theurges

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Oublie

 

They finally got the bracelet off Roland -- Andrew had to kneel on his chest for them to get it free -- and once it was gone, he'd calmed down a little bit. Nadine stared down at him, his face twisted in agony, and idly thought to herself that it had been many, many months since she'd seen that face. His face now was like his face in bed, when it was finally ending and she could get some rest: completely gone, lost in sensation. She wondered what it would be like to sleep with him now, after everything. She wondered if he'd be impressed with her new job. He'd never seemed too interested in her gifts before, but she knew he liked money. There was money at this job, and new clothes, and a gorgeous new house. She wanted to invite him over, and see how well she and Apache were doing. How happy she was without him. She wanted to show him that Apache had won, and their friendship had stayed strong, no matter what he did. She wondered where the thought came from, and then wondered what she was doing, standing there watching her ex-husband possibly dying in front of her. What kind of a person would…

"Nadine, get out of my way please. This man needs medical attention before we can even…"

 

She stumbled as Buzz pushed past her, smiling at him. Of course she'd get out of his way. Let the professionals do what they did. She could help, though, couldn't she? What good was a gift if you couldn't use it to help people. Even people you hated. But did she hate him? She didn't love him, not in the way you love people you love, not like you love your husband or your best friend, but she didn't bear him ill will. She could remember plenty of good times, with him. More good times than bad, really. But more times still she could remember just a strange nothingness, neither good nor bad, where they lived in the blank spaces around each other. But wasn't that marriage? Mining memories out of the dead space between lives? Trying to dig in closer and closer, like marmots in a den, trying to reach through to them, through their skin, trying to become so close that it didn't matter if they were gifted or head-blind, moving into them like an ocean of love and thoughts and memories and everything, like Tetris blocks, fitting perfectly together until all your sides touched their sides, like Buzz's aura, like an impossibly complex structure in an infinite number of dimensions, touching touching touching…

 

"Nadine!"

Claire slapped her, across the face. She was still standing in the middle of the ruckus, holding her replacement clothes. What was a little coffee stain in an emergency? She dropped them on the floor, since she didn't need them, and stood near the pile, looking down at Roland. His hands were like claws and there were tears streaming from his eyes. She looked back up and smiled: Claire seemed so concerned, so loving. She didn't know Claire cared so much about her. Sometimes people have to hurt you so that you know how much they love you. Her mother was that way, sometimes, forcing her way into Nadine's life at inopportune times. Apache was always doing things that hurt her feelings, but it only proved that they were comfortable with each other. Like sisters, like siblings. It wasn't really painful if they didn't mean it, was it? Like that slap, Claire was confused about her and thought she was out of it. But Nadine wasn't out of it, she was entirely into it. She knew exactly what she was doing and where she was.

"Nadine! Fuckin' … Michael, get her out of here. I can't deal with two at once."

 

Michael took her hands calmly and smiled at her, worried. They stood there for what seemed like an eternity, looking at each other. Nadine had never really noticed how lovely Dr. Palatine was. She felt guilty for laughing, when Apache had called her a tranny. Her face was severe, sure, but have you ever looked, I mean really looked, at a supermodel? They're beautiful because they're special; because nobody else looks like them. They're like rare gems, and that's why they deserve our money. That was what Michael Palatine looked like, too, if you just took the time to notice. The lines across her forehead and the firm set of her mouth: she was a strong woman, a staunch woman. You could base your whole philosophy on Michael's face: to be strong, and giving at once. To be both loving and stern. She was probably the finest doctor in the clinic, really. Nadine started to get excited about going on rounds with Michael, which she rarely got to do, because the identity cases were usually such strong transmitters and she herself was still working on broadcasting…

 

"Nadine. I need you to put one foot in front of the other. We're checking you in. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I'm a patient. I just need to be patient."

"That's right. Do you trust me?"

"Ixnay, Oublie." Nadine began to laugh.

 

"Nadine, I need your consent."

"I don't really think I can use my hands right now. They're indisposed."

They were in reception, now. Nadine slowly maneuvered her head toward Roland, to see how he was doing. The floor was empty and everyone was gone from the lobby. Where had they gone?

"What time is it, Michael? Where's Roland?"

"They put him in restraints an hour ago, he's in Intensive."

"Where am I going?"

"You're going to White Hall. We need to get you away from him, and away from the site of the incident. So I need you to walk. Can you do that for me?"

"I'm afraid I can't sign anything. I just need to be patient. I give verbal consent."

"That's good, Nadine. Thank you."

 

"Michael. You're a good friend."

"What I am, is a scared lady. You are freaking me the hell out, Blumenthal."

"Bracelet."

"Yeah, that was…"

"No, I'm being patient. I need a bracelet that says 'Blumenthal,' so they'll know I'm not a doctor."

"We put one on you an hour ago, in reception."

They were sitting on a bed, in White Wing. Michael was close to tears.

 

"I'm not a doctor."

"Nadine, you're in trouble. We're going to help you, and then everything will be okay."

"I don't like hospitals. I like being a doctor because then it's just work."

"I know what you mean."

 

"I'm trying to be patient."

"Me too, kid."

"Where is Grace?"

"She came to visit you an hour ago."

"She wasn't sad."

"If you say so."

"Where's Apache."

"Nowhere near this room, I'll tell you that. She's not going to be visiting for awhile."

"Because she slept with Roland."

"Yeah. When did you pick that up?"

"He was on the floor. He looked like he was coming. You took off the snake."

"It was killing him. We tried to get you away, before we took it off, but…"

"I was being patient."

"That's one word for it."

 

"Apache needs to take hers off too, now. There's no need for it now."

"Trust me, that's the first thing I will tell her, when we can locate her. Lots of other things too, but that's the first thing."

"I still love her, Michael. You can't be mean to her. It hurts."

"…I know. Could you try getting some sleep? It's been forty-eight hours."

"It's … Thursday morning?"

"Yeah. We've been sitting with you in shifts but for some reason you'll only talk to me."

"I like you. I'm patient."

"So you've said."

"If it's Thursday I've got rounds."

"Not this week, Nadine. This week you are taking it easy."

 

"What time is it, Michael? Where's Roland?"

"Intensive, for the last week. Some kind of reverb effect from being around too many sensitives, and the bracelet… He's headblind, we don't actually know much about treating them yet."

"Where am I going?"

"Nowhere. You're on White Hall until we can get the big guns here."

"I'm afraid I can't sign anything. I just need to be patient. I give verbal consent."

"Thanks, Nadine."

"Michael. You're a good friend."

"Nadine, I happen to think you're pretty wonderful too. We're going to figure this out. Just don't be scared. They said you had another screaming fit last night."

 

"I'm not a doctor anymore. I liked being a doctor."

"Everything is going to be okay, Nadine. This is just like… This is like when Andrew got stuck in the Book Of Dimma."

"I don't like hospitals. I like being a doctor because then it's just work."

"Don't be embarrassed. I know about your childhood and all that. This isn't your fault. This is a bump in the road. You didn't do this, honey."

"Where is Grace."

"She's worried sick, she's trying to find help for you."

"Where's Apache. She slept with Roland."

"We're having trouble locating her."

"I am patient. You can't be mean to her."

"So you've said."

 

"Have you ever looked, I mean really looked, at a supermodel? They're beautiful because they're special; because nobody else looks like them. They're like rare gems, and that's why they deserve our money."

"Please don't start telling me how pretty I am again. It makes me want to punch you."

"Just be patient. Blumenthal."

"We're going to fix you, Nadine. You need to sleep. Just please, sleep."

 

"If it's Thursday I've got rounds."

"It's not Thursday anymore, Nadine. Just find a way to rest, please."

"I'm not a doctor."

"None of us are. It's okay."

 

"What if I don't come back."

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE: To The Casbah

 

The bracelet wasn't helping. Well, it was helping in that Nadine had stopped getting spooky, and Apache could tell that she wasn't leaking any memories, but it wasn't helping her feel any better.

She sat in the backyard, waiting for Nadine to come home, waited until the sun went down, tossing a tennis ball against the side of the trailer. She wondered how long it would take for somebody to come around the corner, or shout from a window, and tell her to stop. But the sound was just so satisfying, the thunk and then the sound of it coming back to her.

The bracelet was like that, in practice: like a thousand, a million tennis balls, hitting the wall and coming back to her. Every thought, every memory of him, his smell and his smile and the sickening feeling of Roland's skin under hers, came bouncing back. With nowhere else to go. It was all she thought about, circled around by the snake like this. Her dreams were hot, sticky romps in a devil's playground, his face shifting and changing as she looked down at it. She started going out more often than she ever had before, just to dilute the memories of him.

She wondered, idly, if it were worse for him. He had to be experiencing the same thing, the constant shameful onslaught of sex and self-hatred. It was sweaty and red. He didn't even have Winter Horse's training to deal with it. Knowing Roland, he was probably finding a way to enjoy it. She couldn't manage even that. She pushed them further and further, daring them to do stuff she'd never even thought about doing before. She scared some of them, she knew. She liked the feeling.

Toss and return, toss and return. She'd been drinking straight from a tequila bottle the whole afternoon, having decided that she'd rather die than go on like this. It was like the Night of the Serpent, but all the time. And with all that stress and anxiety gone, Nadine was blooming. She was joining all kinds of clubs, rediscovering herself as a divorcee she called it with a twinkle in her eye. It was as though she'd forgotten all the tears of the last several months. And normally, you'd be happy for your friend if she found this new kind of excitement about life, Apache thought. Except she knew what lay on the other side of it.

So why not just take that snake bracelet and run? Why not head for the hills, say goodbye, and disappear? It would be the kindest thing. Nadine deserved better. Way better, Apache knew, because the reason she wasn't leaving was because she was weak. She kept finding new ways to be a bad friend, and this was by far the worst. Because apache knew she'd die, if she didn't have Nadine. All that time before they'd found each other again, that hadn't really been living. She couldn't go back to it. She'd wither. Or she'd get drunk and sad enough to do herself in, or find some guy willing to take things all the way. She knew it, and it scared her, so she kept going on with Nadine, sharing dinner and quiet times in front of the TV, or out on the patio, laughing as though nothing were wrong. Because she was weak and afraid.

 

When Nadine finally came home, she was carrying a bottle of red wine and wearing her nicest outfit, grinning from ear to ear.

"Get dressed, Patch. We're having classy dinner."

"How come?"

"Because we are celebrating. Momma's got a date."

"What? Then you shouldn't be drinking…"

Red wine always went to Nadine's head. Usually about ten minutes after she woke up the next morning.

"Relax, take it easy, Frankie says. Date's not until this weekend, and I want to celebrate, so put on your dancing shoes. I ordered in. Italian from your favorite place and mine. We are going to drink this bottle of wine and talk about dating. I need some tips."

"Are you nervous?"

"Girl, I'm itchin' to get down. Time to take the training wheels off."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves…"

"I'm not in high school, Apache. I'm not in love. But I do think dating is a good idea."

"What's the guy like? What's his name?"

"We don't care, we're the Bad Girls of Bartleby Creek Trailer Home & Parking Lot."

"By gosh."

"By gosh! Now get your hottest dress on! We're dining al fresco."

"Do I need to give you the talk?"

"Apache McGillicuddy Princess Grace Cleopatra Tear, Esquire, I don't need a talk. It's not like I've only slept with one man in my life. There were others before Roland, and besides, it's just a date."

"Make him work for it."

"This is what I'm saying."

 

Three hours later, Nadine was trying to teach Apache how to hula dance, based on some cable access channel show she'd seen in the fourth grade.

"I said hela, that's a lele."

"Either way I'm not going anywhere. Can't we just do that huli thing?"

"Like, over and over until we barf? You're not going anywhere that way either."

"But it's sexier."

It was true: Apache looked exceedingly sexy doing the huli.

"You gotta teach me how to move like that, Patch. I'll take my new beau dancing and blow his mind."

Apache giggled, her hands over her head. Her bracelet shone in the streetlamps.

"Just let go, Blue. Everybody's body wants to be hot."

Nadine stood up, a bit wobbly on her pins, and tried to let go. She swayed her hips and giggled, giving Apache a look that was equal parts sexy and ridiculous.

"Come with me to the casbah, little lady. We will feast on figs and pigs and … macadamia nuts, or…"

Apache laughed and jumped so that they were standing together, facing the house.

"Pretend the dreamcatcher in the window is your fella. What's his name?"

"Gary Wright."

"You mean… Mister Right?"

Nadine snorted.

"Mister Right Now."

An old joke, but still impressive.

"Nadine!"

"What? Little momma, I am out and about! Swing those hips!"

They focused on the task and did the huli until they felt sick. Around and around and around, hips circling. They collapsed together, laughing uproariously.

"I'm glad you're getting out there, Nadine."

"Well, you can't mope forever. After what he did to me… Well, I suppose it could have gone worse. I can barely remember it, any more."

"Good. Leave it behind."

"I wonder, though. What he's eating, or whatever. I bet he's reverted to total bachelordom."

Apache had a long-standing agreement with herself that you don't speak ill of the ex, so she kept quiet. Nadine sipped her tea quietly. It was a soft night, the air was just warm enough that you felt the breeze.

"I really do want to learn to dance, though. I feel strongly that my body requires me to learn to be sexy."

She half-stood, fell back into her chair, and then stood up again with purpose.

"Look at the dreamcatcher, you said. Okay, Mr. Dreamcatcher. Bring me a dream."

She stared it down with the gaze of a predator and began to move with purpose. Apache laughed, applauding her, and began to sing a little song to help her out. Nadine really felt like she was getting it, after awhile: she could feel all the tension running out of her back and shoulders, and she felt like her body was one continuous line, moving and swaying.

"By George, I think she's got it!" shouted Apache, and Nadine put her arms over her head. She felt like a queen. He would be sitting down, at their table, and she'd jump up -- so spontaneous! So sexy and fresh! And she'd back up a few steps, and put her arms up in the air, and do her huli, and he'd look at her like something entirely new, something he'd never seen before. She would be beautiful. And he'd stand up, as though he didn't even intend it, and before you knew it they'd be dancing together. It would be so perfect, so normal, and he wouldn't even know how hard she'd fought to get there.

Apache had gone quiet, looking out over the small stand of trees behind their trailer. Suddenly, the streetlight just overhead lit up like lightning, reflecting Nadine's image back at her.

