The Unexpected War

by Jean-pierre Breton

  “I do,” I replied firmly.

  He turned to Lara, said my name and a whole bunch of stuff in Jural, and then Lara confidently said, “I do.”

  “You may now present each other with your gifts,” he told us.

  Lara snapped her fingers, and a gold watch appeared out of nowhere, falling from the sky into her hand. I held out my arm to her, and she put it on and then stood back, looking at me, waiting for her gift. I snapped my fingers, half-expecting the ring to fall from the sky, but of course it didn’t.

  Lara and I both laughed. She nodded to my pocket. I glanced at the preacher; even he had a smile on his face. Embarrassed, I rummaged around in the pocket, pulled out the beautiful diamond ring, and slipped it onto her finger. I stared into her sparkling blue eyes; she smiled, glancing down at the ring and then back up at me.

  “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride,” the preacher told us.

  I did, and a shining light seemed to break through the clouds, sending sunlight beaming down on us. I held her, not wanting to let go.

  “Through your long and hard journey together, you will face ups and downs, but remember—no words or actions are stronger than love,” the preacher told us. He slowly dissolved into the air, completely vanishing a second later.

  I blinked, and the next thing I knew, I was back in our house, still holding onto Lara’s shoulder. I looked down at my wrist—the gold watch was there. Lara opened her eyes. I was about to say something, but she just placed her finger against my lips and lay down on top of me.

  I knew what she wanted.

  Chapter 12

  “Hey, there’s my sexy husband,” Lara called to me affectionately the next morning. She had just emerged from the bathroom and was drying herself off from her morning shower.

  “There’s my sexy wife,” I called back. I leaned over to kiss her as she gave me my morning hug. I strapped on the gold watch she had given me for our wedding and looked at her fondly as she finished drying off, briefly naked before putting on a nice outfit. “So was last night real?” I asked her. I wondered if the whole thing was just an illusion she had created to make me feel like it was an actual wedding.

  “Of course it was. I know the sex felt a little bit unreal, though,” she joked.

  I laughed and stared at her. “You know what I mean,” I said.

  She sighed patiently, placing her hands on her hips and staring at me with a warm smile. “That was as real as it could get, Lance,” she reassured me sincerely. “That place that I teleported us to last night is our sacred ground. It is tradition that every couple from Fraturna gets married there. Everything was real, Lance—the preacher, the crowd, even Rachel,” she promised me.

  I decided that what she was telling me was the truth, and I gave her a grateful nod. “Thank you. I just wanted to make sure.”

  With an understanding nod, she grabbed my hand and led me out the door and down to our mailbox. Inside, there was a bag with five thousand crome in it.

  “Wow! What’s that for?” I asked.

  She gave me half of it. “The creators of this city are trying to stimulate the economy,” she explained.

  “How?”

  “They give each couple five thousand crome, and then that money circulates from person to person. Plus, the money that people bring in from the outside gets circulated into the economy as well, letting it expand at a gradual rate. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re creating jobs for people to apply to as well,” she said as we walked down the street.

  I couldn’t help noticing it had come to life with people moving into their new homes. “So you want me to work?” I asked. When she nodded, I said, “I don’t know how I’m going to go from what I’ve been through into flipping burgers for fiends.”

  “Cheer up. I’m going to get a full-time job as a waitress. I feel the exact same way as you, but it has to be done.”

  I nodded understandingly. We walked down to the main strip, where there was an outdoor coffee shop up on the hill. It had a basketball court below it, and there was a pool and baseball field on the other end of the strip.

  Lara applied for a job at the coffee joint and had an interview a few minutes later. She came out triumphantly—they’d given her the job; she was starting tomorrow. “Your turn, buddy,” she told me, sitting down with a coffee and offering me one.

  “What? I don’t want to serve coffee,” I told her, shooing away the offer.

  She stared at me, a bit surprised; I guess she figured I was just going to follow her line of work. “Well, I’m not going to be the only one pulling in money,” she warned me.

  “I know. I’m going to play basketball,” I told her.

  “Come on. Get real, Lance. There isn’t even a basketball league.”

  “I’m being serious. I used to be the best of the best at basketball. I don’t mean playing in an actual game; I’m talking about playing two-on-two for money.”

  She stared at me; she did not look amused.

  “Are those two guys on the court human?” I asked her.

  She looked at them for a second and then nodded.

  “Watch. I’ll show you,” I told her. I got up and jogged over to the court.

  “Yo, what’s up, guys? Want to play some high-stakes basketball?” I assumed they were ex-PLF members.

  “Sure, but isn’t high stakes two-on-two, not one-on-one?” the shorter player of the pair asked.

  “You two versus me. I just got this money in the mail, so I’m cool with losing it. I’m just here to play for fun,” I lied.

  “All right. How much do you want to lay on the table?” he asked.

  “One thousand crome,” I suggested. “Does that sound good?”

  “So if you win, we pay you one thousand each, and if we win, you pay us one thousand and we split it, five hundred each?”

  I nodded. “It’s only fair. It’s two against one.”

