Page 5 (1/2)

Chapter 5

BAHAMALAMA-DINGDONG

Dick&039;s Bar hadn&039;t changed all that much, but I had

It wasn&039;t just my superpowers I was older, wiser, and had lived in New York for just over a year now I had grown-up eyes

It turned out that Dick&039;s Bar didn&039;t get a lot of fe pool in their leather chaps, drinking beer and swigging the occasional Jell-O shot, listening to a e bar

It was a relief, really I could hang out here without having to stare into irls Even better, any wohball glass Surely so a long black dress and picking up ard Texans

"Drink?" the bartender asked

I nodded A little stiitive , please"

The bartender raised an eyebrow, then turned to ring a bell over the bar A few guys playing pool in the back chuckled, and soed itself fro! said my brain, as I recalled that whenever anyone ordered a Baha" part of the name

Well, partly I watched the bartender take a banana frolass and poured rum over it, then mystery juice from a plastic container marked BID, and finally a careful layer of red liqueur across the top I detected a scent like coughup

"Nassau Royale?" I asked

The bartender nodded "Yeah Do I remember you?"

"You mean, from before the Health Department shut you down?" I asked

"Yeah," he said "You don&039;t look so fah"

I nodded "I&039;ve only been here once, actually But I had a friend who used to coan?"

"Yeah Tall, dark hair, pale skin Black dresses Kind of gothy?"

Pause "A woman?"

"Yeah"

He shook his head "Not ringing a bell You sure you got the right place?"

I looked down at the Baha back at me like a bloodshot eye, and took a sip Tropical fruit sweetness poured overfroan to flood back into my mind, carried on pineapples and the burnt taste of dark rum

"I&039;m positive," I said

There wasn&039;t et drunk

The bartender asked around, but no one reothlike wo out here in the old days Maybe, like ht

On the other hand, if her inner parasite had been pulling her strings, ay bar, the place she was least likely to get lucky? (Had she been as clueless as er self? H ht There definitely had been a river involved; I recalled reflected lights rippling in boat wakes All the Bahaan and I had drunk had put a little stuo over the rail and I&039;d have to leap into the cold water to save her, even though I wasn&039;t fit to walk a dog

We had strolled out to the end of a long pier and stood looking at the river The Hudson or the East River, though?

Then I remembered: At some point I&039;d checkednorthwest, which h Definitely the Hudson, then We&039;d been looking at New Jersey

What had happened next?

I tried to press the hazy e of New Jersey reflected in the river - Hoboken already teasing me from across the water No le step of the route we&039;d taken back to Morgan&039;s apartuy came up next to me, back here in the present

It took a fewreverie, but I could tell from his scent that he&039;d just co a smoke outside His leather vest was cow-sued expression Maybe he&039;d heard I&039;d been asking about Morgan

"Hey," I said

"Hey What&039;s your name?"

"Cal" I reached to shake his hand

"I&039;m Dave Sowhat are you into, Cal?" he asked

I paused for a second before answering

I couldn&039;t tell hi the wo the next step in destroyingdown anyfurther into the endless, knotted tree of the parasite&039;s spread So I castin the diner thatas I&039;d waited for the clouds to clear

"Hookworms," I said

"Hookworms?" He took the seat next to me "Never heard of that"

I sipped fro

"Well, they burrow in through your feet, using this enzy the bloodstrea, so you cough them up But you kno you always s a little bit of phlegm?"

One of his eyebrows raised, but he adet sed along with the phlegrow to be about half an inch long" I held up th apart "And they develop this circle of teeth in theirinto your intestinal wall and sucking your blood" I realized I was going into drunken detail here and paused to check if he was still interested

"Really?" His voice sounded a bit dry

I nodded "Wouldn&039;t lie to you, Dave But here&039;s the cool thing They produce this special anticlotting factor, kind of like blood antifreeze, so the wound doesn&039;t scab over You become a sort of temporary hemophiliac, just in that one spot Your intestines won&039;t stop bleeding until the hookworets its fill!"

"Hookworms, huh?" he asked

"That&039;s what they&039;re called"

Dave nodded gravely, standing back up He grasped my shoulder firhtful features seemed to reflect for a moment the hard road I had in front of me

"Good luck with that," he said

I figured seven Bahas would do the job

That was probably more than I&039;d drunk my first time at Dick&039;s, but these days I was older andoff ood rhyth a bit at first My metabolism may be peeped up, but there&039;s only so much rum even my body can process before it starts to sputter All in all, I&039;d ed a pretty fair reconstruction of my first really wicked buzz in New York City

I headed off to retracepath froo with an i nod, and Dave waved froressed, he&039;d sent some of his friends over to ask about hookworms, and they&039;d all listened attentively I&039;d thrown in some stuff about blood flukes, too So it hadn&039;t been like drinking alone

