Chapter Eight

During the following week of recovery, Gigi slept, ran, clawed, and blinked her way directly into Peter’s heart. Once her stitches had been removed, he’d thought Nick would demand that she be deposited at the Humane Society. Strangely, he did not, claiming that they refused to adopt out black cats around Halloween anyway, so she might as well stay with them for a little while longer.

In the meantime, toys appeared. First, a furry mouse. Then some sort of jingle bell and feather contraption mounted on a cheap toy bamboo fishing pole. Nick never acknowledged himself as the procurer of said items. They would simply be present when Peter arrived home, as if they’d sprung up from the carpet like mushrooms bursting from a fallen log.

Gigi began sleeping on their bed. First on the pillow on Nick’s side, as common cat perversity drew her toward the man who showed the least interest in her, then atop the duvet in the gully between their bodies.

One week after her arrival, Peter opened his eyes to see her struggling from beneath the covers on Nick’s side while Nick snored lightly into his pillow. When Peter rose, she followed him to the bathroom, clambered up on the side of the tub, and watched as Peter showered and shaved. Within him a sense of triumph began to grow, like a hazy image of land must seem to a sailor crossing a vast and hostile ocean. Nick was not made of stone. He would never let a kitten sleep under the covers with him and then kick her out to face the windy, wet autumn on her own. Or even with the help of whatever well-meaning cat lady would adopt her.

Gigi would be theirs.

Heart brimming with love, he turned to pet her. She attacked his hand with vicious, unrestrained joy before running back to the bedroom.

Peter left her there, gently swatting a sandy brown curl that lay across Nick’s unconscious forehead, and headed to the office.

When he arrived there he found the delivery truck parked out front, and the sight gave him a shudder of premonition. As he climbed the stairs to the second floor, the feeling deepened into a sense of dreadful foreknowledge. He opened the door and was greeted by the sight of Doug shaking a set of keys at him.

“Shawn dropped these in the mail slot,” Doug told him.

Peter glanced furtively around the office. No one. Not a single soul inhabited the normally busy space. All conveniently late.

Clever bastards.

Doug jingled the keys again.

Peter sighed and held out his hand to receive them.

* * *

Any tourist finding themselves lost on the twisting roads in western Whatcom county might wonder if the entire economy of Whatcom County is derived from U-pick blueberry farms. This is understandable, but untrue. At least half of these U-pick farms sell raspberries. And at Halloween there’s always a pumpkin patch.

U-pick, of course.

Before Peter had been a reporter, he’d had Shawn’s job—driving the truck, that is, not procuring delicious kind bud for Doug. As he made his way along the route through Lynden and Everson, Peter found himself almost transported back to his student days. Before he had any such thing as a steady boyfriend. Certainly before he had a Tom Renner award. Before he even had a reliable bike light.

Those days, when he needed companionship, he went to Vancouver and found some stranger. Now his life was so simple but also infinitely more complex. Instead of finding physical release with unknown men in bars, he made love with Nick. But Nick came with all kinds of history that he was only just now beginning to know.

And with the inclusion of a pet in their small family, Peter felt a strange sense of domesticity that he would have thought would frighten him. Instead, he felt…pleased.

Pleased that he had a boyfriend and a cat. Pleased that he had a job in a town where people knew his name. Pleased when he stopped at the U-pick pumpkin patch to procure a dozen gourds for his annual Halloween Party.

Even pleased by the knowledge that he and Nick and Evangeline would, for the first time, pay for the entire gathering themselves rather than hitting up their friends for BYOB. He felt grown up. Established.

He felt like an adult, and that itself felt good.

Filled with paternalistic largesse, Peter forked over one hundred and fifty dollars for an orange and white monstrosity the size of a beanbag chair.

He drove through Maple Falls, navigating carefully to avoid jostling the pumpkin in the back. And there he caught sight of the black truck he’d seen the previous week. It was parked in front of the Cedarwood Casino. He didn’t need to wonder if it was the same one, since it was not only still festooned with flames, but the same girl lounged against it, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the highway. The truck bed was, as far as Peter could tell, goat free.

Peter decided to pull over and have a chat. As he drew near he saw that the back of the truck held what looked like a bloodstained hospital gurney.

His reporter senses tingled, but observing the brightness and also the texture of the red spattering the gurney sheets, he realized he must be looking at a prop. Maybe for a house party or haunted house.

Perhaps even for Hell House. As he recalled, it had a couple of tableaus that included medical personnel and settings.

The girl caught sight of the Hamster truck and went from lassitude to alertness.

As Peter pulled alongside her, she straightened as if preparing to flee.

“Hi,” he said. “Nice gurney.”

“It isn’t mine.” She buried her hands in the pockets of her vest. The man working the door at the casino took note of him and began speaking into a handheld radio.

The owner of the flame truck obviously had friends inside. Peter had no illusions as to how he would fare against even one casino doorman, let alone a doorman and his friend at the other end of the radio.

“How’s it going?”

In response, the girl narrowed her eyes at him until they became mere slits made of mascara and sparkly green eyeliner. She appeared to be concentrating very hard. Peter wondered if she was trying to put a curse on him. The door of the casino opened, and a young man emerged from the low gloomy interior.

From his first impression, Peter’s inclination was to dismiss him completely. To Peter this kid could have won any award inscribed with any combination of the words “World’s Biggest Pussy.” He was thin and short, and he wore a black concert T-shirt that was way too tight. His pants left nothing to Peter’s imagination, and not in a good way. The boy’s product-intensive hairstyle resembled that of an anime character who has been unexpectedly doused by a rogue wave made entirely of flavored vodka. He wore much black eyeliner.

In short, he was Goth. Peter would have dismissed him immediately as a threat except that Shawn clearly feared him enough to leave the city.

And having been shot at before, Peter did not like the way the kid kept his right hand in his jacket pocket as he approached.

Peter went on, as though he hadn’t seen the kid. “I just wanted to let you know I haven’t seen Shawn yet, but I’ll give him your note when I do.”

“Yeah, you do that,” the girl said. By then the eyeliner boy had come up beside her. He said nothing, just smiled at Peter in an arrogant, youthful way that could be the result of just turning twenty-one or having a .45 in his pocket.

In this case it was probably both.

Peter said, “Hi, I’m Peter Fontaine. I work for the Hamster.”

The boy smirked, pulled out his left hand, and made a waving motion at Peter, treating him as though he were a Railroad Avenue panhandler or a mariachi roving through a Mexican restaurant. He said, “Go back to Bellingham, paper boy.”

Peter didn’t know whether to be insulted or amused by this high-handed dismissal. He chose amusement, since being in a truck would only get him so far if the eyeliner boy had more friends inside the casino.

As he drove away, Peter saluted the boy, who returned the salute, but with only one finger.