Yesterday's Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  A small black phone on the desk interrupts her. She scowls at it. Unfortunately, the inanimate object refuses to be cowed. She grabs the receiver and puts it to her ear. “Yes?” she says, irritated. “Who?” She flicks a look at Clyde, then Tabitha. “What does—OK. And you said?”

  Shaw’s face darkens. She looks at Clyde more and more. “Yes,” she says finally. “Thank you.” She doesn’t sound grateful.

  The phone hits its cradle. “Clyde?” Shaw says. Her voice is the audio version of a thunderhead.

  “Yes?” Clyde seems to be trying to work out how nervous he should be.

  “Would you care to explain exactly why your ex-girlfriend is banging on the door to the office?”

  Clyde settles on very nervous indeed.

  NINE

  “Forgive me if I’m wrong, Clyde,” Shaw uses his name as the verbal equivalent of a club, “but shouldn’t Devon believe you’re working as an accountant on Jericho Street?”

  “I… I…” Clyde stammers. “I…”

  “Let me guess,” Shaw interrupts his stuttering. “When you broke up with your girlfriend, that seemed like a good time to reveal highly privileged information to her, didn’t it?”

  “I… I…” Clyde starts again. “I’ll go out to her.” Shaw’s accuracy has reduced his shoulders to random desperate waggling. “Lay out the whole A-to-Z process that occurred,” he says. “I’m sure she’ll understand—”

  “When she sees your seven-and-a-half-foot tall, wooden-faced self?” Shaw arches an eyebrow. “No. I’ll go.” She stands up. “In the mean time, you…” She looks at us all, and for a moment her shoulders sag. “Just try not to reveal our existence to anyone else would you?” And then she’s gone.

  A moment later Kayla is heading for the door. It’s the first time I’ve seen her hit full speed all day. There’s nearly a sonic boom.

  And I’d wanted to ask her if she wanted to talk about things. She wouldn’t have, but I think she might have appreciated someone asking.

  Clyde puts his wooden face in his hands. “I did it all wrong,” he says. “With Devon. Didn’t I?”

  Tabitha is looking far too pleased with herself, sitting next to him.

  And honestly the answer is yes, but that’s not going to help here. I instead go for the more vague, “I think Shaw is just tired.”

  “Shagged out?” Tabitha raises an eyebrow.

  And I know Tabitha is abrasive at the best of times. I know the professional thing to do, the thing the team leader would do, is take the higher ground. But instead, I go with, “Oh yeah, because my office romance is totally the one causing issues right now.”

  Clyde clutches his head again.

  So that wasn’t the right thing to say either. It’s mildly concerning that I’m starting to get more comfortable in life-or-death situations than in conversational ones. I’ll need to watch that.

  I grab around for a subject change. Tabitha remains looking stalwartly smug.

  “So,” I try, “Clyde, when did you start being able to commune with security cameras?”

  Tabitha scowls.

  “Oh.” Clyde takes a moment pulling his thoughts together. “I… I’m still not sure about that. But I got my personality onto this mask via a wireless internet connection.”

  The incident replays in my mind. Deep beneath the earth in a Peruvian temple. Kayla actually being fought to a standstill by ancient monks who’d stored their personalities on masks half magical and half electrical. And then Clyde using Tabitha’s laptop’s wireless connection to astrally project. Overwriting one of the monk’s masks, so Kayla could kick his arse and turn the tide of the battle.

  “I imagine I’m basically digital now,” Clyde says. “I mean this mask is all electronics. Magical, Peruvian electronics from the dark ages, but still… But I guess there’s a two-way connection. In and out. I just… It’s weird.” He shrugs, helpless. “There’s a lot to get used to.” He says. “This whole body…”

  For the first time I really think about the trauma Clyde’s been through. Yesterday, his meat body was possessed by an alien. Yesterday I killed him. Yesterday. That’s got to take its toll.

  Yesterday was a really busy day.

  I check my watch. “You should probably clear out,” I say. “Let this whole Devon thing blow over.” Neither Tabitha nor Clyde seem to need any more prompting.

