"You know, there is a flu going around," Jimmy said good-naturedly as he untwisted the espresso dispenser. "Working a job like this, I'd bet it'd be easy to pick up."
Adam felt bad, but it wasn't a flu; not that he'd know it if he had one, since he'd never been ill. A few times the Dallas heat made him a little dizzy and dehydrated, but a few minutes in an air-conditioned environment cleared that up. No, it wasn't influenza.
But what the hell is wrong with me?
"Maybe you'd better go on home," Jimmy said. "I've got a lot of nervous energy today. I can handle the bar tonight. These ten-hour shifts you've been doing might not have been the best idea anyway," Jimmy said, his expression friendly but firm. Jimmy was not making conversation, he was telling him to do something. And he had better do it.
But when Adam looked up, Spence stood a few paces behind Jimmy, gazing at the boss. Spence's eyes glazed over, daydreaming or just plain tired. Adam had seen his friend's zombielike expression before, usually associated with working long hours, but not quite in this context. Sure enough, as Jimmy told him to go home, Adam saw Spence's lips moving silently, mouthing the same words, as if reciting a script for Jimmy to read.
Adam blinked, and what he thought was an odd scene now was not odd at all. Spence shuffled off to the back room. Jimmy poured espresso. A pinstripe-suited businessman read a newspaper at the counter. Music from Pink Floyd's
The Division Bell
trickled softly over the sound system. Business as usual.
Great. Now I'm getting paranoid,
Adam thought.
Maybe I'd better go home after all.
"I don't want to leave you hangin' like this," Adam began. "But at least I finally got the drawer counted. Thought I'd never get this thing tallied."
"Don't give it another thought," Jimmy said as he loaded more paper into the register. "You're doing a terrific job. I don't want you to burn out. You're my head man down here."
"Yeah, well . . ." He wanted to argue. He didn't feel good about leaving work like this, and under normal circumstances he would argue further. After all, he had car and insurance payments to make. But something within urged him to go home without complaint.
"
Go
," Jimmy said. "We'll survive."
Adam nodded and winced at the headache he felt coming on, the kind usually brought on by proximity to caffeine, but he hadn't been anywhere near it.
Allergies are in overdrive. Never this bad before. What gives?
Adam frowned, wondering what this might mean for his continued employment at the Yaz.
As he left the Marketplace, he ran into Moira coming back in. She looked frantic, and perhaps a bit pissed off about something, but at that moment, incredibly sexy.
"My pile-of-junk car won't start," she said suddenly, waving a plastic key ring in the air. "Can you give me a lift home?"
Adam smiled as many different scenarios sprouted from his active imagination.
"Sure," he said. "I'm on my way home now."
"This early?"
Adam shrugged. "Boss let me off," he said, not going into any detail.
If she thought I was coming down with something, which I'm not, then
. . . He considered telling her about the missing time, but thought better of it. Adam wanted to put the whole incident behind him and get on with his life.
"Want to come over for a while?" Adam ventured. He was taking a gamble that Mom might be there, but she tended to work until at least ten or eleven. Of course, Moira had been over before, for dinner and movies, as a friend. His throat dried up, and his heart pounded in his ears as he considered something beyond that.
If Moira noticed, she pretended not to. "Well, we were going to go do something, remember? I don't have to go home."
"You look just
terrific
," he said, hoping he wasn't being too obvious. "What about your car?"
"I've got a mechanic coming over tomorrow to look at it. I'm about ready to drive it off a cliff. Empty, of course. If it can even
make
it to a cliff."
Adam nodded, grateful she hadn't asked him to look at it. He knew one thing about cars, and that was that the engine blocks were one big chunk of steel. Poking around under a hood would be the equivalent of sticking his hand in a blast furnace.
Adam's car was a new Geo Metro, a three-cylinder with a turquoise paint job. The door handles were plastic, as were most of the surfaces inside, a main selling point with him. It was the least painful for him to drive, easily insured despite his age, and the most affordable in payments and gas. Since he always went to full-service gas stations, to avoid handling the metal gas spouts, he needed to milk as much mileage out of his car as possible.
