Page 39 of Thunder

I stop outside the door, holding my wilting bouquet and a hundred regrets. “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Bullet says.

“Shouldn’t,” I answer. “Shouldn’t, shan’t, shall not fucking ever.”

Owen puts his hand on my arm, squeezes, looks at me with eyes that more than lightly suggest murder. “Are you saying you’re going to put your pride over finding out who poisoned my grandmother? You really must want to be shot.”

The real answer sits right on my tongue, that flirting with someone—especially some woman who works in the basement of some hospital, on the same floor as the morgue, and who spends all her days out of the sun, dealing with computers instead of real people—feels more than wrong now that Lia is in my life. Even if Lia is a secret that I haven’t told the club about yet, other than describing her as my mortal goddamn enemy the night of the community meeting.Fuck, my life is a mess right now.

“No. I’m saying I’m going to go in there and flirt with basement-dwelling Carol and get the security footage, but I’m doing so under extreme duress.”

“Well, my grandmother—who is also under extreme duress, being that she’s in a fucking coma after being poisoned—would empathize with you. If she weren’t in a coma.”

“Damn, bro,” Bullet says. “Ease up a little.”

“Fine. Do your best, champ,” Owen says sarcastically, then he taps me on the shoulder. “We’re all pulling for you as you fight through this monumental struggle of having to flirt with a woman.”

I trade a quick, reinforcing look with both Owen and Bullet as I psyche myself up. “Whatever happens, no one tell Rook I did this. He’ll never let me live it down.”

Then I turn and open the door to the IT offices of Costa Oscura General Hospital. The room itself is as I expected, smelling like dust, also like dreams of human contact that have died and turned to dust. There'sa poster of a kitten dangling from a laundry line on the wall with the words ‘Hang in there’ written on it. It’s stuffy from the heat of a large bank of mainframe servers. There’s an off-putting mechanical hum in the air. Two people sit at desks at the far wall, their backs turned to me. One’s wearing a hoodie with the hood up, has a slender build, but definitely isn’t a Carol, if anything I’ve heard about her is correct; the hoodie’s an LA Rams hoodie, there’s a miniature football on the desk, and there’s a framed photo of Muhammad Ali’s famous knockout over Liston. The other person is clearly a woman. She’s larger, just barely above average, with unkempt brown hair, poor posture, and no less than seventy Pokemon figurines on her desk. Hand-painted ones, too, from the looks of it.

I sigh.

There’s my target.

I approach. Halfway there, I clear my throat to announce my presence, and say, “Hey Carol, Eliza told me how you felt about me and I just had to stop by. I couldn’t stay away from you any longer, babe.”

The woman turns in her chair. She’s pretty enough, and if I’d never met Lia, and if Carol didn’t have a disturbing number of fictional cartoon animal figurines on her desk—or whatever the hell Pokemon are, I don’t fucking know—I might be into this.

But I’m not.

So I grit my teeth, think of the old woman dying upstairs, and try to feel aroused.

“Who are you?” She says.

“You know who I am. It’s me. Marcus. Maybe you know me by my road name—Thunder—but I’m here because I heard what you told Eliza and I can’t contain myself any longer. I’ve been thinking about you ever since, baby.”

“Oh?” She says.

I come in closer, slide some of the Pokemon figurines across her desk to make room for myself, and sit down. “Carol, you make my heart rev like I’ve just taken a hit of nos. From the moment I saw you, I just knew that you were the one I had to have.”

“Really? Marcus, I—“

Her eyes drift down to the floor. Maybe it’s shyness, maybe she feels overwhelmed by her attraction to me, but either way, I need to keep her focus on me. I put one finger under her chin and lift her gaze to me while my mind races for anything that might keep her interest—computer shit, mainly.

“Carol, I want you like I wanted the iPod touch when Steve Jobs announced it at the 2007 Apple conference—real fucking bad.”

“But there’s something you need to know…”

“The only thing I need to know is how I can get you and me alone. Look, I get it, you might be afraid of your feelings for me, or of even being with me—I know I got a reputation—but, deep down, I like the same things as you: computers, little fake animal toys, and sex.” She blinks, long, slow, probably utterly overwhelmed at how seduced she’s feelingat thisvery moment. I’ve got her right where I want her. I bring myself in close, so close that one move will have my lips against hers, rocking her world the way it’s never been rocked before. “You know what really turns me on? What gets me so hard I can’t even stand it? Talking about computers and security footage in a basement room with you, baby.”

“Security footage? What?”

“Like footage from several nights ago. I can give you the day, thetime frame, all of that. You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you so desperately need. Understand me?”

“No, I’m finding this very confusing.”

“Carol, you show me this footage, and maybe you and I can make some footage of our own, if you know what I mean.” I pause, looking at her. She still looks so confused. Doesn’t surprise me, if I were in her shoes, being hit on by a guy like me, I’d be overwhelmed, too. Maybe she needs time to get her thoughts together because of how aroused she is.

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