Danny

by Steven Piziks

  “Let go of the backpacks,” Eryx growled.

  She did. I got up, yanked them away, and sat on them. Only then did Eryx roll off her. She sat up and glared at both of us. Her hair was short and blond, and it had pink and purple streaks in it. Hazel eyes, big ones. Long nose, pointy chin. Seriously cute, to tell the truth. Her clothes were a mismatch, like she’d gotten dressed in the dark. Too-small shirt painted with stripes in neon pink and green. Orange denim shorts. Her left sock was yellow, her right one was blue. Cheap sandals of red plastic. Chipped polish coated her fingernails, and each one was a different color. She was a little on the skinny side, and her boobs were small. Nice legs.

  “What the fuck were you doing?” Eryx demanded.

  “Stealing your shit,” she said. “You just left it here. What did you think would happen?”

  “We hid it,” Eryx said. “You must’ve been looking for it.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Bitch.”

  “All right, all right.” I rummaged through my pack and found the hundred dollar bill in its hiding place. Relief made me weak. “Look, we got our stuff back and she can’t take it now, so we’re good.”

  “Noobs,” the girl said. She was still sitting a few feet away from us.

  “I’m not a noob,” Eryx said. “How long have you been down here?”

  She folded her arms. “About a year.”

  “I’m Danny Marina,” I said, jumping in. “This is my step-brother Eric Kalos, but everyone calls him Eryx.”

  “I’m Irene. Eryx? What kind of name is that?”

  “Long story,” Eryx said.

  I pushed the backpacks behind me. “Where are you from?”

  “What makes you think I’m not from here?”

  “I dunno,” I said with a shrug. “Doesn’t make sense to stay in the city you ran away in, I guess. We’re from Michigan.”

  Irene blinked at me. “No shit? No fucking shit? Me, too. I’m from Red Ridge.”

  “Lake Trichonida,” Eryx said.

  “Oh yeah—I know that place. My parents used to rent a cottage there all the time. They used to joke that I was probably conceived there. Fucking embarrassing.” She shook her head. “So we’re all Michigan babies?”

  “Looks like,” Eryx said.

  “That’s got to be … I dunno. It’s some kind of sign. Or a weird-ass coincidence from hell. You guys ran away too?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How come?”

  I really didn’t want to go into it, and I could tell Eryx didn’t want to, either. I said, “Arguing with our folks. What about you?”

  A grin spread across her face like a rainbow. It was very pretty. “Arguing with my folks.”

  The three of us laughed a little. Maybe we’d tell each other later, maybe we wouldn’t. But it was comfortable laughing with Irene.

  “You two have somewhere to stay?” she asked.

  Eryx shook his head. “We just got here.”

  “I know a place,” Irene said. “A good one. I’ll show you, if you want.”

  “How much?” I said, wary.

  “Totally free,” Irene said with another rainbow smile. It made my heart beat a little faster, and I got confused again. Last night I was hot for Eryx. Now Irene shows up, and I’m all puppy-dog for her. “But first I want to go swimming. That’s why I came down here in the first place. Finding your shit was just a bonus.”

  Eryx wanted to go in again, too. I volunteered to stay by our stuff. Irene peeled off her clothes and showed she was wearing a swimsuit underneath. The blue top didn’t match the purple bottom. Her boobs were round inside the halter of her swim top. Her tanned skin looked soft and smooth as daylight, and I wanted to touch it. I watched her, trying not to look like I was watching her, but I think she knew.

  Irene and Eryx ran down to the beach while I updated my journal. Later I swam with them for a while, too. We even played Marco Polo, and when it was my turn to shout “Marco,” both Irene and Eryx shouted “Polo” at the same time, and I couldn’t choose between them, so I opened my eyes. When we were done swimming, Irene promised to show us the place where we could stay for free. We’re going there now, soon as they get dressed.

  0o0

  I’m in our new place now. It’s only a few blocks from the ocean. I’m writing this in Irene’s room.

  Once we were done swimming and were dried off enough to get dressed, Irene showed us a couple of good places for Dumpster diving. She knows Aquapura way better than we do.

