by Robin Banks
If I had more to do I may be in less of a funk about this, but I don’t. Asher does, at least. Luke, who seems hell-bent on wandering the streets of this place until he’s explored every corner, spotted a sign advertising vacancies for temporary floaters. I wasn’t keen on the idea because I never fully trust this kind of gig to be safe, but Asher can float as well as he flies and he’s been desperate for what he classes as ‘real work’, so he took it. Now Alya and Raj are off on their official duties, Asher is earning a crust, and I’m a spare part.
I have taken to following Luke around on his walks, or maybe he is following me: I am not sure anymore. We just seem to be walking out together. I find it odd, but not unpleasantly so. The way he moves through the streets baffles me. He walks at a steady pace, not rushing but fast enough to make it obvious that he’s just passing through, hardly seeming to pay attention to anything or anyone. If I didn’t know that he has only been here two days and he’s actually looking for something, I’d firmly believe he was a local just making his way from A to B. People seem to respond to his behavior by failing to notice him. Given that he’s half a foot taller than most people and gorgeous with it, that’s quite a feat. With his hood up and his head down, moving at that weird speed of his, somehow he just fades into the background.
I can’t do that. I try, but I keep messing it up. I think my main issue is that I keep accidentally catching people’s eyes. Luke doesn’t do that, ever, probably because he treats people purely as obstacles. He doesn’t even actively rebuff people: he’s just unresponsive, as if they weren’t even worth his contempt. He doesn’t engage with passersby any more than he would with street furniture. When he has to deal with someone – shopping, for instance – he strips most of the humanity out of the interaction. As well as keeping the exchange purely functional, his expression and tone are machine-neutral and his eye contact is nonexistent. I guess it works for him, but it is awfully creepy and occasionally very rude.
I put up with it for two whole days; even though it is really starting to grate on me, I am trying to maintain the truce we’ve finally managed to reach. It all gets too much for me when I see him blanking out one person too many. It’s not his reaction that pushes me over the edge: it’s seeing her smile turn into a wounded expression as she walks off.
“Gods, Luke! Why didn’t you say hello to her?”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You barely nodded. Didn’t you recognize her?”
“Nah.”
“Gods! Could you be any more oblivious?” I’m so furious at him that I have to stop walking and run through a few breath cycles to stop myself screaming. “She works at your café. She’s been serving your godsdamned coffee gods know how many times a day for the last two days.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“What’s her name?”
“How would I know?”
“She wears a name tag. She’s called Eve. Is it just underlings who don’t warrant your notice or do you move in a world full of cardboard cut-outs?”
His eyes flicker. “I would have recognized her at the café.”
“But you don’t have the least idea what she’s called, and you don’t care. You never actually looked at her, not enough to be able to remember what she looks like, what color her eyes are. You don’t pay attention to anyone. We’re all fucking background to you, insignificant compared to whatever is going on in your head, aren’t we? Hell, I bet you don’t even know what color my eyes are.” I know I’m being petty, but I cover them up with my hand. “Come on. Tell me. What color are my eyes?”
“Red. They’re red.” He says it so quietly it’s almost a whisper. “They get like that when you’re angry or trying not to cry. Maybe other times too, but I’ve not seen it.”
“What?” I drop my hand to look at him, but he’s not looking at me. There’s a crack in the pavement holding his undivided attention.
“Your eyes go red sometimes, around the edges. They’re red now, because you’re angry at me. The girl at the café is scared of her boss. He’d like to fuck her. She doesn’t want him to, but she doesn’t want to lose her job. She’s trying to walk that line and it’s getting harder. Something is off at home, I think. Somewhere else, anyway. The café is her safe place. Or was. She’s got bruises on her arms like she gets dragged around.”
“What?”
“Round dots on her upper arms, where fingers squeezed in. You see them once, you know them anywhere. She’s got a couple of sets, staggered, same size hand, different colors ‘cause one set is fresher. You can see them sometimes when she reaches out for stuff. And she flinches when men raise their voices. She likes you, though. She could tell you’re safe the first time she met you. She’d like you to take her to a better place, but she knows you won’t because you don’t see her like that, which is why she knows you’re safe. It’s all circular. Hopeless hope often is. I’m scared for her. But I don’t know what she looks like and I don’t remember her name, because I don’t pay attention.” His voice has been getting rougher as he’s been talking, though he’s kept his expression studiously blank.
“Luke, listen…”
“She likes flowers. She doodles them every time there’s something spilled on the counter, before she cleans it up. I don’t think she’s ever seen a real flower, though. Someone could turn up with a bunch of them and she’d follow them home like a puppy. Not me, though. She wouldn't come with me. She knows I’m broken. Your eyes are brown. You go do your thing. I’m going home.”
He starts walking off and I go to grab his jacket to stop him, but he shrugs me off.
“Don’t. You don’t get to… Just go. We’ve got shit to do. This isn’t a fucking social.”
“Luke!” It comes out as a wail even though I didn’t mean it to. He looks at me for a split second.
