Leverage

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  “How we still have feelings for each other. How you came here to see me. How, when I was in trouble, you orchestrated an unbelievable rescue—”

  It was unbelievable, wasn’t it?

  “—How you alternate between ignoring and yelling at me—”

  “ ’Cause I’m pissed!”

  “You’re pissed because you still have feelings—”

  “Chameleon,” I say into the comm-link, ignoring Winn. “Where the fuck are you? Falcon got hit in the head and now he thinks he’s a shrink.”

  “I’m almost there,” Puo answers me. “Maybe you should listen to him.”

  Winn can’t hear Puo.

  “Yeah,” I say to Puo while eying Winn, “It’s pretty bad. You better get here quick. Falcon keeps taking his flaccid dick out and talking to it, asking it why it only gets hard to pictures of one-legged flamingos.”

  Puo barks a laugh. “He must really be getting to you.”

  “Yup,” Winn laughs in frustration to himself. “Whenever the dick jokes come out, the walls come up. Close up. Don’t deal with it.”

  “Fuck you.” I throw my helmet at him and hit him in face and chest.

  “Ow!” Winn rubs at his already bloody and bruised face.

  “You left, asshole.” I push myself up and start climbing the stairs to get away from him before I do something worse than throw a helmet at him.

  I yell back, “I brought you along to keep Puo alive—who, by the way—” But I can’t bring myself to finish the thought.

  I stop and force myself to catch my breath. “And I rescued your McGuffin ass just now to make sure you didn’t tell them anything.”

  Winn stays where he is, watching me, nursing the spot where my helmet hit him. “I wouldn’t tell them anything.”

  “How would I know that?” I nearly scream at him. “I didn’t think you would ever leave either.”

  Winn doesn’t say anything to that.

  I climb up the stairs out of his view and now we wait for Puo in a heavy, angry silence.

  * * *

  The drive home to the floating house is tense. I don’t even pretend to try to make conversation.

  Puo makes some half-stabs at trying to hear about how it went, but I’m in no mood. And Winn wisely keeps his mouth shut. Eventually, Puo gets the read on the situation and just drives us home in silence.

  Once we’re inside the house, Puo says, “It’s going to take me some time to comb through the data.” He holds up the squeegee he used at the evergreen building. “Why don’t we each go to bed and connect in the morning to debrief?”

  “Good idea,” I say, rage still simmering below the surface. “Winn, you’re confined to your room. Go!” I point to the staircase, sending a little boy to his room.

  Winn scowls as he stomps up the steps. “I am not a child!”

  “You’re worse than a child!” I scream at him. Puo catches me and holds me back from catching up to that fucker. “You can’t take care of yourself! You constantly endanger us! We were better off without you!”

  “Isa—!” Puo shouts.

  Winn screams in frustration and starts to come back down the steps. “It’s always like this with you! It has to be your way! Your terms!”

  “It’s my fucking team! I put this together! I built this!” I struggle in Puo’s grasp. “Let go of me!”

  “No way,” Puo says.

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” I yell to Puo.

  “It’s not for your protection,” Puo says seriously.

  “See!” I yell at Winn over Puo’s shoulder. “You always need someone else to protect you!”

  “Let her go!” Winn shouts at Puo.

  “No way!” Puo yells back.

  “Then why’d you come back, Isa?” Winn shouts.

  “To tell you I don’t need you, Winn! I never fucking needed you. I saved your ass from Paranoid Pete. I saved your ass from Colvin. And now I saved you from the Cleaners.”

  “EVERYONE CALM DOWN!” Puo roars in my ear.

  Puo drops his death grip on me and steps between us. “Winn,” Puo says, his chest rising and falling. “Go upstairs, now.” Puo whirls on me. “You, stay there.”

  “You are not—” I start.

  “Quiet! Both of you!” When we don’t say anything after two breaths, Puo says, “Winn, go. Sleep. Shower. And you better be here in the morning,” Puo warns. He turns and says to me, “Zip it.”

