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"ANDREWS!" GAIL SAID as she stormed into the waiting room. And I realized it wasn’t her scent from memory I’d been recalling, but her approach from outside.
The rosemary mint scent of her hair was overpowering as she got closer. For a very brief moment I relapsed into that rendezvous in Rockefeller Center and imagined standing up and taking her in my arms again, pressing my body against her and not ever letting go.
But that, of course, was in the repressed thoughts, those things that go through a person’s mind that are on a level far removed from reality. Like the way you might imagine, however briefly, reaching out and flicking the forehead of the annoyingly snobbish sales clerk to see if that might snap him back into a sense of reality.
In my conscious mind, I did want to stand, to at least walk over to her, but I realized I couldn’t.
The memories of that kiss with Gail had indeed been strong, had indeed been powerful.
So much so that I’d actually developed an erection just thinking about it.
I squirmed uncomfortably on my chair, looking up at her as she approached.
She had an odd look on her face, and I smelled the scent not only of concern for her (brother-in-law – the word came to me like a punch in the gut and begin the process of my erection beginning to slowly retract) fiancé’s brother, but also an air of confusion over why I hadn’t stood.
As she got closer, and as I stood awkwardly, I saw the lightning quick flash of a rue smile cross her face, and caught the hint of amusement in her demeanor.
The flash of the smile and the amused scent were gone immediately, but were just enough to let me know that she knew what had been going on in my pants.
Again, that thing about Gail. She could read me like a cheap suit, even now, after all this time had passed.
I’d really fucked up when I lost her.
I was beginning to realize that I would likely never recover from that loss, no matter how much time had passed.
“How is Gary?” Gail asked, pacing back and forth in front of me. “When was the last update?”
“They haven’t told me anything. I told them that a family member was on the way.”
She stopped pacing and stepped closer to me, leaned in and in a quiet voice said. “What can you hear going on back there now?”
I was taken aback. It was different now that Gail knew my secret, that she knew I was a werewolf and possessed these special enhanced senses. Amazing how quickly she’d fallen into accepting the reality of it, accepted the simple fact that I had this gift. She asked the question the same way you might ask a friend who was better with math what a decent tip would be on the restaurant bill.
I marveled at this thought, kicking myself that I’d kept the secret from her, terrified that I would lose her if she knew. And yet, it was not telling her that had driven us apart – and now, so much later, here she was, no longer with me, but accepting of who I was, of the wolf nature of my being.
It just wasn’t fair.
“I overheard them say that he had a heart attack. But he’s been stable now for the past 10 minutes at least. There hasn’t been any other discussion related to him since then.”
She took my arm and pulled me back to sitting. “Will you tell me again what happened?”
I went over the details once more, and ended with the one bit of good news about this event; that I’d been able to hone in on the scent of one of the men who attacked Gary. That I felt I would be able to use it to easily track them down, to get closer to finding Howard.
Gail was silent for a moment.
“Gary said ‘to show Howie they were serious,’” she said, and was silent for a moment longer.
I waited and looked at her, knowing she was processing something and didn’t want to be interrupted.
“Good. This tells me that they’ve got Howard somewhere but they haven’t killed him. This means they either need information from him or they need him to do something for them. Which means that he’s important to them alive.” She paused again, this time for much longer before stating the words that I began to feel must be coming based on the rising apprehension in her scent, by the way her heart suddenly started to beat faster. “Until he gives them what they want of course, and they have no further use for him.”
I reached out and held her hand, could tell immediately that while it didn’t make things better, it was exactly the comfort that she needed.
“I’m here now,” she said, pulling her hand away. “You can get out there and track them.”
I was about to tell her that I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do once I’d found them, but I didn’t know how to say it, didn’t want to disappoint her. I wasn’t a superhero of any kind. Just a guy who happened to have enhanced senses and perhaps a bit of superhuman strength during this particular cycle of the month. It’s not like I could fly over the city and swoop down to smash through the wall of the secret hide-out of these mysterious men in dark suits.
But I didn’t know how to say this to Gail.
Instead, I got up, brushed my sweaty hands on my pants and prepared to make my exit. Then it occurred to me. I froze on the spot. “Gail, you’re not safe either. If they’re trying to get to Howard through Gary, then they might try to get to him through you, too.”
Gail gestured at the two burly security guards in the lobby and then through the window at the police cruiser parked outside with two officers inside.
“I’m relatively safe here,” she said.
Fair enough, I thought. She’d be relatively well protected, at least while the cruiser sat outside. The security guards were carrying guns, but I didn’t feel as safe from their presence as I did from the presence of the police cruiser.
I still stood on the spot and just looked at her, thinking about where I might need to head off to, where I might need to start looking.
Gail pursed her lips together and stared back at me. “You don’t know where to begin, do you?”
I shook my head.
She nodded. “Thought so. Listen, Michael. You know how sometimes when you’re writing something and you feel that you’re stuck.”
“Yeah,”
“What do you do?”
I smiled. “I take a walk, head out to see a show, anything to take my mind off it.”
“And what happens next?”
“It just comes to me.”
She nodded. “Okay, so do that now. Go back to your apartment, crack open your laptop and start working on your latest writing project. You’re not still pushing to do something different – a non-Maxwell Bronte project – are you? I remember you were chomping at the bit to put out a collection of your supernatural horror stories. Has your agent or publisher ever caved on that one?”
My smile widened. “Yeah, they finally did.” I was so impressed with how much she remembered about my personal passions, about my struggles with writing, about who I ultimately was inside, that I didn’t bother to tell her that the short story book would be released in the next month – that I’d even be appearing on Letterman that night to talk about it.
I simply said. “Sure. Good idea.” I thought about how I’d used the same technique earlier. Again, it broke my heart to know that I’d let this wonderful woman who had been so good for my soul get away.
“Good idea,” I said again, almost whispering.
Gail reached up, took my hand for a moment, then quietly said, “Go write something, Michael. When you’re not thinking hard about where to look for Howard, something, some memory, some sensory detail, will come to you, and you’ll know what to do. Go write.”
My heart almost burst out of my chest with love for this woman. I slipped my hand out of hers and turned away as my eyes welled up with tears.