by Linda Grimes
I stuck to Billy like glitter on glue while we finished getting ready for the trip. No way was I going to give him an opportunity to eject his latest inamorata without me in earshot of the phone conversation. If I was going to be involved with him, I at least wanted to go in with my eyes open. Knowing Billy, he wouldn’t shed his baggage before he was certain he had me in reserve. If then.
Billy came back in from loading our bags into the car. I’d watched him out the front window the whole time. He hadn’t taken his cell out of his pocket once.
“All right, monkey girl, the car’s packed. Do you have your Sea-Bands on?”
Molly clapped her wrists together like Wonder Woman, showing Billy she was heroically prepared to stave off an attack of motion sickness.
“I gave her some candied ginger, too,” I added. I also had plenty of large, resealable plastic bags, just in case. I didn’t mention that in front of Molly, though. Didn’t want to undermine her confidence in the home remedies.
“All right, then. Let’s hit the road. Anyone need one last pit stop before we leave?”
Molly shook her head. She’d already been to the bathroom. I, not wanting to leave Billy alone with his phone, hadn’t. I looked at him sharply but decided he seemed preoccupied enough with Molly to risk a brief absence.
He was hanging up as I returned.
“Who was that?”
“Mommo. She wanted to say hi to Molly.”
“What’d you do?”
“What do you think? I let her say hi to ‘Molly.’”
“She bought it?”
He lifted one brow and didn’t bother to answer. Silly me. Of course she bought it.
It was considered bad form to use another adaptor’s primary aura without express permission, but I didn’t imagine Molly much cared under the circumstances. I think being stuck in orangutan form qualifies as implied consent.
I was still a little suspicious. “So why aren’t you still Molly? Since you just hung up and all?”
“Mommo wanted to talk with me again after she spoke to Molly. Any other questions, or is the interrogation over?” He winked.
I held myself tall (-ish) and brushed past him to pick up Molly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No?” He put his hands over Molly’s ears on the pretext of dropping a kiss on her head, and said, “I like it when you’re jealous.”
He removed his hands before I could respond, so I had to make do with a dirty look.
“Did you let Molly touch you while you were her?” I said, shifting topics. “Maybe she could reabsorb her own aura somehow.”
His eyes lit. “No—didn’t think of it. Cuz, you do have a brain.”
Back to projecting Molly in an instant, he took her from me, staggering a bit under the weight. Molly clutched her erstwhile aura and closed her eyes. She rubbed her hands up and down Billy’s arms, bringing them to rest on his face. As her thumbs stroked his—or rather, her own, in this case—cheeks, she slowly opened her eyes.
Nothing happened.
Billy looked at me with Molly’s eyes, so disconcertingly like his own. What now? they asked.
“Give it a minute. You know secondhand auras can take a little longer,” I said.
“That’s right,” he agreed, though it wasn’t technically so. Sure, you had to touch a secondhand aura longer to maintain it, but you ought to be able to project it instantly. Besides, it wasn’t really secondhand—it was her own aura. But what are straws for if not to grasp at?
“Hey, why don’t you help? Maybe a double dose would do the trick.”
I obliged and added my own Molly projection to the mix, taking one of her hands and trying my best to give energy instead of take it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Assuming an aura is voluntary; it’s not like you can impose it on someone, even if they are an adaptor.
Still, we waited a full minute more before we gave up, each resuming our own form. If it hadn’t happened yet, it wasn’t going to.
“It was worth a shot,” Billy said with a too-casual shrug. “Not to worry, sis. James is the brilliant one, and we’ll be at his lab in no time. Heck, he’ll probably have the whole thing figured out by the time we get there.”
Molly drooped against him, the saddest little ape in the whole world.
After she was safely buckled into a hastily obtained car seat in the backseat of the Chevy—an indignity she was forced to suffer because of her size—Billy walked me around to the front passenger door.
Seizing the opportunity, I said, “I am not jealous. Just so you know.”