Moira had a little trouble getting her huge hair into the tiny car, mashing it against the car's roof in order to fit.
"How's your car holding up?" Moira said as she fiddled with the vents. "Must be nice having air-conditioning."
"It still feels new," he said. "Gets me where I need to go."
Adam dropped in a Blancmange tape, wishing he had bothered to put in a more impressive sound system, the one thing about an automobile that would have impressed Moira. She didn't much care for the large muscle cars or even slick sports cars, but she did love music, Blancmange in particular.
"So you went and got this," she said, looking over the cassette case. "Like it?"
"Love it," he said, really meaning it, even if he originally bought it in the event he drove her anywhere.
"Ever talk to your mom?"
Adam had forgotten all about calling her. He now realized that, since the weird experience in the empty mall space, he'd forgotten about the whole incident at the Wintons'. "Not yet," he replied.
With Moira so close to him, and catching occasional whiffs of her perfume, he forgot about Daryl and the whole sordid mess at the Wintons'.
It's not my problem,
he thought.
Daryl can take care of himself.
"Moira, we've been friends for a long time." Adam heard his mouth working, and was uncertain where the words were coming from. "I don't know how to tell you this, except that I think you're really attractive."
Moira turned to look at him slowly, resolutely. He felt his male ego and other things withering under her look, like an African violet in direct sunlight. And he immediately wished time travel was possible, so he could recall the words.
"I don't know what to say," Moira said, obviously flustered. "I'm flattered. I'm sort of surprised. I mean, I thought you might have had something for Spence."
What?
"Spence is a good friend," Adam said quickly. "But I don't think about him, well,
that
way."
"Oh," she said. "But you do like me.
That
way."
He was about to say something, but his throat constricted. Had he spoken, it would have come out a squeak, and he knew it. He made do with a simple nod.
They rode in a terrible silence. A string of firecrackers going off in the backseat would have been a welcome relief of the quiet that fell between them, despite the music.
The tape switched over to side B before she said, "We are going to your house, aren't we?"
"Do you want to?" he said nervously. Then quickly amended, "Go to my house, I mean."
She gave him a sly, mischievous look that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "Only if you have condoms."
Stunned, Adam focused on the road.
Did I really hear that? Did she really say that? I don't believe it!
The smile that spread on his face threatened to squeeze his eyes shut.
Sure am glad I got that box of condoms to practice with. . .
"Don't look so surprised," Moira said casually. "You've been doing some, well, growing in the past year. And I've noticed."
He pulled into the drive of their modest home in the burbs, a four-bedroom brick house on Doucette Street, a few blocks off Cedar Springs. In an otherwise older section of Dallas, a developer built a whole street of new homes, each unit a mixture of contemporary and 1940's architecture. Their driveway was a horseshoe of brick, which swung around to a garage on the side. The house itself was white stucco with an oriental roof of white tile. Though not as luxurious as some of the older, larger homes a few blocks to the north, their home was above the standard of the average police officer. His mom's Taurus was nowhere to be seen.
As sex became an immediate prospect, Adam's knees threatened to buckle when he got out of the Geo. Moira grinned, reminding him of a predator, swooping in for the kill.
"Looks like your mom's somewhere else," Moira said, taking Adam by the arm. The gesture seemed to support him as much as anything; he felt dizzy suddenly. Dots clouded his vision.
"You're not a virgin, are you, Adam?" she asked.
"Huh?"
She giggled and pulled him closer. "You heard me."
He dropped the keys in front of the door. Picking them up, he said, "Yes."
"Good," she said. Adam didn't understand that reply at all. In fact, he didn't understand anything right then, as his brain had seized up completely.
He opened the door, fumbled with the keys some more, and dropped them.
"Leave them," Moira said. She closed the door, and they stood silently in the main entrance for a moment. Then Adam looked up, put his arms around her, and closed his eyes.
The kiss lasted an eternity. Somewhere in the base of his spine a light exploded, sending shock waves through his body. She returned the passion, reaching around his back and running dagger fingernails up and down his inflamed spine.
