by Samara Stone
“We were busy learning, we didn't know how cold it would be. We didn't know that the sky-ice-bits would keep happening. We didn't know that they would stay so long. We still have much to learn. We are sorry we made the Dolores sad—we did not mean to be not-nice. Are we still the Dolores's crazy bitch?”
Dolores softened, despite her anger and the ridiculous number of unanswered questions. Who else would ever take in this whacko?
“Of course you're still my crazy bitch. Just don't do that. Stay here, okay? I mean, you can leave. But you should spend the nights here, okay? You can crash here until you get back on your feet now that you're remaking yourself or whatever. I can help you find a job even if that’s what you want.”
“What is a job?”
“Jeez, did Cody keep you in a bunker?”
“No, the Cody just shot us. Twice. We do not like being shot.”
The tub was steaming and almost full. “Yeah, so you've said. I'm pretty sure nobody has ever liked being shot. Okay, I'll leave you to it. Do you want me to wash your clothes? Do you have anything warmer?”
“Tomorrow we will get better drapes for the snows.”
Dolores tried not to let her face collapse into a scowl. “Well, strip and get in the tub. When the water cools you can drain part of it and put more warm water in, okay?”
Ash immediately shucked her clothes and oddly tied running shoes before Dolores could even turn her back. “Ash, come on, have some modesty or something,” Dolores said, averting her eyes.
“Doesn't the Dolores have a similar body? Is our body not pleasing?” Ash canted her head to a more normal angle. Well, at least that was progress.
“Sure, your body is very pleasing. Now put it in the tub.”
Ash stared at the water, her naked body lavender with cold. She put one foot into the tub with widened, glowing eyes. A small smile played on her lips as she stepped in and lowered herself under the water. She began to laugh.
“We love squishy bipeds and their systems! We didn't know they made the grooming tubs full of warm water. We do not like getting in cold water. No wonder the Dolores spends her time in the grooming tub, it is very pleasant.” Ashe drew her legs up to her chest and splashed her hand in the now empty end of the tub. “Will it come join us?”
Dolores's initial thought when being referred to as an it was always, it puts the lotion on its skin, but there was neither menace nor creepiness in Ash's statement. She seemed like a little kid extending a slobbery, dirt-covered lollipop to share before being genuinely baffled that the recipient wouldn't want a lick. Dolores knew she should decline, but supposed that had never stopped her before. Besides, why was it weird anyway? Warm baths were nice, and so was good company—or at least tolerable company. Dolores sighed and took off her own clothes a little shyly, curious what Ash would think of her broad, tall, flat body.
Ash beamed that genuine smile of delight of hers and suddenly shifted to the end with the faucet. “The Dolores can have the end without the metal water spray stick.”
Dolores clambered in, fully realizing the visual of two grown women in the tiniest tub on the market was probably hilarious. She laughed despite herself.
“We don't really fit together, Ash, and you aren't going to get nearly as warm like this.”
“We do not care if the you warms up. We are warm with the Dolores near us. All we need is the Dolores.”
11 The Lane
After the night of the bath Ash stuck around. Dolores still couldn’t discern where she went when she disappeared for entire days, but at least she never stayed out overnight again. Dolores also confronted Ash about her clothes and since then she regularly started appearing in different outfits. Ash claimed that she “found them” and while Dolores was skeptical, she didn't feel like chastising her only friend. Even though she privately suspected she was going crazy, she’d stopped counting the number of times it seemed like Ash’s body had shifted to fit her clothes and not the other way around.
The only consistent part of her wardrobe was the bright coral Brooks running shoes that Ash would lovingly put on whenever she went anywhere. Ash was gone running every morning when Dolores woke up, but occasionally she would catch her returning before departed for her morning shift. This morning Ash stood in the kitchen sweaty and oddly dressed in a man's suit jacket—buttoned, but with nothing underneath—and women's wool slacks.
“Did you just run in that?” Dolores gestured sleepily to the odd get-up before starting to prep breakfast. “You want some oatmeal?”
