Pale: 5.a - Interlude
Author: Wildbow

Interlude

Clementine slowly pulled up to her parking spot, came to a gentle stop, and then put her battered old car into park.  Both hands settled at the very top of the steering wheel, giving it a death grip.

A big red pickup with oversized tires and all the trimmings sat in her parking spot.  It was elevated, exposing the work that had been done to give it additional exhaust pipes, and had a decal across the back that read ‘GO HOME FAT CHICKS’.

With the way it was parked, it simultaneously occupied Mrs. Preston’s parking spot.  And William Love’s, and the parking spot of the hoarder in room thirty-seven.  It sat diagonally, centered on the point where the four spots met.

She could have called the tow company, but she’d been around the block on this one.  She’d been around the block on a lot of fronts.  Roberto Figueroa wouldn’t get towed.  He was pretty much invincible when it came to that stuff.  If anything, he would thrive on skating by.  Deborah in fifteen had called a noise complaint on him at the start of the year, and the cop that ended up arriving was Roberto’s buddy from a few years ago.  The cop and Roberto both had laughed in poor Deb’s face when she insisted on the law.

Clem had a pickup truck too, but it was about as different from Roberto’s as was possible.  It was a Kei truck, about five feet by ten feet in width and length, and just under six feet tall.  It was a little rusty, and there was still a bit of blood in between the interior panels where she hadn’t been able to angle in right with a toothbrush, which was only really a problem if she ran the heater too long, and the engine was a hack job because the truck’s engine had been too small for it to go much faster than sixty kilometers an hour.  The tires were about halfway between the size of a regular tire and a dinner plate, and the truck’s bed was shallow, not coming up much higher than the knee.

She used that last part, the positioning of the truck’s bed, and did a three-point turn, before getting out and taking her groceries out of the back of her truck.  She placed the bags on the pavement, climbed back in, and reversed into her spot.  It put the rear end of her truck between his left front and left back tires.  She eased back until she felt the bump of his tire against the back of her truck.

She was running a risk that he’d roll over her truck, but she was one of the only people Roberto didn’t come after, and about the only thing that slowed him down was being an asshole right back.  She had a responsibility.

She grabbed the black canvas bags, giving them a quick check-over, then headed for home.  Mr. Morrow was at the back, wearing slippers, pyjama pants that looked like hospital-issue, and a t-shirt.  He was coughing violently, a handkerchief to his mouth.

“Are you okay, Randall!?” she called out.

He kept coughing, not responding.

She picked up the pace, hurrying over, as he doubled over, coughing so hard that he couldn’t really hold his hand in front of his face, but instead clamped his hand to it, handkerchief held there.

“Do you need water?” she called out.

With one violent cough, a wet spot appeared in his lap, running down his pants leg.

“Oh, buddy,” she said, more to herself.  It was the awkward kind of situation where she wasn’t sure if he’d want that added attention.

He half-hobbled, half-stepped over to the door.

“Could you hold the door!?”

He let himself in, and the door swung closed behind him before she could stick the toe of her shoe out to catch it.

She sighed, adjusted her bags, and pulled the door open.  She avoided stepping in the droplets of urine on the floor.

The main hallway was ‘L’ shaped, extending from the parking lot on the one side to the alley on the other, with the front desk at the front-facing corner.  Some of the rooms for the less able and elderly were on the ground floor, as were the offices, closets, and everything else.  There was a rickety elevator that had probably taken more lives than her little Kei truck had before she’d owned it, and stairs that led up from either side of the front desk, merging behind it on the way to upstairs.

“Good afternoon, Arlene,” Clementine greeted the girl behind the partition.  She looked and saw Mr Morrow making his way up the stairs, clearing his throat, one hand holding his wet pants away from his leg.

“Hey Clem,” Arlene said, smiling.  She was a teenager about two years younger than Clem, with neon green braces that made her look younger.  She looked way too happy to see Clem, but that was just how Arlene always was.  Clem liked it.  It was like coming home to be greeted by a very enthusiastic dog.

“There’s a bit of a mess in the hall, I think,” Clementine told her.

“Randall let me know.  I called the janitor.”

“I tried to call out to him, but he gave me the cold shoulder.”

“He has ear infections, he said.  Can’t hear a thing until they clear up.  On top of the rabies scare and the oste-ost-”

“Bone infection… poor guy.  It’s one thing after another.  He’s all dopey with the meds right now.  My uncle asked me to put him on the list of people to check up on… which I forgot completely until I just said that.”

Arlene kicked, wheeling herself over to one side of the office, where she found a clipboard.

“Glad I was able to help remind you, then.  Hey, do I have any mail?  I’m expecting an order and I’m looking forward to it.”

Arlene pushed, the computer chair carrying her to another spot.  She bent down out of sight, and then lifted up a box to the counter.  Narrow and flat and… Clem had to lean over the counter to see.  Label clearly printed.  ‘Bookhole Print’.  Arlene placed two envelopes and a bit of junk mail on the side of the counter while Clem looked.

