Killing Time in Crystal City (2 page)

“That is correct.”

“I was going to guess Benedict, or Kenton, or Skippy.”

“Kiki Vandeweghe,” I assure her.

“And you're just gonna go with that, yeah?”

“Because it's my name.”

“Your very red ears wiggle a bit when you lie. Awfully cute. Like how elephants flap away overheating with their ears.”

“Kiki. Van—”

“Where have I heard that name before? Is it some sports—”

“So what's your name?” I blurt.

She laughs. “Well, I was gonna be Kiki Vandeweghe until you showed up. So I guess I'll go with Anastasia Dimbleby.”

“Really?” I say, as if anybody's name should really come as a surprise.

“For you, we'll just leave it at Stacey. Best not to make things any more complicated for you than they already are.”

Right, so it's more mockery. No problem. “Thanks for that, Stacey,” I say, getting a stupid little shot of thrill when I say her name.

Stacey. My friend, Stacey. I made a friend. Already.

“What are you, like a human thermometer or something?” she says. “You need to get that blushing thing checked before your head pops right off.”

I really, really do, dammit.

“Sign?” I say, pulling out the little stubby blue marker that I have been carrying for just this purpose.

“What?”

“I want you to sign my cast. I want to collect signatures as a kind of record of my travels. And then I'll sign yours.”

“Okay,” she says, shrugging, “but no thanks on signing mine. I prefer all record of my travels to be kept inside my head and no place else.” She then goes on to sign “Anastasia Dimbleby” in long sloppy script along the belly of the forearm part. I'm about to pull back when she turns it over and signs “Stacey” across the knuckle part where I can look at it all the time.

“So, Stacey, are you running away?”

“Why would I do that? I don't run away from things, things run away from me. I'm just on a kind of grand tour.”

“That sounds nice,” I say.

“Nice,” she repeats, but in a tone with twelve more layers of everything than the one I used.

“When did the tour start?”

“Two and a half years ago.”

“When does it finish?”

She lets this last one sit there for several seconds, though her face shows nothing along the lines of pondering.

“I haven't given that a single minute of thought.”

That one sounds like a hint that further questions will not be taken at this time. So we both just look ahead for now.

•   •   •

There it is. I can see it coming, and I rush back up through the near-empty bus to my original seat so I can take it all in fully.

Crystal City.

“Don't you want to come up here and have a look, Stacey?” I call back to her. Best seats in the house. She has her eyes closed and waves at me wearily. I return to the view by myself.

Is there a better capsule, a better pod of motion and vision? A space module, sure, I'd be on that right now if it was ever on offer, pointing and laughing at everybody stuck down here on Planet Puke. But let's be real. And real is the front seat on the top deck of a bus going
somewhere.
Everything is in front, everything's forward. Nothing's behind you, no rear window view for you, sir.

The bus station I come into, though, looks just like the bus station I pulled out of. Could just about be the same place. Could be a big fat fast one played on me, and the driver took a big wobbly go-round to get back to the same, same place.

Except why would he do that? Because people don't need reasons. Making believe that people need reasons to be demented and shitty accomplishes nothing other than to make you demented and shitty yourself. Which you don't want. I have to remember to tell Stacey that at an appropriate moment so she knows that I did in fact learn a little something about life before I met her. A little something.

Except, anyway, I saw it, more than the bus station. I saw Crystal City on the approach. So no matter how much the travel zombie industry wants to disguise their zombie-town depots to look just like each other everywhere, we know better. We won't fall for it, because we have arrived, and we know it.

Why do they want to do that anyway, make your destination look like your departure when they know all you want to do with your departure point is to depart it?

Anyway.

“Anyway,” I say, as the bus hisses into its bay and I return to collect my backpack and my actual friend.

•   •   •

The bus station of Crystal City is precisely as grimy as the one back in Ass Bucket. It's a little bigger, though, so there are more bays, more buses coming in, more going out, belching more exhaust into the oily air and beeping randomly and for no apparent reason other than to make everybody more jaggedy and angry.

