Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [79]
Red finally gave Lewis half a Sudafed. This antihistamine, the first drug Lewis had taken in almost nine months, made him deliciously sleepy. He put his head on the desk and swam in near-sleep for over an hour until the office door burst open with a bang. Billie Fitzgerald entered with her head thrown back, blood streaming down her neck and soaking into her collar. “Nosebleed!” she yelled.
Lewis guided her into an armchair. He knew how to treat nosebleeds. Once, when he was in college, he went to pick up his grandmother for a drink at Lloyds of Loden. But when he entered her house, it looked like someone had thrown cups of blood all over her face and kitchen. He made her lie down on the floor and packed ice on her nose; then blood started running from the corners of her mouth. Terrified, he drove her to the emergency room, where a nurse promptly scolded him. “Don’t ever make someone with a nosebleed lie down. Do this,” she said, and pinched his nose so hard, tears squirted from his eyes.
“Forgive me,” Lewis said, grabbing Billie’s nose. Her eyes snapped open in alarm. She tried to tilt her head back, but he held it in place. “Don’t,” he said. “Or the blood will run down the back of your throat.”
“You bastard,” she said, her voice hoarse and full of self-pity.
“Shhh …” His hand was dark like a savage’s against her face. The sight of blood made him faintly nauseous and dissociated; his lips began to buzz and he sat down on the arm of the chair. Billie’s springy black hair was in a sloppy French twist. She glared at him sideways. Yet her upper arm was wedged against his thigh, generating heat. Was she actually leaning into him? “Remember to breathe,” he said, trying to discourage an erection. He demonstrated a deep inhalation and they breathed together.
Her beeper went off but he held her in place by the nose. “It can wait,” he said. She settled back against his thigh—there was no doubt now, she was snuggling—and he held her there for as long as was credible, four or five minutes, before letting go.
She daubed at her nose with the back of her sleeve, leaned forward. No blood came out. “Huh!” she said. “Hey, thanks.” She stood up cautiously. “This fucking wind. Can I use the phone?”
Giddy, Lewis wandered around the office until she hung up.
“I have to run.” She came around and grasped his wrist. Her eyes emitted raw wattage. “Wish we had more time to talk,” she said. “I’m dying to hear how you’re faring in this soap opera.”
“Soap opera? Oh, you mean with Libby.”
“Aren’t you a cool cucumber.” She gave his arm a rousing shake. “Still, your ego’s got to be a little bruised.”
“I know I’m an asshole, if that’s what you mean.”
She worried his arm again. “We’ll talk. Definitely. Thanks for the first aid.”
His right hand was mottled with her blood. Moist and red in the creases of the palm, it turned brown, grainy as it dried. These cells, he told himself, had strained through her liver, run fast through her heart, engorged the walls of her womb, and wound up here, on him, a form of concentrated, indecipherable knowledge.
EVERY time he set foot out of the Mills, Lewis checked to see if the coast was clear. He stayed out of Happy Yolanda’s even if the Falcon was nowhere in sight. What he feared more than a scene was a rapid, if temporary, reconciliation that would land them right back in the sack. Libby was incapable of holding a grudge—Lewis already knew that. Not that he would have minded another turn on that pony ride. He just didn’t want to start up again with her if he had any chance at all with the Princess Fitzgerald.
He saw Libby one afternoon from a window in the office storeroom. She and Red were across the road, peering underneath first one bungalow, then another, apparently studying the foundations. The heat had broken and Libby wore a denim jacket, her hair was in a ponytail. She looked exactly like herself, which made Lewis a little sad. He all at once remembered her warm skin, her leveling looks, her generous assessments of his