“That would be it.  Thank you.”

“There’s also this.”  Arlene lifted up a box.  It was battered, stained on the one side, and covered in haphazard duct tape and packing tape.  The tape looked like it had trapped a lot of debris.  ‘Return to Sender’ was printed on the side.

Clem’s heart sank.  “I didn’t send that.”

“The postman insisted,” Arlene said.  She tilted the box.  “I guess you could read that label as having your address on it.”

Clementine looked.  It looked like the label had gotten wet and the print had bled out.  It was possible to read it as saying ‘Mother Theresa’.  But the intact part of the area code and address was more convincing than that.

“If it’s not yours, I’ll keep it put aside and tell them to take it and find the real owner.”

Which would put the box in close proximity to Arlene and the postal staff.

“No,” Clem said.  She gave Arlene a quick smile.  “I’ll take it.”

“Do you need a hand?  You’ve got your groceries.”

“No,” Clem replied.  She adjusted her grip, managing the four bags of groceries, the box from Bookhole, her mail, and the strange, oddly heavy box.  “No.  I’m pretty good at wrangling messy stuff.  You stay and make sure the janitor gets that mess cleaned up.”

“You too!” Arlie called after.

Clem carried her stuff up the stairs, bags swinging.  At least there weren’t more drips.

Poor guy.  Arlene was new enough she apparently hadn’t heard about Randall getting the actual bubonic plague, or that the rabies scare had been real.  They’d given him a heat treatment to try to burn the rabies virus out of him, and it had given him mild brain damage.

She wondered, if he’d known, or if Mr. Bristow had told him he lived by different rules, then was there a chance he could have done something different?  Was it that Randall was perpetually ill, or that he was perpetually ill but never actually died from it?  Was there a possibility that he could have just… weathered the rabies virus?  Was that even humanly possible?

She let herself into the apartment, used her heel to stop the door from violently swinging closed, and used her elbow to adjust a painting of an old woman that hung askew.

Once she was in her living room, she was able to set down the boxes.  She carried the bags to the kitchen, dropping the canvas bag into the vegetable crisper rather than emptying it.  She’d have to fix that later, but she wanted to hurry, just in case.

She removed her jewelry, tied back her hair, washed her arms up to the elbows, and then donned an apron.

With a coarse scrub-brush, she rubbed down a knife.  She’d picked up a high carbon chef’s knife a while back, hammer forged, with a black carbon texturing along the back of the blade.  It hadn’t ended up being nice for the kitchen, but there were other uses.  She dried it with care, gave it some whisks with a honing rod, and set it aside.  She cleaned up some cast iron tongs in the same manner, without the honing.

She carried her stuff over to her coffee table.

There were probably rules for this, but nobody was telling her what the rules were.  Cast iron and carbon steel wouldn’t work against some of the problems, but if she was working with unknowns, in her lengthy experience, these things tended to cover the most bases.

She sat on her couch, used the tongs to move the box… and then moved it back to its prior position.  She went for her box from Bookhole, tong-ing it over, then holding it with the tongs while slicing at the tape with her knife.

She used her hand to lift the books out, one by one.  Put to the Proof.  Compost.  Lean Mean Machine Learning.  If Ever There Was.

The other box slid slightly toward the edge of the coffee table.  She used the tongs to put it back where it belonged, and pinned it there while putting some of the books on her bookshelf.  She kept things carefully arranged, so her wall of bookshelves had books she’d read starting on the leftmost bookshelves, books she hadn’t read on the rightmost side, and some random odds and ends as spacers between.

She hummed as she sorted it out, putting away all of the books except the music biography.

“Now, let’s see what you’re about.”

She used the tongs to hold the box while surgically taking care of the duct tape and packing tape.  She cut the box down the sides, and let them fall flat against the table.  She had to peel back newspaper from… it looked like 1995.

It looked like a plaque, of the sort that an animal head was mounted on, but the thing mounted was a baby, curled up in a fetal position, wrapped in bandages.  There were signs of a tail, withered and ratlike, no longer than her hand, peeking out from the bandages, and most of it was covered except the mouth, which had raw red flesh extending from the edges of bandages to the small, badly decayed teeth.

“Hm.”  She poked it with her tongs.  There was more give than she’d expected.  “I do appreciate you being upfront with the fact you’re going to be horrible, but I don’t think I can sell you.  And if I can, do I really want to work with the kinds of people who would have you?”

She set the tongs down and stretched, picking up Compost and looking at the first few pages.  She had lost her collection of books a while ago, after a word-eating wooden bird had left her mute, unable to read, and had turned all of her books into decorations, the pages white with no ink.  She’d owned this before and she was happy to reread it and refresh herself.

Putting her life back together again.  It felt good.

She went over to her computer, because reading a biography about music composition had to be accompanied with classical music.