I follow behind Stacey as we bump our way out of the big daytime dusk of the garage area, fighting through the flow of fellow travelers to get to the terminal on the other side of the thick glass doors. Already my eyes feel irritated and what passes for air here is working my lungs over to provoke the first whistlings of wheeze as I breathe.

The diesel-mechanical stench is replaced by a deep-fried-humanity stench as we push through the doors into the waiting lounge, cafeteria, ticketing offices tilt-a-whirl of busfolk society. Just a few steps in, Stacey turns around sharply and I almost bump into her before braking.

“Is that you making that noise?” she says.

“No,” I say, and lung-whistle right through it.

“Of course,” she says. “Of course you have asthma. Why wouldn't you have asthma?”

“Okay,” I say firmly, “first, it's
controlled
asthma, it's only that the concentrated bus fumes set it off a little. And second, is that some kind of asthmatic stereotyping thing you're doing there? Because that would be very uncool.”

Stacey's hungry grin tells me that my passionate defense of the maligned tribe of asthma sufferers has done nothing to the old fire of prejudice other than throw another log onto it. Before she can say more, however, she's cut off.

“Derek?” says the small, nerved-up girl who nudges Stacey aside to speak right into my chin like it's a microphone. “Are you Derek? You are, right? Sure, it
is
you. It's me, Molly.” As she says her name she smiles really hard, really hard, as if you can amp up a smile like you can a scream. She also holds up her right arm, showing me her cast.

Her intensity could just about push me backward all by itself but I help it along by inching away from her breath, which is slightly sour but with a top layer of Scope that is so strong it's almost a mist.

“Sorry,” I say, “but I'm not Derek.”

“What?” she says, sounding genuinely perplexed by my failure to be Derek. “But you look like you, pretty much. And it's the time, and I'm here. And the cast, and everything. You have the cast, and everything.”

Stacey takes this as her cue, and bumps Molly's shoulder with a casted forearm roughly enough to send her sideways into the path of a big fat businessguy, who jolts her even harder without seeming to notice.

“Yo, rudegirl,” Stacey says as Molly pushes her glasses back up her face and fails to hide the large, watering eyes. “You are mistaken. This is Kiki Vandeweghe, he's not your Derek.”

I'm looking at the slight, twitchy girl whose voice sounds like she has an air bubble trapped in her throat, and who is dealing with the superior force that is Stacey by wrapping her arms around one another in what looks like a badly needed hug. And as I'm looking I think I am sorry for not being Derek. I'm sorry I couldn't have been that, and prevented this.

“Hey, sorry,” Stacey says a lot more warmly now that she has made her point about manners and now that she can see the delicacy of the little lost creature before her. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Molly shakes her head without speaking and continues her unilateral embrace. Her hair is a large gingery mass of a garden with curly parts and frizzy parts and bushy parts shaped into an almost perfect globe. She seems to have attempted some kind of parting in there between the middle and the left side but it's mostly fought back, and the overpowered hair clip is really just floating about six inches away from the scalp. Between the shape, the color, and the midstripe it looks a lot like a Cleveland Browns helmet.

Stacey steps up to her and gently takes the clip, which appears to be in the form of a yellow school bus, and works it back through the hair to where it belongs. Molly holds completely still, but follows Stacey intently with her wide eyes.

Suddenly it occurs to me. Maybe I just could be Derek.
The
Derek or
a
Derek, what's the difference? I'm betting no difference at all, as far as Molly is concerned. So yeah, why not? She could have her Derek, the universe could have some rightness, and I'm pretty sure it would even be okay with Kiki since he is currently unattached.

“What's this, a convention or somethin'?”

Startled, I look to my left where the speaker is holding up a left arm almost completely covered in a cast that is bent at the elbow. Since it is twice the cast of anybody else's here, I'm thinking he may want to be our leader.

“No, it's not a convention,” is my clever response to the man who acknowledges me not at all.

