by Sue Perry
Jenn made the disgusted noise that was her reaction when we mentioned the Frames. "Those t–shirts!" Jenn knew Neeks was Ben's nickname for me. "Do you know those guys?"
"I know what they are. Brainwashed soldiers that fight for Maelstrom. They attacked Fatty because she's important to me. Everyone I love is at risk," I realized.
"Fatty is still in danger?" Jenn exclaimed. She had her phone out, texting. Fatty, Jenn, and me. It had been the three of us since grade school days. Jenn and I didn't see Fatty much, now that she was the glam queen of local news, but we were still tight. "At some point she'll have her phone again, right? Then she'll see this."
She showed me the text.
::Nica says expect more danger. Watch your bony ass.
"Good. Did you hear what hospital they're in?"
Jenn's phone beeped. It made me grin. A quick reply from Fatty must mean she was doing well.
::Fatty conked on meds but okay. Mikal bad –Ben
Ben was in Los Angeles and in the hospital with Fatty? I yanked the phone from Jenn. Her WTF–ing cut off when she saw whatever expression was on my face.
"Hey Jenn," Ben answered Fatty's phone.
I had the voice I'd use to lure a stray off a highway. "Ben, it's me and you're in terrible danger. The people who went after Fatty would love to find you. What the hell are you doing back in L.A.?"
"This is where I stay sober. Don't worry about me. I'm crashing at your office in the Henrietta, no one would look for me there."
"How did –" I cut myself off. Learning how he got access to my office could wait for a safer time. "Ben. You can't stay anywhere associated with me. They want to hurt the people I love. You're in the most danger of all."
"Aw, shucks, I love you too."
"This could not be more serious." Was he high? Why was he acting loopy? Must be the hospital. One time he'd taken me to an Emergency Room—stitches, no biggie—and he acted loopy then, too.
Hernandez clamped fingertips onto the phone. "May I?" I released the phone to him. "Ben, Hernandez. Nica's understating the situation. ... ... ... Okay, I get that. Here's what. You ever spend time in Santa Ana? ... I agree. Reason I ask, I got cousins there, you can stay with them, they got extra cars, you can get to meetings but keep away from places people expect to find you. ... I'll call them next. Go back to Nica's office and I'll have them pick you up. Now get out of Fatty's hospital while you still can. ... Later."
Hernandez went into the kitchen and made a call in Spanish. Jenn had a hitch in her voice when she murmured, "He gets everything." The day was one milestone after another. Jenn was in love with Hernandez. No man had ever pulled her in for a landing, before now.
As Hernandez pocketed his phone he said, "My cousin is on his way. He'll let me know when they get home."
"Thanks." That single syllable jammed in my throat.
"Your girls were okay?" Jenn asked. That's right, when I first walked in he'd been on the phone making dad–like comments. My Spanish was good enough to recognize those.
"They are," he said to Jenn. To me, he added, "The explosions in Barcelona weren't near them, but the Cysts have a lot of buildings there."
"You're talking Frames again." Jenn's tone was bland with a splash of battery acid. "Shower time."
Hernandez smooched her goodbye but by the time she was standing, he and I were deep into discussion, trying to add it all up—the attack on Fatty, taunting me publicly, whether Barcelona was special to the Cysts.
Some time later, Jenn stuck her dripping head out the bathroom door and shouted, "Don't you hear that car horn? And somebody yelling your name?"
Now that she mentioned it. We went to the street–side window and tugged the blind. Parked out front of the Julian was a red pickup truck, mottled by more dents than there are in a golf ball factory. The truck had no driver and its passenger hung out the window to look up at the building. The passenger had a twist in her waist that I couldn't have copied unless I was made of rubber. Which she maybe was.
Tee and Zasu had arrived.
59. WHAT FRAME ARE YOU FROM?
Zasu. She had the charcoal hair and jet eyes of all the Gumby people. Perhaps that commonality made it easier to keep her memories of her people sharp, now that she was the only remaining Gumby, courtesy of genocide, committed by Warty Sebaceous Cysts. Zasu had lived a sheltered life until recently. The wail she'd made when she lost Ziti, her betrothed—no teen should be gouged with grief that deep. Only a few months had elapsed but she looked years older; and yet—as when I'd first met her, before all the killing started—she looked as trusting as tomorrow's sunrise.
