Monday March 22 2004
La Jolla
An hour after school, Roxanne was lounging in a deck chair beside the pool, sipping at a cold drink while she reviewed her long and unsatisfactory conversation with her boyfriend. Grunge was lying in the chair next to her, deftly evading all her attempts to pin down his whereabouts at lunch and his relationship with the little trollop in his Math class. She gave up; short of a direct question, she wasn't going to get a solid answer from him, and she wouldn't have trusted the answer.
The weather forecast had predicted storms all day, but the weather had started clearing early, and the sun was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. It was a great day to catch a burn without realizing it, she thought. Absentmindedly, she set the tumbler of ice and lemonade on the table beside her. As she drew back her hand, she felt the glass bump against her fingers on its way to the concrete, and she realized with a shock that she'd mostly missed the table with it. She snatched at it, only to realize it wasn't falling anymore; it sat on nothing, slightly tilted, an inch off the concrete.
She put her hand around it carefully and brought it close, examining it. It seemed perfectly normal. She took a sip, and the liquid behaved normally inside the container. She stared intently at it as she raised it to chin height. Slowly, she released the glass, keeping her fingers curled around it just in case. The sweating tumbler stayed where it was, a foot above her belly. A bead of condensation slid down its side, reached the base, and stopped.
"Kewl. Weird, but kewl." Grunge was staring at the glass too. "What else can you do? Besides cheat a scale?"
She set the tumbler on the table. Moisture gathered in a spreading pool under the glass's base. Next, she looked at the surface of the swimming pool, still as a sheet of glass. She imagined lifting something in the water, and her hands rose, palm-up. A hump rose in the center of the surface, and fell back, sloshing over the sides. She gestured again, feeling like Mickey Mouse in that old Disney movie. It rose again, higher, assumed a spherical shape, and a volume of water the size of a beach ball was floating a foot above the rolling and lowered surface of the pool.
"Banzaiii!" Grunge leaped off the chair and sprang at the globe, reaching. His arms wrapped around it and disappeared, then his head and shoulders entered.
And he stopped, floating belly-down above the pool with his head stuck in the globe of water. His arms and legs began to thrash.
She flew to the edge of the pool in a panic. She had no idea how to undo what she'd done, or how to get Grunge out of it. His arms were batting at the ball, but they sank in with hardly a ripple, and came out wet but not splashing. He bent and twisted, but the ball of water stayed firmly seated on his upper body.
Then Grunge and the globe dropped into the water with a huge splash. The boy rose to the surface coughing, and paddled to her. He rested his arms on the rim. "Jeez."
Instead of helping him out, she brought a fist down on his head. "Idiot. What were you doing?"
"Thought I could pop it."
"You almost got killed. You shouldn't screw around like that. You don't know what you're messing with." She helped him out of the water then, and followed him back to the chair. Then she stared down at her hands. "Grunge, I'm scared."
Tuesday March 23 2004
MacArthur University
After their second period Lit, Eddie and Bobby hit the lavatory to recycle their morning coffee.
Eddie smiled to himself when Bobby headed straight to the sink to wash up, on the assumption that his rod was presently cleaner than his hands. Even Mr. Hygiene wouldn't lather up beforehand in Anna's spotless house, but it was a regular habit at school and any other public place.
Three of the four urinals were occupied by guys standing between the partitions with their hands in front of them, stoically ignoring one another. The only unused one, of course, was the one on the end, which was set eight inches lower than the other three. Eddie figured the same sort of crazy law that required crip spots in health club parking lots forced college bathrooms to size one pisser for six-year-olds. The instant he stepped up and unzipped, the occupants of the other three urinals zipped up and stepped away, filing out the door without washing up.
Another student stepped up to the urinal next to Eddie, and he heard a snort. "Now I know why they dropped one."
Eddie glanced over. The guy standing next to him was taller than Bobby, maybe six-three, which made him a foot taller than Eddie. The jerk was smiling at the wall.
Eddie wasn't normally self-conscious about his height, but something about the situation rankled. He fantasized about pulling the partition off the wall and swatting the guy with it or just reaching over and breaking his thumb.
No. Even if I'm not using Gen, I can't risk the attention. There's no telling what might pop up on IO's radar.
He zipped up and stepped away, fuming, just as Bobby finished drying his hands.
When Eddie moved to the sink, Bobby stepped to the urinals. He passed the two unoccupied ones, and the one filled by the smartass, and took up station at the kiddy urinal.
