Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(62)
I woke up every fifteen minutes or so all night long, and what little sleep I snatched from the jaws of dread was sullied with dreams of gorgeous angry things with sharp teeth. Halfway through the night Monty wandered in and settled on the air mattress next to me, giving me something to focus on so I could use my mindfulness exercises.
More than once I lulled myself to sleep by focusing on deep breathing and warm fur, only to have the same dreams wake me again on a half-strangled scream.
When the darkness weakened enough that I could justifiably declare it morning, I donned my prosthetics, put on my least stained clothes, and went down to the kitchen. I still hadn’t bought any food of my own, so I was left picking through the unlabeled stuff. There was no way I was eating another bear claw after tasting one at the back of my throat for two hours on the way to Santa Barbara, so I settled on a slightly overripe banana, some saltines, and a cup of weak coffee.
Halfway through the coffee I became so suddenly, crushingly sleepy that I couldn’t even make it back up the stairs. There is no sedative that works quite so well as the aftermath of adrenaline. I face-planted on a couch in the living room and blacked out, waking only when my phone rang at a quarter to seven.
I was careful this time and gave myself a few sound slaps across the face before picking up. “Hello?”
“Millie.” It was Berenbaum. At the sound of his voice I remembered Rivenholt’s blood all over the platform. My throat closed, and my eyes filled up. “Millie?” he said again.
If I said anything, he’d know I was crying. But the silence was getting awkward, so I squeezed out a “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s the ass-crack of dawn, but I wanted talk to you before I got to work. What happened at the train station?”
“I tried to call you,” I said.
“I’m so sorry; I was up to my ass in alligators. Sweetheart—are you crying?” The softness, the lack of fear in his voice, meant he hadn’t put things together yet.
“I screwed up,” I said. “We didn’t get there in time. I think Johnny’s been hurt. I’m so sorry.” I quit pretending I wasn’t upset and just let go. He couldn’t yell at me if I was already sobbing, right?
“Millie,” he said. Firmly, bravely. As though he were about to explain to me why it was okay. But there were no facts to support that, so he just said, “Fuck work. Where are you?”
“I’m at Residence Four,” I said. If he didn’t know where that was, I was pretty sure I was not allowed to tell him.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “I am going to come get you, and we’re going to drive up the PCH, and you are going to stop crying, all right?”
I love you, I almost said.
I don’t think that the instant desperate attachment Border-lines feel really counts as love, but I had never felt any other kind of love, so I didn’t know. I knew that David Berenbaum was eventually going to break my heart, either by turning out to be a scumbag or deciding I was, but my crush on Brian Clay had been stillborn on the railroad tracks, and I was like Tarzan reaching for another vine. So I grabbed.
29
At five till eight in the morning, David Berenbaum pulled up to Residence Four in one of the most recognizable automobiles in the United States and maybe the world. When I glanced out the window and saw a flash of red in the morning sun, some eight-year-old inside of me said oh my gosh, because you don’t say holy shit when you are eight years old.
A cherry-red 1967 Plymouth Valiant convertible—the cherry--red 1967 Plymouth Valiant convertible that David Berenbaum had been driving since, well, 1967—gleamed like imminent sin at the curb. It had been the hero car in six films, two of which Beren-baum didn’t even direct. He was really pulling out all the stops to cheer me up, and I couldn’t begin to wrap my brain around why.
I opened the front door and walked carefully down the steps, leaning on my cane. By the time I stepped onto the front lawn he was out of the car, keys jingling, door slamming. He ate up the ground between us like he was the twenty something and I was the senior citizen. He swept me up in a big hug, and I laughed even through the sharp pain in my ribs.
He looked at me as he set me down; his eyes were a little misty. “You okay?”
“Weirdly great at the moment,” I said.
He put an arm around me and helped me across the lawn into the passenger’s seat. The inside was red and white as a strawberry sundae, with black analog gauges. It was inefficient and sprawling; it screamed of hubris and excess and obsolescence; it was America on wheels.
As he started up the car, the insane anachronistic engine he’d put in there rumbled like the wrath of God. And off we went.
“There’s a scarf in the glove compartment if you need it for your hair,” he said.
“You take out a lot of women in this thing?” I said playfully.
“Well, my wife,” he said. We’d just stopped at an intersection, so he turned and gave me a pointed look.
“I wouldn’t touch anything that belonged to such a classy lady,” I said, equally pointedly. “My hair will be fine.”
“You are fantastic,” he said, and the light turned green.
The traffic was not good at this hour, but who could possibly have cared? I had the whole blue California sky above me and one of the most famous men in the world sitting to my left. People were pulling out their phones to snap pictures. Twenty-four hours earlier I would have slumped down, used that scarf to hide my face, but now I just leaned my head back against the seat and enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame.