“That—” She presses her lips flat.
Atlas steps toward her, angles an ear, and Gene glances at him. She does again. And tracks his eyes, parts her lips, and exhales into the breeze between them, the tips of Atlas’s hair trembling. Her crumpled brow softens.
“That, uh—”
She takes another half-step toward him and her irises snare sunlight that drowns in dawnfire already infused. Dissociation distorting thought, voltage surging down the arm he lifts, Atlas reaches for Gene’s neck, but stops halfway when he realizes he moves.
Gene closes her eyes. Atlas feels to copy her, but stops when all theories as to why emerge wordless in the four languages he knows.
Motionless, he follows the blushed curve of her eyelid to her eyelashes, where they curl at the corner. The pink of her upper lip curls as gently, from her mouth slipping shudders. His pulse heats his forehead that soaks in climbing sun. He stands still; Gene too; his heart pounds. His brow tenses and his brain questions and his body sticks between mind’s cogs and heart’s pistons rocking him on his soles.
He lets his arm fall. Gene peels her eyelids and her exhale warms, soon cools, his jaw. She frowns and steps backward.
“Cops.” Gene rubs her arm. “And Accenda and we probably shouldn’t be out here. Let’s get back inside.”
Atlas runs a hand through his hair, moist, warm, and mouths a couple words he can’t discern. He sighs at the sky and voice surfaces.
“Nunc ultra confusus sum—id maledicamus, allow me the punctum minimum of understanding, Gene.”
“Huh?” Gene says.
“Come.” Atlas suppresses blood’s charge and walks for the stairway. “Let us go inside.”
* * *
“—almost done and,” Gene knots the thread’s two ends, “there.”
Her fingers sweep the fabric and smooth its crinkles, bobbing toward the hems of his tunic’s sleeves, where the original thread now unravels. Atlas looks to the bloodied towels by the front door, a bitumen-black feather peeking from one coiled ridge, then to the scissors on the coffee table, the thread, the needles, the section of floor ceramic shards once lay upon. He stares at Gene, who holds up his tunic, and her glistening hairline and stiff hands, scuffed fingers still blister-red. She spent hours on his clothing. His eyes freeze and fog.
“—take it!”
Atlas twitches and ears’ ocean drains.
“Hey, take your shirt.”
He reaches, focuses vision into a single stream, and takes the now-whiter fabric from Gene. His leather bands around his wrist, Atlas places his tunic with his Sideran pants, already folded, beside him on couch cushions that truly never were lumpy. Gene sits in the recliner.
“They’re not as clean as they used to be,” she says.
Atlas brushes his tunic. “I prefer them worn.”
Holding her breath, Gene scrunches her shoulders into her neck. “I’m really starting to worry about Samuel. He better—”
Samuel bursts through her front door. Panting, he slams it and flips the deadbolt and slides the add-on top latch with a creak and click.
“Freakin’,” Samuel slaps the door, “lock it, Denim.”
Gene lights up and quickens her words. “I’m really starting to worry wads of cash won’t fall into my lap.” She looks up; she frowns. “Poop.”
Samuel points. “Watch your language.” He crashes on the couch next to Atlas and stretches an arm around its backrest, kicking a leg up on its armrest. He slows his huffing. “Our game plan—I was looking about town.”
Atlas scoots from Samuel. “Did you discover something?”
“Yeah.” He gasps. “Kenny. Saw him at an old bar a few miles from here and we’re gonna use him to get to Eden. If we go now, we still might be able to catch him.”
Gene says, “Who’s Kenny?”
“Kenny—Kenneth Smit. He’s an Accend, one of Eden’s favorite toys.”
Eyes wide, Atlas perks his spine board-upright. “Smit is the being who held me prisoner.”
“Attie boy.” Samuel smacks Atlas’s back; Atlas coughs. “He holds a lot of people prisoner. Now, I’m guessing the bar I saw Kenny at is a regular stop for him. He’s a sentimental guy.”
“This ‘bar’ being some rodlike monument?”
“Wait, why are we going—”
“Shh. Talking. We’ve been here for a day under surveillance so Eden’s obviously not coming for us for a wacky reason,” Samuel leans toward Gene and raises his eyebrows, “called control. She wants us in her controlled environment. We’re gonna saunter into it via Smit’s location information before she takes a breath.”