 

She was old, and hippy; she was dumpy and awkward. The arms over her head jiggled with fat; her dress pulled in the wrong places and hung limp in others. Her shoes were cheap, scraping through on one heel, where she'd repaired them the week before. Her jewelry was tawdry and fake-looking, in the sharp orange light. Looking down at herself, her skin was jaundiced and wrinkly, like an old woman's skin. Too many cigarettes. She wore her beers like a belt and her depression binges like saddlebags.

What was she thinking, with all this romance? Mr. Wright was just like the rest of them, too far out of her league to even take her seriously. She should just find another fat, undereducated drunk -- here in the trailer park, maybe -- and settle. She'd never get a real man, or a real lover, not like the kind they tell you about in fairy tales. Those men were for other women. She needed to get real and stop letting Apache help her build these castles in the sky. She was foolish and old and drunk, and nobody was going to save her.

"Nadine," Apache's voice creaked. "Nadine, stop."

It must be bad, if she was transmitting loud enough that Apache heard. She could hear her friend weeping at the picnic table. Tears were streaming down her face, but she kept dancing.

 

The next day, Apache took the Greyhound south. There was a little clinic she'd heard about, where people with the gift could get help. A skinny little bitch with brown hair and a cocktail dress from an Audrey Hepburn movie met her at the door.

"I'm Grace Connelly. You called yesterday? Apache Tear, right?"

"Yeah. I need to forget some stuff."

"We'll see what we can do to help," Grace said, and took her arm. She resisted.

"Thing is, I don't want to remember this. Here. I live with a psychic, and she'll …"

"We'll talk about it," said the young lady, and guided her sweetly through the sliding doors, and into the Halcyon Clinic.

END BOOK TWO: SERPENTINE

CHAPTER NINE: Three Weeks' Time

 

Nadine came back from her rotation with Buzz exhausted, only to find they'd worked through the evening. It was eight o'clock when she returned to their scary little room, and found Apache fairly abuzz with excitement. Apparently things had gone well with Grace at lunch, but Apache wasn't forthcoming with details, and frankly Nadine was too tired to push and pry the necessary amount to find out. Only three cases and she'd put in more than twelve hours! She fell asleep without eating, and woke up ravenous and ready to work.

 

Dr. Redbud had given her two weeks to settle in. The second day of her rotation, Apache chose their apartment and made arrangements to move them in; within three days she had everything set up. She talked Andrew into clearing Nadine's callsheet for the afternoon, and she and Buzz surprised Nadine with an abduction.

The house was perfect: cozy and homey, with round arches and soft acoustics, just like Nadine always wanted. The floors were all big Mexican tile, and all along the back walls, opening onto the garden, were glass doors, and a semi-enclosed porch where Apache had set up a secondary living room, just for Girl's Night. It was designed almost as a duplex, with the kitchen and living areas in the middle, and then wings for the two girls off to either side, wrapping around the small grassy backyard.

Apache had supervised the transfer of all their possessions from the trailer park -- against Nadine's protests, who thought using a moving man was a sign of weakness and a waste of money -- and had unpacked Nadine's things, leaving the smaller boxes and personal items in her bedroom. Beyond that, she hadn't really decorated much, and the common areas seemed half-done, but Apache's side of the house bore the mark of careful and enthusiastic redecorating. Her bedroom was painted blood-red, with sheer white curtains and a huge black carpet under the bed. It was very dramatic, and very Apache.

Not that Nadine had much time to enjoy their lush new surroundings, although it was lovely to have a place to come home to, and a wonderful place to enjoy her morning coffee.

After two weeks of settling, Nadine began to get anxious about stepping up her responsibilities, but Apache's boundless exuberance and joy went a long way toward soothing her worry. Nadine was impressed by the way Apache had so quickly dug into creating their new home, and so quickly! She wondered what would happen if Apache put that genius to work in the real world; if it would be useful to suggest that Apache take up decorating as a vocation, but decided Apache would get bored soon enough. Although whether that would result in her bugging out more often or actually applying herself to creating a life remained to be seen.

But Nadine kept these thoughts to herself, because things between the two of them couldn't have been better. Realizing how little time they'd have to spend together, between Nadine's work commitments and ongoing exhaustion, they both seemed privately to have decided to make the most of their time together. Lots of hot chocolate and movies when they could sneak them in, excursions to nearby restaurants, and -- on the rare occasion that Nadine cleared her boards sometime before midnight -- movies and shopping. It was ideal, and what made that special was that they both knew it.

And slowly, Nadine's secret guilt for dragging her friend south to Halcyon began to recede, and they bent themselves to the task of adjustment. Nadine still got that funny feeling when she passed certain rooms on the halls, but figured that was just part of the job. If she'd been a pattern-noticing kind of person, unusually so anyway, she'd have noticed those areas were the same on every floor: clustered around 36-D. She didn't even think to ask about it.

 

Nadine was sitting in the lobby on Tuesday of the third week, waiting on an incoming consult for Buzz. It was a slow day; she was looking forward to checking the patient in and then going back home to help Apache with her new project: silkscreening her bedroom curtains. It was to be a minimal design, just those white sheers with the occasional stamp mark of Apache's signature design, the ouroboros. A snake curled around and biting its own tail, Apache had found it in one of Nadine's occult books years ago and fell in love with the image. She'd found the perfect shade of blue for the paint, and had been drawing and re-drawing the image since they'd moved in.

Nadine was wondering whether Apache would feel trampled if she suggested doing all the curtains in the house the same way, in different patterns and colors, when Buzz arrived -- late, as usual -- with a huge grin on his face and a bran muffin in his hands. Bran muffins were the white elephant of the breakfast cart, and the staff were always awarding each other with them, knowing only Grace and Claire ever actually ate them. "Could you pass me that chart? I'll give you a bran muffin," they'd say.

Nadine smiled and moved over on the couch for him, asking what the muffin was for. "For lasting three weeks, I hereby commend you and offer this bran muffin in tribute." She thanked him sweetly and placed it on the side table, then took their coffees from his hands so that he could sit.

"I didn't think I'd make it," she said, but they both smiled. She'd been in love with the place from the first day. And Sunday had marked the release of the little girl, Ruby, who saw ghosts. The smile on her face as she wrapped Nadine in a warm hug was the last sign she needed. She was home. Her first case, cleared.

"How are things at home?"

Buzz was always apologetic about not coming over more often, but from what Nadine could tell, his social life was fairly complicated. She'd dropped by once with a basket of muffins and Andrew had sleepily opened the door in his pajamas, so flustered at seeing her she'd privately promised never to drop by again without calling first, even though Buzz lived next door. She wondered what Andrew was so weird about; Buzz was openly affectionate with him -- well, with everybody -- in front of the crew, although not showy. And frankly, you'd have to do a lot worse than just be gay in order to offend Jeremiah Tarquin, whom she assumed was at the root of Andrew's insecurities. With boys, gay or straight, it was always other boys.

"Awesome. You have to come by, Apache's turning it into a den of fun."

"Which I'm sure suits you just fine."

"Last week she had the Twister mat out when I got home. I didn't ask."

Buzz grinned, filthy thoughts broadcasting loud and clear.

"Barf, Aldrin." Change the subject. "How's your research going?"

Buzz had spent the last several days in a fever working on a personal project. She didn't really understand the specifics, but it had something to do with this program SETI had set up for decoding space transmissions. Computer users could install software on their computers that linked them to the central server, and utilize their extra processing power to contribute to the effort, in effect creating a supercomputer in pieces all over the world. A computer that only existed in theory, made up of shards and fragments of other people's computers. Probably the most Buzz-like of any concept ever, and he had been in love with it forever.

But of late Buzz had decided he wanted to do the same thing with the gifted, set up some kind of social networking system that could run in the background of normal activity, inside their minds, to search for and decode random mental impressions from space. "Psychosocial subroutines," he called them. He said it was the perfect pilot program for teaching people about the possibilities and potentials of the human mind. Nadine had listened to him blathering about it for hours one night before she was able to visualize it: take her little inner house, add a computer and modem, and leave the thing running all the time.

"The real goal is networking the gifted themselves. We're so spread out, it can feel very alone except in special circumstances like ours, here at Halcyon. But we're not headblind -- we don't have to be in proximity to be in contact. Imagine having friends -- just as real as the two of us sitting here together -- on the other side of the globe. That's the real goal."

"What does Andrew think about all this?"

"He loves the practical applications, you know he's obsessed with finding ways of using that 90% of the human mind that don't have anything to do. The rest of it, he thinks is a little…"

"-- Creepy?" Nadine privately agreed. Even if you imagined it as a little emailing computer in your head, there were still issues of security. She had what she considered a healthy fear of computer viruses. Why would you want one in your head?

Buzz laughed. "I know, I know. But everything looks scary until you understand it. It's not that different from what Andrew does, knowing our schedules, or from what we all do every day. We've all got subroutines running, all the time, and we don't even know it. Guilt, fear, shame, hope, old patterns from childhood. Imagine if you could see those for what they are, and edit them, or even admit to them. It's a whole new way of looking at life, Nadine. The potential is scary, but in a good way."

"And then it's just a quick hop to linking them up," Nadine said. Still scary, but it did make sense.

"That's why I want to start it with a known model, that's not so weird. It's not really networking if you're just processing random data. The connections would come later, after people see there's nothing to be afraid of."

"Honestly, Buzz…"

"I'm not pushing, I'm just excited about the idea. Excited enough that I don't even really care if it happens. I just think… The gifted are already different. We already do things other people can't do, and we see things differently. Why not take that as far as we can?"

"I would love to stay normal." Potential or not, people seemed to have arrived at some pretty good ways of existing, over the last several thousand years.

"…Why?"

She was just trying to come up with an answer when the screaming started.

 

Nadine had her back to the doors, so she didn't see them slide open, or the man that walked through them: just Buzz's face as his eyes went wide. But the screaming seemed familiar: a man's voice, higher than was possible, arching up against the sky like crashing cars. The taste of the voice was familiar, it was somebody she knew; the sound was like nothing she'd ever heard before. The sound was something she'd been hearing for months.

Buzz's arms flailed out, spattering her coffee against her linen shirt. Maybe there was something to his subroutines, after all. Time seemed to have slowed down in the echo of the scream, so that even as she turned to look, and Buzz was jumping over the back of the couch toward the man, and she was dropping her own coffee onto her skirt in her hurry to look, somewhere in the back of her mind was the irritation of knowing she'd never get the coffee out of white linen. She'd lost some weight working such long hours -- would the replacement outfit in her locker still be wearable? The wrap shirt was adjustable, but the khakis would be way too loose by now, and she didn't have a belt.

Her blood went cold: teal wrap shirt, khakis, black coffee. The first thing Buzz ever said to her. "He's going to hit you hard when he walks in, because you'll still be freaking out about something I can't see yet. You won't have your defenses up. We'll be good friends by then, so you'll feel safe. That's how he gets you."

She knew who it was before she'd even locked on him: the bright sunshine around him in the morning light made him dark as a shadow, but she'd know that gait anywhere. As he stumbled out into the lobby, nose bleeding, and fell, skidding on his chin, at Buzz's feet, the last thing he said aloud was her name. That Bastard.

 

The other docs came running -- they must have hit the bricks the second the screaming started.

"How's he transmitting?"

"What's he doing? Get him up. Get a crash cart in here."

Claire muscled Nadine to her feet, replacement outfit in hand, and clapped her on the shoulder: "Ready?"

Nadine shook her head, still muzzy from the shock. Everybody was gathered around Roland where he lay on the floor, curled around his fists like a baby in the womb, screaming even louder in the silence. At the reception desk, the girl was going mildly about her business, watching the chaos with a bemused grin. Couldn't she hear it?

"What's that fucking thing on his wrist," Michael spat, and Andrew grabbed one hand, slowly extending it from Roland's abdomen. The Bastard hissed like he was burning.

Grace choked.

"Get that thing off him, Andrew."

It almost seemed alive; sparks made the coils seem to twist and turn around Roland's wrist. The skin underneath the ring was blistered and white. Roland began to howl aloud.

The blue serpent, throwing sparks.

 

 

CHAPTER TEN: Grandmother

 

"Why the hell are you calling me?"

Apache had taken her cell phone out onto the driveway as subtly as she could, hoping to answer it before he hung up. She knew she wasn't strong enough to call him back if he did.

"I've been having these terrible dreams, Patch..."

"Don't you call me that. What was your dream? Was a horrible creature from the past calling from under a rock somewhere? I think I've had that dream…"

"Apache, listen…"

"No, you listen. I don't care about your dreams, I don't care about your feelings. You're making a new life for yourself and I think that's great. Not because I care one way or the other about you, but because your new life, by definition, leaves both of us out of it."

"Apache, I'm not calling because of… Just listen, I'm begging you…"

"Roland, you know what? I'm going to tell you something very important, and I want you to listen up. You mean: nothing. You were just another farmer."

"Farmer? What…"

"Talking. I understand that in your life, you seem to be very important. That's natural. But you're not. Not really. Not from here. You go make your new life and make new mistakes and fix them, and grow and learn and change, and you be proud of yourself. But you're not in this movie. You mean nothing, and you never did. I am so fucking sick of you guys thinking you're going to get something out of us. Women. You look at me and you think I'm special and free and you think that by fucking me you're going to become those things. You won't. You were useful. I screwed up, and I hate myself for what I did. But not because of you."

"Goddamnit, Apache. This isn't about us. This isn't about you. It's not always about you."

"Well, I'm not so sure you're right about that. But tell me, before I hang up: what is it about? If it's not about you and me, which doesn't exist, and it's not about me, which it better not be, what on earth do we have to talk about?"

Even as she said it, she knew.

 

Roland had spent so long ignoring his wife's abilities, her strange behavior, the way she knew things before they happened, that it was hard to admit what a fool he'd been about it. But on the same day he woke up at three a.m. after suffering nineteen nested nightmares in a row, his car died dramatically on the highway, nearly killing him, and then an electrical pole had fallen directly in his path, shooting sparks everywhere, as he made his way up the sidewalk to their house. And he realized that, try though she might, Nadine had been unsuccessful in hiding her true nature from him. And now, out of rage or regret, she was trying to kill him.

After a week of near-misses and scrapes, and a broken leg, he'd finally made an appointment to see a bruja on the East Side, who was said to have a fair amount of the gift herself. Apache, in another context, would have enjoyed every single detail, both of his near-deaths and of his ridiculous attempts to find somebody to explain these things to him. Apparently he'd seen nothing obnoxious about asking the yard guys if they knew any witches or magicians -- as though they were from darkest South America, and not Fresno -- and had ended up needing to find a new landscaping company, and a powerful witch, on the same day.

