Page 21 of Riot Act
Meredith is in town.
Here, in Mountain Lakes.
No way I’m going to be able to get back to sleep with that knowledge kicking around inside my head. I get up, groggy as fuck and unsteady on my feet, and I weave toward the en-suite bathroom. I turn the tap on, scooping the flow of water into my hands. It’s icy cold when it hits my face. The shock of it sets my lungs ablaze. Gasping, I throw my head back, unhappy to find myself face-to-face with the all-too-familiar demon in the mirror above the sink. He scowls back at me, top lip curled up in disgust, teeth bared and angry. This demon and I have had some very bitter conversations between the glass of this mirror. I scrub my hands over my head, wetting the short strands of hair I’ve neglected to shear away from my scalp, and the demon does the same, like it was his idea in the first place.
“Fuck you,” I tell him. I’d feel far more satisfied if the bastard didn’t mouth the words right back at me.
Down the stairs I go, padding silently through the sleeping house. The front door swings inward when I open it, and there, sitting on the doorstep, is the package Meredith mentioned: A box. Black. The size of a shoe box, only fancier. On the front of it, in neat silver scrollwork is my name: Pax.
I stand very still with my arms folded across my chest, glaring at it.
Dawn’s fast approaching. The sky has lightened from velvet black to a deep, bruised blue, and the birds have already started in on their chaotic morning chorus. I work my jaw, eyes narrowed at the box, trying to decide if I should just fucking leave it sitting there on the step. Angrily, I snatch it up and head back inside, cursing between my teeth. As soon as the door swings closed, the birdsong cuts off dead.
I was already angry from the phone call, but now I’m rage personified. Rather than open the box, I yank open a series of drawers in my room, rummaging around inside until I find what I’m looking for: a light t-shirt to throw on over a clean wife beater. A clean pair of jeans. Underwear.
I shower, fuming under my breath. The water washes away the cold sweat from my sleep, but it does nothing to stem the anger that’s brewing like a storm cloud over my head.
A gift.
A fuckinggift?
Seriously?
Who the fuck does she think she is? The woman left that box there—Black? So apt, Meredith. Ten out of ten on the theatrics—for me to find. And then she tells me not to open it until she’s gone? Because, yes, she is dying, and didn’t even think to fucking tell me. I had to find out from some dumbass nurse who let it slip over the fucking phone? While I was in another country?
Fucking insanity. All of this is fucking insanity.
This box is a death gift. One last parting fuck you from beyond the grave. Why couldn’t she have had a lawyer deliver it after she was gone like everyone else? Why did she have to have it delivered now, where I’d have no choice but to find it and wind upfeelingsomething?
“FUCK!” I smash my fist against the slate tiled wall of the shower, fizzing with rage. The water swirling about at my feet turns pink, and then red, my knuckles stinging brightly where I’ve split the skin, but neither the pain nor the loss of blood matter. I’ve been bleeding out, one way or another, my entire fucking life. What’s another cut? What’s another drop?
I get dry and I get dressed. I wasn’t going to see her, but it doesn’t look like she’s giving me much choice now. And if this is the last chance I’ll ever get to tell her how much I despise her, then Iwilltake it. I’ll be damned if I let her pass from this life under some illusion that she has anything in common with the martyred saints on my right arm.
8
PAX
“Dude. I don’t know how else to say it. Visiting hours are from one to five.” The male nurse who greeted me when I walked in through the tiny hospital’s emergency room entrance throws his hands up in exasperation. He’s still being patient, but the guy has an edge to him. I suspect he knows how to throw his fists. There’s a little voice in the back of my head, urging me to push him just a little bit further. To see how well he does it.
I point my index finger at the clock on the wall behind his head. “It’s three-thirty, motherfucker. Now tell me where I can find Meredith Davis.”
The nurse’s head jerks back. He raises his eyebrows. “Rethink the tone. I don’t get paid enough to take shit from the likes of you. Listen up and listen good. Come back tomorrow and visit your mother between the hours of onepmand fivepm, and I’ll take you to her with a smile on my face. Curse at me one more time and I’ll cut out your tongue, and no one here will sew it back on for you. You feel me?”
“Oh, I feel you.” My blood is acid, eating away at my veins; my insides are being corroded away into nothing. If I can bully this fucker into hitting me hard enough, it might stop the burn long enough for me to get a handle on this delightful mood that’s taken hold of me. I’m not sure if that’s what I want, though. I kind of want him to keep hitting me until the burn is the least of my worries. The nurse narrows his eyes when I take a step forward.
“Think, man,” he growls. “I don’t normally hand out second warnings, but you look like you’re having a rough night. It’ll get infinitely worse if you don’t back the fuck up.”
This guy doesn’t understand anything about the night I’m having. If he did, he’d stop trying to calm my ass down and put me on it as quick as humanly possible. I’m concocting something truly egregious to spit at him when he jerks his head at someone over my shoulder, to his left, and I get the feeling that someone’s creeping up on me. I turn just in time to see a swathe of black material and flash of gold. Then there’s an ancient security guard pulling a Taser out of its holster, and he’s aiming the business end of it at my chest.
“That’s enough for tonight, kid,” he says. “I saw Meredith earlier. I know for a fact that she’s asleep. Go on back home and then come back in the morning once you’ve slept it off.”
Slept it off? What about me makes this fool think I’m drunk? Am I slurring my words?No. Am I stumbling around all over the place?Nope. Am I behaving belligerently? Hell yeah, but that’s my natural operating mode. I don’t have another setting. I give the fucker my full attention. I’ve been hit with a Taser before and it’s no walk in the park. Not like a good old-fashioned beating. There’s something respectable about getting hit in the face a bunch of times. Being Tased is like getting struck by lightning—and it’s a fifty/fifty whether you piss yourself or not. Fuck it, though, right? You only live once.
“Ooh, ho, ho, pops. Don’t threaten me with a good time. Come on. If you’re planning on pulling the trigger, best just get it out of the wa—”
The blow comes from behind; I don’t see it coming. A sharp, lancing pain spears me through the side, and I can’t help but lean into it, trying to make it stop. It fucking hurts. A hand clamps around the back of my neck, and the next thing I know both of them are on me, the nurse and the security guard, and they’re bodily carrying me out of the hospital.
They get me just outside the sliding doors before the nurse loses whatever weird Vulcan nerve grip he had me in and the blinding pain shuts off. I have him on the ground in a heartbeat, and then I’m laying into him with both fists. The whole thing gets messy from there. The security guard thumps me on the side of the head—not the most finessed blow in the history of brawling—but the force behind it takes me by surprise. I spin on him, snarling, and the nurse unseats me. I hit the ground hard, head spinning, and both men pull back, swearing like sailors.
