Present For Today

by W. J. May

  He was in luck. Just a minute or so after she blacked out, Natasha stirred restlessly on the pavement. Her eyelids fluttered open and shut before locking onto Gabriel’s face—hovering in the air above her. His lips pulled up with a tight smile, his golden hair haloed around his face.

  “Hey you. How’re you feeling?”

  She considered the question a moment before squinting her eyes against the bright sun. “...hot.”

  This time, the smile was much more genuine. His hands slipped gently behind her back as he helped her to a delicate sitting position. There was a collective smattering of applause from the crowd, and his shoulders relaxed the slightest degree. “Yeah, well, you picked a miserably hot country to live in.” After a quick assessment, he tentatively lifted her to her feet keeping a steady hand on her all the while. “You want to get inside someplace cooler? Preferably before this lynch mob decides to avenge your honor?”

  Her eyes flickered to the crowd for the first time, widening slightly, before returning to him. “What are they all doing here?” she asked in a breathless daze, swaying on her feet as her head swiveled around. “Did something happen?”

  Gabriel pursed his lips, looking her up and down with a twinkle in his eye. Then instinct kicked in and he decided to take point. “Come on, I’ve got you.”

  Before she could say a single word he scooped her legs out from under her, lifting her effortlessly into the air and whisking her away down the street. She grabbed onto him with a gasp of surprise, worried she was about to fall. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen she struggled instead, kicking her legs as she tried to wriggle away.

  “Would you put me down?!” she demanded. “This is ridiculous. I can walk. You’re making me look like some urban damsel.”

  He snorted, but kept walking. Carrying her as easily as if she was a doll. “Would that really be such a stretch? I get shot, but you’re the one who faints in the middle of the street.”

  The second he spoke, he wished that he hadn’t. Her face paled when she heard the word ‘shot,’ and her legs stopped kicking against him. Her skin was clammy and her body went strangely limp as he abruptly ducked under an awning and pushed open the door to a diner.

  The place was nearly empty; he headed to a booth near the back, directly in front of the air-conditioning, grabbing two menus as he went. Not a single person looked up as he set her gently upon the laminated cushions, resisting the urge to sit beside her and sitting across instead. “Are you a vegetarian?”

  Her head lifted in a daze, trying to quiet a million screaming thoughts as she realized she’d been asked a question. “...what?”

  “Do you eat meat?” He cocked his head with a coaxing smile. “It’s usually pretty easy to tell from a person’s apartment, but the Cheetos and Pop-Tarts didn’t really clue me in either way.”

  It was impossible to tell whether she registered the joke. She simply looked down at the table and nodded, strangely numb. Gabriel watched her for a moment, then suppressed a silent sigh. This wasn’t just about the gunshot. This was about everything else she’d seen. He should have known better than to show those kinds of memories to someone so young. She was just a year or so younger than him.

  A waitress came by and he looked up quickly, grateful for the reprieve.

  “Hi there,” she said in a heavy Brooklyn accent, “what can I get started for you folks today? We’ve got a few specials—”

  “We’ll take two number twelves, and two raspberry milkshakes. Thanks.” He handed back the menus with a charming smile, one that made up for his brisk response. The woman blinked a moment, a little overwhelmed, then took them with a smile of her own. One that was only slightly diminished by the fact that Gabriel was sitting with a girl.

  “Coming right up.”

  He stared after her for a moment, making sure that she was really gone before turning back to see Natasha watching him very closely. Analyzing his every move. In an instant, he slowed all his motions down, projecting the very image of calm as he began casually unwrapping first her silverware, then his own. “We’re pretty close to your apartment,” he began conversationally. “Have you ever come here before?”

  The quickest way to move past a trauma was to lose oneself in the mundane. Bury oneself in normalcy. Familiar sights. Simple questions. With any luck, Natasha would be able to snap out of it, and—

  “Have you ever been shot before?” she replied instantly.

  Those were the last words the two of them said for quite a while.

  The waitress came back a few minutes later with a giant tray balanced in her hand. With practiced efficiency she placed a steaming plate in front of each of them, followed by an ice-cold milkshake. Condiments and seasonings were soon to follow.

  “Will that be all?” She ignored Natasha completely, but stared down at Gabriel with a seductive smile. “I’d be happy to get you anything you need.”

  “No, that’s it.” He flashed her a dismissive smile. “Thank you.” Looking slightly disappointed she ambled away, leaving the two of them sitting in that same, heavy silence.

  Gabriel didn’t waste any time. He knew enough about shock to have learned that, for whatever reason, it got significantly easier if you drowned it in a burger and fries. And Jason had long ago sold him on the miraculously restorative power of a raspberry milkshake. “Eat,” he commanded quietly.

  For probably the first time ever, Natasha did as she was told. Staring at his chest all the while, eyes dilated with abnormal intensity. Like she could see through his shirt to the damage below. After a while he shifted uncomfortably, then bowed his head with a soft sigh.

  “Listen, I’m sorry you had to see all of that. I wasn’t...when I first came to this city, it wasn’t my...” He paused, trying to figure out how to say it. “I wasn’t planning on doing this.”

