You know the disclaimers . . .
Part .13
The next few weeks were a blur for me. I worked non-stop on cleaning my apartment. It was a royal mess. I could have sworn that it looked halfway decent before I moved it, but the moment I stepped foot into it, I became a disaster area. Add that to the fact that the cat was still getting box trained and I was cleaning quite a while each day.
What is it with people and cats, anyway? I mean, you see people put out little dishes for their cats, filled with this soft, nice smelling stuff, and they live on crap. It is pathetic. Sure, my cat ate pretty much what I did, but only after I was finished with it. I wasn't pampering the idiotic little bugger -- hell, I hadn't named him yet. But it stilled disgusted me to see people with their well-groomed little darlings on pillows while their snot-nosed kids go hungry.
I decided, one day, that I needed time to myself. I was getting cramped in the four walls. I hadn't had any fun in days -- almost a week -- and I just wanted a chance to sprint and race. It was my time to run. All I really wanted to do was play a bit; maybe jot down a few ideas of my own, not just about siblings; maybe go to the park and start a grass fight amongst the little kids and laugh while I watched them. I just needed time, which I suppose is really all of us need, huh?
The air was crisp and clean-ish. I can't stand the pollution that you get in the bigger cities. In Europe, it isn't so bad. You get a chance to breathe for yourself many of the days, you know, and the people don't go around half-stoned from exhaust fumes most of the time. Since Seattle is near the ocean, plenty of fresh air is blown towards us. Not that I don't enjoy the smell of exhaust fumes, mind you.
I walked slowly, enjoying the faces that were rushing past me with various expressions on them. The are all so odd, so wrapped up in themselves. Too wrapped up to notice the faces of their companions, you see. It is really nothing more than laziness on their part. I don't understand people. They're such fucking idiots sometimes. They don't do anything, really, except save their ass. Then again, I'm a hypocrit.
I started kicking a pebble as I walked. It is a pretty fun thing to do. You have to make certain everything is aligned correctly: your shoe is just the correct height off of the ground, your toe pointed down just low enough to start the pebble going, and your pebble not turned in some wacky directions that's gonna take that diver to the left on you as you kick.
I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, like normal, when I ran into Meg. It sure shocked the heck out of me. I was just kickin' along when suddenly my head went into somebody's shoulder. I glanced up, expecting to have to apologize to some adult, then lift a ten offa him, when I saw a grin and bright eyes.
My mouth must have dropped a million miles. "Meg," I gasped. Meg's grin widened. I shook my head. My hair bounced in the wind, blowing into my face. I flicked it out of my way impatiently. "My goodness, haven't seen you in years! It's been so long since I left for France, hasn't it?"
"We were told that you went to live in Canada," Meg said, raising an eyebrow. Canada? Who in the hell would live in Canada? Didn't Mom and Dad know that Canada was full of hockey players and homosexuals . . . Oh . . . if somebody had questioned Meg, they would have gotten Canada. Wait a second, Mom and Dad hadn't even known that I was living in France. Maybe they had honestly believed that I was in Canada. Then that would put them in the position of . . . oh, fuck it. I started paying attention to Meg again. "You know what? I don't care."
" Bonjour, mon nom est Ty. maintenant que je sais que vous biseauté me comprenez, je vous direz ceci. Je suis un solider superbe génétiquement machiné. Je suis sur le passage de ceux qui m'ont fait. Surprise.." I said, giving her a wink. French is French. It had always surprised me when I had first left Manticore and people didn't know languages or such other things. I had grown up listening to countless instructions on languages, my fingers sometimes getting blistered when I didn't roll my Rs correctly in Spanish. Spanish is fun. Er, español es divertido.
"Wow!" Meg said. She grabbed me in a tight hug. "I really missed you! You were like my best friend. School isn't the same without you. There is this new girl there, I'm sure you'll like her. She has really dark eyes that look almost black. It's scary, very scary. Sometimes, though, I wish that they weren't so large. She looks like an owl, staring out at me. In class I'll poke her and whisper, 'Hoo hoo. Hoo hoo,' to make her giggle. She turns bright red and stuff."
Probably looks like a cherry. Probably looks like a cherry with two black *mold* spots on her. The sunlight was dimming as a cloud passed. I nodded. "There was a girl who spoke a lot in my school in France. She never stopped talking. She looked like a Smurf." The idiotic girl. I had hated her. She had known English -- about a cupful of words and phrases -- because her mother was from New Zealand. Her mother wasn't even from Australia -- she was from some dinky little second country. Not that I had anything against New Zealand; Lucy Lawless is one kick ass babe.
