Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(2)

But he never killed Rudy in the dream, even if he landed a perfect blow. The bastard just winked out of existence, and a fresh, unharmed Rudy popped out from another direction. The video game from hell, but somebody with a forked tongue was plugging in the quarters.

He fought grimly on, ducking, lunging, slashing, punching, and kicking, then Rudy cloned himself into six Rudys, and they slammed him all at once, knocking him to the ground—

The images broke apart, fighting to maintain their space in his head, but waking reality rushed in through the cracks.

Ouch. It should have been a relief, but God, his head. It throbbed, like he’d been clobbered with a bat. His heart banged against his ribs.

He’d hit the floor. That was what had wakened him. He was on the floor, next to his bed. He was Bruno Ranieri, and he was thirty-two, not twelve, and this was his own king-sized bed, in his own condo, not Mamma’s tenement apartment in Newark. The sweat-soaked sheet wound like a noose around one ankle was custom-made high-thread-count Egyptian cotton. His picture window framed the pink-tinted Portland skyline and a view of Mount Hood, not a sooty brick wall over a cluster of garbage cans. No drunken Rudy bellowing through thin walls as he beat up Mamma. He stared around at his own space, his own life.

Tried to believe it. To own it.

He gasped for breath. Hoarse rasps. Drenched with sweat, muscles twitching like he’d been electrocuted. He pried the twisted sheet off his ankle and sprawled flat against the cool wooden floor.

It was all behind him now. Rudy was dead, decades ago. Uncle Tony had seen to it. Mamma was dead, too, eighteen years ago. Nothing could hurt her anymore.

Just . . . a . . . f*cking . . . dream. Long past. Dead and gone.

He’d moved on, gotten his shit together. He was not that helpless boy anymore. He deepened his breathing, got up on wobbly legs. He’d use the tricks Kev had taught him. When you can’t stand what’s happening in your head, float back from it, Kev always said. Three steps. Turn down the volume. Then look at it. Idly curious. It’s just a bunch of monkeys fighting in a cage. Stupid. Irrelevant. Can’t hurt you.

He stumbled into the living room, air cooling his naked skin. The city lights reflected off the broad swath of planked flooring. He sank down into horse stance and began the kung fu forms Kev had taught him. His legs shook, and monkeys screeched and flailed in their cage for a while, but eventually, he got where he needed to be. One with the night, crouching, leaping, punching. Black panther climbs the tree. Crane guards his nest. Crane flies into the sky. Wild tiger raises his head. Golden dragon stretches his left claw. Time flowed, smoothing.

Buzzzz. Buzzzz. Who the hell would call at this ungodly hour? Oh, man. Maybe it was Kev. The blaze of hope broke his mellow Zen trance, had him leaping for the phone like a fish for a bug. “Yeah?”

“It’s Julio.” The cigarette-roughened voice of the fry cook at Zia Rosa’s restaurant rasped uncomfortably over Bruno’s nerve endings.

Bruno’s stomach thudded down a couple notches. Not Kev.

Of course not. Why would Kev call? He was traveling the globe with his true love, Edie. Tied up in erotic knots on some sugar sand beach under the moonlight. Which was fine. Bruno was thrilled for that. He’d hoped and schemed to get Kev happy, smiling, sexually fulfilled. He loved that scenario, loved it. Kev deserved blithering happiness and nonstop screaming orgasms after the horrific shit he’d been through.

But those dreams, man. Kev was the only person Bruno could talk to about that stuff. Kev had saved him, back when he was thirteen. He’d been wild-eyed and desperate with the grinding, constant Rudy nightmares. At the time, the idea of throwing himself under a bus had been looking kind of restful. Kev had understood that. The way he understood everything. He’d saved Bruno’s ass, so many times, on so many levels.

But then, Kev was a freaking genius. Nobody argued with that.

“. . . is the matter with you, man? Do you even hear me?”

Bruno shook himself out of his daze and tried to zero in on Julio’s grating monologue. “Sorry. Still half asleep. What did you say?”

“I was saying that Otis didn’t come in tonight at all, and Jillian called, said she can’t make it in at six, either, and I am so done, man. I’ve been here for twelve and a half hours.”

“Not coming in? What’s the matter with those guys?”

Julio grunted. “I don’t know or care, buddy. Call ’em yourself if you’re curious. But I’m outta here, at six sharp. Closing the place up and locking the door. Just lettin’ ya know.”

Bruno glanced at the clock again, calculating dressing time, driving time. “Make it six thirty?”

Julio paused, considering it. “On the nose, dude,” he growled.

Click. Julio was gone. Bruno let the phone drop, slid down the wall until his naked butt hit the floor. Great. An extra shift at the diner. This negated the mellow kung fu vibe in one crushing blow.

There was no logical reason to be so uptight about closing Tony’s Diner while he scoured the city for some decent waitstaff. But the place had been a fixture in his life since Mamma sent him there at age twelve, right before all the bad stuff happened. Bruno had worked there throughout his adolescence, bussing plates, waiting tables.

Thirty years ago, after Vietnam, Uncle Tony decided that he wanted to run a food joint in his adopted West Coast city of Portland, Oregon. A no bullshit place that slung great hash twenty-four-seven, like the diners of his youth in New Jersey and New York. Where a guy working swing shift could get great fries or chops anytime, day or night. He’d persuaded his unmarried sister, Bruno’s Zia Rosa, to move out and help. Zia had added her own heroic efforts to the production of food that made your taste buds burst into six-part harmony while simultaneously clogging your arteries with deadly plaque.