"Zasu!" I pounded the glass of my front window.
Zasu looked for the source of my voice. She held her head steady but rotated and twisted at the shoulders. It was another twist no human could make. A dense high–pitched voice said something and she pulled back inside the truck cab.
I knew that voice. It belonged to Tee, the red pickup truck, a curious blend of adventurer and hypochondriac. I smiled at Hernandez. "I think Zasu forgot about not acting like a Gumby person in Neutral Frames. I think Tee just reminded her."
"My truck just talked to her?" Hernandez gaped at the pickup he'd left in L.A. Last summer, he had missed the chance to meet Tee in other Frames where she was permitted to display her sentience. That the truck was talking and driving on Ma'Urth, a Neutral Frame, was yet another indication that the Frames were in crisis.
Hernandez and I hoofed it downstairs. "Wait'll you meet your truck, she is a hoot and a half." I led him out the front door.
"Well met, Nica!" Hugging a Gumby was a special experience. Zasu's arms made dozens of small bends to encircle me. I watched Zasu hug Hernandez then I frowned at the curb. It was empty.
"Where did Tee go?" I asked Zasu.
"Here is her message, 'I have things to do and will catch you later.' Do you laugh at me?"
"Kinda. That was a perfect Tee impersonation."
"It is an honor to make a friend laugh." Zasu's effervescence emphasized how dampened other spirits were.
"Maelstrom doesn't affect you, does he?"
"By deeds, of course, but not by influence."
Entering my apartment terminated our ability to talk, what with all the yowling. Humanoids typically prompt Dizzy to clean her butt, but she and Zasu have a thing. The cat who has blasé in her bloodstream galloped across the room, meowing like a smoke detector.
"Queen Desdemona!" Zasu was the only one who used Dizzy's full name. She scooped the cat up and said into her fur, "What good fortune to hold you again."
Leon prowled around our feet, more restless than I'd ever seen him. Dizzy vaulted from Zasu's arms then she and Leon ran out of Frame. What put those two in that kind of hurry? Not for the first time, I yearned for a Frame where I could converse with those cats.
Zasu explored the kitchen, gasped when the refrigerator door opened. "How lovely!" She touched the bright spot inside the refrigerator, where the light made a sunburst pattern. Watching this, Hernandez had a soft unclenched expression. Zasu was a wrinkle–smoother. My own tensions eased, including the permanent knots like Ben, Lilah and Sam, the Gumbys. Zasu wandered into the front room and rolled her shoulders. "Such a long journey. May I stretch? Will it disturb you?"
"It's fine, especially if I can watch."
"Of course. For safety, remain in this area." She gestured Hernandez and me into the kitchen.
Zasu lay down on the floor beside the couch and began to extend. The motion was slow—second by second, I couldn't see anything happening except for the gentle rippling of her skin, but after several seconds, only a small part of her body occupied her clothes, which lay where she had started. Her torso stretched along the floor until she circled the front room. Meanwhile her legs and arms flattened and expanded up walls toward the ceiling.
The bathroom door clicked open. I'd forgotten that Jenn was in the shower. Hernandez called, "Stop, love, and stay there."
Stop, love. I replayed it and
yup, it was Hernandez' voice talking like that.
Zasu inhaled and sighed, then snapped back to her daily shape, using the momentum to leap to her feet. Before my amazement could settle, she stood before us, arranging her tunic. "I feel much better now, thank you. Hello," Zasu spotted Jenn.
Jenn stared at Zasu as though she had—well, stretched herself around the room then snapped back to human form while jumping upright and sticking her landing.
"Zasu, this is my friend Jenn and Jenn, this is our colleague, Zasu. That's not her real name but it's as close as my pronunciation can get."
"I. Zasu. When." Jenn tugged Hernandez' arm to join her on the couch. She looked around him at Zasu. "What Frame are you from?"
