The Day After Tomorrow

19

OSBORN STOOD near the front counter of the hospital pharmacy trying to read get well cards in French while Vera took his prescription and walked to the pharmacist in the back. Once he glanced up and saw the pharmacist talking and gesturing with both hands while Vera stood with a hand on a hip waiting for him to finish. Osborn turned away. Maybe he’d made a mistake involving her. If he were ever caught and the truth came out, she could be charged as an accessory. He should tell her to forget it, find some other way to deal with Henri Kanarack. Fumbling, he replaced the card he was looking at in the rack and was turning to go back to her when he saw her coming toward him.

“Easier than buying condoms—less awkward, too.” She winked and walked past him.

Two minutes later they were outside and walking down the boulevard St.-Jacques, the succinylcholine and a packet of hypodermic syringes in Osborn’s sport coat pocket.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, putting up the umbrella and holding it so they could both walk under it. Then the rain started to come down more heavily and Osborn suggested they look for a taxi.

“Would it be all right if we just walked?” Vera said.

“If you don’t mind, I don’t.”

Taking her arm, they crossed the street against the light. When they reached the far curb, Osborn purposefully let go. Vera grinned broadly, and then for the next fifteen minutes they simply walked and said nothing.

Osborn’s thoughts turned inward. In a way, he was filled with relief. Getting the succinylcholine had been easier than he’d imagined. What he didn’t like was that he’d lied to Vera and used her and it bothered him a great deal more than he thought it would. Of anyone he’d even known, Vera was the last person he’d deliberately use of not tell the absolute truth to. But the fact was, as he reminded himself, he’d had little choice.

Today was not every day, nor was what he doing the stuff of everyday life. Old and dark things were at work Tragic things, that only he and Kanarack knew. And that only he and Kanarack could settle. It worried him again to think that if things went wrong, Vera might be accuse of being an accomplice. In all likelihood she wouldn’t go to jail, but her career and everything she’d worked for could be ruined. He should have thought of that earlier before he’d even talked to her about it. He should have but he hadn’t and now it was done. What he had to think about was the rest. To make sure that nothing went wrong, to make sure that both he and Vera were protected.

Suddenly she took his hand and pulled him around to face her. When she did, he realized they were no longer on boulevard St.-Jacques but crossing the Jardin des Plantes, the formal gardens of the National Museum of Natural History, and were almost to the Seine.

“What is it?” he asked, puzzled.

Vera watched his eyes find their way to hers and she knew she’d snatched him out of a dream.

“I want you to come to my apartment,” she said.

“You what?” He was clearly bewildered. Pedestrians scurried past left and right and gardeners, despite the rain were preparing their work for the day.

“I said, I want you to come to my apartment.”

“Why?”

“I want to give you a bath.”

“A bath?”

“Yes.”

A great boyish grin crept over him.

“First you didn’t want to be seen with me and now you want to take me to your apartment?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Osborn could see her blush. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Yes. I have it in my mind that I want to give you a bath, and in the thing they call a tub in your hotel you could barely wash a small dog.”

“What about ‘Frenchy’?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Tell me his name and I won’t.”

For a moment Vera was silent. Then she said, “I don’t care about him.”

“No?” Osborn thought she was teasing.

“No.”

Osborn looked at her carefully. “You’re serious.”

She nodded definitively.

“Since when?”

“Since . . . I don’t know. Since I decided, that’s all.” She didn’t want to examine it and her voice trailed off. ‘

Osborn didn’t know what to think, or even feel. On Monday she’d said she never wanted to see him again. She had a lover, an important man in France. Today was Thursday. Today he was in and the lover was out. Did she really care for him deeply enough to do that? Or had the lover business been only a story to put him off in the first place, a convenient way to end a brief affair?

The breeze off the river caught her hair and she tucked a strand of it behind her ear. Yes, she knew the chance she was taking but she didn’t care. All she knew was that right now she wanted to make love to Paul Osborn, in her own apartment and in her own bed. She wanted to be with him completely for as long as they could. She had forty-eight hours before her next shift began. François, Osborn’s “Frenchy,” was in New York and had not contacted her for several days. As far as she was concerned, she was free to do as she pleased, when she pleased, where she pleased.

“I’m tired. Do you want to come? Yes, or no?”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” she said. It was five minutes to ten in the morning.