  “Twenty-one point games?” the taller one asked.

  I agreed, and we started the game. I ended up losing, twenty-one to eight. I tossed them the ball with a defeated sigh, cursing under my breath. I glanced over at Lara, who was clearly pissed by my poor performance. “One more game?” I asked them hopefully, pulling out another thousand crome from my pocket.

  “Sure, why not?” they both agreed.

  This time, I beat them, twenty-one to eighteen. I nailed every shot, intercepting most of their passes and stealing the ball from the taller guy almost every time. “Wow, you got game,” the shorter player said.

  “I just got lucky,” I said, but I was relieved that I wasn’t going to walk away empty-handed.

  “Want to play another game?” the taller guy asked, eager to earn back the money they had just lost.

  “I can’t. My girl wants to go shopping. You know how they get if you keep them waiting,” I told them with a laugh, nodding over to Lara. I jogged up the hill, and Lara jumped into my arms excitedly, kissing me on the cheek. She bought me a water bottle, and we headed down the street toward the shopping center, although we briefly got lost and had to refer to the map.

  “Not bad, hey? Made a thousand crome in half an hour,” I bragged.

  “That was amazing. How did you turn from bad to good so fast?” she asked.

  “It’s simple. I used the first game to identify their weaknesses—for instance, the taller guy always faked left, and the short guy always passed instead of shooting. Then I used that against them,” I explained as we navigated our way down the busy street.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

  “It’s fine,” I told her, giving her an extra five hundred crome to shop with as we finally arrived at the shopping district of Monatello.

  We bought all the clothes and accessories that
we would need, such as toothbrushes, combs, shampoo—stuff like that. We returned home a couple hours later, where Lara spent the rest of the day unpacking our stuff. I flopped onto the bed and flipped through a magazine I had bought at the mall. Lara hung pictures of us on the wall and placed a few on our bedside tables.

  “You could help me, you know,” she reminded me playfully, flopping down on the bed beside me.

  “What would be the purpose of keeping you around then?” I shot back playfully.

  “If I were you, I’d sleep with one eye open tonight.” She gave me a playful shove as she got back up and busied herself for the rest of the day with decorating the house.

  I woke the next morning to the sound of the shower running. After a while of lounging around in bed, waiting for Lara to get out of the shower, I got dressed.

  “So are you ready for work?” she asked me as she emerged from the bathroom. She quickly slipped on her waitress uniform; she was in a rush to leave because she was running late for work.

  I watched her frantically do up her hair in front of the mirror. “I have to find a partner today, so I probably won’t make much money,” I explained.

  She paused, glancing at me in the mirror. I tried to figure out what she was thinking, but it was always too hard to tell with her. “I don’t know anything about this gambling business, but I’m going to assume you know how to make a profit out of it, and I trust you,” she told me, handing me a thousand crome.

  What I had done yesterday was a very risky move. I knew I probably would never do again, but it was necessary to show Lara that I could succeed at the underground basketball business. “You look nice,” I told her as I opened the door for her.

  “Aw, thanks, you look like you.”

  “Ha-ha. Real funny, smart-ass,” I grunted, closing the door behind us.

  We walked along the sidewalk, holding hands, cutting through some backyards and ending up at the entertainment court where Lara worked. “All right, buddy, good luck. Play hard, or you will be flipping burgers for fiends,” she joked with me.

  I could see the underlying threat behind her joke, though, and I smiled nervously as she gave me a kiss good-bye before walking up the hill toward the café. I plunked myself down on a rock at the side of the court. People began to show up in pairs, and games started to commence. It turned out that the underground basketball business had already started, which didn’t surprise me—it was basically like a religion in the PLF.

  If you didn’t have your legs blown off, then there was no excuse to not play basketball. I noticed that most of the players weren’t top-notch like I was used to playing against. Don’t get me wrong; they were all right, but it was hard to watch some of them play. I chuckled to myself, watching one of the players trip over his own feet, face-planting onto the concrete as the ball rolled away.

  A chick’s voice rang out from behind me. “Yo, you ain’t got no partner?” A slim black girl, about five foot eight, was walking over to me. She sat down beside me in the grass.

  “Nah. I’m just watching some games, trying to find myself one.” I was annoyed by the distraction.

  “Well, that’s good, because I’m looking for a partner as well.” She looked up at me as she fiddled with her hair.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I laughed. She reached for my water bottle and took a drink from it.

  “Yeah, go ahead help yourself,” I added, rolling my eyes as she wiped her mouth off and screwed the cap back on.

  “Thanks, champ,” she shot back, tossing the water bottle on my lap. She held out her hand. “I’m Tracy, by the way.”

  “Lance,” I replied, shaking her hand, half-interested. “Oh, shit,” I blurted out as I saw Lara sauntering down the hill toward us.

  “What?” Tracy asked, looking confused.

  “My wife is a fiend. Touching other females is against the law in her culture.”

  Lara walked up behind us. “What are you guys up to?” Lara asked innocently as she sat down on the rock with me and wrapped her arm around me in a jealous manner.

