The Shakespeare Incident

by Jonathan Miller

  She had felt a slight charge with Nastia. The charge was stronger with Hikaru, but with Denny, the static caused tidal waves to rush through her veins. She wiped away the glass shards from the counter. The remaining lights flickered on and off for a moment, and there was crackling noise from the HVAC system. And then everything went out.

  Did the two of them black out the power supply? She took a deep breath and made her mind blank. Denny apparently did the same.

  The silence in the room grew more comfortable as the static slowly dissipated and their sparks adjusted to the other’s presence. The current got in sync, like two drummers keeping the same beat. The lights came back on. The small hairs on her arm lay down of their own accord.

  Unfortunately, they couldn’t read each other if they kept their sparks in tune. Time to make brother-sister talk, before she got to the attorney-client questions.

  “Denny, so how did you end up here in a place like Lordsburg?” she asked.

  “It’s home, as much as any place. I ended up with a foster family after my mom, well my stepmom, had to go to prison. Did you ever meet Nastia?”

  “I’ve met her,” Denise said, trying to gauge what to say. It was hard when she couldn’t read him. “She seems ummm… nice.”

  “She was never a real mom to me.”

  “Did you know her boyfriend, Fally?”

  “Briefly,” he said. “Let’s just say we didn’t hit it off.”

  Denny continued. “He was with her for a while when I was in middle school. Children Youth and Families was called in. That’s why I had to move to a foster family.”

  She sensed that she’d hit a sensitive spot, as her spark kicked up again. Time to move on. “New Mexico is a small state, maybe we’ve crossed paths over the years and didn’t know it.”

  “Once I settled down at the ranch, I went to high school here.”

  As they caught up for the next few minutes, Denise realized that they’d indeed had a few near misses. He’d gone to Shakespeare Community Academy, which despite its lofty name was an alternative school for kids with issues. He was able to play eight-man football there.

  She’d gone to the best high school in the state, Albuquerque Academy. She’d done a cross country meet in Deming while his football team was playing on the next field over. She vaguely remembered feeling a sharp ping in her brain that day, halfway during her run. She didn’t make it to the finish line and blamed it on a migraine. There’d been a few random power failures over the years while traveling. Could those have been caused by them being in close proximity?

  Denise wanted to know about Denny and Cordelia. “So, you lived with Cordelia in high school and now you’re dating…”

  “I moved in with her family on the ranch. But she wasn’t really family to me. I was the foster kid, and they treated me like a hired hand.”

  “I met Cordelia outside,” Denise said. “Seems like a ummm… nice girl.”

  “I love her. She loves me. She would die for me. But enough about me, tell me about my family, our family.”

  “Your mother, our mother, is Jen Song.”

  Denise had an old family picture of her and Jen on her phone. She held it up to the glass for Denny.

  “I want to meet her so much,” Denny said. “What’s she like? She’s so beautiful.”

  “That’s an old pic. She’s in her late forties now and she’s still beautiful. And very rich, and powerful.”

  “Like a millionaire? How did she get rich?”

  “She won a lawsuit for Susie Song.”

  “Who’s Susie Song?”

  “You’ve never heard of Susie Song the golfer?” she asked.

  “This is Lordsburg, we only have the local paper down here and we didn’t even have a home computer or high broad speed-span or whatever they call it.”

  Denise had remembered reading about a deficit of connectivity in the rural parts of New Mexico. They were probably only on “one g” down here until very recently. The only newspaper, The Lordsburg Liberal, probably didn’t have good national or even statewide coverage.

  “She’s my cousin. She’s our cousin. You didn’t know about that?”

  “I don’t follow golf. Wait, is she that tall Asian girl that does those ads for the insurance company?”

  The ads were technically for a wealth management company. Susie Song—her long legs bursting through a short plaid skirt—chatted with old white men about protecting their retirements on a tropical golf course. “Swing for the stars,” Susie told them and gave them a link to a website.

  Swing for the stars? What did that even mean?

  “I guess so. I haven’t seen either of them in person for over a year. I wasn’t really raised by my mother, I spent most of my time with my, our, grandmother for middle school, and then with Auntie Luna for high school. My mom—our mother—had… psychiatric issues. She was away for a while to deal with them. Then when she won all that money, she just went away to Asia for her career.”

  The lights flickered again, but only on her side. Denise wiped away a tear.

  Denny wiped one as well. “If I could have been there, maybe we could have been a family.”

  Chapter 12

  It was time to move to the attorney-client part of the conversation, well the clinical law student-client. “So, tell me what happened that night at the ranch. Why are you in jail?”

  “We found that Omega Grail on Cordelia’s property, it like appeared overnight. So, we went into town to use the internet at the library to verify it or whatever. Somehow the sheriff finds out that the grail was there, and they seize her property for back taxes or some bullshit. Still we were planning on just walking up and me touching the grail to win the prize. Didn’t want to hurt anyone. And then when we’re checking it out, all a sudden, this UFO comes and hits me with a laser. And I got no recollection after that.”

