Two more days went by without either of them saying much to the other. Jet went to work early and returned to the apartment late or not at all, and Faye gradually became accustomed to the idea of tackily-dressed women wandering in and out unexpectedly. She hardly spoke to them either, and for their part, they didn't have much to say to her. It was a quiet and disheartening living experience.
Tuesday came along, windswept with a gloomy sky, and she had no energy to leave the apartment, spending the majority of her day in a light doze and her afternoon painting all twenty of her nails. She was lying on the broad couch trying to watch a war documentary when Mak came in, drenched from the steady rain. "Hey, you. Whatcha watchin'?" Before Faye could answer, she was in the master bedroom.
Faye followed her, seating herself on the bed as Mak threw open the closet and began to wrestle with a suitcase. "Time for that vacation?"
"You know it. I been waiting all year for this one, and it's only 18 hours away now. You ever been to Io? It's one of Jupiter's moons."
Faye shook her head as Mak started rummaging the oak bureau. "It's got some absolutely gorgeous beaches. If you ever seen a picture of the Bahamas on Earth in the 20th century, you know what I mean. I was a lil' chile when they first started on them beaches, and all my life in Neon I heard about 'em. I'm ready to see 'em now." She grinned, looking strikingly child-like, and despite herself, Faye smiled in return. "I'm real excited. Shoulda gone a long time ago, but I never had the dough."
That's right…Jet was financing most of this vacation. Faye's smile faltered, and she ground her toes into the carpet.
"You all right?"
"Not really."
"I thought not. You know, ever since that night you went runnin' out of the restaurant, Jet ain't been actin' right. He's been 'bout as distracted as they come, and you ain't looked happy for more than a minute at the time. You two fall out or somethin'?" She pitched multiple bikinis into the open suitcase.
"Mak, do you like Jet?"
"Sure, he's a great boss." She examined a set of cotton sundresses. "I bet that ain't what you meant. Yeah, I used to like 'im."
"What happened?"
"We couldn't get our act together quick enough. He'd like me, I'd have a boyfriend at the time and by the time I would break up with the boyfriend, he wouldn't be interested no more. 'Bout the fifth time it happened we just figured we weren't meant to be, y'know? The cool thing is, that never stopped us from caring 'bout each other – we just knew there wasn't no point in trying to be serious."
"So the only thing that kept you two from being together –"
"- was me liking another man at the time, among other things. I mean, who's to say we wouldn't of hooked up and found we hated each other's guts? But there's no way to know now." Mak grinned again. "I swore off on him. Jet Black's a dangerous man to get hooked on if you're just tryin' to fool around. He's not what I'd call a 'one-nighter.'"
Faye didn't answer, turning away to stare out of the window that showed her a reflection of the room instead of the rainy dusk. The thump of fabric hitting canvas told her that Mak was still packing, rather hurriedly. "How long will you be on Io?"
"Eight days. Cruise takes a full day to cross the asteroid belt and docks at 8 a.m. on Wednesday. I guess I'll choose my tours while I'm there. Or maybe I'll just dick around the beaches and play footsie with the cabana boys. Who knows. As long as civil war don't start either here or there, you'll see me next Friday. And you two better be straightened out one way or th'other by the way the time I come back, cuz I'm damn tired of watchin' Jet drag around like a kicked puppy."
They heard the heavy sound of a grown man running up wooden stairs too late to stop talking. Jet burst through the front door and made a beeline for the back of the apartment, sparing them only a glance as he playfully muscled Mak away from the open closet. "Don't let me interrupt. I just need a different shirt." His current shirt, sodden down by the rain, betrayed nothing from behind, but when he turned around, the fabric resembled a piece of modern art. Mak laughed. "What the hell? You got in the way of the double boiler, didntcha?"
"You know it," he answered, sighing.
"Hey," Mak shouted as he went into the bathroom to change. "We were just talking about tomorrow."
"What about it?"
"I made a reservation at Fulani 'bout three months ago 'fore I knew I'd be outta town, but if you flake out on a reservation there, they won't reserve for you again. Why don't you an' Faye go for me?"
Jet poked his head out of the bathroom, face distorted. "Mak, get real."
"I am real. You gotta go or I'll be in trouble next time I wanna take anyone there. C'mon, Jet. I know you get sick of eatin' seafood non-stop. Try some Cuban for a change."
