I hugged her so hard I got syrup in my hair.
chapter fifty-eight
Cadence had gotten syrup in our hair, which was annoying despite the circumstances. I will not deny I was somewhat irked at the thought of Patrick breaking up with us, but I was better at reading kinetics than she was. I think at least a third of his stance and reaction was a put-on. Whether he did it out of honest inability to tolerate the admitted stressors of living with a multiple, sensed the end was near and made a preemptive strike, or a little of both, I, like Cadence, was relieved. And I found Cathie’s solution not only tactful, but elegant. Cadence had excellent taste in friends.
It also left me free to make a phone call, which is why I was at the Barnes and Noble in downtown Minneapolis on a Sunday morning when Dr. Gallo slouched in.
“Oh, good,” he said, spotting me in the small downstairs café, which could be difficult to find, what with all the books in the bookstore. He waved the small bakery bag at me. “I wanted a Rice Krispie bar. And maybe a book, I dunno. Stranger things have happened in bookstores.”
“You even slouch when you walk,” I observed as he sat across from me at a table so small our knees touched. I did not trouble to move mine, so he cleared his throat and moved his, looking uncomfortable. He was in clean, faded blue jeans, a red button-down shirt, and the ubiquitous leather jacket. His face was flushed from the cold—the wind had kissed roses into his cheeks, and his black eyes sparkled. “You have dreadful posture.”
“It works for me,” he said cheerfully. “Comes from cringing away from hits when you’re a little kid, then growing into a big kid and adopting shitty posture to piss off the grown-ups.”
I couldn’t help but smile. It was a distressing revelation, but he said it in such a cheery, matter-of-fact manner it was impossible to flinch away from it. “So it does. I shall never disparage your shitty posture again.” I cracked a knuckle and felt my eyes narrow. “Perhaps sometime we could visit your hometown. I should like to visit your family.”
“Said the armed FBI agent. Tempting, I’ll admit. Never mind. I made my peace with those people a long time ago.” He took a bit of his Rice Krispie bar—ugh. A mound of sugary cereal held together with butter and marshmallows. My God. The humanity. “And hey! Thanks for the invite. I know you’ve gotta be busy. I didn’t expect you to regale me less than twelve hours after you busted Sussudio. And put me on the list of people unsurprised you hauled his ass in. You should be running your division.”
“Thank you.”
“Seriously. You are incredible at your job. Do you know how safe I feel in this city knowing you’re running around kicking ass?”
“I have ended my previous relationship because we were not truly in love. However, I am truly in love with you, Dr. Gallo.”
He froze in mid-chomp, then sucked in a breath. A wayward Krispie must have fluttered into his windpipe, because he began to cough. Before he cleared it I was on my feet, had pulled him to his, and was pounding his back. The Heimlich was no good; he was getting air.
“Kak—gak! Gah. Better.” He sucked in a deep breath. “That’s … okay.” His face had gone so deep a red it was almost purple.
“Perhaps I should have found another way to share that with you,” I worried. “If you have a fragile constitution this may not work.”
He set down the Krispie bar (he had clutched it during his coughing spell), seized me around the waist, and yanked me forward. For a moment I thought lack of oxygen was making him pass out and he was clutching me in an attempt to save himself from collapsing to the floor. Then his warm mouth settled over mine with such possessiveness that I nearly collapsed to the floor.
It was like no other kiss. His hands pressed me to him; he was standing so close his knee was between mine. One hand was in the middle of my back, the other on the back of my neck. His tongue parted my lips and delved, stroked, tasted. It is embarrassing to admit: I did little but hold on.
Far too short a time later, he pulled back with a gasp. “Oh my God. Okay, sorry. I’ve pretty much wanted to do that since you threw up oatmeal cookies on my shoes.”
“How romantic.”
He laughed and hugged me to him. “I should feel awful for the poor guy you dumped. Mostly I’m delighted. Scratch ‘mostly.’ Have I mentioned you’ve made my weekend? My year? My decade?”
