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Gram’s mobile chirped, and she scribbled down a grocery order on some wrinkled paper. “Yeah. Shouldn’t be a problem ... Okay ... Uh-huh.” She stopped, then barked, “Excuse me?”
The old woman was spitting tacks inside but trying to be all polite. “Salmon? No, that’s not something we stock ... Uh-huh ... uh-huh. Well, let me tell you somethin’. If I could even find some real fish, and then get the damned stuff up here without selling my store to pay for it, that’d be all fine and dandy. But unless your Yellarskin mistress wants to buy my store and help run it, she better get her fish someplace else. Now you want this other stuff or what?”
I kept my face hidden as I swept the floor so Gram wouldn’t see my big fat grin. Some Elites had rented out Julian Garvey’s farmhouse and went hog-wild fixing it up. The place had been empty ever since the old man passed away two years before. Only somebody like that would think Gram’s store had real fish.
It was a mind-twister, how Yellarskins had come to live in Pompey. Why the hell would anyone like that want to stay in the middle of nowhere? They could have houses all over the worl’?
Gram swiped off the call. “Shee-it. A damned bot. I hate talking to those things. All high-and-fucking-mighty! You chile.” Her eyes were bleary with tiredness as she held out the list to me. “Get this mess o’ stuff together and take it up to the old Garvey place.”
The whole sitch was playing right into my hands, ‘cause I’d been waiting for the right reason to show up there. Some people had gone out to the Garvey place to spy on the Yellarskins. But not me. If there was anything I’d learned on the OuterNet, it was that Elites considered snooping to be real tacky.
Just to think about meeting an Elite in person gave me the jibbity jibs—that feeling that set the whole worl’ spinning around real fast. I wanted to see one of those crazy expensive Yellarskin cars up close. When they flew over Pompey, they made my skin vibrate a titch, like cupping a butterfly in your hands and feeling the wings beat—that is, if you ever found a butterfly. I’d done it just once.
One of the Elites that lived there walked down Main Street every now and again. Somebody found out her name was Jizelle Reingold. Her face leaned out in front of her body as if her forehead was pushing against a wall. She was long and straight as a hoe, with a curtain of straight black hair that swished from side to side.
Three little girls always rode behind her, jabbering like they were at some party in their stroller. It was programmed to track the woman’s movements like a bird dog behind a hunter. I heard there were two men at the house too, and one of them was too cute for his own good.
If only I could make them like me. Maybe I could become their maid or something and finally get the hell out of Pompey.
I pulled merch off the shelves in record time. The order cleared out most of Gram’s crackers, salt, flour, potatoes, apples, and bottles of milk. Then I loaded it all on the delivery wagon, practicing what to say: “It’s my pleasure ... Well that’s mighty ... er, awfully kind of you to say.”
The wagon’s wheels made a scrawky sound, lurching over the bone-grey stones as I climbed up Round Top Road into the late May day. The air was so hazy, like peering through a glass of water that had a few drops of milk in it. Down below, Mirror Lake was a giant silver platter.
Seeing the water from above made me think back to the rescue—that rope cutting my waist; the pounding thwah thwah thwah of the car in the frigid air. I’d gripped the heavy bodies of Bobby Abdula and Felicity Nesbitt so hard and long it gave me a burning ache in my arms. There was a sucking sound as they came up out of the mud and ice. My heart had felt so sick when they told me Felicity was dead.
The memory seemed to make the wagon heavier. I stopped a minute to stop huffing and puffing so much. Nearly three months had gone by since that night. The pneumony and frostbite had died back to almost nothing, but I still didn’t have all my strength back.
Off in the distance, I could hear the spraying sound of a waterfall. It was hidden in the woods that bordered the Garvey grounds. Knowing I was that near made me start moving again.
A sweet fragrance grabbed my nose even before I rounded a bend and saw that the lawn was fringed with thick lilac bushes just bursting with big blossoms. That was new. And the plants looked so healthy. They must have been revved up with chemicals in some way. I pushed past the grapey clusters and came out onto grass, so green and smooth.
