Last Angel Page 10

  “Now, what am I going to do with you?”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Gabriel stirred and immediately groaned, feeling hot, bloody pain lance through his spinning head.

  His first conscious thoughts were purely physical, hunger, thirst, the need to release the pressure building in his bladder.

  The thud of a newspaper on the doormat, bringing its bad news. His mind turned inwards, trying to decipher the bewildering array of messages that whirled and spun their jig inside his head. Pictures, as hazy as the room about him swam across the fever dream hinterland of his gradually forming consciousness.

  In one, wino wearing a crown of glass thorns held a fingernail to his head and carved away the bone. In another, a woman, bathed in the heat and the sweat of the act opened herself up for knives. Another, a bleached corpse bloodied with a scrawl of tattoos telling the murderers story.

  The flash flood of images rolled on, gathering momentum. “We’re the same, you and me… We’re the same…” A blow out. A car, too close to the white line, too close to the curb, weaving drunkenly across the road. Driver fighting for control. Running a red light. Up on the sidewalk, people falling away in every direction. On the asphalt, burning rubber, throwing himself clear as the car slid into the side of a petrol tanker, licking up into a hateful conflagration.

  The images punched into his head in a series of hammer blows — breaking glass, the diesel stench, the flame, smoke, darkness, death.

  And in there, in its heat: Sam and Frankie.

  Unable to pull away from the wreckage, his spirit floated towards the buckled door, into the heart of the firestorm, ethereal hands burning as they struggled desperately to open it, ghost eyes streaming under the insidious biting of the smokes teeth, knowing it was impossible, too little too late. The heat of the flame beating him back.

  Through the glass he saw a young boy, blood matted in his hair, eyes opening to see his death all around him in the licks of fire and the choking gulf of smoke, to see his mother’s body half-in, half-out of the car, diamonds of shattered windscreen and a spreading pool of blood beneath her too-white face.

  Smoke blind, Gabriel screamed with his son’s voice. To lose him now, again, when he was so close…

  The same tears of loss were pouring from his smoke-stung eyes. He grappled with the buckled door, the metal stripping the flesh from his palms, burning him to the bone, but even in the dream the door wasn’t opening. Crying for his dead son, Gabriel gave up on the door and struggled to drag the corpse of his wife from the blaze.

  Her ruined face stared blindly at him, mouth falling open, head lolling. A bloody spider crawled out through the crack between her lips and scuttled around the curve of her neck. Another bloody leg twitched through the broken lips. Another spider. And another. Swelling out of Francesca’s mouth, bloody legs of blood smeared spiders being born out of his wife’s head, crawling over her cheeks, her eyes, her hair, and still more being born from between her lips.

  Only they weren’t her lips, beneath the bodies of bloody spiders her face melted into the thin lipped smile of a Latino angel with a face of finely carved glass.

  “We’re the same, you and me… We’re the same…”

  Chapter Forty-five

  Gabriel came out of the dream: sat bolt upright in bed, sweat clinging to his fevered skin, gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come.

  Beside him, Ashley shivered and pulled at the covers, bringing the sheet up under her chin.

  He looked at her. Her heart beating against the mattress.

  Looked at himself.

  Somehow, she had contrived to sleep entwined with him, her legs wrapped around his, each time she moved her thigh brushing innocently against his penis. Angry, at himself as much as her, Gabriel wriggled free of her leg-embrace and swung himself out of their shared bed. His legs gave way under him as he remembered —

  “We’re the same, you and me… We’re the same…”

  “No we’re not,” Gabriel bit down on the pain, pressing his fingers into his temples in an attempt to blind the memory. Fighting back. “We’re not the same…”

  In the bed, Ashley stirred, rolled over and lost the edge of the sheet covering her. He looked down at her slumbering innocence as she rolled again, the flesh around her breast wrinkling up as she squashed it against the yielding mattress. Watched her pulse in the soft white curve. The fresh not-quite-morning chill had stiffened her nipple; darkening it to a husky brown around the puckered aureole.