"What's a Smurf?" Meg asked me. I gave her a look that totally said where-have-you-been-the-past-thirty-years? And snorted. She hit me in the shoulder. I grinned; we were going to have a lot of catching up to do. Then again, Smurf's were hard to explain. Little blue people with weird faces. Yeah, that would be so great to explain.
"C'mon," I said, grabbing her hand. "I'll buy us something to drink; coffee or something, you know -- " I interrupted when someone touched my shoulder. I turned around and saw someone there I hadn't seen in quite a while. My father. "Dad."
Dad looked tired. The lines around his eyes were too highly visible. I tried to ignore what I was seeing, just listen, but it kind of hurt. There he was, his chin streaked with a pen that he had probably been holding at one time or the other. "You were looking for me a couple of weeks ago, looking for some information," Dad told me quietly. I saw Meg step back and away from him; she had always been rather afraid of Dad. I looked into his blue eyes and saw weariness in them. I quickly looked away. Focusing on hopes of his finding information on my siblings was my main plan. He had found them, I knew it. Dad had found all of the others and I would send them off like I had sent off Martin and everything would be okay and I could go home and curl up into a ball and forget that everything I had ever tried for was falling to pieces around me. "I can't find anything else."
I don't think my face revealed anything. I remember classes at Manticore. Don't let your enemy know what you are thinking. Don't let your ally know what you are thinking. There are times in life when there is no line between the two, just a fuzzy gray area that is known trust. Always remember one thing, though. Trust is bullsh**.
"Thanks," I told him. "Thanks." I turned and left, forgetting about Meg in my haste to leave. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to Dad; it was just that I didn't think I could without pulling my hair out. That's the odd thing about having good days; they can turn bad in an instant. There I was, ready to go out and have fun with my friend, when suddenly Dad comes up and reminds me that I don't have my siblings with me, that I can't get all of the resources to find them.
It was like France, exactly like France. It was so full of hope, and then it just disappeared. I was so ready to have a life there, just like I had done in Seattle. It wasn't that way. I don't know what had made me so gullible. I suppose I expected that I would go to save people I loved from getting hurt, just like when I left Manticore, and it would all be okay.
Life just fucks with you that it doesn't work. I don't expect to try it again. Running away from something I know and I love into something that I don't know is idiotic. I could have stayed low in Seattle, but I knew that every day I stayed there was a day that I could be drawing attention to Mom and Dad.
I went to the market. Don't ask me why, but I am undoubtedly drawn to food when I'm feeling low. If I didn't have such a high metabolism, I might be making my escapes with the assistance of a crane. I eat like a grown man, most of the time. Actually, I eat kid stuff; I just eat it in quantities that would make a football player blush. Food is good. It is there, and if it isn't, you just go out and snag yourself some more. You get chips, you get whatever; it's on the store shelf, just waiting to be eaten. Food is very nice in times of need.
I was munching on some apple that I had when suddenly I saw something that caught my eye. It was this dark shadow that fell across a public tree that was fenced in over on the corner.
{Vivid thoughts}
I'm starin' straight at the wall, pounding on the desk. It knocks my potted fern to the ground and I look at it in surprise before I toss the piece of trash gift away to the corner, next to the tree. There are shadows on it that give me the willies, and that just makes me fucking madder.
Jesus Christ. Can't anybody do anything around here? Where the hell is the new guy, the one who was supposed to get me the shooting. The fucking idiot got me the wrong shooting. This is that Bruno Assemlo guy who got mowed down after he gave some big time on some of his fellows. Got to love people who take out rats.
I glance back at the TV screen. Right there in the middle of it all is some crip. What in the hell is a crip doing over at the courthouse? Ain't never heard of no crip who was a reporter -- they gotta do legs work and without no workin' legs, they just can't do the legs work. That crip sure does have a nice nose, though. I rewind the tape. Yeah, nice nose, that crip.
"RODRIGUEZ!" I screech for my secretary to come in and clean up the mess.
"Coming, Mr. Billings!" I hear in reply.
{/vivid thoughts}
I looked down the street, from where I had come from. This was another of those memories involving that Billings man. Casey Billings. He was getting annoying. Now that he had hit so close to home with his newest memory, he was doubly annoying. I closed my eyes, trying to remember every detail. Casey Billings had said Logan Cale had a nice nose. I grinned. Logan was no crip, not anymore. Then I frowned. Maybe he'd like to know about these Billings memories? I shook my head. He wouldn't care.
