All Together Dead

uninjured.”
    “We need to go find somewhere to sleep. Can you tell Barry’s king that he’s with me?” I asked, knowing I needed to get off the phone and make a plan.
    “He is too injured to care. He is not aware.”
    “All right. Just someone from the Texas party.”
    “I see Joseph Velasquez. Rachel is dead.” Mr. Cataliades couldn’t help himself; he had to tell me all the bad news.
    “Cecile, Stan’s assistant, is dead,” I told him.
    “Where are you going to go?” Cataliades asked.
    “I don’t know what to do,” I said. I felt exhausted and hopeless, and I’d had too much bad news and gotten too battered to rally one more time.
    “I will send a cab for you,” Mr. Cataliades offered. “I can get a number from one of the nice volunteers. Tell the driver you are rescue workers and you need a ride to the nearest inexpensive hotel. Do you have a credit card?”
    “Yeah, and my debit card,” I said, blessing the impulse that had led me to stuff the little wallet in my pocket.
    “No, wait, they’ll track you very easily if you use it. Cash?”
    I checked. Thanks largely to Barry, we had a hundred ninety dollars between us. I told Mr. Cataliades we could swing it.
    “Then spend the night in a hotel, and tomorrow call me again,” he said, sounding unutterably weary.
    “Thanks for the plan.”
    “Thanks for your warning,” the courtly demon said. “We would all be dead if you and the Bellboy hadn’t wakened us.”
    I ditched the yellow jacket and the hard hat. Barry and I tottered along, more or less holding each other up. We found a concrete barricade to lean against, our arms around each other. I tried to tell Barry why we were doing this, but he didn’t care. I was worried that at any minute some firefighter or cop from the scene would spot us and stop to find out what we were doing, where we were going, who we were. I was so relieved that I felt sick when I spied a cab cruising slowly, the driver peering out the window. Had to be for us. I waved my free arm frantically. I had never hailed a cab before in my life. It was just like the movies.
    The cab driver, a wire-thin guy from Guyana, wasn’t too excited about letting filthy creatures like us get into his cab, but he couldn’t turn down people as pitiful as we were. The nearest “inexpensive” hotel was a mile back into the city, away from the water. If we’d had the energy, we could have walked it. At least the cab ride wasn’t too pricey.
    Even at the mid-range hotel, the desk clerks were less than thrilled with our appearance; but after all, it was a day for charity to people who were involved in the blast. We got a room at a price that would have made me gasp if I hadn’t seen the room rates at the Pyramid. The room itself wasn’t much, but we didn’t need much. A maid knocked on the door right after we got in and said she’d like to wash our clothes for us, since we didn’t have any more. She looked down when she said that, so she wouldn’t embarrass me. Trying not to choke up at her kindness, I looked down at my shirt and slacks and agreed. I turned to Barry to find he was absolutely out cold. I maneuvered him into the bed. It was unpleasantly like handling one of the vampires, and I held my lips pressed together in a tight line the whole time I undressed his limp body. Then I shucked my own clothes, found a plastic bag in the closet to hold them, and handed the soiled clothes out to her. I got a washcloth and wiped off Barry’s face and hands and feet, and then I covered him up.
    I had to shower, and I thanked God for the complimentary shampoo and soap and cream rinse and skin lotion. I also thanked God for hot and cold running water, particularly hot. The kind maid had even handed me two toothbrushes and a little packet of toothpaste, and I scrubbed my mouth clean of the flavor of ashes. I washed my panties and bra in the sink and rolled them up in a towel before I hung them up to dry. I’d given the lady every stitch of Barry’s clothes.
    Finally, there was nothing else to do, and I crawled into the bed beside Barry. Now that I smelled so good, I noticed that he didn’t, but that was just tough for me, right? I wouldn’t have woken him for anything. I turned on my side away from him, thought about how frightening that long, empty corridor had been—isn’t it funny that that was what I picked out as scary, after such a horrific day?
    The hotel room was so very quiet after the tumult of the scene of the