Part 6

Tamara looked away and stared across the hall to the concierge desk and a group of nighttime arrivals. A little girl pulled a green wooden crocodile, and its wheels powered the inanimate object as it undulated and swept its tail across the floor. Tamara shivered and arched her back nauseated.

“The creature squirms, convulses, undulates,” she whispered and held her arms.

“Are you okay?”

“Give me a moment,” she whispered. “It’s the toy. A damn wooden toy,” she repeated to herself.

“What toy?”

“The wooden crocodile in the lobby,” Tamara gagged.

Adrian looked around. He saw the girl and the toy.

“I see it. What about it?”

“I hate things that undulate. That wavy, windy movement. It triggers me ill.”

“Let’s get up and walk. Let’s have a coffee.”

“Okay.”

As she stood up, with the undulating image weaving through her mind, she saw cracks in the tiles move and open and thick, black cables undulated toward her. She closed her eyes. He held her and she hung in his arms like a catatonic marionette with arms folded on her chest for protection.

“Take me to your room.”

“Excuse me?”

“Take me to your room. I need to calm down. I don’t want Mama to know. She will shout at me.”

“Is there medication?”

“In the room.”

“Okay. We go to my room and order some food and coffee, and it will be okay.”

“Okay.”

He supported her as she stumbled across the lobby toward the elevators.

***

Adrian helped Tamara onto the bed where she curled into fetal position and sobbed. From the pillow, she looked past the window and into the night, where white crests of the waves topped the desperately black ocean and on the horizon a lonely, bright cruise ship hung suspended in the darkness.

“I’ll order some food.”

“Please sit next to me. Talk to me, Adrian. Tell me a secret.”

“I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you,” he tried to ease the air, but the word “kill” stabbed her soul, and her body jerked. She cringed and pulled away from him in fear.

“I’m sorry. It’s okay. I didn’t mean to startle you. I want you to find a way out of your pain, so I will tell you because you are not well, and you saved my life. But you can never tell anyone. Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

Adrian exhaled. He stood up, walked to the mini-fridge, opened a bottle of wine, poured out two drinks, drank, and then exhaled again looking at the cruise ship glimmering in the distance.

“I was injured in the service.”

“What happened?”

“Oh God,” Adrian burst out a frustrated chuckle and then a laugh, and then he laughed again.

“It was a horrifying explosion. I woke up alone on a heap of twisted metal and burnt bodies. My unit dismembered, my friends dead.”

“I’m so sorry, Adrian,” said Tamara.

“It’s okay.”

“No. I mean I’m sorry, but I need to see your wounds.” Tamara’s mind shifted away from her mental torment and dove into his physical one.

“What?”

“I need to see it.”

“Why?”

“I feel it will save me.”

“How?”

“I want to see your pain. I want to know I’m not alone. I want someone in my corner. I want someone to care.”

“I care.” He held her hand and watched the ships on the horizon. “You are so incredibly brave.”

“Thank you, Adrian,” she said, caressed his face and rested her face on his shoulder. Her hand slid down his chest, and her fingers felt a crevice of the scar.

“May I see?”

“Please don’t ask that. It’s the ugliest wound. You will be scarred along with me.”

She sensed tears behind his eyes.

“I’m not scared. I have lifetime experience fighting monsters coming at me from the darkness. I have conquered them. I’ve slew them all and I have scars to prove it.”