Black & Orange

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  He shook his head free of the mental cobwebs. “Sorry, too much going on.”

  “I know.” She skimmed her slim hand over the table.

  “You okay?”

  She pushed up her glasses. He loved her glasses. “Remember when I told you I had a nightmare last night?”

  Cole hadn’t. This morning he was too concerned with Paul Quintana to process anything. “Sure,” he replied and put his hand on hers. “But I don’t think you said much about it. Did you?”

  Her face said she hadn’t, but also that she didn’t believe he cared.

  “Tell me.”

  She dragged her hand out from under his and her fingers rapped the checkerboard table cloth. He thought she’d just tell him right then. Instead, she picked up her menu.

  “What—?”

  “Good afternoon,” said a bald waiter with horrible beard stubble. The waiter wore slacks and a chambray shirt, had a cell phone on his hip. Must own the place, thought Cole. Some kid probably hadn’t shown up to work. Youth, what a wasted lot.

  “Can I start you with some drinks?” asked the waiter.

  “Water,” Melissa told him.

  Cole looked at the man, who smiled patiently and masked his degradation. “Do you have any white port here?”

  “Certainly sir, we have TrentadueViognier. It’s a dessert wine.”

  “I’ll buy a bottle.”

  “Very good. I’ll get that and be right back.”

  The waiter disappeared into the region of unoccupied tables in the back.

  “What’s the occasion?” Melissa sunk back into the booth, maybe to look at him better. He didn’t like people looking at his face too much, especially her, but it was what it was.

  “Your dream is the occasion.”

  Melissa sat there, silent and uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t listen the first time,” said Cole. “I’ll listen now.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He looked over the lunch menu and the Veal Parmigiana called to him. When he was finished with perusal, he set the menu down. She was staring at him. “What is it now?”

  “I don’t like keeping things from you. But what if I knew that telling you would upset you?”

  He stopped breathing. “This is about Quintana?”

  When she nodded everything rent inside and Cole just wanted to reach across the table, grab her hair and slam her mousy head into the table. He dry-swallowed instead and waited for the blow.

  “We do have somewhat of a past together.”

  Cole’s skin burned. The marrow blossoms in his chest clenched to fists and filled. “Past? What’s that mean? You told me you’d never—”

  “Calm down. It’s nothing big. You are my first.”

  He mumbled a hateful chuckle from the corner of his mouth. The waiter returned and presented the wine bottle label. Cole nodded fiercely, then watched the man uncork the bottle and pour a sip. He picked up the glass and tasted the syrupy yellow wine, looking at Melissa the entire time. “It’s not quite what I expected.”

  “Does it taste okay, sir?”

  “For now,” Cole coldly stated. “I want to see how it plays out.”

  Both glasses were filled. Their orders were taken. The waiter left again. Mercifully. Cole looked down. His hands grasped the sides of the table. Muscles quaked through his chest and thighs. The blossoms inside were provoking a heart attack. He opened himself and heard the distant call of the children.

  Melissa glanced away. This time, Cole could not help himself. He clutched her face, yanked it to his, made her face him. “You don’t deserve to be the Priestess of Midnight if you can’t be honest with me. What did you do?”

  She wedged her hands between his and shucked them off. “I kissed him once—when I was drunk. And you know what? I even liked it. So shoot me already for kissing someone before we were even together!”

  Burning air escaped his nostrils. “Kissed?”

  She picked up her port, turned away from him and drained it. She made a face from the alcohol and said, “I told you it was nothing. Just calm down.”

  “A kiss? So you gave him something in return to keep quiet for a fucking kiss? Two acolytes and what else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sure.”

  Cole hammered the table. His fist caught the edge of his wine glass and toppled it. He didn’t bother to wipe up the mess and instead reached for the bottle to pour another. “I’m not jealous,” he hissed.

  “I said to calm down.”

  “Why?” he spat. “We’re the only ones in here.”

  Her spectacled eyes implored him for a moment before another long drink. She set the glass gently down. “It wasn’t easy to tell you, you know.”

