Coyote Dreams. C.E. Murphy
anymore. Violently was the key word: there were two people dead because I’d refused to step up to the plate when I should have. So much as I wanted to take my slipper and drive Mitch out of my apartment with it, I kind of thought maybe I should do something adult and sensible, like own up to my great, huge, flaming mistake and try to cope.
The tire iron reasserted its presence in my skull. I groaned and grabbed my head, trying to focus on a cool, silver-blue flutter of power that typically resided beneath my breastbone. A hangover, in a mechanic’s parlance, was essentially an overheated engine—dehydration in any form fit nicely into that analogy—and helping someone recover from dehydration was in my bag of tricks. I called on that power, for once selfishly glad to have access to it.
Absolutely nothing happened.
No, that wasn’t true. Reluctance happened, a feeling I’d encountered once before, when I tried healing a knife cut on my cheek. That cut had left a scar when being stabbed through the chest by a four foot sword hadn’t: my newly-awakened power’s way of announcing that it thought some things should be acknowledged and dealt with on a purely human level.
Apparently hangovers fell into that category, too.
I whimpered and dared peek at myself in the mirror while I got a glass of water and fumbled for aspirin. Aside from the sleepy eyes, I didn’t look nearly as awful as I thought I should. In fact, between the tan, the mussy hair and what could reasonably be called a rosy, satisfied glow, I actually looked sort of hot. As in sexy, not overheated, the latter of which being how I’d normally use the word. The robe was even this nice soft mossy green that played up the hazel in my eyes.
Mitch or Matt or Mark or whatever the hell his name was, appeared in the reflection behind me. He’d put his jeans on and left the top buttons undone, which was possibly more distracting than him being naked. My eyes just sort of slid right down his torso and fixated at that little flat bit of belly before more interesting things got started.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got any more of those?” he asked in a woeful little-boy voice. I flinched, slammed the aspirin with a gulp of water and handed him the mug without rinsing it or refilling it. Ordinarily I’d think that was gross, but under the circumstances, being squeamish about swapping a few bodily fluids seemed hypocritical. Matt seemed to feel the same way, because he took the cup without comment and put out his other hand for some aspirin. I dropped two in his palm and he popped them, then sagged against the bathroom wall with a groan and extended the mug again. “More,” he pleaded, putting enough pathos into the croaked word that I erupted a startled giggle. He gave me an adorable wan grin in return and I got him some more water, then took the cup back and drank another fourteen ounces myself. When I was done I felt like my equilibrium had been restored, which I knew perfectly well was a big fat lie, but I planned to run with it, anyway.
“So.” I leaned on the counter and looked at his reflection behind me. He was taller than I was by at least three inches. I couldn’t remember having ever slept with somebody who was taller than me before.
For that matter, I still couldn’t.
My brain went augh again and I squinched my face up. Mike’s reflection made concerned eyebrows at me. “So,” he echoed, as if it might smooth my features out again. It worked, because I forced my own eyebrows up to make myself stop squinting.
“What was your name again?”
“Mark.”
“Mark. Right.” I pressed my lips together, staring at our reflections. He looked sort of woeful and cute and headachy, and throwing him out seemed kind of like kicking a puppy. “I don’t suppose you can cook, Mark.”
He gave me a big bright grin in the mirror. “Just tell me where the kitchen is.”
The problem with my kitchen was it didn’t have anything to cook in it. Mark slapped around the linoleum floor barefoot and cast me looks of unmitigated dismay as he opened cupboards that would do Old Mother Hubbard proud. His butterfly shifted subtly with the play of muscle in his shoulder, as if it might wing away from his skin. I watched it and mumbled, “There are toaster waffles in the freezer.”
It was the best I could do. I had no raw ingredients in my apartment; the only reason there were eggs was my weakness for fried-egg sandwiches. That was as close to cooking as I got. The rest of it was frozen dinners and canned soup. Even the frozen dinners were a real step up for me. A year ago it’d been all about the macaroni and cheese. Since then I’d met a seventy-three-year-old man whose physique put mine to shame, so I’d started making an effort to eat meals that at least came supplied with a serving of vegetables. The seventy-three-year-old looked pleased, then started nagging me about my sodium intake. I couldn’t win.
“How can you have that body and nothing but junk food in your cupboards?” Mark asked when he’d finished looking behind every door in the kitchen. I looked down at my terry-cloth-clad self and wrinkled my forehead.
“That body?” I knew I’d lost some weight, but the way he said it you’d think I was a cover model. “I walk a lot at work,” I added lamely. “Beat cop.”
“It’s not nice to beat cops,” he said, mock-severely. I blinked, and a smile swam into place. At least if I was picking guys up in fits of drunken idiocy, they were not only handsome, but also even mildly clever.
Speaking of which. “How, um. I mean, who, um. I mean, um.” Okay, only one of us got the Mildly Clever Badge for the morning, and it sure wasn’t me.
“Barb Bragg is my sister,” he volunteered, somehow managing to translate my garbled question into something coherent. “Redhead? Yea tall?” He made a gesture around five and a half feet from the floor, and took a frying pan out of my cupboard. “She’s got some buddies in the North Precinct and got invited along to the barbeque. I tagged along. Never could resist a woman in uniform.”
I stared at his shoulders. Nice wide world-supporting shoulders that tapered into a narrow waist and hips that—“I wasn’t in uniform,” I muttered. He flashed a grin over his shoulder at me. His teeth were very slightly crooked. It was the only thing that saved him from sheer perfection. He couldn’t possibly be real, although my dreams weren’t usually this good. “Are you actually real?”
“Guess I can’t resist a woman out of uniform, either. Leastways not when she can out-arm-wrestle me.” He did a double take at me. “Am I real? I dunno. Did you want an after-party drunken philosophy answer, or just my driver’s license?”
“The license would be great.” I was pretty sure the average godling or demon or monster under the bed didn’t carry one, although I hadn’t thought to ask any of the ones I’d met. I’d try to remember, next time. Mark arched an eyebrow, then took his wallet out of his back pocket and tossed it to me.
I opened it and pulled out an Arizona state driver’s license that had a relievingly bad picture of Mark, along with his birth date—he was two years younger than me—and an organ donor’s stamp. A knot I didn’t know was there untied beneath my heart. I could look up his license number at the precinct, but the fact that he even had ID was an awfully good start. I put it away and let out a fwoosh of air. “Did I really beat you arm wrestling? You must’ve been really shitfaced.” My biceps weren’t sore and I was sure I didn’t have the upper-body strength to match his smooth muscles in a fair fight.
Not sore seemed rather important there for a moment, but Mark laughed, which was surprisingly distracting. He looked even brighter and prettier when he laughed, just all-around sparkling with geniality. I kind of liked it.
“Either that or I know what hill to die on.” In the time it’d taken me to peruse his ID, he’d taken over my kitchen, and now appeared to be making omelets. I hadn’t known I had omelet fixings, but he was managing. Omelets with chili and cheese, no less. And toast. He’d even taken a can of orange juice out of the freezer. Maybe I needed to get drunk and pick guys up more often. I’d never managed to get such a babe to sluff around my kitchen half naked when I’d tried sober dating. Not that I’d done that for a while, either.
“Your