“Dr. Gallo, you have made mine.” I was so delighted with the kiss, and his reaction to my news, I could not be bothered to glare at the smirking yokels who had watched our shameless display. “I am so glad.”
He squeezed me to him, then pulled back and sat, not letting go of my hand. This time he did not move his knees away. His smile was wry. “You know my name.”
“Of course. Maxwell Gallo.”
“But you always call me Dr. Gallo. This may sound crazy—”
“Try me,” I said dryly.
“It was one of the reasons I had the nutty idea you had no interest in me beyond work. You sometimes seemed pretty formal with me. But instead you dumped your guy and came here to tell me you’re a free woman, I ate your face—you’re a fantastic kisser—and the whole time you’ve called me ‘Doctor.’”
“‘Doctor’ is how I met you and ‘Doctor’ is how I came to know you. If we are together for a hundred years I will call you Dr. Gallo on the last day of that century.”
“It’s a date.”
I whipped out my phone, poked at it for a few seconds, then put it away. “There. A hundred years from now, Doctor. It’s on the calendar.”
“You’re so odd,” he said, delighted. He leaned in to kiss me again. “Almost as odd as me,” he said against my lips.
“You wish,” I replied, and kissed him back.
After a moment he leaned back and glanced around the store. It was a quiet Sunday morning; there were perhaps a dozen people around in a store the size of a city block. Even the staring yokels had left once they realized we were keeping our clothes on. “There’s something else I’d like to talk about, all right?”
“Yes.” If this was to work, I had to be honest. He thought I was the FBI agent who caught his nephew’s killer. It was best to start with that lie, and work my way down. Or up.
“Your name isn’t Sag, right?”
“Ah, no.” I shrugged, puzzled. An odd place to begin. “My partner has playful tendencies.”
“Mmmm.” The smile dropped from his face. He did not look angry, or unkind, but very, very serious. “He’s a sociopath. Isn’t he? I don’t mean the word the way people have been throwing it around the last couple of years to explain someone unpleasant. He’s a clinical sociopath. Right?”
What did you do before you showed up in Minnesota to run a blood bank?
“Yes. He is.”
Max nodded. “Just checking. I know you can take care of yourself—in fact, I plan on calling you whenever I have to walk down a dark alley. Thanks for telling me the truth. He’s probably a good agent.”
“He is.” This was already the most interesting conversation I had had in a week that included speculating on Ian Zimmerman’s methodology, HOAP.2, and Moving Day.
“Sure. Makes sense. He gets the rush, the adrenaline high, from chasing bad guys. It’s a job with status, which feeds his ego, and when he’s not feeling threatened he’s probably pretty charismatic. And carefully applied ruthlessness is not the worst quality for someone in law enforcement to have. And I bet you keep him in check. I bet that’s why your supervisor put you two together. Because he balances your checks, too.” He paused, then added, “This is harder. And the thing is, it’s not a problem.”
I was trying to follow the conversation, and having trouble. “Oh no?”
“Yes. Remember that. It’s not a problem.” He was still holding my hand, but he now reached out and took my other one as well. We were holding both hands across the table and I had the absurd feeling that he was going to pull hard and yank me forward, slamming my chest into the lip of the table hard enough to hurt.
Odd.
He would never. I knew that. And yet I felt I was in danger. Like I was threatened by what he was saying, even though he had not said it yet.
“Dr. Gallo?”
“I know why your name isn’t Sag. I know why the name on your chart is Adrienne, even though you never answer to that name and seem annoyed to even hear it.” His gaze, steady and dark, stayed on my face. “I know sometimes you love oatmeal cookies and wolf them down like you’re getting paid, and sometimes you hate them and throw up if you so much as smell one—no, please don’t. It’s all right. Don’t pull away.”