  “If you want fresh food, hit the bins behind the grocery stores before eight in the morning,” she said. “The new stuff gets put on the shelves overnight, and old or damaged stuff gets pitched. By eight, though, it’s been pretty much picked over or the trash trucks have come. Restaurants are hit-and-miss, of course. Most of the pizza places are on to the weird-ass topping trick and they call back to verify, so don’t bother with that one.”

  “What’s the weird-ass topping trick?” I asked.

  “That’s when you call a pizza place and order a pizza with toppings no one will want,” Eryx said. “Like feta cheese and pineapple or something. You say it’s for pickup, don’t show, and the restaurant is stuck with a pizza no one else will want. They throw it out, and you can dig it out of the dumpster.”

  “Right,” Irene said. We were walking down the sidewalk together, all three of us. “And if you want stuff like clothes and shoes, or toiletries like toothpaste or mouthwash, hit the bins behind the motels Monday morning. Tourists leave behind all kinds of shit from the weekend, and the motels just throw it all out on Monday.”

  I looked at her with admiration. “You’re pretty smart. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

  She shrugged, but I could see her face redden a little bit.

  “Tomorrow’s Monday,” Eryx said. “We’re gonna need some summer clothes. Can you show us where to look?”

  “Sure,” Irene said. The sun caught the purple strands of her hair and turned them purpler. I liked the way it looked. “But right now, I’m starving. Let’s see if Ben’s has anything good.”

  Ben’s was a café. Irene had us wait out front while she dashed into the rear alley. She came back with three ham sandwiches wrapped in plastic. “Here,” she said. “These didn’t even come from the trash.”

  “Where’d you get ’em?” I asked, tearing mine open and taking a rich, salty bite. It tasted wonderful.

  “The owner likes me,” she said. “He feels sorry for me and he’ll give me day-old stuff if I don’t ask too often.”

  Once those were finished, Irene showed us around a little more. Aquapura is pretty big, and it must have been nice back before everything went to shit. Irene said a lot of bargain-hunter tourists come here, looking for cheap vacations. Crooked travel agencies also charge unsuspecting families nice-town rates and send them to shitty-town Aquapura. Still, the ocean is the ocean. There are places you can rent boats and hire fishing guides and get surfing lessons from old guys with man-boobs. In a couple weeks, Irene said, a carnival will arrive and set up for the winter, offering shaky rides to the kids, ripping off visitors with cheap games, and bribing the cops to stay open. Maybe I could get a job there. Wouldn’t that be cool?

  By then we were getting tired, so Irene showed us where she lives, where I guess I live now. A kudzu-covered brick sign calls it the Pieria Nursing Home. It’s in the middle of a huge empty meadow behind a strip mall with a crappy-ass grocery store, laundromat, liquor store, and dollar store.

  The place is a wreck. Irene says it’s been abandoned for a long time. The lawn is a forest of grass and vines, most of the building’s windows are broken, and chunks of the roof are missing—hurricane damage, according to Irene. The structure is a single story, made of brown brick, and it winds around itself like a snake with corners. There are lots of little courtyards and walkways, all of them cracked and overgrown.

  Irene picked a path through the kudzu and thigh-high grass. Birds sang, complaining about the heat, and
bugs chugged and chittered in the greenery.

  There are lots of ways to get inside the building. The big doors in the front are chained shut, but most of the side doors have been chopped open or just torn off. And you can climb in through the windows, if you really want. The three of us entered through a side door that has a No Trespassing sign plastered to it.

  The inside is a wreck, too. Cracked gray tile covers the floor, and broken glass crunches wherever you step. Light gets in through holes in the roof and the missing windows. Everything’s dirty. Most of the place is rooms for the old people, but you can also see spaces that used to be a dining room and a visiting area and a kitchen and offices and shit like that. There’s still some furniture, but it’s moldy and gross, like fairies shit all over it.

  Irene took us to the room she’d staked out. It used to be an old person’s room. A battered mattress lies on the floor against one wall with a nest of blankets on top of it. A pile of mismatched clothes sits next to it. Two milk crates turned sideways make a set of shelves on the floor, and in them is some other stuff—some brightly-colored seashells, a stone arrowhead, a couple of magazines, a hand mirror, stuff like that. The mirror has a crack in it and the magazines look like they came out of the trash. Probably did.

