Hunters Run Page 0,104

he didn't enjoy the meal. The couch smelled of old smoke and cheap incense. The afternoon light showed all the dirt on the windows; skitterlings scurried across the ceiling, the charnel stink of the butcher's shop tainted the air. Ramon lay back on the couch, his limbs heavy. He let his eyes close for a moment and opened them again in panic. Something had him, strangling him, pulling him off the ground. Ramon had cocked back a fist, ready to kill the alien or his twin or the sahael or the chupacabra or the cop before his muzzy brain recognized the shrill squealing. Not an alarm. Not a battle shriek. Elena, delighted.

"Fuck," he breathed, but softly enough that even with her head pressed against his she didn't seem to hear him. The threat of violence passed. Elena pulled back from him, her eyes wide, her mouth in a little knot like she was trying to make her lips look like a baby doll's. She wasn't bad-looking.

"You didn't tell me you were getting out," she said, half accusing, half pleased and surprised.

"They didn't tell me for sure until today," Ramon lied. "Besides, what were you gonna do? Miss work?"

"I would have. Or I could have got someone to come get you. Fly you home."

"I can walk," Ramon said with a shrug. "It's not far."

She put her hand around his chin, jiggling his head like he was a baby. Her eyes were merry. It was an expression he knew, and his poor abused penis stirred slightly.

"Big macho guy like you doesn't need any help, eh? I know you, Ramon Espejo. I know you better than you do! You're not so tough."

I cut off my own finger stump, he didn't say, in part because it hadn't exactly been him and in part because there wasn't any point in telling her anything. It was Elena, after all. Batshit-crazy, even if she was in her good place right now. He couldn't trust her, not any more than she could trust him. Whatever meaning she attributed to his silence, it wasn't what he was thinking. She smiled, shifting her body from side to side.

"I missed you," she said, looking up at him through her eyelashes. Ramon felt a twinge of pain in his groin and stepped back.

"Jesus Christ," he said. "They only took that thing out of my cock a few days ago, woman. I'm not healed up down there yet."

"Yeah?" she said. "That hurts? What about this?"

She did something very pleasant, and it did hurt, only not enough to tell her to stop.

The next few days were better than Ramon had expected them to be. Elena was away at work most of the day, leaving him to sleep and catch the news. At night, they screwed and listened to music and watched the half-assed telenovelas they made down in Nuevo Janeiro. He made himself walk as long as he could, never straying too far from the apartment, in case the weakness came on quickly.

His strength came back faster than he expected. His weight was still down; he looked like a fucking twig. But he was coming back. He was getting better. He told Elena the story - the one he'd made up - over and over. It wasn't long before he half believed it himself. He remembered the roar of the stone as it came down, the shuddering of the van. He remembered racing out into the cool northern night and watching his ride washed into the river. If it hadn't happened, so what? The past was what you made it.

The only thing that marred the time was the small voice in his head reminding him of what had really happened, and what he had heard and thought. In the early hours of the morning, when Elena was still fast asleep, Ramon found himself waking and unable to fall back into slumber. His mind returned to the realization that his twin could have done better with Elena, that even that sad sack of shit he'd dropped into the river had been a better man than he made himself out to be. He had meant to break things off with her when he came back, but here he was. Drinking her beer, smoking her cigarettes, spreading her legs.

When things got bad again, he told himself. No point ending things when they were still good.

And, like a ghost, there was Lianna. He remembered the way his twin had told the story - all bravado and bluster, none