It's ten-thirty of the ay-em and the city is already sticking to itself. Frying pan streets cook roadkill and wads of gum together, sunny side up only because no one ordered anything different. Vaporeon smells smoke and there's an omelette underfoot. If she trips, it'll be delicious.
(Breakfast's burning, Eevee told her once when she was small. Unless you want charcoal for lunch, better go do something about it.)
Curtains flutter and her pulse slams. Th-th-thunderclap, but she can breathe easy; it's not a Trainer. Know how she's sure of that? She hasn't been arrested. Not that she's doing anything wrong, she's not in the midst of doing anything wrong, but it really doesn't matter, they'd get her for walking barefoot in public, for cutting the road outside of a crosswalk. For wearing blue. Who knows. Anyway it's just a kid watching her from the shadowy security of floral-print foliage and a grimy window. Not long ago, she was growing up in a place like this watching people like her and she thinks it's kind of funny the way these things work out. Haha. Ha-larious.
It's hottest on the wide paved road, open to the sun and closed to the breeze, but one of her earliest lessons was stay outta alleys and she never forgot it. Even before don't talk to strangers and listen to your mother - well, not so much with that one because, after all, listening to Eevee is just this sort of folk wisdom in the north end of the city - they were telling her to stay in the open. Don't go into tight spaces, that'll get you caught faster than a designer virus. So she trucks it in full sunlight, sweating sheets in sight of shade. Whatever. It's not her job to smell good on-call.
The address written on her hand takes her to a nice house in a shitty part of town. It's small and blue and tucked in between a couple of colourless apartment buildings growling at each other like angry dogs through their ill-kept air conditioning units. There's a bit of grassy yard in front of it and an honest-to-god porch flaked with white paint. Fucking blows her mind, a house with a porch. Who the hell would sit on that shit? You'd get your face shot off for smiling at a neighbour and the only thing to look at is concrete and sunlight melting down the glassy skyscrapers in another world five minutes south.
Vaporeon hesitates at the lawn. Too weird, the place is just too weird and she doesn't want to go inside. The house watches her with gaping black eyes, the porch stretched in a rictus. Not going inside that. Then a car turns at the corner and it's going to drive past and she's got this thing about cars going by, she really doesn't like watching them glide past, so she hurries down the overgrown footpath, hops over the three little steps and vaults the damn porch in one fluid opening-of-screen-door-shutting-off screen-door-while-opening-front-door. It's cool inside and her eyes are just adjusting to the dropped s on 'sunlight' when an ice cube tray clocks her in the head and ice smashes the floor, smooth against her ankles.
"God, fuck!" She throws her arm up against further assault. "What the shit, ma'am, hi, I'm here to see Haunter."
A round shape bustles up to her, same kind of icy glide as a car on asphalt, actually, and Vaporeon feels a sickening thrill of terror, swallows it, forces calm. The ice cubes didn't really hurt much, and now they're melting against her feet, cool and soothing. A big black woman wearing too much makeup presses right up to her, glaring, but Vaporeon's not going to let anything get to her.
"Can't knock?" the woman demands. "Think doors are unlocked just for you, jinxie? Scare the shit out of me. Hi. Come on, he said if one of Eevee's girls came to the house I should send her right up." A show of huge round eyes, bright as fish eggs, speaking to the unspeakable scandal of it. Then she spins around like she's mounted on a greased gear and she bustles across the kitchen, disappears into a hall, so Vaporeon follows her. There isn't much else to do. Can't leave if she ever wants to face Eevee again. Can't stand there for long, someone new is coming into the kitchen from another angle and she doesn't like strangers, the woman is strange enough. On dirty feet she pads across the tile and away, thinks she might hear a soft hey so she says a soft one back. Fridge light comes on, makes the walls a little brighter before she can escape completely.
Narrow corridors, low ceilings, rows of closed doors. Feels like a prison more than a flophouse. It's a relief when some space opens up at the foot of a staircase, even though the stairs lead into darkness and the whole house smells like cigarette smoke and nauseating vanilla candles intended to mask the cigarettes. Skirts rustling, the big woman leads without looking back, muttering something to herself about no-more-good-cutthroat-competition-in-the-world which Vaporeon thinks is an enormous load of cold ejaculate. Competition has cost her a lot of pride and - once, almost - a fair bit of flesh. She stomps up the stairs one by one, as petulantly as possible.
