Color of Blood(74)

“Where are my pajamas?” she said.

“You should go home,” Dennis said. “You looked completely exhausted.”

“You’re an odd one, Dennis Cunningham.”

“I guess.”

“I would like something to eat,” she said. “And I want my pajamas. And don’t give me any more of your shit.”

Dennis gave her the same T-shirt she wore the night before, and she changed out of her clothes in the bathroom while he called room service for a salad and two more drinks.

She came out with her folded clothes, wearing only a white cotton T-shirt and her underwear.

While they waited for room service, Dennis felt the warmth of self-satisfaction spread over him. The unexpected joy of his fledgling relationship with Judy, combined with the fact that he was too preoccupied to be depressed, buoyed him immensely.

Judy had piled her jewelry together on the dresser, carefully laying out her thin gold necklace next to her earrings.

She ambled over to the bed, sat down, crossed her legs, and stretched the T-shirt edges over her knees so that it created a tentlike effect.

“I’m not going to ask you why you want Phillip’s phone numbers, and I’m not going to ask you about this bloody monstrous map and classroom notes. But Dennis, you didn’t really explain why you came back to Australia nor how you got that long, thin scab at the corner of your right eye. Looks like someone scratched you. I gather you think Garder is back here?”

There was a knock at the door, and Dennis took the tray from the food runner and paid in cash. He brought the salad and utensils to Judy on the bed and put her fresh glass of wine on the bedside table. She took the plastic wrap off the salad and attacked it.

After several bites, she said, “So?”

“So what?”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Are you going to answer every question with another question?”

“Am I?”

Judy grabbed a piece of lettuce off the plate and threw it at Dennis.

He laughed, picked up the lettuce, and put it in the bin.

“I found Garder in Europe: in Switzerland, actually. It’s a long story. I had him in front of me and was holding him at gunpoint, but he got away.”

“That’s how you got the scratch?”

He nodded.

“So you think he’s back here now?”

“No. In fact I’m pretty certain he’s not here. He’d be stupid to be here, and while I think he’s lots of things, stupid is not one of them.”

“I don’t follow you,” she said, chewing slowly. “I’m missing something. You’re chasing a fellow, and you’ve traveled all the way to Australia to find him, but you’re pretty certain that he’s not here. So you’re not really chasing the fellow.”

“Correct. My boss thinks I’m chasing Garder, but I’m no longer chasing him.”

Judy put down her fork on the edge of the white porcelain salad dish and placed the dish on the bed.

“I need a drink,” she said, turning behind her to get the glass of wine off the bedside table. “You’re making me dizzy. So are you going to tell me what you’re doing, or do I have to ask a thousand bloody questions?”

Dennis frowned. “OK. Here goes. Just do me a favor. Don’t judge me or say I’m crazy or being self-destructive. OK? That’s my therapist’s job.”

“Mmm,” she said slowly.

Dennis told her of his strange discussion with Garder in the hotel room, about the young agent’s claim that he’d discovered something very wrong going on in Western Australia and his attempts to shine a public light on the project. Judy asked him several questions, intrigued with Dennis’s narrative.

“All right, I grant you all of what you just told me, but I still don’t understand what you’re doing back in WA? Dennis, am I daft? You’re leaving something out.”

“I’m back here to discover what Garder stumbled upon in the first place,” he said. “If he found it, then I should be able to find it. Then I’ll decide what to do afterward.”

Judy slowly turned and looked at the map on the wall, and then turned back to look at Dennis. He took a sip of the Macallan he’d been nursing. She stood up and walked over to the table and sat in the chair facing him.

“Mmm,” she said, eyeing him.

“You promised not to judge me.”

“I have a headache,” she said. “Do you have any aspirin?”

“I’ll get you some.”

“Then can we go to bed?” she said. “You’re exhausting to be around.”

They did not make love that evening. Judy curled herself into a ball around one of the large decorative pillows and fell sound asleep. Looking at his watch on the bedside table, he did a quick calculation, picked up his cell phone, and moved to the table. He opened a small black leather notebook, found a phone number, and dialed it.

“Hey, Joey, it’s Dennis,” he said. “Yeah, Dennis the Menace.”

Dennis went back and forth with Joey for several minutes, exchanging gossip on which personnel were being transferred where. Judy woke at one point and took Dennis’s pillow to cover her head.

Dennis finally got to the point of the call. Would Joey do a favor for Dennis and run an activity report on two phone numbers? Dennis warned that the numbers were Australian personal mobile numbers and he gave the dates of coverage he needed. He hung up, turned off the lights, and gently recovered his pillow from Judy. She turned, threw an arm around Dennis’s chest and sighed; he was not sure whether she was awake or dreaming.