Zasu didn't realize how momentous this question was, coming from Jenn. "I hail from Halcyon but now I am a nomad, a Framewalker." She sat on the chair and questioned Hernandez about Edith, a teenage friend Zasu had met through his daughters. While they chatted, I prepped snacks in the kitchen.
I was setting these on the overturned box that was my coffee table when Jenn swallowed a beensy noise and whispered to me, "He just Traveled here, right?"
She stared toward the bathroom door, through which Kelly Joe walked. He stopped in front of Zasu.
"I'll take you to Anya. Now," Kelly Joe announced to Zasu. His voice was frosted steel.
I'd never heard him so curt, nor Zasu so formal.
She stood. "Hello, Kelly Joe, we met many cycles ago. You were my brothers' musician." For Zasu, the delivery was cold, but she had so much innate warmth that even now some radiated. He was trying to place her or to stop placing her as she continued, "Never have I heard music more enticing than you played that day. My mother and my brothers, like so many in our village, Traveled eagerly to the vacation Frame to hear you play again. From that outing, they never returned."
"I'm sorry for your loss." Kelly Joe sounded like a homicide cop.
"Thank you." She spoke without animosity but she kept talking despite all the cues that he was refusing to listen. "I fell ill that day and my father stayed behind to care for me. He played his guitar, which you had autographed after the previous engagement. We laughed at how poorly he played compared to you." She gave a sad smile. "I was so young, I did not understand when my father burned that guitar." Kelly Joe met her gaze. "My father would have welcomed the news, as do I, that your music serves Anya now."
No one spoke or moved. I got blasted with a memory from left field. I was eight when we moved to the Midwest for a year. I trashed a rose bush with a baseball bat and a basketball—long story—and only one spindly branch survived, with a single fragrant yellow rose. It bloomed for weeks, long into winter, stalk buried in snow. It bloomed and it bloomed.
Kelly Joe turned to Hernandez and broke the silence. "Anya asks that you come along to help with protection for this one, while Anya completes a mission." This one. The other time I'd heard Kelly Joe rude, he'd been heckling Lobotomists.
Of course and immediately, Hernandez stood. His pocket must have buzzed because he fished out his phone. He showed me the new message.
::Got him, got home. All good, Cuz.
Ben was safe with Hernandez' cousin. Hernandez nodded at me, then at Kelly Joe, who extended hands to Hernandez and Zasu and Traveled them out of Frame. Faster than a person could slip on black ice, Jenn and I were alone on the couch.
"Holy shit," one of us said, between stretches of silence.
"The Frames are real," Jenn announced, sounding so satisfied I thought she might smack her lips. She settled back into a corner of the couch and pulled her legs under her: long talk ahead. What followed was a Frames Q–&–A ping–pong match. I'd send an answer, Jenn would lob her next question.
I barely listened to the questions and attended not at all to my answers. I was thinking about Lilah and Sam. I felt worse than ever about my role in their murders. But now I also had Kelly's Joe's encounter with Zasu to think about. Kelly Joe was where I would arrive if I didn't find a way to forgive myself for the twins' deaths—the emotional equivalent of being trapped in a car buried by a blizzard.
Jenn had her arms around me the instant I started sobbing. "The fuck's with you?" She said sweetly, then added mother bird coos until I was able to reply.
"I screwed up and people died. Good people. Awful deaths."
"Oh, sweetie." My sobs and the coos resumed. "That bites worse than a vampire blow job."
"Don't make me laugh. I shouldn't be laughing. I should be saying 'It's my fault so I wish I died instead.' But I don't. I can't. And that makes me hate myself even more."
"Because you're glad to be alive? Fuck that. Anyway, you promised Ick."
That I'd live enough for both of us.
And then Jenn held me, for as long as I needed.
"I can't believe you still call him by his last name." I washed our breakfast dishes while Jenn tossed clothes from her trunk, hunting Today's Outfit.
"Hernandez hates his first name. Obviously, what we call him should be up to him. Are you ducking my question, bitch? What Frame is Hernandez from?" Her abrasiveness was fully restored for the first time since Maelstrom's escape. Easier to resist something when you believe it exists.
