She heard a scraping noise and shifted her head. It was Axel on a ladder at the top of one of the vats, and he seemed to be scrubbing the inside with something at the end of a pole. He was stripped to his khakis with his shirt tied around his waist, and Ellery watched the muscles in his back flex as he worked. For all the folklore about drug users being pale, scrawny types, Axel had always been quite the eyeful. In
fact, laboring away in his current state of undress, he reminded her of something she’d seen before. Where, though? In the athletic world? No. Sculpture? No, though there was a marble statue of Hermes in the Met that had always annoyingly reminded her of Axel. Then she had it: There was a huge Art Deco mural of gold and gray glass from the thirties on the façade of that building in downtown Pittsburgh that showed a puddler, a steelworker who stirs molten iron with his ladle, with his shirt off. At night tiny lights twinkled on it, showing the sparks from his fiery work. It had always fascinated her, and Axel had the body to carry it off.
Ah, Pittsburgh. She had to admit, there were still some things here that made her smile about the place. She still wasn’t exactly sure where she was, but given the grainy scent wafting through the room and the fact that Axel was involved, she suspected she was either in a brewery or a meth lab.
“Morning,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”
“God, yes.”
He chuckled and climbed down the ladder. What on earth had happened to her last night? The last thing she remembered clearly was asking Axel for a pill.
Jesus, how did he do it? She felt like she’d spent the night in a rock tumbler. Gingerly she moved her hands, feeling the surface on which she was curled. The mattress was made of burlap and appeared to be filled with tiny beans.
She tried to focus on the red letters printed on it: “Vienna Malt.” Then she gazed down. She was five feet above the ground. Axel had laid her on a pallet of malt.
He returned with a mug.
“Can I just sniff it? I’m afraid to sit up.”
“Poor Pittsburgh.” He gave her a woeful smile and held the cup near her nose.
She peeled the burlap off her mouth, which seemed to have been glued into place with dried drool. God, she must look like hell. She got up on an elbow and felt her stomach roil.
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Doubtful,” Axel said. “I’m pretty sure you’re running on empty there.”
A snippet of him holding her hair popped into her head. So did a prayer for a comet to hit the earth. “I already…?”
He nodded. “Ten times, at least.”
Great.
She banged her palm on her bedding. “So, what’s with the kitty litter?”
“Kitty litter,” he said with mock insult. “You are sitting on one of the most lovely things on earth.”
“I always knew you were an ass man.”
“Your ass, while remarkable in many ways, cannot impart a sweet honey molasses flavor to beer.”
“I’d say you have no idea what my ass can impart to beer, but since I apparently can’t remember exactly what happened last night, I’m not sure I’d be on solid ground.” She held out her hand and, with his help, pulled herself to a sitting position, though a silent timpani banged away behind her forehead in complaint. She took the coffee and noticed a disconcerting freedom of movement.
“Do you, um, happen to know where my bra is?”
My hundred-dollar bra?
“Wish I could take credit,” he said, heading back up the ladder, “but you really wanted that T-shirt.”
She looked down.
The Monkey Bar: Where Girls Come to Play.
Oh,
Christ
.
“And my dress?”
“You
really
wanted that T-shirt.”
She put a hand on her forehead. She had a vision of jerking her way over the heads of the crowd, which would certainly explain why her shoulders were singing with pain. But why did she smell like men’s cologne?
Then she remembered the hand up her shirt, and a searing flush of embarrassment came over her. “Did we…”
He turned to her, very still. “Did we what?”
She squirmed. More images slipped over the floodgates. A man. Joe? John? Jake? His hands under her shirt, then her shirt up to her neck. Oh, good Lord!
“… get what we needed for the story?”
Axel returned his attention to the vat he’d abandoned. “
I
did. I’m not so sure about you. Though you were conducting quite an interesting interview toward the end.”
Axel must have seen it. She had no idea how she had ended up here, but at some point he must have found her. “I’m remembering a guy,” she said at last.
“Pretty unforgettable.”
“Not exactly Harold.”
Axel considered. “No.”
“How bad was it?”
