Chapter 2
It was midnight when I found myself at a corner table ignoring the blaring music and dark lighting of one of our favorite joints. I sat with my head nestled in one hand and my other hand toying with the tiny umbrella of my untouched milk drink. Tiffany stumbled off the dance floor exhausted from her thirteenth dance session and slid into the booth seat beside me.
"Having fun?" she yelled above the music.
I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so," I replied.
"What?" she shouted.
I rolled my eyes and dropped my hand from my head. "I said I'm okay, but could we go home?" I yelled.
"Home? Why? It's not even eleven!" she argued.
"It's midnight, and I'm kind of tired!" I told her.
She glanced at her watch and her eyes widened. "Wow, did you know it was midnight?"
I grabbed her arm and pulled her from the booth. "Time to go home."
"All right, all right! Walk or taxi?" she asked me.
"Walk!"
My eardrums, vocal chords and various other parts of my sensitive body were glad to be out of that place. We stepped out into the dark, quiet night, or as dark and quiet as a night could be in a city with bright lights and millions of people. Long lines of the masses stood outside the doors waited for a chance to become part of the maximum occupancy group inside the club. I was glad when our steps took us far from the yelling, arguing, laughing, and jeering of the nightlife and into the quieter residential neighborhoods, one of which was where our apartment building was located.
I trudged down the sidewalk with Tiffany at my side and kicked the occasional tin can down the cracked sidewalk. Un-shoveled snow crunched beneath our feet and little puffs of air flew from our mouths. To my right was the road, and to my left was Tiffany and townhouses mixes with old apartment buildings. Between the buildings were long, narrow, dark alleys filled with trash cans and rats the size of the mangy cats that hunted them. The streetlights lit our way and cast our shadows beneath and behind us.
"You're really quiet tonight. Still upset about that party?" Tiffany wondered.
I shrugged. "Yeah, and I guess I've just been thinking about a lot of other stuff," I told her.
"About what?"
"About life. I just wonder if there's something more than this for us," I replied.
"Probably. There could be some guy out there just waiting to take one of us in his arms and tell us how much he needs us, or maybe there's a lotto ticket with our names and the winning numbers somewhere," she suggested. "The only problem is we have to go out there and find it."
"Can't a guy just come swooning into my arms and-" At that moment the silence of our night walk was interrupted by a black Buick that careened down the road toward us.
The passenger-side wheels jumped over the curb and nearly ran me down. I jumped to the side and knocked into Tiffany, who caught me in her arms before I fell to the hard sidewalk. The car didn't seem to notice us as it sped off down the road.
"God damn crazy drivers!" I yelled.
Above me Tiffany laughed. "Liz, I don't think you qualify as my swooning man," she teased.
I rolled my eyes and straightened. "Damn crazy drivers. The least they could do is wait until after Christmas before killing someone."
"They seemed pretty mad at you. You sure you didn't steal somebody's boyfriend away from them?" Tiffany wondered.
I snorted. "As if I could get any man to look at me, but let's get home before another driver decides I'm a turn lane."
"I guess, but you're not going to bed at this early hour, are you? You could go to my place and we could have a few more drinks and bemoan our jobs," Tiffany suggested.
I shrugged. "Why not? What's the fun of facing Thursday morning work without a hangover to distract me?" I mused.
Tiffany smiled, patted me on the back, and we walked on our way to home. "That's the spirit!"
"Speaking of spirits, what does your selection-" Once again our conversation was interrupted, but not by a homicidal maniac in a fancy car. No, this was the sound of something much more human, or so I thought at the time. It was a deep, pain-filled groan. Tiffany and I froze, and our eyes swept over the area. An alley lay to our left. The noise came from there.
Tiffany jumped behind me and grasped my shoulders. Her voice shook like my knees. "W-what was t-that?" she whispered.
"I-I don't know, but we should probably check it out," I suggested.
"Oh hell no. What if it's some serial killer recently broken out of prison who's shot full of holes and is in need of medical attention?" she pointed out.
I rolled my eyes and shrugged off her hands. "If it is then we can kick him in the bullet-holes and run."
"Let's let somebody else kick him in the bullet-holes and get home," she suggested.
"I'll go check it out, and if you hear me screaming you'll know it's a serial killer," I told her as I slunk toward the opening to the alley.
"Be careful!" Tiffany yelled to me, but she didn't follow.
