Windfall

My sister turned a rapt smile back to Eamon, who was watching me with a little frown grooved between his eyebrows. I sent him a silent I’m okay, and Sarah distracted him with a question about England, and they went back to living in a two-person world.

I closed my eyes for a second, concentrated, and drifted up toward the aetheric.

Moving between dimensions was something so automatic that it was like breathing for me; I lived half my life there, co

It felt like swimming through syrup, today. And once I was there, the colors looked dim and indistinct, the patterns muddy and confusing. There was something happening to me, but I couldn’t think what; I didn’t feel bad. I just felt… disco

“Jo?”

Sarah was saying something, and from her tone of voice, she’d been saying it more than once. I opened my eyes and looked at her, saw her impatient frown.

Eamon was measuring me again.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Sure. A bit of a headache, I guess. Listen, I’m really—I’m just really tired. I think I’m going to go home and lie down for a while before I have to do—the thing I have to do. Why don’t you guys go have fun?”

They didn’t seem too unhappy about that, although Eamon insisted on paying for breakfast and taking me back to the studio for my car, and tailing me home, and even went so far as to escort me upstairs and do a quick tour of the apartment.

(I wished I’d cleaned up better.) When he was satisfied that I wasn’t going to be jumped on by a crazed stalker hiding in the overstuffed closet, he and Sarah took off. I waved at them from the patio balcony, and stood outside for a few minutes, watching as his car made its way out onto the street again, heading for a glorious day of sun and fun.

A white van turned a corner, glided into the lot, and parked. I could see a shadow in the driver’s seat.

“Hope you’re comfy,” I said grimly, and looked up at the sky. It was clearing.

The humidity was down, and the cool ocean breeze whispered over my skin and rustled palm trees down at ground level.

There was absolutely nothing I could think of to do that would make a damn bit of difference, except wait and pretend to be completely comfortable with Detective Rodriguez’s continuing campaign of intimidation.

I went back inside the apartment, changed into a turquoise blue bikini, grabbed a towel and a folding chaise lounge, and made myself a pitcher of margaritas. My arm still throbbed, but it didn’t look as if it was badly damaged. I had shadowy bruises forming on my wrists to match the far-sweeter marks of David’s lovemaking from earlier in the morning.

Party on the patio, Detective. Intimidate this.

I slid on my sunglasses, oiled up, and saluted him with a drink as I soaked in the morning rays.

What’s the cardinal rule of sunbathing? Oh, yeah. Don’t fall asleep.

Well, I did. I was lying on my stomach, sun massaging all the tension out of me, and I was thinking about David and hot-bronze eyes and golden skin, and getting that pleasant liquid ache that made me want to call his name, and somewhere around there I slipped into dreamland. It was a nice place. I stayed.

When I woke up, I knew immediately that I was as burned as if I’d stuck myself under the oven broiler. My back felt puffy and numb, and I’d sweated so much I’d soaked through the bikini and the towel. I sat bolt upright, grabbed the rest of my warm margarita and bolted it down, and hastily decamped from the patio into the apartment.

The white van was still downstairs, sitting i

No sign of Rodriguez. I couldn’t tell if there was still a shadow in the driver’s seat or not, but right at the moment, I had another problem.

I dumped the chair, oil, pitcher and towel, and hurried into the bathroom. My front looked fine. I bit my lip and began to turn, very slowly. Tan… tan .

. . redder… red… scarlet…

Oh man. I peeled down the back of my bikini bottoms and found the contrast to be just a little bit more than a barber pole’s stripes. This was really going to hurt.

I stripped off the bikini and got in the shower; that was a mistake. The numbness wore off fast, replaced by a nice selection of agony and pain, depending on where I directed the spray; I gingerly patted myself dry and slathered as much of myself with burn cream as I could reach. And suffered.

When the phone rang, I was in a high temper, ready to bite a telemarketer’s head right off. “What?” I barked, and clutched the towel looser around my aching back.

“Damn, girlfriend, I knew you’d be in a bitchy mood after the Su

“Oh, please, Cherise. At my age, cute? Not really what I’m going for.” I tried sitting down. My thighs and back lodged a violent protest. I paced instead, went to the patio doors and pulled the curtains shut, then dropped the towel on the pile of Things I Had To Pick Up Later and continued pacing around naked. “That was Marvin’s little joke, right? Because I one-upped him yesterday?”

“Sorta,” she agreed. I could practically see her checking her fingernail polish.

“Hey, there’s been somebody asking questions about you down at the station. Tall guy, Hispanic, real polite? Sound familiar?”

Except for the polite part, it matched the description of Mr. White Van downstairs. “What does he want to know?”

“How long you’ve been here, where you were before, past history, how long we’ve known you, shit like that. Hey, are you in trouble? And is it, you know, serious?” She didn’t sound worried. She sounded breathless with excitement.

“No, and no.”

“Is he your stalker-guy? Because usually they don’t interrogate your close personal friends. They’re more of the scary watching-from-a-distance kind of weirdos. Oooh, is he from the FBI?”

“No. Cher—”

“Did you see the UFO over the ocean last night?”

“Did I—what?”

“The UFO.” She sounded triumphant. “I’ll bet they’re tracking down everybody who saw it. There was a thing on the ’net about it; the IT guys told me over breakfast. Don’t open the door if guys in black suits and buzz cuts show up.”

“Cherise.”

“Call me if Mulder drops by. Oh, speaking of that, look, could you do me a favor? I, ah, lost Cute British Guy’s phone number…”

“You never had his phone number.”

“Yeah, but your sister had it and she was going to give it to me only—”

“I’m not giving you Eamon’s phone number.”

“Oh, so now it’s Eamon,” she said. “Fine. Be that way. Break my heart, since you won’t share Hot Boy David either.”

“Bye, Cherise.”

“See you at three?” We had some promo commercial thing. I checked the clock.

Still four hours to go. “I’ll pick you up.”

“Yeah. See you then.”

I hung up and kept walking. The air-conditioning kicked on and felt like ice on my back, which was good. Maybe I could find something light to wear—gauze would be just barely acceptable. Anything heavier would be torture.

The phone rang again before I could put it down. It was Cherise again. “I forgot to tell you: Marvin said you were supposed to wear the Su

Before I could scream.

“Wow,” Cherise said, when she saw me in the halter top and shorts and flip-flops. “You’ve really mastered this business casual thing.”

I threw her a dirty look and tried to ease myself gently into the passenger side of her convertible. Gasped when my burned back touched the leather. Cherise exclaimed and grabbed me by the shoulder to inspect the damage.

“Oh, man, that’s bad,” she said, and clucked her tongue, just like my grandmother. “You can’t wear the Su