  The room has a bathroom. Both the sink and the toilet have been torn out, and little lizards skitter over the walls. Irene’s window has no glass, but on the floor beneath it is a piece of plywood with a handle in the middle of it that looks like it would fit into the window frame. Irene saw me looking at it.

  “Ephram made that,” she said. “I stick it in the window to keep the water out when it rains.”

  “Who’s Ephram?” Eryx asked.

  “You think a big building like this is gonna stay empty?” Irene said. “A whole bunch of us homeless people live here. The others are all way older than me. There’s room for you, though, if you want to stay. Come on—I’ll introduce you around.”

  “Why didn’t we see them when we were walking around just now?” I said.

  “They were probably hiding. The cops throw us out every so often, so they get nervous around strangers. Wait here. I’ll go tell them you’re okay. Don’t touch my stuff.”

  She left. Eryx and I were sitting on her mattress only a few inches apart. The room felt darker without Irene in it.

  “She’s cute,” Eryx said after a second.

  “Yeah,” I said, watching the empty doorway.

  “And she’s nice,” Eryx added.

  “Uh huh.”

  Eryx shifted on the mattress and his leg pressed against mine. “She’s not as nice as—” Then he stopped and pulled back.

  I looked at him. His eyes were big as the moon, and there were pale salt crystals from the ocean in his hair. I felt weird again. “Nice as what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Now you’ve got salt in your hair, dude,” I said, and on impulse brushed at it like he had for me earlier. His hair was soft on my fingers. I liked it, and wondered if Irene’s hair felt the same way. Eryx sat stiff as a rock.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Do I have any left?” I asked, flicking at my own head and pretending I hadn’t just run my hands through the hair of another guy.

  “A little. It shows up really good against all that black.” Eryx ran his fingers through my hair. At first it felt like the tips of ten arrows pricked my scalp, and I almost jerked away. Then his fingers changed into feathers and it suddenly felt soft and fine.

  “You guys okay?” Irene said from the door.

  It’s only in movies or on TV that people jump and look guilty. Eryx and I just looked at her. “Salt check,” Eryx said. “You’ve got some, too.”

  Irene shook her short hair. “Yeah, it never gets out completely unless you shower in fresh water.”

  “You going to introduce us around?” I asked.

  “Forgot—everyone’s out scrounging for the day. They’ll be in later, when it gets dark.” She yawned. “Let’s find you guys something to sleep on for tonight. I might be able to swipe a couple blankets from work, but I’m not sure.”

  “You have a job?” I asked. That was a surprise.

  “Yeah. I was off today. Tomorrow, too, unless they need me.”

  “If you have a job,” Eryx said, “why do you live here?”

  Irene shrugged. “I work at a hotel that hires a lot of illegal immigrants and street kids, people who don’t want their boss to ask questions like, ‘What’s your social security number?’ or ‘How old are you, kid?’ or ‘Where are your parents?’ The trade-off is, he doesn’t pay much. It’s enough to buy some stuff, but no way could I rent an apartment, even if I was old enough to sign a lease. And it’s why I still scrounge in the trash.”

  “What kind of work?” Eryx asked.

  “Cleaning rooms, working in the kitchen, whatever needs doing, really,” Irene said. “Sometimes he has one-shot jobs that pay more.” She paused, looked away, then looked back at us. Her feet shifted and her eyes emptied like leaky water glasses for a moment. She was still standing in the doorway. “If you guys are interested, I could talk to the owner, see if he’s hiring.”

  I thought of the $100 bill in my backpack. I had avoided touching it so far, but it wouldn’t last very long. Eryx and I would need a jobs eventually, and the sooner the better. I opened my mouth.

  “That’d be great,” Eryx and I said at the same time. Then we both laughed.

  “Cool,” Irene said. “I’ll ask Lucian about it tomorrow.”

