Dreams of Gray Read online

  “What is it, sir—uh, Poppa?”

  He took off his glasses and shook his head sadly. “I cannae help ye, lass. Best be moving on.”

  PJ and I shared a confused look. “What do you mean, Poppa?” she asked. “Do you recognize it?”

  “Aye, and I cannae help ye.”

  I slipped my shirt back on and turned to him. “I don’t understand, sir. What does it say?”

  “I’m sorry, lass. Best just move on. Ye be not welcome here no more.”

  PJ’s mouth dropped. “What’s wrong, Poppa?”

  “Out, Bonny. Take your friend with you. I cannae help ye.”

  I got up and started walking toward the door with my shirt in my hand. I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d pinned on Poppa Mackenzie’s help, because I felt myself beginning to tear up. PJ hugged me and pleaded with the man one more time.

  “You can’t tell us anything, Poppa?”

  “Aye, lassies. Pray.”

  We descended the stairs in silence. Connor met us with a smile, but it faded when he saw my expression.

  “No luck?”

  PJ shook her head. “Poppa was acting kind of strange.”

  Connor looked away and coughed. “Yeah. We’ve been worried about him. His mind is going.”

  He looked at me and said, “Cheer up there, Dree. You’ve got a grade-A piece of art on your back. You should be proud. Who cares what it actually says. I had a guy come in once with Chinese up and down his arms. Most beautiful thing you ever saw. I asked him what it meant and he said, Kung Pao Chicken with Noodles.”

  I smiled a little. PJ hugged her uncle and we left. It was starting to get dark outside, and I had work the next day. Stomach flu only bought you a few days.

  “Did you get breakfast without me this morning?” PJ asked once we were safely on the loop back to our side of town.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I mean after the club. I found some napkins in the side door that looked like they had chocolate, maybe raspberry filling on them.”

  “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “You were really out of it last night, huh?”

  Out cold, more like. But I nodded.

  9

  Another week passed, then two. I had a few more episodes with my back, but it was never as bad as that night in the club. My dad called to check on me every night for the first week, but he eased off when I told him everything was fine. My tests from the clinic came back normal for everything. All they could say for certain was that I was human and healthy. Big help there.

  Eventually, I was comfortable enough with the return to my normal routine that I went on a date with the policeman who’d returned my bag. Turns out his first name was Alan.

  “I should be honest with you; I’m not really into Mexican,” I said.

  He looked around at the horrible décor, complete with sombreros on the walls and a huge concrete donkey by the door, and grinned.

  “What? It’s perfectly romantic.”

  I sipped my margarita and scanned the room again. “Umm, yeah. I always did have a thing for donkeys.”

  His grin went dirty, and I cut him off before he could say anything, “Nope. Not going there. Let’s not and say we did.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “So you know what I do for a living, what about you?”

  Sacrificial goat for a local cable provider, I thought.

  “I answer phones.”

  I could tell he was waiting for the rest of it. When it didn’t come, he changed the subject. Brownie points for him.

  “How long have you lived in the complex?”

  “About two years. Moved in when I got my job. It’s a shithole, but it’s cheap.”

  He took a long drag on the straw of his margarita and nodded. “Know what you mean. My toilet went out a couple days ago, and they told me it would take a week to fix. What am I supposed to do, piss in the woods?”

  That was an interesting mental picture. Actually, now that I had a couple of margaritas in me, I was very interested in seeing him with his pants down. I was way overdue for some action.

  “My bathroom works fine. You should come by some time.”

  He called for the check.

  We ended up back at his apartment after all. It was a few buildings over from mine. The good night kiss turned into the good night grope, and it finally became the good night “mad dash for the bedroom.”

  I practically pounced on him, and we tumbled to the bed. I was plenty ready, so it didn’t take much to plunge him inside me. I rode him hard and fast, desperate with need. His hands raked my back. Our bodies slapped and rubbed deliciously.

  We coupled for what felt like hours. I was sweating pretty good by this time, and we both shone slick in the glow from the streetlight outside his window.

  I collapsed onto his chest in exhaustion, kissing his pecs, his shoulders, and his neck. I took a playful bite of his shoulder, and he jumped, but laughed a little. I took that as a good sign.

  He grabbed and sucked on my nipples, and I thrust down on him harder, clenching him as I did. I felt a warmth growing inside me that meant my fun for the evening was about to really start. He bit down on my nipple, and it sent me over the edge.

  I moaned and nuzzled his chest. My mouth found one of his pecs and latched on. Somewhere in the back of my head pain was registering from my back, and my tongue felt a coppery warmth on it I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t care. All I knew was I was coming, and it tasted great.

