Home Fires

20. ’TIL THEN

Winter had ended, spring had forgotten the city, and the heat had come. A lanky young woman with mismatched hands sweated beside two open windows, under a sodden sheet.

* * *

There was a street carnival, and it was already very late. She dodged a man with the pale face of an absentminded angel; he was juggling too many things to count, balls of silver and gold, painted eggs, a black-and-white kitten, a little brown rabbit that looked dead. The crowd jostled her and she jostled back, glad she was on skates when they had none.

A fire-eater lit his torch with a great puff of orange flame; and the rockets came in as if it had been a signal, rockets that flew without a sound, the explosions throwing stones and bodies high into the air. No one in the crowd paid the least attention. She tried to hit the dirt, to fall facedown and take what shelter she could from the cobblestone street; but the crowd pressed her too tightly, the big, fat, frowning, moon-faced man shoving her aside.

“Where’s Mick?” She had intended a demand and voiced a plea. An exploding rocket shook the ground and somehow harmed her head. “Where’s Mick? I know you know. Please tell me! I’ve got to find Mick.”

The moon-faced man seemed not to hear her and pushed past again, his expression intent and inscrutable.

“Mick! Skip! Skip!”

Someone had opened a cage of white doves, a cage that must have held thousands. They fluttered above the crowd, which fired on them.

“Don! Donny! Where are you, Donny? Where have you gone?”

Something was shaking her shoulders. She trembled, her teeth chattering, as a wounded dove spattered her feet with blood.

“Wake up, Chelle.”

Her face was wet. She blinked.

“That’s better. I’m right here, darling. Don’t be afraid.”

He lifted her, sat beside her, and put his arm around her. “What were you dreaming about?”

She wiped away tears with the edge of the sheet, and for a moment failed to recognize him.

“You were talking in your sleep. Then you started crying, and I thought I’d better wake you up.”

“I’ve got a headache.” Pressing her temples eased the pain, but only a little.

“Sure, darling,” Mick Tooley said. He left, and returned moments later with white tablets and a tinkling glass. Chelle swallowed the tablets without protest and sipped from the glass. Soda water.

“Drink it all,” Tooley said, “that’s what you need.”

She nodded. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”

He glanced at his watch. “I will be in twenty minutes.”

“About that job…”

He shook his head. “I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. How would it look? He’s a senior partner, and he’ll be in the office two or three times a week.”

“If I could earn some money—”

“We’d get a better place and get out of his building. Right. And I’ll find you a job, and we will. Only not at Burton, Grison, and Ibarra. That’s out.”

“How was I last night?”

“Fine. You were fine.” He kissed her forehead. “Now listen up. You drink all of that, then lie back down and go back to sleep if you can. Let those pills work. You’ll wake up again around ten, and I’ll call you if we can go out to lunch together.”

She nodded, and found that nodding hurt. “You can’t say for sure?”

He shook his head. “It’ll depend on how things go at the office. Every day is different. I told you.”

She sipped the soda until the door closed behind him, then held the glass up to the light, which hurt almost as much as nodding. There was no color, but he might have put vodka in it, or gin.

Hoping for vodka, she finished it and carried it out to the kitchen. There would be more soda somewhere, and vodka, too.

Dishes in the cabinet and dirty dishes in the sink. Ice in the little refrigerator, but no vodka and no soda. Come on! It’s just a fucking two-room apartment.

There was vodka in the other room, next to the tele—vodka, but no soda. She poured what was left in the bottle over the ice in her glass, and carried the bottle back to the kitchen; there she ran it through the disposer, where it crashed, clicked, and growled.

No soda. She sipped the neat vodka. It burned her throat, and she turned the tap. There was pressure for a change, but the water smelled like sewage.

She threw the whole mess down the drain.

Army water on Johanna had smelled like chlorine; but once she had found a little trickling creek there, and the water had been cold and clean and good, better than any bottled water.