She turned.  The little mummy had moved across her coffee table, centering itself.

“You talk, huh?” she asked.

She turned back to her computer, logging in.

“Take me to pieces and scatter the pieces to the wind.  Burn me to ash and transmute me to elemental flame and air.  It matters not.”

She had a message from Mr. Bristow.  ‘Screentime me’.  Why did that make her heart sink as much as the mysterious package finding its way to her?

Yes, rent was cheap, with utilities included, but some of her neighbors, like Figueroa, and the expectations…

“I will make endless offal boil from your holes until they make mountains.  Bury me in the ground and I will do the same for the worms.  The worms will taint the earth and the earth will taint all that grows green, and those that eat of that taint will vomit out their own viscera…”

She looked back, and it fell silent.

She hit the button to make the call before it could start up again.

Mr. Bristow fumbled with his phone in the opening seconds.  She waited patiently.  She had a few glimpses of trees, of grass, more grass, trees, and then his perpetually flushed face, upside-down.

There was a thump.  She turned, and saw the plaque with the mummy had fallen to the floor.

“Be right back,” she said.

She grabbed her tongs and picked up the plaque, carrying it with her to the computer.

Mr. Bristow was trying so very hard to keep up with technology and trends.  He’d give his all, and then move on to the next thing, forgetting the last.  Earlier this month, he’d been asking the guy in room 60 about VR.

The phone calls being Screentimed was an extension of that.

“Any interest?” she asked, holding the thing so he could see it.

His face contorted in disgust.  “What is it?”

“No idea.  It talks, though.  Lots of stuff about entrails and taint.”

“That is worrying.  I’m going to call a friend about that.  How’s your apartment?”

“It’s fine.  Everything’s in working order.  Sink is finnicky sometimes.  Doesn’t always drain.”

“Let me know if I need to call a plumber.”

“I’ll eat your foreskin and the foreskins of all who follow from your line.”

“Did you say something?” he asked, huffing.  “Sorry, walking.  I can’t look at the phone and see where I’m going at the same time.”

“I didn’t say anything.  Where are you?”

“Old place I used to own,” he said.  “Doing a bit of reconnaissance, seeing how it’s doing.”

The phone stirred.  He pointed it at a building.  It was long, with a stone exterior.  Many of the main windows had a blue tint to them.

“It’s beautiful.  It looks like it’s been maintained well.”

“It isn’t.  Sorry.  Listen, I don’t like to bother you, you’re a good tenant, and you’ve been good to my acquaintances, but I’m wondering if I could make a request.”

He sometimes had a way of talking around things, being so roundabout that by the time he got to the point, the person on the other end was so eager to be done with the runaround that they accepted whatever he was asking for.

“A minor errand I’m asking some people to do.  I can’t put the so-called cat and the hound in the same place if I’m not watching them, and there are only so many people I truly trust as chaperones.”

“These things always wind up being more headache than they’re worth, no offense.  I usually get a month or two of free rent from you, but-”

“Do you want more?” he interrupted.

“I don’t- I’m fine financially, my business is doing well.  I’m getting buyers.”

“That’s so great, that’s good.  I’m glad you’re doing well.  You remind me of one of my nieces.”

“No, no.  Is she still there at the front?”

“Good for her.  Good.  I’ve run through most of my nieces and nephews, and the nieces and nephews once removed, not many of them have that staying power.  I don’t like bringing people in off the street.”

“I like her.  The guy you have on the after-dark shift is a different story.”

“Accommodations must be made.  Listen, listen, I really would like the help, and I would normally ask Ted, he’s reliable, but he’s with me.  What about an apartment move?  You’re in the corner, now.  Do you like the corner apartment?”

“I love the corner apartment.  I especially love the part where the neighbor to the left of me doesn’t let out a scream once an hour, every hour, round the clock.”

“Oh that’s good.  Not so good for this negotiation, though,” he said, huffing for breath.  It looked like he was on a forest path now, and she could hear water.  “I couldn’t convince you?  Perhaps I could owe you a favor for a later date?”

“I want information,” she said.  “Answers.”

“I want to ask you questions, and get straight answers.  I bring some things up with people you refer to me, who buy the quirkier items and they dodge the questions.  I want answers to those questions.”

“I can’t- shouldn’t- hmm.  I do respect you a great deal, Ms. Robertjon, you’ve been a good tenant.”

“I could- hm.  Hmmmmmm.”

The plaque she was holding with the tongs jerked.  She looked at it.

“There’s nobody else?”

“You would be a perfect fit for this, I think.  You get along with them well and your particular talents, succeed or fail, should- hmmmm.”

He said often that he used to be a professor, then a teacher.  Even now he tutored, according to Arlene.

She felt a bit sorry for his students.  She held onto her patience.

“Give me a list of twenty questions,” he said.  “I’ll pick one to answer.  There can’t be follow-up questions.”

