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It only took three days for Lenny Nero to lose it. It was a day longer than Mace expected, but that didn't ease the blow when it came to rinsing Lenny's vomit down the bathtub drain every forty-five minutes. It had been six years since she'd dragged her baby cousin through heroin withdrawals-just long enough to forget how dirty and frustrating the process was.
At least with Zander at her sister's place, she didn't have to worry about Lenny's language echoing all over the house.
"FUCK!"
Mace sat on her toilet seat, thumbing through an arms catalogue addressed to Lornette Mason. "You know, there's no literature on this. No pamphlets at the library. I checked. We should have turned you back over to the hospital for a study," she said mildly, carefully nudging Lenny's sweaty hip away with her heavy boot. "Get back in the tub."
"I can't," Lenny said miserably, bowing his head and playing with the oily, damp strands of his fashionably long bangs.
"Oh?" Mace asked without looking up. She licked her finger and turned the page, eyes lighting briefly at an advertisement for a 1998 Peugeot with Level III armoring. "You owe me a car, Lenny." Another page. "Get in the tub."
"I can't!" Lenny insisted, looking up at Mace with bloodshot eyes.
She waited a full minute before glancing down at him. The heavy bandages across his torso didn't seem stained. He didn't appear to be in danger of keeling over and dying on her bathroom floor. "You can, it just hurts. There's a difference. Get in the tub or I will help you get in the tub. I don't think that's what you really want."
It wasn't what Lenny really wanted. In fact, less than an hour earlier, she'd helped him into the tub and reached up to aim the shower nozzle right at his face.
Even in California, cold water was seriously cold water. Especially in January.
Whining softly, Lenny climbed over the side of the tub basin and flopped like a fish onto the slippery fiberglass. He heaved a heavy sigh and stared up at the plastic shower rack.
"You have soap on a rope," he giggled abruptly, before turning onto his side to gag.
"That's a loofah. It hangs from a string to keep from getting moldy." Mace set the catalogue aside and stretched slowly, carefully easing the tension from her bruised and cracked ribs. Her jaw tightened briefly, and then she relaxed. "You know, just now, I can't imagine what I saw in you."
"That's so mean," Lenny pouted.
"It's true," Mace shrugged. "You're worse than my boy when he's got the flu, and I'm not looking for another adolescent male in my life."
"Gotta puke again," Lenny said. And he did.
***
The next day, Lenny writhed in Mace's bed. She sat beside the nightstand, frowning critically at the tangle of sheets around Lenny's naked body, half-heartedly hoping he'd strangle himself.
"Do you miss her?" Mace prompted, trying to get more out of him than the pleading little whimpers along the lines of 'Faith' and 'baby' and 'baby, no.'
Lenny didn't answer. Not that day, and not the following night. He stared at the ceiling, at the wall, at the lamp-his eyes glazed the way they'd glazed every time he'd jacked into some other jerk's mind. Except now he had no ridiculous-looking wire squid on his head and no flimsy little disk clutched in his hands. He didn't have the mind candy he needed or his cardboard box of stolen memories of that skinny junkie whore he still couldn't forget.
He just had a bed, some sheets, and a thin sliver of Mace's patience.
"And you're damn lucky to have that," she muttered, closing the bedroom door and trying to close her ears to the constant sound of Lenny's hoarse voice begging for that sorry excuse for another woman.
***
The day after that, Lenny had more color to his face and a healthy spark of recognition in his eyes. Enough recognition to realize who he was with, a fraction of what he'd said, and exactly how close he was to being executed by the gorgeous, furious woman sitting beside him.
"I feel better," he offered, resisting the urge to draw the sheets up over his face. It always seemed to work for ostriches.
"That's too bad," Mace said flatly.
"Um. The world didn't end?" Lenny mumbled, scraping for reasons to celebrate the New Year. Or anything to distract Mace from the twitchy way she seemed ready to either cry or fire a weapon.
"You gonna offer me a Rolex next, Lenny?" Mace snapped.