“That’s cute. You get to do the harming and the crying, and now I gotta comfort you? I fucking want to an’ all. Everything just works out for you, doesn’t it? Fucking hell.” He spits those last words out, his eyes darting around as if he was looking for an explanation that isn’t forthcoming, or maybe just trying not to cry. “You fucking asshole.”
As he says that he grabs the front of my jacket, pulls me to him, and hugs me hard. All I can do is stop myself from crying against him.
He lets me go as suddenly as he grabbed me and walks off.
“Luke!”
When he turns around his eyes are red too. “No. I’m going. You handle shit your way, I handle it mine. You’re alright. We’re cool.”
“How can we possibly be cool?”
He smirks. “You know me. I’m fucking oblivious. This pro’lly didn’t even fucking register with me.”
He strides off at that strange speed of his, flowing through the street, just passing through on the way to somewhere else.
I’m in no fit state to do anything right now, even if I could think of something to do, so I head back towards our ship. I have no intention to push myself on Luke; I just genuinely don’t know where to go and what to do, and I want to go home. On the way there I walk past our café. It’s empty. Eve is on her own, looking unusually dazed and fragile. She doodles something on the counter with her forefinger and looks at it with a fond smile before wiping it off. That’s when I start to cry in earnest, hot tears rolling down my face, unstoppable and godsdamned obvious. I’m so relieved when I manage to reach our ship, to get into my cabin, and to throw myself on my bed where I can let myself turn into a soggy heap. By the time Asher rolls in I’ve been crying so long and so hard that I’ve given myself a vicious headache.
He sits next to me and strokes my hair.
“Hey, gorgeous. Anything I can do?”
I shake my head. Having him near me makes me feel infinitely better and absolutely wretched. Although his company and his love are the greatest sources of comfort I can have, right now I don’t deserve them.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head again. The thought of t
elling Asher what an asshole I’ve been fills me with dread. I’ll have to at some point, of course. I don’t want to keep something like this from him.
“Was it something he said or something he did?”
“What? No! How do you know?”
“Process of elimination. You wouldn’t weep like this over a hangnail, were it anything to do with home you’d be telling me about it, and if a stranger had been mean to you you’d be punching your pillow, not trying to drown it. You’re a very tough cookie; you just happen to be awfully susceptible to a handful of triggers. Luke is the only person I know of who troubles you this much and you won’t talk to me about. It worries me.”
The last thing I want to do today is upset anyone else, Asher in particular. I try to compose myself so I can look vaguely convincing while I do my best to reassure him.
“It’s nothing. I just keep misunderstanding him and saying stuff I shouldn’t. He’s not upsetting me; I upset myself when I’m around him.”
He smiles half a grin and sighs. “So sometimes you get things wrong, like all other humans. Did you apologize?”
“Not really. I didn’t get a chance to. He went off.”
“If he didn’t give you an option to make things right, then you’re not the only one at fault.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. He told me that we were cool. Gave me a hug.”
“Oh.” Asher gives me a kiss. “I didn’t have him for a hugger.”
“Neither did I. Then again, I had him wrong on so many things.”
“Maybe you bring out the hugging instinct in him.”
That makes my heart flutter for a second and I can’t begin to understand why. Lots of people like to hug me. I’m eminently huggable.
“Either way, I messed up.”
“I saw him on my way here and he looked undamaged. Well, unchanged, to be exact. If you manage to clean yourself up enough to brave the world, you can see for yourself.”
“Do I have to?”
“Do you have to emerge from our cabin eventually? Yes, definitely. Do you have to see Luke right now, or tonight? No. But if you don’t come out you’ll miss your dinner, and he’s cooking. Not only you’ll be missing out on a good meal, but you’ll be wasting his efforts and likely worry him into the bargain. I can say that you’re not well and you’d like to eat here if you so wish, but that won’t help if he’s concerned about you, and I don’t think he would have wasted a hug on someone he doesn’t care about.”
“You think so?”
“Yup.”
We spend a few more minutes cuddled up in bed, and then I spend a serious amount of time trying to fix my face so I don’t look like I’ve been bawling my eyes out for half the afternoon. I’m largely successful, though my eyes are still red-rimmed. I guess that’s poetic justice. Asher tries to comfort me by telling me that nobody is going to notice, which nearly sets me bawling again.
Dinner is blissfully uneventful. Luke doesn’t say much and hardly looks at me, or at anyone else for that matter. He smiles feebly and formally when people compliment his food, which is delicious, and that’s about the sum total of his interactions. I know he’s watching us and really seeing us, though, even though what he notices has very little to do with the way most people look at the world.
Thinking about it makes me wonder how much I miss because of my reliance on my psi-bility, how much I never learnt to see because most of the time I don’t have to. I can’t think about it very clearly, though, because my brain keeps going back to thinking about Luke. He’s sitting at arm’s length from me. He acts like he’s thousands of klicks away, but he really sees us. Knowing that Luke is watching makes me feel awkward and protected in roughly equal measures. I don’t know how I feel about it overall, whether it’s a bad thing or a good one, but it’s definitely A Thing. I can’t get it out of my head.