“Such is suicide,” Atlas says.
Samuel beams. “Attie, good, good job. You know what that word means. Do you want a treat?”
“That’s the stupidest plan.” Gene rests her cheek in her palm. “We shouldn’t follow Eden’s rules.”
“There’s no other way around it ’cause she’s not coming out. Eden’s the puppet master and we’re going to tie our own strings. It’s choreographed. It’s a face-off. It’s honest.”
Atlas scoffs. “You abhor honesty.”
Samuel’s eye gleams. “Uh-huh. And I’ve concealed a Colt CM901 under my itty-bitty puppet clothing.”
“Playing into her hands,” Gene purses her lips, “is our bluff?”
“It’s our only option. I’m not waiting for her waiting to play out. We going or what?”
Atlas glances around. “Now?”
“What did I say?” Samuel stands and checks his jacket’s contents, one wing after the other. “Don’t plan on waltzing back to your not-so-secret hideout for a while. We can’t return to this death trap until all’s resolved. Better pack.”
Atlas’s forehead crumples. “This is it then.”
Samuel tucks his chin, darkens his stare, and meets Atlas’s, Gene’s eyes. He slides his revolver from his jacket and, glimpsing the cartridges, swings out its cylinder. He clicks it back in. With a whirring rattle, he spins the cylinder and says,
“This is it.”
XXVIII
A Sideran, a Sacrifice, and a Samuel Walk into a Bar
He yanks his strap far past its buckle and constricts his upper arm into circulation’s blockade, tunic’s white fabric mushroomed around char-brown leather. Forcing an exhale, Atlas loosens his grip, wipes his grimace, and tugs wider band’s loop until its buckle prong meets the first hole and his arm’s snugly strapped, along with his chest and other arm. He slips on his Sideran shoes, straightens his citizen-grade pant legs over them. He checks his collar, one or two invincible blotches along its hem.
Atlas exits the bathroom. Half a step from the threshold, he bumps into Gene.
He jolts. Wind pours from his palms and blasts Gene’s hair toward the ceiling, air shooting up her nose. Atlas grabs his left hand in his right and pulls them into his chest; the stream dies.
Gene coughs. “I wasn’t spying on you.”
Atlas narrows an eye.
“I was just standing here.” Gene clears her throat and, with both arms, motions a circle around her feet. “Right here because . . .”
She mumbles and Atlas angles forward.
“Because . . . gonna . . . you . . .” Slurring her words, lowering her voice to a breath, she twirls a finger at strands of her hair lifted at odd angles. “Yeah.”
“Gene, your words,” Atlas squints, “aren’t.”
She stands on the tips of her toes, falls back down, swishes her mouth, and walks for her kitchen. She grabs two medium bags off the counter. Paper cracking against its handles and fabric jangling its buckles and zippers, she spins around.
“I got it, Lord.” Gene laughs at the ceiling. “No need to shout.”
Eyebrows tensed, Atlas neglects blinking. Gene sighs and walks back to him, bags in hand.
“You’re not. I never thought you were and I didn’t mean it,” she says.
“You’re frightening me.”
“I’m sorry, Atlas.” Gene d
raws a deep breath. “You’re not stupid and you’re not a dummy and I’m sorry. You’re a million times smarter than me obviously. I’ve been,” she presses her lips together, “petty.”
“No, I—” Atlas looks into the sun veins trickling through her kitchen, a somehow lonelier square without the bags, her sink empty for the first time he’s seen. Room by room, Gene has switched off the lights for a slow-rolling murk; and its eerily quiet daytime haze builds beneath his skin.
“For me,” Atlas retracts his gaze, “understanding does come with difficulty.”
“And I’m difficult to understand. You shouldn’t be trying to understand anything right now but the deadly clash of two opposite dimensions.”
“ ’S right.” Samuel claps.
Gene and Atlas turn to him: Samuel dangles car keys from his forefinger, his shoulder against the entryway corner.