"What's wrong with those two?" The guy said, puzzled.
Poker-faced, Bobby said to the wall, "Thought you said you knew. Not that I'd admit to looking."
"What are you-"
"Dude," Bobby said, as if he were explaining something obvious. "They didn't drop it down for the short guys. They did it for the LD's."
The guy almost looked, and caught himself. He zipped up and left, also without washing up.
Bobby came back to the sink as Eddie was rinsing. As Eddie stepped to the hand dryer, he said, "Love you, man."
La Jolla
Caitlin grunted with effort as she pressed the barbell away from her chest towards the ceiling. Only part of that effort was due to the resistance of the weights. She was fighting her Gen, trying to hold it in check so that the exercise would stress her muscles. The double battle wasn't easy. From where she lay, she could see a huge dent in the ceiling drywall above her from a time her control had slipped at the end of a rep. The bar had leaped from her fingers, smashed into the drywall, and come back down on top of her, weights coming loose to bounce, ringing, off the floor.
Might get more out of the exercise if I could still get my elbows below the bench. She glanced sourly at the huge mutant growths on her chest. I can't believe there are women who pay to go through life like this. She strained for the last few inches of extension. "Uhhhhh!"
"Sounds like rough sex down here," Sarah said from the stairs as she descended. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, never better," she said through clenched teeth as she brought the bar level with the station rest and dropped it in. She blew out. "Getting a handle on it now, I think."
Sarah stood over her, shaking her head and smiling. "I don't know why you bother. You could lift every weight in the stand with one finger if you wanted. And you certainly don't need to work out for vanity's sake. You look terrific already."
"Opinions vary, but thanks." She sat up and wiped her forehead with her palm. "Should have brought a towel down. Clothes feel glued on."
Sarah carefully studied the wall. "I don't get it. That outfit barely covers more than your swimsuit. What happened to all that prudish modesty?"
"Just can't afford it when I'm pumping iron, I guess. And, well, I'm just less self-conscious. Maintaining proper form taxes my concentration enough without dealing with clothes that hamper my movements."
"I'm surprised Eddie's not down here spotting you."
"He's offered, but Roxy always comes down with him. That sort of hampers his movements." The girls shared a chuckle, then Kat said, "Bobby's offered too, but I'm not really pushing myself that hard yet. Not till I'm sure I've got my Gen firmly in hand."
"Speaking of which."
Caitlin felt a draft on her sweaty forehead and shoulders, but it didn't feel like the refrigerated air from the AC. And she didn't hear the usual whisper from the registers. It caressed her skin, gently drying it. "You?"
Sarah nodded. "Uh huh. I'm thinking about trying to make it rain, and live up to my name. But I think the conditions would have to be just right."
The soft touch of the air on Caitlin's damp skin raised goosebumps, and bumps in a couple of other places that pressed against the damp shirt fabric. Sarah glanced at her, and then quickly away. "I, ah, are you done down here? I'm heading back up."
"No," Kat said quietly. "I've got a few more things to do."
Sarah nodded and headed upstairs quickly, taking the breeze and its caress with her.
-0-
"Don't know, dude." Eddie looked at his right fist, which was smooth and white, threaded with veins of darker color. His left hand rested on the marble fireplace mantel. "What good would this do me in a fight?"
"Are you kidding? You hit somebody with that, he'll go down and stay down."
"That's cuz he'll be dead." He let his hand return to normal. "If I ever had to, I can already kill somebody with my bare hands. I don't need brass knucks besides. There's gotta be a better use for my Gen than this."
"Well, what about armor? Touch a chunk of steel, and you're a tank."
Eddie shook his head. "I'm not even sure it would really be steel. If it is, the effect on my skin must… refresh itself instantaneously, or so fast it doesn't hamper my movements. But it's still just a millimeter thick. Doubt it would stop a bullet. How's the flying thing going?"
It was Bobby's turn to shake his head. "Not happening."
"Come on. So it didn't work the first time. Maybe you just need more practice."
"Bro, the parking lot looked like a shuttle launched from it, and we barely got out of there before the firemen showed up. There's not gonna be another practice."
"Dude. Think how cool it would be to fly, like the Human Torch."
"I don't care how cool the Human Torch looks in the comic books. I only got a foot in the air, and I almost fell face first into four inches of melted asphalt. You can't heat the air enough to lift you off the ground and keep from frying yourself and maintain your balance and tweak it so you can steer all at the same time. Just too many variables. I can just see myself losing it thirty feet in the air."