He pulled me to the back of the car and opened the trunk, blocking us from Molly’s view.
“Did you forget to pack something? You want to run back and—”
He framed my face with his hands and kissed me, slowly. I was too surprised to protest. When he finished, he took me by one elbow and deposited me in the front seat. I couldn’t fail to notice he hadn’t claimed there was no reason for me to be jealous.
The thought was shoved aside by the car that pulled up alongside us and stopped, blocking our exit. I waved it along without looking, trying to indicate our parking place would soon be available. Billy slid into his seat, started the car, and gave a polite tap of the horn. The car blocking us didn’t move. Finally I looked over and tried to catch the driver’s eye.
Shit! “Step on it!” I yelled at Billy.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“It’s the woman from the zoo! She must be after Molly. Go!” I said, bouncing in my seat, ready to reach a leg over and stomp on the accelerator myself.
“And where do you suggest I go?” Billy asked, looking around him. Car in front, car behind, and Zoo Lady holding steady where she was. What did she think we were going to do? Just hand Molly over?
“I don’t know. Crap. Someone’s getting out of her car. Two someones. Big someones. Hurry, before they have us surrounded!”
Billy grinned, took a deep breath, and jumped the curb. He missed the parking meter by inches. Thirty or so feet down the sidewalk (fortunately clear of pedestrians), he found a spot to squeeze through back onto the street.
Zoo Lady was slowed by waiting for her goons to get back into the car, giving Billy a chance to get ahead of her, down obscure streets. A last look behind me showed her gesticulating frantically at somebody next to her in the car.
My speculation about who it could be was cut short by Billy swerving around a corner. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.
He gave me a quelling look I took for a yes. “Just keep an eye on Molly, okay? Make sure she doesn’t barf in my backseat.”
Molly looked to be on the verge of sleep, completely unimpressed by our daring escape. Candied ginger is a wonderful thing. Especially when laced with a hefty dose of Dramamine.
Chapter 7
James’s lab was straight out of a sci-fi movie. He wasn’t officially affiliated with Columbia, other than as a perpetual student, but they backed his research anyway. They must have really liked him, because the large work space was outfitted with more computers than an Apple showroom, and had scientific gizmos out the wazoo. I couldn’t tell you what half of them were, much less what they do.
Security was tight. Even Billy had to wait for James to let us in, unusual for a guy who doesn’t generally grasp the concept of “locked.” Once we were inside, he gave Billy a key, so he could come and go with Molly as needed, and commandeered the freshly acquired stroller, pushing it to an alcove equipped with a sofa, several TVs, and an array of video game consoles.
“There you go, Molly. The tests might take a while, and I wouldn’t want you to get bored. Have at it.”
I smiled at James, a little surprised it had occurred to him to find ways of distracting Molly from her troubles. His brain usually occupied a much loftier plane. He shrugged, and helped her out of the stroller. She dove straight for the Wii, something I knew she’d been lusting after for the better part of two years. Auntie Mo thought video games rotted
the brain, and persisted in shoving her offspring out into the fresh air whenever they begged to be allowed to join their peers in the twenty-first century.
Once Billy and I had eluded Pregosaurus Rex, the rest of the ride up had been uneventful. Ultimately, we’d decided it must have been a phenomenal piece of bad luck that Zoo Lady had been passing us as we were loading the car, and that pregnancy hormones, coupled with an overdeveloped sense of zoo-volunteer responsibility, had impelled her orangutan recovery attempt. That didn’t fully explain why she had the goons with her, but we put it behind us anyway, certain nothing could come of it once James had Molly back to her own form.
After Molly was settled and figuring out how best to hold the controller with her simian hands, James led Billy and me to the other side of the large room. We had to wend our way around several tables crowded with experiments in various stages of completion.
“Has there been any indication yet that she might bring herself out of this?” James asked, directing his question to both of us.
“Not a flicker,” Billy said.
