In between kisses, she asks, “Why are you trembling?”
I just lean down and kiss her again and she melts into me. We stand out and pay no attention. Finally, I order a double Maker’s Mark and steer her to a booth in the back.
“So shall we swap life stories?” she asks merrily. “You first.”
“I was raised by wolves and ran away with the circus.”
She smiles at me until her eyes light on the tabletop. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
Somehow in the dim light she has still spied the button-sized burn on the back of my hand. The skin has the look of clotted blood and ruined skin trying to make a scab. She takes my hand and examines it.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time, Mister Life of Secrets.”
I smile for the second time that day. I ask if she’s all right.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Right at that moment I need someone to talk to more than I need the drink, which is a hell of a lot. Not just someone to tell about the feds and the National Security Letter, but the whole damned thing, the note from Rachel, the mystery about her dad, the growing web that I don’t understand. I need to talk about eleven/eleven. But it’s a lethal number and Amber is just a rookie. She gently kisses my hand.
“What do you know about eleven/eleven?” I just ask it as bar conversation. Come here often? What’s your sign? What do you know about eleven/eleven? Columnist walks into a bar…
She looks at me blankly and draws her mouth into a half smile, then shrugs.
“It was tattooed on Ryan’s calf,” I say.
“His birthday?”
“The day Hardesty jumped to his death, he asked me what I knew about eleven/eleven.”
Her hand lessened its pressure on mine.
“What does that mean?”
I shook my head.
“Coincidence? What could Hardesty and Ryan have in common. He was a poor kid. Your buddy was a rich guy.”
“A homeless woman screamed it me the other night.”
“Eleven-eleven?”
“She said it and then said ‘you’ll get yours, asshole.’”
“Maybe she was somebody you used to date, like your girlfriend with the water glass?”
“Come on. I’m serious.”
She is unzipping my pants. She disappears under the table and takes me in her mouth. My breath comes quicker and I see the faces at the bar watching us impassively. They’ve seen worse. Then the bartender looks our way and raises the gate on the bar. I gently pull her back up. He lowers the gate. Amber smiles demurely at him. She keeps her hands under the table.
“Is it a date? In a month the world comes to an end?”
I half-shake my head. “Maybe it’s a bank account in the Caymans. But how does that tie into a pair of teenagers from Seattle?”
Her face assumes a thoughtful beauty. “Maybe it’s just a meme, started on the Internet by a sixteen year old. Maybe it’s like Y2K, and it sounds scary but nothing happens in the end.”
I sip the drink and tell her about the feds and the cigarette burn, but not about Rachel’s note or the National Security Letter. Her shoulders hunch in agitation.