“Three hundred likes on Instagram,” Dew said, checking her phone, moments later as Denise emptied a final load of trash. “You’re famous, Star Cats, Next Generation. We can finish cleaning later. Now you see why I haven’t taken over the world yet.”
A few hours later, with Petro’s parking lot party back in full swing, there was a knock on the door. Rayne Herring and her daughter Rita had arrived. Rayne wore a red shirt underneath a red Texas Tech blazer. After a successful sports career at Clovis High, Rayne had actually been recruited to be a power forward on the school’s well-regarded women’s basketball team. Unfortunately, she had to bow out after she got pregnant in high school with Rita.
Rayne had a “Big Red Herring” campaign button with her mom’s picture. “I’m contractually obligated to wear this.”
Rita also wore red, with the obligatory campaign button, but it was pinned upside down over a t-shirt for BTS. BTS was Denise’s favorite K-pop band. Rita’s awkwardness was even more apparent this close up. She resembled her mother in height and hair color, but her face lacked the symmetry of her mothers. Everything was a little off, and Denise could empathize with the poor girl.
Rayne nearly hit her head on a low-hanging light fixture and caught Rita before the girl did the same.
“Howdy Auntie Denise,” Rita said, bending down to embrace the smaller Denise.
“Lovely Rita Meter Maid,” Denise sang. “I knew you before you were born.”
The four of them sang all the verses of the song. After laughing at the end, there was an uncomfortable silence.
“You live like this?” Rita asked Dew when she sat on a couch and nearly cut herself from some mystery item that the cats must have gnawed all the flesh off. Beef jerky? “Aren’t you supposed to be like really smart?”
Denise was liking Rita even more. Although they often talked by phone, this was the first time they’d all been together in the flesh since high school. Denise could sense that both Herrings had sparks to them. Rayne hid hers away in embarrassment, and clearly wanted Rita to do the same.
“Be careful, Rita,” Rayne said. “This place is dangerous.”
“I’m sure you’ve been in worse,” Dew said. “Didn’t your mom take you to Iraq when she was with the Luftwaffe?”
“She wasn’t in the Luftwaffe,” said Rayne, a step slow. “That’s the Nazis, right?”
“Iraq was safer than here,” Rita chimed in. “They cleaned up after the camels.”
Dew laughed. “Your daughter is clearly the brains in the family, Rayne”
From the interaction between Rayne and Dew, it was clear that they had some unfinished business from mock-trial days. “You really should have cleaned up the place,” Rayne said, her military upbringing apparent.
“I’m not going to clean it for you guys,” Dew replied.
“I almost didn’t want to come to see you, Dew,” Rayne said. “But my daughter was quite persuasive. She says her Auntie Denise needs us.”
Denise smiled when her phone beeped and broke the silence. “I just got a text, Hikaru Yu is on his way.”
She didn’t show them the text as it was merely a pic of his van with the Organs in the background as he came down Route 70. He was a few minutes away.
“Team Tur…”
Dew stopped her. “We should wait till he gets here.”
“Hopefully, he can sing with us next time,” Denise said. “He’s got a nice baritone.”
A short time later, there was a knock on the door.
“Hikaru?” Denise asked.
“No, it’s me.” Denise and the cats looked for cover when Hurricane Luna made landfall in Room 237. The light fixtures shook. The cats scurried under the couch.
Dew was unaffected. “Hey Luna.”
“Sacka-Dacka-Dew,” Luna replied.
“How is my mom, Aunt Luna?” Denise asked.
“Had to pull a few strings but I got in to see your mother and she’s… stable.”
“Thank God,” Denise said. “What does stable mean?”
“She’s not getting worse. But no one can see her for a few days which might be just as well,” Luna said. “I literally had to walk over some fat guy in a pink sombrero who had passed out on your stairway. Some Vista de Estrella.”
“Petro and his gang are harmless,” Dew replied. “Well mostly harmless.”
“I hope you lock your door,” Luna said. “Is this your so-called supercomputer? The one I gave you all the money to buy after you left your last one in your unlocked car.”
Dew shrugged. “I think spies took it. Or aliens.”
Luna introduced herself to Rayne and Rita. “I know Big Red Herring, the colonel. We were on a corporate board together.”
“We’ve heard of you,” Rita said. “You’re like the best lawyer on the planet. My grandma said so.”
“I try. Is anyone else coming?” Luna said.
“My friend, Hikaru,” Denise said. “He’s almost here.”
Hikaru arrived moments later, in jeans and a cycling jersey sans blazer that showed off his lean, but muscular arms. His French equipe jersey was turquoise, worn to show Team spirit. His cologne took the edge off the feline smell of the apartment.
“Like old times,” Hikaru said. As Rita sat on the couch looking with longing, the four teammates formed a circle like athletes before a big game. “Team Turquoise!”
In that instant, the Rayne-Dew feud was over at least for a moment. “Well Team Turquoise,” Luna said, “let’s get on with it. Do you have case notes, Denise?”
“Right here, Aunt Luna.” Denise handed some notes to Dew who scanned them onto her big computer screen.