  But she’s not Francesca, he caught himself thinking.

  “No, she’s not,” he half-whispered as she drew her leg up, gradually exposing the darker triangle of hair, the edge of velvet between her silken thighs, and felt a hardness creep into his groin, slowly, teasing, stiffening.

  She’s Ash, and I was so close to throwing it all away…

  Before he could change his mind, Gabriel lowered himself back onto the bed and leaned in to kiss the nape of her naked back, tonguing the soft hollow just above the swell of her buttocks, forcing all thoughts of Francesca from his mind.

  “Ash,” he breathed, needing to hear her name. She stirred slightly, her delicious shiver tracing through his fingertips as he explored.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Together, they touched, tentatively at first, and then with more assurance, fingers opening doors to pleasure, they tasted, tongues on the salt skins, drank with their eyes, ate with fingertips, the muscles of their bonded bodies merging into a single song.

  The delicious shiver as he entered her, her legs wrapping, locking around his back, pulling him in, fingernails raking in, needing to feel him.

  Moans, sighs then whimpers; a final scream-like sound.

  Then, release.

  She held him, head resting on her collarbone, eyes closed as she smoothed her fingers over the black bird painted on his shallow-breathing chest.

  Together, holding each other, needing the intimacy and comfort of skin against skin, they passed the remains of dawn making gentle, leisurely love to the quiet harmony of waking birds.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Ashley Powell was a live-life-pretty-much-as-it-comes kind of woman, her life a perfectly balanced knife-edge between chaos and the abyss of order. Things had a way of getting done, but only when they absolutely had to be done. Her apartment was a perfect reflection of her character, cluttered, carefree with just a hint of playful sensuality beneath.

  She packed as she lived. Quickly, bustling about the empty bedroom doing a passable imitation of a decapitated fowl, she pulled seemingly random garments out of the closet and jammed them into the battered overnight bag on the bed. The afterimage of their bodies was still burned into the crumpled sheets like the radiation shadows of holocaust victims.

  Ashley fumbled with the top drawer of the dresser, grabbed a handful of lacy black and stuffed it in on top of the wrinkled edge of her only C.K. blouse. As an afterthought she flattened the wrinkled surge of ripples away. She cast a quick glance back in the direction of the bathroom even though she could hear the primal tattoo of the shower water splashing down on the bathtub.

  Okay, plenty of time, she told herself, digging through her make-up bag for a kohl coloured eye-pencil. Her hand trembled ever so slightly as it drew a line around her watering right eye, the blunt pencil painting its shades of colour in. She used a rubber band to put her hair up. Tried smiling at her mirror self from two or three angles with two or three different smiles, trying them on for size.

  “Hey,” Gabriel’s sleep-filled voice called from the doorway. “Where’re you off to in such a hurry?” His reflection was looking at the overfilled travel bag on the bed. He still looked like warmed through shit, naked but for the damp-darkened towel wrapped around his waist. Red rimmed eyes heavy with more tears smiled softly her way. More than anything, Ashley found herself wanting to throw her arms around Gabriel and hug him so fiercely he split through the middle. She turned around to face the real Gabriel, look him in the eye, and
felt herself wanting — when had she last felt like this? Too long ago was the answer — to cry for him.

  “Nowhere without you,” the slight catch in her voice giving away more than she wanted to say. “Oh Gabe, I don’t know. After last night… I don’t want to be here for a while. I thought we could be alone for a while… Somewhere…” she let it hang, wanting to say so much more about ghosts. About his ghosts. The two of them that lived in every building, on every street corner in Manhattan and the Bronx. She knew he knew and hated herself for nearly saying it. He’d earned the right to mourn, as a father and as a husband.

  She blinked back tears of her own as she watched the emotions jostle for position behind his eyes, wished she could take back every word, every thought until he stepped out of the doorway, arms held wide for her to step in to.

