Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel

Author:Theresa Schwegel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

19

I wake up when the phone double-rings, meaning it’s the doorman. I look at the clock: it’s just after eight. I hope I don’t have a visitor.

“Hello,” I say into the phone.

“Good morning, Miss Mack. A delivery for you,” the Greek kid says.

“Can you bring it up?”

“Right away.”

I’m startled when I catch sight of myself in the hall mirror. My eyes are so swollen from last night’s breakdown that I look like a battered geisha. I make an ice pack out of a tray of cubes and a Ziploc bag and I press it to one eye at a time until I hear a knock at the door.

The Greek kid hands me a vase, with floral paper protecting whatever’s inside.

“Thanks,” I tell him, and hand him a couple bucks. After an awkward pause, he nods and gets on his way. When I put the flowers down on the kitchen counter, I realize I’m not wearing a bra under my off-white pajama tank, and I think the kid saw more than I wanted him to.

I tear the paper off a dozen long-stemmed roses. No card. That’s how I know they’re from Mason; roses are his apology MO. They are beautiful, the stems so long and the petals so red that they almost look fake. I don’t want to draw the parallel.

I feed the flowers their packet of stuff and then I snag some cold pizza from the fridge for myself. I’m three bites in when the phone rings again, this time from an outside line.

I consider hiding, finishing this piece of pizza and the whole rest of the box, feeling sorry for myself and waiting to be rescued. And then I answer anyway.

“Smack, it’s Wade. How ya feeling?”

“I’ve had better hangovers.”

“You feel like breakfast?”

“Not really.” I drop the half-eaten slice back in its box.

“I’ll be at the Granville,” he says, “if you’re interested.”

“Not really,” I say again.

“Come on, Sam. Get off your ass and come talk to a friend. We have to stick together.”

“Fine,” I say. “Give me half an hour.”

I hang up and throw on a pair of jeans. I decide a charcoal turtleneck will draw the least attention to the discoloration in my face, but it’s tough to pull over my beat-up head. The ice pack didn’t do much for the swelling, and the bump on my forehead where Birdie knocked me is the size of a peach pit. Sunglasses are the only solution. I grab a pack of smokes and my Ray-Ban knockoffs and head out. Real peachy.

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