  Winn reluctantly backs up, never taking his eyes off of me. “Fine.” He heads upstairs.

  Puo watches Winn leave, and once we hear Winn’s bedroom door close he turns to me. “This isn’t funny anymore.”

  “Funny?” I ask dangerously. “What about this is funny?”

  “Toying with him,” Puo says. “Lying about how you—”

  I take a step closer. “What makes you think I’m lying?”

  Puo stares at me. Licks his lips. “Maybe you aren’t. Maybe I’ve read you wrong this whole time. But the damage he laid down, you’re starting to make permanent.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you,” Puo says not backing down. “He’s trying to come back. He wants to—”

  “He left, Puo! HE LEFT! I would never leave you. I would’ve never left him. But he did. He. Left. End of fucking story.” I turn around to get out of here before I explode.

  “Isa,” Puo says softly after me. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t be here right now. I can’t be in the same house as that ... as that ....” Ugh, I can’t even think straight anymore.

  Puo stays where he is, presumably watching me leave.

  I wouldn’t know. I don’t look back.

  * * *

  Forty minutes and half a box of tissues later, Puo opens the door to the hovercar I’m sitting in on the pier and slides into the passenger seat. “Chic setting,” he observes dryly. “That’s all I needed to look for—what’s the coolest setting within stomping distance.”

  “What are you doing here, Puo?” I ask, and blow my stupid nose that won’t stop running.

  He hands me a glass of water. “Making sure we’re still okay. You and me,” he clarifies when he sees my reaction to the statement.

  I nod. “Yeah. We’re okay. Although I don’t recall getting into it with you.”

  “No,” Puo says. “But you were pretty upset. I’ve never seen you like that. Angry, pissed, incensed, enraged, furious, irate, ill-tempered—”

  “Ill-tempered?” I needle. “Better wrap it up, running out of synonyms there.” I take a sip of the clean, cool water.

  “But never out of control,” Puo finishes. “Not like that.”

  “I just— I don’t know what came over me. For a moment back in the maintenance stairwell, it was almost like it was back before he left. And then I just got ... so angry with him.”

  Puo sits there in silence, staring out the window, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “This stuff with Winn is pretty heavy ... are you sure that’s all it is?”

  “What?” I ask, genuinely confused.

  “Your, uh ...” Puo stammers off, avoiding looking at me. “Ya know, your ... uh ....”

  My period. Asshole. I stare hard at him, daring him to go further. Jackass. “You’re seriously going to go there?” I ask him dangerously.

  Puo shakes his head no fervently. “No, ma’am. Absolutely not. I’d—”

  “Good choice,” I cut him off, not wanting to hear it. “So what the fuck are you doing here?”

  Puo clasps his hands together and stares at the floor of the hovercar. “The computer’s chugging through the data now. But, Isa—” He turns toward me. “—you’re going to have to figure out what do with Winn sooner rather than later.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The other side unequivocally knows his involvement now. We’re going to have to set his CitID to the same malfunctioning mode as ours—”

  Damn it. I am not paying for a third fucking CitID for that man-child w
ho wants to live the Leave it to Beaver life.

  Puo continues, “—We also need three new tablets. The Cleaners have Winn’s. I already scrubbed ours. And I made sure they can’t track us here from Winn’s.”

  I rub at my face. In the grand scheme of things, three new tablets aren’t that much. But it’s the principle of thing, of money continuing to fly out of our coffers. I exhale and tell him, “Take care of it in the morning.”

  Puo nods and then continues more softly, “They used him to try and get to us. We either have to take him with us, or set him up somewhere else after we figure this out.”

  Shit. I’m still not paying for a third CitID.

  “I know you,” Puo says. “Even as pissed as you are, you’re not going to leave him to fend for himself.”

  “You really think he’s trying to get back on our team?” I ask.

  “Yeah. And you didn’t build this team alone you know.” Puo points both his forefingers at his face and looks at me half-mockingly.

  I stare at him deadpan. “I know. How do you know about Winn?”

  “He told me.”

  “He told you?”