“You haven’t even told me the job.  How do I know if this ‘payment’ is appropriate?  Also… I’d still like that cut on my rent.”

“If only my nieces and nephews were as on the ball as you are.  Hmm.  It’s a long drive.  Ten hours.  You’d be driving overnight, stopping somewhere along the way.  I’d guess… a one or two day stay at the location itself.  I’ll cover all of your accommodations.  You’d be looking after Daniel Alitzer and one other.”

“What about Daniel’s little sister?  She watches him.”

“What are you up to?  Are Ted and Shellie doing you favors too?”

“That could be two of your twenty questions, I think,” he said, before laughing.  “They haven’t maintained the wooden bridge here.  What a shame.”

He wasn’t especially old, but he had an old man vibe to him.

“You will drag your dangling entrails behind you while you blindly wander my tainted realms.  Impossible miles of innards, and you’ll feel every inch of them.”

“I’m getting a bit of static,” Mr. Bristow said.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.  He nodded.  “I’m thinking you should give me ten questions,” she said.  “You pick one of the ten.  And three months of rent.  As a starting point.”

“You will tread on the vitals of others and they’ll tread on yours.  Your knees will bend with the pain of each step another takes on what trails behind you.  And you, you small, sweat-drenched man, for all that you pretend you are a buffon and a blowhard, for all that you claw to power, you will be reduced to doing the same, eyeless, stumbling the earth while each step tears more of your endless innards from within you.  And you must wander and search, or you’ll never find an end to your torment, nor will you find the foreskin you pine for, lost to you.”

“You there?  The connection went fuzzy.  There aren’t many cell towers this far into nature.”

“I’m here,” Clementine said.  For all that he pretends?  That was interesting.

“Good.  Clementine, my dear, I’ll send them to you.  Listen, I have a meeting with someone, I should go.  Thank you for getting back to me.  Keep an eye on Daniel, he’s a good boy.”

“We’re not done negotiating.”

“We’re- Yes, okay, listen, if it winds up being more stressful, talk to me about it.  I know Daniel can have his moods, but he’s so good at finding things of value and uncovering patterns.  You’re good at finding things too.”

“Are we looking for something?”

“I’ve got to go.  They’ll explain to you.  If it winds up being too much, I’ll give you another month of not having to worry about rent, and maybe we can talk about shortening the list further, but I’m already pushing it.  Ten questions and three months is fine as a starting point.”

“What about the mummy plaque?”

She held it up for the webcam, using the tongs.

“Oh!  Of course.  I’ll see about texting you the details, if you’ll please remind me if I forget?  I’ve got to go.”

“So he’s faking it?” she asked the plaque.

It remained silent and still.

She found her puzzle bracelet, slipping it on, adjusting a cube with three turns, slid a little prism through the hole in the cube that the bracelet’s chain was strung through, then headed to the hallway, checking the coast was clear before stepping outside, locking her door, unlocking it, and stepping back through.

The door no longer connected to her front hallway, but to her bedroom.  Books were piled up on the bedside table, clothes were on the floor, which she should do something about.  She also had a whiteboard with a fancy frame, and some fine decorative lace she’d drawn into two corners with a fine permanent marker.  A reminder to file her GST and HST amounts, and, in the top right corner, a little heart and a note left by a one-night stand.  It thanked her for a wonderful seventeen hours.  There was a phone number.

She’d met them at this motivational thing, and they’d joked about how bad it was.  The joking had become flirting, the flirting had become chemistry, and chemistry had become Clem taking them back to her apartment.  They’d fallen fast asleep together at four in the morning, woke up together when it was close to noon, and barely left the bed until it was dark out again.  Cuddling, talking, touching, connecting.

In any other person’s story, it might have been the start of a beautiful thing.  A chance meeting leading straight to something like a honeymoon.

Clem walked through kitchen, then the front hallway.  She adjusted the picture of the old woman, which hung ajar.  Then she continued into the living room, every room in a straight line that should have carried her out past the street.  The windows were fogged up, with a diffuse light shining through, making up for the fact that the lightbulbs didn’t work like this.  She passed into the bathroom, where she pushed aside the shower curtain and saw the storage room.  A room that wasn’t in her usual apartment.

The shelves were stacked.  There was an energy to the space, where it felt like everything was moving, but not in a way the eye could see.

“You will be alone, Clementine Robertjon.  You’ll be utterly and completely alone, blind and hurting, hurt by others who have no idea it’s you they’re wounding as they try to make their own blind way through existence.  All of mankind will.  Every individual an exile.”

A child’s toy in the corner laughed.  Something rustled off in the other corner.

She checked a case, metal, with several locks and a chain.  She gave it a one-handed shake to remind herself of whether she’d left something inside it or not.  She’d left it locked with a bike lock and several different padlocks, which was annoying.

“You will pass from this world alone, scarred, hurting, and ignorant.”