  She met his eyes for a split second, betraying not a shred of emotion.

  In most cases, her silence would have been a welcome relief. At the very least, it meant that she wasn’t losing her head in blind panic. But, for whatever reason, the longer she stayed quiet the more desperate Gabriel became to fill up the space. Saying anything and everything he could just to break that suffocating silence.

  “At any rate, I should have called it off the moment I saw you,” he murmured, running his fingers back through his hair. “You’re just a kid—”

  “I’m only three years younger than you.”

  She spoke suddenly, catching them both off guard. For a moment, the two stared at each other in perfect silence. Then, with an impulse she couldn’t control, her eyes drifted slowly over his body—lingering on certain parts. Seeing things that were no longer there.

  “I convinced myself it was pretend,” she whispered, shivering involuntarily as she perched on the seat. “It was the only way I could get through it. Pretending it wasn’t real.”

  Without seeming to think about it she reached out and took his hand, turning it over and running a finger over the arch of his palm. There was a scar. Too light for anyone to see. Anyone who wasn’t looking. She was looking. Her eyes locked onto it, and she shivered again. A second later she pushed up from her chair, joining him on the other side of the table. With hands so soft he almost didn’t feel them, she brushed back his hair and found another scar at the base of his neck. A perfect crescent moon. His only souvenir from a not so perfect night.

  “But it was real,” she breathed. “Every memory. Every scar. Those things all really happened.” There was a slight hitch in her breathing. “To you.”

  Gabriel froze dead still, mind racing a thousand miles a minute as he tried to figure out his next move. She wasn’t making it easy. She wasn’t following any of the normal patterns.

  “Go back to your seat,” he said quietly. “Drink your milkshake.”

  It was like she didn’t hear him. She stayed right where she was, staring up at him with those impossibly wide eyes. Eyes that saw more than he wanted them to. Eyes that saw more than he wanted to
see himself.

  “Is that why you took off the way you did?” She didn’t dance around the question the way most people would. She asked it straight-on. “Why you said this wasn’t going to work?”

  He raised a hand, summoning the waitress’ attention. “Can we get the check—”

  “Why did you pull us out so quickly?” She retreated to her side of the table, but kept him locked in her gaze refusing to let him off the hook. “What didn’t you want me to see?”

  “Any boxes?” a woman’s voice called back.

  “No,” Gabriel answered swiftly, pulling out some cash, “just the check—”

  “What was about to happen in that room, Gabriel?” Natasha demanded. “All the things we saw, the places we went... why stop at that one? What could possibly be so—”

  “That was my first assignment.” He stopped her interrogation in its tracks, and a sudden silence fell over the table. For how hard he’d been trying to avoid it, once it was out in the open he didn’t shy away. He was fierce, almost defiant as he suddenly turned the spotlight around. “Is that what you wanted to know? The answer you’re so desperate to hear?”

  Time seemed to stop between them as he looked her dead in the eyes.

  “That was the first time I ever killed someone.”

  THERE WERE THINGS THAT you could discuss in a diner, and there were things that you couldn’t. ‘First kills’ were more of a park conversation. Something that had to happen outdoors.

  “So, what happened?”

  It was the first thing either one of them had said since leaving the restaurant and, true to form, Natasha didn’t follow any sort of conventional script. Gabriel shot her a glance from the corner of his eye before sticking his hands into his pockets with a silent sigh.

  “I was fifteen. The year before I got my tatù, but Cromfield was confident I wouldn’t need it—given my other training. The mark was some hedge-fund guy who’d refused to help him launder money. He was working late. Supposedly alone. It was supposed to be easy.”

  Natasha listened quietly, her eyes fixed on the ground as they circled the grass.

  “He was supposed to be alone, but he wasn’t. When I walked into the office, there was a receptionist sitting behind the desk. She saw the gun in my hand before I could hide it, and started to scream. I didn’t think. I pulled the trigger. The man came running out, and a second later I killed him as well. Two deaths. It was only supposed to be one.”

  As if that made it somehow better.

  Gabriel remembered how he’d sprinted four straight miles back to the airstrip, panting and unable to control his hands. How he’d rushed from the plane straight into the heart of London, down into the depths of the tunnels. How that chilling darkness seemed to comfort him for the first time. Hiding him. Obscuring his reflection. Almost like he’d vanished clean away.

  Cromfield had been startled to see him back so soon, pleased that he’d completed his mission and completely baffled as to why Gabriel would feel the need to apologize about the woman. In truth, Gabriel didn’t know why he was doing it himself. The words would be lost so far beneath the ground, and the man he was saying them to couldn’t have cared less.

  But that didn’t change the profound need he felt to apologize. To absolve himself in some way. That night, he’d stayed up in the sanctuary. Staring at the candles. Wondering at the irony that someone doomed to an eternity in hell would be living beneath the foundations of a church.

  “There are things I don’t want to see.” Those fluorescent office lights flickered in his eyes, and he turned deliberately away. “Things that no one should have to see.”

  They came to a pause at the edge of the park, staring off into the distance as the path they were walking on split into two trails. One circled back around to the street. The other vanished somewhere into the trees.