 

Finally, he'd blundered into a weird little store with spices and herbal packets and strange candles in the windows. "Giant toad sculptures, Apache, as big as your head," he said. And the man there, after questioning him for awhile behind a secretive grin, decided he was serious, and gave him an address. Roland skipped over describing the experience of visiting the witch; Apache was almost disappointed. He was a pretty funny storyteller, even when he didn't know he was being funny. The important thing, he said, was that Nadine had indeed cursed him, but didn't know she was doing it.

"She knew her name, Apache. She said her name to me."

"Bullshit, Roland. Nadine doesn't have a mean bone in her body. Not even subconsciously."

"She'd say the same thing about you."

"Fuck off. What did the witch say was the solution?"

"Well, that's the thing, Apache. Apparently this is your fault."

"Don't you think I fucking know that?"

"No, I mean the part where I'm cursed. The bruja knew that you had the gift too, and she said that you're broadcasting it. What we did. She said on some level you're telling Nadine what we did, and Nadine's hearing you, and now she's going to kill us both."

"…This has got to be the biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard. I knew you were jealous of our friendship, Roland? But you have seriously lost the effing plot if you think I…"

"Apache, seriously, this isn't about you. I'm seriously scared here."

"Good. You deserve to pay. We both do."

"Apache, if it's true, think about what you're doing. To her, to Nadine. Think about what you're putting on her. It's not fair to her."

Apache ripped her thumbnail away from the nail bed, viciously, and her thumb began to bleed. Bastard.

"So you're going to leverage my friendship with Nadine against… what, exactly? Your impending death? Not a fair trade."

"I promise you, Apache. I'll disappear. You won't ever see me again. Nadine either. I'm just really scared here, and I need you to help me. Do it for her."

Apache sighed. Fucking Sweat stuff, invading again. Magic powers and witches.

"What do you need?"

"We have to go see the bruja and she'll do some kind of…"

"-- Rule number one, white boy. Just call her a witch. Your Spanish accent is atrocious. We're going to play this my way, okay?"

"Whatever you want. You know more about this stuff than I do."

"No. I don't."

 

The woman started laughing the second Apache walked in, pointing at her cruelly. Her grandson sat at her feet, and rocked lightly back and forth with an expression of such seriousness Apache wondered if the kid had ever smiled.

"What's so funny, Grandmother?" Apache asked.

"You're like a cracked vase with the world inside. You spend so much time ignoring your gift. Spitting on it, when you could save the world."

"Roland, go outside," Apache said. She didn't want to talk about herself in front of him.

"But I…"

The old woman nudged the child with her foot.

"All boys outside. The women need to talk."

The little boy looked at Apache before he left; his eyes were oceans. He took Roland by the hand and led him from the room.

"What do you mean?"

"There's saints and there's sinners, girl. You could help, and you do nothing. That makes you a sinner by omission. If you're not part of the solution…"

"-- You're part of the precipitate. I know, Grandmother. I'm not here about my career path, I'm here to talk about Nadine."

"I know damn well why you're here, girl. It's no use getting smart with me. I painted the sky when your great-great-grandparents were walking the Trail of Tears."

"If you know me so well, you know I don't want to talk about this stuff. And you know why."

"True enough. We're sisters, you and I."

Apache looked around the little room, with its heavy carpet for a door. It seemed to absorb sound. It was like being locked in a closet with an old woman who smelled like sage and liniment. The smell was chokingly strong, come to think of it.

"Sit, girl. This won't take long."

Apache sat, gratefully, and looked up at the woman. Her face was lined, and seemed carved from wood. She had been beautiful once, with sharp proud cheekbones. She still was; Apache would have liked to photograph her.

"We're not sisters. There's some creepy stuff in here, Grandmother."

She could see the skull of a goat, almost hidden beneath a rocking chair, and several spooky masks adorned the walls.

"It's for ambience. We could be doing this at a Starbucks, but nobody would believe they were getting anything for their money."

"Starbucks?"

"I drive a Prius, girl. Don't imagine that you know me."

Apache laughed.

"Apache Tear. Your name means sadness, for our people. Why did you choose it?"

"Not my people. My people are real estate agents in Sacramento."

"And the women of the Sweat."

"You know it?"

"I know of it. There's a school of thought that would say without places like the Sweat, we wouldn't even have these gifts. It's the stories that keep us alive."

"Places… There are other places like the Sweat?"

"You'll live at one. You'll visit another. You'll die in a third."

"Grandmother, I don't want to die."

"You're going to, if you can't figure out a way around this one."

"I know it."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Can't tell the truth. Can't lie about it anymore, it's leaking out. Can't go somewhere else, because she'd still kill me…"

"Girl, don't be imprecise. You know she's not trying to kill you."

"Things have certainly got harder since …"

"Since you fucked her husband. What are you thinking, living with a powerful psychic like that with something on your chest this big?"

"I love her, Grandmother."

"I see that you do. It burns in your chest."

"Please, help me."

"And what will you give in return?"

"Anything."

"Never say that to a witch."

"What are you asking for?"

"A favor, and a secret. And your death."

"Grandmother…"

"Not now. When the time comes, you'll know what I mean."

"And the favor?"

"Also, when the time comes. Nothing too terrible. Just a little budge in probability."

"And the secret?"

"That one, you give me now. You know the one I mean."

She held out a tiny blue glass bottle, and Apache took it. She looked up at the witch, shivering. The air was close, suffocating.

"You can … see it on me?"

"Girl, it doesn't make you special. It makes you just like one-quarter of all women. You think you're the only girl that ever got interfered with?"

"Not a club I really want to belong to."

"Everything that happens to us, marks us. Every single thing. Doesn't mean it defines you. Why are you called Apache Tear? Something beautiful out of something ugly."

"They marched us down the trails, and eventually some threw themselves off the cliffs, rather than be taken."

"And their tears became stones."

"You know the story."

"Girl, I was there. You thought the name would give you power, make you beautiful again. But it won't, not until you tell. Give me your secret."

Her cheeks were wet; she was angry at the old woman because her cheeks were wet. The room closed in, and it sounded like the ocean. She could hear her heartbeat like a drum.

Apache held the bottle to her mouth, choking back sobs. And she began to speak.

 

The little boy led Roland back into the room, patting his hand kindly, and resumed his seat at the old woman's foot. Roland was supremely uncomfortable. Apache sat on the floor, looking up at him dumbly, wishing she could stretch out in that creepy old closet and take a nap. She summoned her strength and looked at the old bitch savagely.

"I'll have your ass for that, witch."

The old woman chuckled, eyes sparkling, and gave her a thumbs up.

"You are tied together, in your shame. You'll have matching punishments."

The little boy produced something from under the old woman's chair; in the half-light of the candles it seemed to be alive. He held up his hand and looked mutely at the old woman. She reached out and took the object; it seemed to flow to her like water.

"Give me your hands."

Roland held out one arm, shuddering, toward her. Apache rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, roughly, presenting them both. A little ceremony, please?

The old woman stroked their hands and then clasped two identical bracelets -- obsidian, or something, they were never sure -- around their wrists. Blue serpents, sparkling in the dark.

"They'll keep your secret safe, until you're strong. I think you'll find life is easier with them on, but I wouldn't keep them on too long. You two have proven so strong in the face of temptation that I'm sure you'll be fine. While you wear them, none of your secrets will leak out."

"Thank you," said Roland, and she shook her head at him.

"Don't thank me. You're being rewarded for your weakness, in my opinion. This is a punishment. You'll see."

Roland began fussing with his wallet, and Apache strong-armed him back behind her, toward the door.

"Already paid for. Get the hell out of here," she whispered, and looked again at the old witch.

"Grandmother?"

"Yes, darling."

"You said one-quarter?"

"In this country, in this century."

"Couldn't you, I don't know, do something about that?"

Her eyes glittered in the dark.

"We're working on it."

Her witch's laughter followed them out of the closet, down the hall, out of the shop, into Roland's car, down the street, into sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN: HANG THE DJ HANG THE DJ HANG THE DJ

 

"Wow, so…"

"Yeah. She's one of my favorites. Sometimes the job pushes down… Not often," said Grace, "But sometimes. She makes it easier, right now."

"How do you…?"

"Survive? People always say that. Listen, I wasn't kidding before. My gift is a lot closer to hers than to yours. And I know how hard it was for you. You know what that girl was feeling, you've been there."

In a way, Nadine knew, she was right. But still.

"Nadine. If we're going to work together you need to understand this. I can handle it. I'm not a martyr, I haven't been handed anything I can't handle. I could ask how you survive, or how Apache survives."

"So you know her gift?"

"It's not something easily put into words, as I'm sure you know. But it's like that old saying, if you had your option of all the burdens in the world, you'd choose your own. I don't think I feel as badly about it as you, or anybody, does. It's not easy, but nobody's job is easy. If it is, they're doing it wrong. I work it out."

"I just can't…"

"Nobody can. I just look at it like… You like to dance? I love dancing. We go dancing every weekend. And if a song comes on that you don't like, maybe you sit the song out. Get some water, or something. But you don't hang the DJ. Because if you kill the DJ for playing a song you don't like: no more songs. No more dancing. So you can either take a breather -- which I often do -- or you keep dancing. Because the option is, no more music. Ever."

 

The next case on Grace's callsheet, Nadine hated to admit, was a little easier. Not because of the patients, who were clearly in agony, but for whatever reason, it was emotionally easier to deal with. Maybe it was because she'd already seen something so rough, or because the patients were not psychic and so were just broadcasting a normal amount, or because their pain was mostly physical… Whatever reason, it didn't take the bite out of her that she was expecting.

"Wasn't there talk of a 'sentient virus'?" Sounded interesting.

"Yeah, Buzz said he didn't need me. Turns out the kid's telling the truth, so I don't really need to be in there. Catch the symbiote and the pain will go away. It's not a fact of life, so I can't waste my energy. And I really wanted you to meet these two before lunch."

 

The little boy, probably fourteen, was covered in burns.

Grafts at the real hospital, he's healing well. We have medical interns to catch what we don't miss, there.

Nadine noticed that Grace didn't speak aloud in front of them, but more importantly, she hadn't spoken silently to her in front of the little ghost-girl, Ruby.

She picks it all up. We didn't worry about it for awhile, but she started to get antsy once I had to estimate how long her recovery would take.

Nadine could not imagine.

But these kids, they're head-blind. They like the quiet.

Grace adjusted a pillow behind the boy's head. On the other bed was another girl, of similar age, with bright hair. Both her hands were bandaged.

The bandages are driving her nuts. Half the time it's not even pain management, just distracting her.

And the boy?

Mostly worried about her. To the point where we thought he might actually have a gift. It was amazing, Nadine. We'd have the MD's operating on her in another room entirely and he'd be screaming. Half the team was in here. It was like Buzz and Andrew when they were dating, just a complete mesh. That's true love, I guess. Screaming when they're cutting on her. He's sort of a hero around here, and has no idea why.

She looked down at the boy, sleeping soundly. His bangs were in his eyes, he looked like a child.

He picked her. They ended up in here together -- Grace sent her an image of the scene, where the chemical plant had exploded: fires everywhere, gurneys and winding sheets, chemicals pooling on the ground, toxic fumes -- they were skipping school, of all things, and decided to check out the runoff pools, because of the wild colors they turn. They were almost a mile from the actual explosion, but … Chemical burns. Look at him, though.

His aura was a murky and muddled blue-pink, which was totally wrong. Nadine tried to look at it the other way, and saw him now as a small grey wolf. It was licking the girl's snoring hand, and whining. Hers was a cockatoo, curled up against her face on the pillow.

He picked her. I mean, he's sustained almost no personal trauma. And his injuries are twice hers. I treat her pain, his retreats twice as far as hers. You could spend a lifetime…

Grace dropped off suddenly, for some reason, and blushed.

Well. It's an interesting case, anyway. Save him, they both roll and moan; save her, they sleep soundly. I can't imagine loving anybody like that.

Nadine could. Apache Tear. Not even Holden the Bastard, on the day she loved him best, could make her heart hurt like when Apache was in trouble. Maybe it was because Holden's feelings got hurt so often, and Apache's so rarely, but that was the only thing she could think of to compare.

 

"So, I just … Lay my hands on her? I … go inside?"

It seemed grotesque, violating, to go inside this girl's house while she was knocked out. She'd known how, on some level, they'd be doing that -- moving into the patients' minds, moving things around -- but to actually be asked to do it seemed disgusting.

"I know. Trust me, it gets easier. We're just helping. Watch…"

Grace held Nadine's hand, and placed the other on the girl's forehead.

See? See how we move…

Nadine was suddenly in the girl's house, with Grace. It was filled with children's toys: dolls and bright pink kitchen stuff, books, all the things a kid would want. Nadine started to feel funny about her own austere, plain house. She'd built it so long ago.

Let's go find her, said Grace, and pulled her along by the hand upstairs, to the girl's imaginary bedroom. Her imaginary face was as beautiful as ever, luminous, but there was a long scar down the left side. It had healed as well as it could, but you could still see a slight indentation, a discoloration. Nadine looked away.

"Callie?"

Callie sat on the bed, staring out the window.

"He's come again today. Keeps knocking on the door. I can't use my hands."

"Not right now," Grace said. "They got hurt. But you can get stronger."

"What he wants," the little girl said, "He wants so much. I know he thinks I'm going to wake up, and he'll be sitting there like my boyfriend, and I'll wake up in love with him."

"I think that's sweet," Grace said kindly.

"I guess it is, technically, except I don't actually like him and would never date him."

Nadine's jaw dropped. She thought they were in love.

"Well, he seems to like you a lot."

"Yeah, and Heather G., last week, and Brandy the week before that. Let me tell you about boys, Dr. Connelly. They don't know what the hell they want. He's in love with me this week. And if he hadn't gotten me blown up yesterday he'd be moving along right about now."

Nadine couldn't believe it. The little girl -- young adult? -- was so much prettier inside than out, and she had started out lovely, all peaches and cream and that amazing hair.

"That's not very compassionate, Laurie," said Grace. She managed to say it without sounding chiding or nagging; it was something to behold.

"Dr. Connelly, come on. Are you … Are you as pretty as you look?"

