Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,35
pushing two shopping carts tied together like boxcars and piled almost to overflowing with bulging Hefty bags. I thought how good he’d taste, and my mouth watered.
“I’m hungry,” I said, and I wiped drool off my chin. There was a smear of it on the window.
“After everything you puked up back there?”
I never do manage to keep down what the loup eats. This body ain’t so keen on solid food.
I closed my eyes. I wanted to be in a very, very dark place, away from headlights and taillights and sodium-vapor light. A closet would suffice. A subbasement would be wonderful.
“You have my bag? You didn’t leave it on the High Line?”
“I have your bag, Quinn. Stop talking so much, why don’t you.”
Good advice, which is probably why I ignored it. The driver drove, and I rambled on. I asked if we were going all the way to fucking New Jersey, and Selwyn told the driver to ignore me, that I was drunk. That I was, in fact, an alcoholic who’d fallen off the wagon. She told the driver she was my AA sponsor.
“Liar,” I said.
“You oughta know.”
I oughta. Takes one to know one. The pot calling the kettle black.
That smudgy, alien blur of street rushed by outside the cab, and I asked her, “This isn’t the way back to your place, is it?”
“No. You sort of trashed my place. And the cops have it cordoned off. It’s like a crime scene or something now. I don’t know how I’m gonna get my shit out of there.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, but I expect I didn’t come off especially sincere. Apologies are not my specialty.
“It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault. The Aconitum. I should have known better.”
I didn’t disagree.
“They’re gonna know it’s your place, Selwyn.”
“Yeah, they will. So, we go to ground. We keep our heads down. I know some people who’ll help. But it’s a mess. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’m too tired to pretend otherwise.”
“B, he used to say I could cock-up a wet dream.”
Selwyn laughed, and she sounded as tired as she’d said she was. She didn’t argue with me, either. I didn’t ask about these people she knew; figured I’d learn all about them soon enough. The taxi ride couldn’t go on forever.
“There’s stuff in there you need?”
“There is. Maybe I can get in later, but I’m not gonna count on it. And even if I do, I doubt the safe will still be there. You know that’s going to be taken as evidence.”
I didn’t ask her as evidence of what. My head was too foggy. Everything was too foggy. I shut my eyes and listened to the wheels on the road until we finally got where we were going. The Village, MacDougal Street, an apartment three floors above a frozen yogurt joint. Selwyn paid the driver while I stood on the sidewalk wearing the blue wool blanket, wishing my old duster wasn’t back in Hell’s Kitchen or already tucked away in an NYPD evidence room somewhere. There was a woman waiting for us at the door.
“This is Jodie,” Selwyn said, nodding to the woman. “Jodie, this is Quinn.”
Jodie said it was good to meet me and offered me her hand. I shook it, and her skin felt very, very hot. Everyone alive feels hot when I’m hungry. Her skin was almost as dark as Selwyn’s was pale, but her eyes were a startling, unexpected shade of green.
“You’ve made the news,” she said, just before leading us upstairs. “But no one has any idea what happened.”
“No shit,” Selwyn muttered.
“The police aren’t saying anything yet, but the most popular rumor is that a drug dealer’s pet grizzly bear got loose and went on a rampage.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Jodie’s apartment was bigger than Selwyn’s, and it wasn’t cluttered. It was furnished with pricy-looking antiques, and there were real paintings—not prints or posters—hanging on the walls. Real fucking art. Oh, and a stereo system I once would have done murder for. I wondered what she did for a living. I mean, Selwyn was making a small fortune peddling her junk, but you’d never have known it from the way she lived.
I caught Jodie staring at me. It was more a curious stare than a worried or frightened kind of stare.
“I’m your first?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said softly. Jodie said everything softly. “You’re my first.”
Right then, I caught a peek at myself in a mirror hanging in the hall. It was a miracle a taxi