The place seemed freaking weird. It was hard to put a finger on all the “whys,” but for starters, there was a grass-mowing robot throwing off the scent of green juice as it clipped the gigundo yard. The bot was like a giant metal rat. I’d never seen one of those before. Plus, all the rotting parts of the building had been fixed up. The whole place looked like a gazillion Americos.
But there was something else. It took me a minute to figure it out: the air wasn’t hazy around the house. Everything was clean and sharp-edged, every tree leaf and grass blade. I felt super alive. My aches and tiredness disappeared.
There was a sporty little car in the drive that looked like a coppery fish. Beside it was a larger, chocolate-brown-colored model covered with elegant golden scriggles that spelled out “Tseng Motors.”
Hot damn. I’d seen a promo for that model on the OuterNet just the other day. Inside there was a guitar case on the plush, furry back seat.
“Wo, girl,” said a smoky man’s voice.
Shit. I pivoted around and found a middle-aged Yellarskin just behind me. “Where you going, darlin’?” His nose had an angle to it like he’d been punched a long time ago. And his eyes skimmed everything about me like I was some kind of animal he’d never seen.
I must have looked so dumb and sickly thin in my old blue dress, which had bottle caps sewn all over it. Didn’t fit me right. Why hadn’t I changed it and taken the feathers out of my braids! I must look pathetic to an Elite, not funny, and definitely not sweet the way I wanted to be.
I felt my face go fire hot, but I gruffed up some courage. “I’m just delivering some goods from Melada Supermarket.”
He smiled, and I got the sense he already knew that. “Terrif. My name’s Federico, but everybody calls me Rico.” He offered his hand, and I shook it.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Luscious.”
“Why, yes you are.”
I didn’t like the sticky-sweet fakeness, but I could sense he didn’t mean anything bad, so I just smiled. “Let me take this,” he said and reached for the wagon handle, but I wouldn’t let him. It was my job. The wheels scrawked even worse as we started toward the house. The right front one was wobbling like it was about to fall off, which would be crazy embarrassing.
As soon as we stepped on the white porch, a big ole robot nanny with four sets of arms opened the door. She was carrying three little girls, who screamed “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”
“No! No! No!” the robot barked back. The loudmouths went silent so fast; it was like the bot had hit a freeze button. They looked like poppies, with black-seed eyes peering out from bright yellow faces. The youngest must have been about a year old and was a tinier version of the oldest, who must have been about four. Both had scrunched-up hair that was shiny and black as crows’ wings. And the middle chile was all red-headed devilment.
The bot had the look of an aging Elite mother on the pudgy side, except for the extra arms. I wanted to touch its skin so bad; it was probably warm, like a human’s. But weren’t no way I’d do that.
Its eyes bore into me as it pulled up information about me from my mobile’s ID signal. “Please put the groceries on the front table, Ms. Melada,” it said, all tight-ass. No wonder Gram got so bitchy. This must be the bot that called her.
I picked up the bags, walked through the door, and placed them carefully on a round table so they wouldn’t fall into a bouquet of peonies about the size of a bush.
Where was that Reingold woman I’d seen on the street? She was probably the one that hired maids. Might pay to stall for time. “I can show you what I brought, just in case something’s missing.”
“Determination has been made that the order is correct. But Melada Supermarket license has expired. Please comply with the law.”
Criminy. The bot had pulled up info on Gram’s legal records. How was the old lady going to find enough money to go legit? Nobody cared about shit like that in Pompey.
“Now Caldonia, give the girl a break,” Rico told the bot, then turned to me. “Sorry, darlin’. How about a little refreshment? You’ve walked a long way.”
Gram wouldn’t like that. “I-I’d best be getting back.”
“Oh, stay a minute. Some peeps would love to meet you.”
WHAT? I followed him back out the door. The setting sun was burning red streaks in the clouds above the green hills. Rico walked along the building’s side and made for another door.