“Oh, Denim,” Samuel shakes his keys at her, “forgot to tell you. The Presage is for and about Attie and, when we were in the woods, we were spanking some spying Accend kid until he told us this and Attie didn’t want me to tell you but I’m Samuel Covey. Also, because the same people made Accenda and Siderans, those two dimensions aren’t opposite, so much as distant relatives.”
“Huh? Spanking? The Presage is about you?” Eyes wide, Gene faces Atlas. “For you?”
“Plausibly.”
“Wait.” Gene grins and looks between him and Samuel. “Relatives? So you guys are like brothers?”
Samuel grabs a fistful of flowers on an end table and yanks them from their vase. Eyelids drooped, he squeezes them until mangled petals and leaves drift to her floor. He bursts open his palm, dropping the rest. “Oops.”
Gene gapes.
“Are you prepared to depart?” Atlas asks her.
“Yep.” Samuel opens her front door and exits. They don’t see him but hear his shout. “Get moving. It’s not safe for toddlers here.”
Gene glances around her living room, to the flowers on the floor, the closed curtains, the sack of bloodied towels halfway between washing machine and garbage can, and sets down her bags. She glimpses a framed photograph by the empty vase. She wraps her arms around her center.
Atlas steps to her side. “Do you have all you need?”
She nods.
He lifts a hand near the back of her neck, near her hair, and then lets it fall. He instead grabs her bags off the floor and carries them out the doorway, down the stairs. In the parking lot saturated by sun, Samuel unlocks his Mustang’s doors. Atlas watches his key glint as it twists, and the key that fell from Smit’s pocket and clacked onto dungeon cement, glimmers of swaying ceiling light in its bow loop, strikes mind. Atlas swallows the churnings crept up his throat.
As she ambles through the lot, arms folded, Gene strikes new images: the morning they started for Helena an eternity past.
“It’s almost eighty degrees out and you’re dressed like it’s the middle of winter.” She gestures to Samuel. “Why do you always wear that? You’re gonna get sick.”
Atlas sets Gene’s bags across the Mustang’s back seat. Samuel props the driver’s door and spins his keys around a finger.
“This jacket’s who I,” Samuel holds his keys to his heart, “am. And Denim’s who you are. You should understand.”
Gene frowns. “Samuel. You’re gonna get heat stroke.”
“I was born in the heat. It got nothin’ on me.”
She rolls her eyes and then stops them on his head. “And what’s with all the product? You look like you’re trying to be a French male model.”
Samuel gasps and runs his fingers down his swept, shaggy bangs to where his hair flips out above his shoulders. “How’d you think I get cash in my off time?”
“By stealing.”
“Well,” he bobs his head to the side, “yeah.”
“Do you put a ruler to those sideburns when you shave?”
Atlas says over the vehicle’s roof, “Five centimeters above his jawline.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Samuel drops his jaw. “How did this start? Why are we all picking on my appearance? Don’t get me started on glorified-strait-jacket-wearing, sexy-in-a-cushy-way marshmallow here. It’s like he cut his hair with a broken bottle in a back alley.”
Atlas avoids eye contact.
“Just because some people don’t look in the mirror a hundred times a day,” Gene says.
“But I do—” Atlas stares at his feet. “I intend, I look into the mirror at times.”
Samuel scoffs. “ ’Scuse me, Scarlett Johansson wannabe. I don’t spend three hours fixing my makeup in the mornings. I know how subtle you are about it but I’ve seen it. We all know. Secret’s out!”
“I don’t—twenty minutes, maybe. Wait, do you wear makeup?”
Atlas says, “—look into the mirror but does it appear as if I haven’t? Because I have and I do—”
“Denim, it takes you twenty minutes to get out of bed.”
“Yeah? I slept on the hard, cold floor and then jumped up like a marathon runn—Samuel. Why the heck have you been watching me sleep and get ready? Frickin’ creep.”
“—have ample access to mirrors on Earth and I merely like to utilize that privilege—”
“I’m not a creep. You know what’s creepy? ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. Also, ‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police.”
“I bet you wrote that song.”
“—do not wish to appear as if I didn’t have access to reflective surfaces because, though I don’t have need to shave frequently, they would serve—”
“Watch your lukewarm insults ’cause Sting’s a hottie, you Sideran-toddler-fawner.”
“You’re the one who called Atlas sexy in a cushy way.”
