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I stomped to the back to get the mop to clean up the grounds. After I did that, I spelled Jane behind the counter. Tex cursed, banged, slammed and crashed through every cup of coffee he made, as if each creation had to be wrenched by force out of the seven-thousand-dollar machine. I tried to put this down to the fact that he was making coffee one-handed due to the sling, but it took all my willpower not to put my hands to the sides of my head and scream bloody murder.
“What’d you…”Bang!“get up to last night?”Clank!Tex asked.
“Bar brawl…”Smash!“stun-gunned a few people…”Kablam!“Lee caught some guy who jumped bond then we came home.”Crash!I answered then asked, “You?”
“After doin’ the posters, the cats and me had a quiet night.”Bam!
The morning passed relatively normally, not counting Jane and I jumping every time Tex bashed the espresso machine or cursed (which was a lot). I spent the morning trying to decide where I should go to avoid Lee for the night because, let’s face it, telling your girlfriend what to wear was bad enough. Doing it in front of someone else was a serious transgression.
If he was anyone else, he’d have his walking orders. Since he was Lee, and he loved me, and he wanted (or more to the point, wasgoing) to marry me, I was willing to be pretty fucking angry for a while and then carry a mean grudge.
I couldn’t stay with anyone I knew because Lee knew everyone I knew. This meant hotel, which was easy pickin’s. He’d probably get Brody to write some program to hack into the computer register of every hotel in Denver and find me in half an hour.
No, I needed to be clever. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that clever.
Around eleven thirty, Duke staggered in, looking hungover because he was. Duke being hungover and Tex banging on the espresso machine was not a good combination, so fifteen minutes later, Duke took off for some hair of the dog.
The coffee crowd was long gone and Tex snatched up the poster I’d pulled down. I watched him stalk outside with a staple gun to put it back on the pole. It was then I got a brilliant idea and followed him out.
“Hey, Tex,” I said.
“What?” He stapled the semi-mutilated poster so many times it was going to have to wear off the pole.
“Would you mind if I crashed at your place tonight?” I asked.
“Don’t you have a place?”
“I can’t go to my place,” I told him.
“Doesn’t your boyfriend have a place?”
“His place isn’t an option.”
Tex stopped stapling and turned to me. He watched me for a couple of seconds, ciphering something in his head, came to a decision and then shrugged.
“You can share the couch with Tiddles, Winky and Flossy.”
“Thanks.”
I had to admit, I really liked sleeping with Lee. His body was comfy, warm but strong and solid, so I felt cozy and protected all at the same time. I didn’t think Tiddles, Winky and Flossy were going to have the same effect, but it was just one night. I’d cope.
* * *
It wasthree o’clock and Duke hadn’t come back. Jane was off doing whatever Jane did when she wasn’t at Fortnum’s (I imagined her tapping away at an old electric typewriter like Angela Lansbury). I was sitting behind the book counter reading through a magazine someone had left behind, and Tex was sitting in the middle of one of the couches, looking wild-eyed and frightening.
“This is boring,” Tex said.
I looked up from the extraordinary tale of the courage of a young man faced with a rare form of cancer and then looked back down without answering.
What could I say? Itwasboring.
“Do something,” Tex demanded.
I looked up again. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know, something. Isn’t it on someone’s schedule today to kidnap you and hold you hostage?”
Oh, dear Lord.