We went into a big ole room with chilly air. The Yellarskins had sure done a number on it. On the far wall, there was a huge fireplace crackling out heat. Big white quartz crystals surrounded the flaming black center part. An old potbelly stove had stood there before when old man Garvey was around.
A white fur rug was spread out before a sprinkling of very cushy moon-pale furniture. “Go ahead. Grab a seat,” Rico said.
It would be so embarrassing if I got one dirty. How much bad could I do if I just sat down for a couple of seconds? The chair nearest the fire, that was the one to go for. It kind of curled up around me—light and soft as angels’ wings must be. I didn’t ever want to get up again.
“Those feathers are SIMPLY WILD.” It was a woman’s voice coming from the balcony on the second floor. Shit. Jizelle Reingold stared at my hair as she floated downstairs in these things called air slippers.
“Thanks,” I said. Her skin looked like liquid almost and had a little glitter to it. She was wearing a long dress made of something thin and glossy. Probably cost more money than all the houses in Pompey put together.
“Luscious, meet Jizelle—Jizelle, Luscious,” Rico said.
“Lovely to meet you,” I said.
The woman’s mouth twitched like she guessed that I had practiced the word lovely. “Same here.” She cocked her head in Rico’s direction. “He’s my big bad brother.”
Rico handed me a glass of some kind of alcohol. Gram would have a fit if I drunk it. “I-I’m sorry, but I’m only 15.”
Jizelle raised an eyebrow. “And your point is ... ?” I wasn’t sure if I should answer, but she just went on. “Tell me, Luscious, what would you do with a brother who holes up in a laboratory all the live-long year, and FINALLY breaks away with promises to whisk you off to Bora Bora—but you end up here?”
“Jizelle!” Rico gave his sister a dismayed look as if to remind her there wasn’t no way I knew about Bora-fucking-Bora, and I might think “here” was kind of a special place.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know why anybody would want to come to Pompey.”
“There. YOU SEE? I knew she’d understand,” Jizelle said. “Drink your scotch like a good girl.”
I took a big gulp. My mouth blasted into a choking fire. I tried not to cough but had to let out a pathetic little one.
Rico’s mouth quirked up, but Jizelle pretended not to notice, her gaze settling back on the feathers in my hair. “Where DID you get those?”
“My Papa found them a long time ago. On the ground.” Shit. I sounded even more stupid. But it was a tender memory: walking through the fields with Monkey, finding those feathers on Sunday afternoons—cardinals and blue jays and crows. There were hardly any birds anymore, just like there wasn’t any Papa.
Jizelle gazed at my sadness, and that’s when I saw it: how lonely she was. She gave me a crooked smile, and it flew right down into my heart.
“Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” The girls looked down from an upstairs hallway.
“HELLOOOO, my darlings!” Jizelle waved, then turned back to me. “That’s Rhodes, Riviera, and Rio.”
I plucked some feathers out of my hair. “Here. They can have them.”
“Aren’t you the sweetest. How much?”
“What? Oh, n-nothing.” I just wanted her to like me back, and hire me.
Just then, this girl-woman walked down the stairs. I blinked. Myra Oldman? I had known her like forever. She was 18 and had a curvy body, lazy cool eyes, and a mess of light brown hair that fell down to her waist.
Usually, Myra looked kind of stuck on herself, like she was the Princess of Pompey. But now she seemed like she was in some sort of trance. And her lips were swollen up some. What was she doing upstairs?
“Hey, Luscious!” Myra’s voice kind of lilted, so deeply relaxed. “See ya,” she said to Rico and Jizelle, then blissed out the door.
“Nothing like getting rip-roaringly fucked,” Jizelle said, acid as all get-out.
“Ah-hem.” Rico gave his sister a do-I-need-to-remind-you look.
“I don’t care,” I said.
A voice like whiskey and gravely velvet sounded from the stairs. “Damn, my bones are beat.” A man walked down in a silky bathrobe. Wowza, was his bare chest ripped! And he had this guitar on backward so that it jiggled above his sexy butt when he walked. They had two guitars around this place?
