by F P Adriani
Sighing a little, she walked away, saying over her shoulder, “It’s the double door by the back patio. It was open when we got here. The man ran out of there—I saw a gray jacket slide between them.”
When we got to the door, she moved the red curtain there aside and flicked on a light switch for inside. But when I looked down at the double-bolted reinforced lock and my hands played with the mechanism, I found no damage.
“The lock’s fine,” I said, looking up at her, and then at Lori behind her. With bigger than normal eyes, Lori stared back at me for a long moment before finally looking away.
“What do you mean fine?” Julianne said, her mouth twisting down yet shaking a bit. Now, she looked young again, young and scared.
“He must have got in somewhere else,” I said quickly. “Or maybe it was left open accidentally.” I was looking at her face, but in my peripheral vision, I saw Lori’s whole head twitch to the right, away from Julianne.
I said to the girl now, “Let me look around some—see what I can find.”
*
In my car before I came to the house, I’d packed part of my old kit from my old life; before I started MSA, I’d had some stuff shipped from Earth to here. And now I always kept my tools either in my office or in my special mirage-coated case, just in case I ever needed to use my tools again. Tonight definitely qualified for that I Need To Use Them Again category.
I took some stuff from my case, then I went back inside and had both Lori and Julianne stamp their fingers onto a piece of fingerprint-embossing paper. Alone outside the house again, I used my high-powered flashlight on the ground and the back first-story doors and windows, all of which windows seemed clean; then I used my Osier fingerprint scanner to check for fingerprints around the windows—again I found nothing. I went around to the front windows, and to both the porch and the driveway. People usually assumed intruders chose back entrances, but they didn’t always. Someone going in through a front looked more normal so less noticeable to neighbors.
In this case, however, prints around the front door especially might not tell me anything because the residents hands had been on there, as had mine, and Roberto’s, I assumed, and—sure enough—I now saw mostly smeared prints under the scanner’s blue field; the rest were expected known prints. I pressed the scanner’s Record button anyway, but, as I did, I realized that the front lock looked fine. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t been picked just as the other door locks hadn’t.
There really was nothing to see out here. If someone had “broken in,” that person must have been a ghost who could diffuse through walls. Or a real person with the security-system code.
Though there was the second floor….
I went back inside and told Lori I needed to look at the upstairs’ windows. She shrugged and followed me through the house, standing not too far behind me as I examined each of the windows. Nothing. Again.
I had been wasting time, in more ways than one. I got tired of putting on this show.
I didn’t know where the girl was right now in the house, though, and I didn’t want her to hear any of my conversation with Lori. So when I stepped inside what Lori had said would be the last room to window-check, I shut the door to the hall and turned to face her.
“How long have you known Arlene Hu?” I shot out.
Lori’s face collapsed a bit, one hand grabbed a desk beside her, the other grabbed her own skirt-covered thigh. “How did you—”
“Never mind! What the hell’s going on here? I want some answers. Now.”
Lori recovered herself, her back stiffening-straight. “I don’t know her. Amy did. She told me something bad could happen months ago. And that she asked for Hu’s help. What could I do? The girl’s alone now—no family here. It was just her and Amy. Amy and I were involved.” Her eyes looked at me defiantly. “I’m married but that marriage is crap. We don’t live together. But I like both.” Men and women, I took her statement to mean.
“Hu is scum—” I started to say.
But her shaking head and words cut me off. “No—no she isn’t. It’s about politics with her. She doesn’t really want to hurt anyone—”
“Doesn’t matter whether she WANTS to; she ultimately DOES.” I said that in a firm voice, but, inside, I didn’t feel so firm. Despite what she’d done to this planet’s people and to me personally, Hu and I now shared a common enemy from my past. And I still couldn’t be sure how much of what I’d learned about either side was true or was a lie.
“Why’d you leave the back door unlocked?” I demanded at Lori now.
Her eyes dropped away from me and fell on that side-desk. “I got a call from her—she calls my portable phone. Not regularly or anything, but if there’s something I need to know or I should do. She’s tried to find the notebooks in here—so have I. What else can I do? I’m afraid for Julianne’s having them. And no one can be trusted with Amy’s work. It’s the danger involved.”
“You keep saying that, but I’ve yet to see anything except a crude map. How do I know anything’s so dangerous—how do you?”
“It’s true that Julianne hasn’t let me read the notebooks—”
“Smart girl,” I said.
Lori’s thin lips let out a frustrated abrupt sigh. “Look, I don’t like doing this, but if what Hu says is true, what choice do I have?”
I didn’t respond to that. I just kept looking at her, I just kept waiting for more info.
“Can YOU help her—help us?” she finally asked me.
“Yes. But do I want to? That is the question.” I opened the door behind me and left her standing in the room as I went in search of Julianne.
*
The house was too big, the rooms too winding; I couldn’t find the girl. Then I wasn’t sure I wanted to find her. But I thought it strange that I hadn’t seen her inside any rooms even once during all my searching. Maybe she’d gone to sleep, and in a room I hadn’t been shown.
