Touching Dream (three)
Janelle bounced up and down on Will's stiff dick, sweaty and naked.
No, not naked -- her blouse was still hanging on her arms.
So they'd been in a hurry.
She started to moan. No, grunt. No, chant: "Oh oh oh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah..."
She was close.
Will was closer.
"Ngh, ngh, ngh, NGH! NGH! ... NGH! ... Ngh..."
It took less than five minutes.
And more than five Kleenex to get it all off of his chest.
He'd used her. Actually, just the fresh memory of her. An intense and angry rub, twisting her as far away as he could manage from the person he thought she really was. He'd turned her into a reckless club girl out for a speed screw, and then he'd obliged her -- behavior as much unlike him as it seemed unlike her.
It was spiteful and mean, a private revenge for what she'd done-- *tried* to do to him. It made him feel dirty and guilty and mad. It was the mad that he fostered. He needed it as much as he needed the quick release to keep thoughts of her at bay. At least for a little while, long enough to finish the Carlisle case. All he had to do was find out where she'd pawned the ring; the rest of the sordid business was someone else's problem.
That's the way Will liked it. Get the item, don't get involved.
His heart hadn't yet slowed, but Will could already feel the post-climactic calm lowering him. He didn't make a habit of using a 'manual release' to prepare for Dream -- after so many years, he could get to Dream faster than he could get to climax -- but sometimes the endorphins made it easier.
And Will knew he couldn't dive straight in with his usual aplomb. Even after (ahem) releasing Janelle, she had influence. If he took an active role in Dream, his subconscious would wander and he'd end up locking on to her, and then she'd be everywhere. So he had to go back to the way he did it in the beginning, before he'd realized all he could do. He had to let it flow. It took more time -- more wandering than searching -- but people being people eventually a subject's thoughts would turn to the matter at hand and take him right to it. It was better than nothing. And right now, it was all he had.
He knew he could let the Carlisle solution come naturally. It had been a while since he'd done that. Maybe he was working too hard. Maybe that's all it was...
So Will let himself drift, the most tenuous of thoughts flowing him through Dream toward the Carlisle house...
Connie Carlisle is here. She is thinking of the ring. She's always thinking of it. She feels guilty.
He lingers; no need to nudge, she's already heading that way.
Memory, made bolder and darker with meaning. The letter in her hand. The ring still on her finger. The SUV rolling down the road, slow but still too fast.
Will finds himself in the back seat. See, this isn't so hard.
An address scribbled, directions added. No, don't look; let it happen.
We'll be there soon enough.
It's dark; how long have they been driving? Did he nod off?
The SUV rocks gently with the undulations of the road; he always used to find riding in the car soothing, before-
He's just a passenger. He's not driving this time.
He's not old enough.
"Dad?"
"We're almost home."
His mom turns around. "Shh. Go back to sleep, honey."
No. This is why he doesn't let go. It brings him back here.
It's been a long time. But he always ends up here. He always closes his eyes. And the ending is always the same.
But before he closes his eyes, he looks to the seat next to him.
A young woman is there.
*Janelle* is there.
And then everything goes sideways. The first instant of crunching metal is so loud it wakes him.
Like it always does.
But this time when Will snapped awake, heart pounding, chest heaving, lungs burning, this time he didn't relax so quickly.
This time was different. The nightmare never changed, but it was *different*. Janelle wasn't supposed to be there, but she *was* there, sitting next to him at the end.
This was bad. Really bad. She'd put a spell on him. If she could penetrate such a deeply guarded memory, such a traumatic moment, it meant he was *obsessed*.
This had happened once before. Not this bad -- not all the way into The Accident -- but then he hadn't given himself so much hanging rope before.
There was only one thing he could do. Only one thing worked before; he hoped it would work this time, before it wrecked him.
He'd have to stop sleeping.
Will stepped out of the office building. It was a cool day, and he hadn't worn a coat, but still he turned down a cab. It was better to walk, even if it was all the way across town.
It would keep him awake.