He smiled and squeezed my hand, not a grip to imprison, but to reassure. “I know you always love our motorcycle rides and sometimes you chatter the entire trip and sometimes you don’t say a word and sometimes you press your cheek against my back and sing “The Wheels on the Bus” so loud everyone in the next lane can hear you. So my question is, if you’re not Adrienne, who are you right now?”
chapter fifty-nine
“I—I—” The usual feelings: panic, embarrassment, dull shame. The usual questions: Where am I? How did I get here? How long have I been here?
“It’s all right.” He smiled, wide and warm, and I felt myself relax. We were holding hands. Shiro! That slut! Thank God I’d already let Patrick think he was dumping us. (Yes, “let him think,” that was my official story for George and I was by-God sticking to it.) “Everything’s fine. Nobody’s watching, and who cares if they are?”
“Okay.” I knew I shouldn’t care what strangers thought, but I did. I glanced around, not wanting to pull out my phone and seem rude.
“What time is it?” he asked gently.
Good question! Where was a clock? Where was my watch? Why had I never taught myself to tell time by the sun? How could I have forgotten to learn to tell time by the sun? “I don’t—”
“You’ve lost time again, haven’t you?” He said those terrifying words in a tone that if it had been one bit less kind, would have sent me flying from the body and leaving Adrienne to deal with the consequences of my terror. I was a grown woman, but that sentence, that concept
(Freak.)
(You’ve lost time again.)
still had the capacity to terrify me, as it had since the first time
(Freak.)
I heard it at age six.
“You don’t know where we are, do you?”
I stared at him, then down at our hands. Our clasped hands.
Hmm.
“You don’t remember how you got here, right?” There was a half-eaten Rice Krispie bar on his plate—yum! I realized the closest to breakfast I’d come that day was the syrup in my hair and a third of a waffle. He followed my gaze, then pushed the plate over. “D’you want this? Knock yourself out.”
I grabbed the delicious, luscious, wonderful, crispy Krispie bar. Mmm, crunchy cereal held together with a God-sent glue of butter and marshmallows. Bliss on a plate!
“And hey, don’t worry about the time, but if it’s really bugging you, go ahead and pull out your phone. Just don’t Tweet. I’m begging you.”
I laughed, lightly spraying him with crispy Krispies, and then nodded. I swallowed, summoned courage from somewhere, and said, “I don’t know what time it is, and I don’t know how I got here. But I’m glad to see you.”
He smiled and squeezed my hand. “Yeah. I’m glad to see you, too…?”
“Cadence,” I said, answering his obvious, if unspoken, question. “The chilly one is Shiro.”
“Chilly!” He burst out laughing and I felt myself blush. “Not the first word that springs to mind!”
“I see. That’s probably why I tasted Rice Krispie bar before I actually bit into a Rice Krispie bar. Slut!”
At that, Max Gallo laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. For a wonder I didn’t mind, and I didn’t look around to see if we were being stared at. I just ate the rest of his bar and thought that I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone’s, not ever.
When he calmed down, he asked, “And Adrienne?”
“She’s our wild child.”
“The one who likes ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’”
“Oh my God,” I gasped, shocked. “You know about that?”
“She sings it when we’re on the motorcycle. And she loves SpongeBob SquarePants.”
“She’s got a crush on Plankton,” I mumbled into the plate.
“And oatmeal cookies.”
I threw up my hands. “Yes. And yes and yes. And it gets a lot weirder than that before it gets un-weird, so you should probably—oh.” He’d leaned across the table again and kissed me. “Well. There’s that, too, I guess.”
Then, apropos of nothing, but maybe not, he asked—told me, rather—“George is a sociopath.”
“Oh, yeah.” I studied him. “What’d you do before you ran a blood bank?”
“All kinds of sordid things and I promise to tell you about every one of them. I only ask because he did call Maureen and I think they’re going out. My receptionist,” he added, which was a good thing because I’d forgotten all about that flirtatious skank. “And if he hurts her in any way, I’ll—”
“What?” I was peeved to be peeved. “What is she to you?”
He gave me a look, like What, you have to ask? “My employee. Whom I look out for. And if she went out with a sociopath she never would have met if she didn’t work for me, I’ve got a responsibility to make sure he doesn’t do something that would result in me pulling his balls out through his throat.”