“We do not eat the oatmeal.” Despite weeks of living together, the use of I still eluded Ash. Dolores was used to it now, but she had to be careful not to adopt it herself they talked so often.
“Are you ever hungry?” Dolores turned to watch Ash. Her strange friend was certainly slender—which made sense since she seemed to spend most of her time running and not-eating—but she was by no means anorexic or unhealthy looking. One of Dolores's more persistent suspicions was that Ash was just stealing everything she needed, but she never looked hungry. Ash just watched food like it was an interesting puzzle to be solved—as if she just stared at it enough it would make sense to her.
Now, though, Dolores had backed Ash into a corner. Her bioluminescent eyes gleamed brightly as they met Dolores's. “No. We are not hungry. The Dolores does not need to worry about us.” Then Ash scrunched her face and said, “Dolores. Dolores does not need to worry about us.”
Dolores smiled. It was a tiny step in her syntactical progress, but a step none-the-less. Ash had alternated between infuriated and exasperated when Dolores tried to explain “he” and “she” to her, insisting that all humans looked the same and that it was ridiculously arbitrary. Then Ash grabbed her dictionary, found the word arbitrary, and shoved it into Dolores's face, saying, “Aaaarbitrary.” So pronouns were off the table, but Dolores felt okay about working on articles. And whenever she probed Ash about where she learned to speak the way she did, Ash would simply snap that she was learning. Oh well.
Dolores knew enough to tell she should let the food thing drop. She was exhausted and had her tenth day straight of work ahead. Alicia had fallen ill with the same bloody cough that took out Chance and also Kenny. Chance still wasn't out of the hospital, and whatever this new disease was, Bozeman found itself as the epicenter of the plague.
Still, all the coverage was irritatingly back page and local. The CDC was finally acknowledging the disease now that cases had popped up in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Chicago, too. There was panic now that cases had developed in San Francisco. Supposedly San Francisco victims died rapidly, fanning a fear that whatever it was, it was mutating.
“You should run in running clothes, Ash, or people are going to think you're being chased. That or that you're chasing them.”
“Sometimes we are.”
“What does that mean?”
“Both.”
“Goddamnit, how are you still this bad at communicating? Look, I have to work another long shift today. Why don't you come hang out at the coffee shop? Will you at least eat something there? Are you dumpster diving or something? Or stealing? You shouldn't steal, Ash—it's wrong. And if you're starving and running around in our crazy cold weather you’ll be a prime target for whatever disease everyone is getting. People are dying, Ash. It's no joke—you need to take care of yourself.” Dolores found herself feeling choked up. “You can't be my crazy bitch if you're dead.”
Ash's eyes narrowed. “Does the Dolores speak of the blood-juice cough? The Dolores will never get the blood-juice cough.”
“That is the grossest description possible, but yes, I am. They don't know how it's transmitted yet, so I'd feel better if you were at Starbucks with me.”
“We have things to do today. We will not go where the… disease… is.”
“Why do you say it like that? It's not like I'm making this up, Ash. You're not one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks all news is made up by the government, are you? Please don't be
that brand of crazy.”
“We are only the Dolores's crazy bitch kind of crazy. We can meet the Dolores and walk it home from work if it is afraid of the… disease.” Ash appeared to be barely containing a growl. Bearly, Dolores thought to herself.
“You know that's not how diseases work, right? It's not a mugger or a rapist—”
“What is the mugger or the rapist?” Ash said, half-owl rolling and then growling a full bear growl as she righted her head, clearly annoyed that the owl-head was on her Not Allowed list. Ash regularly had outbursts about the things that Dolores told her were Not Allowed, so Dolores posted them on the fridge to prevent arguments. Owl-head-turning was number two, right below voice mimicking.
“Jeez… Well a mugger is a person who takes your shit and a rapist is a dude who fucks you against your will.”
Ash's brow furrowed and her eyes glowed brightly in the dim of the morning. Dolores wondered if anyone else saw that bioluminescence or if it was just her imagination. She wanted to take a picture, but Ash had swatted her phone away aggressively the only time she tried. Even if she did, part of her feared that maybe Ash wouldn't be there, existing only in Dolores's loneliness-addled mind.