Nadine laughed. Only inside could that question make sense. Grace looked at her suddenly, surprised by the laugh, and Nadine looked the girl in the eye.

"Even prettier," she said.

"Well then, you have no idea. Like I thought. I know what I've got. No boobs, a sense of humor, a bunch of freckles. I'm cute, but they don't get it yet. Including my future husband here. I'm just the best option. Frankly, I think he's gay. I mean, his name's 'Harry.' We were kind of going together when I let him take me to the runoff pools, but I was thinking of dumping him anyway. Trust me, if he weren't right here dying along with me, he'd be obsessing on somebody else. Probably that blonde with the big boobs."

Did Claire Redbud have large breasts? Didn't seem likely. Nadine realized this girl probably had never laid eyes on the staff in the real world. It could be anybody!

"Laurie, come on. You're telling me you feel nothing for this kid? He's … You know what we do here?"

The girl nodded, and looked away again, out the window.

"Well, I can tell you honestly that when your pain level goes down, so does his. Do you know how rare that is?"

"You need to talk to him. He forms magical psychic connections with girls all the time. And he writes creepy little letters about it, and talks about it to his friends, and it's totally weird. Maybe he's like you, I don't know. But it has nothing to do with me."

She sounded like Apache: Like guys were these mysterious machines that responded the same way every time, depending on what you did to them. Like it didn't involve you, anymore than an engineer in the caboose cared about the train. Unless it broke.

"Laurie, that's awful. You're never going to get better if you keep thinking such nasty things…"

Grace looked at her with a deadly look, cutting her off. And for real! What was she thinking, saying something like that. She would never say that in the real world.

"I've been here long enough to learn a thing or two about you guys, you doctors. What's your name?"

"Nadine Blumenthal."

"Nadine Blumenthal, stow it. You're such a romantic you've got little bluebirds flitting around your shoulders. Even after everything you still believe that. I'm talking about real life."

"You're fourteen!"

"Yeah, and you're well past thirty. Catch a hint."

"Laurie, I'm going to ask you to be less of a bitch to Nadine. It's her first day."

"Then tell her to butt the hell out, Gracie."

Nadine nodded.

"Fair enough. Let's do some work."

 

Dealing with Laurie for an hour and half, Nadine reflected, was a day's work. On a normal day, of course, which until now had meant a six-hour shift at Target sweeping products across an infrared reader machine and reminding people to press DEBIT or CREDIT. Here at Halcyon, her day wasn't even half over. Grace dropped her with Buzz to run and have lunch with Apache Tear, having cleared her morning schedule.

"I'll see you around, and on rotation later this week. I had a great time -- you're a natural. I think you're probably the only person Laurie actually likes on staff at this point. Can you visit her with me tomorrow?"

Nadine agreed, but found this characterization of Laurie to be somewhat indulgent. She's stopped being horrible, sure, but it was clear she was way too busy to actually like any of the doctors. Frankly, Nadine kind of loved her for it: she couldn't be less interested in this place, or the doctors, or even poor little Harry. She just wanted to fix the problem, come back out into her body when the coast was clear, and get back to doing stuff. Whatever teenagers did, which Nadine could barely imagine anyway, which was clearly part of what irritated Laurie anyway.

"So. Alien abduction, Andrew said. Is that … a metaphor?"

Buzz laughed, all his laconic stress from earlier seemingly evaporated.

"I thought it was a metaphor. Wasted about three days of Palatine's time on it, actually. But no, this is the actual rare true abduction."

"Buzz, aliens don't exist."

"I'm not going to disagree with you. I'm not positive either. But this is differential diagnosis. We've ruled out everything else it could be, so even if it's not alien abduction, we might as well treat it that way. The patient will respond."

"And how long has this particular patient been here, since his close encounter?"

"Mmm. Three weeks. But I only figured out he was really abducted yesterday, so that's water under the bridge."

"Or the Martian canals, in this case."

He laughed and clapped her on the shoulder.

 

"Basically, Andrew's given me twenty-four hours to prove everything is ruled out, or he's calling a psych consult."

"Shouldn't you be ordering those, like, first thing?"

Everybody in this place was obviously crazy, or mentally ill or whatever -- why not give them to professionals?

"I guess, except for how everybody on staff is psychic and can already tell. Right? There's not a psych attending on the west coast that can give a consult quite as fast as one of us taking a little look inside."

"Andrew said that if they're really crazy, they'll believe it all the way down, so isn't it the same thing?"

"Not the whole story. Because, at least in my specialty, if they believe it's true, you're better off treating it like it's real. I was a psychiatrist for ten years before I got here. Trust me, it's all a metaphor anyway."

She wasn't sure what he meant, but so far she didn't feel confident that she'd grasped any of the weird conversations she'd ever had with him, so she just nodded and followed him to Gold Wing.

 

As they passed room 36-D, on the way to their patient, Nadine had the strangest sensation. It was like hearing something, only quiet. It was like in the old days, when she was just learning the ropes, and she'd pick up on strangers having sex or fighting behind their closed doors. It had been a long time since she'd let something through the cracks like that, but the sensation was unmistakable. What if she was cracking up?

When they entered the patient's room, 45-D, she lost all memory of that moment, because while her craziness was up in the air -- just like it had been for thirty-something years -- the patient's craziness in 45-D was all too real.

He was a telekinetic, on top of everything else, which Buzz had neglected to mention. So not only did opening the door release a blast of psychic and emotional energy on her, a whirling green mass of clouds and dust and screams, but she also came close to getting socked in the eye by … What was it? Like a piece of balled-up trash, or a …

It was a million paper airplanes. Or if not a million, at least a whole bunch. Whirling around the room in perfect formation like an Air Force exhibition, darting and twirling in the air, zooming low to the ground, catching gusts from the central air vent near the bathroom door before twisting themselves back into the dance. Once she'd accustomed herself to the not-actual danger of it, she could see the logic of it. It was beautiful; it was like looking at Buzz's aura, all whirling parts and teams within teams, wheels within wheels moving in perfect synchronicity.

And in the middle of this display sat a young man. Overweight, hair down to his shoulders, bad skin, wearing a comic-book t-shirt and drumming softly on his crossed legs. His eyes were closed, but the calm grin on his face was beautiful and triumphant. He had a beautiful face, like a cherub, and his head swung slowly from side to side as though he were playing a particularly demanding piece on piano or guitar.

"Chuck. Hey, Chuck," Buzz said softly, as one would to a son. It was clear he liked the boy.

"Zzzt. Forty-six. Never got forty-six…"

Buzz backed off, and the two of them watched this strange maelstrom, and the strange boy in the middle of it all, orchestrating it with quiet movements and almost-silent hums. Buzz grinned at her like he was showing her one of those bizarre and wonderful new life forms that he always talked about.

Maybe he was.

 

After a time, probably less than ten minutes, and a shockingly beautiful finale in which the birds lofted around Buzz's face like a cartoon, like those bluebirds Laurie had mentioned, and plucked at his clothing with their airplane noses, the planes coasted to their places on the floor around Chuck like they were assigned by name. For all Nadine knew, they were.

"You're Nadine. Blumenthal. They said you were coming. Buzz said. I told them you wouldn't really do it. Too scared."

She smiled. His face was so open and funny.

"And how did you know that?"

"There's nothing wrong with being wrong, I don't mind it. I saw a crossroads and you chose this place. I thought you'd choose… The other thing."

"Which was what?"

"Death. Eventually. But before that, a downward spiral of madness. Blue sparks and rage."

"Chuck…" Buzz said warningly, and Chuck smiled.

"You're going to be okay, Nadine Blumenthal."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. My first day has been pretty exhausting."

"That's nothing. Your real life is way harder. It's about to get bad, I can't fix that. But you can trust them."

"Chuck, that's enough. She gets freaked out by precogs."

"Only because they don't lie to her," Chuck mumbled, but he let it go. He clapped his hands together like a little boy and smiled at her.

"What are we doing today, then?"

 

An hour later, Nadine had learned more about alien abduction than she thought was possible, even after having been a faithful X-Files viewer for nine years. Or had she?

"It's all a metaphor," Chuck giggled, and Buzz pretended to swat at him before gathering him into a bearhug headlock.

"Same time tomorrow, Chuck. If we don't start making some headway I have to call county. You know that, right?"

"Okay, so what's my timeframe before I'm officially nuts?"

"I don't care if you're nuts, I care if you're happy. That's the goal. Let me worry about the rest."

"Okay, so how long until I'm happy?"

"Chuck, if I knew that I'd tell you. At least it would give us somewhere to go."

"I don't need to go anywhere. You'll see, Buzz. They're coming for you."

"Wish they would. I could go back to grad school."

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT: LOOKING FOR A FARMER

 

Things worked for about six weeks, after Nadine left Holden. Or Holden left Nadine, in his unassuming and lazy way. In practice, what he'd done was tell her to leave, and then wait for her to do so. Completely loving and cordial, as though nothing had changed, but with that edge of polite waiting that always set Apache's teeth on edge. He did it whenever they slept together: everything fine until it was time for her to go, and then he'd just sit there on the bed or couch and look at her, until she got the hint and left. And actually, come to think of it, he always did that at his house with Nadine, too, when the evening was over and the singleton was free to leave.

Nadine and Apache spent that time having more fun than either of them had ever had in their lives. It hadn't been too long before Holden that they'd met again, after their years apart, so this was their first grownup time together without responsibilities. Nadine got to cut loose a little bit, and Apache always had somebody to come home to, and nobody got scared or frustrated or anything. And every night, after Nadine had gone to bed in the guest room, Apache would sit on the front porch, drinking scotch with diminishing amounts of water, and eventually drag herself off to bed as the sun was going down. It was a life.

 

Until the Night of the Snake, which is how they referred to it from then on. Apache was a little toasted on -- was it gin that night? -- and Nadine was doing a funny little dance in the living room to some pop stuff on the radio they'd never heard before, but agreed they loved more than anything the world. Apache went out to the car to get a bag of ice she'd forgotten, and on the way back she'd stumbled nearly on top of a tiny garter snake, half-coiled in front of her back door. She'd screamed like a fool, of course, and Nadine had come running to save her. Of course.

"It's just a little garter snake, Patch. I wanted one as a pet when I was a girl."

Nadine bent over, giggling quietly, and picked the thing up -- picked it right up! -- and let it coil around her hand, tightening and securing and calming itself. Its little tongue darted around, tasting the air. Apache felt like she'd throw up.

"Its mouth isn't even big enough to bite you if it wanted to. Which it doesn't. If I weren't living with you I'd get a little cage and feed it pinkies. You know what pinkies are?"

Her grin was hilarious, excited in a way it only got when she was being shocking.

"I do not want to know. I don't want to know what kind of snake it is, or what pinkies are, or where you want to take it to dinner. I want you to put it on the driveway calmly and quietly and step away, so that I can run it over repeatedly with my Honda Civic. And then I want to drink all the alcohol in the house."

Nadine threw her head back and laughed. The little snake curled its tail.

"Apache, you're hilarious. You'd sneak drugs across the border but you're afraid of this little guy. He's beautiful!"

"He is nothing like. This is what happens when you let lesbian witches raise your kids."

"You were there too, idiot. Come here and look at him."

"Shove it, Blue."

"Oh, don't be scared. Come look at him. His little scales, like little pieces of armor, and his beautiful eyes. He uses his tongue like dogs use their noses."

"In your crotch? Gross."

"No, he tastes the world with it. Like the whole world is a novel he's reading. Look at him."

"Nadine, stop."

"Oh, come on. He couldn't hurt a … Well, he eats flies. Not Apaches."

"If you won't kill him, at least throw him over the fence."

"We don't even know it's a him. Come hear his thoughts, he's thinking…"

"None of that spooky shit. He's thinking he wishes he were poisonous so he could kill you where you stand and then go talk about it at the Snake Club. How he bagged a lesbo witch."

Nadine cocked her head at her.

"You're really freaked, huh?"

"You could not be weirder or yuckier right now…"

Right when she said it, she knew it was wrong. She'd crossed the line. Nadine blinked, hurt, and shrugged.

"It's just a snake, Apache. I'm sorry. You don't have to…"

Apache could tell by the crook of her head, the way her eyes slid away, that she was embarrassed. Like she'd become disgusting in Apache's eyes. As if that were possible. If you only knew, Apache thought. You'd throw that snake in my hair.

 

"Winter Horse told me a story once. I mean, everybody knows it, but I remember it on the Sweat…"

"Is it the thing about the footsteps on the beach and God's like, 'That is because I am your hotrod' or whatever?"

"Heh. No."

"Because she told me that story like a hundred times. 'Even when they're bending you right over and fucking you up the keester, God's there watching.' Like that's a good thing. Like it helps."

"Language. No, this is another story. Guy finds a snake in the yard…"

"-- Oh, yeah. I heard that one."

"Winter Horse told you this story?"

"No. But I heard it. She never told me specifically."

"She should have. You'd have dated better guys, anyway."

"All right, so I don't remember the story."

"Guy, like a farmer or something, a shepherd, finds this snake. It's cold, like, snowing. It's about to get really cold for the winter."

"There's a weather report in this story. Fun. Sounds about right for Winter…"

"Shh. He realizes he has a choice: get inside where it's warm, or deal with this snake. Bring it inside. He touches the thing…"

"-- UGH!"

"-- Touches the thing, and it's nearly dead. Snakes are cold-blooded, right, but this guy's barely moving."

She stroked the snake curled around and through her fingers as she spoke.

"And he takes it inside and lays it by the fire. Every day he brings it … grasshoppers and …"

"-- Winter grasshoppers? That thrive on snow?"

"Grasshoppers that play the fiddle, like another story you should have been told a billion times."

"Right. And you're the ant."

"Yes. But so the snake finally comes awake, by the fire, and he looks up at the farmer, and the farmer looks down at him… Doesn't he, buddy? Looks right at the snake, and says," Nadine chuckled as the snake unwound himself and began to wind himself around her fingers again, at a better angle, sniffing up her arm with his tongue.

"Looks at the snake and he says, 'How you doing, snake?' And the snake says…"

"None of this happened in Winter Horse's story. There was no fireside chat."

"Let me tell the story. So the snake says, 'Thanks for saving me. It was so cold out there, and so warm here by your hearth.' And the farmer says, 'You know, we have rules in this house. Like, you can't bite me. We're friends.' And the snake nods…"

"The snake. Nods. Snakes don't even have chins. Their heads are just… More snake."