  “What I just say? Yes, he told me. Now, shh. I want to tell you a story.”

  Oh, Lord. Puo’s stories are always ... unique, and they do usually amuse me.

  “There was once was a young zoo keeper in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in the early 1800s. Let’s call him Gus—”

  “That’s not a Czech name,” I say.

  “His name is Gus!” Puo counters. “Now Gus was a prodigy zookeeper. They still speak of him and tell stories of him to this day—”

  “Like now?” I ask.

  Puo taps his nose. “Now shh. Gus was so good that giraffes would bow their heads when he walked by, lions would roll over onto their backs for a belly rub and ducks would line up behind him to follow him around. But despite his prodigious skills, the zoo was financially failing. Gus needed to boost attendance. His plan—”

  “Let me guess,” I cut in. “He trained Cheetahs to be vegetarians and to greet guests, giving small children zooming-fast rides around the zoo. It’s how trains were invented.”

  “No,” Puo says. “Don’t be ridiculous. Traveling spectacle shows were all the rage back then—so his plan was a public spectacle display featuring the zoo. In particular, he built it around one kind of animal ...”

  Puo pauses here to let my imagination run wild.

  This should be good.

  When the right amount of time has passed, Puo continues, “... The world’s first flying rhinoceros—”

  I burst out laughing, and immediately have to blow my nose.

  Puo lifts his left hand up while putting his right hand over his heart. “It’s true. Honest. Gus’s plan was to lead Ronny the Rhinoceros—”

  I snicker.

  “—up to the highest cliff overlooking the town and have it hang glide down into the center of town in the middle of the awaiting, adoring crowd, thus securing the town’s undying love and a massive amount of free advertising.”

  Puo pauses again and tilts his head as if he’s picturing the absurd scenario. Then he continues, “Yeah. It failed spectacularly. Ronny the Rhinoceros didn’t make it. Gus got arrested. The zoo shut down. It’s not there anymore. But the cliff is now called Rhinoceros Rock and is still there to this day.”

  Puo stops his story and looks at me expectantly.

  “What was the point of that?” I ask, searching for his warped, hidden moral.

  “Sometimes things are confusing—”

  “So you admit your stories don’t make sense!” I say, delighted I finally caught him.

  “I said no such thing!” Puo roars. “Yeesh, you never did learn to listen very well, did you?”

  “Yes, I did,” I practically chortle. “I heard the whole thing. Flying Rhinoceros. But you just said it didn’t make sense—”

  “What I meant,” Puo says over me, “is that even though Gus was competent and his intentions were good, his reasoning and execution were baffling.”

  “I—I don’t know what to make of that,” I say in response.

  Puo answers, “Sometimes good people do stupid things for unknown reasons.” He then exhales and turns to me. “Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen between you two. But I’m on your side.” He holds out his fist for a fist bump.

  “Uh, thanks.” I oblige the fist bump. “You really talked to him?”

  Puo nods and yawns. “Yeah, when we were waiting to pick you up after you left the hospital and ditched the goons.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Puo’s rubs at his eyes. He suddenly looks very tired. “He talked about why he left. How he was keeping an eye out for us on the news feeds—he knows the British Museum—”

  I flash back on Liáng in the basement, wearing the tight white tank top, his muscled arms flowing out of it. The night we spent flirting at the Goth bar. More complication I don’t need. How would Winn react if he found out?

  Puo continues as if he didn’t notice, “—was us, by the way. And about how he rushed to help us in the hospital without even thinking about it.”

  No big shock there. “So why’d he leave?” I ask in a distant voice, banishing the thought of Liáng.

  Puo yawns again. “You should ask him.” He holds up his hand to forestall me. “Seriously. You owe it to yourself to hear it from his own lips. And ask him sooner rather than later.”

  “It seems like the explanation got him back on your good side.”

  “Well,” Puo says, “I do need him to make sure I don’t die here in the near term. So that makes me more positively predisposed toward him. But, yes. His reason for leaving is not some noble, grand, self-sacrificing reason. But it was real. And it was sincere. I believe him.”

