The ball flew out again. Banch saw it clearly. Black, spinning, final. She raised her hands, opened her fingers and caught it. Mohawk man’s carnage-caked brow lifted in shock.
“Come here, bitchwhore!” Banch cried, and yanked the chain hand over hand.
The Assembly member staggered off the planter and fell into her from his momentum. She threw her arms around his body, tight. He squirmed, fought, but it only took a few seconds. The other Assembly scrambled for cover but it wasn’t soon enough. The Lung Spike’s spilling of sparks increased tenfold and the entire length of the shaft shattered into fine emerald and sapphire shrapnel that stretched out in a ring. The Assembly shot into the air and lightning threaded through them in a blink—they were caught from heel to toe in florid flames and slammed to the ground. Immediately some of them rolled around to smother the flames, to no avail.
Banch grappled with the spinning world around her and crashed into a dumpster. She licked more blood off her lips.
“So much easier calling deaths,” she mumbled.
Glittering cinders fell from the sky onto the passed-out Assembly members. The streets suddenly erupted in steam, every single shadow becoming the mouth of a smoking volcano.
Banch checked the sky for her twin’s crease.
It was still visible. And wasn’t near the restaurant yet.
“We still didn’t make it.” She lowered her head. Her lips trembled and eyes welled. She hated that lack of control but let her pretenses go. Banch took a breath and closed her eyes. Accepted what would come for her. But not for Jared.
Chapter 15
Jared
When Jared was twenty-two years old…
His mother Mary died of breast cancer. It had claimed her in less than a year, even after a partial mastectomy. Jared had written something to say at the service but didn’t have the courage to read it once the time came. He didn’t feel as bad, though, once his father made it known he wouldn’t be saying anything at the service either, except to thank everybody for coming. Listening to other accounts from friends was hard enough, but saying something about Mary was just too much for them to take.
The day was still clear to him. Jared looked down at that cold sheet of printer paper with the laser-inked words for more than an hour. His mother had bought the paper at Costco. His mother likely had bought the ink cartridges there as well. That was her favorite place to shop. She loved shopping. Loved spending money. It relieved stress for her. In fact, his earliest memory of her was a shopping run to a grocery store. Two and half years old and he’d been sitting beneath the shopping cart. He preferred the solitude down there instead of facing the cart-pusher. She let him sit beneath unless she had cases of soda or bulk items to buy. One day he’d gotten his finger pinched while exploring one of the spinning wheels. The pain was erased from his memory now, but seeing his mother bend under the cart, parking lot sunlight and shadow crosshatches over her sweet face, and her kissing his wounded finger, that was an image that never left him.
He recalled shopping with her for much of his life. With her gone, she’d not be that person holding such mundane household duties. No paying bills, cleaning, cooking—god, her meatloaf, Jared’s favorite, and he’d never thought to ask her how she made it, had no clue if she wrote the recipe down somewhere, but that hardly mattered since he couldn’t cook to save his life. Even though he’d known she was dying, he wouldn’t let such questions cross his mind.
His eyes went to the words he’d written about her:
“…she was my best friend. I spent most of my childhood with her. She even brought me to her job when I was too afraid of babysitters.” His eyes filled. “She loved Science Fiction movies, the campier the better. I admit she liked them a whole lot more than me, but I watched them with her every Friday night, she with her blush wine, me with my diet Dr. Pepper, and tons of microwave popcorn. I asked her once if there were really creatures on the moon. Mom just laughed and told me the moon was nothing more than big rock stuck in the sky, nothing special, but to her make-believing was still fun and worthwhile.”
There was one more thing he’d wanted to add but hadn’t. I’m sorry I made her life so hard and I’m sorry she could never be happy because I needed her so much.
Jared wadded up the paper and let it fall to the hardwood floor of his bedroom.
He glanced at his shoes, still untied. For so many years his mother would shake her head, kneel down, and say, “They’ll just come undone that way. You didn’t tie them correctly,” and then she’d untie and retie them. And she was right; his shoes felt more secure, like they belonged on his feet when she did, opposed to when he tied them, his shoes felt borrowed and the world that much more chaotic.
So he stopped tying them and would find his mother every morning to get them tied correctly. It was a ritual he enjoyed. It was attention. It was safety. Even as a young adult. His father hated it and his parents argued over the matter often enough, but his mother relished taking care of him—to her, it probably meant her baby wasn’t really growing up.
Jared’s father knocked and cracked open the door. “You good?”
“Yep.”
Bob entered, hands deep-deep in the pockets of his black slacks. “You ready to go down and talk to the fam?”
“No.”
His father nodded and glided a hand over the shiny dome of his bald head. “Me neither, I guess.”
For a minute he stood there, not saying a word, just glancing around at all the art and movies posters on Jared’s walls like cave writings of some alien race—no matter how hard he tried, his confusion and the awe of this dark moment ran so much deeper than pockets would ever go.