  “You don’t remember shooting at three cops?”

  “Not even.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I was still going to walk up to the grail, and I took a step forward just to check things out. It must have triggered the UFO. And like this drone or saucer or whatever it was comes out of the earth and hovers above me. It like shines a laser beam on me. Like I said, I don’t have any recollection of what happened after that.”

  Recollection was a strange word for him to say. It had a few too many syllables.

  “Were you armed?”

  “Kinda,” he said. “But I didn’t want to shoot nobody.”

  “That’s a bad fact.”

  “I didn’t want to shoot anyone. It’s like I lost control because of the UFO and the grail.”

  “Are the grails good or bad?”

  “They’re not either. They’re just tools to find people like us and sorta like test us and probe our powers to see if we’re dangerous to them. That’s what the whole contest was about, I guess.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Positive. And the military at White Sands Missile Range and over at Holloman, they’re in on it with the grails. The aliens can only communicate through the worm holes with neutrinos or whatever. So, they got the half-aliens and also like real human people here to do their dirty work. We got time, maybe another hundred years before the big invasion, but they’re setting things up right now.”

  Denise covered her eyes. Did her brother really believe this crap? “And the grails, do the aliens make them?”

  “Not anymore. Somebody makes the grails overseas in Asia because that’s where some of the rare earths are or whatever they use for them. And they can manufacture them with less oversight or whatever.”

  That almost made sense. “Have you actually been abducted by aliens?”

  “Not yet, but I can get glimpses of them watching me from afar. Can you get glimpses of them?”

>   “No, I can’t.”

  “I can see the aliens in my dreams. Ever since I started working with them grails in the military.”

  “What did you do with grails in the military?”

  “That’s classified. I can’t tell anyone, or I could be busted for like treason. You wouldn’t really understand it anyway.”

  “Were you like a test subject, like a guinea pig, with the grails?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  That weird electric current passed through her, like he was scanning her. She didn’t like it. “Stop it.”

  “I guess we’re like two charged people and we can’t read each other,” Denny said.

  “Please don’t do that again, and I promise I won’t do it to you.”

  He touched his hand to the window. She touched hers to his on the glass. There was a brief current, but it stopped. “Deal,” they both said.

  “Jinx,” she said. He stared at her. “That’s something me and my cousin Dew would say if we both said the same thing at the same time.

  “Jinx” he said. “Then it’s just like jinx, the grail. Maybe we both have to touch the grail at the same time to get it to work for us.”

  “I don’t really know much about the grails or jinxes,” she said. “I think we need to concentrate on the case at hand, the attempted murders on the cops. You’re facing some serious charges.”

  “Whatever. What I need you to do is like subpoena all the top-secret military records, if you get them, I can prove everything about the aliens.”

  “You want me to subpoena umm… them aliens?”

  “Well, I guess so.”

  How would one serve a subpoena on Alpha Centuri? She looked over at her brother. He was breathing heavily; his bloodshot eyes were bulging. His eyes were similar to hers in their vague Asian influence, but his eyes were… crazy.

  There was video of Denny shooting the cops that would come into evidence. The case could not be won at trial. She would have to raise competency, and given Denny’s alien fixation, he would be found incompetent. She wasn’t sure what happened after that.

  “Maybe there’s another way,” she said. Denise knew a little bit about the mental health laws of New Mexico after her disastrous run-in with the infamous Professor Kang.

  But Denise now had a very real reluctance to take this case. “Cordelia said it’s up to you. So, Denny, do you want me to be your lawyer?” she asked.

  No hesitation at all. “Of course. It’s got to be you. You can touch the grail with me, and we can see the aliens. We’re the twins, the Gemini, like Castor and Pollux.”

  Denise had spent her whole life waiting for this moment to meet her brother, to be part of a real family. Now she couldn’t wait for it to end and be all alone again. “First I have to get you out of custody.”

  “It shouldn’t be that hard. Just tell them the aliens made me do it.”

  There was a knock on the door behind her. A big correctional officer opened the door. His badge said “Horatio,” and Denise wasn’t sure whether that was a first or last name. “Visiting hours are over.”

  Denny had calmed down. “My detention hearing is tomorrow at nine. Will you be there for me?”

  Horatio held the door open. “Miss?” She had a very simple choice to make. She could leave, get in the Lexus and drive away on the interstate and never see her brother again. Or she could stay here for the long run.

  She looked at Denny one more time. Their currents were in sync. It was as if they’d known each other forever.

  “I’ll be there,” she said. She was clicked out the front door.

  But would she really be there? “Welcome to Lordsburg,” she said to the end of America.

  Chapter 13

  Denise sped out of the jail parking lot, got on the freeway and headed west. She needed a place to stay other than the broken-down motels on the boulevard. Part of her wanted to keep going all the way to Arizona.

  Still, a billboard advertised the ubiquitous chain hotel, the Holiday Comfort, at the next exit. She’d given her word to her brother after all. The place looked comfortable, and her holiday would be convenient to court and to the freeway to get out of town. When she exited, she noticed several transients were hitchhiking near the off ramp. They didn’t look at her, they looked at her car. At least it had an alarm.