  “Do you want him back on our team?”

  Puo doesn’t answer right away. He fidgets and shifts in his seat.

  “You do, don’t you?” I ask. All my anger and indignation were bled out earlier this evening. Now all I feel is a tired resignation.

  “I want you to be happy,” Puo says, looking at his lap. “And I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but you were happiest when you were with him.”

  Shit. I reach for another tissue. I thought I was done with this.

  Puo looks like he’s about to say more but shuts up while I get myself under control.

  Eventually Puo head-bobs and says, “I’m going to bed. You coming in?”

  I look out at the row of floating houses. Most of them have their lights off. The light-haze of the city on the other side of the English Bay glows behind the houses.

  Winn’s in that house. Sleeping. Or showering. Or watching one-legged flamingo porn. Which make me bark a laugh.

  “What?” Puo asks.

  “Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “Yeah, I’m coming in now.” I need a shower and a warm bed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING the house is quiet. All three of us seem to be taking our time in our rooms, hesitant to come out and face each other.

  Eventually, though, I’ve showered, brushed my teeth, made my bed, reorganized my dresser, trimmed my fingernails, plucked my eyebrows, combed my hair, waited for my hair to dry, combed it again, tidied up the master bathroom, swept the floors, and sorted my dirty laundry for some reason. There’s nothing left for me to do in here, so I take a deep breath and leave the master bedroom.

  The hallway is empty, and both Puo’s and Winn’s bedroom doors are closed. As I reach the stairs, I suddenly have a bout of paranoia that Winn left again, that Winn’s room is empty on the other side of his door and that I’ve missed my chance to figure out what the hell happened back in the Seattle Isles, to figure out where we went wrong.

  I spent a lot of time thinking about all of that last night, tossing and turning until exhaustion finally took mercy on me and overruled the dull pain from lying on my back.

  But then I hear Winn moving around in his bedroom, and that only
makes me descend the stairs faster, to find the kitchen empty. I rush through making my morning latte in the hopes of retreating to somewhere I’m less likely to run into Winn.

  My milk still has twenty-five seconds left in the microwave when I hear a bedroom door close and the shuffle of someone coming down the stairs.

  Damn.

  “Mornin’,” Puo says.

  “Oh, thank God.” I breathe a sigh in relief.

  Puo cocks an eyebrow at me. “Not ready to face—” He points toward Winn upstairs.

  “Not before my coffee,” I answer. “You done chugging through the data?”

  Puo nods once and heads straight to the refrigerator. “Yeah. I also set up new three new tablets. Getting a bit tired of doing that, honestly.”

  Me too, I think tiredly. But I stay silent.

  Puo opens the refrigerator and stands there, surveying its contents. I start to think he’s trying to memorize the contents of the fridge when he doesn’t elaborate about what he learned from the data.

  “Well?” I prompt him. My milk dings that it’s done, and I add the hot creamy espresso.

  “There’s nothing to eat,” Puo laments, standing in front of the refrigerator that’s chock-full of heart-healthy foods.

  “No, the data,” I correct him. “What did you learn?” I take a sip of the morning heaven-in-a-cup.

  Puo continues to stare up and down at the refrigerator. “We should wait for Winn.”

  Perfectly sensible. However, my desire to know what is going on just ran headlong into my desire to pretend Winn doesn’t exist. “Do you want an egg-white omelet?” I ask Puo.

  “We don’t have any eggs,” Puo says.

  “It’s the green creamer-looking container in the door. It’s just egg whites.”

  “Gross,” Puo says. “And yes.”

  I finish a sip of my latte and then call out toward the stairs, “Winn! Puo wants an egg-white omelet!”

  “Subtle,” Puo says as he goes to climb into the bar stool at the center island.

  I raise my mug to toast Puo.

  Winn’s bedroom door opens and closes, and he comes down the stairs dressed for the day and already showered. The blood and dirt from his face are washed away to reveal dark purple bruises on his left eye and right cheek. Small lacerations dot his face.