Page 8 of The Undead

No.

Chapter Three

Serendipity

I woke up disoriented.

I’d been in the park—running—

And now I opened my eyes and I stared at the spackled ceiling of my own bedroom. My gaze drifted downward. Framed Uzilevsky prints. The washed-oak bedroom suite that Maggie had gone crazy over a year ago. The French floral bedspread thrown haphazardly half-on and half-off the foot of the bed, a cascade of spring thrown by a giant with lousy aim.

The other half of the bed was empty. My head throbbed, which was excellent circumstantial evidence that the night’s adventures were not a dream.

(Nightmare.)

I uncovered other supporting evidence when I crawled out from under the sheets. Bruises bloomed liverishly on my ankle. Jesus, how had I gotten home? Crawled? I looked like the loser in a fight with a bear trap.

Maggie’s voice drifted back from the other half of the house. She was singing with the radio, on-key and enthusiastic. It was on mornings like this that I really regretted marrying a morning person. I pulled my thick white robe on and made sure it covered the ankle bruise (no sense in alarming her now that the damage was done) and shuffled like an old arthritic man into the kitchen, where I dropped gratefully into a chair.

Maggie was bouncing around the kitchen singing “Material Girl” and doing a damn fine imitation of Madonna. She was already showered, though she still wore a silk nightgown under a frail wispy robe, and I felt more than usually disreputable and decayed watching her bop around to the beat. She slid a generous helping of eggs onto a plate, flipped two slices of bacon beside it, and handed it firmly to me without dropping a note of the song.

“You’re trying to kill me for the insurance money,” I said morosely, and poked at the eggs. “Death by cholesterol.”

“Shut up and eat, Doctor, or I’ll start feeding you uncooked oat bran and berries with the stems on.” Maggie leaned over and kissed me, which was the best thing that had happened since the last time she kissed me. It was odd, though, that she didn’t seem more solicitous about me. After all, I’d nearly killed myself. “You know, you always gripe but you always shovel it in, don’t you?”

“I have an image to uphold,” I said with dignity, and put a forkful of eggs in my mouth. Delicious. Maggie filled her own plate and sat down across from me. She spooned picante sauce over her eggs and gave me a wicked smile as she took a big bite. I made a gagging sound.

“You should try it,” she advised smugly. “So, are you recovered from your little jaunt last night?”

“What?” I asked, not sure if I’d heard right. Jaunt? I’d almost crushed my skull, for God’s sake.

“Oh, come on, Mike, married to a cop and you think I wouldn’t notice when you sneak out of bed on your anniversary? Shame.”

I sat there in silence for a while, a mantle of unreality drifting around me as I tried to separate dream from life, and Maggie stopped eating to stare at me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked in a different tone. I blinked.

“I went to the hospital,” I finally mumbled. She nodded in that encouraging, practiced movement of the professional listener. “I went to see Julio, the kid who was killed last night.”

“Why?”

“Because I just did. I needed to; you can understand that, can’t you?”

Maggie was wise enough, whether she could or not, not to make an issue of it. She stood up and came around behind me to massage my shoulders. It felt incredibly good.

“You look like hell this morning. Promise me that you’ll take another hour or so to sleep?”

“I’ve got rounds,” I sighed. Her fingers found a knotted muscle and smoothed it out, to the accompaniment of orgasmic pleasure.

“I don’t care. Rest, or I’ll be making conjugal visits in your semiprivate hospital room, and that would be a scandal.” Her hands abandoned my shoulder blades and slid down the front of my chest beneath the robe. “Although it might be interesting.”

“Exhibitionist,” I accused, and she sat down in my lap. The nightgown, seen close up, was deliciously impractical as anything resembling clothing and was probably outlawed in seven out of ten states in the Bible Belt. “How about dinner tonight?”

“Where do you want to go?” she asked, and kissed me. My headache receded with remarkable speed, directly related to the heat of her skin against mine.

“Did I say I wanted to go out?” Her lips slid against mine, damp and sweet, and then opened.

“If we stay in we just order delivery and never get anything done,” she protested breathlessly. I slid the silk off one shoulder, uncovering skin so soft that it made the fabric feel rough by comparison. The curve of her breast fit in the palm of my hand, heavy and sensuous.

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