The Silenced Tale, стр. 9

The paranoia about the TV show leaking is starting to get to him. Elgar shakes his head, and tries to push the man in black out of his mind. But the curiosity follows him as he walks up and down the aisles. He makes a decision. He’s going to talk to the man, find out once and for all if he’s really here for Elgar.

Congratulating himself for choosing a pre-made salad and a steak to fry up instead of the frozen pizza that was calling his name, Elgar is quick to get back out of the store, the desire to talk to the man in black itching at the back of his skull.

He fully intends to do it, too. Until he looks up and meets the man’s gaze across the sidewalk.

Elgar has written the phrase “the hate in his eyes” more times than he can count over the last twenty years and eleven plus novels. But he’s never really been able to envision how that kind of visible, tangible hate would actually look.

Now, he knows.

It smacks into him, as if the stranger has launched a crossbow bolt at his heart, making his lungs constrict with terror and his whole body sway and jerk. His fists clench, sweat gathers behind his whiskers, and his knees go wobbly.

Clutching his groceries close, he clamps down on the ridiculous urge to apologize to the man—for what?—and makes the most dignified escape he can, considering his inability to run at a pace that is anything more than a mortifying wobble. He only looks back over his shoulder twice.

When he gets back home, he dumps the bags in the kitchen, double-checks every lock on every door and window, and spends an hour in his en suite bathroom searching “panic attacks” on his phone and the methods used to control one.

It’s past sunset when he manages to get his breathing back to a normal level, and by then, he’s exhausted by the adrenaline his body’s been dumping into his system, forcing his heart and lungs to work so hard he might as well have been running a marathon. He’s too tired to be hungry now, so he shuffles his way to the kitchen to put the steak in the freezer for another day, and the salad in the crisper for tomorrow.

What he finds on the kitchen counter makes him scream.

The plastic salad bowl has burst open. All across the granite countertop, a writhing, bilious wave of maggots wriggles its way to the edge, falling in fat plops against the tiled floor. Some of them burst like pustules, yellow-white, splattering into the grout.

The salad is heaving like a creature trying to escape the pile of leaves and sliced vegetables.

And Linux sits beside it, one paw raised to strike, ears back and teeth bared, whiskers and expression intent and tight. Elgar doesn’t know how he knows it, but he knows that if Linux strikes whatever it is that’s trying to escape the salad, his cat won’t survive.

He swoops around the revolting, stinking pile of maggots and scoops Linux up around his middle. The cat snarls and yowls, but Elgar holds him tightly, accepting the scratches this time instead of flinching away. He doesn’t let go of Linux until they’re both back in the en suite. Elgar locks the door and jams a towel against the gap at the bottom. Linux prowls back and forth in front of it, hissing and snarling at whatever is on the other side.

Elgar’s hands shake and bleed so badly that it takes him four tries to call Juan.

“There’s—” he’s able to get out, and then has to swallow hard against his own rising gorge. “There’s bugs!”

“Bugs, boss?” Juan asks from the other end of the line. It sounds like his assistant is in a bar. Elgar hates to pull him away from his own social time, but he can’t . . . he can’t face the kitchen alone.

“Maggots!” he says, coughing and then biting his tongue hard. He will not puke. He will not. “All over! It’s . . . I can’t . . .”

“’S okay, boss,” Juan says quickly. “Maybe the cleaner forgot to do the garbage disposal this week. We’ll get it sorted.”

“Juan, I can’t . . .” Elgar tries again, and the lump of bile pressing against the hollow of his throat becomes a hot ball of shame and fear. “I don’t . . .” The sob that bites off the rest of that sentence startles them both, if Juan’s soft gasp on the other end of the line is anything to go by.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, boss. Okay? Ten minutes.” And then, faintly, as he clearly holds the phone away from his face: “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be back. Yeah, part of the job, you know? It’s cool. Gimmie an hour, okay? Have another drink. Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Elgar whispers when Juan comes back on the line, narrating his journey from the bar to his car, and then switching the phone to his Bluetooth speaker as he drives.

“I’m nearly there, boss. Breathe. Deep breaths, okay?”

“Okay. Deep breaths. I’m sorry.”

“For what, boss?”

“Screwing up your date.”

“Nah, it’s cool. He was a weirdo, anyway.”

“Weirdo how?”

“Doesn’t read. I ask you, what kind of a man doesn’t like reading? A loser, that’s what. I don’t sleep with men who don’t own books, boss.”

Elgar tries to laugh, but it comes out bubbly and choked.

“Hey, boss, hey. Keep breathing. I’m nearly there.”

“Juan . . .”

“What’s that I hear in the background?”

“Linux. He’s . . . I locked us in the bathroom. He’s not happy.”

The cat punctuates that statement with a long, low yowl, hunching down and ripping at the towel jammed under the door with his teeth, trying to get at whatever’s on the other side. Elgar jumps up from the side of the tub and pushes the towel back with his toe, grateful that he’s still wearing his street shoes when Linux, put out, attacks his foot instead.

“You . . . you’re in the bathroom?”