He had a swirling mass of dark hair and hadn’t shaved in days, blue eyes like cut glass and a play-with-me mouth that was saying: “Christ on a bloody cross this vacation is exhausting.” It was then that I remembered seeing him before. He was a reporter on Nuhope’s news. He was way more exciting than Guy Styvel.
He saw me. “Why didn’t you say we had more company? I woulda put on more clothes.”
“Sorry, pal,” Rico said. “This is Luscious. Luscious, Dove.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said.
“Me too. I’m mean, pleased to meet you.”
He walked toward me with a kind of rhythm, as if he was listening to some dance tune. Or maybe I was listening to it, but I just couldn’t hear. It was kind of confusing—especially because I was getting worked up about someone so old. He had to be way over 30.
His eyes flicked over my homely body. “Right. Well. You’ll have to excuse me. My bed’s yowling at me like a love-sick cat to get back to it, so maybe I’ll catch you later.” He turned back toward the stairs.
It made my chest ache, to think about him leaving. All this stuff I’d seen on the OuterNet started churning up in my mind. Somehow I blurted out, “Is that tin can of yours out in the driveway meant to look like some old Louis Vuitton luggage?” He pivoted around. “It sure looks there’s a little ‘homage’ thing going on.” I loved that word, homage. I’d just learned it.
Jizelle and Rico looked at each other in laughing surprise, like they were thinking, “The girl can actually put together more than five words at a time?” And “where the hell did a Chav learn that?”
I figured I might as well keep going. “I hear Tseng didn’t get the adaptive cruise control quite right on that model. But there’s a new one coming out next month, or so they say.”
“Do they now?” Dove said.
Maybe they didn’t understand how I got on the OuterNet, but they sure realized I had.
Rico coughed. “Luscious is the young lady that saved the kid in the lake.”
“Holy crap,” I blurted. “You know about that?” I colored up again.
Rico smiled. “You’re famous, girl.”
Jizelle gazed at her brother like she suddenly understood something. And Dove’s interest shot up. He ran a hand down my arm. He was just being friendly, but I let out a little squawk. It felt like I’d run into an electric fence, only there was this thrill to it and no pain at all. Dove gave a soft little yelp like he felt it too.
Everybody laughed. Yessiree. Myra must have had one helluva afternoon.
“That was a pretty amaz thing you did on the lake,” Dove purred, like he was trying to make me feel relaxed again.
I shrugged. “Nobody else was going to do anything, and I just got mad.”
“You got moxie, Lush. Don’t ever lose it.” Dove stretched his body and let out a roar. “Forget bed. I’m too hungry now.”
“Why don’t we go rustle up some oysters on the half shell?” Jizelle said.
I tried not to look too excited. They sure didn’t get oysters from Melada Supermarket!
Rico smiled at me. “I got some bubbly with your name on it, kiddo.”
I don’t know exactly how it happened, ‘cause we’d just met. But suddenly I felt like they were my oldest friends in the worl’.
# # #
FOR DAYS AND DAYS AFTER that, it was like I was in a real-life dreamisode. Jizelle, Dove, and Rico wanted me to drop by whenever I could sneak away. It was a head-scratcher. Even more than what I wished for was coming true. They didn’t want somebody to scrub floors; they wanted a friend. Nothing ever happened easy like that. But I wasn’t complaining. Being with them seemed to speed up time.
We had so much fun shooting pool, swimming, and just hanging out. Plus, there was so much lobster, wine, aged steak, and duck in creamy sauces. I was so used to just eating boiled potatoes and oatmeal that all the richness made me sick at first, but then things got better.
Gram would be so pissed if she knew I was hangin’ with the Yellars. She’d heard rumors about all the young Pompey women comin’ in and out of Dove’s door and decided he was a sex trader scouting for Chav whores. That’s the way the old lady’s mind worked. Wasn’t no way to change it.
If I told Kirsten about my new friends, I’d just muck things up, given her big mouth. So I kept my visits to myself.