Outside Dick&039;s Bar, the streetlights wore coronas of orange, and the glassphalt shiue pie My breath curled out steamy, but the warmth froers nestled around e But I was a little drunk

My feet carried me toward the river autoan&039;s yet It was just gravity doing its job

Skateboarding around the city, I&039;d noticed the Huround rises in the center of Manhattan and falls away toward the rivers, like the slippery back of a giant whale eiant whale: The slope is barely perceptible - you only feel it on a board or a bike, or if your stride is lubricated by seven or so Bahas

My feet had wheels, and I rolled toward the water effortlessly

Soon I gli as it had that night A ay stretched along the water By instinct, I turned north It was a little tricky staying between the pedestrian lines, though A few bikers and skaters whirred around ht back at them, my words a little slurred Outside the wars had made me antisocial

But my mood lifted when I saw the pier

It stretched out into the water, as long as a football field Mismatched beats froht lights beah posts

Was that the saht?

There was one way to find out I sha couples and a group of very cute roller-dancing girls, and pulled netic north

I was facing northwest, the exact reading I&039;d taken a year before

I breathed in deeply, tasting ocean salt, green algae, and ht This had to be the place

But what now?

I gazed out onto the river On either side of me, the ti black teeth More pieces ofinto place, like a blurry picture downloading in waves, gradually beco clearer

Then I saw the dark hulk of a building across the Hudson, its three giant maws open to the river The Hoboken Ferry Terliht a year before

My peep-strength eyes caught a flicker of lights in its second-story s Dr Rat was still up there, probably with a dozen or so of her colleagues fro habits of Sarah&039;s brood Weighing andfor a rare "rat king" - a bunch of rats with tangled-up tails who travel in a pack all tied together, like dogs being walked by a professional dog walker, ten leashes in hand

With Sarah gone, her brood would be disintegrating over the next few days, scattering into nearby alleys and sewers like runoff from an autuet so ?

The thought of all those orphaned creatures depressed me, and I turned back toward Manhattan

My heart drunkenly skipped a beat

Before h-rise stood

Buildings get their personality from their s, just like people express the had a schizophrenic look Its lower floors were cluttered with tiny balconies, but along the top floor stretched floor-to-ceiling ide open with surprise I re and squeezing my hand

"That&039;s where I live!" she&039;d said, thusthe exact et laid

How the hell does anyone forget amy head in amazement, I stu in

Funny I hadn&039;t re: river views and duplex penthouses, a lobby encased insix TV inity and otten

I watched fro behind a cluster of newspaper boxes, waiting for just the right bunch of residents to follow through the door - h of the unnoticed

Of course, if I was really lucky I&039;d see Morgan herself But as I going to say to her? Hey, do you know you&039;re carrying vampirism? What&039;s up with that?

Thesteadily colder The wind roaring off the river stopped being invigorating and veered over into cruel My Bahaan to wear off, and soon ar It occurred to me that the only solid food I&039;d had for dinner was seven frozen bananas, not enough for ry parasites can provoke crazy behavior

Worst of all, I felt like I was being the stalker now, stuck between anatheht, I spotted uys, college-aged, dressed for a night out They shouted jokes at one another, their voices still pitched for whatever loud bar they had spent the evening in

I leftmy move to reach the outer door just as they did

They hardly noticedabout what kind of pizza to order "Lots of cheese Hangover helper," one guy was saying The others laughed and voted their way to a split ticket of two large - one mushrooood to me, after all those drinks As we approached the door, I tried to look interested in the conversation while hanging at the back of the pack

Through the glass, the doornition, and the inner door buzzed as one of the women reached for its handle Warm air rushed over us, and I was inside

As we crossed the lobby toward the elevators together, the wolanced back atlook troubled her expression I returned her gaze blankly With four friends around her, she shouldn&039;t be so nervous about a stranger, but so fro a weird feeling about her too

She wore a leather jacket over a short plaid dress that left her knees bare to the cold Her hair lay across her forehead in a jet-black fringe that had grown out too long, ending just above her dark brown eyes It took me a moment to realize that in the days before I lusted after all woirl would have beenhtful than suspicious When she ran her tongue between her lips in a distracted way, a little shudder went through me, and I tore my eyes away

Bad carrier, I scolded ainst ed and opened, and the six of us crowded inside I tucked lued, and everyone besides the girl in the leather jacket was arguing again, the reflected sound fro their voices

Then a sirl pushing her fingers through her hair So to their clothes, the alcohol on their breath; it carried her human scent to ers

I shuddered again

She pressed seven, glanced at me "What floor?"

I stared at the controls The array of buttons covered one through fifteen (without the thirteen), in three colu out and pressing one of them, but my mind was in turdong memory injection had finally let me down

"Any particular floor?" she said slowly

"Uan?"