“Did Larry leave his keys in the bank vault?”
We gazed horrified for several more moments before we realized she was waiting for a reply. Her hair was like a haystack; she appeared completely disoriented and so unsteady it seemed she might topple down the steps.
“Er, yes,” said Boris loudly. “I mean no.” And then, when she still stood there: “It’s all right. Go back to bed.”
She mumbled something and—uncertain on her feet—staggered off. The two of us stood motionless for some moments. Then—quietly, the back of my neck prickling—I got my bag and slipped out the front door (my last sight of that house, and her, though I didn’t even take a last look round) and Boris and Popchik came out after me. Together, all three of us walked rapidly away from the house and down to the end of the street, Popchik’s toenails clicking on the pavement.
“All right,” said Boris, in the humorous undertone he used when we had a close call at the supermarket. “Okay. Maybe not quite so much out-cold as I thought.”
I was in a cold sweat, and the night air—though chilly—felt good. Off in the west, silent Frankenstein flashes of lightning twisted in the darkness.
“Well, at least she’s not dead, eh?” He chuckled. “I was worried about her. Christ.”
“Let me use your phone,” I said, elbowing on my jacket. “I need to call a car.”
He fished in his pocket, and handed it to me. It was a disposable phone, the one he’d bought to keep tabs on Kotku.
“No, keep it,” he said, holding his hands up when I tried to give it back to him after I’d made my call: Lucky Cab, 777-7777, the number plastered on every shifty-looking bus-stop bench in Vegas. Then he dug out the wad of money—his half of the take from Xandra—and tried to press it on me.
“Forget it,” I said, glancing back anxiously at the house. I was afraid she might wake up again and come out in the street looking for us. “It’s yours.”
“No! You might need it!”
“I don’t want it,” I said, sticking my hands in my pockets to keep him from foisting it on me. “Anyway, you might need it yourself.”
“Come on, Potter! I wish you wouldn’t go this moment.” He gestured down the street, at the rows of empty houses. “If you won’t come to my house—kip over there for a day or two! That brick house has furniture in it, even. I’ll bring you food if you want.”
“Or, hey, I can call Domino’s,” I said, sticking the phone in my jacket pocket. “Since they deliver out here now and everything.”
He winced. “Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not.” And, in truth, I wasn’t—only so disoriented I felt I might wake up and find I’d been sleeping with a book over my face.
Boris, I realized, was looking up at the sky and humming to himself, a line from one of my mother’s Velvet Underground songs: But if you close the door… the night could last forever…
“What about you?” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Eh?” he said, looking at me with a smile.
“What’s up? Will I see you again?”
“Maybe,” he said, in the same cheerful tone I imagined him using with Bami and Judy the barkeep’s wife in Karmeywallag and everyone else in his life he’d ever said goodbye to. “Who knows?”
“Will you meet me in a day or two?”
“Well—”
“Join me later. Take a plane—you have the money. I’ll call you and tell you where I am. Don’t say no.”
“Okay then,” said Boris, in the same cheerful voice. “I won’t say no.” But clearly, from his tone, he was saying no.
I closed my eyes. “Oh God.” I was so tired I was reeling; I had to fight the urge to lie down on the ground, a physical undertow pulling me to the curb. When I opened my eyes, I saw Boris looking at me with concern.
“Look at you,” he said. “Falling over, almost.” He reached in his pocket.
“No, no, no,” I said, stepping back, when I saw what he had in his hand. “No way. Forget it.”
“It’ll make you feel better!”
“That’s what you said about the other stuff.” I wasn’t up for any more seaweed or singing stars. “Really, I don’t want any.”
“But this is different. Completely different. It will sober you up. Clear your head—promise.”
“Right.” A drug that sobered you up and cleared your head didn’t sound like Boris’s style at all, although he did seem a good bit more with-it than me.
“Look at me,” he said reasonably. “Yes.”