Chapter 9
CHARY
Noonish, still in the rooming house, still exhausted, Chary was awake and shaving, dealing with plenty of mixed feelings toward Laurie—no, the anti-capitalist reporter.
Lawrence Tulley. Gratitude to be able to razor himself smooth.
Slight humiliation because of his failure to achieve it on his own.
Unease, too: a scaleless, fleshy kind that must’ve been an aftereffect from vulnerable arousal.
He hadn’t had too much practice being brought to stiff breathlessness and then dumped forthwith upon the bed.
And now…
Chary shifted on the little vanity chair.
Now, yes, still also arousal. His prick was uncaring that the reporter would ruin him, given the chance, or that he thought Chary capable of murdering two of his coworkers.
(Employees?) It remembered only the solid, warm feel of Laurie’s hands on his skull, the chills that had sparked every nerve in his skin to exquisite sensitivity.
Remembered the yearning to be touched that he’d forgotten existed but had grown like a molten bubble, shattering and leaving a deep imprint behind.
A knock on the door.
Chary checked his wristlet watch. It was only eleven forty-nine, barely two hours since Laurie had left, but it had to be him; no one else knew he was there.
Chary toweled off, made sure his trousers were decent, thought briefly on whether to pull on a shirt—why bother, if the man had already seen him at a stand and gasping? —and opened the door.
“Hel— Oof.”
A day of firsts. He’d never been punched in the gut before.
The surprise of it tossed him back into the drawers of the vanity, sending bottles and combs and the shaving basin skittering; water splattered across the floorboards that his face shortly met.
“Wha—” Dirty boots followed him into the little room, and then Chary was lifted, and the vanity mirror spiderwebbed between his forehead and the plaster wall as it shattered.
He groaned, fogging the glass, and went limp.
His assailant paused to breathe ominously and peer at him, probably to see if he lived, which seemed good: perhaps it meant he might not have been intent on murder.
At least not immediate murder. That would’ve been a bullet in his head. Wouldn’t it have been?
He was thrown down onto the wet, muddy floor and kicked, and he quickly revised his assessment of the situation. It was murder, just a quieter, slower kind.
Four dead gaffers—Laurie would come back to find another one. At least he would know Chary wasn’t behind it this time. Or maybe they’d take his body and he’d go “missing” too.
The towel was in his hand.
He rolled free of the vicious steel-toe, sheltering briefly under the iron bedframe; he crawled out the other side, half his face fuzzed with dust. He heaved up, threw himself halfway onto the vanity, slammed the towel flat against the mirror his forehead had broken—such a loss.
He pried loose a shard, kicking, tearing his head free against the man’s renewed grip on his hair—he had a forearm as hard as iron—and swung backward.
“Shit!” The man saw it and reacted, jerking back, but not in time; Chary had a long reach. He hit something warm and fleshy and tendon-taut.
Beautiful substance, glass. Versatile. Chary dug in, half-hoping for an artery—frantic blows fell upon his head, fingers reaching, scraping at his neck, pushing him down—and hot blood soaked the towel; he didn’t know whose. Chary twisted his wrist.
The man screamed and let him go, staggering back. Red streaked the matelassé unevenly, a rogue dye job. The man fell over the edge of the bed and stayed there, squashed between the frame and the wall, twitching and gasping, pleading for breath. “Wait—” His speech grew fainter, more slurred. “Wait…”
There was blood everywhere.
Blood loss, Chary thought dimly. Exsanguination. Now I have murdered someone.
What had he done?
Wheezing, he picked himself up from the floor. He had no idea how he’d gotten there again.
The worst part of a fight, he decided, was the awful dizzied unmoored-ness, the blood-dark ignorance of which way was what, where escape hid, so the mere possibility of it was a relief.
He ran, limping, tallying more bruises with every step, and found escape three flights later in the morning-sun-lit front door.
There in the doorway, of course, was Laurie, arriving. He stood, one foot on the step, hands in pockets of an immaculate linen suit of a gray that wasn’t his color, his hair neat with pomade. His brown eyes widened as he took in Chary’s sideways stumble across the threshold.
“Holy sh— Chary? Chary!”
His name, used intimately, like nothing. Had Laurie been lying in wait? Had he set him up? The coincidence of their meeting, Laurie following him, now this?
No. Two minutes to noon now, he saw, swiping across the smeary, bloodied face of his watch; Laurie was merely right on time. And his whole person was shocked. Chary’s whole person said to him clearly, even in delirium: safe. Safe safe safe.
“Laurie,” he croaked, not like nothing.
Laurie swore, then he was there beside him, holding him up by an elbow, dragging him across the street and onto the sidewalk opposite, saying things Chary couldn’t hear through the gradual, muting rush of shock.
Chary gripped his sleeve hard and leaned over. He gasped, “Head hurts.”
He was sick in front of some cemetery hortensias and then knew nothing at all.