Eddie rubbed his chin. "Hm. They say if the avionics computer goes out on an F16, the only control that does the pilot any good is the eject lever, cuz the tiniest mistake sends you spinning out of control and a human pilot can't react fast enough to correct." He gave out a heavy sigh. "Still, it was a beautiful dream. And you looked boss, like somebody mounted a jet engine under you pointing up into the sky. And the noise… un-frickin-believable."
"Yeah. It'd make a great clip on YouTube." Bobby's frown deepened. "Hey… you turned your right hand marbly, but you touched the fireplace with your left."
"Oh, yeah. New trick. You like that, watch this." He touched the mantle again. This time, his whole body changed, as well as his clothes. "Cool, huh?" Said the marble statue that looked like Eddie. "It's not just clothes, either. Check this out." He touched a glass candlestick on the mantel, and it changed too. He removed his finger, and the candlestick still looked like marble. Eddie returned to normal, and the candlestick still looked like marble.
Bobby touched it. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it felt like marble instead of glass. He picked it up, and it seemed too heavy. "If you cut it open…"
"It's like that all the way through."
"How do you know?"
"Dude, I just know."
"How long does it stay like this?"
"Depends. I sort of press it when I touch it, but not really. The harder I press it, the longer it stays. I changed a piece of driftwood to aluminum last night, and it stayed that way till morning. On the down side, I did the same thing to a cricket. When it changed back, it was dead."Eddie studied his finger as if he'd never seen it before. "Another reason I'll never need brass knucks, I guess. I can kill somebody with a touch of my finger. You can incinerate somebody with a cross look. Rox can lift a guy fifty feet in the air and drop him, I bet. What Kat can do to a guy doesn't bear thinking about. And Sarah…"
"What?"
"You haven't seen it? Last night those popping noises in the back yard weren't all coming out of the bug zapper, dude. Trust me, you do not want her to poke you in the butt when she's mad. I landed in the pool, and I've still got a red spot the size of a quarter. I'm betting she could crank it up till there'd be nothing left of you but smoke coming out of your boots."
Bobby shrugged. "A ten-year old with a Glock can smoke somebody with a twitch of his finger. What we can do doesn't make us gods, bro."
Friday March 26
La Jolla
Glancing down the hall on the way to the kitchen, Roxy saw something in the living room that froze her with one foot still in the air as she pressed a hand to the wall. Then she turned and drifted into the living room, awestruck.
Grunge and Caitlin sat on opposite sides of the coffee table, a chessboard between them. Grunge sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, looking smug; Caitlin perched on the edge of the other couch, hunched over the board with her shins bumping the table, frowning in concentration.
Roxanne knew the pieces and how they moved, although she didn't have much interest in the game. But she saw that a lot more of Kat's pieces were off the board than Grunge's, and that couldn't be good.
"Still your move," Grunge said.
"I know." Kat continued to stare at the board.
Roxanne came up behind. "I don't believe what I'm seeing. Grunge, I didn't even know you could play. Are you winning?"
"Two to two," he said. "Playing best out of five."
Kat shook her head without taking her eyes off the board. "He's got a devastating opening game. The first ten or fifteen moves are like skipping through a minefield. If I can keep my feet that long, I've got a chance."
"Sweeping girls off their feet," Grunge said. "My specialty."
Roxy leaned deeply over the back of the couch, bringing her lips near Grunge's ear. "Been memorizing plays out of chess books, haven't you?" She watched his ear redden. Then she looked up at her sister, and realized what sort of view her boyfriend was getting, with Kat bent almost double over the board right in front of him and the collar of her shirt hanging loose off her neck. "How come you're not playing in the kitchen?"
Still staring at the board, Kat said, "Eddie set it up in here. He thought we'd be more comfortable."
Roxy reached around and gave Grunge's ear a twist. "I think you should move to the kitchen table."
Kat shook her head, then reached out and moved her queen. "Check."
Grunge rubbed his ear as he looked the board over. He grunted. "You sure?"
"No takebacks. Check."
He took the queen with a knight. "We done here?"
"Not yet." She slid a bishop across the board. "Check."
He took the bishop with a rook. "Come on, Red. You…" Then he frowned and hunched forward, staring at the board.
A minute later, Kat said, "Still your move."
Grunge touched his king and carefully laid it on its side. "Concede."
"What?" Roxy was flabbergasted. "You've got more than half her back row off the board!"
"Doesn't matter. Forced mate in three moves." He reached a hand to Kat. "Good set."