  Cole dabbed at the spilled port with his napkin. The mess had gotten to him. He exhaled slowly. “No, it probably wasn’t easy.”

  “I wish I hadn’t kissed him. I wish you could have been the first, and I—”

  “Why did you do that with him?” he whispered. “He’s a sleaze.”

  A handsome sleaze, he thought bitterly.

  “Cole, I—”

  He raked his fingernails over the scabrous plains of his face. He’d have given anything to leave, to not have to look at her. He felt lost. He felt small. It took him a while to find words. Slowly he tapped his chest. “Don’t you understand why I’m like this? Can’t you see? I—I could never be like Quintana. Don’t you see why that would bother me?”

  Melissa’s eyes misted, but she tried to remain strong, unashamed. “I should have told you everything in the beginning. But I was too scared to hurt you.”

  “I’m not hurt,” he returned.

  “Oh, can’t we just forget this? Can’t we move on, please? I just wanted you to know. I don’t like keeping things from you. This is something small, really. Nothing has changed. We had good news today, and we should act like it.”

  Cole’s back went straight as a board and he ignored his boiling insides. He knew it would return once his mind began to think endless over this again, but he canned it, for both their sakes. “Sure,” he breathed out in fake relief. “Let’s enjoy lunch. This is wasting time anyhow. I have to get going soon. So…” He tried to find a new thought, new words, something, “… Did you call your people out yet?”

  Melissa nodded and tipped back her port to taste the golden drop at the bottom of her glass.

  Their food arrived. The Veal Parmigiana was not as juicy as Cole would have liked. Melissa played with her pasta, doing pirouettes with the noodles around her fork and then letting them fall, unattended. It was a nice distraction for about ten minutes.

  “Tell me your dream.” Cole was determined to forget everything that had happened from the moment he walked in until two seconds ago. It wasn’t working but he was damn sure trying.

  She simpered. “Did you hear me shout?”

  “I think the shower was too loud. I couldn’t hear anything. Was it a long dream? One of those weird ones with different parts?”

  “No,” she replied. “I think it started on a cliff overhanging the shore of some ocean.”

  “Sounds all right.”

  “This ocean looked like blood, in a way.”

  He put his fork down. Cloth’s children clamored at the back of his mind to hear her words. Cole had long ago learned to keep them contained, but sometimes they were tenacious buggers.

  “You were there with me—I slipped off the side of the cliff. You tried to reach for me, but it was too late. I fell off and went deep into the blood.”

  The waiter sauntered up. “Well, well, are we doing okay—?”

  Cole snapped, “Yes, goddamnit!”

  “Super.” The waiter bounced back through the tables.

  Melissa laughed and Cole reached over and adjusted her spectacles. “So what came next?”

  “I don’t remember. I think I drowned when I tried to scream.”

  There was his Melissa. He’d made her terrified of him. She couldn’t even tell him
something trivial about her past without him losing it. “Just a dream, sweetie,” he told her.

  Her lips tried a smile but then fell. Cole didn’t want to think about those lips pressed into Quintana’s. “I’ll never let you slip, Melissa,” he said. “Just be honest with me from now on. I’ll always be there. I’ll never let go. I promise.”

  Cole finished his lunch and the rest of the port. By the time they left he felt a powerful buzz from the wine, but he’d have rather thought the feeling activated from love. He didn’t want to think otherwise. It would kill him to have this love taken away. It was love. Wasn’t it?

  Cole would be Archbishop soon and that would change a legion of things for the better. When Melissa became the first Priestess of Midnight that kiss with Paul would fade forever from her mind. And with any luck, his as well.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Martin sat down on the bed, his nerves finally starting to calm. Teresa had marked the Colton map with black Xs. Sunlight tried to burn through the crimped Venetian blinds. The weather had cleared and reverted to rain four or more times since returning, but the clouds always held firm around the Happy Moon Lodge. Now the Nomads were confined to this room with only canned food, bottled water and the occasional string of great programming: Beavis and Butthead reruns, Survivor: Alaska, and even the latter half of a Hawaii 5-0.

