I woke up a few minutes past three when Jeri turned on the light by the bed and looked down at me, swaying slightly on her feet. Her hair was damp and tangly and she had a towel wrapped around her. Rain was still thundering down. I had the idiot idea that she’d been out walking in it.
“I threw ub,” she said, speaking with effort, doing a pretty good job of enunciating, all things considered.
“Did you?”
“I didn’ make id to the bathroom. The bed’s a mess.” She blinked owlishly at me.
“Why am I not surprised?”
“I toog a shower. I’m clean. Can I sleeb here, Mord, wisch you?”
“That could get complicated, Jeri.”
“You mean ’cause of Kelza?”
“Kayla.”
“I need sleeb. I’m so dizzy. I won’…try anythig, I promiz.”
“Are you all through throwing up?”
“Yes.”
I patted the bed next to me. She turned off the light and came around to the other side. I heard the towel drop, then she slid in beside me. I couldn’t tell how she was dressed, but she’d just come from a shower and all I’d seen was that towel, so odds were she was naked, which is the kind of deductive power that separates world-class PIs from your run-of-the-mill PIs.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
“I use the phone by the elevadors and call down an’ tol’ ’em I logged myself oud by assident.”
“Wearing only a towel?”
“Well, I didn’ tell ’em thad. A kid broad a mazzer key. Nod a big deal. I bet weirder things habben ’round here alla time. I mean, this is my room.”
“A kid, huh?”
“Sorta. He was like aroun’ twenny.”
No doubt Jeri had made his day, or night. For a while I listened to the downpour outside. It was a soothing sound, watery, something you don’t hear much in Reno.
“Mord?”
“Yeah?”
“Juss lizzen to id. All thad rain.”
“It’s great. Christ, I miss rain. I guess people who live here probably get sick of it, but after years of Nevada…”
“I know.” For a moment we lay there, listening to it. “Mord?”
“Yeah?”
“Could I like…hold you? Juz for a while.”
“Sure.”
She shifted in the dark, pressed herself against my side, and put an arm across my chest. I smelled rum and wine on her breath, and toothpaste, and soap. She suddenly felt more real to me, more human. Not that iron piston I thought I knew, but a young, vulnerable woman trying to get by in a rough world. Twenty-eight years old. To me she was young, but she would see herself approaching thirty. She would be staring at the hard press of time, wondering where the last five years had gone, starting to have an idea how fast the next five would go.
I thought about Kayla. Would she care about this? Hard to say. Would she understand? Hell, did I? I decided I didn’t, not entirely, but that was nothing new. I have a history of not understanding things, then having them slam into me at high speeds.
She was warm. She was wonderful. She was hard and soft and pliant and naked and everything one might hope for in a woman. This gumshoe business was definitely underrated.
I was confused as hell. I felt every breath she took. I switched off the words and listened to the rain, secure in this temporary womb, the wild din and wet of it out there beyond the windows, howling off the ocean, glad that it wasn’t a full-scale hurricane.
Jeri shifted her arm, placing her hand on my chest. Her elbow ended up touching my erection.
“Oop, sorry,” she said, moving her arm an inch.
“It’s okay. Go to sleep.”
“Not so awvly sorry, Mord.”
* * *
She drifted off.
I knew what it was, of course. Pheromones, a la Mike Hammer. Spores, burst out of an unknown pod, fatally attractive to the fair sex. I had acquired it or them that Monday when I’d woken up as a private investigator, a whole new man. It had started about then, all these women.
Before Monday—year upon year before, after Dallas divorced me—I’d lived a traditional IRS life of longing and near-celibacy. God’s curse, no doubt, as if sexual fulfillment was not meant for those who confiscated the piggy banks of eight year olds and spread misery throughout the land with the steamroller weight of the federal government behind them. But of course, the rationalization is that it’s a lousy job and somebody has to do it. Which wouldn’t be true if we had a rational tax code.
Since Monday I’d had three gorgeous women in my bed and one scantily clad beauty beckoning to me from a doorway, even if she was a scary little brat.
Greg hadn’t been wrong, the cad. He’d been trying to throw me off track, wanting to keep it all to himself. But I figured it out, Greg, you twerp. Now I know. Except you didn’t have to die. There was plenty of it to go around, enough for both of us.
So darn much of it.
* * *
I woke up at eight thirty. Jeri was still out cold. I slid quietly out of bed and hopped into the shower to wake up, running the water hot, then cold, like the night before. When I came out in a towel, she was standing at the window, looking out at the storm, wearing nothing but panties.
“How’s your head?” I asked.
She didn’t turn around. “Hurts. I’ll be okay.”
“What time’s our flight back?”
“Not till four fifteen.” Her speech had improved markedly in the past few hours.
“How’s that storm looking?”
She turned her head. “Wet. Windy.”
“Think we can make it? I’m worried about Kayla. She’s not answering the phone.”
Jeri faced the storm again. “We’ll make it. If they haven’t closed the airport.”
* * *
We ate at a place called Aleece’s. Jeri toyed with her oatmeal and toast. I had grits with butter, salt and red-eye gravy, scrambled eggs, ham, sausage, two plates of toast and strawberry jam, coffee.
“Gawd,” Jeri said, staring at her oatmeal. Her skin had a pale greenish cast.
“We oughta stay another night,” I said. “Go out drinkin’