Beyond his closed eyelids he perceived a flash of light, like a camera bulb. The kiss closed, and he leaned back, his eyes still shut.
"You've done this before," she whispered, her breath brushing against his cheek.
He opened his eyes a bit, and noticed something different in her blurred image. Their noses were touching; their arms wrapped around one another.
When his eyes opened all the way, he stared.
Her eyes, which were once dark blue, had become emerald with no whites. The pupils, dilated, stretched vertically, in slits.
The rush of hormones leveled out and finally drained from his system, replaced now with a confused fear. Slowly, he drew further from her. Her arms relaxed, fell to her sides. Adam's arms released her, but remained in position, as if he were clutching a thick force field surrounding her.
The tips of her ears extended a full two inches above her enormous hair, tapering to points.
Adam stared. He stopped breathing, afraid to speak, afraid to move. No coherent thoughts formed as he stared at Moira, her eyes, her ears. Frozen in place, he felt the blood draining from him, the strangeness of the situation spraying ice water on his fire.
"My name is Ethlinn," she breathed, a slight smile creasing her alien features.
Light clouded his vision, and he became vaguely aware of his body folding into a heap on the floor. She grabbed his arms, breaking his fall, seconds before he passed out.
Presto pulled his '82 Camaro with the bashed-in front fender into the hidden recesses of a dark, empty alley, parked, and turned the engine off.
"I
said
, he'll
be
here," he said to the kid sitting next to him. "Do you think you can shut up for at least a minute?"
"Yeah yeah yeah . . ." the boy said, sounding bored. "Look, I told you, I've done this before. I know what I'm doing." His hair was long and matted, and his eyes wild and crazed. Presto hadn't wanted to take this kid under his wing and make him his new middleman, but his former lieutenant, Monk, now in jail for unpaid tickets, said he was clean and never did product. Presto had doubts, and expressed these to Monk, who replied offhandedly that Mikey was just naturally insane.
"But you don't
know
this dude," Presto said. The boy irritated him. He reflected that it would be easier to make the exchange himself, go home, and start stepping on a ki of coke by himself, without Mikey's help. But he needed to train a middleman, if only a temporary one, and acquaint him with his supplier. Until Monk got out of jail, he would have to make do with temps.
He even considered recruiting Daryl Bendis, one of the few regular customers who appeared to have a brain, but figured he'd be watched after the fiasco at the Wintons' mansion.
Maybe later,
he thought,
after things cool down.
That is, if he didn't kill Mikey first. The boy started humming a few bars of an Ozzy Osbourne tune, tapping his feet on the rusted floorboard, and playing drums on the dash.
Not cool. Simply not cool.
"So what's he going to be driving, huh, boss?" Mikey chirped, peering down the darkening alley. He had an annoyingly high voice for a boy, but then he was only sixteen. Maturity, and intelligence, had not occurred yet.
"You'll see," Presto growled.
Wonder where Daryl is right now?
"It'll be here in a minute."
From one end of the alley came a strong gust of wind, sweeping litter past the Camaro. Mikey stopped all noise and movement. He stuck his head out the window. "There's not a cloud in the sky. This a storm or what?"
"Sit tight," Presto said, grinning sardonically. "It's almost here."
A jet-black Volkswagen beetle with blackened windows pulled in behind them, drove past, and proceeded to the end of the alley. As usual, the driver was invisible.
He's going to crap his pants when he hears this guy,
Presto thought, trying hard not to laugh.
The beetle parked, but its engine remained running. Thick gray exhaust clouded around the vehicle.
"That's him," Presto said, pulling a shoebox full of fifties and twenties out from under his seat. "Give him this. He'll give you something. It's that simple."
Mikey said nothing as he climbed out of the Camaro. He gave a Presto a nervous, worried look, and for a moment looked like he was about to bolt.
"What's wrong?" Presto said evenly.
"Uh . . . nothing. Just smells like something
died
in this alley," he said before he walked up to the bug.
That could be arranged,
Presto thought as he opened a bottle of Evian.