"Snake nods and says, 'Maybe we're friends, maybe not. But you're not putting me back out in the snow, are you?' And the farmer realizes he couldn't do that. They're friends."

Apache knew she was talking about Holden, or the snake in her hands, but she shivered anyway. Too close, too close.

"So the winter goes along fine. He brings the snake grasshoppers and their tiny violins, brings pinkies from the store…"

"Okay, what are pinkies?"

"Tiny mouse embryos, you keep them in your freezer."

"Winter Horse is a frigging deviant."

"She didn't invent pinkies, Apache."

"Somebody did. And she followed his advice."

"End of winter, the spring is dawning outside. Best day of the year. And the farmer goes over to the hearth. 'Time we went outside, Snake,' says he. And the snake loves the farmer by now. Not because he fed him, or saved him, or anything. They're friends. They love each other. But the farmer's getting closer, on his big feet, and somewhere inside that snake there's a snake part that feels his foot, thumping the floor, and he gets scared, because what do you do when you feel people-feet on the ground?"

"Fuck them up."

"Language. And the snake says, 'Don't come any closer.' And the farmer says, 'Don't you want to see the sunshine?' And the snake says, 'Get out of my way.' And the farmer shakes his head, because: what? Why? They're friends. He doesn't get the snake is telling the truth. So he stomps his big old feet over there, and the rattle starts going. Both the farmer and the snake are surprised by that, because it means danger."

"But there's no danger. Just a farmer and a snake."

"Who love each other."

"Nadine, this isn't how the story goes…"

"-- This is the parts between the regular story. The snake doesn't get enough credit in the usual story. He's just something that happens to the farmer, like the farmer didn't know better. But the farmer knew better."

"So then why did he…"

"He thought it would work out different. The farmer fell prey to thinking that he could change things. He sat in that cabin every night thinking the snake was scary, but every night he sat a little closer to the fire, and the snake let him. He thought he was taming the snake."

"Nadine, I don't…"

"Almost done, Apache. He thought he was taming the snake. And you know what, the story isn't fair to the farmer either. Because you're supposed to think the farmer was being stupid. But I never thought he was. I thought the farmer knew what he was doing, what was going to happen. Like the farmer was psychic. And I think that the farmer even knew when the rattle started…"

"Nadine, I'm serious. Stop it."

"But he didn't care. That's how much he loved the snake, Apache. He knew and he didn't care, because he loved her."

"Him, the snake's a boy."

"You can't ever tell, with snakes."

"So he's clomping toward the snake with his big stupid feet, and the tail's going. The rattle."

"And the snake knows, and the farmer knows…"

"So what keeps him going?"

"What if they're wrong? What if all the farmers before him were just doing it wrong, or didn't care enough, or didn't love the snake enough, and all the farmers got bit. Maybe by this same snake. And maybe the snake is thinking the same thing."

"This time I won't bite. This time I won't bite."

"Right."

"I don't like your fairytales, mommy."

"Me neither. But that's what it made me think of. Anyway, I'm tired."

"Wait, how did the story end?"

"When Winter Horse told it?"

"No! I mean, how does the story end?"

"Oh… Don't know yet. I assume the snake bites the guy and he dies in agony, twitching with venom all through his veins, crapping his pants. And the snake feels bad. But not too bad. And then the snake goes out into the forest, looking for food. Looking for a farmer."

Nadine got up, less steadily than normal. She'd had more to drink than usual. She put the snake down in the grass and it hurried away; she grunted and headed off to bed, scratching her leg and humming quietly.

"Nadine, I love you!"

She didn't mean to scream it, but she did.

CHAPTER FIVE: FIRST WATCH

 

After a quick coffee refuel with Claire in the breakroom, Nadine found herself deposited in the conference room all alone, while Claire rounded up the rest of them. She was not really looking forward to seeing Grace and Andrew again, after the way the night had ended. She wasn't embarrassed by Apache -- never that -- but it put her in a funny position. From all they'd said, she was going to be in intense situations with these people, and she didn't want to deal with any residual resentments.

Grace arrived first, of course, at five minutes till, looking fresh as a daisy. Nadine was tired, and hoped it didn't show, but she knew they'd all be looking for signs of wear and tear after her first night on campus. She was glad she'd decided to wear makeup the first week. Grace's first question was about Apache, wondering if she'd slept okay. Nadine liked that. She said she'd left her friend sprawled on the bed, but neglected to mention that she'd sat up all night watching her sleep. Grace touched her hand and held her gaze just a second longer than normal, so Nadine would know it was okay.

Buzz and Andrew entered next, their hair wet from showering. Something was going on there, she could tell Buzz was ruffled. His totem was very fidgety, if you could accurately describe a multidimensional crystalline superstructure in those terms, and he kept checking in with Andrew across the table. Andrew was solicitous with Nadine, asking to refill her coffee as though he might have somehow offended her last night.

He was wearing a pressed khaki three-piece that looked expensive, and bright red Chuck Taylors; Buzz was wearing a white linen shirt with a lace-up front, like a pirate, and camouflage cargo shorts with the inevitable Birkenstocks, and his hair was pulled back from his face. She wouldn't have thought it was possible for his face to register such worry; he looked ten years older than he had yesterday, lined and upset. He winked at her across the table and sat back, lounging low. Nadine wished she had some sunglasses to give him; he seemed shy and restive.

Michael and Tarquin came in next, laughing about some miscommunication they'd had with the coffee delivery guy. She didn't catch the joke, but she could tell they enjoyed each other's company. It was nice to see Tarquin just laughing, without that prowling sex-predator look in his eyes. He caught her looking at him and she blushed, looking down. When she looked back up, he was whispering with Michael again as though it hadn't happened.

Dr. Palatine was wearing a lovely sleeveless gown, in black, with an Empire waist, and a hundred silver bangles on her wrists. There was a complicated silver wreath bound in her icy blonde hair, with tiny oak leaves on it like charms. She sat in the corner with her ankles crossed and her hands clutching a small silver handbag. She always looked like she was going to a party. Nadine could see why her patients found her so comforting: even though she looked perfectly put together, there was a warmth in her eyes that was impossible to fake.

Claire walked in wearing her tailored white suit and giant white sunglasses. The suit was like something you'd see in a '70s movie about nurses or flight attendants, all darts and shoulder pads. Michael and Tarquin laughed, but she looked amazing in it; nobody else could have worn it that way. Her stockings were covered in multicolored Harlequin diamonds and she was wearing burgundy patent-leather Mary Janes. She looked like she was going dancing, even though it was only seven in the morning.

 

Claire waited for the casual morning conversations to die down, and then took her place at the head of the table.

"Welcome, and good morning. I'm happy to see we haven't scared Nadine off, quite yet. Although I did notice that she had some late-night visitors last night…"

Grace and Andrew smiled at her.

"…Who have apparently forgotten the rules. No smoking on grounds, okay?"

Grace nodded, contrite, and Andrew grinning winsomely.

"Do it again and I'll render you impotent for a week, is that understood?"

They looked at the floor; Nadine was terrified. Was Claire kidding? It didn't seem like it.

"What's on the board for today, Andrew?"

He closed his eyes, smiling easily.

"Michael's got that girl from the mental hospital, still, and a couple of consults from Halcyon Northeast, but I don't think they'll take too long. This afternoon, your board's clear… Buzz and Grace have that sentient virus case in Green, and then Grace has those two kids from the toxic site in Encino… Grace, I don't feel good about the male, check his autoimmune again…Buzz, you've got that alien abduction in the afternoon but I don't think it's a go, so keep county on speed-dial… Dr. Redbud, you've got those three couples to vet from the fertility clinic down south, I think one of them is a candidate… I have those two psychometry cases in the waiting room now, and then I want a crack at the boy in White Wing, Michael, if you don't mind… Tarquin, you're on rounds this morning and then off-site this afternoon, unless you need anything…"

"A driver. I can't get anybody to log a drive to Encino."

"I'll take care of it, Jeremy," said Claire. "And Nadine, I'm going to put you with Michael for the morning, and then you can go with Buzz and Grace this afternoon. There was an incident in Encino yesterday before you arrived, a chemical plant that exploded. There's been some fallout, emotionally speaking, and Tarquin's going onsite to see if he can work on the land itself."

Nadine wondered what the chemists and engineers would think about Jeremiah Tarquin showing up in his sleek suit, doing magical things to their base of operations. It sounded hilarious.

"Andrew, I want you to schedule Nadine into as many on-site rotations as possible for the next couple of weeks, before she gets a callsheet for herself. Consults and spirit work only, no surgeries just yet. Those take too long and I want her to get acquainted with the patients. We don't have a very full house right now, Nadine, so you'll just have to make do."

Nadine nodded. She was anxious to see the patients, and the work the rest of them did.

"Shields up, Nadine. These patients Michael's working with transmit louder than you do, and I don't want you getting hit with anything. Remember, okay?"

Nadine nodded. She couldn't imagine ever letting her defenses down in this place.

"Dr. Palatine might need your help with these cases, so she'll brief you before you head over. Okay, Buzz and Grace, remember that we've got a little publicity with this toxic case, and they're going to be getting litigious on everybody. That includes us, so best behavior. Tarquin, take some pictures for me, please. That's great PR if we can show what you've been doing down there."

"I'll have a daisy growing from the muck by the end of the week."

"My thoughts exactly, thank you. I've looked at the charts on those fertility patients, and I think at least one of the couples might need your special touch, so check in with me before you head out, okay?"

"I am, as ever, at your beck and call."

"I don't need you to be at my beck and call, Jeremy, I just need you to show up. Now, Nadine. Do you need anything?"

She was flummoxed. What could Claire possibly mean?

"Okay, then. Let me know if you run into anything. Grace."

"Yes, Claire?"

"How much time are you going to have this afternoon?"

"The toxic kids … that's just a treatment, pain regimen. I can't do much else for them until they can at least concentrate."

"Okay, well, hit those as quickly as possible and then… You're still interested in spending some time with Miss Tear, yes?"

Grace took a moment to respond. "Yes. Of course, yes."

"Then you're off the clock after lunch, okay?"

"What's going on with Apache?"

"I understand that Apache has agreed to spend some time with Grace while she's on campus, and unfortunately Grace's day tomorrow…"

"-- Is insane," Andrew confirmed.

"…And since you'll be on your feet for the rest of the day, it's a good time. Do you think she'll be amenable?"

Nadine wondered how she could, without embarrassing Apache, suggest that she visit with Dr. Palatine, or Claire perhaps, instead. But it was Grace that had volunteered. Nadine nodded, slowly.

"Oh, Dr. Blumenthal, don't look at me that way. We're not going to stick her with needles. It's just a late lunch."

 

"So, your first patient," Grace said excitedly, her heels clopping on the linoleum.

"Not really mine, though. I mean…"

Grace smiled at Nadine.

"Yours. We work together here. I'm afraid you're on the clock as we speak."

"What's the deal with this patient? Andrew said it was a girl from a mental hospital…"

"Nothing too bad. She's … Well, from your chart I think you'll understand immediately. Her gift is proving a bit too unwieldy to use easily, and it's deafening her."

Like Sylvia, they were going to be like Sylvia and rescue her. But…

"If it's just a psychic thing, why is she your patient?"

"She sees ghosts."

 

"One thousand Bulgaria fifteen in the Ozarks thirty Fallujah asthmatic kid in Leeds young girl on a basketball court in Uruguay used to think she'd get a scholarship watching her life bleed out onto the concrete two infants in Queens one is six months old the other one is already going five grandmothers in five provinces wearing the same dress a little boy in a bathing suit a woman in a waterbed with a handful of pills look at the little boy in the bathing suit his dog in the pool just drifting and bloated he got it for Christmas…"

Grace looked at Nadine, who stared. What was the girl talking about? She was only twelve, possibly younger, sitting in a chair by the window eating chocolates from a Valentine's tray and rocking quickly as she called them out.

"…Fifteen soldiers but six will live a few dozen heretics hiding in the hills one of them has lost a leg this family in the south of France without a phone…"

Grace smiled and shook her head almost imperceptibly, and Nadine looked down: her feet were moving her backwards toward the door involuntarily as the truth dawned on her: the girl was announcing deaths, all over the world.

"That's why she's my patient. She's watching them go."

Nadine was horrified. The girl kept talking, endlessly. She wasn't exactly emotionless; you could tell it hurt her, but on some level she just seemed numb.

"How long?"

"She's been like this for a few weeks now. For a few days it was pets and she managed, without telling anybody. Then it was all the pets in the western hemisphere, and now it's people. That's when she cracked."

"Is she responsive?"

"Not as far as her parents were concerned. Of course, she blew the gaskets on every empath and psychic in about ten miles, so they might disagree with that assessment."

"And so you … I mean, what do you do? What are you doing?"

"Gostock method. I mean, this is something she's going to have to deal with, so the best thing we can do is keep her from bonking everybody with it whenever they get too close."

"That poor girl…"

"Well. It's not too far off from my gift, really, so maybe I have a biased perspective, but it won't be so bad once she can handle it."

That was a unique perspective. Grace looked her in the eyes, glittering with tears.

"These people are going somewhere, alone. Whether it's a good place or not is not my concern: you can handle anything with hindsight. And when you can't, that's what we're here for. But the worst part of any traumatic experience is the moment before you do it. Before you walk through the door: that's the scariest moment. In death, as with anything else."

"Sure." Like Nadine had any idea. She'd been scared before, that was for sure.

"And more than any other experience we have, death is lonely. You're the only one walking through that door. At some point, you retreat from the world and the people around you, and that's the moment you walk through the door. Into the unknown. Maybe nothing. Lonely."

This wasn't exactly comforting.

"But this little girl is there, with them. With all of them. She's there to say goodbye. They're lucky."

"They're dying."

"Everybody dies. She's making it easier. And she'll remember them forever. Every single one of them. This is love."

"Palestine Berlin Jerusalem Lithuania Niger three teenagers in the alley after school they don't know it's live there's a girl in a bedroom writing goodbye in her diary there's a girl in a bathroom and her heart's about to stop…"

 

Tears began to run down the girl's face; she bent to her task, steeling her back against it, curling up in her chair against it. But she kept talking.

This is love.

CHAPTER SIX: THE GAY DIVORCÉE

 

"Well, I think I'm going to be a divorcée."