The only answer was the sound of the door slamming. Mak looked at Faye, who sat motionless on the bed. "That's his way of saying 'alright' when he's pissed. That's about the best I can do for you, hon. It's on you now."
Jet carefully cleaned the straight razor with an alcohol-soaked cloth, wiping down the metal blade until it gleamed, a characteristic of nearly everything he did when he was nervous. If you can't control what's going on, overcompensate. Satisfied that he wouldn't contract any diseases from the blade this morning, he began to skim the edge over his face, scraping the coarse stubble from his cheeks and sculpting the hair that remained into the labor-intensive pattern that he had worn since he was old enough to shave.
After this, there was a ritualistic choosing of what shirt to wear: feeling moody? Go with primaries. How about dreamy and sweet? In that case, pastels. A little flushed? Warm colors. A wee bit melancholy? Cool colors. Patterns? Stripes? Solids? Textured? He stood in front of the closet for nearly seven minutes before sighing deeply and going with simple black cotton. It paired nicely with the crisp khaki slacks that hung on the door.
There was absolutely no reason he should be so nervous today. His hands trembled as he splashed on aftershave.
"Oh, you're ready."
He jumped, cursing silently. Faye had come into the room without his notice. "Ready to go?" His voice sounded too calm to be his own.
"Yeah." Her voice was more distant; she was looking away from him, staring out of the window.
The Mustang was parked in front of the building. It had taken more than one day to completely remove the water stains from the leather, but the gentlemen at Poffrey's didn't have a city-wide reputation for nothing. Mak had been forgiving of the ill-treatment of her car, and graciously allowed Jet to continue using it while she was out of town. "Just make sure you put the damn top up next time it rains."
"Where are we headed?" Her dark violet hair was bound in a tiny bun, but the shorter strands whipped around her face as they drove along. It made her look mischievous.
Just three days ago, he had kissed her for the first time ever. And now they were back to being strangers. She was a ghost, torturing his thoughts and impossible to touch even when she was sitting two feet away. And he was turning into a robot, feelings so suppressed that he wasn't even sure he felt. Even when it felt awful. Or amazing.
"Jet." Her eyes were growing dark with anger. "You could at least answer me, even if you're annoyed with me."
"I'm not –"
"You've all but ignored me for two days straight. Why bother taking me to lunch if you don't want to talk to me today either?"
He slowed down and let the stick fall into neutral. The car idled patiently as the signal turned green for the opposing lanes of traffic. "Can you wait until we get to the place? Then you can yell at me all you want."
"What's wrong with right here?" Her eyes lacerated his skin. "Don't want your streetwalkers to see their big bad pimp get his ass handed to him?"
He slumped, suddenly feeling like an old man just realizing that he had made a very poor choice in female companionship. "If you'll just wait five more minutes until we get there, I promise to let you say as much as is…necessary."
She snorted and turned away. Jet caught a glimpse of her flushed face. Whatever was on her mind, it was pretty serious. He had to remind himself not to fend her off with sarcasm. Today just was not the day for the usual theatrics.
Fulani loomed ahead, valets at the ready. As they exited the car and Jet handed the keys off to the waiting hop, the glass doors opened with a yawn, ready to eat them both alive.
The wait for the table was uneventful, and they sipped their complimentary mineral water in silence. Faye didn't ask him any more questions, since her primary one had been answered by their arrival.
It was hard to believe that they were in a restaurant, he thought. The waiting area rivaled a five-star hotel's. A glass and marble sculpture of a Nereid on a dolphin's back greeted all patrons, along with several very garish-looking paintings that were clearly expensive, if ugly.
"Sir, Miss. Your table is ready."
They followed the neatly-dressed hostess to a window seat, a table covered with white linen and delicate glassware. Faye sat down closer to the window, presumably so she would have a distraction should the conversation become too intense, or never start at all. She ignored the menu that the hostess placed in front of her and didn't answer when the woman asked her about another drink, so Jet ordered two bottles of water and the coconut shrimp appetizer for their mutual meal. He had always been curious about this place's food, but had never quite been able to make time to visit, even though the owner had invited him over several times. It figured that it would take something as dramatic as say, Faye Valentine, to throw his careful life into an awful tailspin, and give him the time to do things that he had always been able to put off before. Such as eat another restaurant's version of coconut shrimp – Mak would be so disappointed with him for eating seafood yet again.