A music box started up, tinkling.  The child’s toy giggled again.

She strode from the storage room before things could get livelier.  She carried the metal box by its handle, the little mummy plaque with the tongs.  She passed by the message with the heart again.

She couldn’t allow someone to get that close.  Anyone else would get a love story, possibly something to carry them into old age.  But she couldn’t risk it.  She liked them too much.

She needed the answers.  The solutions.  Some hope that there was a normal life somewhere on the far end of this.  Maybe then she could put that phone number into her phone.  Show up at their door and throw herself at them.  Kiss them and accept them like they’d kissed and accepted her scars.

She opened the door to find herself face-to-face with a short blonde woman with her hair in a side-braid, a very straight nose, thin lips, and a penetrating stare.  She wore a t-shirt and stretch pants, and had a bag with her.

“So you are home.  I’ve been knocking,” Sharon Grigg said.

“Ah.  You’re going on this trip?”

She’d been conned.  Three months of free rent and one question weren’t nearly enough.

She’d have words with him.

“I’ve got to do some stuff.  Do you want to come in?”

“Only if you’re doing some of the driving.  It’s a long trip and I want to arrive at least tomorrow afternoon.  I hate driving when it’s dark.”

Sharon strode into the apartment.  In passing, she fixed the picture of the old woman, which hung askew.

Daniel was in the hallway.  Long-haired, beautiful.  Languid and clumsy.  Insightful and lacking in common sense.  He held himself like he was wounded, somehow, and spoke and did so much with confidence.

“I would hug you and give you a kiss on the cheek, because you seem so sad, Clementine.  But that thing you’re holding is too ugly.”

“Right.  I should deal with this.  Let me- come in, please.”

Daniel followed her in, keeping a fair distance from her as he did so.  The rooms had fixed themselves.  The bracelet only really worked if she was alone.

Sharon had already migrated into the living room, picking up the book.  Clementine, to have the elbow room, went to her dining room table, setting the plaque down with care, so the tongs wouldn’t scratch the wood, and then got the box.  She had to fetch her keyring.  She turned to Daniel.  “Would you watch it?”

“I would take my eyes off it forever, if I could.  My life is worse for having seen it.”

God, she loved his voice.

She used the keyring to remove the locks.

“Are you into this stuff?” Sharon asked, from the other room.

“The book?  Compost?”

“Yeah.  I wouldn’t read this unless I had to for a class, and I’d put it off until the last minute.”

“I like that stuff.  Reading about people leading their true lives.  Pursuing passions.”

“And the composing stuff, is that because you’re oriental?”

“I- no.  No, Sharon.  On multiple levels.  It’s all sorts of passions and interests.  I just got one by a model and one on A.I.”

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way.  It’s positive, right?  Moms instilling their kids with classical music.”

My mom was drowned when I was nine.  There was no instilling.

She ignored Sharon, dialing in the combination for the bike lock.

“May I stop watching it?” Daniel asked, sounding pained.

“You- yeah, yeah, Daniel.  Sorry,” Clem said.

He turned his back, walking away.

“You’ve got the craziest knick-knacks,” Sharon said.  She picked up a stone hand, small like a child’s, that sat on Clementine’s shelf.

“Don’t touch things,” Clementine said.  “I’ve told you before.  Please.  And put that back in the dish.  It bleeds from the stump.”

“Bleeds?” Sharon turned the hand over, looking at the place where it was ragged and rough.  The ‘core’ of the stone hand where it would have attached to the wrist was a crimson stone with bits of white.  “I think it’s probably an iron-rich stone.  It picks up humidity.  Bleeds?  Come on, be rational.”

“Whatever it is, don’t get it on you, and don’t get it on my carpet, and please stop touching my things.  And Daniel- Daniel, don’t touch anything.”

Sharon approached, standing so she had a clear view through the rest of the apartment, and presumably, of Daniel.

“That looks so fake,” Sharon observed, indicating the plaque.  “That box seems like overkill.  I mean, I get that you’re trying to sell an illusion to buyers, and it clearly works because wow.  Is the rent much higher for the corner apartments?”

“Rude.  Just promise me, friend to friend, that if you move out, I get dibs.”

Oh god she thinks we’re friends.

This trip was going to be so much worse, knowing that.

“Are you watching Daniel?”

Sharon stepped back so she had a better view through the apartment.  “Oh… he’s doing his thing.”

Sharon walked off.  Clementine watched her, and watched as Daniel, singing to himself while facing the bathroom mirror, swaying, turned to Sharon and swept her, unwilling, into something of a dance, twirling her.  Sharon stumbled and nearly crashed into Clementine’s little table and attached mirror in the front hallway.  As relatively small as Sharon was, that trajectory and speed came very close to obliterating the table.

Clementine turned to the plaque, and was surprised it hadn’t whispered.  She gave it a prod, and found it firm.