“We know of one of these the rapists,” Ash said quietly, her face stony with anger. “We do not know of the muggers, but we do not understand why anyone would want to collect the feces you bipeds produce.”
Dolores snorted. “Us bipeds? Like you don't shit like everyone else.” But as she said it, she realized she had never once seen, smelled, or heard Dolores use the toilet. Maybe she shit in the woods, getting in touch with her bearish roots, or her cult roots, or her held-captive-in-an-isolated-forest-cabin roots. Wherever she came from.
Ash narrowed her eyes again. “The blood-juice cough is not the rapist or the mugger, we understand that. We do not understand why the Dolores is concerned about the disease. The Dolores is not the mugger or the rapist either.”
“I seriously have no sane response for that. What the hell does that have to do with anything? You know what, never mind, just get yourself some running tights and a goddamn long-sleeved t-shirt, okay? Despite how weird you insist on being, I think I would miss you if you froze to death out there. Or if someone finally locked you up.”
“They will not lock us up. We will always come back to the Dolores so it doesn't worry or feel sad.”
Dolores took a quick shower and when she emerged there was Ash's classic pile of clothes again, lying on the floor like a snake had shed its multicolored, multi-fiber skin. Dolores imagined what it would feel like to go out into the sub-zero temperatures in only her birthday suit. Did she keep a stash of warmer clothes somewhere else? And why had she been so annoyed and testy about the plague?
Despite their little fight, the minute Dolores was due to go on her first break Ash walked through Starbucks’ door. Lane was working too and his eyes snapped up to look Ash over. Dolores could tell that he wanted her but didn't quite know how to deal with her. Dolores had managed to keep Ash's interactions with her coworkers to a minimum, but once they realized that Ash lived with her, inevitable questions arose. In fact, that had been the first time Lane really seemed to see her as a woman. His eyes had glittered with the fantasy obviously playing in his head. Leave it to men to assume that any two women who were single and spent a lot of time together were secretly fucking.
“So, hey, Dolores,” he said. “Is, uh, your friend, is she, like, into dudes?”
Dolores looked from Lane to Ash and burst out laughing. “I have no idea. That woman is like a walking, poorly-written mystery novel. I have no idea what Ash wants or likes or even does most of the time. She likes to run, that much I know.”
Lane grinned his knee-weakening, lopsided grin. “Hey, I like to run too. Can you give me an intro?”
Dolores found herself feeling oddly proprietary about Ash. Ash was hers. Hers to joke with. Hers to chide. Hers to teach. Ash was her crazy bitch. Ash sauntered toward them, though, and Dolores knew it would be weird not to introduce them. Before Ash reached them Dolores said quietly, “She talks in a pretty strange way, I don't know if she's foreign or what.”
“Maybe she's a foreign exchange student? Why don't you just ask her?”
“Yeah, good luck with that with that.”
Then Ash was in front of Dolores and she awkwardly ordered a hot brown coffee liquid. Lane turned to Dolores with a huge, disbelieving grin.
“I told you,” Dolores said. “Hey, Ash, this is Lane. Lane, this is Ash.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand over the counter.
Ash growled and threw her hands in the air, “The You returns! Always the You! Oh, how we hate the You.” Then she refocused on Lane and reluctantly crushed his hand in her own. Dolores had only introduced her to one other person and afterward had tried to explain the purpose of hand-shaking, but it was clear she was still getting the hang of it.
Lane laughed and withdrew his hand, obviously in pain. “That's a grip, girl.”
Ash turned her radiant eyes on Dolores. “Is it the mugger or the rapist?”
Dolores scrambled around the counter as fast as she could while making her best shut-the-fuck-up face at Ash. “No! Jesus, no. He’s neither. Come on, come on, outside.”
Lane waylaid her attempt to limit their interactions, seemingly oblivious to Ash's question. “Dude, Dolores, it's effing frigid out there and the girl isn't wearing a coat, why not take her in the back for your break? There's like two customers—I can run the counter and still chat. Come on back, Ash. We've only got one chair, and it's actually a bucket.”
