“I had a date,” she said. Her voice wasn’t much above a whisper, but Greg could already tell that she was drunk. It was in the softness of her eyes, the way they melted like caramel and slid over his face. “We were going to get room service, and I don’t know - - I guess it was the champagne.” Catherine’s hand cut through the air to gesture at an ice-bucket with a black glass bottle still resting in it. Two glasses were on the table next to it, one with Catherine’s lipstick smeared over the rim.

“Where is he?”

“He took off,” she said. “Almost an hour ago. I took a shower - - drank some coffee - - I wanted to sober up, but none of it was enough.”

“Did you - - did you use something?”

He couldn’t look at her. He stared down at the bed, but that was just as bad, because the sheets were rumpled, and he was sure that he could smell someone else’s cologne on the other pillow. Besides, Catherine wasn’t dressed all the way, and he could see a beige slip peeking out from underneath the bedspread, rimmed with coffee-colored lace.

“I don’t know.” She pressed her hand to her head. A turquoise bracelet dangled from her wrist. “I can’t remember. Can you check - -?”

“Sure,” Greg said, too quickly, and went to the bathroom. There was a condom floating in the toilet bowl, and he flushed it with a savage heave of his stomach. He gripped the towel bar. “You - - you’re fine,” he said when he came back into the hotel bedroom. “There was one in the toilet.”

“Thank God,” Catherine said weakly.

Greg wasn’t in the mood to thank God or anyone else. He’d known what to expect when she’d called and asked him to show up at the hotel, and he’d known what to expect when he’d seen her sitting on the bed, staring listlessly at the wall, but it was still going to be hard. Someone was going to have to make sure the word didn’t get around at work. Someone was going to have to get her dressed and get her home. Someone was going to have to explain to Lindsey why her mom had a headache.

He knew how to do it. He’d cleaned up her messes before.

“I’ll find your stuff,” he said, averting his eyes. She was just in a bra, and staring seemed rude. “Let me just look around for a second.”

She was silent as he hunted around the room and came up with her slip, skirt, blouse, and shoes. No pantyhose. He couldn’t guess where those had gone to, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. He handed them to her, but her hands were clumsy, and he ended up pulling the blouse out of her hands, the satin hissing between their fingers, and helping her into it. He hooked a line of small white buttons up her belly, and saw the hickey above her neck.

“You want a scarf?” He tapped his own throat.

She touched the mark gingerly. “No - - I’ll get one at home. Thanks for telling me, though. I might have missed it.”

“It’s not very hard to miss,” he said. It hurt to talk. He dropped the skirt on her lap. No way was he helping her into that. He couldn’t stand it. He’d have to stand behind her and brush his fingers over the soft skin on her thighs to do that, and she’d just look at him and understand completely. And pity him, for loving her that much.

Better to be cruel than in love.

Catherine managed to slide into the skirt, and Greg didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d forgotten the slip. He gathered it up with her coat and stuffed it into one of the pockets. His fingers collided with peppermints, hand lotion, and finally, a set of keys. At least she still had a car, then. He’d have to drop her off at her house, and come back to pick up his Denali.

He wondered if the scent of her new lover would fill up her car the way it filled up her room. He looked at Catherine in silence, thinking about whose fingerprints he would find her on her skin and whose DNA had been on the condom that he flushed. He didn’t know the name of her newest fling, and he hadn’t known the name of her last. When he picked her up in hotel rooms, names were never an issue.

He never asked; she never said. Sometimes he doubted that she even knew.

Greg didn’t even ask her how she always knew he’d show up. The first time had been two years ago, and when he’d shown up, bewildered, she’d had to talk him through it and explain what he was supposed to do to help her. It was simple. Get her sober, if that was possible, and get her home if that wasn’t. Don’t talk about it in the lab.

This is just between us, she’d said, and dragged her tongue over her lower lip.

He didn’t need her help the next time it happened. Greg always had been a fast learner.

A year ago, she had kissed him as he was smoothing her hair. Nothing fancy, nothing loving, just a hard press of her lips to his, and a hint of teeth, like she was going to eat him whole. He’d shuddered into the kiss, because it was all he’d wanted and too much for him to have, and when it was over, his mouth felt bruised and almost swollen. Catherine had licked her lips pertly and folded her long legs underneath her, looking pleased.

Don’t, he’d said then, wiping a smear of lipstick from his jaw. It stayed on the back of his hand, dark red, like a bloodstain. I don’t need you to thank me like that.

She hadn’t kissed him since, and sometimes, at night, alone, he wondered if it might have been worth it to be the object of someone’s pity. To have Catherine love him just because he would never say no. Half the time, he couldn’t decide, and it made him tired and snappish and desperate - - waiting around for some genuine feeling on her part while another guy gets it all because he’s not afraid to take it, or to ask for it, or whatever guys like Catherine liked did.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said. “I’ll talk to your daughter.”

Catherine smiled, and he could measure how far she was from sobriety by how sweet that smile seemed. He’d meant to hurt her with that last remark, but he hadn’t even cut the skin. “Lindsey likes you.”

Lindsey did like him, and he knew that. Lindsey was too young to have learned about guile and deception, and definitely too young to realize that Greg was caught up in her mother. Too young to think about things like self-destruction and compromise.

“I’ll make her some breakfast,” he heard himself say. “Waffles. She likes those, right?”

“Yeah. She does.”

He knew too well how the rest of the morning would go - - he would spend it in Catherine’s kitchen, making waffles for a cheerful little girl, and fending off questions about why her mom was sleeping off a hangover upstairs. He would drive Lindsey to school, and leave Catherine’s breakfast on her bedside table before he went to go pick his car back up. He’d drive home, and sleep on his couch because he wouldn’t have the strength to make it to the bed.

At work, everyone would ask him why he looked so tired.

Catherine slid into her shoes and came towards him. For a second, he thought that he was going to get another kiss, but her hand just smoothed back his rumpled jacket.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. There were wide dark circles under her eyes.

He did not want to be responsible for this. He did not want to be responsible for her. But somehow he was, because he’d do anything she asked, and he never asked any questions. He doubted that any of the others would be so forgiving.

Or so blind.

“I always come, don’t I?” he said bitterly.

She looked at him, her face so perfectly expressionless that it looked bizarre, attached to that dancer’s body and that sweet smell of booze. “Yeah,” she said. “You always do.”