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Yet here he was, getting out the bottles. Re-reading those labels.
No.Aside from possible side effects—like, say, death—he had a creeping sense that if he drove Rudy underground, the guy would really be able to fuck with him. At least when Rudy was in his face, he could see what he was dealing with. Who knew? He was feeling his way.He wasn’t great at introspection. He liked action. Constant, restless motion.
Don’t think about it. Shine it on.The hole in his belly was deep enough as it was. Just stay shallow, that was the trick. Babbling brook shallow. He was great at that. Ask any of his ex-girlfriends.
He batted the bottles aside with the back of his hand, and kept digging. Found some aspirin, swallowed it dry, and turned on the water, to wash that fried look off his face. Maybe he could sneakily do for himself what Kev had done for him years ago. Kev had researched lucid dreaming, speed reading hundreds of books and medical journals. Every night, Kev made him practice kung fu forms in the wide part of the alley out back, behind the diner, practicing stepping back from the cage of the monkeys. And after, Kev sat next to Bruno’s bed as he went to sleep, helping him visualize Rudy putting down his weapons and fading away. Imagining that booming voice getting softer, until it disappeared.
Then Kev stretched out with a blanket, and slept on the floor. And when Bruno had the nightmare, Kev woke him, and did it again. Every night, for months. And bit by bit, it started to work. A night would go by, no dream. Then another. Bruno stopped freaking out in school, for the most part. He’d stopped getting straight D’s and F’s. He’d never gotten particularly good at sleep, being hyperactive by nature, but it was better. And finally, the dreams stopped altogether. He was cured.
Or so he thought, until a couple of months ago.
He could make a recording similar to Kev’s mesmerizing monologue, and hypnotize himself, as Kev had hypnotized him. Problem was, he suspected it was the force of Kev’s will that made the technique work. Kev had been a bulwark by his bed. No one messed with Kev.
But Rudy knew damn well he could mess with Bruno. No lame guided visualization with waves crashing and birds chirping was going to change that. But what could he do? Call Kev, bleating for him to come home, tuck Bruno into bed? Whining to be rescued, like the zinged out twelve-year-old dingbat he’d been when Kev met him?
No. Grow up. Get a spine transplant. Get the fuck over it.
He muscled himself into the shower and slumped against the tiles for support. Let the water beat down against his closed eyelids.
Move your pansy ass, Ranieri. You’re on a schedule.He almost laughed. Tony, again. Made him nostalgic, to channel the old guy’s brusque rudeness. Aw, to hell with sleep. Kev would be back soon, for the wedding that Edie’s terrifying aunt was planning for Kev and Edie in a few weeks. He could talk to Kev between tux fittings, wedding rehearsals, dinners, showers and all that standard nuptial fluff.
In the meantime, he’d face his monsters like a man.
Brave words, dude. Brave words,an inner voice commented.
So?he shot back.Shut the fuck up, or say something useful.
He listened in the silence for more, as he got get ready, but surprise, surprise…the little voice said nothing further.
CHAPTER2
Lily Parr stared into her laptop. The taxi’s swerving on the bends in the highway was making her queasy, but she powered on. Nausea was nasty, but if she shut the laptop and closed her eyes, she’d have to think about what she was doing. And the way it made her feel.
She’d rather cram psych texts into her brain until there was no room for so much as a fleeting thought. After all, she had six years worth of studying to do in four short days for the grad thesis she was writing. A steep learning curve, but the guy who’d hired her to write it for him had forked over the fifty percent in cash she asked for up front this very morning, thank God, so she was committed. With that, plus the other fees she’d scraped together, letting utility bills slide and paying the minimum on her maxed-out credit cards, she’d covered the monthly fee for Aingle Cliff House, Howard’s private clinic. Assuming she didn’t need to buy anything frivolous, like subway fare or groceries until some fresh fees trickled in. But when they did, she’d already be budgeting for next month’s check. She wasn’t sure what was left in the dark corners of the pantry, but she was going to get friendly with it this week. And who needed subway fare? She could walk. As far as she needed to. Her thighs could use the workout.
She muscled her mind back to the screen. The trick was to keep her mind constantly applied, like a pen that did not dare leave the paper. If only she could forget she had a body. Just be a vaporous cloud. Things would be simpler. Talk about saving on the grocery bill. Her inconvenient body was the medium through which feelings made themselves known. She hadn’t been able to afford feelings since she was ten, but they never figured out that they weren’t welcome. Clueless.
Ironic, to be writing a thesis in psychology. A crash course in the inner workings of the human brain, yay. That stuff belonged to the category of things that she could not afford to personally worry about. Like, for instance, the fact that a guy who’d paid another person to study for him, take his exams for him and write his papers and his graduate thesis for him, was about to graduate with a Ph.D, probably cum laude, thanks to Lily, and then go out and find work in the field of psychology, perhaps diagnosing or even treating people.
Yep. She, Lily Parr, had made that scenario possible.
Too bad. She pushed it away. She hadn’t chosen to do this. It just happened, and then it snowballed, and now she had no way out, not with Howard to take care of. The world was a shitty place, and she was sorry, but an ethical dilemma was another luxury she could not afford.
It was better than robbing banks, or dealing drugs. It really was.
The last paper she’d been paid to write had been on ethics. Hah. But at least a false ethicist wasn’t likely to hurt anybody once he was unleashed upon the world. There had been some small comfort in that.
Every month, she pulled together the many, many thousands of bucks, plus her own cruelly pared down living expenses on top of it, and forked the dough over to the professionals who’d promised to watch her father like a hawk twenty-four hours a day to make sure he didn’t kill himself.
She’d put Howard in less expensive facilities before Aingle Cliff, and every time he’d managed to get his hands on some pills and swallow them. God knew how. But he’d been at Aingle Cliff for four years now, and they’d kept him under control. So far, so good.
Not that one could really describe the situation as ‘good.’ Good in the sense of, ‘not dead.’ Everything was relative.
So here she was, for the monthly torture. Checkbook at the ready. Stomach in knots. Locking Howard up was all she could do. She couldn’t help him any other way. She’d almost killed herself trying when she was young and dumb. She knew about addiction, codependency, blah blah blah. She’d written papers about it, taken online exams. On behalf of others, of course. She knew the material. She got it already.
Her presence was not a comfort to Howard. He never asked her to come. In fact, he begged her to stay away. Real ego-pumper, that one. Her own father, pleading for her not to visit him.
So why did she feel compelled to visit every month?
