my mood. "If you consider that we came here less than a week ago, and in that time you've been assaulted by riders three times, Aubrey has been possessed and exorcised, we've bought a house and a car and fitted both with wards, added to which-"
"Hey, could we talk about this a little later?" I said. "I'm just... I'm not up to it right now."
Now he smiled. I could see my own exhaustion mirrored in him. Added to which Aubrey and I had fallen back into bed together, I thought. And my childhood had been reframed by my mother's sexual indiscretions. And, added to that, I'd screwed everything up. I didn't know how much of that he saw in my eyes, but some, I thought. Enough.
"Later, then," he said, and sat back. I didn't know how he managed to so clearly retreat into himself without actually moving more than an inch. I sat back in my soft plastic chair and waited for the unpredictable gods of the airline industry to get me the hell out of Louisiana.
This wasn't the first time I'd failed. In fact, it seemed just then like everything I touched was a failure. I'd have expected to be more used to it. And I knew what Chogyi Jake was going to tell me: we had all gone into the job exhausted; we'd been running since we touched ground; it was a complex situation, we didn't know all the facts, and our ally was perhaps not the least fucked-up person I'd ever known.
I could give myself all the excuses. The truth was, I was disappointed because I'd wanted Karen to like me. Or if not that, respect me. I'd wanted her to see that I was capable of handling myself, of taking over the job Eric had left me, of being the person I was pretending to be. If she had looked at me-preferably over the steaming corpse of the rider-and said that I reminded her of herself when she'd just been starting out, I would have done just about anything for her.
But.
I actually managed to doze for a few minutes before the captain came on the loudspeaker and announced our descent into Atlanta. An hour layover in an airport, then the flight to Savannah, then... what? I couldn't bear to think about it.
The Atlanta airport was alive with a wide, varied stream of people. Harried business types in gray suits and power ties, college-age men and women traveling in sweats and sneakers, a tour group at least two dozen strong speaking something that sounded like German but might have been anything. It took me a few minutes to realize we were traveling on a Friday. After the first few months of bopping around the world, setting my own schedule, I'd started to lose track of things like days of the week. We navigated through the concourse to a Houlihan's bar, the four of us crowding around a small table made of something equal parts wood and plastic. A television overhead blared about a particularly god-awful earthquake someplace in China, bright images of dust and violence fighting with the bar's dark, fake comfort. When the drinks came, my beer was warm and tasted weirdly like cut grass. I put it down after two sips.
"Okay," Ex said sharply. "Postmortem."
"Ex," Aubrey said, shaking his head, "I think maybe we'd better-"
"Postmortem," Ex said again. "We just had something go off the rails, right? So before we start forgetting things or romanticizing or justifying ourselves or whatever, why don't we get this out of the way."
Ex's pale eyes were hard. From his breath, I had the suspicion that he'd started on the drinks while we were still in the air. A man at the next table started talking into his cell phone loud enough to compete with the dying Chinese above us. It hadn't occurred to me until just then that by getting us fired, I'd also screwed up Ex's love life. He must have spent the whole flight to Atlanta stewing. I didn't want to talk about it, but I owed it to Ex to at least let him vent a little.
I reached for my lousy beer, thought better, and grabbed Aubrey's rum-and-coke instead. Chogyi Jake put his hands flat on the small table.
"Ex. I think this would be a mistake," Chogyi Jake said, his voice low and penetrating.
"No," I said. "It's okay. He's right. We screwed up, and we ought to face that straight on."