"We should probably be talking," Faye commented as the woman left.
"Let's talk, then." He sat up a little straighter in his chair. "First off, why are you so mad at me?"
She leveled her eyes at him and said nothing.
"All right, we'll try something tangible." The bottles of Pellegrini arrived, and he busied himself with opening one. "How about you explain to me exactly why you're here in my life after two years of no contact and why you haven't left yet, since you swore you were leaving three days ago."
"Because I found something here that I wanted to keep."
"So, keep it."
"I'm trying," she said plaintively. "But I'm not like you, Jet."
"And I'm not like him, Faye. I'll never be him. And if that's what this is – you want me around, but you want to be free to run out of the door at all times to look for him – then you should go."
"Jet, for God's sake, why you don't care anymore?" She was keeping her voice level, with noticeable effort. "He was part of your life! Even before I got involved! You were one of his best friends! How can you just throw that away?"
"Faye –" and she could hear the trembling anger in his tone, "- you don't know how damn hard I had to try to give it up. Don't you think every time I see green hair, I look twice? Whenever I see a skinny guy in a suit smoking, I don't wonder? But I couldn't keep looking backwards. I didn't want to go insane. I had to live life, because life didn't stop for me. Or him. Or you. Or anybody. I had to go on, Faye."
She turned to the window, face clouded.
"Faye, please listen, because I don't think I can say this more than once."
The waitress (whom up to this point neither of them had noticed) brought a plate of pan-fried shrimp sheeted with transparent flakes of coconut, and several unidentified sauces. Faye slowly turned to face him, the food's steam little protection against whatever might come out of his mouth.
"Faye, I love you –"
Huh?
"- and I want you –"
But…
"- but I don't need this."
Huh?
He examined one of the pink shrimp closely, practically dissecting it with his cocktail fork. "I generally like certainty in my life, Faye. I like to know that for the most part, tomorrow will be something like today. Why in hell do you think I run a business as monotonous as a restaurant? I'm a fairly mundane person who doesn't mind living a routine life. And intergalactic space-hopping isn't part of the plan right now, and I'm not sure it ever will be again."
She bit her bottom lip, why, he wasn't sure. Was she trying not to speak, or trying not to cry? But she released the lip soon enough, and turned over a few of the shrimp.
"The ISSP gave me an urn two years ago; they said it was Spike's ashes. Problem is, the report was inconclusive, so there's a good chance it's not him. I've kept it because it stabilized me, but I've never felt any need to open it or get the ashes tested myself." He chewed the pink meat thoughtfully. "Maybe I've just been afraid of what I might learn, one way or the other. If you want it, you can have it – get it tested or something."
"You would give away your only memento of him? Just like that?"
"I've got plenty of memories of Spike Spiegel. Most of them are permanent. That urn served its purpose a long time ago. It stays in the closet now."
She looked almost heartbroken. "You really have changed, haven't you?"
"I told you I had."
"I didn't want to believe it."
"Well, denial's not the way to go. At least not for me." He drained his glass and reached for the second bottle, which was perspiring in the room temperature. "Don't get me wrong. I'll never forget him. But he's not my reason to live. I am."
The shrimp were gone, and Jet was making mental notes of their flavor when the long-absent waitress came by again. "Any after-dinner drinks? Dessert?"
Faye ordered a glass of Patron tequila. She looked so glum. Had this lunch done any good at all?
"…have you tried to keep in touch with Ed?"
"I send her email every two months. Sometimes she answers, sometimes I don't hear from her until half the year is gone. Strangely enough, her father does some bounty hunting now. He writes me a few times a month and invites me along by offering me a third of the reward. I never answer those emails."
"I never thought you to be the type to turn down money."
"If the man showed up on the ship tomorrow in the flesh, I'd say howdy and keep right on managing my store. I really don't think there's anything anyone could do at this point to pull me back into that life, Faye. Some people can do it forever – I'm just not one of them."
The waitress set down the glass and the bill. Faye examined her liquor while Jet commandeered the bill. 50 wulongs for two bottles of water, an appetizer and a drink. Ye gods. No wonder people ran screaming out of Neon on such a regular basis.
