1.
It was cold in the apartment. Simon kept himself bundled up in the quilts and sheets like a schoolkid not wanting to face the day. He didn’t. The day was going to be just like the rest of them. Cold, long, and empty. His blood was thick and his joints hurt. He knew the bottle of oxy he’d left next to the couch would even him out, but the trip from the bed to the next room seemed like an insurmountable journey. He pulled the quilt over his head to block the winter-gray sunlight from cutting slices across his face. He had no idea what time it was. He hadn’t known the time since he hit Atlanta. It was either day or night. Cold or hot. His days were filled with absolutes. The details didn’t matter. He needed a shower. A gym. That made him laugh. He didn’t even want to walk into the next room, for fear of getting spent. A gym was just a pleasant memory of a life he had long since buried.
He wanted coffee—a hot, steaming cup of black office coffee. The kind his secretary used to bring him in the morning as he went over case files. He hadn’t craved that bitter mud in months. He didn’t think he ever would, but this morning, or whatever time it was, the thought of it was making his mouth water. Well, it made his mouth pasty anyway. There wasn’t enough water in his dehydrated husk of a body to produce any real drool. He pulled the quilt back and sat up. The bone ache from lack of hydrocodone in his bloodstream shot up his back and settled in his stiff neck. It wasn’t the thought of coffee that had him craving it. It was the smell. He could smell it. It was strong. Did he make some last night? Did he even have a fucking coffeemaker in this flop? The muted sound of footsteps and a thump from the other room answered at least part of that question. Simon reached for his gun. Then he remembered he had left it next to his pills on the sofa. Stupid. His head was pounding, but he forced himself to his feet. He was still dressed in the clothes from the day before—from the week before. A filthy blue cotton oxford and a pair of khakis complete with a belt buckle that spent the entirety of the night digging a grooved impression into his new soft white beer belly. He scratched at the red marks, half tucking his shirt in, and crept slowly to the door, pushing the throb in his joints to the back of his mind. What he saw in the kitchen made him think for a moment he might still be asleep.
A woman.
A tall, shapely woman, standing with her back to him at the kitchen sink. She was drying dishes—dishes she must have just finished washing. Her brown hair obscured most of her face, but for a moment, peering at her through the crack in the door, Simon thought he could see the scars on her cheek. He shook his head slightly and rubbed the thick crust from his eyes. When he looked again, she was still there. She moved from the sink, picked up the coffeepot, and poured the black steaming sludge into two freshly washed mugs on the counter. Simon felt himself shrink down to the size of a nine-year-old who had just woken up in the old house back in Mobile.
“Mama?” he said, barely audible.
Kate turned around and shattered the fantasy. “How pathetic,” she said. She picked up her mug, leaving the other to sit, and crossed over to the sofa. She gave it a disgusted once-over but sat anyway, blowing into her mug.
“What do you want, Kate?” Simon said. The nine-year-old boy was gone, replaced by the forty-one-year-old junkie.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I thought I knew what I was coming here for, but now I’m not so sure.”
“I know you didn’t come here to wash my dishes and make me coffee.”
“That’s true. I came here to kill you.”
Simon looked to find his gun. It was right where he’d left it, but not as he’d left it. Kate had obviously disassembled it and placed it on a dirty sofa cushion in several pieces. He also took notice of the bulge on Kate’s hip covered up by her sweater. The blood pounding in his head was a tidal wave breaking on rock.
The oxy was missing, too.
“You change your mind?” he said.
“About what?”
“About wanting me dead.”