When we get out he says, “Come by Bamboo House tonight. I’m making tamales.”
“We’ll do that,” says Candy.
I guess they go that night. When I finally wake up, Candy tells me that I’ve been out for twenty-four hours.
It’s the best sleep I ever had.
NEW CLOTHES ARE waiting for me on the kitchen table when I wake up. Boots. Leather bike pants. A new coat. And a clean Max Overdrive T-shirt. There’s a note too.
There’s coffee in the pot. Just heat it up.
I get dressed and turn on the coffeemaker. Candy comes in just as I’m pouring myself a cup. I start to pour her one too, but she shakes her head. I take a sip of mine.
“Holy shit.”
“You can taste again?” she says.
“Yeah. It’s strange. I was just a couple of days without taste or touch, and now that all my senses are back it’s like they’re all new again.”
“That sounds exciting. It almost makes me wish I could do it.”
I drink some more.
“Figure out another way than the one I used. It wasn’t worth it.”
Candy takes my hand and pulls me over to the couch. We sit down. There are coasters with cute anime creatures on the table. I set my cup down on one of those.
“It’s good to have you back,” Candy says.
“It’s amazing to be back. But listen, I’ve got to know. What ever happened with Audsley Ishii? The last thing I remember is you jumping him.”
“Yeah, that. It was a big mess,” Candy says. “Alessa was freaking out and someone called the cops. I managed to get clean clothes on before they got here. You gave me Thomas Abbot’s number, so I called him and—I don’t know how he did it—but he fixed everything with the police. No one got arrested. Then they took your body away in an ambulance.”
“And that was that?”
“And that was that. We never heard another word. I suppose Wormwood must have known about things right away. When I called the morgue about your body they said they couldn’t find it.”
I pick up the coffee and drink a little more. The heat goes through my whole body.
“Wormwood kept me on ice until they wanted me back.”
“What happened to Howard?”
I don’t want to look at her, so I look at the floor.
“It was stupid to leave with him. He tried to fuck me over, just like you said he would, but Sally saved me. No one is going to see him again.”
Candy moves the coasters around for a few seconds, then says, “Were you really going to kill yourself back at the drive-in?”
“I don’t know. I was a little crazy right then.”
“You didn’t look crazy to me. You looked like you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“You don’t get it. I went against everything I ever believed in when I threw in with Wormwood.”
She leans back against the sofa pillows.
“I would have done the same thing.”