The security envelopes tucked themselves more tightly under his arm. He was lucky -- Truman had almost twenty hours worth of dictation saved up. Bless the man, because Will needed it to keep busy. Most people found legal transcription to have a narcoleptic effect, but it kept Will awake. It also kept Will from starving when P.I. work was light.
And now it would keep him out of trouble.
"Hey."
Or not.
It was Janelle. What was she doing here? How did she find him? Why did she have to?
Well, he had taken her money... which he'd gladly return now, only he didn't have it on him.
"Hey," he answered, pretending to focus on the crosswalk. It didn't last. She moved so she was in his line of sight. He'd have to look at her unless he was going to be a complete asshole, and he just didn't have the energy for that...
"You look like I feel," she said.
"I wish I could say the same -- you look beautiful."
It was a sweet lie. She looked haggard. "Thanks. I haven't been sleeping well lately."
Her too? "Why not?" came out of his mouth before he could stop it. He didn't really want to know...
"Randy hasn't been letting me dream- I mean, he keeps waking me up in the middle of the night."
So thanks to Randy, Janelle couldn't sleep -- and thanks to Janelle, Will didn't want to.
"Why?"
The light changed. She glanced over her shoulder before stepping off the curb, backpedaling to stay in front of him. She may have been mentally frazzled, but not so much that she stopped trying to push his buttons. Will just let her -- at this point it didn't much matter.
"It's his way of punishing me for being a bad wife."
"Bad how?" Again, a question he didn't want to ask. He'd forgotten how uncoordinated he got when he didn't sleep.
"I forgot to drop off the dry cleaning. He didn't have his power suit for a big meeting, so he didn't close the deal."
"And I suppose it's all your fault." That was fucked up.
"It's okay. I did it on purpose."
She saw his puzzled look; her eyes darted up for a moment before finding an explanation: "If I was suddenly the perfect wife he'd know something was up."
So Will wasn't the only man she was manipulating.
She was walking next to him now, his height and her high heels combining to stretch her strides further than modesty might dictate, but she kept pace anyway. Actually she kept just a quarter-step ahead, no doubt to make sure he could see her. He couldn't help but fixate on the way her long strides made her hips sway and her breasts jostle and her hair bounce...
Fuck. If he didn't get some sleep soon, she'd have him doing tricks in the street. Of course, if he did sleep he'd just be dreaming about doing tricks in the street -- or something much more stupid, like getting between her and a rhino...
"How'd you find me?" It was a question of despair more than curiosity.
"I followed you, and just kind of hung out."
Followed? Will looked around casually, trying to be cool about it.
"Oh, he doesn't care where I go. Or who I see. Actually, I think he enjoys it when some guy tries to help me."
Oh, great. Will had visions of Randy hiring some unibrowed barrel-chested wrestling fan to demonstrate how to beat someone with a folding chair.
"So, any luck?"
Yeah. Thanks to you, lots of it, and all of it bad.
But if she was asking, it probably meant she really did have something she wanted him to find. That wasn't good, but it was... something. At least she was using him because of what he could do. At least he wasn't just a warm body.
In his exhaustion he finally relented. If she was willing to follow him... if she was willing to provoke her husband -- her husband The Rhino -- to throw off suspicions... was that why? he couldn't quite make sense of that one, but whatever... if she was willing to pay him up front, and flirt with him, and... well, it didn't look like she was going to leave him alone, in reality *or* in Dream, until he helped her, so he might as well help her.
"It would help a lot if I knew what I was looking for."
"I told you I don't know what it looks like."
"That's okay; actually it's not how I find things most of the time. I need to know about its significance. What does it mean to you? And to him?"
Janelle suddenly stopped walking. It took him a couple of steps to react.
Whatever it was, it seemed to hit her pretty hard. Her playfulness was gone.
"Do you know what you do to a pet bird to make sure it doesn't fly away?"
"You put it in a cage."
"No, you clip its wings." She turned to leave. "You're looking for his scissors."