The screen buzzed. Automatically, she blacked the camera and flicked on the picture. Buckhurst’s face appeared in the screen, big, black, and scowling. “Ms. Blue? Is this you?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not going to turn the camera on. You got me out of bed.”

“Sorry, Ms. Blue. Mr. Tooley, he done gone, so I think you be up, too. Man here say he got a package for you. Say you don’t know him, only you know the man sent him. I say what his name, only he won’t tell. His name Smeedy. He show me his card. Got his name on it an’ say he a musician.”

“Did he say what was in the package?”

“No, ma’am. Say he don’t know.”

“Put him on, please.”

Buckhurst turned away, and a familiar face appeared on the screen. “I’d like to come up, Ms. Blue. All I have to do is hand you this.” The package that he presented for her inspection could easily have been a shoebox wrapped in brown paper. “I’m told it belongs to you.”

“I was up late last night,” she told him, “and I’m sure I must look like hell. It’s twenty-nine eighty-nine, and the door’ll be open. Come in and sit down. I’ll be in the bathroom splashing stinking water and combing my hair. Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

Softly: “I can just leave your package and go, honey.”

“Don’t you dare!” Raising her voice, she added, “Let him in, Buckhurst. He’s okay.”

* * *

She had carried a bottle of cologne into the bathroom, and smelled like a flower garden when she came out. He was sitting in Tooley’s big vinyl-covered chair, with the package on his lap.

She smiled. “Hello, Charlie.”

“No thanks?” His eyes—the bright blue eyes she had inherited—twinkled. “I risked prison for you. I deserve a kiss.”

“You didn’t. But you’ll get one anyway.” She bent, and her lips brushed his.

“Since I’m no longer your father, I can ask you for a date.”

She straightened up. “You can, and I might go. Is it a good show?”

“How about a picnic?”

“You’re serious?”

“Entirely serious, honey.”

“I’d offer you a drink if it wasn’t so early. Would you like me to make coffee?”

He shook his head. “We need to talk to you, honey.”

“We?”

“I thought I’d bring my wife.”

She sat on the couch, one long leg drawn up. “You two think I’m getting fat.”

He shook his head again.

“Do you know about her? That’s not really Vanessa.”

“Depends on what you mean by really.”

“Well, I am getting fat. Fat and soft. See, I know all about it, so Mother doesn’t have to make those cream-cheese-and-watercress sandwiches.”

He said nothing.

“Fat and soft, and I’ve been drinking too much. I know that, too. What else is there?”

“Now it’s my turn to change the subject. Do you want to open this box? Check it over?”

“No, I don’t. How much is she costing you? How much a hundred-day, or how much a year? However you’re paying.”

He grinned, displaying teeth more regular than she remembered. “Your mother ought to have taught you that it’s impolite to ask how much things cost.”

She started to say, I don’t consider her a thing, when she realized she did. She substituted, “There are times when I’ve got to make exceptions. How much, and when will you get tired of paying?”

“She’s cost me quite a bit so far. Dresses and shoes and jewelry, none of them cheap.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

“Then nothing.” He was no longer grinning. “You’re asking about Reanimation?”

She nodded.

“Nothing. That file is closed, and Reanimation gets to stay in business. They were greatly relieved.”

“I don’t even know whose body it was. Skip knew, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

“That was probably wise.”

“So you’re not going to tell me either?”

“At the picnic, perhaps. It will be up to my wife. What would you do if you knew the name?”

“Damned if I know. Find her family, I guess, and tell them what happened.”

“They think she’s dead, and they’re right. She was suicidal, honey. That’s why she did it, why she went to work for Reanimation. This is what she was hoping for.”

Chelle rose and went into the bathroom. When she came out, her eyes were dry once more and the lean, white-haired man who was no longer her father had gone.

* * *

She had gotten dressed slowly, thinking of breakfast. As a civilian, she had always hated going into restaurants alone. Now she was a civilian again. She could make her own breakfast—SoySunRise, milk, and coffee or tea—or go out.