  She went inside the hotel. The spacious beige lobby with pine accents doubled as a dining room. She could be in anywhere America. Fine by her.

  “Should I park the car around the back?” she asked the concierge inside the bland hotel lobby that looked like every other bland hotel lobby. He was a big guy and his muscles barely fit into his white and tan hotel uniform. Then again, everyone was big compared to Denise. The concierge’s name badge said CALIBAN.

  “No, I can’t see it if it’s in the back when they try to break in,” Caliban said.

  He pointed to a boomerang hanging on the wall. “If someone breaks into the car in the front, I scare them off.”

  Denise nodded. “Sounds good.”

  She received a call from Cordelia the minute after she entered the nice room.

  “Denny called and said he wants you to be his lawyer,” Cordelia said. “I don’t know why.”

  “I told him that I’ll do it.”

  “You better get him out tomorrow. I know a lot of people here. We can pay you a lot of money if you can do it.”

  “I don’t need your money,” Denise said, the Swan bank card firmly back in her wallet. “This is my family. And you know there’s no way I can guarantee anything.”

  “Just get him out,” Cordelia said and hung up.

  Cordelia didn’t say “Or else.” She didn’t have to.

  She noticed an email from Hikaru when she set up her laptop. He had prepared all the paperwork for the case, even prepared the entry of appearance forms for her with docu-sign. She signed them with her finger indicating that she was a clinical law student operating pursuant to Rule 5-110.1, under the supervision of Attorney Jen Song. There was an electronic signature that was marked “/JS/”.

  Denise didn’t know if that meant that her mother had physically signed it or someone else had clicked a few keys on their computer. Did it matter?

  She noticed that by signing with her finger she had somehow cut herself on her laptop’s track pad. She dabbed the cut with a tissue until it stopped bleeding. She tried to calm herself down by practicing her martial arts kata with her staff again, and doing it slowly, as if doing tai chi.

  She still almost broke the mirror with her staff.

  Chapter 14

  Bored and it was only seven at night, and she didn’t want to risk breaking the mirror for real. She used the stationary bike in the hotel’s gym to pedal away the anxiety. She assumed Hikaru too was on his bike catching the last hours of daylight so couldn’t talk right now. She messaged him a “?”

  He sent her some incredible pictures of his last cycling adventures—on the white pyramid of Sierra Blanca glowing in the moonlight. This man actually biked in the snow and at night.

  Another picture, presumably an old one, showed the sun setting over some desert lake, the waters of the lake a bright fuchsia. Perhaps it was her spark, but there was a whiff of that dying smell that burst through the phone for an instant. She recognized the scene; it was the toxic pond she had passed earlier today.

  “Love it!” she wrote. He did not text back but did send her an email regarding the case for tomorrow. But that could wait, right?

  She got a salad for takeout from the nearby McDonalds and settled in for the duration. That night in the tan, spacious hotel room, Denise downloaded the “Petition for Pre-trial Detention” sent by Hikaru. The petition had been filed by “Special Counsel,” indicating the New Mexico Attorney General was taking over this case, presumably because the local prosecutor didn’t ha
ve the expertise or resources to handle a case of this magnitude.

  As for the allegations contained within the petition itself, while Denny didn’t have a felony criminal record, the four counts of attempted murder were by definition “violent.” Thus, there was a presumption that he be held for pre-trial detention for the duration. While Denny lived with Cordelia at a local address, he was not a property owner and was unemployed. Besides, Cordelia’s family’s property had been seized by the state, so technically she had no address either.

  Denise recognized the name of the judge, Shahrazad Sanchez. Shahrazad had been a court reporter not too long ago and Denise had seen her listen and type cryptic notes onto her strange device. As a court reporter, Shahrazad often seemed distracted and looked at her phone as if she was reporting on the courts of other worlds. Denise shuddered to think how she’d be as a judge.

  New Mexico had a small population spread out over a big state. Back when Denise did social media, they’d even been “friends” on Instagram because the court reporter was a “friend” of Dew’s. Shahrazad had a short stint as an “alt-model” on Instagram, posting provocative pics showing her piercings and tattoos against ample helpings of skin. Denise’s cousin, Dew, had posted a snarky comment, something about Shahrazad being a slut reporter instead of a court reporter. Denise had merely liked the comment. But that was enough.

  Shahrazad had unleashed her Instagram fury on Denise. All her fellow mean-girl alt models followed suit. The attacks on Denise for merely “liking” a comment on Instagram were vicious—nerd girl, virgin, ugly bitch—were the ones she could remember before the postings got racist.

  Denise quit all social media after that.

  In the here and now in her Holiday Comfort room, she winced at the thought that the “slut reporter” was now a judge, her brother’s judge. She felt utterly alone in the room as she unpacked her small suitcase. She had enough clothes for three days at most, even though all the clothes were black—well her cheerful charcoal. The hotel had a washer-dryer, so she could holiday here comfortably for the duration.