“Hey, driver,” she said. “Pull over. I want to give our friend a ride.”
“Sorry, miss, I can only take the students from the Foundation.”
“Well, today you can make an exception.”
“Sorry, miss,” the driver repeated.
Eva threw her door open, forcing the car to stop.
“Miss, please close the door.”
Eva ignored the driver and called out to Jim. “Yo, Ecco. You want a ride? The driver says he would be delighted to give you a lift.” She drew out the word, looked at the driver, and arranged her mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. Her eyes were hard. She hopped into the front seat, startling the driver, and said, in a near whisper, “Listen. We owe this kid. Somebody tried to jump us this morning and he stopped them. So, just for today, you’re going to find a little different route home. Tell your boss there was a detour, something. Help me and one day I’ll help you.” Then she opened the front passenger door and leaned out again. “Otherwise I drop to the pavement and say that you took off while I was getting in the car.”
The driver frowned as if trying to decide which held more danger: her threat or her smile. He pulled over.
“Jim,” Eva called. “Get in. We’ll give you a ride.”
Jim and Ringer got in the car. The driver glared at Eva. She held his gaze until he looked away. Jim looked puzzled, then concerned. A flash lit Eva’s eyes. Then they turned opaque, and evicted any attempt to see into her soul. That territory was off-limits.
The riders sat without speaking. Eva was sphinx-like, wrapped in stony silence. The driver kept his eyes fixed ahead. Marta was reengaged in her reverie, eyes closed. Ringer sniffed, hunting for food, and then settled on Jim’s lap. She looked back and forth among the friends, lost in their own worlds.
Jim and Marta and Eva were inseparable during their freshman year at Los Pobladores. The next year Eva and Marta spent less time together, and Jim divided his time equally between his two friends. As a third year began, he spent more of his time with Marta.
Jim Ecco was as skittish as a wren the day that Marta kissed him. When people stood close to him he was anxious, and when Marta moved into his intimate space to embrace him, he was unsettled. His repertoire of responses to members of the two-legged set had been limited to fight, flight, or wary distance, and the movement from impersonal space into a conjoined embrace was a slow journey.
Jim knew that Marta was willing—her pupils widened slightly, she positioned herself to face him squarely, open and inviting. Her head tilted back a fraction, inviting contact. He thought, It’s taken me two years to kiss her, a moment he’d wanted since meeting her.
Truth be told, she kissed him.
They had met after school on a warm day in early spring. A nearby park offered a few acres of green grass and a hedge of jasmine bushes. The jasmine lent an intoxicating scent and privacy. They’d decided to work together on a homework assignment. Marta had brought a blanket and a small lunch. They’d arranged the blanket and Marta set out a variety of fruits and cheeses, a small loaf of sourdough bread and sparkling water. She’d packed small plates, indistinguishable from bone china, but unbreakable, and two glasses. The place settings were compressible nanoplastics, shape-shifting materials that could organize and reorganize at a molecular level. The glasses collapsed into discs the width of a drinking glass but as thin as a coaster. Gentle pressure on the circumference of the plates allowed them to collapse into equally small discs so that the table settings occupied less space in Marta’s bag than a pack of cards.
“You think of everything,” Jim said as he took in the small feast.
“I wanted us to have a nice time. Hunger is distracting, don’t you think?”
Her words were matter-of-fact, but he heard the warm harmonics of affection in her voice. He was alert, senses aroused. She spoke with a quiet, measured cadence, almost hypnotic, and Jim had to lean in to hear her. As he leaned in, Marta closed the distance between them, an inch, and her movement drew him closer still. Marta’s lips parted and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue.
Jim heard blood pound in his ears. His heart sped and every capillary in his body dilated. He felt a flash of warmth like a corona of radiant sunlight. The heat was real but it was all generated from within. Without thinking—finally, without thinking!—Jim closed the tiny gap between them and touched his lips to Marta’s.
