Page 50 of Jealous of the Clouds
He flicks his smoke to the gutter and turns into a darkened alley.
I grin. I know what’s coming.
I follow him into the shadows.
*
After, I pull up my pants and watch him walk away, the taste of his come still in my mouth. We never exchanged a word. He didn’t have a pipe or any favors, but we had fun anyway. There’s still a couple of hours until it gets light, still time to score in every sense.
He disappears around a corner. In instants, I forget what he looked like.
I didn’t even get his name. But maybe I got his disease.
What the hell?
And then, there it is again—footfalls on pavement. Coming toward me is someone familiar. I smile. “Hey. What are you doing out so late?”
My only answer is the glint of a knife, raised in the dark, but the blade reflecting the orange glow of the streetlight at the corner.
Chapter 23
Ted
I turned to Karl. “This can’t be. We’re in a dream—a nightmare, a wish fulfillment. But this isn’t real. Is it?”
Karl concentrated silently on getting into a small parking spot near the front of his building. Once he was situated, he shut off the car and looked over at me. “Our eyes don’t lie, sweetheart. This is a good thing.”
We sat in stunned silence for only a few moments, but it seemed longer.
Maybe our eyes don’t lie, but they can deceive us, confuse us. Those two women huddled together against the cold and drizzle, perhaps, merelylookedlike Josh’s sister, Shondell and—no, it can’t be—Camille. “It’s Camille and Shondell.”
“You’ve met Shondell?”
“No. But Josh had a picture of her in his apartment. It was on the little secretary near the front door, so I saw it many times. I recalled Josh picking it up and showing it to me. “Shondell,” he said, “My baby girl. Yeah, she’s my sister, but it’s always felt like father and baby girl between us.” And there was the image of that picture, come to life—a big-framed woman with her hair pulled back away from her face. She wore a knee-length tweed coat. Her skin was almost luminously pale. Camille, beside her, seemed in shock, at least to me. She stared ahead, her expression, even from here, vacant.
“He told me he killed her.”
“ItwasJosh, though? You recognized his voice?” I swung open the car door, impatient to get out, to take the few steps that would lead me to them.
“The voice was disguised with one of those filters. It sounded deep and, I don’t know, kind of mechanical. I just assumed. Who else could it have been?”
“So you don’t know for sure that it was Josh?”
“Not for sure. But it’s pretty damn likely.”
I jumped out of the car and hurried up the sidewalk, with Karl right behind me.
I didn’t say a word. I rushed to Camille and took her in my arms, breathing hard, near tears. I was so relieved she was alive. It was almost a miracle—as though she’d been resurrected from the dead. Who knew? Maybe she had been. My whole world was turned upside down.
Anything was possible.
After a long hug that left both of us nearly breathless, I held her at arm’s length for a moment, drinking her in, making sure it wasn’t a mistake. But here was my friend, truly. She was alive. “Let’s get inside.” I let go and turned to Karl, who already had his keys out. “Let’s get warm.” I was trembling, but I couldn’t say for sure if it was from the chill in the damp air—or terror.
“I’m Shondell, Josh’s sister.”
I’d almost forgotten she was there, despite her proximity of less than a foot away. Her voice was gravelly. She sounded like a lifelong smoker. Josh had said she was several years younger than he, but now, seeing her in the flesh, she appeared to be at least a decade older, her face lined, her hair shot through with gray. Her eyes were a weird shade of pale gray that unnerved me.
“Yes, I recognized you. Josh had a picture of you in his apartment.”Oh God, does she know her brother’s dead? What brings her here? How did she wind up with Camille?I hadso many questions, but Karl, wisely, urged us to move and get inside.