By my count, Dove had gone to bed with about 25 pretty women from Pompey in two weeks. That was saying a lot, not just because of the speed. There weren’t many ladies like that to choose from if you were looking for somebody young, which he was. Pompey’s so tiny.
Everything started to change about five days in when Jizelle decided to leave. She fretted over her three R children as Caldonia the bot got them settled in the coppery convertible. The kids were crying ‘cause they didn’t want to go, and that got Jizelle a little crazy. I could tell that she was covering up a worl’ of pain. Rico had let slip that Jizelle and Dove had bedded down a while back. It hurt her bad, seeing all the other women traipsing in and out—most of them more beautiful than she was.
Jizelle reached out and touched my hand so soft-like that my heart swelled up. Yellarskins didn’t touch that much at all, unless they were family, or having sex. “I’m sorry I have to go,” she said. “But I can only take so much country.”
“Don’t blame you.” I was pretty sure she’d lied about the country part, but if she needed an excuse, that was okay with me.
“Don’t you DARE let Dove and Rico mess up your head.”
“You think they will?”
She looked at me longer than usual and sighed. “My brother and I, we’ve always had our issues. He likes to mess with people, always did. That’s why he’s gotten as far as he has at Victory Star. But I DESPISE the way he operates, especially when it involves me.”
I tried to figure out what the hell that meant. It was like Jizelle knew some secret she couldn’t tell me. “Listen, Lush: I may have wanted to go to Bora Bora, but I am SO GLAD I met you instead.”
“Me too.”
Her car buzzed off. I figured she’d forget me in about two days flat. We’d had some good times together, singing, dancing, but she had so much exciting shit going on in her life back in New York. I’d just be a funny story to tell, how she’d hung out with an honest-to-God Chav.
The good news was, Rico and Dove were still around. Maybe they’d take me back to New York like some kind of stray cat. I tried to be as charming and funny as I could as a plan started to form in my head.
One evening, we were belting out a bunch of ole cowboy tunes on the back porch, and I took a solo during my favorite, “Down in the Valley.”
Dove put down his guitar. “Do you believe the set of pipes on this girl?”
“That’s ‘cause of her sweetness and sadness,” Rico said.
“What are you talkin’ about?” I said, full of flattery.
“You’re the realest deal we’ve ever met,” Dove said. He made my heart thump so hard.
“I don’t suppose we could get you to make some of those mint lemonades,” Rico said like a wicked boy.
I gave him a smirk and went into the kitchen. Fact was, they could get me to do most anything. Dove’s not coming on to you, so you just get your mind straight, I warned myself. I squeezed some lemons into three glasses, added some maple syrup, and a hefty glug-glug of vodka along with a few drops of water—a little thinner for myself than the others.
The two of them probably thought of me as a kind of toy mascot—the type that was so ugly it seemed cute. I practiced what I wanted to say about going to New York: “I wouldn’t be no burden. I’d clean up your places and sleep on a couch. I just want to be—you know, there.” A part of their worl’.
I waved the glasses through the FlashFreeze machine to make them frosty. All the while, I went over what I’d discovered about Rico and Dove. A few “innocent” questions, eavesdropping, and research on the OuterNet had turned up a lot.
Dove was on the payroll of that hot-shit media company Nuhope. But just like Jizelle had tol’ me, Federico worked at another one, Victory Star. He was a bunch of years older than Dove, but they’d been tight friends for a while now. They told me they met at a bar somewhere in New York.
Dove started out at Nuhope in the sales department, but after he scored a lot of big contracts with advertiser clients, he caught the eye of the mucky-mucks. They loved him so much that he was able to coax them into letting him switch over to the news team. Which was a pretty odd move, according to the reports I found.
Quirky little stories were Dove’s specialty. He did one on a singing gorilla at the Chase Bronx Zoo and another about some rich guy that preserved a huge piece of a glacier in a gigundo freezer. But there was a dark side to Dove. I found reports on the OuterNet about how he got in hot water for screwing a Senator’s wife, and he had to go on what they called a “hiatus” for a while ‘cause of the scandal.