“UGLY BUCKET THAT WAS YOU.”
“—didn’t have access to mirrors on Sidera but I don’t believe I appeared any less—”
“Atlas,” yell Samuel and Gene.
Atlas flinches, crouches into Samuel’s vehicle, and lowers his voice. “I have never shaved myself.”
Samuel elbows Gene and they grin at Atlas. Pushing Gene’s bags to the seat’s far side, Atlas slips under their scrutiny and into the Mustang’s back. He forgets Smit and feels the Helena journey in his blood, a static electric hum that mitigates the deeper, violent arcs. For a few beats, his palpitations speak excitement he gladly can’t decipher.
Gene gets in the passenger’s side and Samuel gets behind the wheel. They slam their doors; the bangs trill into breeze’s block, metal’s box, engine’s rest of a sea of silence the vehicle’s interior swirls in their heads. They glare out the windshield. Their smiles fall.
“Denim,” Samuel says, “your homemade cookies were burnt. Just letting you know.”
Gene faces him and clenches her jaw. “How would you know? You’ve only been eating for, what, a few days or—” Pushing her palm into her cheek, she exhales. “Good try, Samuel. Let’s go see this Kenny guy.”
Samuel swears.
He starts the engine, presses the gas to a thundering rev, and swerves out the apartment parking lot. He switches on the stereo. Its bass competes with the vehicle’s rumble but neither scratches the sewn-mouth cacophonies directing their mental preparations.
They turn onto a smoothly paved road walls of green enclose, foliage wrestling residences’ peeling shingles for view, each new terraced row more aged than the last. They age well. Fresh coats of white paint settle in porch pillar engravings, shallowing wood’s original depth. Other houses dangle collections of chimes from overhangs and bird feeders from willows, any warble or peal retained within their leafy sanctuaries.
Raising his voice over mind more than music, Atlas asks, “Smit is where?”
“Kenny—Smit, whatever—was at this bar in White Oak. Let’s hope he still is,” Samuel yells.
Gene makes a face. “He was at a bar in the middle of the morning? Are any bars even open at that time? And I thought Accenda don’t drink.”
“You obviously don’t know Kenny.”<
br />
“How’d you know he was down there anyway? What could you have possibly been doing in White Oak?”
Samuel juts out his jaw. “I have a life.”
“And what are we to do,” Atlas leans between the two front seats, “once we arrive at this ‘bar’ location?”
“Atlas, put your seatbelt on.”
Samuel shrugs. “Buy him a drink.”
“Come on. Really?” Gene says.
“I’m serious. He’d grovel at anyone with alcohol, a girl, or a Dutch accent. The smartest Accenda don’t sabotage themselves with loyalty and he’s smarter than you think.”
Clicking his seatbelt into place after difficulty, Atlas leans back and tenses his forehead. “We simply ask about Eden then?”
“Among other things. If Brianna, the bed-wetter, knows Presage secrets,” Samuel swings the steering wheel, turns a corner, “then Kenny’s gotta know something about it. Or Pylon. He likes showing off so he’ll spew the truth as he knows it. Getting coherent sentences out of him is gonna be the hard part.”
Gene grimaces at her reflection in the window. “I don’t want to chat with a serial killer.”
“Pro amore Imperii.” Atlas scoffs. “Maledico—maledicant omnia quae sancta sunt. Te non credo, Gene.”
She twists to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“You think this a light matter?” He sighs. “Samuel, decrease the volume of your musical mechanism.” Samuel doesn’t; Atlas turns to Gene and yells, “You are not conversing with any being capable of conjuring flame, particularly him. You will remain in the vehicle.”
Samuel hums a protest. “Mmm, I don’t know. Genie could get him to talk in a snap if she flips her hair right. Bringing you is a nice treat but she’s even better.”
“I should come,” she says. “I’ve come this far. I have a right to know what’s going on firsthand.”
“Can you do a Dutch accent?”
“No.” Atlas strains his voice through pounding bass. “Curse it, Samuel. Will you quiet that horrid noise?”
“You’ll be there. Samuel’ll be there.” Gene leans around her seat. “Maybe I could help get information. I’m tired of stuff going on behind my back.”
Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn Page 36