Carefully, she transferred it into the reinforced metal box.  She sealed the box, latched it, locked it with the three padlocks, and threaded the bicycle chain through the loops in the exterior before clicking it closed.

Daniel was singing without words, while walking a tight circle around Sharon, who looked very unimpressed.  He did a kind of dance that didn’t touch her, and for Sharon, who wasn’t playing along, it had to feel like a child taunting another child, saying “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.”

Clementine ducked past them, leaving the plaque in the box on her dining room table.  Daniel switched to singing to her, reaching out, expression and body language like he was imploring something of her.  She took the reaching hand and gave it a kiss, and he flashed a brilliant smile at her, singing with more gusto and passion while she continued on to her bedroom.

She kept a bag in case she needed to leave fast, so that was convenient.  She gathered some minor extra things.

Behind her, Daniel stopped singing as tunelessly and wordlessly, and it sounded like he was singing something specific, in another language.  Clementine felt a full-body shiver, the rest of the world as good as gone.

Even Sharon seemed captured.  Defensiveness gone.

The moment passed.  The singing became something tuneless but pleasant.  Wordless and aimless and beautiful in its own way.  Clementine’s heart thumped in the wake of it, slow and heavier than she could remember feeling it.

She went to the whiteboard, touched fingers to her lips, and then to the heart.  It was a wistful thing.  Sad.  There was a good chance that someone that cool and that good had already moved on.  Her policy was a limit of two dates and she was on the fence about whether she should even allow the second, in this case.  Did a one-night stand followed by a day-long date count as one or two?  Was it dangerous, when she liked them that much?

But thinking about it gave her something to work toward.  Thinking back to that day-long date in bed gave her a past that wasn’t all tears.

She had to do the tax stuff too, she noted, reminding herself.

Bag collected.  She got the book on the music composer, to read when she wasn’t driving, grabbed the modeling one, and then picked up the case.

The other two got their stuff and headed out her apartment door.

She paused, making a conscious effort to remember the little things.  Stove was off, no lights on, the child’s hand wasn’t bleeding, no ominous music, no fire, no stray bullets lying in the corner… they liked the couch.  There were three scratched-up figurines of Buddhas and they were in the right order.

The picture of the old lady- she reached for it with an elbow, because her hands were full, and stopped.  It wasn’t askew.

Good.  Well, that simplified life.

The tire popped as she was rounding a corner.  She steered hard, trying to correct, and to avoid the head-on collision with another car that was in the opposing lane.

A car horn blared, and Clementine leaned into the steering wheel, shutting her eyes for a moment.

It couldn’t be simple.  It couldn’t be easy.

“Damn it,” Sharon complained.

They’d had to take a detour, to drop off the metal case with some of Mr. Bristow’s friends.  Which had been an event.  She’d opened the case and the normally cool, calm, and collected people had reacted like she’d set them and their houses on fire.

She did have experience with houses being set on fire.  The matches she’d let her brother take, the time she’d had to set the Matching Dollhouse that had appeared across the street on fire, and there was the house she’d tried using as a storehouse for items that had been taken over by the Hairball.

They hadn’t ended up paying her.  Between their agitation and Sharon demanding they get moving again, she’d ended up leaving.  She’d have to take it up with Mr. Bristow.

“I swear, if you fucked up my car-” Sharon said.

Clementine drove onto the shoulder, checking a few times on the other car, which had come to a screeching stop.  Sharon climbed right out, and Clementine, once she had checked there was no incoming traffic, slipped out as well, leaving Daniel in the back seat.  She walked around the sedan to where the tire had been.  It was rags, now.

“Accident, not malfeasance,” Daniel said, leaning out of the open window.  “But accidents can be malfeasance.”

“And grown men can talk like grown men,” Sharon said.  “Fuck.”

“Do you have a spare?”

“Yeah.  Of course.  I’m prepared for everything, but I’ve got camera equipment and computer stuff packed into the back, and I’ll have to take it all out.”

“I’ll help,” Daniel said.  He climbed out of the window with more of a smooth, fluid motion than some people stepped out through an open car door, and dropped down into a squat, before standing like a colt taking its first step.

“If you help me with that stuff you’ll get distracted and misplace some of it.”

“There’s a lot to be distracted by,” he said.  He held out a hand, feeling the wind.  “Dust in the wind.  And a strong, dizzying smell of blood.”

“No, there really isn’t,” Sharon told him.

“I’m going to go talk to the driver of the other car,” Clementine said.  She looked both ways, and then jogged across the street.  Hopefully they would be forgiving.  People in small towns were supposed to be nice, right?

She approached the window, and slowed as she got closer.

No driver.  Had- had she heard them open the door and leave?

But she could smell that blood that Daniel had mentioned.  She glanced back to make sure things were okay.