Luna frowned. “Denny’s saying he was abducted by aliens?”
“No, Aunt Luna, he’s saying that the grails warped his mind as they are really conduits to the aliens in another dimension,” Denise said.
“I stand corrected,” Luna said. “And he was first exposed to the grails when he was in the military?”
“I guess so,” Denise said. “It doesn’t really make sense.”
“How bad was the shooting of the cops?” Luna asked. “Do they have lapel cam videos?”
“It’s pretty bad,” Denise said. “Dew, can you play the lapel cam videos from Channel 8’s website?”
The grainy video showed an anorexic man, walking like a well-disciplined zombie, firing away at the cops.
“He looks innocent to me,” young Rita said. She was strangely entranced by the video on the screen. “I mean he looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And he looks just like you Auntie Denise.”
“Quiet Rita!” Rayne said. “Hopefully you didn’t take that the wrong way, Denise.”
“I’m all good. He says the aliens made him do it.”
“Well, maybe we can subpoena the aliens,” Rita said before Rayne could shush her. “That sounds like a dirty word, subpoena.”
“Our strategy is obvious,” Luna said, banging a gavel down with her voice. “We are raising competency and raising his inability to form specific intent. I already drafted the motion to determine competency and we can e-file it tonight. I will contact Dr. Maryann Romero. She’s been the expert in this stuff ever since I was a rookie lawyer. She will do the forensic evaluation on Denny while he’s in custody.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Denise said. Luna didn’t acknowledge her.
“Rayne, like I said, I knew your mom, the colonel,” Luna said. “She was a big deal on all the bases. Do you have a security clearance of your own?”
“My mom made me get one so I could babysit my daughter on base if need be.”
“I have one too,” Rita said. Rayne clamped down on her daughter’s shoulder.
Luna nodded. “Find out who we have to serve our subpoena duces tecum to get all Denny’s military records. It’s my experience tha
t if he worked with any classified materials you might have to go on site to get them, and it always helps if someone has a clearance.”
“I’ll check with my mom,” Rayne said. “She can help us get on base. At least I hope she can help, if she’s not too busy campaigning in the asteroids or whatever.”
“My grandma doesn’t like to help anybody with anything when she’s campaigning,” Rita added.
“Hikaru, I knew your dad,” Luna said, ignoring Rita. “Can you help get the records of the civilian contractors who dealt with Denny on base? We don’t even know where to begin.”
“Well, it’s not as hard as you think,” Hikaru said. “A lot of them are stored on site at the Syrinx facility, but it will take another subpoena to get to them.”
“We’ll exchange emails tomorrow,” Luna said. She turned to Dew. “Sacka-Dacka-Dew, my lovely daughter, I want you to help Rayne and Hikaru with the computer files after they get them from the base.”
“Love to, Luna,” Dew said.
Denise looked around. “What do I do, Aunt Luna?” Denise asked.
“You’re going to be doing client control,” Luna said. “You’re Denny’s twin sister, he trusts you. You’re going to be our point person in Lordsburg, starting tomorrow.”
Denise shuddered.
Luna nodded. “That’s all then. Hikaru, is something wrong?”
Hikaru frowned. “I didn’t realize you all would be here. I thought I was coming here to see Denise.”
Denise smiled. Was he hoping for a date?
Chapter 26
Hikaru nodded at everyone in the room, took a deep breath and then looked directly at Denise. “Denise, can I talk to you, outside?”
Luna interrupted. “You don’t have much time; she needs to get back to Lordsburg tonight.”
“Lordsburg isn’t going anywhere,” Rita said. “Let her have her moment.”
Luna looked at her watch. “You’ve got an hour. I have dinner plans of my own at six.”
Denise blushed for a moment, and then nodded to Hikaru. They didn’t say a word, but the two of them walked out to the balcony.
Outside, the party in the parking lot was still going strong. It seems like there was a whole new supporting cast, but Petro was still the star.
“You guys want to join us?” Petro asked. He wore a white cowboy hat and white boots this time, but the same shirt and the same shorts. His belly button ring was now a turquoise nugget.
Hikaru went down the rickety stairs to the lot, took a beer cup from Petro and chugged it, much to the crowd’s delight. They offered Denise a beer when she joined them, but Hikaru pushed them away.
“I want her to have a clear head,” he said, “and avoid the appearance of impropriety.”
Once they walked out of the lot and were around the corner from the party, Hikaru turned to Denise and smiled, suds around his mouth. She wiped them away.
They walked across the four lanes of University Boulevard and onto the “pueblo revival” structures area of the NMSU campus. “It’s like an adobe Amherst,” he said.
“Cornell with cactus,” she added. “Or Cal Tech with cactus if that’s where you went.”
“MIT by the way, so it would be MIT on the mesa.”
“Of course, you did,” she said with a smile. “I failed out of Harvard Law, kinda.”