Nadine plopped herself down on Apache's old sleeper couch and tossed her shoes forcefully across the room, groaning with pleasure and wiggling her toes. Apache headed to the kitchen to mix up some margaritas, and waited quietly for her friend to explain. The silence seemed to go on and on. Apache wondered if she had a gun or something. She'd always wondered what it would be like if Nadine finally snapped, but didn't want to be the one to experience it first-hand. It would be cool if Nadine took it out on Holden, if not exactly fair.

Nadine was staring into space when Apache brought the drinks in, still not speaking. Apache sat down near her on the couch, rather than cuddling in case Nadine was concealing a weapon, but held her hand casually with the palm up. Nadine put her hand in Apache's, and squeezed tight. Apache closed her eyes, the back of her throat gone tight and rough. It was like she'd swallowed crackers without chewing. She almost opened her stupid mouth right then.

"My Mom said men like it when you're nice."

"That's a good policy generally, I think. I wouldn't know."

Nadine smiled weakly. It was like the sun coming through during rain: weak but trying.

"She said it was good, that nobody wants anybody pushing all the time. I mean, he was nice too. He did things… Everybody does things, I mean, I do things and we talk about it, annoying things, you do stuff… I didn't think I should bring it up. I thought men ought to be like women, where you can talk about things."

"There is no difference between men and women. None."

"Well, that's not true. They act all soft and easy but they have pride. There are things you can't say."

No, there aren't, Apache thought. You can say everything, if you're not afraid.

"Apache, men leave. This isn't the first guy I've been with."

And you pick guys who want you to be soft, so why's he complaining?

"I just… He said it was like being married to tofu. He said I was … Well, he didn't say I was weak, but it's what he meant."

"Do you know that? Is that really what he meant?"

What Apache was asking was whether Nadine had used her gifts, even though she knew her friend better than that. Nadine would think of that as assault and battery.

"I know darn well what he meant. He wanted me to be nice, but strong. He wanted me to be quiet, but interesting. He was…"

"A jerk?"

"No," Nadine sighed. "A man." She sounded so tired.

"Nadine, you guys are a good fit. You can work this out…"

"No. I confirmed that, at least. I didn't beg, don't think that I got weak. That would be the last thing he wanted. But he made it clear that this isn't a therapy issue. He just… Didn't want to be married anymore. To me."

"Any man would be lucky to have you, Nadine. Don't…"

Nadine started to cry, shaking her head.

"I don’t want any man. I want this one. I chose this one. I want this one and I chose him and I am a married woman. I am a wife. I have a home and a husband. I'm one of the women who is married, do you understand that at all? I don't want to stop being a wife. I love it. I love having a home and being married. I like being on that list. And I like him. I love him."

"You're not your marriage, Nadine."

"Then what am I?"

"Oh, Nadine…"

"No, I mean it. This is the Nadine I want to be, Nadine Pritchard. I'm not interested in starting over, or being afraid again… I'm too fat and I have too much stuff. I can't be moving around and living in apartments and dating random guys. I'm tired."

Apache nodded. Nadine squeezed her hand through another round of tears.

"I am tired, Patch. I am too tired to start again."

"Then rest. This is not the end of your…"

"Screw that, Apache. What am I going to do?"

"You're going to rest, and you're not going to look at this as the end. Remember last Christmas?"

Nadine nodded. Holden had bought her a necklace at the local jewelry store, really beautiful: blue amethysts and a small diamond on the pendant. Apache knew Nadine had thought it was ridiculous, because it was something you'd only wear to a fancy occasion and fancy occasions stressed Nadine out on many levels. Not only because she was insecure about her figure, but because everybody else was too.

But Holden was so proud of the thing that he almost cried; his cheeks were red like he'd had a bottle of champagne as Nadine opened the box and began to scream with delight. She'd worn it the rest of the evening, and as they were cleaning up for the night after their Christmas party, one of the amethysts had fallen off. You could see the disappointment in Holden's eyes, heartbreaking, and in the slump of his shoulders. Nadine stood in the kitchen, stock-still and afraid to move, and Holden had picked up the stone, looking through it at the kitchen light, before silently unlatching the necklace from Nadine's neck, without speaking, and taking both into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.

"He barely spoke for a week. Trust me, Blue, you're looking at failure here. Of course he's going to write everything off. Just find out what's wrong, and let him fix it. You'll be fine."

Nadine's lips were a tight red line across her face. She looked like she was about to explode, but defeated too. It was sad. Apache threw her arms around her friend.

"Everything's negotiable, Blue. Every single thing. Especially men."

 

But it wasn't. Not this guy, and not this time. Apache knew she wouldn't be able to get him to talk to her about Nadine, because she'd tried nearly every time they'd been alone. He was like a jewelry box: he kept these thoughts and feelings over here, nestled in this compartment, and all those feelings and cares in another area entirely. Apache knew what that was like, although she couldn't have explained it to Nadine.

She couldn't understand what he could possibly be thinking. He and Nadine had a wonderful relationship. Nadine lived for him, and Apache honestly believed that he loved his wife just as much. As much as she hated them together, sometimes, Apache knew in her heart that they belonged together. But something had happened, something had broken.

She'd spent the whole of their time together trying to stay out of it. Not coughing on the Petri dish, to use Holden's phrase. Their relationship was their relationship: she wasn't allowed to have an opinion about anything that happened, even when she thought Nadine was being a pushover or Holden was being a nerd or whatever, it wasn't her business. Her business was to be a friend, and leave when it was time to leave, and love Nadine the best that she could.

But this… It wasn't possible that Holden had spontaneously become an interesting person, it wasn't possible that he had suddenly decided to do some inner searching -- that's not why Nadine loved him. Privately, Apache thought that his lack of introspection was one of the things that Nadine loved best about him. Her gift had made her appreciative of the authentic life, and nobody was quite as authentically dorky, or unintentionally funny, as Holden. He made funny little happy noises when he ate, and loved putting on his fluffy slippers after a bath. He wasn't stupid, but he didn't worry. Apache knew her friend loved that aspect of him best.

But if he wasn't suddenly rethinking his life and all his choices, that meant something else in his life was changing, or had changed. And that meant Apache. And all the velvet jewelry box-compartments in the world wouldn't stop that from being true, as gross as that was. She was the germ in the Petri dish. A sensible woman would speak up now, and say something, apologize, throw herself down on the carpet, bruise knuckles on her rings. That's what a sensible woman would do. But this wasn't Apache's problem, and it wasn't Apache's area of expertise.

The fact was, and she knew this as it was happening, she loved Nadine more than she loved the truth. If the truth came out, she'd deal with it. She'd walk through fire to make it up to Nadine, make her love her again. But right up until Nadine looked her in the eye and called her names, or blamed her for this, or asked the question she couldn't avoid, it didn't need to be dealt with. Knowing this, knowing she'd stay silent until the exact last moment, knowing she'd lie through her teeth until Nadine forced the truth out of her, made her hate herself.

But she was used to that, wasn't she?

 

So as the days turned into weeks, Apache found it easier to move into her role. Put that in the box and walk away. Leave it up to Nadine, be the caring friend, try to help patch things up, try to get Nadine to calm down and look at it logically, be a good friend, the best friend in the world. Apache could let this go on and on, divorce and recriminations and the move, and still feel good about her friend Nadine. She knew she loved her. This was proving how much.

This was love: telling Nadine to be strong, showing her how. Distracting her, when the pain got to be too much. Covering for her, at the mall, or taking off work to accompany Nadine to the county office, to change her name back, or the DMV, to talk her ear off while everybody waited to get their licenses renewed. All the ugly, bored, nasty annoyance and quiet rage of people going about their business while Nadine rebuilt her life: Apache could protect her from that, with her nonstop monologue and her turquoise iPod when that didn't do it. This was love, too.

CHAPTER THREE: SEPARATELY TOGETHER

 

 

"So Andrew. While Grace and I were doing our obligatory stint as junkie whores, and Nadine was dyking it up at the lesbian commune, what were you doing?"

The mood in the room shifted immediately. Apache was looking at Andrew with a gaze she sometimes got, like a cat with its prey. She only focused on people and said awful things like this when something was really under her skin. Her aura was mottled and confused, ugly, and Nadine wished she could see it the other way, the Claire way. What was Apache's animal, and what was it doing? Grace's lioness was in the corner, poised and angry, and Andrew's salamander had skittered away beneath the dresser, but she couldn't tell what they were reacting to. All she could see when she tried was that stupid bracelet, which Apache never seemed to take off lately. The blue snake, throwing sparks.

"I was in college, wondering if I was dying. I thought I had some kind of degenerative neurological disease, or epilepsy or something. I thought I was being punished."

Nadine nodded, with a kind smile, asking him to continue, but he seemed satisfied with that answer. Grace looked right at the bracelet, and when Apache saw her staring she just fixed her with that toothy grin, as though readying her next assault.

"Andrew had a tough time, didn't he? But I guess we all did," Grace said. There was a tiny amount of force behind her light tone, and Nadine began to catch a glimpse of how such a slight and friendly girl could possibly deal with the stuff she dealt with all day: death, pain, addiction. It wasn't an act, exactly. She really was sweet, and enjoyed baking and all that stuff, the headbands and bows and all that. But underneath, she was made of steel. All along they'd thought that Claire was the hard one! She was Swiss cheese compared to Grace.

Apache nodded, somewhat mollified, but Grace continued.

"A lot of pain. Ever notice how many of us are runaways? Seems like we all got into scrapes. I wonder why that is?"

Nadine never had. Besides Holden, That Bastard, she couldn't think of a single scrape she'd ever gotten into. Maybe it was because she'd received her gift so early, maybe the incident was the price she paid. She felt bad for Apache, but it still was no excuse for being so rude. Grace shot her a look: I'm okay, I'm handling this.

"Apache, I wonder if you wouldn't like to do a session while you're on campus. I bet we could do a lot of work on that anger."

"Don't patronize me, Doctor."

"Nothing like. I've logged more time with the other doctors than any of our patients, most likely."

"Job hazard?"

"Life hazard. I'm angry too."

Apache nodded. "But you're just fine now."

"Nobody's ever fine. When all your problems are over with, you die. Trust me on that."

Interesting way to look at it. Nadine wasn't sure she was buying, but the last thing Apache needed was backup right now. How inconsiderate did you have to be to… As far as Nadine was concerned, this was still a job interview. She hadn't even met a patient yet.

"I guess we're all pretty tired…"

Grace nodded, so sharply that for a second she almost seemed to be mimicking Claire.

"Too true. You'll want to shower and get ready. Today's going to be a bear."

She looked at Andrew and he obligingly began to gather himself to leave.

"Apache, I have the lunch hour off tomorrow. If I know Claire, she'll have Nadine running charts and auditing rotations for twelve hours straight, but if you'd like to get some lunch I promise not to annoy you."

Apache looked at her suspiciously.

"Great. I'll be by at noon. I get two hours tomorrow, so unless I get beeped we can have ourselves a nice conversation."

"Sounds perfect," Apache spit, still angry about something.

"And if I do get beeped, you'll get some hands-on yourself."

"I'm not a doctor."

"We will see about that, won't we?"

 

After Grace and Andrew left, Nadine turned a bewildered eye on her friend.

"The heck was that, Patch?"

"I know, I'm sorry. I just … She thinks she knows me. She kept saying that stuff like she knew I would react to it."

"About being angry or whatever?"

"Even before. About how you just have to like hope, or wish or whatever, and you can solve your problem."

"I don't think that's exactly what she was saying…"

"It's always what they're saying, really. You spent all that time on the Sweat and you never figured it out. You were too busy trying to impress God or whatever, trying to be nice all the time, and you drank the Kool-Aid."

Nadine started to wonder if moving Apache Tear down to live with her was the best idea imaginable. She kept saying she didn't feel left out…

"I'm not trying to be a bitch, Nadine. I'm sorry."

"You're doing a great job of it, though. Imagine if you tried."

Apache sighed and stretched out on the bed, clearly embarrassed.

"This place is getting to me, Blue. It's like being back there. The good parts and the not-so-good parts, all at once. I feel like a teenager again. I'm all elbows. And they're all so happy and you're so magical and…"

"I'm not magical. I have a thing they need. That's all it is. And it seemed like Grace was thinking that you might…"

"Not interested. I'm going to live in your poolhouse and you're going to get me on your insurance. I'll get a job temping or something. End of story."

"You'll survive."

"I always do, Blue." Nadine only called her that name when she was scared; it was too much like the Sweat, when she'd called her that all the time. She rarely used that name now, even after they'd reconnected and moved to the trailer park, post-Bastard.

"Well, that's what we do. But it's not everything we can do. We could have a … place here. We could have a life."

"Yeah, we'll see."

"Well, what else do you want? Any big plans I don't know about?"

"Nope, this is it. Sleep in a mental institution bed while you're running around pretending to be a doctor, have lunch with Mother Theresa, try to get Tarquin into bed. That's all the planning I've got in me for now. I'll deal with the rest later."

"Apache, you know that I …"

"I know, kid."

"And we're in this together."

"Sure. Separately, but together nonetheless."

"Patch?"

"Yeah."

"I am sure they'd love to get their grubby little fingers on you. They could run all kinds of tests and find out all kinds of hidden potentials and whatever, I mean, they always said on the Sweat that you were one of the most…"

"Nix. Ixnay, Ooblay. Case closed. I'm along for the ride."

"Along for the ride."

"Just like always. It's just a ride, I'm just on it. You be a hero and I'll be Jimmy Olsen. Just let me sleep now and we'll work out the details later."

Nadine frowned, but she knew better than to push.

"Fine. Sounds good. Do you think I should catch a couple hours, or just stay up?"

"Apparently the first thing they remove is your need to sleep. Did you see those two? I bet they're jogging as we speak."

"Well, they haven't removed it yet. But I almost dread waking up more than just playing through."

"I have spent what seems like my entire life trying to wake you up when you don't want to wake up. Trust me when I say it's tragic."

It was true. Nadine was completely unmanageable upon waking. Apache could go from a solid sleep to soldier readiness in a split second, but it took Nadine an hour to get moving in the morning. Nadine wondered what that was about: was Apache just naturally like that? Or was it something you could learn? Was it something she'd had to learn at some point?