“The Dolores can have the bucket chair.” Ash said as she strode into the storage room like she owned the place.
“I hear you're crashing at Dolores's place these days. Where are you from?”
“We do not crash—we walk or run carefully and do not wreck anything. We are mindful of the Dolores's lair and items. Does the Lane crash into others’ lairs? How are we to know where the You is from? Why are all the humans concerned with the You's original location?”
Lane mouthed, What? to Dolores with a delighted smile. Dolores did not smile back. She felt her fists clenching and hissed, “Don't you dare be mean to her.”
Lane shook his head, held up three fingers, and said in barely a whisper, “Scout's honor.” Dolores found she was liking him less and less the more he enjoyed Ash's oddity in hopes of getting in her bed. Or couch rather. Dolores’s couch.
“We could run sometime if you want,” Lane boldly suggested.
“We run all the time.”
“I meant together, silly.”
“Who is the Silly?”
Lane chuckled. It felt surreal watching someone else try to interact with Ash. Dolores felt like she'd slipped into it pretty naturally, but Lane was a born extrovert and charmer. Still, Ash showed no more interest in Lane than she showed for a piece of food.
But Lane persisted. “So, let's say tomorrow at six in the morning if no more of our coworkers get the plague. I'm supposed to have tomorrow off. I can come by Dolores's place to get you and take you to a great trail. You ever been up Hyalite Canyon? It'll be cold, but I can handle it if you can.”
“We can meet the Lane there. We know the trail.” Ash looked him up and down. “We do not think the Lane can run with us.”
He gave Dolores a delighted smile. “You've been keeping her a secret on purpose, haven't you?” He turned to Ash. “You're on, Ash. I'll wear my fastest shoes.”
Ash narrowed her eyes. “We will wear our running shoes.”
12 The Mouth-Smashing
We have shown the Lane that it should not have suggested running with us. It is still lying on the ground poking its digits at the beepy small device on its wrist. It is grinning, despite the fact that it only caught us after we had been done for a long time. It says, “Dude, you just ran ten miles like it was walking down the block! Seriously, I wish you'd had my watch on to know how fast you ran that. That is the faste
st I've ever run that trail and I couldn't even see you! Are you training for the Olympics or something?”
We try not to make a bear noise at the Lane, but only because it is Not Allowed. The You is everywhere with it.
“We need to run home now. The Dolores is concerned about the disease and we don't want it to be worried.”
“Yeah, it really is taking people out right and left. Another coworker went down yesterday. Poor Dolores has been working her butt off covering for all these people. I'd take more shifts but I'd flunk my classes. What's the deal with you two anyway? Are you like… a thing? I always pegged Dolores for straight. I even thought she was into me, but...”
The Lane stares at us. We try to evaluate the Lane. It is nice. We like that it is never not-nice to the Dolores, but we sense that the Dolores did not want us out with the Lane.
“We do not know what the thing is. Or the straight. The Dolores can bend in many ways but can also hold its body quite straight, especially when prone or standing. Are there humans that are not straight? What part of the Dolores is put into the Lane? The Dolores does not have the pegs to be put into anything.”
The Lane is laughing, so we laugh with the Lane, though we are uncertain what the Lane finds amusing.
“Man, Ash, you are a trip, Dolores was not kidding.”
It gets awkwardly back to its feet. It leaks the coolant like we do, but more and its running drapes are damp. The Lane was correct that it is unpleasantly cold. We wish again that we had a nice pelt. We suspect that the Dolores would say a pelt is Not Allowed. The Lane reaches out and runs a hand over our arm despite our lack of soft pelt, only our artificial pelt that is not-nice and also somewhat damp from our coolant. We watch the hand with interest, but since the Lane does not touch our actual flesh, we cannot tell if the Lane has the same effect as the Dolores. We are very pleased that the Dolores gets in the grooming tub with us sometimes even though it told us it is Not Allowed with other people unless we check with it first. Then we get to touch a lot of the Dolores's flesh. Shins against shins, thighs to thighs, feet on tummies.