The man just couldn’t keep his dick zipped away. That must be the reason they were laying low in Pompey. I wondered about other things too. It seemed like Dove might be sick because Rico kept checking his pulse. There was this liquid medicine that Dove took every now and then when he didn’t think anybody was looking. It looked like syrupy water, all thick and shiny.
I washed off some spearmint sprigs I’d found earlier that day in the pasture behind their house, plunked them in the drinks, and started toward the porch door. I stopped at the sound of Dove saying to Rico: “Now we got to get your sweet ass hired at Nuhope.”
I didn’t move, fingers frozen by the three glasses. This could be some really secret stuff they didn’t want me to know about. They couldn’t see me through the screen door, and their backs were turned.
“I know you can sugar-talk them into hiring me,” Rico said.
“Sugar talk! Hellz, I don’t need to do that. They’d give their eye teeth to hire you away from Victory.”
“Maybe so. The thing is, I don’t know how to leave Victory without getting killed by Petra. You know, my boss.”
“She likes you that much?”
“She likes what I did to her. Although it’s making her a little crazy.”
Dove chortled at that.
“It’s not what you think.”
“What then?”
“Can’t say. But bottom line, I’m going to finish up this thing I got going with her, and then I’ll leave.”
“Thing? Fuck, Rico. Are you experimenting on a Victory president?”
“Let’s just say she and I are working on something.”
“Uh-huh. Tell you what. Let me talk to this Petra person. I’ll make her see r—”
“No! I don’t want you to have anything to do with her.”
“How come? Worried about mixing up your experiments?”
“Don’t piss me off, Dove. You might not get what you need.”
There was a long silence then as if Dove’s brain was playing out some bad what-if’s. “I’ll keep away. Don’t worry.”
“Good. Now, there’s a new plan I got going on that I want to tell you about.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to do your chem thing on somebody new.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need a female version of you.”
“I’m not enough?” Boy, did he sound jealous. “I don’t do too bad.”
“We both know you don’t get the same reaction from men as you do from women—the heterosexual kind, anyway. And I want to see what happens when everybody’s under the influence, not just half the population.”
“So, you’re treating some chick?”
“Not yet. But I have one picked out.”
“Who?”
“Think about that jolt you got when you touched the girl.”
My skin started prickling. I just about dropped the drinks.
Dove guffawed. “Oh, come off it. Luscious?”
“You weren’t such hot stuff before I started fixing you,” Rico said.
Dove was quiet, but I could feel his grumbling mind.
“Think about it,” Rico said. “Usually, it’s just you that gives off the excitement when you touch someone. People don’t even recognize what you’re doing, consciously. They just know they’re tickled pink to be near you. But when you touched Lush—boy, did you both feel it.”
“Hmmm. I’ll give you that.”
It was too confusing. Sure, there was a zing when Dove and I touched, but what was it to Rico?
“One thing I’ve figured out about this concoction is that it’s better to start off with a naturally charismatic human. You can make a much more potent, chemically enhanced person than you would with an average Joe. That’s why I chose you. Hell, I’m not even sure the guy that invented this stuff figured that part out.”
“You mean the guy that was attacked by that militia of bots you hired—the guy that killed himself on that island?” Dove’s voice was all sunny, but there was a knife in the middle.
My whole worl’ started spinning something crazy. I couldn’t believe it. Rico would not attack somebody.
“Fuck me to fucking death,” Rico snapped. “If you ever say anything like that to any –”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m in too deep for that, as we both know. But I just don’t understand why you’re zeroing in on the little Chav chick. Can’t you find a pretty little Elite with the same kind of jolt? Somebody a little older?”
“Too many legal issues with an Elite. And if something goes wrong, nobody’s going to kick up a fuss with a Chav.”
It made me squirm, but I knew it was true.