 

There had been a night like this, a night of wakefulness and fear, back in the trailer park. They'd been living in their trailers for about six months, and Apache had been off on one of her two-day rambling benders. These were the kind she prepared for beforehand, like a track and field champion. She'd go to bed early for days beforehand, as early or earlier than Nadine even, and load up on protein, and fill her purse with carbs and extra lighters, and then just go out. Sometimes she'd be around the corner at the bar with Kid Joe, sometimes she'd call from Reno. You never knew. And she always came home Monday morning, between nine and eleven, looking lovely but tired, and she'd sleep for a day or two, and come out ravenous.

The only thing anybody knew about Apache's nights out was that she'd come home safe, because she was Apache: she could take care of herself. She had pepper spray, and if that didn't work she had a gun. She never woke up wondering where she was, because she always knew where she was. She never got scared, or got her feelings hurt, because she never left her heart anywhere. She'd just do what she needed to do, and come home calmer.

Except for this one time. She'd come in stumbling four days later, bracelet throwing sparks, weeping quietly and tripping over herself, with her purse clutched close to her body. She'd fallen to her knees on Nadine's kitchen floor, crying. There was blood running from a gash over her right eye, and her mouth looked bruised. She seemed as confused as a sleepy child, hot tears in her hair, whispering over and over, "Don't wake up, don't wake up, don't wake up..."

When she'd looked up to see Nadine watching, to see that in fact Nadine had been watching the whole time, she'd crumpled to the floor, wracked by nearly silent screams of sadness. "You burn first," she kept saying. Nadine just put her arms around her friend there on the floor, and held her as tight as a person could, until she slept.

And at the end of that day, as the sun was going down, she'd gotten up wearing Nadine's pajamas, tucked into Nadine's bed, and she'd made her way out of the room in the fading morning light, and the shrug she gave her best friend there, sitting on the couch watching TV nervously, was so eloquently uninterested in talking about it that Nadine just took the silent apology for what it was, and handed her a cup of coffee she'd brewed ten minutes earlier, just for her, and they sat quietly, and Apache thanked her lucky stars for Nadine, and went to the kitchen for some bourbon.

They never talked about it. What was there to say? Nadine stayed home, and Apache went running, and they met in the middle. It was the way it worked. And Apache would get annoyed telling the story, if she could even remember it, and Nadine would just be happy that Apache had made it another night, or four, and wonder if Apache would live through her thirties.

 

Nadine spent the next two hours sitting in a chair, watching Apache sleep. The sun's advance guard, that blue-grey light of the morning, crept across the room, lighting it up slowly like an underwater dream. When she was a girl that was her favorite time of the day. She'd always been an early riser, provided she'd gotten enough sleep, and she loved to see everything blue and funny like that, like a secret. Lit from nowhere in particular.

Ixnay, Oublie.

Apache slept like a man, arms up above her head, snoring madly. One leg was crossed beneath the other, and she clutched one corner of the sheet -- which she'd kicked off entirely in about ten minutes -- in her fist. Nadine watched her friend, chest rising and falling with every brutal snore.

She was twitching like a dog, dreaming of running.

 

CHAPTER FOUR: THE BASTARD

           

 

The most annoying thing about Holden Pritchard was that there was nothing wrong with him. He wasn't too hard or too soft, Nadine always said, and it was the truth. He didn't give in to everything Nadine wanted, didn't agree just to agree, but he wasn't interested in fighting either. He was smart, but not boring. He was attractive, Apache guessed, if you liked that kind of thing.

He was a computer programmer, and all that entails. Furry, funny, unkempt blondish hair, glasses, a bit round through the middle, with astonishing blue eyes and a ready grin. He liked video games and old romantic movies and he never used curse words. Basically, perfect for prim Nadine. They baked bread together on Sundays and puttered around the garden. They were sickeningly adorable together.

Apache watched them together often. Even when it was just the three of them, it was really just the two of them. She didn't feel left out, because they paid more attention to her than they did each other, but that was only because they worked so well as a team. One of them would chat with her out on the porch, watching her smoke cigarette after cigarette, and the other would make whatever silly cocktail was blowing their skirts up that week, and bring them out with a board of cheese and bread. Somebody would tell a joke and everybody would laugh.

All these things seemed to start immediately. Apache and Nadine were only back together as friends for a few months before Holden Pritchard made his appearance on the scene. Apache loved seeing her friend happy, of course, but couldn't help wondering if there weren't something suspicious about the whole thing. A perfect -- or at least Nadine's idea of perfect -- guy shows up, they meet cute at the DMV of all places, and before you know it, Nadine's got a boyfriend.

It wasn't like Apache thought Nadine was an unacceptable girlfriend, or that she didn't deserve a man in her life. She thought Nadine was wonderful, and probably the most loving and loyal person on the face of the earth. If she was a man, she'd often thought -- and sometimes said, after a margarita or two past the limit -- she would have taken Nadine off the market years ago. Nadine always giggled nervously when she said things like that, but it was true. She was a great friend, and that's what you wanted in a lover, if you wanted them to stick around.

Which Apache never ever did. So Holden and Nadine were perfect. They were the same height, that's how weirdly perfect it was. And when Apache was with them, which she was as often as possible, she felt calm like she never knew. It was like church, being with them. Not the sermon part, not sitting in a pew, but just being there, before and after, with everybody dressed beautifully and smiling at each other and being considerate at the door. "No, you first!" No, go ahead.

It was a lot like being home, she imagined. She'd never really had a home. Apache thought maybe those were the breaks: either you knew what normal was like, and you played along, or else you didn't. But the thing about normal is, people have been doing it for a billion years. All the questions have been answered, all the rough spots rubbed off. If you were doing normal well enough, it was just like church because you could just do what they said, and you'd be okay. That's what Nadine and Holden were like: okay. Doing their thing.

Nadine always said she didn't give a hump about normal, but you could see it, under her skin and in her blood. Apache always thought she just said that to impress Apache anyway. Especially considering it was as close as she ever came to cursing. Nadine didn't need to give a hump, or anything else, about normal. She was born that way. It didn't seem weird or neat to her, to date Holden and have their little agreements -- she would always give him her pickle without discussion when they went to dinner; he always let her have one more drink before he reminded her she'd asked him to cut her off -- and then when it was time to get married, they got married… Their whole life was like something they'd rehearsed.

It would have killed Apache dead. And not because she was screwed up or anything, but just because she would feel caught. She tried to imagine it: the way Nadine sometimes made her feel, like a wild beast, but times a thousand. She didn't have to answer to anybody this way. A guy around would just mess everything up, she told herself.

And Nadine understood that, and agreed: what was perfect for Nadine was yucky for Apache, and vice versa. They were able to discuss it, it was on the table. But, Apache took pains to explain, that didn't mean she looked down on Nadine. Or vice versa, which Nadine always said but Apache didn't always really believe. They were such good friends because they understood that they had different paths. Their job was to support and help and know each other well enough to know what that path was, and not get in the way by helping. They were such good friends.

 

About the wedding, the less said the better. Nadine of course let her mother design the whole thing, because she knew it was important to her mom and not at all important to her or Holden. What this meant for Apache personally, in addition to all the maid of honor stuff, was wearing the most hideous dress ever sewn in creation, chosen especially for her by Nadine's mother.

Meeting Nadine's mother had been an exercise in fear. She was like Winter Horse without any of the soft and loving qualities that made Winter Horse's holier-than-thou attitude bearable. If Winter Horse's silence was a room filled with silent judgment and doubt, Mrs. Blumenthal's was a football field. No, a hockey rink. Icy cold, and slippery, and too blocked off to see anybody's face.

Mrs. Blue knew that Apache was from the Sweat, of course, and that was the first strike. And then there was her attire -- like Apache was going to wear a dress for anybody -- which blew Nadine's mom's mind completely. Strike two. And then there was the fact that of all the friends Nadine had made in her life, here at home and at the Sweat, Nadine had chosen Apache to stay closest with. As though it were a personal attack on her mother.

Of course, Nadine's dad thought she was a hoot. She could tell she made him nervous, and tried to charm her way out of it, but that just made him -- and his ever-watchful wife -- even more nervous. For the first time, Apache realized that she wasn't enjoying her notoriety. Any other circumstance, she'd listen in on their fear and sensationalistic, speculative thoughts. But this was her best friend's wedding, and she was the maid of honor. She bent over backwards to make a good impression on these people, and it did no good. It wasn't like she was stupid: she knew what to do, she had good manners, she didn't talk about anything crazy or the Sweat, or talk about taboo topics like normal, or dress too insanely. She just acted like a friend, a smart and funny and loving and loyal friend, like how she felt inside. And it did no good at all.

So she wore the damned dress and let them cut her hair and put it in some ridiculous updo and put on makeup -- for real, not as a joke or a costume, but for its intended purpose -- and walked down the aisle, with Nadine's awful mother and father on one side and Holden Pritchard's completely identical family on the other side, feeling like an insect pinned to something. And at the end, when Nadine's mom gave a toast, Apache's name was the only one she conveniently forgot.

 

The first few months were bliss. For Holden and Nadine, obviously, but for Nadine too. It was like the simple act of getting married had some kind of solidifying effect on their relationship, and all their outside relationships. They stopped caring about silly things like stains on the carpet, or where to put all their stuff so that it wouldn't jumble up and make a mess, and just allowed themselves to be real. If that was all it took, Apache thought, she would have married them off on the first date.

Two or three times a week, Nadine would invite Apache over for dinner, and the three of them would sit down to something delicious the two of them had cooked together, and they'd drink a bottle of wine and tell Holden stories about the Sweat; about their lives before Holden. Apache wouldn't ever talk about life after the Sweat, because she didn't like worrying Nadine and she didn't know what Holden would think. So she would let her mind wander back to those days, and even if the memory didn't come right away it would usually come eventually.

Even at the time it was happening, Apache knew that this was the best period in her life. Normally, something this regular and routine would send her running. Or if not running, she'd make the decision, somewhere inside, and start to drift away. She didn't want to do that with Nadine, not least because she credited Nadine for saving her life on a continual basis since they were teenagers, and because as a couple they were about the most solid thing she'd ever touched personally with her life.

But sometimes they seemed just like some random married couple. She'd be sitting at the table chatting, and suddenly things would fall silent the way they do, and she'd catch herself wondering what they were doing there, with her. She'd see them with new eyes, the way they slipped into this life so easily, without any question or moment of fear or doubt, and they'd just be some boring married couple she might have met on the highway or at the grocery store. She'd wonder what she looked like, to them:

The differences between her life, as she saw it, and theirs as she saw it, seemed too vast. She'd open her mouth to tell a story and then worry about how they'd react. Because the other nights of the week, she was having fun. And fun wasn't something Holden and Nadine Pritchard seemed to understand. So she was in their movie, and they loved it, because she was interesting, so interesting to the two of them, like a safari.

"Oh! So you slept with this fellow because he had tattoos of a nautical sensibility? And how did he compare against lovers from other bodies from our military forces? Was he satisfactory? Was there a difference quantitatively?" And they'd all laugh. And at night, Apache would peel herself off the couch or the backyard swing, and make her way home, and Holden and Nadine Pritchard would turn down their sweet little sheets, and make sweet little love, and fall asleep in each other's arms.

 

It was about eight months after the wedding that Apache slept with him for the first time.

BOOK TWO: SERPENTINE

 

CHAPTER ONE: THE CORNER FROM HERE

 

Standing at the door was, thankfully, not Claire Redbud, but -- no less strangely -- two members of staff who really should have been at home. Nadine opened the door eagerly to the grinning faces of Andrew St. John and Grace Connelly. Andrew was wearing old-man pajamas, matching top and bottom, flying toasters on a sky of blue; Grace was wearing a velvety white track suit that looked soft enough to sleep in. They were holding mugs of hot chocolate and Andrew had a box of what looked like donuts under one arm.

"Nobody ever sleeps their first night. We figured you'd be up."

Apache was sprawled on her side, in bra and panties, grinning at them from the bed with a hand on her hip.

"Come on in, kids. We were just wondering if we should smoke a cigarette out the window, or if Dr. Redbud would somehow know."

St. John nodded wryly.

"She would know. And you'd hear about it."

Grace hopped toward the bed lightly.

"But that shouldn't stop us. Do you have cigarettes?"

Nadine was aghast. She turned from the sideboard, arranging the donuts on a platter, and stared at Grace Connelly.

"You smoke?"

"No, silly! But this is a special night. It's your first night! I made donuts and everything. Who cares about the rules?"

Nadine shook her head, surprised.

"She's not the good girl she appears to be, Dr. Blumenthal. Our Grace is a wild one."

"Oh, you," Grace said, touching Andrew's face distractedly. She sat down next to Apache on the bed as if they were both fully clothed and it weren't the middle of the night. Andrew went to the window, cranking it open with a sound familiar to anybody who'd spent time on the Sweat. Apache and Nadine grinned at each other, as if they shared a secret.

 

"So," Grace said, around a mouthful of dough, "What do you think?"

"Let me guess," said Andrew. "Grace is the nice one, Buzz is out of his mind, Tarquin's the sexiest thing on two legs, and Claire is like the big sister you've never had."

Nadine and Apache nodded.

"And you're wondering how the heck such a bunch of smart professionals ended up in this bizarre occult backwater."

Actually, they hadn't. It seemed clear, with the possible exception of Dr. Tarquin, that none of them were fit for the larger medical community.

"We all spend a lot more time on our private projects than they let on. It's not really a publishing scramble, since there's nowhere to publish, but it seems endemic to those with our gifts that we have our little obsessions. You wouldn't get those kind of opportunities, much less the subjects of study, in a regular clinic."

Grace nodded. "He thinks about his research a lot."

"What do you research, Grace?"

"Oh, I actually don't have much interest in that stuff. I'm not really an academic. If I didn't have the outlet of my work here, I would probably go crazy."

"You deal with terminal illness and pain, right? So don't you need a distraction?"

"Short answer: that is my distraction."

A longer answer didn't seem forthcoming, so Nadine decided to change the subject. All she could think of to ask, though, was about Andrew's relationship with Dr. Aldrin, which hardly seemed appropriate. When she did think of something, a half-second later, she blurted it out crazily.

"Oh! Why are you here in the middle of the night? Are you a later shift, or…"

"We don't really have shifts, because we're always on call. We live in the clinic."

Apache coughed.

"For real?"

"Yes. There are a few apartments in the North Wing."

"But why? Don't you get a free place?"

Grace nodded.

