I suddenly realized that the balcony doors weren’t open, they were gone, without even any shards left around the edges. Which probably explained why there was a guard out there, every two feet, smoking and drinking and testing the weight-bearing limits of Dante’s architecture.
Considering who had built this place, I’d have been worried if I were them. But if they were, or if they were freaking out about the events that were just beginning to edge back into my consciousness, they didn’t show it. Rico even winked at me, through a haze of smoke.
I tried winking back, but my eyelid was still gummy and it got stuck.
I sighed. And pried it up. And glanced around to see what else had changed.
Annnnnd it was a lot.
The coffee table was gone, too, with its glass top. And the pictures with their metal frames. And the sconces with their mirrored backs. Even the recessed lights were different, their shiny rims now covered in black duct tape.
I blinked at them for a minute, swaying a little because my butt was still asleep. The clock had been obliterated, so I couldn’t see the time, but it felt like the middle of the night. Looked like it, too, with nothing but darkness and the distant glow of neon visible beyond the balcony. But somebody was cooking, nonetheless, and it smelled . . . oh so good.
I retrieved my slippers from beside the couch and shuffled my way into the lounge.
And discovered that it had been visited by the mad redecorator, too.
The TV was gone, and so was the light over the card table. The nice glassware on the portable bar had been replaced by red Solo cups, upping the I-live-in-a-frat-house ambience to something approaching 100 percent. But the real showstopper was the pool table.
Each of the little balls had been stuffed into somebody’s socks, I guess because they were glass and kind of reflective.
“Don’t you think this is a bit much?” I asked, toting one into the kitchen.
Rhea, who was at the sink, gaped at me for some reason.
“No,” Marco said, not turning from the stove, where he was cooking something in a cast-iron skillet. It matched the black duct tape on everything from the stove knobs to the drawer pulls to the sink faucets. And coordinated with the heavy taupe and black zigzag blanket someone had affixed to the front of the fridge.
“Don’t worry; she always looks like that in the morning,” Fred told Rhea, looking up from chopping a slab of bacon on the cutting board.
“I do when I sleep on the sofa,” I said, vainly trying to pat down my wayward hair. “By the way, why was I on the sofa?”
“Because you wouldn’t let us move you,” Marco told me, finally turning around. And giving me the once-over before shaking his head.
“I wouldn’t let you?” I repeated. Marco didn’t usually bother to ask for permission.
“The girls wanted to keep you with them, and when I tried to cart you off to bed anyway, you flailed at me.”
“I did not.”
“You did.” He rolled up the sleeve of his golf shirt to show me a massive bicep and a nonexistent bruise.
“You’ll be telling Mircea I abuse you next.”
“I already tell him that.”
I snorted. And opened my mouth to give him the reply he deserved. But then something was shoved into it.
Something wonderful.
“What—” I asked, after chewing and swallowing.
“Tochitura? moldoveneasca?.” Marco rolled the sounds over his tongue lovingly, even though that wasn’t Italian.
“And that’s what?”
“This,” Marco said, handing me a flimsy paper plate.
And a plastic spork.