Part .13
The next few weeks were a blur for me. I worked non-stop on cleaning my apartment. It was a royal mess. I could have sworn that it looked halfway decent before I moved it, but the moment I stepped foot into it, I became a disaster area. Add that to the fact that the cat was still getting box trained and I was cleaning quite a while each day.
What is it with people and cats, anyway? I mean, you see people put out little dishes for their cats, filled with this soft, nice smelling stuff, and they live on crap. It is pathetic. Sure, my cat ate pretty much what I did, but only after I was finished with it. I wasn't pampering the idiotic little bugger -- hell, I hadn't named him yet. But it stilled disgusted me to see people with their well-groomed little darlings on pillows while their snot-nosed kids go hungry.
I decided, one day, that I needed time to myself. I was getting cramped in the four walls. I hadn't had any fun in days -- almost a week -- and I just wanted a chance to sprint and race. It was my time to run. All I really wanted to do was play a bit; maybe jot down a few ideas of my own, not just about siblings; maybe go to the park and start a grass fight amongst the little kids and laugh while I watched them. I just needed time, which I suppose is really all of us need, huh?
The air was crisp and clean-ish. I can't stand the pollution that you get in the bigger cities. In Europe, it isn't so bad. You get a chance to breathe for yourself many of the days, you know, and the people don't go around half-stoned from exhaust fumes most of the time. Since Seattle is near the ocean, plenty of fresh air is blown towards us. Not that I don't enjoy the smell of exhaust fumes, mind you.
I walked slowly, enjoying the faces that were rushing past me with various expressions on them. The are all so odd, so wrapped up in themselves. Too wrapped up to notice the faces of their companions, you see. It is really nothing more than laziness on their part. I don't understand people. They're such fucking idiots sometimes. They don't do anything, really, except save their ass. Then again, I'm a hypocrit.
I started kicking a pebble as I walked. It is a pretty fun thing to do. You have to make certain everything is aligned correctly: your shoe is just the correct height off of the ground, your toe pointed down just low enough to start the pebble going, and your pebble not turned in some wacky directions that's gonna take that diver to the left on you as you kick.
I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, like normal, when I ran into Meg. It sure shocked the heck out of me. I was just kickin' along when suddenly my head went into somebody's shoulder. I glanced up, expecting to have to apologize to some adult, then lift a ten offa him, when I saw a grin and bright eyes.
My mouth must have dropped a million miles. "Meg," I gasped. Meg's grin widened. I shook my head. My hair bounced in the wind, blowing into my face. I flicked it out of my way impatiently. "My goodness, haven't seen you in years! It's been so long since I left for France, hasn't it?"
"We were told that you went to live in Canada," Meg said, raising an eyebrow. Canada? Who in the hell would live in Canada? Didn't Mom and Dad know that Canada was full of hockey players and homosexuals . . . Oh . . . if somebody had questioned Meg, they would have gotten Canada. Wait a second, Mom and Dad hadn't even known that I was living in France. Maybe they had honestly believed that I was in Canada. Then that would put them in the position of . . . oh, fuck it. I started paying attention to Meg again. "You know what? I don't care."
" Bonjour, mon nom est Ty. maintenant que je sais que vous biseauté me comprenez, je vous direz ceci. Je suis un solider superbe génétiquement machiné. Je suis sur le passage de ceux qui m'ont fait. Surprise.." I said, giving her a wink. French is French. It had always surprised me when I had first left Manticore and people didn't know languages or such other things. I had grown up listening to countless instructions on languages, my fingers sometimes getting blistered when I didn't roll my Rs correctly in Spanish. Spanish is fun. Er, español es divertido.
"Wow!" Meg said. She grabbed me in a tight hug. "I really missed you! You were like my best friend. School isn't the same without you. There is this new girl there, I'm sure you'll like her. She has really dark eyes that look almost black. It's scary, very scary. Sometimes, though, I wish that they weren't so large. She looks like an owl, staring out at me. In class I'll poke her and whisper, 'Hoo hoo. Hoo hoo,' to make her giggle. She turns bright red and stuff."
Probably looks like a cherry. Probably looks like a cherry with two black *mold* spots on her. The sunlight was dimming as a cloud passed. I nodded. "There was a girl who spoke a lot in my school in France. She never stopped talking. She looked like a Smurf." The idiotic girl. I had hated her. She had known English -- about a cupful of words and phrases -- because her mother was from New Zealand. Her mother wasn't even from Australia -- she was from some dinky little second country. Not that I had anything against New Zealand; Lucy Lawless is one kick ass babe.