  “These are the freeway entrances.” Teresa touched the Xs with the capped marker. “We’ve got one up Mount Vernon—that’s closest. There’s also one here and there.” She tapped two others.

  “So Enrique brings the Hearts in, and we shoot off, probably for the exit up the street?”

  “Makes the most sense.”

  “What about the Voids?”

  They would need the Voids if they got cornered. With Cloth that was the more likely reality. Trying to outrun him forever was a rookie mistake. Teresa grabbed for a poster tube sitting near the nightstand. The white top popped as it came off and she slid out a transparency with a general outline of San Bernardino County. Shaded areas were random across the glassy sheet. She set it over the road map. The shadowed areas covered portions of the city of Colton like an illustration of organ locations in a cadaver. These were the sacred places Cloth’s children could never tread. Voids. Martin loved them. The world would be a better place with more of them. If only the voids kept Cloth out too, Martin might have built a home in one.

  “The Messenger left this?”

  Teresa shrugged. “Enrique gave the transparency to me. Saves us some homework since we’re cooped up here.”

  “Saves more than that. We should fill in those areas on the paper map.”

  “And input void destinations in the GPS.”

  “Absolutely.” Martin blew out in relief. “It’s easier than locating them that night. When did Enrique hand this over?”

  “You were busy goo-gooing inside with the Jordons.”

  “They’re kind of cute,” he admitted.

  “You miss them?”

  Martin had been trying not to think about the Hearts since they got back to their room. It hurt too much to consider being apart for two and half more days.

  Teresa smiled thinly. “I miss them too. Did you see the big eyes on that one baby girl—I don’t remember their names yet.”

  “I think that was Rebecca—or was it Nancy?” Martin went to a canister of organic dried vegetable sticks on the dresser. “I don’t know. I can’t tell the boys from the girls when they’re all dressed in the same lime green onesies.”

  Teresa watched with a long yawn. “You know those kids and the dog you tried to run over today?”

  “Screw you,” he joked and took out some dehydrated carrots.

  She pushed the map and transparency aside so she could sit on the bed. “Building that quick mantle took a lot more out of me than usual. I should probably use our time here to rest. All this damn coughing, all this weakness... I can’t imagine how I’ll hold up on the 31st if I tire so easily.”

  Martin sealed the canister. It popped solemnly in the silent room. “It wouldn’t be ideal.”

  “We cannot lose even one child,” she answered his thoughts. “I think the other three would die if that happened.”

  “I wouldn’t want that option anyway.”

  “Me neither,” she replied.

  “And I don’t think I could leave them like how we left the others, how we left Tony. Even if Cloth had them—I don’t think I could run the other away.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Living to fight another day, no, that’s out. This changes things.”

  He sensed the somber edge to her voice. “Take it easy. I’ll mark up the map and go through the first round of checking the artillery. Then I’ll probably make some foot pedal detonators.”

  “You’re programming the circuit boards for remote activation?”

  “Yes.”

  Teresa tugged up the covers. “You’re calibrating the pressure between two and three hundred?”

  He rolled his eyes and crumpled up a flyer from the TV stand. It bounced against the head board behind her. “You just rest, okay?” he laughed. “I got this.”

  Her head dented the flat pillow. A hundred mile stare came into her deep blue eyes. “When will the Messenger decide we’re too old for this sort of thing?”

  “You’ve asked that before. And speak for yourself, I’m young at heart.”

  She reeled back to cough, face tensing up, but she conquered it. Martin was glad. He was sick of hearing the assault; all that retching made his optimism fizzle away. But he knew it wasn’t fair to judge her anymore, everything she was going through and him so critical. An hour ago she’d called her father in Texas with the business card from earlier. He’d hung up on her once she told him who she was. Martin was all she had.

  Martin studied the oily black gun parts with a bored sigh. Teresa soon began to snore. A much better sound than coughing, indeed.