  I was a little shocked when Alan cried out and pushed me off of him. His eyes were wide, and he had a hand to his chest where I’d latched on. He ran to the bathroom and closed the door. I lay there for a few seconds, basking in the afterglow. Maybe he wasn’t the biting type. That would definitely not work long-term. Oh well, I’d got something fun out of him, at least.

  I rolled over onto my stomach and caught my reflection in his dresser mirror. My hair was a wild tangle, my eyes were bright in the streetlight’s glow, and my chin and mouth were black.

  That jerked me out of my orgasmic fog.

  I reached for the lamp on the nightstand and let out a startled yelp when I realized it was blood, and a lot of it. I didn’t usually go that deep. A bruise the next day for him, maybe. Something to brag to his buddies about. This was—well, I suddenly understood his reaction.

  I got up and walked to the bedroom door. “Are you okay in there? I’m so sorry. I must have gotten a little carried away.”

  “Maybe you’d better go,” he said from behind the door.

  It stung, but I couldn’t blame him, could I? I gathered up my things, dressed, rinsed my face and hands in the kitchen sink and did the walk of shame back to my apartment.

  I stepped into the hot shower and watched the last traces of blood swirl down the drain. Hopefully, Alan wasn’t the kind of person to press assault charges for a love bite.

  10

  I was late the next morning. I snuck into my cube, slipped on my headset, and gave my first caller our canned greeting: “It’s a great day at Woodspring Communications. This is Dreama. How may I help you?”

  No one in real life calls me Dreama. Well, no one but my mother and a couple thousand customers. To the rest of the world I’m Dree. This particular caller’s response came in an out-of-key Sinatra impression with way too much warble. “Dream a little dream of me.”

  Figured. First shot out of the box and it’s Charles Filmore. My day just kept getting better.

  “Hello, Mr. Filmore.”

  “Now, Miss Dreama, I told you to call me Charlie. How are we today?”

  I followed our belligerent caller policy: First step, ignore any attempt to provoke.

  “And what can I do for you today, Mr. Filmore?”

  “Always so formal. Well if you must get right to business, my cable box is out again.”

  Script number two, coming right up.

  “I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble with your service, sir. I’d be happy to schedule a tech
to come out and take a look at your equipment. Is a morning or afternoon time best for you?”

  He sighed on the other end of the line, but I wasn’t playing along. Finally, he dropped the saccharine tone. Score one for me.

  “Evening. Preferably after five.”

  I flew through our reservation program with the kind of familiarity only three years at a dead-end job can give you. A window popped up with a confirmation number, date, and time.

  “Okay, Mister Filmore. I have you down for Wednesday the 12th between five p.m. and eight p.m. Our tech will give you a call when he’s on his way. Is that time all right for you?”

  “Sure.”

  He sounded sulky. I so didn’t care.

  “Would you say that your issue was solved satisfactorily today?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, Mister Filmore. Please hang on and I’ll transfer you to the automated satisfaction survey. Thank you for choosing Woodspring and have a nice day.”

  I slammed the call termination button much harder than I needed to, pulled off my headset and retired to the ladies room. Dealing with that guy always made me want to wash afterward.

  As I scrubbed my hands, I looked at myself in the mirror. A little gaunt, but otherwise not worse for wear.

  I tried to smile, and mostly succeeded.

  I was saved from actually dealing with things by a tornado of curly red hair and freckles. Her entrance was heralded by a heavy slam of the ladies room door and a loud, “FUUUUUUUCK, I need to take a shit. That lady kept me on the line forever.”

  She flew past me into the first stall and slammed the door. After a beat, she opened it just a sliver.

  “Hey, Dree.”

  “Hi, PJ.”

  The stall door shut again. I ran my hands under the sink again, left the water on while I pretended to check my makeup (I don’t wear any), and took my time at the electric hand dryer.

  PJ emerged while she was still zipping her slacks. Silver chain hung out of both sides of her mouth. She chewed on her necklace a lot. Unsatisfied oral fixation, she’d told me once. When she saw me, the tiny cross plopped out and landed with a smack on the front of her unbuttoned polo.

  “Still here? I figured I’d run you off.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Movie night tonight?” she asked.

  “Sure. My place or yours?” I said. “Er—better yours, now that I think about it.”

  If PJ sensed anything odd, she took it in stride. “No problem. Seven?”

  “Sure.”

  Most of our plans were quick, simple, and vague. It got me into trouble sometimes, but if I woke up indoors, that would count as tame.

  I sat back down at my desk and donned my headset. Surely, after Charlie, my next call would be something simple. Someone with intelligence, or at least common courtesy.