There was a small hot-pink couch in the big brown hallway downstairs. I plopped back onto that couch; then I popped another of the candies into my mouth as I shifted my gun inside my holster. I leaned my head back against the wall behind me, closing my eyes and hoping I could remain still like this for most of the night.
I’d rather experience boredom tonight than excitement; today I’d had enough of the latter to last me the rest of the week. If I were lucky, nothing else would happen while I was here, nothing bad.
…Apparently, luck was with me for tonight at least: I wasn’t on the couch for more than half an hour when Lori’s brother showed up. She’d called him after she and I had spoken on the phone, but he only just got off his shift at work.
He wasn’t exactly a brutish-looking person. He was tall and pole-like skinny, and kind of studious-looking. But he also looked very angry; probably that anger would be enough for him to look out for the place tonight.
I told him and Lori I was leaving now.
I really didn’t want to be there; I didn’t like the…atmosphere. I had already gotten in deeper than I wanted. And tomorrow I’d get in deeper still: I’d move Roberto to doing this job, to guarding the girl when she left this house at least. I could use Mike for the other office jobs Roberto would typically do. Where Roberto was normally part-time, Mike was normally part-time, part-time. But now he’d have to become part-time alone.
In the hallway still, I said to Lori, “For tonight, call the cops if anything else happens.”
Lori’s brother nodded at me, and Lori herself grunted at me.
I continued, “But at my usual rate for more dangerous jobs, I’ll move Roberto to your…case starting tomorrow. He’ll guard you. If that’s what you want.”
“I do,” Lori said quickly. “I’m sure Julianne would approve too.”
Now I asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be the adult here?”
There was a silence.
Then she said, “Julianne’s really very mature in personality. She could legally become an emancipated adult, you kno
w.”
Pointedly looking at Lori’s face, I replied, “I’m sure she could. Maybe she should.”
And with that, I walked out the front door.
*
As I drove to Tan’s, I felt the excitement-jolt I always experienced whenever I was about to see him. I had my portable phone with me, but I didn’t bother calling him. I kind of just wanted to get there and tell him what had developed today. …Yet I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t think he’d be thrilled upon hearing it.
Plus, I hated the way we’d left off earlier today when I’d sounded like an asshole and he’d hung up on me. Not exactly a highpoint in our relationship. And I didn’t want a repeat with a second phone conversation.
I wondered now if he’d even be home just yet as I never tracked all his movements. We didn’t have an every-single-day relationship. More like an every-other-day or every-third-day relationship. That was how I wanted it and he’d agreed…reluctantly. We’d argued over that too once, argued over that I never wanted to meet his mother.
“You know I’ve always been close with her,” he said then. “Yet twice I’ve asked you to come see her with me, and you won’t meet her. That hurts me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I’d replied.
And I really didn’t want to hurt him—my not seeing his mother wasn’t about him. It was about me and his mother. No one had ever “brought me home to his mom.” This was an alien situation to me. I suspected I wasn’t the type of person people brought home to their parents, period. What if Tan’s mom hated me? That might put an end to Tan and I, and I didn’t want to end anything with him now.
For the past six months, I’d been trying hard to change our interactions—I’d succeeded for a little while, and things between us had become more relaxed. But then he went for the museum job. And that was my turn to feel hurt….
I smiled suddenly: Tan was indeed home now; his red car sat parked in front of his house. I pulled my car beside his, walked onto his stoop, opened his screened door and rang his doorbell.
The light came on beside the doorframe, and when he opened the inside door to me, I noticed a small blob of tomato sauce decorating his chin. I wanted to lick off that blob. The candy had given me energy, and I planned on making good use of that energy.
“I’m sorry about earlier on the phone—I was so curt,” I said to him.
He shrugged now as I walked in; I promptly kissed him hello, my arms curling around his waist and pulling him closer. He’d changed out of his work-uniform and now stood in blue jeans and a slightly damp black t-shirt. He must have showered as soon as he’d gotten home. He always did, he once told me.
“I was just eating,” he mumbled now near my ear. “You want some? There’s extra.”
“I’m not hungry.” I pulled away from him and walked down the hallway toward his dining room. “I wish I came here with good things to say, but….”
“What now?” he asked sharply.
“Well, Tan, you’re not gonna believe this,” I said, sighing as I sat down at his round table and looked up at his frowning face.
I spent the next ten minutes giving him a summary of everything I could about my experience with Julianne. Then, lastly, I dropped the Hu-Called-Me Bombshell. By the time I’d finished explaining that, Tan looked as confused and shocked as I must have looked during my conversation with Hu.
“I don’t believe this,” he finally said.
“As I predicted.”
Now his right hand shot through his black hair, his face looking paler than normal—yet pale with rage. His mouth shook as it shot out, “Goddamn my fucking ass. Sometimes I really fuck up. I’m a real fucking dumbass.”
“Tan, don’t say that about yourself—don’t. No one could have predicted today.”
“I just don’t believe this,” he repeated, his voice in a half-angry half-shocked haze, as if he hadn’t even heard my words. And now he sat down across from me at the table, pressing his face into his hands.