Find a restaurant and go into it alone.

The street was filled with sunshine and clogged with patient trucks, hulking yellow buses, gliding bicycles, and hunchbacked cars. She flipped a mental coin and turned to her left, a slender, hard-faced blonde taller than most men. After two blocks of shops, she was about to stop someone and ask about a good place to eat when she saw the cheerful red-and-white sign: Carrera’s Café. The café was plainly open and serving, though not now (Chelle glanced at her watch) terribly busy. She went in and took a booth.

She had finished ordering by the time the lost woman came in. The lost woman looked at her and looked again; Chelle looked back and—after a second or two—waved. “Sit down.”

“I … Really, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not.” Chelle kept her voice low. “There’s nobody seating people, and you don’t want to sit alone. So you sit here with me. Solves both problems.”

The lost woman nodded gratefully. “My name’s Martha Ott.”

“Pleased to meet you, Martha,” Chelle said, and held out her hand.

The lost woman accepted it doubtfully, held it a moment, and released it.

“What would you like for breakfast? I’m having ham and pancakes.”

“Oh, I’ve already eaten breakfast.” The lost woman tittered. “That was hours ago! I just—just wanted a place…”

“Where you could sit down,” Chelle added helpfully.

“Y-yes. And have some tea.”

“And toast? I like toast myself, when I’m not having pancakes.”

“Oh! So do I, ever so much! Cinnamon toast.”

Chelle waved at a waitress. “Martha wants tea and cinnamon toast. Put it on my bill.”

“I don’t know about the cinnamon toast,” the waitress told her. “It’s not on the menu.”

Chelle leveled a finger at her. “Any jerk can make cinnamon toast—it takes about five seconds. You tell your fucking cook we want cinnamon toast, and we want it fast. Now get going!”

The lost woman tittered and the waitress scampered.

“You and me,” Chelle said, “are going to help each other out. You’re going to tell me your troubles, and I’m going to sympathize with you. Then I’m going to tell you mine, and you’re going to sympathize with me. By that time we ought to be through eating, and we’ll both feel a whole lot better.”

“Do you know,” the lost woman said, “you remind me of somebody I went to school with. That’s why I was looking at you.”

Chelle grinned. “She was shot up, too, I guess.”

“Shot up?”

“You ought to see my scars.”

“She—she wasn’t shot. She was captain of the fencing team. Just wonderful at sports, you know. I wasn’t, and I envied her, oh, terribly!”

“Maybe she envied you, too.”

The lost woman cocked her head thoughtfully. “I, well, I really don’t think she did.”

Chelle’s phone played. Telling the lost woman to wait a moment she answered it. “I’m in this place right now. Why don’t you join us when you can get away?”

She listened for half a minute, then said, “Carrera’s. Carrera’s Café. It seems to be pretty cheap and pretty good.”

She listened again. “Okay. Love you! Bye.”

As she shut her phone, the lost woman said, “Your contracto?”

“Not yet. Just a boyfriend. He’s been trying to find me a job, and he’s got something he wants to talk about.”

The lost woman looked stricken. “I suppose I ought to leave.”

“Hell, no. I want you to meet him. Besides it’ll be a while before he shows up, and I need somebody to talk to. What’s troubling you?”

“I—I’m lost, that’s the main thing.…”

“Where are you trying to get to?”

“I know where I am, it’s just that I don’t know what to do.”

While Chelle was nodding sympathetically and sipping her coffee, the waitress arrived with tea, ham, pancakes, and a cruet of syrup. “The cook won’t make you cinnamon toast,” the waitress told them. “He says it’s not on the menu, so he won’t cook it.”

Chelle rose. “I’ll talk to him.”

Another waitress, emerging with a tray from an arch at the back of the café, betrayed the location of the kitchen. A sweating fat man was flipping burgers there while a much smaller man with the furtive manner of the oppressed loaded a dishwasher.