  ~ * ~

  Teresa’s dream bled into the quiet motel room. There were hundreds of babies and Cloth wanted them all—the fragile little bundles, lined up around the room’s flaky walls, weakened by underdevelopment, were also sick, coughing up birthday gifts for her: retches wrapped in ribbons of blood and bows of green sputum. Cloth’s own children fell into the room and tore through the soft nursling flesh with spiny teeth. Red freeze-frame flashes lifted on the air in staggering parabolas. The gurgling blared in layers, as though each begging wet mouth was at her ears. The wailing. Louder and deafening. Thriving with intensity, until she opened her eyes to superheated darkness. Was she tanning on a beach somewhere? Was Martin out bodyboarding? This was summer. Isn’t that right? She was supposed to be relaxing... but they were crying! The babies were.

  Her real eyes flew open to the motel room. She watched the woman in bed as an outsider, hacking and coughing against her own will, jerking the bed right and left. Martin brought his hand away from the long oval of blood on her pillow. This was no dream. She’d woken up. And all the blood had come from her throat. She could taste it. Her hand found the lukewarm spot on the pillow too, coming away cherry red and panic constricted her chest. Her sleeve—the white cotton blushed with violet dots and whips.

  Martin was buttoning his jeans. Without zipping them, he began shoving his feet into his tennis shoes. From the nightstand he grabbed his wallet and the Messenger’s false ID packages. She watched in numbed awe. Metal salts corded through her gums and dripped down the back of her throat. Martin jammed his gun into the back of his pants.

  Her eyes wandered. Such a depressing little room...

  The Wrangler’s keys jangled somewhere in oblivion.

  Fight. Teresa wasn’t weak. She could fight. She could sit up. She forced a hand to her chest. It felt good to press there. She wheezed; blood sprayed up from her lungs into her throat.

  Martin yelled, “Let’s go. Now.”

  She hadn’t noticed its intensity before, but his short, cropped, brown hair ran silver at the temples. His hazel eyes were sunken,
intense, unrelenting, abused, terrified. Desperate. Martin crossed the bed and grabbed her arm. “I’m not fucking around anymore. This is bullshit. You have to see a doctor. Whatever kind of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or pill you have to take, you’re taking it.”

  “Stop being stupid,” she rasped. “It’s impossible for us to go—you’ll get the Hearts killed.”

  His eyes suggested she had a point but he wasn’t giving up. “I can handle this on my own. But you need to go.”

  She pulled her arm away from him. “It’s just some blood. It looks like more because of all the spit. I’ll be fine tomorrow. Just calm down. We’re not going anywhere until it’s time. They’ll find us.”

  “Let them come then. I’ll kill everyone in a black suit. I don’t care. Let’s just fucking go, Teresa. Come on!”

  “Quit it. Please? Just stop talking. Stop this.”

  Martin looked to frantically search for something to demolish. When he found nothing he slumped down on the bed and snatched an escaping sob through his lips. “Fucking hell!” he shouted through clawing fingers. “Fucking hell,” he whispered now, shaking his head. “I won’t let it end like this. I promise you.”

  Teresa wanted badly—needed—to force out the snag in her lungs, but she wouldn’t allow it. She willed the fit away and clutched his shoulder to brace for the interval. The room dimmed. Her hand looked so spotty, an old lady’s hand, decaying flesh over rickety bone. She wanted to chop it off rather than see some ancient sickness pooling up. Softly to him, she said, “Imagine the world with every day another October 31st. That’s what you’d do. There’s four of them, Martin. That’s too much power to play around with. That gateway will slip open wide enough for the columns to hold it in place—that’ll be that. The Eternal Church will destroy everything we know.”

  He turned, looking crazy with fatigue. “Stop—I don’t care about that shit anymore. Just so you know: you’re not going to leave me alone.”

  Teresa’s eyelids drooped. She was about to say something else and suddenly, without warning, she began to cough. This time the fit would not be controlled; this time the pressure in her lungs wasn’t going to linger but live on forever. She wouldn’t even be able to die because she’d be too busy coughing, like a machine built by cancer, caught in an endless logic loop.