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Page 21.
11. Paris Apartment (1st)
 Rick had more of his usual terrifying dreams.
He was running down a dark road while a muezzin droned out the call to prayer from invisible minarets under a full moon. The terrifying, droning voice was amplified and echoed by a million loudspeakers. In the dream, Rick was being chased by an armored vehicle that was going to explode any second.
He came to a place in the road where, in full moonlight, his old buddy Charley stood. Charley had his arm out, to stop Rick. You're okay, man, Charley said.
Charley, that car is going to blow up and kill us.
I can't be killed twice.
You mean you're dead.
It was a question, posed in a blind panic. Rick's heart beat in his ears.
Charley shrugged.
Am I?
Charley shook his head. You're going to be okay, and we'll see each other again soon.
The armored vehicle caught up with him and exploded in a blinding flash of black smoky oil and orange-yellow flame filled with terrifying grimaces and hooked claws reaching out to impale Rick.
He fell out of bed, screaming, and landed on the floor.
"Are you okay?" that same angel cried out, shaking him gently.
Rick could not speak, but lay in her embrace gasping for air and making jerky, panicky hand movements.
The girl holding him across her lap, like Mary holding Jesus in the Pietà, patted his cheek gently while her other arm curved protectively around his back. She sat on the floor, where he had fallen and then crawled and she had intercepted him to calm him down.
"You were having a dream."
"Charley…"
"Who?"
He licked his lips and paused to think. "It was a dream."
She nodded, slowly letting go so he could sit up on his own facing her on the wooden floor.
"Charley was a friend of mine. Never mind." He lowered his forehead onto his hands, resting his elbows on his knees with crossed legs. "Huilongistan…"
"That war is long behind you," the girl said. "We have a new one going on. This is Paris."
"Paris," he echoed stupidly.
"France," she said. She was pretty. No, beautiful.
His head felt as if a car had run over it.
She rose and yanked a window shade up and open.
Oh no…
A beam of light shone into his eyes, blinding him and baking his face.
"Mistake," she said. He saw her as a floating form made of dark green and brown and violet and maroon blobs. His eyes suffered as if there had been an explosion. He rubbed his eyeballs with his knuckles while groaning and writhing.
A pretty hand swept through the air, ripping a shade down, and the light turned dark. It wasn't death, but gentle shadow. Sunlight swayed into the room as the ugly dark-green shade swung where it had been let go over a dingy white wooden windowsill.
The young woman approached, offering something. "Here, drink some water," she said. Her voice had a nice quality, tinged with fear, frustration, and hurt. "Your name is Richard?"
Rick inched up into a sitting position with his back against the wall.
"Rick," he croaked. "Call me Rick. And you?"
He was on a rumpled, unmade bed whose dirty quilt had a fetid smell. He accepted the nicked, cloudy glass with both hands and sipped yellowish tap water. He drank it down—cold, vaguely tasting of cisterns and rain.
"More?" she asked.
He nodded.
She was slender and pretty, maybe still just a bit of teen softness about her as she padded barefoot across a dirty wooden floor with a faded, threadbare oval rug near its center.
She finally answered, "My name is Hannah Smith."
He felt a warm thrill inside. "You're American." It was a question.
"Bigger than pancakes."
A touch of home.
"Aw geez," he said, "I love you already."
"I'm not that easy," she said in a funny tone.
"What the hell is going on?"
She returned with a newly refilled glass, and held a handful of pills. "I found these in your backpack. It says you are supposed to take these pills three times a day."
He looked into her pink palm with its pretty, curling fingers. Almost baby fingers, with neatly trimmed nails under red polish.
He took her open hand in both of his, and held it to his lips as if it were a plate. The pills rolled onto his tongue. She followed with the other hand, driving the glass to his lips. He took it, swallowing more of the tepid gutter water (or so it seemed) to make the pills wash down.
"Thank you." He regarded her. "I wasn't going to take them anymore."
She sat on the bed beside him, folding pale arms between soft thighs. She sat half-sideways, not yet ready to fully face him. "What a mess."
"You tell me. What is going on?"
"You first." She regarded him with a pale, worried face. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and that sort of creamy complexion that spelled Middle USA and could come from a lot of things. He touched himself on the cheek, self-consciously, and realized he had not shaved in about three days.
Rick regarded her back at the same time. "I saw a man murdered."
She nodded, and tears welled up on her lower lids. Tears dropped, one by one, onto her lap. Her lips fluttered in a sob. "I'm sorry. You were not supposed to be there."
"Yeah." He sidled into a more comfortable position. As the medications took hold, he felt more relaxed, and his thinking swam into focus. "What did you give me?"
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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