They passed the massive NMSU Performing Arts Center, where an electronic billboard proclaimed that famed New Mexico singer Anna Maria Arias would be performing with her daughter Jaylah. As a promotion, the duo’s musica romantica blared from the building’s loudspeakers, and the mother-daughter team harmonized their greatest hits.
“Follow me.” Hikaru and Denise kept pace to the lilting beat as they walked over a barren field to a large puddle underneath some windmills. He pointed downward; the still water perfectly reflected the windmills in the pink of the sunset. The last notes of the musica romantica reflected off the windmills and onto the waters.
“What is this place?” Denise asked, leaning closer to him.
“The Zuhl museum grounds. I wonder if it was named after the demon in the first Ghostbusters.” Hikaru smiled.
“I loved that movie, but I think Zuul was spelled differently. That’s the first movie I’ve seen about people like me. People who have umm… powers.”
“People like us,” he said.
“Kinda,” she said.
“How did you know this puddle was here and that there would be reflections of windmills and sunsets and soft romantic music?” she asked.
“I googled romantic places in Las Cruces, and it identified Zuhl museum after a rainstorm. I heard the music when I was driving in.”
She tried to reach out to him with her mind, like a current passing between them. Perhaps it was a matter of charge, or frequency, they couldn’t quite read each other’s thoughts, but colors came through, like images of sunsets and sunrises.
“I like this,” he said. He touched her shoulder. “I really, really like this.”
“I do too,” she replied.
Their combined charge must have been what was making the metal windmills turn even faster. He looked around, making sure that no one was looking and took her hand. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all,” she said. “So why are we here? Are we tilting at windmills? Am I your Sancho Panza or your Dulcinea?”
To her disappointment, he released her hand. “You’re not Sancho Panza. I’m still on double secret probation at work,” he said. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”
“Probation with whom?”
“My big boss,” he said. “All the way to the top.”
“I thought you worked for your dad.”
“I thought I did too,” he said. “But it turns out he works for someone else.”
“So, you can’t help us at all?”
“I can’t help you yet,” he said. “But I’ll find a way.”
“You were there when Denny got in trouble,” she said.
“I was and I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” he said. “The drone made him go crazy.”
“So, it wasn’t a UFO?”
“Just a drone, a terrestrial drone,” he said. “Probably made in Asia at some cut-rate factory and sent to New Mexico for a test flight or two. There are a lot of these drones hidden around this area. That’s all I can say right now. But I will try to get you all the information on how the drones affect people, despite what my bosses say.”
“I was actually hoping it was a UFO. I was just in Roswell and all the alien stuff was so tacky. I want to go to the real site someday.”
“Maybe I can take you there.”
“Romance in Roswell,” she said. “Sounds like a Hallmark movie.”
“Never seen one.”
“Have you ever seen a Korean soap opera?”
“I’m Chinese.”
They looked at each other. She felt enveloped in a protective cocoon. “I’ve never felt like this before,” he said.
“We’re like Romeo and Juliet,” she said. “Kinda.”
“I’m still hoping for a happy ending,” he said, blushing. “Kinda. Oh wait, that doesn’t sound right.”
His awkwardness was endearing. He touched her hand again, and the current was even stronger. For one brief moment, she thought they would kiss, but then one of the windmills turned faster, and even faster. He released his hand before the blades flew off.
He got another text again, spoiling the moment. She got one from Luna about getting back and getting on the road which made it worse.
“We better go back,” he said.
* * *
They held hands tightly while crossing University Boulevard, and once they adjusted their energies, they found that the current was comfortable, like a vibrating bed that relaxed the muscles.
The musica was still romantica.
If she strained her neck, she could see the top of the hospital tower. “I wish my mom and I could sing together like Anna Maria and Jaylah,” Denise said. “We might never get the chance.”
“I have a feeling you will. Kinda.”
She couldn’t tell if he could foresee the future or was being hopeful. She didn’t want to know; she was happy with either. He walked her back to Dew’s apartment. Petro’s party was being busted by the cops.
Petro somehow managed to convince the cops to leave without incident, without even turning down the stereo or hiding his bag of marijuana, which was visible in plain sight.
Petro waved at Denise and Hikaru as the cops drove away, their signals off. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“How did you do that?” she asked him, amazed.
“You just gotta have faith,” he said. “You’ve got to put every ounce of energy into staying put, into creating your own gravity so that nothing can move you. I was an Astrophysics major.”
Denise nodded. Before she could say anything more, Petro belched. The air smelled like petroleum.
* * *
Everyone stopped talking the minute Denise and Hikaru went back up the stairs and entered Dew’s apartment, the door still open to let the air in. Hurricane Luna had left the building to spread havoc somewhere else.
“We were starting to wonder about you two,” Dew said. “We were about to get Colonel Herring to order the 101st Airborne to pick you up.”
“The Airborne is Army, my mother was in the Air Force,” Rayne said. “Well, she was in Space Force at the end. She always pointed that out to us.”
Denise ignored them, kept smiling.
“You’re glowing, Auntie Denise,” Rita said.
“You’re actually smiling,” Dew said. “I didn’t know you were capable of that.”
The Shakespeare Incident Page 16
