“The Grand on Fifth,” I tell the driver. “My hotel,” I say into the guy’s ear. “Don’t fucking pass out, or I’ll dump you at the hospital instead.”
I’m starting to sweat now, clammy and unpleasant. It’s hitting me: I could have died.
Ishouldhave died.
But I still haven’t died.
The hotel isn’t far, and I pay for the cab. No one in the hotel looks at me straight when I go in, but they give sidelong glances, thinking their bourgeois petty thoughts about the rich guy picking up street trash for the night. I don’t give a fuck. I’m concentrating hard on placing one foot in front of the other, pulling Lucifer along.
“Where are you taking—” he begins.
“There’s a camera at the elevators,” I say, and he puts his head down. He follows me, follows my feet, one after the other to the elevators.
My suite is exclusive enough that the elevator needs the card swiped before it will even accept the floor destination. When we finally get into my suite, I pull my houseguest into the lounge and dump him on the sofa. “You wait there,” I say. “I gotta—”
I don’t make it any further than that. I turn to the nearest vase and puke my fucking guts into it, and it all sprays out of me like poison. I heave and hurl until there’s nothing left, and then I stagger away from the vase and grab a bottle of water from the minibar.
After I’ve downed it in one go, I feel about a thousand times better. But Lucifer’s slumped on the sofa and there’s red smeared on the white leather. His breath is shallow, pained.
He might legit be dying or something.
I wonder if Death is here in this suite, chuckling as he chooses yet another over me.
“Always the bridesmaid,” I mutter, and turn back to the minibar.
This situation calls for booze, and lots of it.
* * *
It takessome time to persuade Lucifer that he needs medical attention, and it’s a bluntHell, no, on going to any hospitals. “You need stitches,” I point out.
“You a doctor?”
“No, I’m a sensible human being. Fine, if you won’t go to the hospital,I’llfucking stitch it. I’ll dunk the needle in vodka. It’s totally sterile. Well, kinda sterile. Better than a spit-and-shine, anyway.” I say all this as a way to get him to go to an actual goddamn medical practitioner, but he calls my bluff.
“Fine.”
“Wow. For serious? Okay. Hey, this could be fun!”
With a sigh and another look at the wide gash in his upper arm, he submits to my drunken arts and crafts. We go into the bathroom and I seat him on the edge of the spa bath.
“Take that hideous thing off,” I say, gesturing to his turtleneck sweater. He gives me an icy glare from under thick black lashes, but he starts to pull it up. He waves off my help with that, but does let me wash his arm down to clear the blood. It’s not a wide cut, but itispretty deep.
I slosh his arm with a mini-vodka, ignoring his growl.
Then I grab the handy button-sewing kit provided with the hotel’s crest on it, and a pair of plastic gloves from one of my hair-dye boxes. I do my own hair, because I’m totally punk rock; bleach it and then color it with whatever I feel like at the time. Currently it’s bright flamingo pink.
Every time I color it I ruin all the towels and stain the marble around the sink, but the next day the cleaning crew have it sparkling again and a stack of virgin white towels waiting there as usual.
There are advantages to living in a hotel.
I thread a needle with the thinnest nylon thread I can find, pull on the plastic gloves, and start to close up his arm while he stoically hisses and grinds his teeth and drinks the rest of the minibar supplies.
I have to pause after I finally get the needle through his skin, because another wave of nausea comes over me. This is definitelynotlike sewing on a button.
“So, what’s your name?” I ask conversationally, to take his mind off it all.
He doesn’t answer.