  “I know,” he said softly, taking her in his arms, closing them around her. Gabriel brushed an errant curl back and touched his lips to the top of her head. “I think I might, you know…” he didn’t say it, couldn’t.

  “Me too,” she swallowed, feeling the strength of his body against hers and the slow track of her tears on her smiling cheeks.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  While Gabriel packed the few bags into the trunk of the Black Hawk Ashley slipped into the bathroom, taking the opportunity to rinse the mingled aromas of sweat and his sex from her skin, and luxuriated in the comforting warmth of the water pouring from the shower head. The dim light streaking in through the small hatch window grouped in tight clusters of brightness, like mottled freckles on the glass face of the shower door.

  Showered, the faintest tang of Gabriel’s scent still clung to her skin, acting as a reminder of their first night and morning spent coupled as lovers.

  Towelling herself off, Ashley dressed in a tight pair of faded denims and a loose cotton blouse and locked up. As she closed the building door, she saw Gabriel sat on the Studebaker’s stretched hood, his eyes looking somewhere into the foggy middle distance.

  “Penny for them,” she called, coming down the steps.

  If anything, the mist that had slowly descended on New York the day before seemed to be getting worse.

  “Not worth it,” Gabriel mumbled, slipping down off the hood, the last of his vision slipping away as his eyes drew in to focus on her.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  In two hours they climbed away from the heady skyscrapers of glass and steel and the clammy street fogs, dipping in and out of pockets of smog before they hit the five lane interstate. Ashley reclined lazily in the passenger seat, the sun visor up, basking in the refracted rays of the midday sun.

  They followed the serpentine trail of the I87 roadway, meandering through a bitter series of corners and diminishing rows of grey stone before rising over the Tappan Zee Bridge and moving out into the country, and passed Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, leaving the crazy hubbub of city centre roads further and further behind.

  Gabriel watched Ashley through the rear-view mirror as she stared through the dimpled pin-pricks of the roof-lining, eyes unfocussed. She’d hardly said a word since they’d cleared the Hudson. Watching her through the mirror it was obvious what was going on inside; the thoughts behind the eyes. She was afraid to ask about what had happened immediately before she’d opened the door on his unconscious body. They were the same thoughts — We’re the same, you and me… We’re the same — that had curled lazily through Gabriel’s mind five times an hour since he’d woken, the ones he hadn’t dared give voice to for fear of making them more substantial.

  More real.

  And they were eating her up, these thoughts, and still she was saying nothing.

  So they drove in silence, passing into and out of Scranton before Ashley opened the glove box on a few sun-bleached cassettes sheltered between dirty chamois leather, the black flap of his shoulder holster and a box of tissues, half-hidden in the cool shadows, their lettered inlays faded beyond reading.

  She picked one at random, pushed it into the player. The tiny screen was lit up by an insipid glow, a double row of squares pulsing like a heartbeat in rhythm with Leonard Cohen’s end of the world vocal.

  “Happy happy, joy joy.” Her first words for over an hour. Her last words for another hour.

  Through the rear-view mirror, Gabriel watched his battered old fedora slide between the speakers.

  Near sun down, Gabriel turned off the interstate and drove down into Small-town USA, parking on the wide main street across from the ramshackle wooden form of Al Straker’s General Store, in line with a neat row of Jeeps, Toyotas and dusty old Fords. The blinds were down and the awning was up. The sign on Straker’s door said:

  CLOSED FOR THE NIGHT

  WHY DON’T Y’ALL COME BACK AND SEE US

  IN THE MORNING

  Much of the town looked like Straker’s; box houses of slatted wooden frames squatting in the middle of small patches of Eden, bordered by blacktop. No sidewalks. No cars to talk of either. Not driving.

  They went for dinner at Sal’s Country Kitchen, choosing to sit out on the veranda and catch the last of the sun’s failing rays. Beyond the rail the glitter of an old creek puddled, catching rainbows from the sky and throwing them out in hypnotic ever-decreasing circles of shifting colour. The creek’s watery sides lined with cypress and pines.