“Let’s just say your breasts probably have their own Twitter following at this point.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Hey, it beats Ashton Kutcher.”
She rubbed her temples, wondering how each of her teeth
could hurt separately. “Axel, what the hell happened to me?”
“Delayed adolescence? You know, it’s sort of like always getting immunized for the flu: You build up no tolerance. When the big one hits, you’re wiped off the planet.”
“Are you saying my young adulthood was sheltered?”
“Have you heard of
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble
?”
“Hey, I know how to party. Look at my shoes.… Oh, boy, where’s my other shoe?”
“I was a little curious about that myself.”
She sipped the coffee. It was strong and hot, not unlike the guy who had made it. “Hey, thanks for taking care of me.”
He shrugged. “No problem.”
“And now can you tell me what we’re doing in a brewery?”
He laughed. “I don’t know what
you’re
doing in a brewery, but
I’m
cleaning.”
“Cleaning? The man who never picked up a single sock? Who ate cereal out of a saucepan when he ran out of bowls?”
“Works for photographers, not so much for beer. This is Brendan’s place.”
Oh, yes, she remembered Brendan, Axel’s party-boy college friend. “So, why are you cleaning? Can’t Brendan just get a cleaning person to do it?”
He scooped the mug from her hand and took a long gulp. She felt a tingle where his hand had brushed her skin.
“First,” he said, returning the coffee to her and threading his arms back into the shirt, “brewing
is
cleaning. Sure, it’s not the glory part, and it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s about ninety percent of what a brewer does. Second, I’m hoping to buy this place soon.”
She lowered the mug. “What?”
“I want to make beer.” He buttoned his sleeves.
“And leave New York?”
He laughed. “Yes. And leave New York.”
“What about your work?”
“I figure I’ll still do some freelance stuff. But this is my dream.”
“I-I-” She didn’t know what to say. She knew he liked beer and had homebrewed while they were together, but to do it full-time? That seemed so unlike Axel. Of course, what did she really know about him anymore? “But you’re going to live in Pittsburgh?”
“I know it’s hard to imagine, but it
is
possible to be happy outside New York. I don’t really like the publishing business. I’m not going to miss it.”
He’d said this without a touch of venom, but Ellery couldn’t help but feel the words applied—if not particularly, then in general—to her.
“Where will you live?” she asked.
“For a while, at least, upstairs. There’s an office and a storage room up there. All I need is a bed.”
This was more than her bruised brain could process. New York would be different without him. While she’d taken care not to cross his path, she’d always known he was there, and in some ways the way he’d worked to stay on top of his game had inspired her to be better too. And now Axel would follow his dream. She felt a sudden emptiness inside.
“Gosh, I certainly wish you the best.”
He smiled, a nice crinkly eyed one. “Thank you. That means a lot.” He hesitated. “It’s funny about dreams. You think you’re happy doing one thing, and then something happens.…”
“What happened?” she said, instantly alert.
“I just meant in general,” he said. “You reach a point when you find you want something else, and the desire can be so powerful.”
She made an affirming “Mm-mm” and smiled.
“You’ve always followed your dreams. That’s one of the things I loved about you, you know. The
Sill,
New York,
Vanity Place
. Is there anything left for you to even dream about?”
She considered telling him about the Lark & Ives position, but decided against it. “You know me,” she said. “There’s always something around the corner.”
“Well, whatever it is, I know you’ll nail it.”
“Thanks.”
“Now, I hate to rain on all this fun, but it’s getting close to noon and we have a flight and I still have to dump the yeast and then get you back to the hotel to pick up your stuff—that is, unless you’re willing to spend the rest of the trip in jeans and a Monkey Bar T-shirt.”
“Believe me, if you saw what else was in my suitcase, you’d understand why that isn’t such a bad idea.”
“But I’m pretty sure that laptop’s going to come in handy on assignment. Speaking of deadlines, did I hear you mention you’d started to write?”
God, what had she said to him? She remembered sitting down to type, but she didn’t remember anything about romance coming out of her fingers. “It’s, ah, coming along.”