  “It’s a great day at Woodspring Communications. This is Dreama, how may I help you?”

  “Yeah, uh, my computer won’t connect to the internet.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir. I’d be happy to help you with some troubleshooting options. First, is our modem turned on and showing three green lights?”

  The line rustled. He was probably kneeling down to look in the TV stand or under his desk. People shove our hardware into dark corners like they don’t want to know it’s there. I sometimes felt like they wanted to do that to me as well.

  “Yeah,” the man said, “Three green lights. One is blinking.”

  “Okay, sir. That’s good. Now can we go back to your PC and look at the network settings screen? Do you see any warnings or error messages?”

  “No, I see a bunch of zeroes and periods.”

  I never knew how much or how little these people knew about computers. At least he hadn’t called the monitor a TV…yet. Baby steps.

  “Okay, sir. Are the zeroes and periods you see in a column called 'IP Address'?”

  “Umm…I don’t know. Oh yeah. Okay.”

  “All right, sir, reboot your computer and see if it picks up a fresh IP address from our modem. Are you connected to it directly, or do you have a router?”

  “What’s that?”

  The magic box that gives you your porn. “It’s something that lets you connect more than one computer to our modem.”

  “Uh—”

  He probably didn’t know what I was talking about. Moving on.

  “No problem, sir. Is your computer rebooting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s wait and see if it picks up a new IP address.”

  I hit the mute button while he waited and sighed. This was one of my least favorite parts of the job. We had to stay on the line until the problem was resolved. Short of an expletive-filled tirade from a customer, we couldn’t just hang up. No matter how often I wanted to.

  “Okay, it’s booted,” he said finally.

  I unmuted. “Okay, sir. Can you check the network settings again for me, please? What do you see?”

  “It’s still zeroes! What the hell? You said that would fix it.”

  “I’m sorry that didn’t resolve your problem, sir. Let’s try something else.”

  “No, I want to talk to someone else. You got any guys at that place?”

  I probably looked like I’d been slapped in the face by the Pope. I should have let it slide and continued. Belligerent Caller Training Manual. I just couldn’t get myself to calm down this time.

  “Wait. Did you just insinuate that I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  “Yeah, get a man on here.”

  “And it’s because I’m a woman?”

  “What, are you deaf too?”

  Not cool. I felt myself getting warm. Who did this guy think he was? Was I just supposed to sit here and take it?

  “Sir, I’ll have you know that I have a degree in information technology. My first job out of college was installing computer networks. I think I have a damn sight better idea of what’s going on in this situation that you.”

  “What—”

  “And furthermore, your misogynistic comments are insulting and low-class. If you honestly think women are intellectually inferior to you I feel very sorry for the bimbos you surround yourself with.”

  “Wait just a—”

  My thoughts were going a mile a minute. I didn’t care what happened to me after this call; this guy was going to hear what I wanted to say.

  “I’m done waiting on you, you entitled macho pig. Go steal someone’s wireless signal for your donkey porn and have fun fucking yourself!”

  I slammed the call terminate button and ripped off my headset. My polo itched something fierce and I was burning up. Sweat trickled off my forehead and into my eyes. I made a hasty beeline for the ladies room.

  I splashed water on my face. I looked terrible. I was pale, almost translucent. My eyes were sunken in dark circles. To top it all off, the itching was worse. I ran into the nearest stall and stripped from the waist up. It stopped the itching but my entire body now felt like it was on fire. I sat on the edge of the toilet and doubled over.

  I just stayed like that for I don’t know how long. A dripping sound woke me up. Not unusual for a bathroom, but this one was coming from directly under me. I opened my eyes and saw a growing circle of dark red on the floor. My fingertips were bleeding!

  I half-screamed and grabbed the nearest thing I could find: a huge wad of crappy one-ply toilet paper. It didn’t staunch the flow very well. I tore open the stall door and dove for the sink.

  PJ bolted through the door, “Man, Dree, you must not want to keep this job long! You really ripped—what the fuck?”

  She slammed the ladies’ room door shut and twisted the bolt. I must have looked a hot mess bent over the sink topless and bloody, with my hands painting the drain crimson.

  PJ grabbed a pile of paper towels and examined my hands. The water had cleaned most of the blood off and she dabbed the tips of my fingers. I let her, leaving my hands limp and my head down.

  “Dree
, there’s something under the skin.”

  She pressed against the tip of my left index finger, and I watched in horror. There was a small vertical slit on the tip of my finger, and when she pressed it more blood came out. That wasn’t what scared me. I also saw the tip of something that almost looked like bone.