  I sit alone in the conference room for a while and let my head spin. Clyde is wireless. Russians are trying to bomb us. Kayla seems abruptly unable to punch her way out of a paper bag. Not even the world-invading kind. Devon is in the building.

  We saved the world, but I’m no longer entirely sure that we put it back right.

  I’m still chewing on that one when Shaw appears in the doorway with her coat on and a pocketbook over her shoulder.

  “So,” she says, “what do you fancy? Curry or Chinese?”

  I weigh my options. “Which one is less likely to be transformed into a life-threatening monster by rogue wizards?”

  I’m beginning to get concerned about how work is affecting my decision-making process.

  Felicity smiles. “I think I have a good place in mind.”

  TEN

  You have to give it to the Mongols. Fabulous at both invading China and takeout food. Kudos to them.

  Shaw takes me to place near work and her apartment where we pick up a steaming feast of noodles, vegetables, and meat. Later, we sit about in her living room surrounded by trapezoidal cardboard boxes and I get to demonstrate my inability to use chopsticks.

  “So, how’d it go with Devon?” I say, giving up on the whole process, and just trying to spear a piece of pork.

  “I hired her,” Shaw says through a mouthful of noodles.

  Having just placed the piece of pork in my mouth, I then spray it halfway across the room.

  “You what?” My incredulity is a zombie T-Rex smashing through the room.

  “Would you be better off with a fork?” Shaw’s face is the picture of innocence.

  “You did what to her?”

  “Hiring someone is not a violent act, Arthur.”

  “It is to bloody Clyde,” I say. And I believe I have a point.

  Shaw puts down her chopsticks. “What should I have done, Arthur? Clyde had told her everything. Literally everything. In fact he briefed her so extensively I think I should have him date and break up with all new hires. Tabitha’s in the process of stepping up into more of a field agent role. We need a good researcher in the office, and I suddenly have one sitting in my lap.”

  “She’s going to work for Tabitha?” My voice leaps up to an octave I didn’t know it could reach. “Her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend is going to be her boss?”

  Shaw shakes her head. “She won’t report to Tabitha. I don’t think Tabitha’s entirely ready for that sort of responsibility.”

  “Not exactly my point.” Jesus. Shaw is sensible and steady. How can she be letting this happen?

  “Look, Arthur.” Shaw grimaces. “I didn’t recruit her. Clyde did. My hands were somewhat tied.”

  “This is going to be a disaster,” I say. Which is maybe not diplomatic of me.

  Shaw puts out her hands, calming rough waters. “We saved the world yesterday,” Shaw says. She’s smiling. “How bad can we do at this?”

  Considering the arse-whooping the Russian woman gave us, the depths are starting to seem deeper than I’d previously imagined.

  But Shaw is leaning over the boxes of noodles to kiss me, and that exact point gets lost for a while.

  Later, after a fork is fetched

  Given the long girlfriend drought I suffered through prior to this relationship, I am intimately aware with that moment when there is nothing left on TV except infomercials and made-for-TV movies about hepatitis. The time when there is nothing left to do but hang around. It’s usually around two in the morning.

  But having already crashed headlong through the sex-with-my-boss barrier and landed, tangled in the sheets, on
the other side, there’s no bloody way I’m waiting around that long tonight.

  I slip my hand off Shaw’s and onto the remote. The news credits roll out to Big Ben’s farewell bongs. I press a button on the remote, and the TV dies with a little electronic sigh.

  I turn, look at her. She turns, looks at me. She has her hair down, has her legs tucked up under her. She has a spot of soy sauce on her chin that I think is cute enough to not tell her about.

  I smile. And I know exactly what Kurt Russell would do.

  Shaw reaches out a hand, touches my chest. I lean towards her. But there is no give in her arms.

  As much fun as kissing is, I am abruptly aware of how stupid someone looks in the split-second before it all happens, eyes half-closed, lips half-puckered.

  I pull my face back into the semblance of a non-idiot. Shaw is smiling.

