Into the Fire(43)
“In time for…?” And then, with horror, he remembered.
The fucking HOA meeting.
“We started fifteen minutes ago,” Lorilee said. “Hugh was worried you forgot.”
“No.” Evan scratched his forehead, hiding the dilated pupil. “I got hung up with a work thing. I just have to run inside to grab the…” He cringed slightly. “Nibbles.”
Mia stared at him. It seemed she couldn’t believe the word had come out of his mouth any more than he could.
He smelled of dog and sweat and vomit, so he bladed through them as swiftly as he could and fumbled the key into the lock. The internal security bars gave a clink as the lugs withdrew from the steel frame.
Peter said, “You’re missing your boot again.”
Evan looked down. “I guess that’s right.”
“This time it’s the other boot, though.”
“You’ve never lost a sock in the laundry?”
“Huh?”
“I’m kidding. It’s a new workout. Calf conditioning.” Evan was inside now, peering out, closing the door as he spoke. “I just need a … Be down in a…”
He closed the door. Put his back to it. Shot a breath at the high ceiling.
Then he ran to the bedroom. He kicked off his boot and grabbed another oversize shoe box from the closet. Pulling on the new pair, he stumbled into the Vault, grabbed a replacement RoamZone, and dumped his ARES into a medical waste bucket. On his way out, passing the bathroom mirror, he froze at the sight of the dark orb of his right eye. In the second drawer, he kept a few sets of specialized contact lenses for precisely this contingency. He popped one in, masking the damage, and immediately noticed two dark lines seeping through his shirt across the stomach.
He ripped off his shirt, exposing the claw marks from the pit-mastiff. Superficial gouges, reopened in his mad dash around the penthouse. He tore open a pack of styptic swabs that he snatched from the medicine cabinet. Grabbing two, he painted over the cuts, the sting setting his nerves on fire.
An annoying level of pain, too high to ignore, too low to take seriously.
“Ow, ow, ow.” Hopping back into the bedroom with one boot raised so he could tie the laces. Pulling on a new gray T-shirt, he sprinted to the front door. He’d just reached it when he remembered: nibbles.
Back to the refrigerator.
It held five saline bags, a jar of pearl onions, several ampoules of epinephrine, and a half-eaten doorstop of Huntsman cheese. The vegetable drawer was filled with vials of Epo, an anemia med that hastened the creation of red blood cells, kept on hand in the event of a bad injury.
Not helpful.
A sleeve of water crackers, a box of jasmine rice, and two types of lentil pasta peered back at him from the roll-out pantry. He shot a desperate glance at the living wall. Nothing there he could readily alchemize into a crudités platter.
To the fridge yet again. At the back of the top shelf stood his collection of cocktail olives. Grand Barounis, Spanish Queens, pitted Castelvetranos. He juggled the jars to the concrete island and then started slamming through the cupboards looking for any sort of serveware, as if he’d unknowingly purchased some in the event he suddenly had occasion to distribute canapés.
No appetizer bowls had magically materialized on the shelves. Water glasses would have to do.
He upended the jars over the sink, using his hand as a sieve, and jammed the olives into the glasses. All the movement made him dizzy, and he paused for a moment, leaning on the counter to catch his breath.
The freezer drawer held a murderers’ row of the world’s finest vodkas. He grabbed the Syv? because it came packaged in a manageable bottle, short and plump. Encircling the glasses with his hands, the vodka swaying beneath one fist, he hurried out the door, kneed it shut, and rode down to the ninth floor.
As he elbowed into the social room, the conversational hum halted abruptly. Evan turned to take in an array of the usual suspects rimming the oval expanse of the fine-grained conference table. More tenants stood against the walls, Ida’s mugging clearly having escalated the meeting to standing room only.
Hugh Walters was of course installed at the table’s head, a despot’s perch from which he could hold forth at length on topics ranging from parking regulations to chlorination levels in the pool.
“Delighted you could make it, Mr. Smoak,” he said. “Generally a resident makes arrangements to be here early when he is responsible for refreshments.”
Evan blinked away the rising tide of his headache. “Sorry. I got stuck with a work situation—”
“We’re all busy.” As Hugh leaned back and folded his hands, Evan sensed he was warming to a platitude. “We all have jobs and responsibilities. Everything in life boils down to priorities. It’s not like you’re a firefighter or a doctor where you can’t responsibly control your schedule.”
Evan’s grip was slipping, so he held the collection of glasses against his stomach, refusing to wince as his shirt pressed into the scrapes.
Lorilee wiggled in her swivel chair, her eyes lighting up to match her surgically fixed expression of perpetual surprise. For a moment he thought his vision was blurring again, but then he realized that was just her face. “You brought … olives?” she observed.
Evan set down his offerings with a clink. Forty or so sets of hungry eyes lasered to the woeful glasses. It was surprising how inadequate they looked there on the massive wooden table.