They walked out, if not quite together, at least closer in proximity than they had come in. As they descended the shaded steps and walked towards the garage (the valet had handed Jet the claims ticket, at Jet's request), Faye jerked to a stop. Jet looked up in time to see a slender man with poofy green hair walking the opposite way down the other side of the street. He was tall, but it was hard to tell, because he was hunched over as he shuffled along.
Faye looked at Jet, distraught. But Jet was already on his way to the garage again. And she stood there, watching the two men walk farther and farther apart.
The car was waiting for him on the second level of the five-story garage. Jet unlocked it with the remote keypad, momentarily blinded by the glare of the taillights as the alarm disengaged.
As he climbed into the driver's side, cursing the bucket seat, a woman's small hand knocked on the tinted passenger window. He unlocked the door without thinking, and Faye all but fell into the car, panting, face streaky, hair damp. She looked as if she had run the whole way from the street.
"I just ran the whole way from the street," she gasped out. "I was afraid you would leave…"
"I'm still here."
She nodded, struggling to breathe.
"Did you go talk to him?"
She shook her head no.
"Well, what does that mean, Faye? Are you ever really going to want to know, or are you going to back off every time you feel unsure?"
"This is what it means," she whispered, and kissed him, leaving the warm taste of tequila all over his mouth.
It wasn't long before they were back in the apartment, pounding each other in the mattress for all they were worth, covering the sheets with sweat and mutually wondering how they could have resisted making love for two whole days. Afterwards, they lay awake, smoking.
"Faye."
"Hmm."
"Let's get one thing straight." Jet sat up and stubbed out his stick. "I don't mind if a relationship ends. But I don't like one-shots. You can take that for whatever you will."
"What do you like, Jet?"
"I like it when someone is confident enough to be themselves. Don't suppose that I want you to change for my sake. I want you to be Faye Valentine, every part of her. Whatever that may mean."
So the next day, when he went to work, she went elsewhere. And the next, and the next, because being Faye Valentine was not the same thing as being Jet Black. And he was quite alright with that.
She came and went, and even occasionally showed up at the restaurant to work. If Jet was there, they talked about whatever was on either of their minds, and when he wasn't, she sat in his room and looked through the box that he had given her to rummage through – a box full of the crew's paraphernalia.
With time – it took several months, but it happened - she found that she didn't have as much desire to dwell on the past as before. And certainly, her days on Ganymede didn't have the extremes of ecstasy and agony of a bounty hunter's lifestyle, but in its own way, her new life was charming. The prospect of a drive in the country now held as much appeal as gambling on horses.
One balmy Saturday, Jet invited her out on a picnic again, promising good weather. So they made their way out to a different park – one with a freshwater spring within a five-minute walk.
The food was excellent, of course; Mak had made the entire meal herself. They ate slowly and teased each other about their choice in clothing, and made silly pictures out of the clouds, and Faye tried to climb a tree, but gave up quickly. Jet suggested a dip in the spring.
"I don't know how to swim."
"Oh, don't worry. There's a loading dock of sorts. You can stand on it and get your feet wet, if you don't trust me to keep you from drowning."
She agreed hesitantly; that dream she had eight months ago was still fresh in her mind. Jet picked her up with a grin and marched straight in while holding her close.
The coldness made her gasp, but it soon faded into a vague, liquid sensation. Jet's hands felt good on her back as they stood shoulder-deep, alone in the spring. The wind blew through her hair and rustled the leaves above them as they kissed.
Quite suddenly the sunlight was gone, and the wind felt cold. But Jet's hands were still on her back, and his lips brushed against her throat as her head tipped back, her hair spreading out in the water.
Pinpricks on her cheeks made her open her eyes – rain. She jerked, but the hands on her back stiffened.
"Don't worry about it," Jet moaned against her ear. "Just let it rain."
He moved further down her body, placing burning kisses all over her chest, her stomach, steadily moving lower on her floating body. Faye closed her eyes, feeling the wind blow. His hands, holding her. His mouth.
And it rained.
fin
Author's Notes:
All right, that's it. Oh, what happens next? Whatever you want. :-)
Thank you to everyone who reviewed and kept up with this story through its very long process (sorry, I'm just not a very quick writer, especially on longer endeavors - this entire file is now 57 pages in MSWord. Eeek.), and people who were kind enough to point out my silly errors. This will probably be my last CB for quite some time, unless I watch the series again (not likely). I had fun. I hope you did too.
april