I grasped the edge of the brick building on one side of the alley and peeked around the corner. The light from the streetlights barely reached a yard into the alley, but I was able to make out some dumpsters and broken boxes with all the usual assortment of trash. The white snow was blemished by brown and yellow water. Something moved. I leaned forward and squinted. Something, or somebody, sat on the other side of one of those large dumpsters that sat twenty feet into the alley.
"Hello?" I called out. The thing beyond the dumpster stiffened and the groaning stopped. I cautiously stepped into the alley. "Are you okay?"
The person shifted and I heard the familiar groan. I moved closer and craned my neck to peer into the darkness. My eyes widened when I beheld a handsome young man of about thirty. He had short black hair and a perfect tan. His clothes were simple, a black dress shirt and pants. They were clean but for the muck on them, and I thought I saw some stains on the front of the shirt. Round stains like those made by the bullets of prison guard guns.
The man lay with his back against the brick building. His eyes were closed so hard his eyelids looked pinched. His white teeth stood out in the dark as he ground them together, and one of his hands clutched his chest and tried to cover the round stains.
I knelt three feet from him and looked him over for weapons. I didn't see anything he'd stolen from the prison guards on his escape. "Are you okay?" I whispered to him. His eyes opened and I swear they were red. Not a Hell-fire red, but a red-silk kind of red, the kind that was soft to the touch and reminded you of two lovers pressed together on a bed beneath a blanket of roses-
Where the hell did that comparison come from? I'm not usually the romantic type, as shown by my lack of a boyfriend, but here were all these crazy, voluptuous ideas popping into my brain. The ideas popped out when he winced and closed his eyes.
"I'm okay," he replied. He didn't sound okay. His voice was hoarse and he hissed through his ground teeth.
"Do you need a doctor? My friend and I could take you to the nearest hospital," I offered.
He shook his head. "No, this isn't permanent. I just-I just need a place to stay for the night," he told me.
I glanced around at the lovely mold and trash decor. "Well, I don't really recommend the Alley Hotel, so why don't you let me help you up and I can find a nice couch for you in my apartment building?"
His eyes opened, those beautiful blue-wait, blue? No more red? What did this guy have, multi-colored contacts? "You would do that for me?" he wondered.
I shrugged. "It's Christmas, or almost, so why not? You need help, and I can offer it, so let's get you up," I insisted.
"Liz!" Tiffany called from the head of the alley.
I rolled my eyes and glanced over my shoulder at her. "I'm fine, but there's a guy in here who needs our help."
Tiffany hesitantly stepped into the alley and over to me. She stayed in back of me and leaned over me to get a look at
the man. "What's wrong with him?" she asked me.
The man chuckled, and the sound wasn't pleasant. It rattled in his chest and came out more bitter than amused. "I fell in with the wrong people," he explained.
"So you got beat up pretty bad?" she guessed.
"You could say that," he agreed.
"Well, beat up or shot we need to get you to our apartment. There's a nice couch in the rec room you can use," I offered.
With more strength than I would have guessed was in her Tiffany grabbed my shoulders, hefted me to my feet and dragged me to the opposite side of the dumpster. "Are you nuts? Why don't we just dump him off at the hospital and get home?" she hissed.
"My being nuts is a matter of opinion, but right now we should just help him get some place warm. Then we can decide what to do," I replied.
She gestured in the direction of the man. "Letting that dirty guy into our apartment building when we don't even know who he is or what's wrong with him?"
"He's not that dirty and his clothes are nice, so I think we can rule out the whole serial killer thing," I pointed out.
"Have you ever seen American Psycho?" she asked me.
"I'm sure we'll be safe as long as we don't make better calling cards than him," I quipped. I pushed past her and walked over to the man. "Come on, let's get you up," I told him. I grasped his arm and hefted him to his feet. He leaned against me and I was surprised how supple and warm his body felt after sitting on that hard, cold ground. I slung one of his arms over my shoulders. "It's a couple of blocks to our apartment. Think you can make it?" I wondered.
"I think so," he replied.
We shuffled out from behind the dumpster. Tiffany threw up her hands in despair, but marched over to us and slung his other arm over her shoulders. "If you want to get us killed then we may as well get to the apartment as quickly as possible and get it over with," she commented.
I smiled. "Thanks," I told her.
"Don't thank me yet. If he kills me I'm coming back to haunt you," she warned me.
We shuffled on our way with the stranger between us.