“Besides,” Rico went on, “the female I pick out has to be plenty brave. And we both know Luscious is that, the way she saved that little boy. People love her, all over this town, even though she’s—well, not exactly ugly as sin but in that general ballpark. Funny thing is, I don’t think she gets that. She knows that kids follow her around, and she makes everybody laugh and sort of come alive more. But she just doesn’t see how charismatic she is. Probably thinks it’s just because of those mangy feathers.”
Mangy? I blushed.
“So that’s why we’re here. And that’s why you kept insisting we make her part of the group.”
“Yep.”
My heart was hammering so hard, even though the whole thing was kinda confusing. Dove got up and walked back and forth on the patio for a minute. “It still sounds insane.”
“You know what your problem is? You don’t see how far this can go. If you did, you wouldn’t get so jealous of her.”
“I’m not –”
“If you could see what I’m about to make
happen for you, it’d make your head spin around in circles goin’ 90 miles an hour. What you’re doing now with those little news reports is nothing, nothing compared with what you’re about to become. And when you become more, then I become more. We’ve got a lot more riding on that little substance of mine than you can imagine.”
“Like what?”
“You stick around and behave yourself, and you’ll see.”
“And you’re really sure that girl’s the one?”
I banged open the door and shouted, “Oh yeah! I am!”
# # #
THERE WAS NO WAY TO tell Gram that some Yellarskins were about to show up without getting her mad. I’d tried to change Rico and Dove’s mind about coming by the store. It would have been easier if I just run away with them and left a “sorry” note. But Rico told me that was too chickenshit.
Of course, he was right. I’d regret something like that down the line. So I got ready for a fight when Dove’s mahogany-colored car with the little gold squiggles swooped down Main Street right past the broken-down school and the Burty & the Bitch Bar that went bust about 10 years back.
The speedster froze, vibrating on a cushion of air right outside Gram’s grocery. Heads watched from windows and doorways all down the street as the car doors shot up. There was a halo of super clear air, which always kicked in when Dove was around. It was something I had gotten used to, but it seemed strange again as I imagined what it would feel like for Gram.
Two sets of cowboy boots poked out of the car, touched the ground, and started crunching toward the store. Dove winked at a couple of girls that were cooing at him from the corner.
As soon as Gram saw them out the window, she bolted the store’s front door, scowling like thunder. A playful little rap sounded on the wood. “Looks like they got money. Don’t you want the business?” I said, all innocent-like.
“Git in the back.”
“Wha?”
“You heard me.” She grabbed her Smith & Wesson from a drawer.
“NO! GRAM!”
“I’ll fire this right now if you don’t git!”
“Criminy!” I huffed into the storage room as Gram creaked open the front door.
Dove laughed and said: “Whoa! That’s quite the antique you got there.”
“You may be one tall glass of water. But that don’t make no diff’rence. My gran’chile ain’t no whore. You can’t have her.”
“What?” It was Rico’s voice now.
“You can’t play me.”
“Hold on a second here. Our motives are entirely legit. We just want to talk to you.”
“Ha!”
“Just let us sit with you for a minute or two. And if it isn’t worth it, you can go ahead and blast us,” Dove said.
I forgot to breathe; the silence lasted so long. Finally, Gram said, “You want a cup of hot water?”
“Why we’d just love it!” Dove said it like she’d just offered him a frozen chocolate drink with brandy whipped cream.
I gave them some time to get settled in Gram’s tiny office before I showed up. Gram picked up the whistling teakettle and filled two mugs with water.
It was bizarre to see Dove and Rico, dressed so expensive, in the tired-out shack of a room. Dove was all warm fun, getting used to what it was like to be on my home turf. It sure gave me the jibbity jibs.
Gram plunked the mugs on the table. “Okay, Bubs. Shit or get off the goddamned pot.”
Dove grinned. “How come you and I weren’t young thangs at the very same time? You got a way with words.”
“Oh, she’s just gettin’ started, believe you me,” I said.
Gram didn’t soften up even a smidge. Maybe Dove’s charms didn’t work that well on old women.
Rico cleared his throat delicately. “Mrs. Melada, I happen to know you’re one skinny step away from homelessness.”
I quaked. Was that really true?