"Hernandez is from our Frame—he's human, could you not tell that?" Maybe she couldn't. What if I'd met Anwyl in a bar, what would I have sensed about him?
"But he's so—so much better." About Hernandez, Jenn was as abrasive as a duckling.
I piled her reject garments next to her trunk, pocketed my ID and Metro card, shouldered my backpack.
Jenn continued to explore her blouse options. "You're abandoning me," she noted evenly.
"I'll check back before too long but yeah, I've got some—what is the deal with this –" I couldn't open my front door. I flipped the latch, jiggled the knob.
Duh. I couldn't open the door because Julian was telling me, don't leave. At least, don't leave in this Frame.
Sometimes I think about that immobilized door. Was it a turning point or simply the next step on the road we were following, all along?
Jenn had stopped dressing to watch my struggle with the front door. Her current top was a soft peach color that reminded me of the grannies' flower petals, scattered by a breeze.
At some point, Julian would release the door and I would leave and Jenn would have to fend for herself. Jenn was tough—tougher than I am—but did she know enough to keep herself safe? Maybe I could find Leon before I left and somehow communicate that he should watch out for Jenn.
Or I could keep her with me.
"Are you ready to go out? Good. Then take my hand and don't talk for a bit, I need to concentrate."
60. WITH BOOKS WE WIN
The Halls of Shared Knowledge are many Frames away from Ma'Urth and after I Travelled Jenn and I there, I exited my apartment only to drop to the hall rug. "This rug is softer than it looks."
Jenn copied my drop. "Why do I feel so fried?" she demanded.
"You just Traveled a lot of Frames from home."
We must have dozed because we woke up about the same time. When I stood I wobbled into the wall—I'd sat in one position long enough to cut off circulation to my extremities.
"Nica, are you in need of assistance?" The building's voice was even more solicitous than usual.
"I'm good, Julian, thanks. My leg went to sleep, is all."
"I believe your entire body slept." Now that was adorbs. My erudite building was unfamiliar with the expression, leg went to sleep.
Using my arm for leverage, Jenn joined me standing, staring from me to the wall where I directed my words.
Julian continued, "I am pleased that you understood my warning to remain inside your apartment on Ma'Urth, and relieved that we have found a means to communicate in your Neutral Frame."
Jenn looked around for the source of the voice. "Mr. Parsons," she murmured, and she was right. Julian sounded like our tenth–grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Parsons, who wore bow ties with his lab coats.
I answered Julian, "Me, too! What was wrong, anyway? Why couldn't I go outside back there?"
"There was a disturbance on the next block. It appears to have moved inland and away. Is this your friend, Jenn? Again, I apologize for all that I can't help but overhear."
"Yes, and Jenn, this is Julian. He's a sentient building."
Jenn touched her fingertips to the wall. "I'm very happy to know you. I. This." She gave me a new look. There really was a Santa Claus and he left world peace in her stocking. "Thank you," she said to me, then rubbed her eyes. "I don't suppose there's caffeine in this Frame."
"There is not, but partial immersion in the river can be quite restorative," Julian said.
Jenn was silent and gawking on the walk to the Hudson. She clung to my arm because Travel had weakened her. To let her rest, we stood at the river's bank, watching limbs fall from the trees, erode to tree stones in the rush of water, catch in nets, come to shore in the hands of beings or in the jaws and beaks of dog–like creatures.
"When do we try the partial immersion?" Jenn was out of her shoes and rolling up her leggings.
"How about now?" I agreed.
We stepped cautiously from the bank to the water. The current was strong and the river bottom was not visible in the swirling foam. Jenn shuffled into the water like a cartoon zombie, with arms out and feet planted on the bottom. I copied Jenn's technique. The water shoved at my shins and I stumbled. Jenn took my hand and we laughed. What an experience!
When I touched the water, I joined the flow. Of the river, of the Frames. It coursed through me, and I somehow knew that I shared the sensation with Jenn and all the stone gatherers, up river. As the water swirled around us, I tasted wind on leaves and Jenn's laugh was so bright it made me squint. Almost beyond my hearing were scuffs and taps that I somehow recognized as countless feet moving through endless Connectors. In the river, everywhere was near. Everything connected.