Page 16 of Nightcrawler

“Okay,” Mathis said, the first words he’d uttered since we’d begun the dressing change.

I went into the kitchen and ladled a big bowl of stew for him, bringing it back with a chunk of crusty French bread. I’d slathered it with the last of my precious butter—the one luxury I usually hoarded for myself—before walking back to him. I didn’t have to microwave anything since the food was still warm from the stove. After setting up a rickety TV tray and setting it in front of him, I grabbed another glass of water, setting it down with a big soup spoon and napkin.

He leaned forward, winced, held his side, and then inhaled, letting out an appreciative moan of pleasure the minute he’d put the first spoon in his mouth. I smiled inside as I watched him begin to nod and take several more spoonfuls before looking up at me and giving me a thumbs up as he chewed. After stripping off the bedding, I turned around and saw him staring at the bloody sheets in my hands. He was no longer chewing.

“Oh, my God, Trigg. I ruined your sheets…and look at your mattress!”

I turned and spotted the huge bloodstain on the side of the bed where Vonne had worked on him as well as the one higher up where he’d slept all day. He was right. My mattress looked like a crime scene.

I glanced back at him. “It’s fine,” I replied. “It’s a really old mattress.” I sighed before grabbing my detergent from under the kitchen sink and heading to the front door. “Be right back.” I was out of the apartment, headed away from him before I embarrassed myself.

RAVEN

I watched Trigg vanish out the door wondering why he was in such a hurry and feeling terrible about what I’d done by bleeding all over his mattress. I could tell by the humbleness of Huerta’s apartment, lack of furniture, bare floor, and walls, that he wasn’t exactly living the high life. I wanted to kick myself for not realizing how desperate he’d been when he’d fought me so hard for the bounty on Gemma’s prosthetic boobs. I should have known he needed the money even after his cracks about my shoes, my truck, and how he’d referred to me as a rich boy.

I turned and looked at his bed, noting how old and ratty it looked and felt even worse. I’d bled all over it. He hadn’t put a mattress pad over it and as I thought about that, another realization hit me. He’d felt it necessary to wash the sheets even though my phone told me it was past ten which probably meant the sheets and the stack of bloody towels he gathered before walking out of the room were all he had.

“Fuck, you’re a total idiot, Raven,” I said out loud to the empty room.

“Meow!”

I looked over the side of the chair to see where the call had come from and spotted a pair of golden eyes staring up at me. They sat in a heart-shaped white face. The kitten was small and if I had to guess, less than six months old. He appeared to be mostly white with black markings on his head, sides, and back. I’d completely forgotten the kitten as Trigg had practically carried me into the apartment earlier in the day. I couldn’t remember what he’d called the little guy, Henry? Steven? Harley? I set down my spoon, carefully pushing the empty bowl aside and reached down. The kitten immediately walked into mypetting fingers, rubbing against them as I scratched the top of his head.

My side was killing me with the effort it took to bend, so I sat up slowly, leaning back in the recliner as I picked up the crusty bread and chewed on it. A second later, the kitten jumped up on the arm of the chair, balancing there with all four paws like one of those circus elephants you see balancing on a ball, a feat I always knew was impossible. He gazed at me for a few seconds, blinking, and then looked down into my nearly empty bowl before walking to the end of the chair’s arm and leaning toward it. He obviously thought food was much more interesting than I was. I grinned and picked up the bowl, holding it out for him. He stared down into it and then reached down, catching a small piece of potato with one paw, and pulling it out. It dropped onto the floor and he instantly followed. I laughed as I sat back in the chair, and the door opened.

Trigg walked into the room and immediately came over, holding a small bottle of laundry soap as he looked into the bowl. “How was it?” he asked, staring into my eyes.Jesus, the guy is intense.

“It was really good. I don’t know where you got the recipe, but it was amazing. Thank you again.”

He gave me the ghost of a smile and walked over to the kitchen table to pull out one of the hard backed chairs, dropping down into it, still holding the bottle. When the kitten came running over to him he grinned, bending over to meet the little guy who was standing on his hind legs, holding up two white paws. Trigg’s whole face changed when he saw the kitten. He looked soft and approachable, even kind, traits and characteristics that I wouldn’t have guessed he had. Then again, he’d been so kind to me after the shooting. When I’d first methim, he’d been such an asshole. I was seeing a very different side of him, and this one, I really liked.

“There you are, Stanley!” he said, picking the kitten up by the nape of his neck like a mother would. He immediately hugged the little guy and that’s all it took for me to become a goner in no time flat. Trigg’s big, dark presence holding this small kitten made me want to melt onto the floor.

Stanley. That’s his name. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him cooing into the side of the kitten’s neck. When he looked up, all the stress of the day had been erased from his face. That was no ordinary kitten. He had to be magical. I grinned at my own foolishness.

“There’s no recipe,” he suddenly said, pointing to my bowl as he returned to the topic we’d been on before the reappearance of his beloved pet. I chewed the rest of the buttered bread as he kept talking. “That’s the kind of stuff me and my Marine Corps unit used to make when we had nothing else to eat out on patrol. Sometimes we’d be separated from the rest of our platoon for days, high up in the mountains, or deep in some stinking, sweating jungle, so we didn’t have access to refrigeration or anything other than what we could carry in our packs. We’d procure whatever cans of food we could find if we were somewhere populated but if we weren’t, we hoarded them for later and carried them on our backs.”

“And you’d just cook up a bunch of canned stuff?”

“Sure. We’d put them all in one pot and just make it. Sometimes we’d find cans with no labels.” He grinned. “Those were always entertaining to open.”

I laughed, pain making me momentarily breathless as I remembered I shouldn’t…fucking…do that.

“One time, one of my buddies opened a can and found pickled scorpions.”

“Oh my God!” I stared at him horrified as he sat there calmly petting Stanley. “Please tell me you didn’t eat them.”

He shook his head. “Fuck no. We passed on that can, but we often found canned meats we couldn’t identify. Needless to say, we never added that to the stew. If we opened a can and found a dried protein, bacon or beef jerky, we’d add those. One time there was a can of crickets which made it into the pot.”

“Gross. I mean I know some people eat bugs but, no. My friend had a gecko, and she fed him live crickets. I watched that cute little lizard eat this poor cricket and really felt for him,” I said.

Trigg smirked. “The cricket or the gecko…or your friend?”

I laughed and grabbed my side as an involuntary moan escaped.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” he said, losing his smile. “You, okay?”

“It’s okay, just an ache when I laugh.”