At first he feared that he’d committed an offense. Perhaps she read his anxiety, for she placed one hand behind his head and held him to her lips. They kissed again. At that moment, Jim Ecco began his life’s longest journey, the eighteen-inch passage from his head to his heart.
Seconds or hours later—who could be certain?—Jim and Marta backed up just enough to see each other’s faces. Her usual look of curiosity was creased with amusement. “Nice,” was all she said, and then pulled him back and kissed him again, slowly. “Like this,” she breathed. Jim brushed the plates and food aside and sank to an elbow. She followed in his embrace. He held her in the crook of his arm and played with her hair, stroking and pulling it gently. His hand explored the terrain of her face and he thought he saw something new in her familiar features.
Jim started to speak but Marta placed a finger on his lips. She kissed him again and took his right hand and placed it on her breast. “I will not make love with you today,” she whispered. “But I will give myself to you soon. I promise this to you.”
He bowed his head in fealty. He removed his hand and kissed her at the soft indentation where her collarbones met. “Te quiero, Jim,” she breathed. I love you. She held his head against her breast.
Surely the infant Jim had laid his head on his mother’s breast. Surely she soothed and comforted him in a loving embrace. He would not have known how to be held and comforted without that experience. But whatever quotient of tenderness had been offered to the infant, he’d existed without it, and the sensation of intimacy with Marta was unfamiliar. They lay together on the blanket, unmoving save for fingers that caressed the outlines of each other’s forms. Marta traced his jawline and the soft skin of his neck and then rested her palms on his chest.
“Touch me again,” she urged and drew his hand up once more.
He kept her cradled in the crook of his left arm and ran his right hand over the contours of her body, exploring the flat of her stomach and the roll of her hip. She arched her back and pressed herself in closer as he ran his hand over the smooth curve of her buttocks. She breathed into his neck.
“Marta, I feel...funny. No, not funny, but, I don’t know...different. Is this what it feels like to be in love?”
She took his hand in hers, and placed both on the center of his chest.
“What does your heart say, querido?”
“I don’t know. This is all new.”
“Your heart knows. Haven’t you wanted to kiss me all year? No. No words. Tell me with your heart.”
So he kissed her again, now at the corners of her mouth, on each lip and then openmouthed and urgent. His thoughts stilled, replaced by the need to possess and be possessed, to draw her in, to find a calm surcease of anger.
Four days later Marta fulfilled her promise. She gave herself, took his strength in exchange, and passed into womanhood. Jim discovered a still place within himself where turmoil paid obeisance to the gentle parts of his being.
There was no school and the house would be his for the day. He spent the morning cleaning his room, checking for dog hair, pacing and then cleaning again. Marta arrived. She wandered through Jim’s home, looking at the photos on the refrigerator, the art on the walls. Ringer kept to her side. When Marta sat at a dining-room chair, Ringer placed her head on the girl’s lap. Jim smiled and said, “She beat me to it.”
They laughed and stood and embraced and kissed. Marta laid her head on his chest and held him close to her. Together, they swayed to an inaudible rhythm.
“Would you like to make love to me?” she asked.
Jim said noth
ing. He took her hand and kissed each of her fingers and then led her to his room. They undressed each other in self-conscious wonderment, and handled each piece of clothing with the reverence of a pilgrim touching a holy relic. Jim sank to his knees before her and pressed his head to her stomach. He breathed in deeply, and then sank lower to kiss the gnarled joints of her left leg. She gasped and started to pull away but Jim held her fast, as she had held him four days earlier. He pressed his cheek to her calf and then kissed her feet. She allowed herself to sink onto his bed. She reached to pull back the sheets. They might as well have been cemented in place, they were tucked in so tightly, and they laughed as they struggled to free the linens.
Jim grazed his hands along her legs and paused at the plain dark triangle that held such awe and mystery. He traced the concave line of her ribs, around her breasts and up to her face again, holding her head immobile while he kissed her again and again.
