The Sound of Broken Ribs(54)

He chuckled softly. “I think I should be thanking you. You know us guys can’t go long without—”

“Hush. Don’t ruin the moment.”

He shut up.

She rolled onto her side. Her hip throbbed, but the pain was manageable for now. She’d take a Percocet afterward if the pain didn’t drain away.

She said, “I meant, thank you for wanting me.”

He rolled to face her, his face bright in the darkness—her beacon. Her lighthouse. “Why wouldn’t I want you?”

She waggled her stump at him.

He shrugged. “You’re more than an arm to me. You could be a head on a stick and I’d still love you.”

Lei laughed and said, “Nothing but blowjobs, then. Lucky guy.”

He didn’t join her in laughing. “I mean it. It might sound disturbing, saying I’d love a head on a stick, but what I love is up here.” He touched her temple with the tips if his fingers. “I love all of you, Lei.”

“Oh, you.” She reached down and gripped his limpness. It wasn’t limp for long. “How about that blowjob?”

“Not gonna argue with a woman on a mission.”

Now, on the plane from New York to California, Lei realized she had tears in her eyes. She swiped the corners and under her eyes with the skill of a woman used to wearing heavy makeup. She didn’t leave so much as the slightest smear. She steeled herself. Last thing she wanted was to devolve into a crying jag in public.

From the corner of her blurry vision, she caught the boy with the bowl cut staring again. She didn’t startle him this time. She allowed him to look. The curiosity of childhood would be soon enough lost. Was likely already being taken from him by constant parental demands of “Quit staring, it’s rude!” Lei, however, had grown used to being ogled by horny men and stared at by jealous women long before she’d lost her arm. Now people stared for other reasons. It still didn’t bother her though. A look didn’t hurt. Neither did words as long as you didn’t give them power.

Lei had known true agony. Looks and statements would never match the pains of which she had been introduced to. She had lain in a hospital bed for an entire month, was only allowed up after her hip started to heal. The pain of walking the halls, shuffling along with a walker in front of her, bracketed on either side by physical therapists in blue scrubs repeating platitudes the likes of “You can do it!” and “Look at you!” while she shuffled on, sobbing, had taught her that Hell didn’t reside in some netherworld outside of her current reality. Hell was not knowing when—or even if—the pain would end. Hell was a CPM machine forcing her knee to bend against its will. Against her will. Hell was the idea that she might never again walk unassisted.

Hell was in the mind.

The boy continued to stare. Lei continued to face forward. But she cocked her eyes in his direction, far enough to see that he was no longer looking at her prosthetic. He was looking higher. Not at her face though. A little lower than that.

She cut her eyes down to her right shoulder.

Four black fingers rested on her shoulder. The sharp yellow nails looked matte in the diffused light of the cabin. Lei reached up and patted the back of the hand with her own. The fingers, one by one, drew themselves out of sight.

Lei woke with a start. She jerked forward and the seat’s harness caught her.

“Whoa, whoa! You okay?” the pilot asked. He was a middle-aged man, about as unremarkable as middle-aged men come, too: Caucasian, brown hair, sharp chin, blunt nose. He had a wedding band on his ring finger and scars on the backs of his knuckles that made Lei think he’d seen his fair share of tussles in his younger years.

The distressing part about him was that, no matter how hard Lei tried to conjure him from her memory, nothing came. She remembered leaving the hotel in New York and taking a taxi to the airport. But after that? Nothing.

Lei, confused, looked around the chartered jet’s tiny cabin. The world outside was dark and speckled with stardust. Inside, the cabin was illuminated with the alien-green glow coming off the dash. Lei glanced out the window, saw a layer of clouds below them, and sat back hard in her seat.

“You okay?” the pilot asked once more.

“Yeah. Yeah. Where are we?”

“Over Colorado. We’ll be in Ontario in a little over an hour.”

“Good deal.”

The pilot smiled. “You can go back to sleep if you want.”

“No. No, that’s all right. I think I’ve slept enough for one lifetime.

The pilot’s only answer was a chuckle.

Lei glanced out the window once more, half expecting to see two yellow eyes glaring back at her from the dark early morning sky. But there were only stars. Beyond that, who knew what lurked in the void.

*

Belinda’s finger burned as if she’d dunked it in molten steel. As of now, her bandage was half a roll of toilet paper. She’d wrapped the thin sheets around and around until the blood no longer seeped through. She’d need stitches and antibiotics, but that would have to wait.

“She’s dead,” Carl said for the hundredth time.

He sat on the floor with his back against the door to the bathroom, knees to his chest. Several times, Belinda had caught him crying. Not sobbing. Nothing as severe as that. But, twice, he’d had tears slowly scrolling down his cheeks. He would catch her watching and swipe them away.