James nodded. “All right, then. I have a few tests lined up—I’ll get started right away. By the way, do needles bother Molly? I’ll need to take some blood.”
I spied a nearby stool and sat, hard.
Billy laid a casual hand on the back of my neck while James automatically ran a paper towel under the nearest faucet, wrung it out, and handed it to me. I dabbed my face and the insides of my wrists while they went on talking. Needles do bother me, just a tad.
“Not much. If you poke her while she’s in front of that Wii, she probably won’t even notice,” Billy said.
James gave me a sideways look. “Ciel, I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure.” Anything, as long as it involved me leaving before he brought out the needles.
“Mom and Auntie Mo are expecting me to show up”—he checked his watch—“in about half an hour. They’re decorating—”
“Oh, no you don’t! I had decoration duty last year. No way can I do that two years in a row. It’s inhumane.”
“Well, I can’t be there, obviously. My hands are full here. You think it would be fair to make Molly wait?”
“Why can’t Billy go? He’s better at being you than I am. I always slip up and throw in too much of me.”
“I can’t,” Billy interjected. “I’m meeting someone—a colleague,” he stressed, for my benefit, “uptown in an hour. I can’t put it off. I can stay with Molly until she’s comfortable here, but then I have to leave.”
“Grrr. This is so not right.”
“Sorry. No choice,” James said with an angelic smile. Easy for him to be happy. Nonadaptor that he was, he never had to fill in for anybody.
“Okay,” I said grudgingly. “But I’m going to do it as myself. If I have to suffer, I may as well get credit for it.”
“You can’t do that,” James said.
Billy backed him up. “He’s right. If James isn’t there, our mothers will be suspicious—they know there’s no way in hell any of us would do it two years running. We can’t risk it.”
“But…” I looked from one to the other. No getting around them.
“Fuck!” I said under my breath so little Miss Big Ears wouldn’t hear.
*
It’s a very intimate thing, wearing somebody else’s aura. Lets you know everything there is to know about another person, physically at least, and there is only so much I want to know about any of my brothers. I had changed into James’s clothes before switching to his aura for the express purpose of avoiding an unintentional glance at his naked body. Somehow that would seem like even more of an invasion of privacy in his case, since he was incapable of doing the same in return.
It was my parents’ turn to host the infamous Come As You Aren’t party, though in reality Dad had little to do with it. Mom and Auntie Mo were equally in charge every year; only the venue alternated. Dad and Uncle Liam stayed as distant from the details as any two hapless husbands could, no matter where it happened to be set. Whoever wasn’t hosting the party provided a hiding place for the husband of the one who was. Right now I suspected Dad and Uncle Liam were sharing a Guinness in Uncle Liam’s man cave, probably playing a friendly game of darts and commiserating over the latest economic crisis on Wall Street. Lucky bastards.
On the front porch of my parents’ familiar Upper West Side brownstone, I inhaled deeply and plastered a distracted look on James’s face. I thought I knew my brother well enough to pull this off, but I’d never been him in front of our mother. She had a nose like a terrier when it came to her kids hiding behind fake personas—with three of us capable of looking like anybody we wanted at any given time, she’d had to develop other ways of discerning our true identities. She claimed we all had “tells,” but of course wouldn’t dream of letting us know what they were.
I was banking on the fact that she had no reason to suspect I was anybody but James. First of all, she knew none of us was a willing helper, nor were any of us so altruistic we’d be likely to sub for each other. Second of all, she had no reason to suspect I would be anywhere near New York until the day before the party at the earliest.
The front door was locked. Crap. I patted my pockets—empty. I’d forgotten to get the key from James.
Relax. No big deal. Surely it wouldn’t be the first time he’d forgotten his keys. I’d just knock—
The door swung open.
“James. You’re late.” My mother grabbed me, barely looking at me as she dragged me into the foyer. “I was just about to call you. You know we have a hundred things to do today. Are you okay?”