She lifted her legs and placed them on the bed. Jim supported himself above her and allowed her to caress his chest and hips. She reached down and took him in her hands. One moment he was above her, separate, and the next moment he was inside her. They were fused. They kept their eyes open and marveled at the sight of one another. Then they were engulfed in passion.
Later, they lay entwined. Each time Jim started to speak, Marta put her mouth over his mouth to stop him, although she did permit him to profess his love for her. Repeatedly.
Much later, Marta broke the silence. “Why did you wait so long?” she asked.
The next day at school, Eva stopped and looked first at Jim, then at Marta. Pain, then anger flashed across her eyes, almost too brief to notice. Then she grinned.
“About damned time,” she said, and lapsed into stony silence for the rest of the day. It was difficult to think when the din from the Voices at Table rose in deafening ridicule.
Throughout high school, Jim, Marta, and Eva, friends by exclusion as much as by attraction, were protective of one another even as they quarreled. Marta and Jim sometimes fought, always over Jim’s temper. His anger was hard for her. Eva’s insults were mingled with affection. She kept Marta close, but always at arm’s length, as if the act of embracing her would be painful.
Jim supplied the minimum effort to pass his classes and remain enrolled. He continued to study people, teasing out their secrets, a talent that often proved more curse than blessing, a gift that cleaved him from, rather than bound him to, members of his own species.
Eva and Marta, drawn to science since childhood, were accepted at Yale, Tufts, and Harvard. They chose Harvard College, for its medical school and its Center for Nanoscale Systems. The Hidden Scholar Foundation continued to fund their education.
And the three friends who shared different but difficult childhoods, three friends thrown together by chance, three who would share an orbit travelled to another part of the country and another chapter in their lives.
07
___________________________________________
WALKING WITH JURICÁN
BOSTON
OCTOBER. 2029
Okay, Jim thinks, she was old. She had cataracts. So what? She didn’t need to read a dataslate. Her hearing had largely faded. But she registered the clink of a spoon at mealtimes. She smelled bad... so what?
Ringer had been Jim’s friend and familiar. The move from southern California to Boston had been hard enough on Jim, but the freezing weather and endless grey skies seemed to drain life from Ringer. Her filmy eyes implored, a whine in her voice chided, Make it warm! Her every arthritic step made Jim ache. A stab of pain shot through him each time she fell.
A boy and his dog. Ringer was eleven, and then—no more.
Tips from, “Coping With The Loss of Your Dog”
It is normal to feel angry
“God help me, Marta, I’m about to explode.”
“Shhh...querido. Just let me hold you for a while.”
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND DAMMIT THAT WAS RINGER.”
It is normal to feel depressed
“Jim, it’s been a week. Are you going out? What about your job?”
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s not just you. I can’t ignore my classes. Harvard is harder than Los Pobladores.
“I’m not keeping you from your studies.”
“How can I concentrate on school when I’m worried about you? I have to go to class. Jim? Jim?”
The most important step in your recovery is to express your feelings in a way that suits you best
Night shrouded Boston Common. Dark figures slid in and out of the park’s shadows: drug dealers, prostitutes, muggers—and a hunter. Jim Ecco moved silently. His practiced eyes counted the park’s denizens. He wanted to find two or three, young enough to be a challenge, but not so young as to be exculpable.
He crouched by the Soldier and Sailor Monument. It topped a small rise and gave him a view of much of the park’s fifty acres. Over the centuries, the Common had hosted soldiers, protests, and recreation. It accommodated criminals as graciously as upright citizens. And on a crisp fall evening, as the fires of his rage and the anguish of his guilt consumed him, Jim Ecco prepared to approach three of these habitués.
He moved away from the monument’s bas relief, stepping with care. No twigs snapped, no leaves crackled. He raced across open ground, crouching low, moving with the cover of trees. He kept his attention wide, sensing for danger, for intrusion, for anything that might come between him and his prey.
