Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [49]
“Emma.” He felt his knees weaken and he lowered himself onto the edge of the tub. “Emma, is it you or are you in my head?” Was this image of Emma merely a manifestation, a more concrete expression of that thought?
Emma, or the image of Emma, crossed one leg over the other. “You’re in a dark place, Dad, so dark I can’t see. I don’t know whether I can help you here.”
“That’s all right, honey.” Tears glittered in Jack’s eyes. “That’s not your job. It’s time for you to rest.”
“I’ll rest,” Emma said, “when I’m dead.”
There was a knock on the door, shifting his attention.
“Jack, I have to pee,” Alli said from the other side of the door.
He stood up. “I’ll be right out.” But when he looked at where his daughter had been sitting a moment before, she was gone like a will-o’-the-wisp.
HE AND Annika hadn’t discussed their sleeping arrangements, but crossing the living room he saw no linens or pillows piled on one end of the sofa, so he pushed open the door to the larger of the two bedrooms, which was already half open like a question or an invitation. The room was roughly a square, with windows on two walls, both covered with old-fashioned Venetian blinds. Street light shone through the slats, painting tiers of parallel bars across one upholstered chair, across a faded hook rug, up one side of the bed and across approximately a third of it. The overhead light was off, but one lamp threw a scimitar of light on the empty side of the bed, which was actually two double beds pushed together.
The bedspread and blanket had been rucked back to the foot of the bed. Annika lay beneath the top sheet, turned away from him. She hadn’t bothered redoing her hair, which as a consequence lay rather wildly along one cheek, snaking down her neck to cover one shoulder and the shallow indentation between her scapulae. Her injured arm lay on her hip outside the sheet. He couldn’t be sure in the dimness but it looked like it was still wrapped with Alli’s shirt.
Jack unwound the towel, found some of his new clothes, put on a T-shirt and underpants. The moment he sat on the bed he was overcome with exhaustion. Every muscle in his body, it seemed, was crying out for rest. He climbed under the covers gingerly so as not to wake Annika and, switching off the lamp, put his head on the pillow. The bars of street light seeping through the blind were thrown into prominence, looking like a staircase or a bridge to Emma’s world, whatever or wherever that might be.
Slowly he stilled his breathing, but as sometimes happens when one is exhausted, sleep did not immediately come. While his body longed for surcease his brain was on fire problem-solving. He knew from experience not to interfere with this fiendish engine when it was on a roll.
Annika stirred. “Jack?”
“Sorry I woke you,” he said softly.
“You sighed.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did,” she said. “Why did you sigh?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned onto her back and he saw her face, freshly washed without a scrap of makeup, illuminated only by the bars of light, and it struck him how utterly desirable she was. She was also beautiful, but that he had seen the first time they’d met at the hotel bar. But what was beauty? Large eyes, full, half-parted lips to be ensnared by, deep cleavage and powerful thighs to catch the breath, but all of these were surface considerations, delicate and ephemeral enough to be invalidated by a nasty comment, a violent temper, or a lack of understanding. Desirability took into account all those things, and more.
“Did you take your antibiotic?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How’s your arm?”
“It hurts.”
“Time for one of Dr. Sosymenko’s magic pills.”
She tossed her head. “I don’t want a painkiller.”
Jack reached for the twist of paper that held the pills. “Stop being a stoic.”
“That’s not it. I don’t want my mind impaired.” She stared up at the ceiling.
They lay side by side for some time steeped in a silence that seemed to crackle with silent electricity or a confused magnetism to which he was both attracted and repelled. But perhaps repelled was the wrong word. What