She came to a full stop and looked at me sharply. “James? What’s wrong?”
I felt my eyes widen as I looked down at her. Aurora Halligan. She was my mother, but I still thought of her that way whenever I first saw her after I’d been away for a while. An imposing entity, bigger than the word “Mom”—or her diminutive size—can contain. She’s me in thirty years, only with brown eyes, bigger boobs, and a much lighter sprinkling of freckles. On her they look good.
“Uh, nothing. Nothing is wrong. What makes you think something is wrong?” Thank God James’s voice didn’t squeak under maternal interrogation the way mine did. That would’ve been a dead giveaway.
“You look pale. Are you sick?” Her hands flew to my forehead, where they paused briefly before she grabbed my chin and pulled my mouth open.
“Let me see your throat.”
I came that close to complying before I remembered James didn’t put up with Mom’s nonsense. Me, I just stick my tongue out and let her look. I’ve found going through a quick physical is easier than balking, because she’ll usually settle down once she figures out I don’t have the bubonic plague.
I jerked my chin away and deflected her with a kiss on the cheek, something James was known to do in desperation. Since he wasn’t normally the most demonstrative of fellows, it tended to derail Mom’s obsessive concern.
“Mother, I’m fine. I just got busy at work. Now, what do you need me to do?”
She smiled up at me, her eyes the swirling light and dark brown of pecan shells, happy now that she was assured death wasn’t lurking over my shoulder. Tucking her hand into the crook of my elbow, she guided me toward the living room, a cavernous space by city standards. It was furnished with good, solid pieces: oversize and overstuffed sofas and chairs upholstered in brocades and velvets. The tables (coffee, end, and occasional) were dark, heavy pieces, impervious to children. Somehow Mom had managed to marry hideously expensive with ugly as sin. But I loved it. It was home.
“You can bring down the folding tables and chairs from the attic. Don’t bother with the tablecloths—the caterer is taking care of the linens—but do see if you can find those globular oil lamps. You know the ones I mean? Good. I think they’ll make splendid centerpieces, don’t you? We can’t use flowers this year. Your great-aunt Helen is allergic, and she claims it isn’t fair that her sneezing gives her
away every year, so we’re trying to be accommodating. Not that it will make any difference—she can’t hold an aura longer than fifteen minutes at a time anymore, poor dear. The change hit her hard. So we’ll do the oil lamps surrounded by origami figures from nature—you’ll find the paper in your father’s study, only don’t use the orange. The orange is hideous when it’s backlit by the flames, and besides, it’s too Halloweeny—”
“Mother, slow down. I don’t do origami.”
“Of course you do, dear. You made me lovely origami gifts when you were a child—remember the swan? Or was that a goose? The neck was kind of in between, but whatever it was, it was gorgeous and I loved it, such a shame the dog ate it. Anyway, you made them all the time when your brothers were out playing football. It’s why I thought of using origami instead of flowers. We could go with silk flowers, of course, but that would be tacky, don’t you think? If you use flowers, they should be real flowers, not fake flowers, though I suppose, when you think about it, fake flowers are somehow symbolic of us, aren’t they? Wait—no, not really. I mean we are realistic fakes, not fakey fakes—”
Damn. “Mom—Mother! I’ve, um, forgotten how.”
“Don’t worry. I bought a book. Just follow the directions—it’ll all come back to you.”
Not likely. I’d never made an origami figure in my life. I could only hope the directions were clear and my fingers were more dexterous as James than they were as myself.
“Ciel? Is that you?” my aunt’s voice piped in from the kitchen.
“Of course not, Mo. It’s James. Why would Ciel be here?” Mom called back, then ran to answer the phone.
Auntie Mo made an entrance, emerald eyes flashing and auburn hair gleaming. She was named for Maureen O’Hara, and her resemblance to the actress—when the actress was in her prime, of course—was uncanny. I suspect she may fudge a little.