“Her pants are on the floor now. She is wearing fancy lace panties that she got at Victoria’s Secret just for you.” Rosalia almost giggled. “You’ve got a look on your face, Deron. Do you see her?”

In his mind, Rosalia’s avatar had crystallized. It was easier to maintain once he realized he wasn’t simply testing his imagination. He truly wanted to see her. And that desire only made her more real. It provided backdrop in the form of a window that showed buildings silhouetted by the fire of a sunset.

“She’s putting her thumbs in her waistband and pushing them down her legs.”

There was something in the way she said
legs
that made him imagine her turning away, looking out the window perhaps. He could hear her breathing, but her narration had stopped.