  “Beautiful,” Ashley breathed, her voice as slippery as the invisible fish bathing beneath the surface.

  “Yeah,” Gabriel agreed, thoughtfully. “And then some.”

  When the food arrived they were both pleasantly surprised. Sal, it seemed, had discovered the secret of the perfect pizza.

  “So, what do you reckon?” he asked when they got back to the car. “Do we look for a cheap motel for the night, or do we go on?”

  “What do you fancy? You’re the one driving. It’s going to be long gone midnight when we land.”

  Gabriel shrugged his shoulders, working out a cramp before he’d even got in behind the wheel. “I could probably do with a break from the driving but otherwise either way suits me just fine.”

  “No problem then,” Ashley grinned, holding out her hand. “Gimme the keys.”

  Hand around his jaw, Gabriel whistled out a short breath. “Don’t know about that… The old girl’s a bit on the sensitive side, needs plenty of T.L.C. just like her old man. You think you can handle that?”

  “Just shut up and give me the keys.”

  “Whatever you say, honey bunny,” and then to himself. “Anything for a quiet life.”

  “Treading on thin ice, Rush,” she warned. “Very thin ice.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Okay, wise guy. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  Opening the side door and ducking into the passenger seat, Gabriel nodded thoughtfully. “Right, I think I’ll shut up now.”

  “You do that,” Ashley agreed, sliding the keys into the ignition and turning over the rest-cooled engine.

  “Music?” He asked as she reversed out between the lines of parked jeeps.

  “Help yourself.” It was the closest he was going to get to a yes.

  There was a trap in the glove box, a lure to hook him back to everything he was trying to forget; memories and music entwined like forever lovers. The haunting strains of Tears bringing back the sad, timeless feeling of watching the seasons fail while his mind ran back to the day everything in his old life died, moving him gently toward the tears of the title.

  The song finished seconds before they rejoined the interstate. Gabriel cut the next song short, rewinding the tape to play it through again.

  Even concentrating on the darkened road and the tube-like tails of light streaming out before her to form an elaborate grid of gold and red, Ashley could feel the pain haunting him.

  “Want to talk about it?” she asked as he rewound the tape again.

  “Not much to talk about, really.” Gabriel lied, fingers concentrating for him.

  “Try me anyway. I’m a good listener.”

 
“Maybe later,” he said, giving himself up to the same army of ghosts again.

  “Whenever you feel like talking,” Ashley said softly, moving out to overtake a hulking Merry Maid pantechnicon.

  He was asleep by the time they passed the last exit for Utica, curled up in a tight foetal ball with his face pressed against the glass of the passenger door.

  “Next stop, paradise,” she told his sleeping form, seeing the sign for Syracuse lit up in the distance, the soft voice of her words too quiet to be heard above the humming of the Black Hawk’s rumbling engine.

  Gabriel groaned and half-stirred.

  Without the distraction of cars on the other side of the glass, and little else out there to hold her attention for more than a few seconds, Ashley felt deadly caress of sleep creeping up on her. The regular monotony of passing alone through the dull puddles of sodium light, soporific in itself, and the ebb and flow of Gabriel’s breathing, didn’t help.

  With the stars acting as token light-bearers in place of the sleeping sun, Ashley pulled in at one of the roadside cafes.

  She had nearly overshot the turning, attracted at the last minute by a barbershop beacon that flashed OPEN irregularly; its slow moving life, the shadow of a working waitress up against the window and the overriding need for a caffeine fix calling out to her.

  She left the engine idling so as not to wake Gabriel, and ran across the asphalt to a small, anonymous serving hatch. It was a pleasantly mild night.

  “Coffee?” she asked a wire grill and was rewarded a pasty faced nod. “Great. Make it strong. No milk, no sugar.”

  Before shouting the order back into the kitchen, the waitress made a show of wrapping a well chewed ribbon of gum around her painted nails.