Infernal

1

After a restless night during which his bed seemed to be rocking with the swells of an unseen ocean, Jack got up and walked into the empty front room.

He stood there for a moment and tried to convince himself that last night had been a dream—that none of last week had happened.

Then he heard the snoring from the TV room and knew he wasn't going to be that lucky.

He looked in and saw Tom sprawled on his back like a beached whale. His right arm hung over the edge of the mattress, the fingers just brushing the top of the Lilitongue chest.

Jack had been on the phone for an hour. His first call had been to Joey who hadn't answered. Jack left a message and then got to work on the hotels. But no luck. Not one place he'd called—and he'd tried uptown and down—had a room. There had to be one somewhere in this damn city.

He needed a break. He went to the kitchen and spooned some Brown Gold into his Mr. Coffee and got a pot perking. The odor of coffee soon filled the apartment.

Jack was pouring his first cup when Tom appeared, rubbing his eyes.

"Christ, what time is it?"

Jack took one look at the wrinkled T-shirt stretched across a belly that overhung a pair of pee-stained Jockey shorts and pointed back to the TV room.

"Out, damn spot!"

Tom blinked. "What?"

"Get something on—at least on the lower half of that body."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No coffee for eyesores."

Tom stared at him a moment, then shook his head and retraced his steps to the TV room. He reemerged a moment later wearing a pair of plaid Bermudas.

"Happy now?"

"Happiness is relative. Less aesthetically offended is more like it."

Tom grabbed an empty cup, filled it, and took a long sip. No milk, no sugar.

He held up the cup. "Damn good coffee." He winked. "Give me a reference."

Jack did not want to reference that or anything else, didn't want to get started with games. But he couldn't resist.

"If you'd just toasted me with the cup and given a grin, I'd say Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction. But the 'damn' means you're probably thinking of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks."

"Excellent! I'm impressed. Now how about—?"

Jack was about to cut him off when the intercom buzzer beat him to it.

Baffled as to who'd be buzzing him at this hour on a Sunday—or at any hour on any day, for that matter—Jack stepped to the wall box and pressed the button.

"Yeah?"

"Hi, Jack." Gia's voice. "Buzz us in. We've got a surprise for you."

Jack was momentarily baffled. Gia had a key. Then he realized that because he had company she didn't want to barge in unannounced.

He said, "Urn, okay, sure," and hit the unlock button.

A surprise?

"Gia?" Tom looked panicked. "I've got to clean up!"