“Who the hell you been talking to? That’s a lie,” Gram cried.
“You’ve been researched, Mrs. Melada. By me.” Rico said it so gentle. “I happen to be rather fond of your grandchild, so I want to give you and her an amazing opportunity.”
“Do you now?” Gram gave me the stink eye as if to say, “What the hell have you been doing?”
“You see, Dove here works for Nuhope. You know, that big entertainment and communications company? Owned by the U.S. government.”
“Is that pile of horseshit supposed to impress me?”
“Nuhope’s looking for new talent—the next generation of space dancers,” Dove said. I just about flipped. Nobody’d mentioned space dancing! Dove kept talking, smooth as glass. “Only the bravest, most charismatic kids are being considered. We think Luscious is perfect.”
Gram pulled out her gun again and pointed it at them. “You think you can come in here and tell some damned lie just so’s you can make my gran’chile part of your cultish harem? You got another thing coming. Now you just get on out of here before I show you what this antique can do.”
I didn’t think she would actually use the gun. But when Gram got this mad, there wasn’t no way to talk sense to her. Sadness filled up my throat. Somehow I got out the words: “I think you better go.”
Dove gave Gram a smile bright as a rocket blast. The room seemed to get even more clear-cut like there were invisible sparkles in the air. “Mrs. Melada. I know there are some stories running around about me, and I’m sorry to hear you got the wrong impression. What I’m talking about for Lush is totally on the up-and-up.”
“Luscious. Not Lush.”
His voice got even more velvety. “Yes, ma’am. Luscious. You see, the kids they want to train can’t be Elites who’ve been spoon-fed every little thing they ever wanted their whole life. We need people with drive, people that are fearless, charming, and whip-smart. And I’ve come to know enough about Luscious to realize she’s the only one I could ever want to put forward as a candidate.”
It was beyond anything I ever hoped for, to hear him say that. He sounded like he meant it. And to think I’d just wanted to be a maid! Gram didn’t let out a peep.
Dove glanced at me to make sure he was doing okay. There was no telling, but I smiled anyway. His eyes landed back on Gram. “I care about what happens to her. We both do.”
“That’s right,” Rico said. “I’ve got a sister she can stay with in New York. It’s not like she’d be living with either one of us.”
Really? I wondered if Jizelle knew about it.
There was a long pause. I could feel Gram’s mind shift. “What would she have to do?”
“Well, I’ll make sure Nuhope bankrolls her education,” Dove said. “And soon as she gets out of college, she’ll start training at the company.”
I could see a shiny speck of hope creep into Gram’s face. Rico coughed. “Of course, she would have to take something.”
“What do you mean, take?”
“An experimental drug. Top secret.”
“What?” I said.
Gram was like a big ole volcano about to spit. “No. Oh, no.”
Rico looked at me gently. “I wanted to get you and your grandmother together before we talked about it.”
I didn’t like this one bit. It sounded—I don’t know, kind of underhanded.
Dove looked way into my eyes. “Listen to me. Do you want to help more people like that boy you saved? This is the way you do it. You’ll be an Elite. You’ll have so many riches you can shed on other people—your grandma, your friends, anybody you like.”
“Bull crap!” Gram said.
“I’m not asking her to do anything I’m not doing,” Dove said.
“Get out! Get out!” Gram shouted.
Rico gazed at me. “Sorry, kiddo. But this is good-bye. We’re heading back to New York.”
Dove tried to smile, but it was too hard. “You take good care of yourself.”
They made for the door. I couldn’t stand it, the idea of never going to New York, of never knowing so many things. It was almost like Rico had tapped into my dreamisodes and found out I wanted to lead a brilliant life as a space dancer. Not that anybody could do that; I was pretty sure. And now that wish could be real!
Gram tried to hold me back, but there was no way she could. Rico and Dove were getting into the car when I raced up. “Wait! What will happen if I take the drug?”
Dove’s eyes shifted. There was something about the daylight that made them flick from green to deep, deep blue. “Well, darlin’, you’d be just like me.”