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
“Okay.” Bemused, he obliged. Happily, if I was any judge. He was a splendid kisser. And Shiro had beaten me to it! If only I could scratch her eyes out without scratching out my own.
After buying me another bar, he seemed to sense I wouldn’t mind a little privacy and got up to browse the shelves for a bit. I was more grateful for that understanding than I could say, and I used the time to check my phone, find out the time, figure out how I’d come to be at—well, look at that! The Barnes and Noble in downtown Minneapolis. Not far from BOFFO, though I wasn’t going near that building before Monday morning. Right or wrong, liar or protector, Michaela was gonna be pissed. I’d always thought the whole “Don’t put off until tomorrow” thing was glorified hype.
When Max came back, carrying two graphic novels, he sat across from me and asked, “D’you mind if I ask some annoying clinical questions?”
“I would have before the Rice Krispie bar. But now all the butter and sugar is surging through my system and I feel soothed. Fire away.”
“I was wondering if reintegration is the goal.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Shiro had gotten herself tea, and by now it was almost cool enough for me to drink without getting a second-degree burn on my tongue. That girl could drink lava. “Yeah, and has been since diagnosis. There wasn’t any progress for a long time, but last year my doctor was able to take me back to the split event.”
“That must have been fun.” His deep voice was rich with sympathy. “Tax audit fun.”
“Oh, God, nothing’s that bad. But yeah, stressful,” I agreed, and he smiled at my understatement. “I’ll horrify you with the gory details later. Since then, things are … different.” I thought about it. “Better. It’s hard to explain. I’ll tell you what: three years ago, you and I could not be sitting here having this conversation.”
“Not least because I was in jail.”
“What? When? What’d you do?”
He waved it away. “Nothing too horrible, I promise. You know I don’t have a record. Let’s get back to you.”
I allowed it because I did know he didn’t have a record. But I was gonna get every bit of his backstory out of him, no matter how long it took. That should have sounded exhausting, but to me the prospect was more exciting than anything else.
“Are Shiro and Adrienne okay with integration?”
“They weren’t when we were younger. I couldn’t blame them—it’s death
for them, of a sort. But it’s sort of happening on its own these days. It wouldn’t be if they were fighting it.” I stared into my tea for a minute. “Like I said, it’s hard to explain. When I was younger, I was aware of the other two, like we were separated by strong, thick glass. We could never touch, but we could see and hear. These days it’s like the glass between us is turning to mist. Really slowly—like it could still take years.”
“It might.”
I nodded again. “And that’s okay. Because when we were younger, we hardly ever worked together. It was like girls fighting over a doll, only the doll was our body. These days we don’t fight so much. We share it.”
I thought of the recording Shiro left me, and how by the end it was a conversation, not a message. That had never happened before. “These days they’re close enough to touch. Sometimes we almost can. I know it, even if I can’t describe it.”
“You’re describing it very well,” he said, squeezing my (sticky) hand.
“It’s funny … Shiro could always look through my eyes at the world, but recently I’ve been able to look through hers. Stuff’s been happening lately that I didn’t need her to deal with because I couldn’t face it. I needed her to deal with it for her sake, not to save myself. It’s different. It’s all changed.” I smiled at him. “I kind of can’t wait to see what the three of us are gonna do next.”
He laughed. “You can’t?”
“Yeah, sure, say that now. Wait till Adrienne papers your office in old Highlights magazine covers.”
“I loved Goofus and Gallant!”
“And I’m a virgin.”
He blinked. “Okay.”
“Abrupt, right?”
“I’m fine with abrupt.”
That’s a really good thing. “If we’re gonna make this work, I wanted you to know. The body isn’t a virgin. Shiro’s not, I mean.” She hadn’t ever been in love, but she’d been curious. And the men she’d picked—not many, and not often—were kind. Kind of dull, frankly … or was I now comparing every man to Max Gallo? And speaking of Max, I’d better get back to the conversation I was having with him.