“Shady, I don’t know what to do here.” I’m the epitome of the phrase stuck between a rock and a hard place. For the first time in my life, I am lost.
“I’ll find something, Dirk. I swear. I’ll find something more important to them than money, more than Texas, and more than you.”
—
I hang up the phone and make my way back to Saylor. I have a woman who needs me. I’ve made a promise to her. She trusted me when I gave her my word that I would be there until the end. But I’m terrified that death is knocking on my door.
I finally have a real purpose in this life. I can’t be defeated. I can’t give up. I know Shady will do everything he can, but I’m afraid it might not be enough. Before I’m opening the door to the small chapel provided at the clinic, I’ve got a plan forming for death if he comes. And I’m calling in a favor.
22
I MAKE IT back to Saylor just as they are unhooking her. She is all smiles until she sees my face. When her brow wrinkles, I force the corner of my lip to turn up, and diminish all thoughts but her from my mind.
She looks fine. Great. Better even, but I know all that can change in a matter of minutes. I ask her how it went and she tells me all about the new people she met. Apparently, she is now on a first-name basis with everyone she will be sharing a room with every Friday.
She talks animatedly about her plans to brighten up the room, and has already talked to the doctor and gotten his approval. She even contacted the art department at Jackson State University, and they promised to have her request filled by Thursday of next week. The local Home Depot would be donating the supplies, and she asks me to forgive her for using up some of her charm to convince the manager to do it. I do, of course, and then wonder if the manager was a man and if she was using the word charm instead of flirt to keep me from paying him a visit. I decide that the excitement Saylor has about her project is more important. At least the “charming” was done over the phone.
She wants ice cream, and I drive through Dairy Queen and am introduced to the Peanut Buster Parfait. It’s the most delicious fucking thing I’ve ever tasted, other than Saylor, and we agree to make it part of our Friday post-treatment routine.
When we get back to Saylor’s apartment, Donnawayne and Jeffery are there waiting. Because we flew home and Saylor doesn’t have a car here, we borrowed theirs for the day. Shady was driving ours back from Nevada. He claimed he would be here in the morning. I sure as hell hope so. Driving a hybrid was sucking all the masculinity out of me.
While Saylor told Donnawayne and Jeffery about her visit, I stepped outside to call Shady back. But not before kissing Saylor’s lips and telling her to holler if she needed me. This earned me a sigh from Jeffery and an eye roll from Donnawayne. Even after everything, he still didn’t like me. I started to tell him that the fucking shirt he was wearing so proudly was bought with the money someone paid me to kill a man that looked similar to him, but then thought better of it. I didn’t want to upset Saylor.
—
“What was wrong today?” Saylor asks while we are lying in bed. I’m rubbing her naked thigh, staring at the ceiling while she writes in her diary. I want to tell her the truth, but I can’t.
“How do you feel?” I ask, avoiding her question. She gets it and doesn’t push the issue.
“I feel great. I have tons of energy.” We both know that this won’t last long. The doctor warned us that the steroids would give her a false sense of well-being and to not overdo it just because she felt good.
“You still drinking?” I ask, catching a peek of her bare ass as she leans over and grabs her half-empty bottle of Gatorade off the nightstand.
“Yep.” She turns the bottle up and drains it. Glad I have something to do, I get up to get her another one out of the fridge. My job as a Nomad was to always pay attention to my surroundings. I heard things and noticed things that wouldn’t attract most people’s attention. So when I hear the sound of muffled voices outside the kitchen window, I know they are not the voices of Saylor’s neighbors.
Even though the next-door neighbors often hang out on their back patio this time of night, and their sound often travels through our kitchen, I can decipher between what is and isn’t familiar to me. And these are the voices of people I’m not familiar with.
I walk casually back to the bedroom and stand in the door, waiting for Saylor to notice me. Within seconds she looks up and smiles, then I watch her face fall and head nod when I put my finger over my lips. I walk to the bed, making sure to put my body between her and the window, and take her hand, leading her into the bathroom, where there are no windows.