He’d marked his quarry the night before. Now he drew into himself, presenting the smallest possible profile as he closed the distance to the trio. They would get an opportunity to leave him alone, although the assaults he’d observed at their hands argued against a peaceful interchange. They would set on him and Jim would respond. Violence would be his catharsis. He could purge the feelings of helplessness and frustration that he’d felt at the hands of his father, the grief he felt at the loss of Ringer.
Twenty yards, fifteen, and still no sign of recognition from them. Five yards. It was time. His posture changed, he stood upright, and shed his stealth. One of the three looked up at him and then nudged his two companions. They fanned out around him.
Jim relaxed. His eyes became unfocused as he took in the gestalt of the night. His prey came closer. He’d evaded his father with ease, and Padron, at school. These three would be no harder. They would strike first, but he would land the telling blows.
He heard a rustling to his right. Two more figures came into view, two women. One stood no taller than a child. The other limped in obvious discomfort. Eva? Marta? What the—?
Time sped. The women turned to Jim’s presumptive victims. The small one looked at the closest of the three men and grinned. There was no humor in her smile.
“Boys, it’s been fun, but you were just leaving.”
Marta Cruz lumbered over to Jim. “Don’t do this, querido. You cannot fight and stay whole. Juricán walks with you tonight. He will destroy you. Come back to me.”
Suddenly, the man closest to Eva Rozen lunged at her. One moment she was in front of him, and then she seemed to vanish. The man flailed wildly, bewildered at her sudden disappearance.
She reappeared behind him. “I said, time to go. Here—buy yourselves a drink somewhere. Anywhere. But not here.” She held out a bill.
He lunged again, and once more she disappeared and reappeared beside him. “Okay, two drinks,” and now there were two bills in her hand.
The three men looked confused as Eva winkled in and out of view. Marta spoke to them, softly. “I have something better for you than violence. I bring you life. Leave now and you will have a much better evening.” She withdrew a handful of fine powder from a small leather pouch she wore around her neck. Marta blew on the loess in her palm and it enveloped two of the men. As they breathed in the airborne particles, their features relaxed.
Marta continued in a soothing voice. “That is the seeds of the cojobana tree. You will have a vision. You should
heed it well, as it is a gift from Yocahu.”
Eva’s voice was a sharp contrast to Marta’s gentle words. “Well, boys, which is going to be? The lady,” she pointed to Marta, “or the tiger? That would be me. You know what? I think her gods are nutty, but you’ll like her approach a whole lot better than mine.” Eva vanished again, popping up next to the trio’s ringleader. “Time to decide. And, just so you know, I have something different up my sleeve and I promise you won’t like it.”
She had money in her right hand and a small squeeze bottle in her left. The smell of peppers drifted in the crisp air. The leader of the three looked at her and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He looked at the money and snatched it from her hand, turned and strode towards Tremont Street and away from this strange tableau. The other two remained, rooted to the spot, rapt in the beginnings of a vision.
“Come on, children, time to leave before we have any more company,” said Eva.
Jim Ecco recovered from his surprise. He looked at Marta. “What are you doing? Are you crazy? You could have been hurt. This is not your fight.”
“It is not your fight, either.”
“I needed to do this. And those three are no good. Putting them out of commission for a while would be a blessing for everyone.” He paused, confused by Marta and Eva’s sudden appearance. “How did you get here, anyway?”
Eva said, “You aren’t hard to follow. Weren’t too hard last night, either.”
Marta grasped his shoulders. “Look at me, querido. Look at me!” Her eyes shone. “Juricán is powerful and gives you strength but he will take it away. You cannot walk with him and survive. He consumes his followers. The hurricane is too great for you and your anger feeds it. Tonight you need grace.”
“Marta, I don’t know about any of that. I just know I can’t stand the way I feel.”
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