The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [50]
The two made their way across the car-littered parking lot, up and over an infestation of weeds and cracks of broken sidewalk. As they crossed the adjoining intersection, Andrew paused to gaze back at the mouth of the Crow Job’s rear alley as the reminder of its hidden crime scene briefly struck his memory. Melony turned too, noting as her eyes caught sight of Andrew and then of his distraction that she should interject a regard for the evening’s professional mission while there was still time...
...before she found herself driving home without so much as a promise from Andrew that she will meet with him again.
For investigative reasons, of course.
I’m walking her to her car, Andrew thought, and he could not believe where the evening had taken him thus far, holy gee-zus.
“Andrew...?”
Andrew looked at Melony. “Yes?”
“I had a great time tonight. Thank you.”
“You didn’t expect to, without me?” He meant to say, you didn’t expect to, unless you met someone, but the instant before he said it, he thought it too rude. Or too blunt.
Melony laughed a short laugh. Then, rather straightforward, she replied, “I didn’t expect to really meet anyone tonight, unless it was....” (unless it was you in particular) “...unless it was Ralston or someone in the band.”
“I was meaning to ask you about that,” Andrew said, “and now’s as gooda time as any. So, Diverse Arcanum covers entertainment as well, as, say, Noah’s Ark and vampires and Santa Claus? What’s a girl like you and a magazine about the unknown doing in a place like The Crow Job?”
The two half-passed a lone and lowly motel before Melony began to cross the street to her vehicle with Andrew following. Approaching a sleek cherry-red custom-made convertible ‘68 Mustang, she withdrew from her purse a black box-shaped gadget and flicked its center button and the car responded with an abrupt chirp chirp! Already, she found herself relieved upon casual inspection that no rat-bastard hoodlum had attempted to tamper with it. She exchanged the black box with a set of keys.
Behind her, across the street at the motel, a door slam startled her, made her turn. She found Andrew before her, jotting something down with a pen to a jagged paper within his palm.
“This is my home phone,” he said, and coyly handed to her the jagged piece. “I...I was hoping tonight wasn’t just a really good night and nothing more....”
She took the paperand it disappeared into her purse after a quick glance at it. Her keys clinked and jiggled in her hand. She didn’t know what to do with them, for it seemed that to turn and open her car door was to call her encounter with Andrew quits for the night. And she didn’t want to do that. But yet, she had to. For herself, for Max, for business.
At the same time, she knew she had to meet Andrew Erlandson again.
If but only for business.
For one sweeping second, Melony found time to wonder whether the way she was achieving this task of getting to know Andrew was right or wrong. Was she coming on to him like some relentless diva willing to go as far as to sleep with a guy to get what she wanted from him? Was she a spy sent by Maxy to befriend Andrew, to be Andrew’s buddy-ol’-pal until she knew him good enough to exploit him? Was she genuinely attracted to him as she would be attracted to any intriguing young man, as though he actually was a man and not the secretive Being From Beyond she’d convinced herself of him to be?
Was she finding him to be more of a man than anything she expected?
Was she so incredibly turned off and tired of Max that any prospects of fooling around or falling in love again turned on and tempted her?
Surely she wouldn’t cheat on her husband.
Not under these circumstances, especially.
It was okay to be attracted to Andrew. It made her comfortable with him and she had to