“Molly?” he says, walking right up to Stacey. “Please, tell me you're Molly.”

Stacey goes right on taking care of the business of hairdressing before she sizes the guy up. “Even if I was Molly, I wouldn't tell you I was Molly.”

Molly tells him she is Molly anyway. “I'm Molly.”

Stacey is still looking the guy up and down when she says to her, “Are you sure? Maybe you're not Molly.”

“I'm Derek,” he says, still staring at Stacey and staring a stare that says he is failing to recognize any of the hostility waves radiating from her.

I step in quickly. “Sign my cast, Derek?”

“What?” he snaps, but grabs the marker and squiggles his mark along the outer edge up near the elbow.

“This is your Derek?” Stacey asks, getting in between them and holding her gaze.

“I guess so,” Molly says.

“Who are you?” Derek asks Stacey's back. Stacey's back keeps him on hold.

“You thought he”—she thumb-points back at Derek—“looked like him?” She pinkie-points at me.

“The picture was kinda blurry,” Molly says, the air bubble in her throat expanding.

“Oh, the picture is more than
kinda
blurry,” Stacey says.

“What picture are we talking about?” I ask.

“Uh, I'm here to meet Molly, right, so if the two of you who are not Molly would be on your way, we can get on with getting to know each other.”

“
That
picture,” Stacey snaps.

And a picture he is. I mean, I know I'm not bringing home any blue ribbons from the fair, but if he looks like me it has to be me after being dragged underneath a truck, left to age in the summer sun for a couple of months, and then given an all-over coating of a fine-grade motor oil. Although, it appears by his dense stubble that he is well capable of growing a beard. Like, three times a day.

“How old are you,
De-rek
?” Stacey says with a hammer blow to that second syllable.

He seems to be up for the game with her, which I personally think is unwise.

“Why don't we just call it early thirties,” he says, all leery.

“What piss,” Stacey spits. “I didn't ask what year you were
born
.”

“See, Molly,” Derek says, leaning in to take her hand, “I tried to be nice and get along with your friends, for your sake, but it just doesn't work with some people.”

Then, it goes emphatically wrong.

Then, Molly
takes his hand.

Then, Stacey nearly takes
off
Molly's hand, in slapping the two apart.

“What's
wrong
with you, girl?” Stacey says, starting to shuffle the girl away toward the streetside exit. “This is a bad thing. You have to know this is a bad thing.”

“Nothing's wrong with me,” Molly says, but puts up no resistance to Stacey's mothering.

“You are outta line,” Derek snarls, walking after them. “She wants to be with me.”

Even though nobody's invited me, I start fast-walking after them. Derek is managing a seriously quick stride that keeps pace with the now-running girls while at the same time not looking like he's chasing or pursuing anybody. The kind of thing I'd think takes practice.

What kind of guy practices that?

Myself, I'm pretty sure I look like I'm running, or run-shambling, as I catch up to the action. The girls have reached and gone through the middle one of a five-across bank of glass doors to the street. They run hard left. Seconds later, Derek goes through that same door while I pass through the one to his immediate left.

Then it all becomes a mess of a run-shamble as I half-stumble, half-throw myself to the ground in Derek's path. I fall hard to the pavement, breaking my fall mostly with my good arm while I also take Derek right out of the play. He hits my side just below his knees and just like that he is up and over, his legs taken right out from under him. I am looking in the direction of the fleeing girls as Derek flies over me and hits the pavement with his jaw after his big bent cast breaks all up on impact with the sidewalk.

He is howling and growling, rolling on the ground and holding his resmashed broken arm and bleeding a good puddle from his mouth as I scramble up and scram away.

I might not be a superhero, but I can fall down like nobody's business.

•   •   •

I walk up the street, through the center of Crystal City, trying to catch up to them. I trot for a couple of blocks and then walk hard for a couple more. Then I walk slowly for a couple more, before I start trying side streets off the main drag and then side streets off those, with no plan, no idea what I'm doing. And no luck.