Something in her tone must have alerted him, for he gave her a long, considering look. “You
are
going to write it, aren’t you?”
Ellery stiffened. She didn’t like to be backed into a corner, especially when it came to her work, especially
by Axel. The assignment sucked, which was exactly what Black wanted, but that didn’t mean she had to do it. Not if Carlton Purdy was going to get his bow tie in a double knot over it. She was pretty sure she’d rather explain to the folks at Lark & Ives why she didn’t have any article at all in next month’s issue of
Vanity Place
than explain why she had written a freakin’ ode to romance novels.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
He nodded. “Good.”
She ran a hand through her slightly matted and malt-smelling hair. “I don’t suppose there’s a shower upstairs.”
“What? The renewal of your soul wasn’t enough?”
“Axel. Is there?”
“Of a sort.”
She cringed. “Spiders?”
“No walls.”
“Oh.” She relaxed. “That’s not a problem.”
“Not for a woman who stared down the garbage can of hell, I suppose. What was I thinking? Make it fast, though. I’ll be done dumping the yeast in fifteen minutes and then we’ve got to go.”
Axel listened to the thunder of the water upstairs. He found the notion of a naked Ellery in his brewery quite enthralling—so enthralling, in fact, that he’d found himself at a total standstill twice when he should have been working. Crafting beer all day, crafting interesting interludes all night—now,
that
would be the way to live.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t told Ellery about the
diabetes when she’d asked what had happened. He supposed he was still getting used to the idea himself. Perhaps if he were a little more confident that whatever this thing with her was becoming would last…
Of course, he also remembered the way that guarded look had come over her face when he’d asked her about her dreams. In that flash, he’d felt the same small sting of being shut out that he’d sometimes felt when they were together.
The shower stopped and the sound of her toweling off inspired yet another pause, this one involving a vision of a snowy night, a Hudson’s Bay blanket and a bed far more forgiving than a bushel of Vienna malt.
“Axel?”
He jumped. “Yes?” She had crept down the stairs without a sound. Her hair hung in damp tendrils and her face was scrubbed a moist pink.
“I feel tons better—though fresh panties would hit the spot.”
He held up a finger and dug with his other hand in his pocket. Then he handed her the red thong.
She gazed at it, hypnotized. “I’m not even going to ask.”
“My lips are sealed. Listen, I need some help.”
“Sure, what?”
“I’m going to up the pressure in the tank by putting the CO
2
line to it.” He pointed to a gauge at the top of a nearby fermenter. “We need to get the yeast out. It’s all used up. Kaput.”
“Like me after last night.”
“No comment. The pressure compacts the yeast inside into a manageable mass. When I give the word, you
open the valve at the bottom and it slides out into the tub there. Got it?”
“Sure.” She knelt down and gave him a thumbs-up. “Ready.”
He climbed the ladder and increased the pressure. It generally needed to be about five pounds per square inch to get the soggy yeast to coalesce. He waited a minute then turned it off.
“Okay,” he said. “Try it.”
She opened the valve. “Nothing.”
“Okay, close it tight. I’ll turn it up a little more.” He turned it up to ten and tapped his foot, counting.
“So what does a manageable mass of kaput yeast look like?” she asked.
“Pudding. A barrel-sized serving of sticky, smelly chocolate pudding.”
“Yum.”
“Definitely not yum.” He turned the pressure off and signaled her to try it again. “Actually, it reminds me of one of the funniest things I ever saw. We like to refer to it as the Bugs Bunny syndrome.”
She opened the valve and shook her head. “‘Bugs Bunny’?”
“When you build up the PSI,” he said, turning the pressure on again, “the yeast slowly creeps down the side and amasses at the bottom; then, when you turn it off and open the valve, it slides out.”
“Yeah?”
“But if you forget to tighten the valve at the bottom and the pressure gets high enough, you get something very much like what you might see in—”
An explosive wet boom filled the room, and Ellery stood there, mouth open, arms outstretched, dripping from head to toe with a thick, bready slag that also covered the walls from end to end except for the silhouette of one perfectly shocked Ellery.
“—a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Maybe we can make time for another quick shower.”