Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

little cave for us. We kiss that way for a long time. She laughs and smiles as we do this. She is almost giddy. There is warmth in her smile.
    We undress each other, clumsily. There is joy in our fumbling. Finally, we’re both naked, and she straddles me again, reaches between her thighs and guides me inside her. She lowers herself down slowly till I am all the way in. We both gasp. Then she begins to rock back and forth, her back straight, her palms on my stomach. I watch her.
    Afterward she is standing at my bedroom window, wearing nothing but an old army surplus wool blanket around her shoulders. Her feet are bare. The floor must be cold. I tell her this but she says it’s okay. She stands in that pale light and tells me that I’m a hard man to get to. I’m not sure what she means. Then she says something else, says it several times before I finally hear and understand her. I realize she is asking me if I will help her. I hear myself tell her that I can’t help anyone. She says something about how he’ll think twice about hurting her if he knows we’re together. I don’t know who “he” is, but I don’t ask. I tell her I can’t see her face with her back to the light. I ask her who she is. I have asked that before. She tells me that she is Rose. Don’t I remember? I say nothing.
    She tells me that I am drunk. There isn’t any hint of recrimination in her voice. It is just a fact that she for some reason needs then to state. She tells me that she’s drunk, too. Confused, I tell her that I wouldn’t be of much help. I’d only make things worse. She seems reluctant to believe me. She goes on to say that he pays men to hurt people. I stop listening. Or maybe my mind can’t hear anymore and shuts off. I feel the cold without her near me. I focus on that. I can smell her, us—I focus on that, too. I remember her face above me, the way she laughed like we were just two kids at play. I want to be back in the cave made by her long hair, I want her laughing again, I want to be beneath her, lifting my head off the pillow to meet her face as it descends toward mine.
    I tell her to come back to bed. But she won’t. I don’t remember her, she says. She says she thought I did but that I don’t. She says her face has changed, that he broke some bones and she had to have surgery. And anyway it was such a long time ago that she barely recognized me, too.
    She is dressing now, suddenly modest. She turns her back to me as she gathers her clothes off the floor. I ask her something but I don’t even hear my own words. I don’t know what I just said. She tells me to go to sleep. Go to sleep, Mac, she says. Go to sleep.
    Then she is dressed and standing in my bedroom doorway. She lingers there, is looking into my living room at something. The light in that room is on. It is a dim light. She stares at something in there for a long while before looking back at me.
    She tells me to take care of myself. Before I can ask her to stay she is gone. I don’t hear my apartment door close right away, though. I wait for it, watching the bedroom doorway, waiting for her to return to it. But she doesn’t. I finally hear my apartment door close and follow as best I can the sound of her footsteps as she moves down the hallway toward the stairs. I follow her sound till it is gone. Then there is nothing but darkness and silence. I linger in it, utterly alone, till even that is gone.
    When I awoke it was day and somewhere down Elm Street a dog was barking. I got up and pulled on a pair of jeans as I tried to shake what was left of that dream from my head. That had to have been a dream. It felt like a dream. I had dreamed worse things than that. But I was in no condition at the moment to dwell on it. I needed something in my stomach. I found leftovers in my refrigerator and sat at my kitchen table and ate them. I could remember going down to get some food from George, but not much after that. But this really wasn’t anything new. I didn’t know what day it was, though, not off the top of my head. But I knew sooner or later, one way or another, I’d figure that out.
    Eventually I remembered that my phone was shut off. I knew that if I went down to the phone company and paid my overdue bill in cash they would restore service today. With all that was going on, a phone would be a good thing to have. I went into the living room to get the envelope Augie had dropped on my table. My legs and back were stiff and sore. It was as if I had