Hanging on to his hand, she said, "And?"
"And you eat my dessert tonight."
The two players quickly stowed the game in its box while Roxy watched. When Grunge picked it up and headed down the hall to its storage spot, she followed. As soon as they were out of her sister's sight, she kicked him in the butt so hard his teeth clicked. "Got your candy already, didn't you? Jerk."
-0-
"And here we go," Anna said, as she opened the oven door and the smell of broiled meat filled the kitchen. "I declare the first Friday Night Macho Meal officially ready for serving."
"I suppose we're going to have to eat bovine muscle tissue every Friday night from now on," Sarah said peevishly.
"Dunno." Eddie's nostrils flared. "Still in negotiations. I'm pushing for family-style fried chicken next week, but Bobber wants turkey with all the trimmings, kind of Thanksgiving in April. Dude, think of the possibilities. Meat loaf. Pot roast. Real American food, like beef stroganoff and spaghetti. Not like … what was that stuff we had last night? Where did it come from?"
"Borscht, served with traditional black bread, with fruit and cheese blinis for dessert. Mr. Lynch is going to a great deal of trouble to convince IO's spies that we're jetting all over the world trying to avoid capture. You might have to profess some knowledge of the food in exotic places someday. Next week's menu feature is Thai cuisine."
"Except Monday," Kat put in.
"I know. Monday is Fem Fare, Salmone All'olio E Limone. I have the recipe."
"Rich girl food." Eddie made a face. "Straight from a magazine, I bet." He ignored the fist Roxanne put into his shoulder. "Have you ever had it before?"
"Hope it takes longer to eat than it does to pronounce," Bobby said. "Back to Macho Meals. Spose we might get a charcoal grill?"
"I don't see why not," Anna said. "Bobby, can you help me get the broiler pan out of the oven?"
"Sure," Bobby said, and rose from the table. Then he froze and stared at her, as did all five of the teenagers seated. "Uh, you okay?"
"Sure. Just a little sore." Anna pressed at a spot near the small of her back. "Right here. Think I pulled something gardening yesterday. I'm just going to take it easy tonight, and I'm sure I'll be fine tomorrow."
Sarah snorted. Bobby stepped close and looked into Anna's face. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped as Anna's left eyelid drooped deliberately.
"You should be more careful," he said, his voice low. "I hear, once you hurt your back, it just keeps coming back at the slightest excuse." He wrapped a towel around his hands, stooped, and drew out the big pan laden with sizzling T-bones and set it on the stovetop. "Scuse." He left the kitchen.
Kat stood. "Let me help dish out." She glanced at the other two girls.
Roxanne glanced at Anna. "Uh..."
Sarah folded her arms. "Don't even ask me to take part in this charade."
Bobby came back as Kat set the last place. "Here," he said, holding his fist out, thumb down. Anna held out her hand, and he dropped two tablets into it. "Aspirin. Any person in pain would reach for it. Take them with water."
San Diego
Alex asked, "Notice something odd about this crowd?"
Alex and Melanie were standing idle towards the back of the stage, while Bobby and Lori performed a bridge, a sort of dueling instruments number, facing each other as they played. Melanie scanned the audience of the college bar the Sirens were working this weekend. "I presume you're talking about all the single girls in the house, elbowing the guys out of their way to get close to the stage."
"Yeah. Reminds me of an alligator farm at feeding time. Some of these bimbos were at the gig Wednesday. Looks like they spread the word."
"Well, the management can't say we're not a draw."
"Mel," Alex said as she picked up her sticks, "this is spooky."
Melanie nodded and settled her guitar strap on her shoulder as the duet drew to a close. It was good, she thought, that they'd caught on to Bobby's… whatever you wanted to call it; knowing seemed to lessen the effect somewhat. So did distance, they'd learned; from a stage width away, Bobby was just a very hot guy, not a nearly irresistible one. His mood seemed to have an effect, too: they'd learned more or less to keep their distance when he was intent or emotional. She recognized several of the girls surrounding the stage from school. Some of them had boyfriends, who were nowhere in sight, and there was an awful lot of lip-licking going on down there. Would it make any difference to them, she wondered, if they knew Bobby wasn't old enough to buy a drink here?
Then she took a close look at Bobby and Lori as they finished up. The group's Goth Princess and Surfer Dude were facing each other across Lori's keyboard, grinning at each other like kids, and Lori's eyes had a strange shine as she watched Bobby's hands on his guitar. I wonder how much longer it's going to matter to us.
