There was a plump bouquet of white lilies on the pillow when Kit awoke the next morning, not the kind sold from umbrellas staked outside cemeteries, but natural looking, like they’d been growing in someone’s garden not long ago, damp and imperfect. Manny was in the shower. He came out of the bathroom scrubbing his hair dry with a hand towel.
“Happy Independence Day, Kitty Cat.”
Kit felt motion sick, like the room was rocking, and her eyes struggled to latch on to him. She waited, sensing he had more to say.
“Bi-cen-fuckin-tennial is what it is, 1776 to 1976. That’s a pretty goddamn auspicious date for a new start, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean, ‘new start’?” She was halfway toward puking. She could hold it off for now, but sooner or later she’d need to dash to the toilet.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said and slipped into bed, nothing on, warm and damp against her. Nothing could stop this from feeling good. She sank into the rightness of their bodies next to each other. He nested his face between her cheek and shoulder and spoke to her there, muffled and slow.
“I’m sick of these dull, dusty highways. Let’s head east. New Orleans, maybe? Miami?”
Kit pulled away a little. “What for?”
He didn’t try to close the gap, but stayed sweet. “I know what you did yesterday was hard, and I want to make it up to you, I guess.”
She tossed the lilies on the bedside table, and a couple of blossoms fell from their stems, leaving sprays of orange pollen on the carpet. “It’s fine,” she said, feeling dry and bruised. What she wouldn’t give to get back to normal and level the ground between them. But the terrain had shifted and cracked open, a black and howling gash. She did not know how to forgive him for this.
He propped up on one elbow and looked at her with plotting eyes. “Listen, I been scoping out a job. No security cameras, pretty low-tech establishment with easy access and no barrier to the cash register. It’ll be easy in and out, and we can use what we have to get to New Orleans, or wherever you want to go.”
She couldn’t deny the pull of erasing everything, starting over somewhere else, with him. Together.
He was looking at her now with the challenge of adventure, with a doting twinkle that felt like family. “What do you say, Ki’ Cat?” he said and laid his palm open on the bed, as if inviting a bird to land. Knowing full well she was throwing herself across the chasm, she hooked her leg into his and rolled toward him, letting him wrap her in his arms. She rested there in numbing comfort, taking in the clean smell of lemons and fresh soap, almost forgetting yesterday.
He held her behind the neck with one hand and kissed her, then nibbled around her ear, brushed his cheek against her hair. She lay there, not giving back, but not pushing him away. She was stuck there wondering how she was going to leave the loving behind. She felt so different now, and yet he looked the same as always. It was as if she were changing around him, a fixed object in time and space. Maybe he had been twenty-five when she met him? She didn’t trust herself to know. He had just been a grown-up. A guardian, maybe. Then, her partner. And now she didn’t know what to call him.
He ran his other hand across her thigh, then up over her hip and rested on her stomach.
“You did the right thing, Kitty,” he murmured in her ear, his breath hot. “This is how it’s supposed to be, just us two.”
She didn’t want to be reminded of yesterday, of what he had asked her to do. She pushed his hand off her stomach and rolled away.
“I don’t want to go out today,” she said.
He seemed to tense up. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not feeling so good,” she said, bringing her knees to her chest. “I just want to stay here and sleep or something.”
He was eyeing her, reading her. She could feel him turn hateful. Then he pushed her off the bed and onto the floor. She reached out to protect her belly and landed on her hands and knees. She teared up. It wasn’t the fall, but the ugliness behind the push that hurt.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? I said it was an easy run. I said we start fresh, go wherever you like. I thought you’d be grateful,” he said, his outrage turning bitter.
Normally she would fight back, but she didn’t want to take any risks. She stood up and got dressed, then she closed the bathroom door, turned on the fan, and threw up as quietly as she could. She brushed her teeth and rinsed her face, then went out and sat down on the bed next to Manny.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m feeling better now. Let’s go do this thing.”
Manny sat facing the window, a glass in one hand, a bottle in the other. In the time she had been in the bathroom, he had drunk the top three inches off a fifth of whiskey.
“As you wish, your fuckin’ highness,” he said, tucked the bottle under his arm, took his gun from the dresser, and went to the car.
Kit tipped her head to catch the wind as they sped down the interstate later that afternoon. It tugged at the skin on her cheeks, ruffled the short fur on her head, the freshness of the air a balm to the nausea that threatened with every bump to blow her cover. She hoped she could hold it in until Manny was gone. He couldn’t know she was still carrying their child. Her child, she reminded herself. He had signed away his privileges the day he told her to get rid of it.
Manny tippled the whiskey and set the bottle back between his legs. Steppenwolf was on the radio, electric guitars grinding, vocals long and loud. He was edgy as hell. And drunk. And once he got this way, there was no way to manage him unless she could get him so wasted he passed out. They had a rule against drinking before work—his rule—but it would do no good to remind him of that now.
Kit angled her ear toward the wind to block out the music and Manny.
Up ahead, a veteran in jean shorts and a GI jacket waved a half dozen sparklers in each hand, hawking his scant assortment of fireworks. Even at this speed she could tell he was off, some distant scene rattling around in his body, jerking and weaving like he had extra joints.
“Look at that crazy motherfucker,” Manny said, leaning on the horn. “Someone ought to put him out of his misery.” The man shot up his middle finger, grabbed his crotch, and humped the air. Kit turned around as they sped past and watched him light a bottle rocket. It screamed and burned a brilliant red, spiraling toward them before bursting into a spray of crackling sparks.
They were passing a roadside joint called Stoker’s BBQ when Manny took a hard right into its dirt parking lot. The rear tires skidded, and they fishtailed, sending up a cloud of dust. Manny laughed as he wrestled the car back in line, then braked to a sudden stop.