Chelle approached the fat man. “What’s your name?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I was hoping we could be polite about this.” Chelle stepped nearer and her voice hardened. “That’s what I was hoping, but I can play it any way you want, buster. I can have you down on that floor yelling for mercy in less time than it takes a rat to shit.”

“Lady…”

“Shut the fuck up!” Chelle’s left hand gripped her blouse and tore it. “I’ll have you down there, and I’ll start screaming. I’ll say you tried to bite my tits, and by God I’ll have you locked up in an hour. I’ll sign every complaint the cops shove at me, understand? And I’ll cry my eyes out at your trial, and you’ll do ten fuckin’ years easy. Get the picture?”

The cook looked as if he were about to spit, threw his arms up in a gesture that sent his spatula flying, and fell at her feet.

“That was just a sample.” She bent over him, almost whispering. “Make us cinnamon toast, buster. Make it good, and make a lot of it, or I start yelling. Only I mess you up a whole lot more first.”

He groaned.

“Which is it? Cinnamon toast or jail?”

* * *

Grinning, Chelle returned to her booth.

“Goodness!” The lost woman’s eyes were wide. “What happened to you?”

“My shirt?” Chelle glanced down at the tear. “Oh, the cook did that. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think I’ve got a pin…” The lost woman snapped open her purse.

“It’s okay.” Chelle cut a piece of ham and forked it into her mouth. “Tell me about being lost.”

The lost woman did, and at some length, while finding a small safety pin and pinning Chelle’s blouse to her own satisfaction.

“Your kids don’t need you anymore and your contracto never did,” Chelle summed up for her as a heaped platter of cinnamon toast arrived. “You need to be needed. Maybe we all do. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“I … Well, I just feel so helpless. And I feel like I ought to die.”

“Do you know about the soldiers in the hospitals?”

The lost woman shook her head.

“If the docs can patch you up in a hundred-day or so, they keep you up there, on whatever crazy planet it is. But the long-term cases get shipped back here. Some of them won’t be well for years. Some won’t ever be, not unless the doctors figure out something new.”

The lost woman’s nod was hesitant and small, but it was unmistakably a nod.

“You said you had two boys. What’re their names?”

“Jack and Jeff … That’s what we call them, I mean. Their real names are Jeffrey and—”

“Doesn’t matter. Jack’s older?”

The lost woman nodded, positively this time. “By two years. We spaced them like that.”

“Okay, let’s suppose Jack went into space. Say that he enlisted at twenty. Jeff was eighteen. Jack’s off fighting for a couple of years, his time. When he comes back, it’s been more than twenty. His folks are dead, and his kid brother’s pushing forty and lives in the EU. Get the picture? Jack’s in some hospital hooked to a bunch of machines, and nobody gives a damn. You’re your Jack’s mother. How about if you go to some of those hospitals and be my Jack’s mother? I’m not going to tell you you’ll get your reward in heaven or any of that shit, because I don’t know. But one day pretty soon you’ll get your reward from my Jack’s eyes.”

Chelle paused, and sighed. “I spent a hundred-day plus in a hospital once, and believe me you will.”

For a time that seemed stretched, the lost woman was silent, nibbling while she watched Chelle eat. At last she smiled. “I … Well, I’m not a forceful woman, but I’m going to do it. I spend hours and hours shopping. Just shopping for nothing, really. Or watching tele. Vic can’t object, but if he does I’m going to do it anyway.”

“Good for you!”

They had nearly finished eating when Mick Tooley came in. He grinned and said, “Hi, Chelle! Who’s your friend?”

Chelle slid over to make room for him. “Martha, this is Mick.” Her right eyelid drooped. “He’s the wonderful boyfriend I was telling you about.”

Tooley produced a card and handed it across the table. “You hang on to this, Martha. Call me anytime you need somebody kept out of jail.”

“He’s a lawyer,” Chelle explained.

“A good one. What’s with all the cinnamon toast?”

