"ANDREWS!" Gail said as she stormed into the waiting room.  And I quickly realized that it wasn’t her scent from memory that I’d been recalling, but that I’d been smelling her approach.

The rosemary mint scent of her hair was overpowering as she got closer.  And for a quick moment I relapsed into that rendezvous in Rockefeller Center and imagined standing up and taking her in my arms again, pressing my body against her and not ever letting go.

But that, of course, was in the repressed thoughts, those things that go through a person’s mind that are on a level far removed from reality.  Like the way you might imagine, however briefly, reaching out and flicking the forehead of the annoyingly snobbish sales clerk to see if that might snap him back into a sense of reality.  

In my non-repressed conscious mind, I did want to stand up, to at least walk over to her, but I realized I couldn’t.

The memories of that kiss with Gail had indeed been strong, had indeed been powerful.

So much so that I’d actually developed an erection just thinking about it.

I squirmed uncomfortably on my chair, looking up at her as she approached.

She had an odd look on her face, and I smelled the scent not only of concern for her (brother-in-law - the word came to me like a punch in the gut and begin the process of my erection beginning to slowly retract) boyfriend’s brother but also an air of confusion over why I hadn’t stood up.

As she got closer, and as I began to stand, the erection subsiding slowly, but still present enough to make the motion of getting up awkward, I saw a lightning flash rue smile cross her face, and caught the hint of the scent of amusement that I remembered smelling on her that day in Rockefeller Center when she’d felt my erection pressing against her while we embraced.

The flash of the smile and the amused scent were gone immediately, but were just enough to let me know that she knew what had been going on in my pants.

Again, that thing about Gail.  She could read me like a cheap suit, even now, after all this time had passed.

I’d really fucked up when I lost her.

I was beginning to realize that I would likely never recover from that loss, no matter how much time had passed.

“How is Gary?” Gail asked, pacing back and forth in front of me.  “When was the last update?”

“They haven’t told me anything.  I told them that a family member was on the way.”

 She stopped pacing and stepped closer to me, leaned in and in a quiet voice said.  “What can you hear going on back there now?”

I was taken aback.  I forgot that Gail knew my secret, that she knew I was a werewolf and possessed these special enhanced senses.  Amazing how quickly she’d fallen into accepting the reality of it, accepted the simple fact that I had this gift.  She asked the question the same way you might ask a friend who was better with doing math in their head if they could quickly calculate what a decent tip would be on the restaurant bill.

I marveled at this thought and again kicked myself across the room and back in my mind over the thought that I’d kept the secret from her, terrified that I would lose her if she knew.  And yet, it was not telling her that had driven us apart -- and now, so much later, here she was, no longer with me, but accepting of who I was, of the wolf nature of my being.

It just wasn’t fair.

“I overheard them say that he has had a heart attack.  But he’s been stable now for the past 10 minutes at least.  There hasn’t been any other discussion related to him since then, at least that I could hear.”

She took my arm and guided us both into a sitting position in the chairs and asked me to again explain what had happened.

I went over the details again, and ended by telling her the one bit of good news about this event; that I’d been able to recognize the scent of one of the men in the suits who had been beating on Gary.  That guy with the powerful odor of sweat.  Mr. Hyper-hydrosis.  That I’d been able to lock in on that.

And that I felt I was able to use it to help track them down, to get closer to finding Howard.

Gail was silent for a moment after I told her this.

“Gary said ‘to show Howie they were serious.’” She said and was silent for a moment longer.  I waited and looked at her, knowing she was processing something and didn’t want to be interrupted.  “Good.  This tells me that they’ve got Howard somewhere but they haven’t killed him.  This means they need something from him, they either need information from him or they need him to do something for them.

“Which means that he’s important to them alive.”  She paused again, this time for much longer before stating the words that I began to feel must be coming based on the rising apprehension in her scent, by the way her heart suddenly started to beat faster.  “Until he gives them what they want of course, and they have no further use for him.”

I reached out and held her hand, could tell immediately that while it didn’t make things better, it was exactly the comfort that she needed to feel a bit better.

“I’m here now,” she said, pulling her hand away.  “You can get out there and track them.”

I was about to tell her that I had no idea where to start looking, no idea of where exactly I was going to go, but I didn’t know how to say it, didn’t want to disappoint her.  I wasn’t a superhero of any kind.  Just a guy who happened to have enhanced senses and perhaps a bit of superhuman strength, particularly at this time of the month.  It’s not like I could fly over the city and use my x-ray vision to look through the buildings and find the secret hide-out of these mysterious men in the dark suits.

But I didn’t know how to put it, how to say this to Gail.

Instead I got up, brushed my sweaty hands on my pants and prepared to make my exit.  Then it occurred to me.  I froze on the spot.  “Gail, you’re not safe either.  If they’re trying to get to Howard through Gary, then they might try to get to him through you, too.”

Gail gestured at the two burly security guards in the lobby -- my double double buddy’s partner had re-joined him at their little booth that overlooked the emergency waiting area -- and then through the window at the police cruiser parked outside with two officers inside.  Again, her powers of observation never ceased to amaze me. “I’m relatively safe here,” she said.

Fair enough, I thought.  At least here she’d be relatively protected, at least while the cruiser sat outside.  The security guards were carrying guns, but I didn’t feel as safe from their presence as I did from the presence of the police cruiser.

I still stood on the spot and just looked at her, thinking about where I might need to head off to, where I might need to start looking.

Gail pursed her lips together and stared back at me.  “You don’t know where to begin, do you?”

I shook my head.

She nodded.  “Thought so.  Listen, Michael.  You know how sometimes when you’re writing something and you feel that you’re stuck.”

“Yeah,”

“What do you do?”

I smiled.  “I take a walk, head out to see a show, anything to take my mind off it.”

“And what happens next?”   

“It just comes to me.”

She nodded.  “Okay, so do that now.  Go back to your apartment, crack open your laptop and start working on your latest writing project.  You’re not still pushing to do something different -- a non-Maxwell Bronte project -- are you?  I remember you were chomping at the bit to put out a collection of your supernatural horror stories.  Has your agent or publisher ever caved on that one?”

I could feel my smile getting wider.  “Yeah, they finally did.”  I was so impressed with how much she remembered about my personal passions, about my personal struggles with writing, about who I ultimately was inside, that I didn’t bother to tell her that I’d already succeeded in that almost a year ago, that the book was already in production and would be released within the next month, that I’d even be appearing on the Late Night with David Letterman show tonight to talk about it.

I simply said.  “Sure.  Good idea.”  I thought about how I’d had virtually the same idea earlier this morning shortly after we’d parted ways in Grand Central Terminal and I’d begun my northerly walk.  Again, it broke my heart to know that I’d let this wonderful woman who had been so good for my soul, to get away.

“Good idea,” I said again, almost whispering.

Gail reached up, took my hand for a moment and then quietly said.  “Go write something, Michael.  When you’re not thinking hard about where to look for Howard something, some memory, some sensory detail, will come to you, and you’ll know what to do.

“Go write.”

My heart almost burst out of my chest with love for this woman.  I slipped my hand out of hers and turned away as my eyes welled up with tears.