“You had tomato sauce on your chin before,” I said then.
“Who gives a shit!” he barked. “You lay all this on me and now you’re talking about my hygiene?” Shooting up from the table, he rushed over to the booze cabinet nearby to pour himself something fast, then drink it even faster.
“You know, I could use some of that.”
“You’re driving,” he shot over his shoulder.
“Well, I thought I’d stay tonight,” I said, feeling hurt at his not automatically assuming I’d stay. He usually would assume that; it was usually me who wanted to bolt, why I sometimes looked for excuses to stay overnight.
Now he spoke to me over his shoulder again: “I knew MSA would be a mistake.”
I jumped up from my seat. “Well, gee, maybe you should have said that before you agreed to start it with me?”
“What else could I do? I was leaving the mine job. You wanted the new business, and I wanted it for you because you wanted it.”
“I didn’t need charity. I needed support, as in, someone else in the office sharing alternative insights with me.”
“You’ve got Nell,” he correctly pointed out.
He still hadn’t turned around, but on his left side I saw his hand shaking as he poured himself another drink—no, as he poured me one. He finally turned a bit and slid the glass across the table to me, bypassing his dirty dinner plate.
I picked up the glass, and that was when he said, “Why can’t you join Nell in her jewelry business? Why can’t you behave more like her?”
“Because I can’t,” I snapped, hurt once again because, apparently, I wasn’t good enough in his eyes. Now I slammed down my glass. “I’m me. Pia. Why don’t you go with a woman like Nell if that’s what you want? Why are you with me?”
He had been looking at me; now his head shot toward the tabletop, and he sighed loud and hard, as if sighing out a long-held anger he could no longer contain. Then he looked up at me again from beneath hooded dark eyes as he said, “I guess I’m addicted to bad girls.”
There went those hurt feelings again; this time, he must have seen them on my face.
“But you’re not so bad,” he said fast now. Then he sighed even louder than the last time. “I shouldn’t have said you’re bad. Another dumbass thing from me!”
“Tan, we’ve known each other a year now, and I don’t know why we still can’t get this together right—between the two of us.”
“Maybe it didn’t start right so keeps getting screwed up. It just didn’t start in the right place for a bunch of reasons.”
“But I care about you so much,” I said.
“I know,” he replied.
Now both his hands reached for me, and I slid into his arms; they were warm and hard and they always made me ache for them even while inside them. The area around my heart literally hurt; for a long moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Then I finally said against his soft neck, “I know this is difficult for you—I know. Because of your past with Hu, this brings up old things. I realized this a while ago, like that’s why you had difficulty helping me back then—I mean other than you didn’t trust me. But it was like you didn’t trust yourself too. The thing is: this has happened now. We need to deal with now.”
He pulled back, stared into my face. “Well, what are you going to do?”
I sighed. “I just don’t know yet.”
“This could be lies. It could be a trick of hers.”
“And the girl? I really don’t trust any of them; I know she’s holding back. But the thing is, she came to you and then to me. Why would she? What would she have to gain from tricking us? She’s rich…but she seems kind of pathetic to me.”
“So? Pathetic people can still be creepy troublemakers.”
“But my instincts about her in specific—they’re telling me that she isn’t that way.”
“You know,” he said fast now, “I suddenly wish we could forget all this shit. I really do. Derek came into my office right before I left—h
e said we should all meet for dinner this weekend at Rinaldi’s. I want us to be normal. A normal couple going out with normal friends. I thought that would happen this weekend, and now this shit happens instead. This fucking Arlene and her fucking messes.”
“Well, maybe it’ll all blow over. Maybe it won’t be a big deal.”
His black eyebrows shot up at me, and the right side of his mouth jerked to the right even more.
It was my turn to sigh loudly. “Well, what else can I say? We can’t go back and undo the past few days—how many times have I learned that about life already?” Um, more times than I wanted to discuss right now. Actually, I suddenly didn’t want to discuss anything at all. “I shouldn’t have to say this to you either, Tan. You should know all this. And I’m all talked out now. The bottom line is: I’m into this too deep already. I want to help this girl with her goddamn problem, whatever it is. But I don’t want to think about it anymore tonight.”
*
A few moments later, he was cleaning up his dinner, and I was taking a shower in his bathroom. The warm water slid over my shoulders, my back, my ass, and I could almost believe that the water carried the whole day away into another part of the Universe that had nothing to do with my existence.
I was here now, with Tan; for me, life didn’t get any better than this. I’d had so few close relationships—and nearly all of them had been as a child before my parents were killed.
Now, when I was with Tan, I forgot all the loneliness from my past, I forgot all the things I’d seen, I forgot all the things I’d done, things I hated, things I now felt ashamed of…things I didn’t want to think about now or ever.
My hand quickly twisted off the spigot, and I stepped out of the shower. After I dried myself, naked still, I walked into Tan’s bedroom and over to the closet there, standing beside a messy-with-papers box on the floor. As I reached into his closet for one of his nightshirts, my leg shifted at the box, making some of the papers slide off the pile on top.