Chelle said, “The cook made it for us.”

The lost woman nodded. “She made him do it.” After a glance at Tooley’s card the lost woman added, “I asked for cinnamon toast, Mr. Tooley, and she’s a very kind person.”

“I know,” Tooley said.

“I didn’t even have to pull my gun.” Chelle took a piece of cinnamon toast. “We’ll call this the appetizer before our early lunch.”

“It looks like you just finished breakfast. You sure you want lunch?”

“I’ll order something light, like a roast pig with an apple in its mouth. You know. Have you got me a job?”

“I think so. They want to talk to you first, but you’re a natural and I’ve got the screwdriver.” Tooley demonstrated, tightening an imaginary screw. “We used to use the Zygmunt agency, a little shop over on a hundred and fifty-first, only Zygmunt’s dead and it looks like they’ve closed. So we’re looking at some others.”

“He’s talking about private investigators,” Chelle told the lost woman. “Lawyers use them all the time.”

“Right. This outfit, Confidential Security Research, would love to have our business. I’ve told them they ought to staff up a little for us, and I’ve made an appointment for you.”

“Honestly, Mick, I’d like to get this job because somebody wants me.”

The lost woman said, “You are.”

Tooley looked startled, then nodded. “That’s right. And they’ll want you, too, once they get to know you. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” Chelle’s coffee cup was empty; she pushed it away.

“And another thing,” announced the lost woman, who no longer looked even a little bit lost. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, and I’ve finally remembered the name of that girl I went to school with. Her name was Shelly. Shelly something with a B. Shelly Blaine or something like that.”

“Was she nice?” Chelle asked.

The no longer lost woman slid to the end of her seat and stood. “Very nice. Good at games, you know, and she could run like the wind. But a really nice girl. Now I’ve got to go. It was wonderful talking to you, but if I’m going to see Jack I’ve got to get started.”

“Who was she?” Tooley asked when she had gone.

“A girl I went to school with, only her name was Martha Watson then. She used to help me with my math.”

“Are you sure you’re up to eating lunch?”

“I told you, a wild boar’s head with an apple in its mouth. Those things take a long time to cook.”

Tooley took a bite of cinnamon toast. “This is good.”

“You’re hungry. I bet you didn’t eat breakfast this morning. I’ll eat the toast and I might steal your food, too. Now order something.”

Tooley did. The café was beginning to fill, harried office workers with an hour for lunch and no time to look at the menu. The waitress who had taken Tooley’s order brought Chelle more coffee.

Not long after that, an Army officer came in. Chelle, who had to repress the impulse to stand and salute, needed a full six seconds to recognize him. Tooley, who did not, took even longer.

By which time Skip had reached their booth. “Glad I found you,” he told Chelle. “I was going to call you after I got some lunch.”

“You joined.” For an instant Chelle’s voice faltered. “You’re JAG, by God!”

Tooley said, “What’s that?”

“He’s in the Judge Advocate General’s Department.” Chelle pointed. “See? Crossed gavels on his lapels.”

“Nobody knew where you were, Skip.” Tooley seemed on the point of stammering.

“Luis did, he just wasn’t talking. I asked him not to, in case I washed out.”

Chelle said, “You’re a major, so you didn’t.”

“Correct. I didn’t. They call it officers’ school. Do you know about it?”

Chelle nodded.

Tooley said, “I don’t. What is it?”

“Easier than I expected, for one thing. Basically, it’s a three-week crash course in how to be an officer. How to salute and return salutes, how to wear the uniform, the moral code expected of an officer and so forth. Say that some kid just out of law school wants to join. He looks good, he’s physically fit, and they need him. They send him to officers’ school, and he’s commissioned as a second lieutenant when he finishes it.”

“You’re not a second lieutenant,” Tooley said. “Major sounds pretty important.”