  “I’m not stopping anything,” she tells me. “This isn’t me wishing you good night. Far from it. But…” She looks away for a moment. “I just want to make sure we both know what we’re doing here. I… I get that this could be weird. I’m the wrong side of forty. I’m divorced. I work a lot. I’m your boss.” She shrugs. “And the thing is, I’m not going to stop being any of those things.”

  “I don’t mind those things,” I say. And it’s true.

  “Except I think you might have minded a bit in the museum today. With the way I handled Kayla. And the Weekenders. Sometimes I’m going to make calls you disagree with. And I’m going to stand by those decisions despite you. And it won’t be personal, but I think sometimes it’ll feel that way.”

  And that’s true too. But…“I’m willing to work with that,” I say.

  Shaw smiles. “I am too. I just wanted to make sure… Relationships aren’t perfect. They’re messy. People aren’t perfect. I know I’m not. I’m messy. And I know you’re not, but that’s not me saying I want you to change. I don’t want you to stop being funny, or good-looking, or decent at a really fundamental level.”

  “OK,” I say. I can feel her elbow weakening.

  Shaw furrows her brow. “Will you say pretty much anything now if you think it’s going to get me into bed?”

  “Not anything,” I say after a moment’s consideration. “But I should warn you that we’re pretty far from where I draw the line.”

  She slaps at my shoulder. A playful rebuke. One that means her hand isn’t between us any more. I close the distance.

  She pulls me closer. She smells sweet and spicy, of far-flung lands, and horseback riders conquering the known world. Her hair falls forward onto my cheek. Her lips brush mine.

  We manage to make it to our feet, she pulls me after her, through the unfamiliar apartment, down a corridor I should surely remember from this morning. Through a doorway. She pushes me onto a bed. Her bed.

  The idea of sex, to me, is always a graceful, nebulous act. Limbs, and pleasure, and afterglow. The act itself always seems to involve more issues about getting my tie over my head, and trying to find the correct moment to take my socks off, and negotiating the mechanics of bra hooks. And then there’s the choreography of where to be when, and there is always more sweat than I remember, and I’m pretty sure it can’t be comfortable with my weight there, but I’m not sure how else to rest it.

  But then, somewhere along the way, I finally lose myself. And there is just Shaw’s body, and mine, and the point where we meet, that tiny spot of pleasure that grows to eclipse the whole world.

  And then shuddering, and gasping, and grinning it’s over. She kisses me. I kiss her. We lie next to each other, panting.

  “I know,” I say, looking up at her ceiling, gripping her hand tight in mine, “that this won’t always be easy. But I believe some things are worth fighting for. The right things. The good things.” I turn, look at her. I want her to see that I am, for once, at least, sincere. No dissembling frivolity. No shield of humor. “I think you’re a good thing, Felicity.”

  “You’ll fight for me?” Her finger plays across my chest, the corners of her lips curl.

  “Well,” I say, “that is basically what you pay me to do.”

  ELEVEN

  Once the afterglow has faded

  “Fucking with me. Seriously. You are.”

  Cold war has broken out in conference room B. On one side of the iron curtain, Tabitha sits next to Clyde shooting fiery daggers from her eyes. On the other sits Devon, Clyde’s ex, large, buxom, and red-cheeked, with an expression of unadulterated hatred carved into the soft surface of her face.

  Kayla and I perch in no-man’s land, bathing in the backwash of enmity. Except, for once, it doesn’t seem to be just washing over Kayla. She looks back and forth from woman to woman, slowly chewing her lip.

  I should probably say something, but putting words out right now seems like an invitation to be kicked in the gut so I keep my mouth shut for a change.

  Still, I am going to have to have a word with Shaw. Her, “You head into the meeting, I’ll be along in a minute,” seemed so innocent at the time.

  I keep calling her Shaw in my head. Not Felicity. Surely we’re on a first-name basis at this point.

  And then she opens the conference room door. “Ah.” She smiles warmly at Devon. “Punctual. Excellent. Very happy to have you aboard.”

  “About that,” Tabitha says.

  Shaw… Felicity smiles at Tabitha in much the same way a Great White smiles at a minnow. “If you have a problem with the staffing situation, Tabitha, I suggest you work on being promoted to a position where you actually get a say.”