  I sent her an explanation in my head. “It’s not her fault. She was looking for a partner, and I forgot about the no-touching-other-females rule.”

  “You still need a partner to play?” Lara’s voice echoed back.

  “Yeah, everyone else is taken right now,” I told her.

  “Give me a second with this human then,” she ordered me.

  “I need to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back,” I said, excusing myself and walking up the hill. I stayed out of sight until Lara called me back in my head.

  Once I got back down the hill, Lara kissed me and said her break was over. She walked back up the hill. “You can be her partner. I’m willing to bend that no-touching rule as long as it’s appropriate places. Just make sure to tell me in advance who your female friends are,” she told me in my head.

  “So … would you like to be my partner?” I asked Tracy, pretending to not really be interested in the answer.

  She nodded, trying to match my lack of enthusiasm.

  “What did Lara say, by the way?” I asked casually as we watched a game going on between two pretty tough-looking teams.

  “Oh, your wife’s a real angel,” she snapped. “She told me she liked my hair and thought you and I should be partners. She also told me to keep in mind that if I made any moves on you, she would make sure that I had a long, painful death.”

  I snickered. “Yeah, that sounds like my wife.”

  We got up as one of the games on the court ended. Tracy wasn’t as bad as I expected; in fact, she was pretty decent. I sunk a lot more baskets during our games than she did, kind of making her a weak link, but the way I looked at it, it was better to get slow money than no money at all. I ended up making a hundred fifty crome by the end of the day, winning four games to one.

  I wasn’t very satisfied with the amount we’d made, knowing that Lara made two hundred twenty-five crome a day, but I figured we would make more once Tracy and I adapted to each other’s playing styles.

  “You want to show up early tomorrow and get some practice hoops in before the games start?” Tracy asked me.

  She seemed afraid that I was going to ditch her and find a new partner. “Sure, and thanks again for teaming up with me today,” I told her sincerely.

  She seemed relieved that I had accepted her as my partner. When I arrived at our house, Lara still hadn’t returned home, so I jumped in the shower, cleaning off all the sweat and dirt from running around in the blistering sun all day. A couple minutes later, Lara came home and jumped in the shower with me. She hugged me close, telling me about her first day at work.

  “So how much did you make?” she asked.

  “A hundred fifty crome,” I replied with a shrug.

  “That’s not bad,” she told me, taking the shampoo and redoing my hair.

  “Were going to make more as we get better,” I promised her.

  “You and Tracy?” she asked casually.

  I nodded. “You’re cool with that, right?”

  “Yes, I don’t see any harm in your hanging out with her,” she told me, but I could tell from her fake smile that she was unsure.

  David and Carana came by that night, asking us to play some pool with them, which we did. Lara didn’t know how to play, so I had to teach her. It was fun, for the most part. The four of us ended the night by drinking at the bar, sharing love stories of how we met one another.

  The next couple of weeks flew by pretty quickly. Tracy and I had become pretty good players together, and she started tagging along with David and me to the bars at night.

  “Let’s go home, buddy,” Lara bugged me as I was finishing a game of poker with David, Tracy, and her new boyfriend, Mike.

  “Yeah, are you almost ready to go, David?” Carana asked
impatiently.

  “Can you at least let us finish our game in peace?” David asked.

  They sat beside us and bugged us every five minutes. “David, Lara wants to go home. Just let Lance take his money,” Carana suggested impatiently.

  “You’re only playing for fifty crome. Let’s just go. I don’t care about the money anyway,” Lara added.

  Carana agreed, bugging David to just give up as well.

  “I’m almost done. What’s the rush anyway?” I asked Lara, becoming annoyed by her childish behavior. She unbuttoned her shirt, flashing me her bra in front of David and the rest of the crew.

  “I’m no expert, but I’d say tonight might be a good night for you.” Tracy’s boyfriend laughed.

  “All right, I fold. You guys win. See you later.” I grabbed Lara’s hand and we rushed out the door, chased by the laughter and cheering of the others in the background.

  Lara giggled as we rushed down the road like little children after an ice cream truck. “Slow down a bit, buddy,” she begged me, stopping in the middle of the street. Her stomach groaned and she gasped for breath, and then, after another groan of pain, she straightened up, grabbed my hand, and playfully bumped into me before running down the street toward our house. I hesitated, a bit freaked by her overly happy mood, especially since it appeared that she was starting her monthly tricnoses. “Are you coming or what?” she called to me playfully.

  I shook it off and laughed, chasing her down the street and into our house as she playfully taunted me with insults. “I got to use the bathroom real quick. Then we can have some fun!” she told me, stripping down to nothing in front of me while pushing me onto the bed and pulling off my pants and shirt. She headed to the bathroom, stopping at the table by the mirror to hunch over as a cramp hit her. She pretended to be reading, as if nothing was happening.

  I could hear her groaning as her chest heaved in and out forcefully. Once it stopped, she turned to me and said that she must have eaten some bad seafood at the bar. Then she rushed into the bathroom. She closed the door quickly and turned on the faucets—I could hear water running in the sink. Soon afterward, Lara returned, flopping on top of me.