"What's a Smurf?" Meg asked me. I gave her a look that totally said where-have-you-been-the-past-thirty-years? And snorted. She hit me in the shoulder. I grinned; we were going to have a lot of catching up to do. Then again, Smurf's were hard to explain. Little blue people with weird faces. Yeah, that would be so great to explain.
"C'mon," I said, grabbing her hand. "I'll buy us something to drink; coffee or something, you know -- " I interrupted when someone touched my shoulder. I turned around and saw someone there I hadn't seen in quite a while. My father. "Dad."
Dad looked tired. The lines around his eyes were too highly visible. I tried to ignore what I was seeing, just listen, but it kind of hurt. There he was, his chin streaked with a pen that he had probably been holding at one time or the other. "You were looking for me a couple of weeks ago, looking for some information," Dad told me quietly. I saw Meg step back and away from him; she had always been rather afraid of Dad. I looked into his blue eyes and saw weariness in them. I quickly looked away. Focusing on hopes of his finding information on my siblings was my main plan. He had found them, I knew it. Dad had found all of the others and I would send them off like I had sent off Martin and everything would be okay and I could go home and curl up into a ball and forget that everything I had ever tried for was falling to pieces around me. "I can't find anything else."
I don't think my face revealed anything. I remember classes at Manticore. Don't let your enemy know what you are thinking. Don't let your ally know what you are thinking. There are times in life when there is no line between the two, just a fuzzy gray area that is known trust. Always remember one thing, though. Trust is bullsh**.
"Thanks," I told him. "Thanks." I turned and left, forgetting about Meg in my haste to leave. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to Dad; it was just that I didn't think I could without pulling my hair out. That's the odd thing about having good days; they can turn bad in an instant. There I was, ready to go out and have fun with my friend, when suddenly Dad comes up and reminds me that I don't have my siblings with me, that I can't get all of the resources to find them.
It was like France, exactly like France. It was so full of hope, and then it just disappeared. I was so ready to have a life there, just like I had done in Seattle. It wasn't that way. I don't know what had made me so gullible. I suppose I expected that I would go to save people I loved from getting hurt, just like when I left Manticore, and it would all be okay.
Life just fucks with you that it doesn't work. I don't expect to try it again. Running away from something I know and I love into something that I don't know is idiotic. I could have stayed low in Seattle, but I knew that every day I stayed there was a day that I could be drawing attention to Mom and Dad.
I went to the market. Don't ask me why, but I am undoubtedly drawn to food when I'm feeling low. If I didn't have such a high metabolism, I might be making my escapes with the assistance of a crane. I eat like a grown man, most of the time. Actually, I eat kid stuff; I just eat it in quantities that would make a football player blush. Food is good. It is there, and if it isn't, you just go out and snag yourself some more. You get chips, you get whatever; it's on the store shelf, just waiting to be eaten. Food is very nice in times of need.
I was munching on some apple that I had when suddenly I saw something that caught my eye. It was this dark shadow that fell across a public tree that was fenced in over on the corner.
{Vivid thoughts}
I'm starin' straight at the wall, pounding on the desk. It knocks my potted fern to the ground and I look at it in surprise before I toss the piece of trash gift away to the corner, next to the tree. There are shadows on it that give me the willies, and that just makes me fucking madder.
Jesus Christ. Can't anybody do anything around here? Where the hell is the new guy, the one who was supposed to get me the shooting. The fucking idiot got me the wrong shooting. This is that Bruno Assemlo guy who got mowed down after he gave some big time on some of his fellows. Got to love people who take out rats.
I glance back at the TV screen. Right there in the middle of it all is some crip. What in the hell is a crip doing over at the courthouse? Ain't never heard of no crip who was a reporter -- they gotta do legs work and without no workin' legs, they just can't do the legs work. That crip sure does have a nice nose, though. I rewind the tape. Yeah, nice nose, that crip.
"RODRIGUEZ!" I screech for my secretary to come in and clean up the mess.
"Coming, Mr. Billings!" I hear in reply.
{/vivid thoughts}
I looked down the street, from where I had come from. This was another of those memories involving that Billings man. Casey Billings. He was getting annoying. Now that he had hit so close to home with his newest memory, he was doubly annoying. I closed my eyes, trying to remember every detail. Casey Billings had said Logan Cale had a nice nose. I grinned. Logan was no crip, not anymore. Then I frowned. Maybe he'd like to know about these Billings memories? I shook my head. He wouldn't care.