  Clyde lowers his wooden face to the table. It lands with a slight thunk. Devon twitches. At first I wonder if she’s gone wireless. Then I think that there is probably a significant difference between Felicity telling Devon about Clyde’s new corporeal state and Devon seeing it for herself.

  Shaw… Felicity, dammit… lets her breath out in a controlled, slow fashion. “Now, I was hoping to deal with the more pressing issue of Russians trying to blow up London. Is everyone fine with that?”

  “Not really,” Tabitha says. Because she apparently has far larger balls than I do.

  “Unless you have information on the stolen mineral deposit,” Shaw suggests, “be quiet.”

  Tabitha opens her laptop, still glowering. She reaches to tap a key, but next to her Clyde spasms violently. The laptop screen blinks, and a file opens. Tabitha looks over at Clyde and finally lets her frustration boil over.

  “The fuck?” she snaps at him.

  “Sorry.”

  As soon as he utters the first syllable, Devon seems to shrink into herself. Again I hear how it’s not quite Clyde’s voice. See how it’s not quite his movements when he gestures. Everything is in translation.

  And my relationship with Shaw is not the first one I’ve been in. I know that when someone leaves you, you hope they’ll come back, you hope they’ll be regained somehow. But given how much Clyde’s changed “the way things were” must seem like it exists on a different planet to Devon. The impossibility of a way back must be slapping her in the face.

  I’m debating if it’s my place to do something about it, when Kayla reaches over and pats Devon’s hand.

  There is utter silence in the room. We all stare at Kayla. She glares back.

  “Thanks,” Devon mumbles.

  “Well then…” Felicity starts but doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go.

  I try to think of something to say to cover the moment. “Clyde,” I say, grasping at straws, “did you just open a file on Tabitha’s computer with your mind?”

  Clyde turns his head, studiously ignoring Devon. “Well, I sort of figured out how last night.”

  “Boundaries,” Tabitha hisses.

  Clyde says nothing, while Devon’s stare looks like it’s causing his sperm to detonate one by one.

  Felicity massages her skull. “OK,” she says, “On the off chance we can actually get down to business. This stolen mineral deposit.”

  “Not of terrestrial origin.” Tab
itha sounds almost glad for the opportunity to change the subject. “From a meteorite. Hit earth about a thousand years ago. High percentage of antimony. Odd element. Not much of it here on earth.”

  A voice cuts Tabitha off. “It’s mostly used for flame-proofing actually.”

  Every eye in the room flies to Devon. She is attempting to look breezy and detached while engaged in a life-or-death staring contest with Tabitha.

  “Was saying.” Tabitha curls her lip between sentences. “Main uses are flame-proofing, producing synthetic fibres, and lead-acid batteries. Not typical for bombs. But, of note, Chernobyl came up again.”

  Russians. Chernobyl. Bomb. Not the most reassuring triumvirate of words.

  I glance up at Shaw but she’s watching Tabitha.

  “Big component of Chernobyl experiment,” Tabitha says. “Thought it’d power intradimensional magic. Russians did.”

  I look over to Devon. “Magic that doesn’t punch out of our reality,” I say to her in a way I hope sounds more knowledgeable than rote. Then I realize more backstory is explained. “There’s magic, by the way. Did you cover that?”

  My respect for Clyde’s explanations suddenly grows profoundly. He makes explaining this stuff seem much easier than it is. Still, Devon finally unlocks her gaze from Tabitha and beams at me with a megawatt grin.

  “Thank you, Arthur,” she booms. “Very helpful to know. Don’t really understand a word of what you’re talking about but common courtesy is really just… Well, it’s not that common at all really. Actually a bit of a misnomer. I mean if it’s common courtesy then why mention it? But people are always mentioning it. Well not always. Due to the uncommon-ness.” She glances away. “Yes,” she concludes.

  Then she levels her death-stare at Tabitha once more.

  I look from Devon to Clyde. God, there are two of them now. My chances of understanding anything at all ever are rapidly diminishing.