  Gabriel wasn’t sure how long they stood there. It must have been a long time. The sun moved in a slow orbit across the sky, and the families that had been picnicking on the grassy slopes packed up to head home. Not that the silence bothered them. In fact, Natasha Stone was one of the few girls Gabriel had ever met who was as comfortable with the quiet as he was. Like Rae. But different.

  Finally, after an unending silence, Natasha cocked her head towards the hidden path. “Yeah...but you have to see them anyway.”

  Without another word the two of them vanished under the emerald canopy, walking side by side. If Gabriel had been surprised by his own reaction to their dalliance into his past, he was flat-out astounded by her insistence that they continue. Why in the world would she want to see more of what she’d witnessed today? He was having trouble even looking her in the eye—

  “Did Canary tell you that my parents died in a car crash?”

  He swiftly glanced up and shook his head. Over the years, he had seen enough tragedy to push past the emotions and approach the news pragmatically. It made sense that she would be an orphan. She carried herself like one. Self-reliant. Defiant. A chip on her shoulder the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. Between that and the bare cupboards in the kitchen, he probably should have guessed. His own cabinets were bare. So were Angel’s.

  “It was a couple years ago. They were picking me up from ballet.” He lifted a single eyebrow, and she swatted him with a grin. “I know. Hard to picture, right?” The grin faded as they continued to walk beneath the green canopy. “Anyway, I was a mess. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Some days, it felt like I couldn’t even breathe. I dropped out of school, alienated everyone who knew me, and wound up here in Brooklyn.”

  Gabriel’s face softened, but he said not a word. He was well familiar with the feeling.

  How when you woke up, the first thing you did was look at the clock—counting the seconds until you could go back to bed. Marking the hours until blissful unconsciousness. How, when you found yourself at a social event, you always seemed to end up near the back. Watching the others. Smiling only when cued.

  His friends had changed that. Slightly. His family had taken it away. Slightly. But it was always there beneath the surface. Like stretching a piece of tissue paper over a broken pane of glass. One way or another, little shards were bound to poke through.

  “It took me a long time to get past it. A really long time.” She came to a sudden stop, staring up at him. “But I could never be okay until I did.”

  He avoided her eyes altogether, staring out at the trees. “You don’t have to see it all over again.” He tensed as echoes of the images flashed before his eyes. “You don’t have to go back there, and—”

  “That’s because I don’t need to see it,” she cut him off abruptly. “I remember it just fine.”

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and started walking away. Leaving him alone beneath the trees. She had almost vanished from sight, when she called over her shoulder.

  “Eight a.m. Sharp.”

  His eyes rested on the back of her head. Watching until it faded into the blinding sun.

  Eight a.m. Sharp.

  Chapter 6

  Gabriel trembled as he stood in the cave. A lot smaller than he was now.

  His skin was pale, his knees were locked, and his eyes were trained on something on the other side of the cavern. A tiny weapon, glittering in the dark.

  Cromfield slowly stepped forward. Raising the gun in the air. “Are you ready?”

  Gabriel nodded quickly, his eyes bright with fear. Too scared to move. Too obedient to run. He took a deep breath, keeping as tall and straight as he could, staring not at the gun itself but at Cromfield’s finger wrapped around the trigger. “Where are you going to—”

  A shot rang out in the dark. Dropping him to the ground. The smell of blood and lead washed over them, thick and heavy, as he let out a quiet gasp, clutching desperately at his leg.

  Cromfield gave him a moment to collect himself, watching the blood stream over his shaking fingers before holstering the gun and stepping forward with an indifferent nod. “See? It’s not much worse t
han some of the other things I’ve shown you.”

  Gabriel’s eyes flashed up in a split second of indescribable hatred before he quickly bowed his head. Nodding. Cromfield seemed to expect as much.

  “Now go off and see the healer,” he instructed, sweeping back up the darkened corridor without another glance. “We don’t want you to scar.”

  Before that could happen, the edges of the cave lightened suddenly as both Gabriel and Natasha were lifted off their feet. They closed their eyes as they ascended into a world of pure light, opening them to find themselves sitting in her living room.

  This time, Gabriel had an easier time transitioning out of it than he did before. His body tensed as he grabbed reflexively at his leg, but a moment later the disorientation passed. His breathing slowed, and the phantom pain vanished in the bright morning sun.

  Natasha was having a harder time.

  “Holy crap.”

  She stood up suddenly, pacing in a manic circle around the room. There was a constant tremor in both her hands, and her breathing was fast and uneven—as though she’d been trapped underwater for a very long time. She was moving so quickly, wringing her hands, it took Gabriel a second to realize there were tears in her eyes.

  There was a sudden tightening in his chest, and he made a compulsive movement towards her. Then twenty years of experience kicked in and he caught himself, sinking back onto the sofa and looking grim. He knew better than to offer words of comfort. They never worked.

  Fortunately, Natasha thought of something that would.

  “You want a beer?”

  Gabriel leaned back in surprise, staring up at her as the hint of a smile ghosted over his lips. “Brooklyn ballerina drinks beer?”

  She paused her manic pacing long enough to shoot him a dirty look. “What, none of the girls you know drink beer?”