At the top, there's another hall and it ends at a half-open door through which light hooks like a beckoning finger. Knowing Haunter - and Vaporeon doesn't, really, but she feels like she can safely assume a lot - it's all calculated. Checkmarks in chequebooks, whatever teases out the most lucrative response. She's supposed to be nervous. And she is, but knowing that it's a product of manipulation makes it easier for her to be pissed too.
At some point the big woman in the hideous dress must have moved aside because Vaporeon is the one knocking on the door, good and loud. She learned her lesson downstairs. Learns her lessons and doesn't forget them. Haunter wouldn't be one to throw something as soft as ice, anyway.
"If that's Eevee's girl, come," he says. Quiet voice, so close she can almost feel the breath of it on her skin. Vaporeon pushes the door open slowly, trying not to hope she hits him with it; but he's actually on the other side of the room, and facing the window. It's a plate of fire in front of him and he's just a violet silhouette. "You can go, Jynx. Won't be needing you."
Somehow the woman Jynx makes a slow inhalation sound like a public toilet backing up, but she goes. Haunter turns and smiles, far too kindly to be sincere.
"How's Eevee?" he says.
"Pissed that you didn't call to congratulate her on the twins."
"If she stopped having multiples for a second, I could catch my breath to say something. When you were born, it was a big deal. Triplets. Pretty girls, too. Then twins, now twins again. It's getting old and I figure she's running out of names."
"You sure you wanna talk like that to me about my sisters?"
"Half-sisters," Haunter says, and his lids drop low and his voice drops lower, wreathing his legs like a fluttering tail. Then he chuckles a bit and goes to a chair behind a desk, motions her to another chair in front of it. Like a fucking job interview. Vaporeon makes a face, but she sits. "You're right, though. Sorry. Just getting hard for me to keep up with everything she wants."
"Yeah," Vaporeon says. Suddenly she realizes that she sympathizes, or at least she sounds like she does, and that would be bad feng shui even in the house of horrors her life has already become, so she adds sharply, "And what do you want?"
"What a beautiful girl you are," he says idly.
Lots of dime novels would get extra-sketchy after a line like that. Having read every page of crappy pulp fiction Eevee ever forgot to throw out, Vaporeon knows what to do next. She keeps her heels flat on the floor and her knees cracked together. Scowls unattractively. "Thanks."
"I want you to take some Ether downtown to Alakazam."
He's looking at her like he's going to say something else, but he doesn't say anything else.
Dry-mouthed, Vaporeon asks: "How much Ether?"
"I talked to Eevee and she said I should trust you to do it. You've got good instincts. That's exactly what she said. And I said: If she has such good instincts she'll go running to the Trainers once I put the product in her hands. And you know what Eevee said? Oh no, she said. V knows better than that." Haunter leans onto the desk. As if to share in a secret, Vaporeon makes herself lean a little to meet him. "You are either a very good girl, or a very bad one. But I've always known that about you. So I'd be very happy if you did this for me, just the once and properly. I wouldn't like having to move again so soon, you understand. Afterward you can decide how much you like the job." He leans back. Stares at her. "Two cases. He needs it immediately. That should fit into a backpack, maybe you feel like dressing up as a schoolgirl or something."
Even as she swears to herself that she won't tell him what she thinks of that, she feels her expression starting to tell him: you know what I think of that?
Fortunately he seems to take it in good humour. "Maybe not." His teeth flash brighter than a custom business card and he reaches into a drawer, draws out one of the cigarettes that's been crawling up Vaporean's nose. "Maybe next time."
"Can I go?"
She's already standing, so Haunter has to look up at her while he lights the thing. He takes his time. He puts his head back and sighs smoke at the ceiling, his throat full of cinders. "Uh huh. Jynx will give you everything you need. Is Eevee treating you kids all right?"
The question catches her like a tripwire. She starts to answer: we're not kids anymore. Says aloud: "Yeah."
"That's good." He sounds irritated. "Bye-bye, bluebell."
Laughter might curl after her as she walks away on her bare feet, tp-tp-tp across the hardwood floor; but he does not say anything to her and she is not quite young enough to look back.