Page 4 of Absinthe Dreams
I pulled the card from the plastic fork thing that held it in among the greenery and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
My name was written on the outside of the crisp white envelope in a delicate script, beautifully done.
I turned it over and lifted the flap, slipping the thick, expensive cardstock out of the envelope.
I swallowed hard at theThank youembossed on the front.
I opened it and swallowed hard, the message written in a spidery script that was a mishmash of cursive, printing, and slanted this way and that.
You only slowed me down. You didn’t stop me.
XOXO,
You Know Who
“Aw, another ‘thank you?’ Want me to put it on the board for you?” ReJeanne smiled at me. She was the charge nurse for the ER and was as toughened and battle-hardened as they come. She didn’t take shit off the cops, EMS, doctors –no one.And yet, when she wasn’t in ‘attack mode,’ she was as sweet as could be.
“Thanks,” I said, not wanting her to see the note or make her worry. “But this one is kinda personal. I think I’ll keep it.” I slid the card back into the envelope and into my pocket. She smiled even bigger and nodded, and I was grateful she didn’t press.
I sighed and stared at the one red rose, a drop of red, red, blood in the center of the purest of intentions, and felt isolated, small, invisible, and yeah… doomed.
Fuck.
CHAPTER TWO
Chainsaw…
My hip twinged, and a second later, I felt an echo in my chest and shoulder, and then a heartbeat after that, I felt it in my leg. It sucked, but that was life now – especially when rough weather was rolling in.
I’d always thought that it was some kind of old wives’ tale, the whole old injuries acting up when weather was about to come in – but nope. Should have known if it was as widely talked about like that, there’s something to it.
I shook my head and checked my gear, the thick canvas strap around the pole I was climbing, the spurs in my boots wedged tight in the creosoted wood. I was a lineman and tree trimmer by trade. Working for the power company to trim hazardous branches and take down threatening trees, but I also did line work and got the big transformers back up and running when it called for it.
Hurricane and tropical storm season was my busiest season, but the work was year-round around here. When it wasn’t for some odd reason, there was plenty of work to be had in the rest of the country, out in Florida or up through tornado alley or Dixie alley.
I wiped the sweat off my brow, up under my hard hat, and from above my wraparound sport sunglasses with their safety rating. Expensive, but needed out here doing what I did. I looped the canvas strap up higher on the pole, pulled one climbing spur out from the pole, took a step up, and knocked it back in. When I was sure it was secure, I looped up, took the other side out, and rinse and repeat.
They had us using bucket trucks more often than not these days, but sometimes I just liked the good ol’-fashioned old-school climbing method.
Helped my fat ass be a lot less fat these days.
I hadn’t quite reached the point in my health journey of quitting smoking or drinking, but I’d dropped a shit ton of weight since the necessary coup after Ruth had my ass shot up all to hell and gone.
Wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about that. Wasn’t a second after I thought about it that I didn’t think ofher.
The blonde angel right out of the script by Milton, or that Alighieri guy. She’d been beautiful and my saving grace that night, chewing out the attending doctor motherfucker on my case, who was being stingy with the pain meds on my arrival after I’d taken three fuckin’ bullets.
She’d even been kind about how they’d cut off my cut – going along the top shoulder seams and sliding it out from underneath me. Some easy cross-whip stitching across both sides, and my colors were back together as good as they’d ever been and ready for wear.
By the time I finished my work up here, a quick glance over the Gulf of Mexico saw dark clouds on the horizon, heading right for shore.
My body’d been right once again. Weather was coming, and by the looks of it, it looked like it was going to be a rough band of thunderstorms. I had a fifty-fifty chance of being called out intoit to fix something, but if I shimmied my ass down off this pole with the quickness, I could be at the club and enough beers deep, I could feign too drunk to work on-call. Which was the plan at this point, with how my joints pained me and the fact that it was, in fact, my fuckin’ Friday, and it was supposed to be my long-stretch weekend off.
I did my work and hustled down the pole, the breeze picking up and blowing in wet off the water.
“You better get you gone and into something if you don’t wanna get tapped for overtime,” my work buddy Clayton Biggs said, spitting out his wad of chew onto the ground.
“Read my fuckin’ mind, homie,” I told him. His dark features cracked into a too-white smile against his dark skin, his teeth stained with the chew he’d had in his maw only several shades lighter than his dark skin.