  0o0

  Now I’m feeling bored. Irene went somewhere and Eryx is sleeping on her mattress like a dead statue. It seems like he sleeps all the time. The graveyard wasn’t a great place for restful snoozing—not for the two living people, anyway—and we should both be as wiped as used Kleenex, but I’m wide awake while Eryx conks. Anyway, we’re going to sleep here on the floor tonight and then look for a better mattress tomorrow. Kinda weird. We didn’t talk about it, we just sort of assumed that all three of us would share this room. It’s not like there aren’t any empty rooms on this floor, either. But we just put our stuff here together and we’re all going to be sleeping here together, too.

  I wonder if we’ll be sleeping together. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Are we supposed to? Does Eryx like—as in like—Irene, too? What if we both want her? Does she like me? Eryx? Both of us? Neither?

  I got an image in my head of all three of us sliding together on her little mattress, the mismatched blankets crushed beneath us like dirty clouds. But probably nothing’ll happen. That’s the way it always works. We’ll all three be just friends, or Eryx and Irene will pair up, leaving me alone. I feel like I should say something, but all the words that come to me are blundering, stupid cows, so I keep them in my mouth.

  Irene kind of hangs on the air even when she isn’t here. She colors everything in the room, and I remember everything about her—her streaky hair, her hazel eyes, her funny clothes. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and make her mad or—worse—make her think I’m an idiot.

  Funny how I don’t worry about that with Eryx. Maybe it’s because I already know him. Or maybe it’s because he’s a guy. Would Irene be mad if she saw me and Eryx—

  Shit, why am I even writing about this? None of it’s going to happen. It’s not. I should be worrying about my next meal and whether this Lucian guy will give me a job or not. Fuck this—I’m gonna do something else.

  0o0

  Ganymede was flying. Sort of. The eagle held him both tight and gentle by the shoulders as it flapped its impossible wings and climbed toward the storm clouds. The ground was a green blur surrounded by a blue blur far below. He still couldn’t hear a thing, and the air rushing past his ears didn’t make a sound. The wounds from his fight with Minos and the dogs hurt, but he barely noticed the pain. Fear and awe had smashed everything else from his mind.

  The eagle rushed up through the clouds, and Ganymede found himself enfolded by cool white mist. Before he co
uld think further, the eagle burst up through the top of the clouds into clear, bright air. The clouds formed a fluffy white plain that stretched out in all directions like a puffy blanket. Overhead shone the golden sun.

  The eagle dropped him. Ganymede yelled in terror, then yelped in surprise. He had landed on the clouds, and they supported him. They felt both soft and bouncy, like a gigantic sponge. He lay there a second trying to get his heart started and his breathing back to normal. What the hell was happening to him? Maybe Minos had hit him on the head and he was dreaming.

  He felt a rush of wind, and the eagle landed near him. Before Ganymede could do anything, the eagle shimmered and shifted. Its feathers shrank and vanished. Its talons became human feet, its wings became human arms. Ganymede’s mouth fell open. Standing before him was a tall, handsome man in a short purple toga the same color of heaven after sunset. He had a lot of red-blond hair and a full beard. His eyes were blue as the sky, and they sparkled with stars and lightning. Every powerful muscle stood etched against the clear air. In his right hand he held a thunderbolt like a staff. It flickered and jumped and crackled in his grip. Ganymede’s first thought was that this was the most incredible, amazing guy he had ever seen. His second thought was that the thunderbolt staff was seriously cool. His third thought was that, holy shit, this was Lord Zeus, king of the gods, ruler of Mount Olympus, and why the hell was Ganymede still standing upright?

  Ganymede threw himself flat on the clouds, prostrating himself before most powerful of the gods. Fear made his whole body shake. Minos could only kill him. Zeus could do way worse. This was the guy who had chained Prometheus—another god—upside-down on a mountain and had his heart ripped out every day. A moment later, though, Ganymede felt a gentle arm around his shoulders. The arm pulled him to a sitting position, and he found himself enfolded in Zeus’s powerful arms. Zeus sat beside him on the clouds and stroked Ganymede’s golden hair with one broad hand. The lightning staff had vanished. Ganymede was staring straight into the god’s powerful chest. He smelled ozone, and the air around him felt tense, as if a storm was holding back and trying not to break. Ganymede swallowed, uncertain and still afraid.