"I have an apartment, in Buzz's neighborhood actually, but I don't spend a lot of time there. I rent it to some friends. I stay because… For whatever reason, a lot of people seem to choose to die at night. And I want to be here for them, so I mostly just go home weekends."

"People don't die on the weekends?"

"You'd be surprised how much choice we sometimes have in the matter."

"And what about you, Dr. St. John?"

"Andrew. I, um, I get caught up in my research…"

"-- Sometimes literally," Grace smirked.

"-- Once! That happened once." He smiled at Nadine's confused look. "I got stuck in a book once and they won't let me forget it."

She shook her head, still not understanding.

"I have a relationship with information. Books, websites, movies, stuff like that. It's not all history. Or I mean, it is all history, eventually… Time is hard to talk about. Anyway, if I'm not careful I can get lost."

"He was stuck in one of Beethoven's Symphonies for the better part of an afternoon. We had to send Buzz in after him."

"It was beautiful," Andrew sighed. "Those guys, the real ones, the ones that stood the test of history, they built their music like houses, like buildings. From the first note they could see it, every strut and stud, every door and window. They're just giving us a tour. If you climb inside and walk around, you can see things from new angles, the way this corner looks from over here, the way it echoes and talks about itself, and you… and …" He blushed. "I'm a fan. I don't know if I can explain it."

Nadine nodded. "And you have an apartment as well?"

"No, I gave it up. I'm perfectly happy right here."

Apache shook her head.

"Don't you feel a lack of privacy? You need like a room of one's own or whatever…"

"I have that. The staff apartments are a hundred times nicer than this, and well-protected."

Grace laughed.

"Spare no expense, but the first night is always hell. I think it's a test or something. Claire's really into that."

"'I want you to know the worst of what we see here, so you can be at your best,'" Andrew quoted.

"Sounds like my mom," laughed Nadine. "So is Claire, like, your boss? Our boss?"

"Not really. We don't have a boss like that. She's the team leader because she's good at it, and she oversees the administration, but we all have to agree on things."

"Things?"

"Well, like you, or the budget, or how to deal with problems that aren't immediately resolvable. Patient cases that don't immediately present, or that get complicated later on, that's all group decision. Somebody with a different specialty is always going to be looking for different ways in, or symptoms. We work together a lot."

"And play! We have a lot of fun together, too," said Grace, and caught a look from Apache. "And we all have friends outside, with and without our gifts. We know how important it is to maintain relationships outside the staff. Too many regular hospitals devolve into weird Roman dynasty fighting that way, and we share a lot more deeply with each other over the course of a single day than a lot of closeknit medical teams do in a lifetime. You have to keep a balance."

"So what do you do for fun, Andrew?" Apache cocked her head at him, cutely challenging.

"I'm creating a concordance for the library onsite. It's really small but I like cross-referencing, and I just set up this wiki so that it can all hyperlink to itself, and to web resources. Of course, a lot of that is bunk and Claire doesn't want it connecting straight across, but if I can confirm its validity it goes in."

"That sounds like a blast."

"I also belong to a cage fighting group, but it's not exactly legal."

"Yeah, you might notice some strange bruising or lacerations on Andrew some Monday mornings, but we don't talk about it in front of Claire. She thinks that stuff is savage."

"Well," Nadine said without thinking, "Isn't it?"

Andrew just grinned at her.

 

Grace sat in the chair by the window, knees up to her chest, taking tiny inexpert puffs from Apache's cigarette and sending them coughing out the window.

"I pretty much thought I was going to get married right out of high school, like that. You know. And then my senior year, things kind of turned left. I failed every class the first semester and barely graduated. I was dressing like an urchin, like one of those prophets in the park, because I didn't want anybody to see my … I knew I was going crazy and I couldn't handle anybody knowing it for sure. I thought it showed on my skin."

That perfect, china skin. Right.

"It was bad, Nadine. I don't know your whole story, but I got into some stuff. I thought maybe, well, I'm crazy now, so what do crazy people do? I painted my nails black and got myself a heroin habit. My parents were hippies, it broke their heart."

"You were raised by hippies?"

"Yeah, I became a Republican at a young age because it was the only thing that pissed them off. I joined every club and said yes to every single thing. Nothing made an impression. So when I went nuts, it was kind of liberating. At least it freaked them out. And then the drugs… I do addiction, here, too. We don't advertise it, because we're not really equipped to be a detox center, and if we were that's all we would do. But we get a lot of traffic that takes the same way out."

Nadine tried to imagine beautiful Grace Connelly on drugs. She couldn't do it.

"Not important. I'm just saying… We bring ourselves to the job. Compassion is a lot easier when you've been lower than they are when they come in."

"And they come in low," said Andrew. "People do the worst things to themselves when they're hurting."

"But you can work your way out of it," Apache said loudly. "Anything terrible, you can find your way out."

"Yeah. You can do that here, too. It's still you, doing the work."

Nadine remembered Sylvia, back after the incident: "Blumenthal, you're only failing yourself. Go again. Again."

Apache shook her head.

"Seems like cheating."

Grace nodded.

"I know what you mean. I do. But it's like… We can give people drugs for depression, but all it does is clear a little space for them to work. It doesn't actually make their problems go away, right?"

Apache nodded.

"So that's what we do here, sometimes. Clear a little workspace."

Apache didn't seem convinced, but she liked Grace enough to let it go.

"And where do you fit in, Dr. St. John?"

"Andrew, gosh. I haven't been called 'doctor' since I was just out of grad school."

"Like you ever left," snorted Grace.

"Ahem. Apache, to answer your question, I deal with those patients who have informational needs or confusion. I'm not the only one that gets stuck in books. Have you ever read Catcher In The Rye?"

"No," she laughed. "I was afraid I'd kill the President."

"Exactly. Lots of people get stuck in that one. Books have souls just like people, if you can read them right. It's just like falling in love."

"So you … cure people who have fallen in love with books?"

"Not exactly, but … sometimes, yeah. Or any self-organizing system. We get a lot of deprogramming cases, during the madness season. People get pulled into religions or cults or particular people or whatever, things that suit their needs, and just give themselves to it. They end up hungry because they haven't kept anything for themselves. They don't have a direction or a thought in their head that somebody didn't put there. And it's not satisfying, so they're hungry, so they give more money or read the book again and again, or go back to the guy who's hitting them… Most of the work I do is more like Tarquin's stuff, really. He grounds them in the Earth, and I remind them of the stuff they know."

"Which is?"

"Um. Everything. We already know everything there is to know, and since that would incapacitate us, we just restrict it down to what we can handle. We reach for shadows and stars that remind us of the truth, and think they are the truth. It's just information, words for stuff we already know. Sometimes, you know, when you read a book or see a movie and you think, 'Yes, that's it, that's exactly it?,' you're just being reminded of something you already knew. It's easier when you can just access it directly."

"Sounds like you're the one starting cults."

"Yeah, well."

But Nadine knew: when you couldn't shut it off, you went silent and dead. So you had to shut it down. It was like the bad wisdom. You had to learn things as you went along, not just get it all at once. You'd burn out, like she did as a girl.

"So you don't believe in love?"

Andrew laughed.

"You're transmitting again. But I mean, of course I do. Just not like that. You can't get anything from anybody. That's not what people are for. When you start thinking it is, that's when love turns into something else, and you've lost the whole point."

"Are we still talking about your specialty?"

"Good point. No."

"Andrew's prone to philosophy if you don't watch him," said Grace, and he nodded mournfully.

"Not very romantic, though. Is it?"

Apache was thinking very seriously about something; the buzz from her head was nearly deafening. Nadine wondered if the others could hear it so loud.

"Romance… I don't really know what that word means, exactly. But I think it's romantic to look at things the way they are, all that complexity at once, unfolding… Have you seen Buzz's thing? His totem or whatever?"

Nadine realized she'd been wondering when he'd say Buzz's name.

"Yeah. It's amazing."

"He says it's a computer, dreaming or thinking or… I think it's a model of the universe, in miniature. I think it's what a computer would think the universe looks like, if it was just learning to walk or…"

Apache stretched and scratched herself beneath the robe she'd grudgingly put on when their guests arrived.

"I think this is putting me to bed."

Andrew nodded. "Boring. I know."

Nadine leaned forward suddenly.

"Gosh, no! But it is kind of late…"

Grace laughed. "It's four AM. We're due in the conference room in three hours, dude."

Apache threw herself backwards on the bed, robe flying wide, with a groaning yawn.

"Not. Coming. I mean, I figure I'm not invited, but even still, no thanks. I'm sleeping all day. I'll see you for lunch."

Nadine rolled her eyes. Seriously.

 

CHAPTER TWO: CHEATERS

 

When Apache Tear and Nadine Blumenthal met again, it was a rainy night at the Cattle Grill, where Apache was waitressing. She hadn't seen Nadine in more than ten years. Once there had been a regular postcard and letter exchange, but it slowed to a trickle. Apache knew she could count on a letter from Nadine on the day she most needed it: she'd come home from work after getting fired, ready to climb into bed or onto the couch for a good few weeks, and there the letter would be, bright pink or lavender, urging her on and on. She knew if she broke up with a guy, or, less frequently, got dumped, that she'd at least get a funny postcard or goodie basket out of it.

Her own letters weren't so presciently timed. She knew that Nadine didn't expect her to stay in touch, that she didn't want to ask too much. Just knowing that Nadine didn't expect her to write… Sometimes she'd think about it and write twice a week for a month or two, and other times it would make her so mad she'd trash whatever she'd written so far. It was annoying enough that Nadine was so nice all the time, she thought sometimes, but did she have to be psychic on top of it? How do you compete with that?

But those times, when it felt nasty, were rare. Mostly she liked having all the benefits of a best friend without having them around all the time, watching her make weird choices and decisions and feeling weird about them later. Having Nadine in the vicinity wouldn't clean up her act, but it would make her feel worse about everything.

It wasn't that Nadine was judgmental or even really cared what Apache did: she loved her, and that was usually enough. But it got hard when there were things Apache couldn't tell her. She wouldn't understand, or she'd worry, and that would be causing Nadine stress, which Apache didn't want to do. Apache had a strong feeling that she'd only have to screw up once, and Nadine would be gone forever. It was based on experience.

There was a time on the Sweat when they'd gone down to the gas station at the end of the road. That was the kind of thing they thought was fun back then. Not Apache, but the other girls. Walk down a dusty road for a mile with cars passing by screaming at them -- ugly words for women, or how they were crazy, that kind of thing that you knew they were looking at you -- and then when you got there, the real party would start.

You would have the extreme party experience of buying a Coke or a pack of Twizzlers from the creepy guys at the gas station, and once you got over that excitement, you could stand around awkwardly in your training bras looking at the people buying gas. And they'd look back at you, like you were trailer trash or something to eat, and then they'd drive away again, and forget your face before they hit the highway. And then eventually the heat and the dust and the exhaust would remind them that this activity was in fact not that fun, and they'd turn around and make the long walk home.

This little pilgrimage, usually taken on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday morning, meant something different to everybody. Apache liked it because she liked it when the truck drivers or weekend dads would check her out, because it meant she was still in charge. Nadine liked it because she liked routines and doing the same thing every day. Ruthie liked it because she was a dumb little kid and it was a new trip every time. Jane Crow liked it because she liked having adventures as a group.

Winter Horse hated it when they did this, Apache knew, because it made them look nuts, which was Winter Horse's main issue of life. She hated that the townies all thought they were a school for crazy kids. This was firstly because she fought for equal rights for actual crazy people as part of her mission to save the entire world from fossil fuel consumption and mean vibes, but mostly because she thought of the Sweat, "her kids," as the next step in human evolution, like the X-Men.

So when you got a lot of dirty kids huddling by the roadside, and Jane Crow dressing like a crazy Pam Grier movie all the time, and Apache wearing the trashiest stuff she could find, or the little kids' clothes… And then they'd all stare at grownups, because that's what kids do, but on the other hand of course they were obviously kids from the Sweat, which to most townies meant cuckoo like a clock… Winter Horse had a point. You couldn't argue with that. Winter Horse always had a point. It drove Apache bonkers.

But Winter Horse was one of those, too, that wouldn't tell you, if you were grossing her out, like Nadine Blumenthal. It was maddening. Apache never trusted anybody until she knew what the limit was.

She remembered one time in Art when she was saying stuff that nearly crossed the line with Bethany, about her rumored relationship with Winter Horse, and Bethany finally gave her such a look that Apache felt like she'd been slapped. And that was how she knew Bethany liked her.

Winter Horse would act appalled, but Winter Horse acted appalled about everything, so it was a like room so big that there was no echo. And anything could be in that room: judgment, sudden betrayal. Sudden moves.

So one time they were standing outside, sipping on their sodas or munching down on their ice cream bars before they melted or whatever. Probably four girls and two of the younger boys, just staring like urchins. And along came a weekend dad, from the sad development on the edge of town where all the divorced men lived, those apartments with discolored carpeting and Venetian blinds, and looked Jane up and down like they always did, and his eyes finally fell on Apache and settled. The moment she always waited for.

She wouldn't ever talk to them, or be gross and ask them to buy her stuff. None of that. She'd just flip her hair and watch them watching her, through her dark sunglasses. And this one time, of all times, with Nadine by her side, the man started to walk over. Jane and the younger kids turned their backs, which was Jane's rule for this kind of event, but Apache -- was she trying to impress somebody? Nadine? Jane Crow? -- took off her shades and smiled brazenly at the man.

He got about a yard away and said hello, and Apache could tell from his eyes that he wasn't all there. Not in a crazy way -- she could tell on sight if somebody was crazy -- but in a way where he was kind of dumb. She always loved those guys, country guys who were kind of dumb and afraid, who wanted love and wanted sex but didn't know how to ask for either, so they'd just kind of look at you. Not like they were hungry, but like they were … not trying to figure you out, but like they wanted you to come figure them out. The sweetest country boys in the world. You wanted to tell them it was easier than they thought. Life, being a man, finding love: way easier than it looked. They just wanted to be men.

She said hello, and introduced him to the violently shy and scandalized Nadine, and even Jane turned and gave him a little wave. She asked his name and he told them, who knows what it was now, and she asked what he was doing so far out in the country. And right then, Nadine clamped down on her wrist and said, mind to mind, Wedding ring.

Of course he was wearing a wedding ring. That's the second thing you check. And the first was for a girl in the car, and there was one, doing her hair. Nadine was a rookie.

He's a cheater. We know our own kind.