In the back seat, multiple trash bags had been lashed around a roughly cube-shaped object.  The object had been belted in with the middle seatbelt, but with the sudden stop, it had apparently flopped forward.  It rested at an angle against the two front seats, some of the trash bags ripped.  Blood dripped down onto the floor of the car.  Where it was ripped, she could see red fur.

“I think I’m going to take a pass on this one,” she decided, speaking to thin air.  “I’ve paid my dues already, yesterday.”

She left it behind, heading back to the others.  She reached out for and held a bag for Sharon, while she worked to get the spare tire out of the compartment inside the floor of the trunk.

“Perfectly.  Bystanders are taking care of them,” Clem lied.

“It looks like they walked off for a breather after that scare,” Daniel said, his arms and upper body draped over the roof of the car.  He winked at Clem.

“Can you not put all your weight on the top of the car and jostle it when I’m preparing to jack it up?  Clementine, since you’re the babysitter, can you take Daniel for a walk or something?”

“I can.  You don’t want help?”

“I can change a tire, hon.  I can’t deal with… that.  Not after a ten hour drive.”

“I can barely deal with myself,” Daniel mused aloud.  “I must be insufferable to other people.”

“I like you just fine,” Clementine reassured him.

“I’m so touched,” he said, as they walked away.  He linked arms with her.  “And I’m fond of you.  If I could do it without hurting you, I’d sweep you off your feet.”

“I… really relate there, Dan.”

“Ah,” he said.  He touched her chin and turned her head so she faced him.  “You fell in love.  What a tragedy.  Will you pursue him?  Her?”

“Them.  I need to find my way to normal first.”

“I will be your most ardent ally,” Daniel whispered.  Then, in a more serious voice, he asked, “How will we do this?”

“I need you to be good.  I need you to make this job easy.  Then I get to ask our landlord some questions.”

The place they’d nearly collided with the other car was by a triangular bit of grass, at the foot of a ski hill.  There was a place to pull off, and some picnic tables.  A family sat at one table.

They got up to leave around the time Clem and Daniel were walking by, gathering up snacks and trash.

Leaving behind a gold watch.

Clementine turned, looking back at the car they’d nearly crashed into.  Some teenage boys had pulled out the trash bag and were looking around.

“Sir!” Daniel called out, to the departing family.  “You forgot-”

Clementine gripped his wrist, squeezing.

The family didn’t even seem to hear them.  Clem had only managed to catch a few of the people who left these things in her path.  There was usually a story.  It was usually helpful.

This felt like one of those things.  She looked closer.  A watch with a broken face.

“We’ll sit at another table.”

“We’re not going to take it?”

“But it glitters so.  It catches the light.”

“No, Daniel.  Please.  I said to make this easy.  As my friend.”

He sat at the other table.  “As stars-crossed lovers of others.”

“Are you in love, Daniel?”

“With the world, with possibilities, with dreams, and a bit with every girl I come across.”

“No.  I don’t know if I could.  They gave me such a love for singing and tragedy, I don’t know if I have enough room in my heart to give a girl.”

Three items in less than twenty-four hours?

She looked out over the small town.  It was just big enough that she could see it all without having to turn her head to take in more of it.  Framed by hills.

“This isn’t what our keeper thinks it is.”

“He’s not our keeper, Daniel.”

“This place, this town.  It’s so bloody and beautiful, and there are motes of dust in the air that catch the light in a way that pierces my heart.  Our keeper is so cruel, sending me here.  I wonder if he knew what he was doing.”

“That mummified thing you didn’t like?  It said Mr. Bristow pretends.”

“Oh he does, he does.  Oh, this place is so heady with blood it makes me feel like a carnivore drunk on rich meat.  It’s making you richer.”

“The items?  It’s… this place is worse for me?”

“It’s all lining up, making you more you.”

“Fuck, okay, do you want to leave, Daniel?  I don’t think it would earn us points with our landlord, but if this place is bad for you maybe we should turn around and go.”

“But then how could we find you a way to reunite with this them that you fell for, hm?” Daniel asked.  He placed elbow on table, chin in elbow, his long wavy black hair in his face.  His eyes peered through the hair, looking off to the side.  “Perhaps we could ask that deer for directions.”

Clem twisted in her seat.  A deer wouldn’t be surprising in a town like this, with more nature around it, but-

It was a girl, walking through the edge of the woods, with red-blonde hair, a raglan tee, and shorts.  A girl a bit younger ran behind, with waist-length blond hair.

“She’s skittish.  Pretending she doesn’t see us.  We should be gentle when approaching her.”

“Is this what Bristow wanted us to investigate?  Or are we getting sidetracked?”

“I think the sidetrack is the main track.”

“That’s more worrying than a lot of main tracks I can imagine.”

“I can imagine a lot,” Daniel said.  “But I don’t think he would send us to do much killing.  You’re too gentle, Sharon would hate it, and I’d be very bad at it.  I’m so distractable.  I leave that sort of task for my little sister.”

“Ho!” Daniel called out, raisng a hand.  “Hello!”