After dinner I volunteer to do the washing up. It’s not much of a thank you or an apology, but it’s something useful I can do right here and now, so I do it. It also gives me a chance to linger in the kitchen with Luke, who is busy storing leftovers while everyone adjourns to the lounge. Asher gives me a half-quizzical, half-concerned look on his way out, but he leaves me to it. I don’t want to give Luke the opportunity to dash off, so I start talking as soon as they’re all out of the way.
“Luke, listen...”
“No need. It’s over and done with.”
“But I want…”
“But I don’t. Look, you got an urge fix something? Fix something that matters. Get Eve out of there.”
“How the hell can I do that?”
He shrugs. “All she needs is a ticket to the next shithole with a bar in it. She’s a clever kid. I think she’s just stuck in a bad place. It happens. Give her a new start and she can sort the rest out. If she can’t, then you couldn’t help her anyway.”
“I can’t do that. I mean, I physically can’t. I can’t get her a ticket to anywhere. I have no fucking credit.”
“I do, but she probably wouldn’t take it from me and I’d rather chew my own leg off than have that conversation with her.”
“So you’d rather I did it because you hate the thought of it?”
“Partly. You’d be better at it. I’d fuck it up. But I’ll give it a go if I have to. You don’t have to get involved if you don’t want to.”
“I think you’re wrong there. Now that you mentioned it, I have to do it.”
“Are you doing it for me or for her?”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head. “Whatever. Tomorrow?”
“Yes. If you’re sure. Why are you bothering? She’s nothing to you.”
“I don’t think she’s much to anyone.”
“But why are you getting involved?”
He frowns at the sink. “Is it a trick question?”
“No. I’m just curious.”
“Because she’s not much to anyone. Maybe I caught it from Raj. The world could be better. And this doesn’t cost me anything.”
“It’ll cost you some credit.”
He shrugs. “I won’t need it where I’m going.”
“What? Where are you going?”
His face goes even blanker. “Anteia is cheap for me. I’m a parasite there. Anyway. Listen, I’m not angry at you or anything, but I think it’d be better if we went back to ignoring each other from a distance. This isn’t working out. All we do is rile each other up. It doesn’t get anything done.”
“Oh.”
“You cool with that?”
“Yeah. I guess. No. I don’t know.”
“You’ll be alright.”
He walks off. He does that so well.
I feel as if I’ve spent the most poignant moments of my life staring at his retreating back, as if of all the pictures I carry in my head those were the brightest. I know that it’s nonsense, that there are a myriad other memories that are infinitely more significant. I just can’t think about any of them right now.
17. Luke
I told her that her eyes are brown. It’s total bullshit. Alya’s eyes are brown, and Raj’s, and those of the circus ponies. Hers are coffee and caramel and gold, deeper than anything that size has a right to be, changing with the light and her moods. They’ve got swirls inside them like those holos of galaxies you get on tacky postcards, only the swirls in her eyes aren’t tacky at all. They’re fucking amazing.
I can feel those eyes on my back as I walk away. They’re not boring into me, like the saying goes. They never do that. They’re just there, huge and liquid, calling me back.
I can feel them all the time, everywhere I am. Whenever nothing else is happening, whenever I don’t have to think or do, my brain brings them up. They get bigger every time, the details clearer, the light inside them brighter, the little caramel dots softer and warmer.
I could let myself fall into those eyes so easily. I’d just have to let go, to stop pulling away, to let them take me over. I want it so badly that I can’t think of anything else, eve
n though I don’t know what would happen if I went for it. I don’t know if I’d find completion or annihilation or what. I don’t know that I’d care, as long as those eyes let me in. Of course, they probably wouldn’t. Most likely I’d find rejection, polite surprise at me being there, expecting something that isn’t for me and never was. That’d hurt like a motherfucker, but it’d only hurt me. If there was something there for me, that’d be worse: that’d hurt her too, down the road.
Those fucking eyes. I have to get my head in the game and I can’t, because I can’t get over them. So I put them with the rest of the stuff I can’t get over and push them right down until they’re just something else I’ve lost and I can’t grieve about. It feels like I’m killing a bit of myself in the process. That ought to feel good, ought to feel like a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t. It fucking hurts and it does no good, because every time I don’t stop myself thinking about them, those eyes are there again.
First thing in the morning Quinn does as she promised. I knew I could trust her. I left a wad of credit under her placemat before breakfast so she couldn’t miss it. As soon as she’s done eating she’s on her way to the café. I watch her go and decide to follow, not sure why. When she gets there, I lean against the wall opposite the café window and disappear into it, so I can watch them without them seeing me.
She’s got her hair down and is wearing a shirt with flowers on. It pushes her just over that invisible line she straddles between what people class as masculine and feminine. It’s perfect: it makes it totally clear that the conversation is about her being concerned for Eve, not about some self-serving macho fantasy of a knight on a charger rescuing a damsel. I knew she’d get it right. She’s so fucking good with people.