Skip shrugged. “I’ve been practicing law for over twenty years, and I’ve made something of a reputation, so that’s one thing. Another is that my field is criminal law, which is basically what military law is. Disobeying an officer’s direct order is a crime, punishable by death or such lesser penalty as the court may decree, et hoc genus omne. But is Private Doe guilty of it? Were there mitigating circumstances? It’s all pretty familiar.” Skip paused. “Another thing was that I was asking to go into space.”

Despite the noise surrounding them, Chelle’s gasp was audible.

Skip grinned. “They don’t hear much of that. Most of those new lieutenants want to stay right here, so there was that. Still another thing was that a second lieutenant my age would look silly.”

Chelle said, “You’re going up there.” It was not a question.

“I am. I’d been holding out for a captaincy, telling them I wouldn’t enlist without it. General Le Tourneur called me in. He’s the Judge Advocate General, the Armed Service’s top attorney. We must have talked for an hour or more, but main things were that he was going to make me a major, and as soon as I was actually out there I would be promoted again, jumping a grade to full colonel.”

“You were going to call me.” Chelle’s voice quavered. “You said that.”

“I was. I wanted to tell you where I was going, and why.” Skip paused again, waiting for a question; but none came. “I can’t tell you what planet they plan to send me to. That would be secret even if I knew it, and I don’t. The why…” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s obvious enough.”

“I’d like you to say it just the same.”

“All right. I want us to be about the same age. It won’t be exact, I know; but we’ll be a lot closer than we are now. My hair will be a little grayer and a little thinner. You’ll be a middle-aged woman. If you want me, I’ll be yours for the asking. If you don’t…” He shrugged. “I’ll try to find something else to live for.”

Tooley said, “What about the firm? You’ll be creating one hell of a vacancy.”

“Ibarra can run things in my absence, and do it about as well as I could.” Skip was brusque. “As for me, I’m a senior partner, and I’ll remain a senior partner. There are hardnosed statutes protecting the rights of men and women who go into the armed services. If you don’t know about them, I advise you to bone up on them.”

He turned back to Chelle. “A court will void our contract if you try hard enough. Mick can tell you all about that. You may have contracted with him or someone else by the time I’m sent home. I realize that. If you haven’t—well, you know. Now it’s goodbye until then.”

“Not before I kiss you. Get out of the way, Mick.”

Tooley slid to the end of the seat and stood, and Chelle slid as he had, rose, and embraced Skip. “I can’t make a kiss last twenty years,” she told him, “but I’m going to try.”

It was in fact a long, long kiss. When it was over, Skip turned and left the café.

Chelle followed him and stood on the sidewalk watching him—his bright blue dress uniform made him stand out—and heard not a word when her heart poured from her lips. “I didn’t want to tell you, but now you can’t hear me. And they’ll be after me, whoever it was that hired Ortiz and his gang. You wondered why they wanted you? Why they sent Achille for you, to bring you back to them? It was because they wanted me, and you should have seen what they did to me when they had me, trying so hard to drag out Jane Sims and everything she knew.”

A woman like a small, gray mouse touched Chelle’s arm. “You’re talking to yourself, darling. Did you know it? Talking out loud?”

“Bad, mad Chelle!” She nodded, smiling. “I’m psycho, that’s why the Army doesn’t want me anymore. Only I was really talking to somebody, to that major in dress blues. See him? He’s crossing the street now.”

“Yes. Yes, I do, darling. He can’t hear you.”

“That’s the good thing about it.” Chelle’s smile was still there. “If he could hear me, he’d come back and we’d be miserable all over again.”

She turned away from the mousy woman. “They think I’ve got part of Jane Sims’s brain, Skip. That’s the EU, because I think it was them, and the Os, because they sent poor Rick. Only I don’t. All I’ve really got is her left arm up to the shoulder, only I feel her in me sometimes just the same, so I’m psycho and the Army won’t take me back.”

He had vanished among hundreds of other pedestrians. She stood beside the mousy woman for a moment longer, and another moment after that, before she turned away and began to walk.