It’s been an odd week but still he’s known Aunt Drew (“not really but we’ve always called her”) since forever and it was good to see her, after all. She’s memories of museums and cats, books on long car rides.
She hugs Grey, then Mom, waves from a window. Her mouth is set in a thin line as the train pulls away. “She always cries,” says Mom, sighing, “whenever one of us leaves.”
Grey understands, suddenly, that Aunt Drew is in love with his mother. That she has been for years. That Mom knows. That neither will ever say a word.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Rob thumbs a glowing 22. The elevator groans up, and he idly reaches out to flick the handbar. It bells a tone, strong and clear. No telling what note, but it’s practically a tuning fork.
Rob pings the bar on his left, then the one on his right: more notes, just as definite and pure. He hesitates, then hits all three in sequence. The reverb catches him in a minor chord.
Sound and car stop abruptly. Rob squints up at the dial.
An old building–he didn’t stop to think. But now the car says it’s nowhere, between 12 and 14.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
The door slams, the light goes, and Kipeli turns to swing the weighted end of the chain straight. He’s actually paying it out, link by link; it’s far too fast for him to count, but easy for his fingers. They’ll tell him when it’s far enough.
Half a second later, they do. Kipeli stops the pay of chain, snaps a wrist and sends a spiral wave down its length. The spinning weight hits something with terrifying speed, and there’s a muffled scream. He jerks it back: another one.
One ninja down, he thinks, smiling in the dark. Probably six to go.
Funny, thinks Amy, how “scrubby” has come to mean “unscrubbed.” She really has no business among humans right now–no shower, no shave, IU sweatpants, hair yanked through a hat and feet in dusty thongs. Oh, and commando.
She holds it together, though, through the day’s two lectures. Leaving, she snags in a traffic jam near the gym’s entrance. Somebody’s holding a green towel, somebody else a peeled orange.
Memory. It’s 1995, dark outside, he’s a towel an orange and she feels dirty–wrong–excited–
Amy’s sweating, suddenly disconcerted; she hurries on, uncomfortably aware of the brush-brush of her secret thighs.
Connor can pick out gray in Angelique’s hair as she tugs on jeans: it’s the only clue to her age. He’s still intrigued by the receptivity of her conversation. He took it for youth or naïvete, once, but he’s since found layers of perception and emotional control in her that he can’t yet approach.
She’s eight years his senior. He tries that phrase out–it sounds strange, inapplicable. Eight years his señorita. His señor. Connor watches Angelique’s back by lamplight and remembers bilingual Mass with her, italic verses in the hymnal, his surprise at calling God the word that means Mister.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Rikki shucks out of the jumpsuit, which won’t help if things go badly. She pops an ampule and spills yellow silt into one hand. If Canard’s wrong, she’s dead. If he’s right, it’ll dice her pheromones into something resembling a spineback’s: a label saying Don’t Eat, Not Worth The Trouble. She starts smearing.
Up a tree, over a wall–easy, but Rakshasa’s got better defenses. One long limb bows and suddenly Rikki sees them. Orange. Black. Shimmer like heat haze.
The first one notices her, scents the air: here’s the test. Rikki holds her breath, a strange Daniel, naked among tigers.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
It’s 5:59 when Ronnie decides to close. Tess and her brothers are still arguing over the display games, but their tired mother will be here soon, apologizing and promising to be on time tomorrow. It’s a gentle little fiction, and the gratitude in her face warms him. It’s been a heavy January.
He crutches out to the door and sees first that the frost has melted, second that the sun is just barely still up. Ronnie flips the sign and remembers the picture of Solstice in his almanac: every day, from here on out, it’ll be bright a little bit longer.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Terry would really like to go to his room, but Aunt Val’s holding an icepack to his face. “I’ve always said!” Uncle Walter smacks a newspaper into one hand. “They underestimate your potential!”
Terry’s lied, said the coaches sent him home after a practice accident. He doesn’t want to say Sorry, Uncle, I got deadbeat Dad’s short thick body, sorry I actually ran into a doorknob. Sorry everyone calls me Squat (what’s a bear do in the woods?).
“What they call football!” raves Uncle Walter. “In my day they’d let you dust off, slap a steak on that shiner and roll!”
“Who was that one dude?” muses Rainer. “The British somebody? Prime Minister. Who said he had sex with all those women. All those illegitimate children or something. Did anybody ever, like, call him out on that?”
“Tony Blair?” says Ian blankly. “Uh, Margaret Thatcher?”
“No, William… Winston…”
“Winston Churchill? I think he had a mistress, but he wasn’t really–”
“No, that wasn’t it. The one guy who came before him!”
“You mean Nev–oh.” Ian pauses, then asks heavily, “You mean Wilt Chamberlain?”
“Yeah!” shouts Rainer. “Yeah! I told you, man, that British dude everybody says was such a pimp!”
“The impact,” Tarek says patiently, “blows all foreign objects at least one hundred microns away.”
“I can’t believe you’re explaining this,” says Ellen.
“We agree that the germs want to get it,” he reasons. “But germs are small, right? So their legs must be even smaller.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“Tiny, tiny legs! To cross that space, they’re going to need five and a half thousand milliseconds.”
“You eat food off–”
“So if you pick it up before that time expires, you’re golden.” He leans back, triumphant.
Ellen drops her head into her hands.
Later, she strangles him with a phone cord.
Thursday, January 8, 2004