The girl with the reddish hair froze in place.

He was up out of his seat.  Clem had to extricate herself from the picnic bench and chase after.

The girl ventured a bit closer.

“You glitter,” Daniel said.

“Can I help you?” the girl asked.

“You’re carrying it.  It swims in the air around you.”

“He’s… quirky, sorry,” Clem said.

“Are you, um, new to Kennet?  I haven’t seen you around.”

“Not staying for long,” Clementine said.

“You dressed yourself up in it.  You took so much care, but you’ve been using it less.  Why be so conservative when you have it to spare?” Daniel asked.  “Paint with bolder strokes!  Be bolder!”

He stepped closer, and between body language and his intensity in tone, Clementine grabbed his arm, stopping him from advancing.  The girl took a step back, and the younger one with blonde-brown hair stepped to one side, almost protective.

The girl looked scared.  Really scared.

“Daniel?” Clem asked, tightening her grip.

He looked at her with the saddest eyes she’d seen.

“Do you think you could take a seat at the bench?  Leave the watch alone.  Just… give me a chance to ask for directions and stuff?”

“Directions.  We have to find you your way to where you have to be.”

“I can put aside my own heartbreak if it means sparing you from yours,” he said.  He touched the side of her face.

Then, slumping, swaying like he was a bit drunk, he made his way back to the bench.

“Sorry,” Clementine said.

“I don’t um… I’m not so great with people who are… off, apparently.”

“Sorry again,” Clementine said.  “I’m sorry to bother you.  I don’t want to keep you.  You can go back to your walk, I’m going to look after my friend.”

“You should go,” the girl said, almost whispering.

“Leave.  Whatever brought you here… whoever.  If you’ve got a goal or if there’s something going on… I don’t think it’s worth it.  There are other ways, that don’t make things this messy.  Go.”

The blonde girl with dark circles under her eyes shook her head.

“Okay,” Clem said.  “Okay, sure.  Yeah.  My… acquaintance is fixing the tire that blew out.  We nearly had a collision, I think it was my fault.”

“A popped tire is your fault?”

“Yeah,” Clementine said.

“I’ll take us straight out of here, if she lets me drive, or I’ll convince her to go.  Somehow.  I know well enough to take advice when I hear it.”

“Thank you,” the girl said.

“I don’t suppose I could ask questions?  Get some answers?  I… I’m pretty wildly desperate.”

“I’m sorry.  I don’t think I should.”

Clementine clenched her fists.

“Your friend is really making himself at home,” the blonde girl said.

“Listen, I’m going to go anyway, we’ll get in the car as soon as the tire is replaced, and I’ll get them to go even if you won’t answer.  But please, I scrape by on the little tidbits I can dig up.  I don’t know if you have any tips, or anything-”

“Your friend left,” the girl with the reddish hair said.

Sharon wouldn’t, would she?

Clementine turned.  She looked to the road, and saw that sure enough, the car was gone.  The other car without a driver was gone, which had had the black bag in it, as were the teenagers and other bystanders.

“Your other friend, I meant,” the kid said.

The picnic table was unoccupied.

Daniel being off on his own was so much worse, and Shellie might literally kill her, if Daniel hadn’t been fibbing about that.

They both left?  They left her like this?  Alone?

She walked over to the table, trying to see what might have captured his attention.

She looked back, for the two girls.

She pulled out her phone, to dial Sharon, because the first priority had to be Daniel.

She didn’t get as far as dialing the number.  She stared at the time.

It had not been that long of a car ride.

She hurried over to the other bench.  The golden watch was still there.  A broken face, each bit of broken glass showing a different set of hands moving at different speeds.

“Hi!  You’ve reached Sharon Grigg.  I’m busy filming and can’t get distracted with my phone, I hope you understand.  Leave a message and I’ll get right back to you as soon as I’m done my show.”

“It’s Clem.  Call me,” she said, leaving a message.

She ran her hands through her hair, turning around on the spot.

She swiped the phone from the picnic bench, then strode toward the road where the car had been parked.  “Fuck!”

“Miss!” someone called out.

It was a woman who might’ve been homeless, from the state of her teeth, with the red face of an alcoholic.  “You’ve got a, uh-”

The woman pointed at her foot.

Clem’s shoelace had dragged across the ground, and it had picked up a passenger.

“Saw it glinting,” the woman said.  “Thought you might want to know before you lost it, if it’s yours.”

It was an earring, the hook caught on the fabric of the lace.  With a long blue gemstone.

Clem spent a few seconds shaking her head, looking down at it.

What had Bristow done, sending them here?

“Thank you,” she told the woman.  She grabbed the earring and broke into a run.  Daniel first.  He was most important.  She’d start by heading toward the prettiest places, and go from there.  Which looked like the river.  She held her tongue until she was out of earshot.

This was the worst place for them to be.  The worst place for her to be.  But she had responsibilities.