...Continued Part I: molto lento

Noticing the renewed grimace playing across his friend's features, Nick stepped closer toward Myers and asked, "How you feeling, buddy?"

"Fine, fine. Much better, actually," Bert assured him, moving a hand across his now-bandaged mid-section.

"If it's not any trouble--could you direct me to--?" Win spoke up, wanting directions to the W.C.

Nick obliged, walking with him over to the entry and pointing him down the hall, beyond the many curtains that had so disoriented Claudia upon her arrival. When Wolfe returned to the bar a moment later, he found Bert pouring himself another drink.

"Fine," Bert mumbled under his breath. "Everything's just fine." His tone was less convincing aloud than it had been when he had been going over the game plan in his head as a way to focus himself. "Get you to the airport to pick up this Chloe, get myself back upstairs posted in the dressing room for Claudia. An hour, two hours sleep--fine. Just fine"

"What's this about a dressing room?" Nick asked, his curiosity getting the better of him--he knew Bert had not been speaking for him to hear.

"Claudia's up in Amanda's apartment." Bert did not add that she had refused to stay any other place in the building he had taken her, nor that she had sallied forth into Amanda's flat uninvited--that was immaterial.

"In her spare bedroom--right?" Wariness edged Nick's tone.

"No." Bert did not even give the word a whisper of feeling, a color of shading.

"Do you honestly think that's a good idea?"

"I don't know, Nick. Do you think that question deserves an answer?" Bert was tired. He didn't want to argue about Amanda right now or think about Amanda or speculate about Amanda, or Claudia or Chloe or Nick or really anyone or anything but taking a nap. So, in lieu of the nap he was still several flights of stairs, or one jerky elevator ride, away from, he took another drink. While he swallowed he remembered the old days, the days where he was just a "Guy," where no one questioned him or offered opinions, where giving him a broken rib would have met a swift and extreme prejudicial response, where an op in pain was ignored and expected--trusted, really--to suck it up and never became the center of badgering questions like "are you okay?" because if you were standing and holding your weapon steady everyone knew damn well you were okay. He sighed. And days where he could drink a lot more than what he just had without fear of becoming maudlin.

An unfamiliar and unexpected jingle turned both Bert and Nick in a instant toward the doorway to the saloon, Bert rounded on the intruder first, his gun, from nowhere, already in his hand aimed perfectly for a clean kill, though nothing Nick had heard in the noise could have betrayed the height of the intruder.

It was Pascal, returned.

Whether it was the sight of the gun, so menacingly leveled at him or the topic of conversation would never be known, but within that instant the moments-ago jingling contents of the silver tray he had been holding--a carafe of coffee, a plate of pastries, and the doctor's payment--spilled almost artistically onto the marble floor by the doorway. And while they fell, and Bert had the presence of mind to lower his weapon away from the bartender, Pascal stood frozen, his head to one side, his brow furrowed. He did not stoop to pick up the mess of broken cups and dented pastry.

Bert did not apologize, but instead asked, "when you expect Amanda back?"

Pascal looked to Nick, but responded. His voice sounded unsure of its own ability. "Three days from now."

Bert turned back to the bar, holstered his gun, satisfied.

Nick gave his friend and boss a stern look, shrugged his shoulders mildly to the bartender as if to say, "what can you do where Bert is concerned?"

Pascal inhaled and spoke. "Mr. Meyers," he began, "you will need to have someone call for a replacement bartender tonight--and I think for the next three nights. I am no longer feeling well." He turned and left. Bert sighed.

"You could go after him," Nick offered, "after all, his apartments are just downstairs."

"Kid needs to grow some balls," Bert replied. "Wasn't like that's the first time he ever had a gun on him." He did not add that on those other occasions, of some of which he had been part, Pascal had never seemed to have minded or have held those moments against him.

"Not sure it's the gun that's got him hanging you out to dry." Nick cast his eyes to the ceiling.

"What--" Bert sputtered, not believing it, "he'd leave the club in the lurch just because of an upstairs guest?"

Nick shrugged.

Bert clambered down off the stool he had been occupying and walked around behind the bar, grabbing the bartender's planner from a shelf beneath the shiny bar's surface. He tossed it to Nick. "Have Gerard--the doorman--give someone else a call to come in, start with Liucia--she makes a hell of a--well, a hell of an anything."

While Nick was catching the planner, and having his own thoughts about Liucia, Bert was crossing the floor to the mess Pascal had left behind. From where he stood he looked down at it, knowing that bending over to pick it up was going to play havoc on his ribs. He cursed Pascal. The man was his paid employee for crying out loud! Why should it matter to him that someone else was using Amanda's place for the night? She wasn't even here! He gritted him teeth and kneeled down on the marble, reaching, painfully, for Win's francs. "And make sure Gerard knows we're offering twice Pascal's wage for the three nights."

Nick's face showed him the betrayal Pascal would doubtless have felt upon hearing the news.

"It's such short notice," Bret pretended to explain, wincing one eye against the next stretch he had to perform to capture the last franc.

The intra-Sanctuary phone rattled to life on the bar, extension 801.

"Claudia," Bert cursed, pulling himself up. He swiftly withdrew his own PDA from within his pants pocket so he could give Nick the numbers on Chloe's flight. "Meet Chloe, be charming."

The phone rang a second time.

"Find Win--he must've gotten lost. Pay him. Get Gerard to call replacements."

"And get a shave and a haircut that costs more than a few francs?" Nick added good-naturedly.

Bert half-smiled. "While you're at it, pick up a new tux--two in fact, you're gonna be attending a lot of performances."

"If--" Nick tried to interject.

Third ring.

"No ifs. Answer the phone, here, tell her I've already left. I'll be there before you hang up. Remember, this is the first day of the rest of your life with Claudia Jardine." Bert turned and laboriously double-timed it toward the elevator, his heart and injured side beating a rhythm as if to remind him that this was--hopefully--to be one of the last days of the rest of his life with Claudia Jardine.

He was so near exhaustion at this point that the stiff chaise in Amanda's dressing room--the one he had been told he would occupy--had started to seem as exotic and luxurious as a round, heated waterbed, smothered in ruby red satin sheets he had slept on once--not alone--somewhere in a fond memory some years ago.

END OF PART I: molto lento
...to be continued...in
PART II: allegro con anima

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DISCLAIMERS: The characters in this story are not my property, never have been, and I'm just borrowing them for a few pages. No money is being made, etc.
Thanks. In addition to this, I have other stories available on-line at Seventh Dimension and The Raven's Nest as well as my own site, The OutBack Fiction Shack.