Lenny licked at the inside of his mouth for a while in response, deciding against asking for a glass of water.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, after several minutes passed.
The heavy toe of Mace's boot thumped softly, quickly, again and again against the nightstand. Lenny thought it sounded like a bomb getting ready to explode. He focused on the floral-print on the sheets. Some sort of white flower, with little blue flowers and some pale green vines. Very un-Mace-like.
"I don't know if that's enough," Mace sighed, weighing the words out as if she'd chewed and swallowed a handful of responses before settling on that one.
"Yeah." Lenny just nodded. "Yeah, Mace. I know."
***
When it was over, a week had passed. Lenny sat on Mace's front porch stairs with a tall glass of ice water. He stared into it, watching the cubes slowly melt.
Some guys from the station were throwing Max something like a funeral in two hours.
"I guess it doesn't seem right."
Rocking slowly in an old wooden chair behind him, Mace shrugged. "That's your call. You do what you have to do."
"I thought I did. I don't think I do anymore."
Mace narrowed her eyes and watched Lenny's back muscles tense under his shirt. "I can't keep waiting for you."
Lenny turned so sharply that some of the water splashed out of his glass and onto his pants. He scrubbed at the wet stain briefly and then realized he just didn't give a shit. "Mace."
She watched him, waiting for more, and didn't seem surprised when nothing else came out of his mouth. The rocking chair scraped against the floor as she stood up abruptly and opened the screen door. "I need to get ready for wor-"
"Mace," Lenny repeated, the sweaty glass tight in his fingers. He looked up at her and it felt right being down on the ground with Mace standing there, proud in her distress. Just like the day he met her. "I don't know what to do about Max. I probably don't want to see his friends. I'm not sure I want to see anyone. Nobody-see nobody knows me. Anymore. She's gone, right? Do you see? I haven't sweated her out yet but she's gone."
Mace started to say something and Lenny scrambled to stand, trying to interrupt her with a kiss. She held him away at arms length, fingers bruise-tight on his arms. "Don't you-don't you dare, Lenny Nero."
"Damn it Mace, please listen to me!"
"You never make sense," she hissed back.
"I want you. I want to be whoever you think I am when you put up with me all the time. I want to be that person. For you-with you-you-"
Mace slammed Lenny against the wall next to the door-and immediately felt a little bad for it. Although there really was something satisfying about the way he just shut right up and paled.
"You're a piece of shit. You got that? 'Cause you better get that right now, before you say another word. One week of pain doesn't make up for years of peddling that poison. You think about how many folks you've introduced to that shit to. You think about that, Lenny. I'll let you into my life-into my boy's life-when I think you're staying out of all that. Away from her. Away from your clips. Away from your scumbag friends and your piece-of-shit lifestyle. And when you ARE that person, you come back here and maybe I'll listen to your half-assed soap opera apologies. You get that, Lenny?"
"Ma-"
"You expect me to just smile and keep my door open for you? You think I'm that sort of woman? I don't have room for your shit. I don't have time for this. I sure as hell don't have time to wait for you to stop daydreaming about Faith. I don't care what you WANT. You know what I want? I want a man, Lenny. Not a friend or a puppy or a child or whatever it is you're gonna be tomorrow."
Mace's voice went hoarse and she looked up and around, briefly lost in her words and the choked up pressure of what wanted to be tears. Then she looked at Lenny. Lenny's sad eyes and Lenny's unspoken apologies and all the well-meaning lines on his face. She leaned in, kissed him hard, tried even harder not to shove her knee toward his crotch, and then pulled away with a harsh breath.
"You can't sell me your bullshit." Every once in a while, Mace wished that he could. That she could sink into the soft, familiar bed of a man's lies. Just for a little while.
"I'm sorry-Mace, I'm sorry."
She nodded. "You are. But you're not sorry enough yet."
But it helped when Lenny nodded, lurched, and passed right out on her porch. It helped a lot.