The silence ended with broken sobbing. Jared didn’t look at his father crying, wouldn’t face seeing something akin to the sturdiest fortress walls crumbling down. For his mother and for this, Jared’s eyes spilled too; he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop it from happening.
Taking a knee before him, his father tied Jared’s shoelaces. Once finished, he wiped his nose with the sleeve of his suit coat and sniffed. “How’s that?”
Not as tight as his mother used to tie them, or at least it seemed so, but Jared wouldn’t have dreamed of critiquing at that moment. “Good, Dad. Very good. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, son.” His father pressed his lips together, face muscles twitching as he fought another crying spell.
“Do you think I made her do too much?” Jared asked.
“What?” His father now looked straight at him. Jared had never seen his eyes so swollen and red, except when his seasonal allergies kicked in.
“Did I run her down? Make her sick? She did so much for—“
His father held up a hand. “She did a lot for both of us, but that has nothing to do with it.” He shook his head passionately. “It was goddamn cancer. That thing doesn’t care if you’re lazy, tired, or have all the energy in the world. It just is.”
“I know, but do—I mean, did I make your marriage harder? I did, didn’t I?”
A look of fear bloomed in his father’s gray, bloodshot eyes. “You must never think that, okay? Please. Okay? Say okay.”
Jared nodded. “Okay.”
“Your mom and I didn’t get along. I always believed I could be the right man for any woman, that I had a lot to give, but sometimes you’ll never be content with yourself and that gets in the way, makes the other person feel like you don’t want them either. I understand now that I wasn’t the right man for your mom—”
“No, Dad.”
“Just let me finish, son. I wasn’t right for her, but she was right for me. We stayed together because you were right for both of us. I might have said some awful things to your mom, and she may have called me names, but we didn’t hate each other.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “She may have tolerated me, but I loved her more than I could ever explain. Please always remember that before anything else.”
Jared bowed his head. “I don’t know how I’m going to get t
hrough this. I need her, Dad.”
“I know son, but I’m here to take care of you now. Not to mention your girlfriend, Kaitlin.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I’ve told you that before.”
“She’s downstairs bringing food to everybody right now. So at very least she’s a damn good friend.”
“Agreed,” said Jared.
“We’ll get through this together kid, you and me.”
Naturally his father had a rough go of things that year. Lots of drinking, lots of bad cigars, and plenty of shouting matches with televised sports. Jared couldn’t talk to him about anything. He didn’t know how to be there for his father. Some of the players from the softball league finally came over one day to try to cheer them up. Then they started coming by every Thursday to play poker and drink microbrew beer. His father wasn’t as alone. Things started turning around after that, but with his wife gone, life was always fighting upstream for Bob Kare, and Jared took that battle with him too.
* * *
What will I do now?
Jared’s heart raced. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, syncing with the blood pounding in his face. The Bayou Cat was in sight but as they headed into the street, massive gouts of steam lifted all around them.
“Shit!” the twin yelled and pointed. “Is that the place?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, coughing, the sudden air in his lungs overwhelming.
He turned to the twin. She held his hand but her body stretched a mile away into colorless stands that bunched and unbunched. In the next second the strands all pulled back together into a human form. Her molecules were unstable, thinning out to nothing.
“Hurry, I’m
dis
associat
ing
from
reality.”
Her voice was a metal machine echoing in his mind.
After that, the next moments were dream. The door to the restaurant opened. He pointed to the back. People stood at their tables like obedient lap dogs welcoming their masters. Jared crashed into a few chairs with his air tank. The twin transformed into a kaleidoscopic swirl that drifted apart in grains of molecules, only to pull back together in a temporal version, a fainter variety of herself. They were in front of the table and he could see her screaming at him but bewilderment had his tongue numb.
“Which seat, Jared? Hey? Snap out of it? Which seat was yours?”
Jared stared at the table. He pictured Banch in one seat. He pictured Banch in the other seat. He stared back up at the twin, sounds through the breathing apparatus the only reply he could offer.
The twin’s body scrambled, the particles hovering a bit before sticking back together.
“Jared! Which goddamn chair?”
“He sat there.” A waiter pointed to the chair on the left.
The twin lost no time and dropped into the opposite seat. A blinding flash expelled from her body, followed by a darkness that contracted and pulled inward.
Banch.
His Banch.
Just as she had before, she sat at the table, head resting on her arms, eyes clamped shut. Jared stripped off his face mask and dropped to her side. “Hey,” he said, patting her shoulder. “Hey, please wake up. Wake up!”
Her eyes fluttered and she gave him a drowsy stare.
“Are you okay?”
“That was… too close,” she said and licked her lips. “I’m starving.”
Someone in the room gasped for joy and cried, “SHE WANTS FOOD!”
Everybody jumped to his or her feet, rushing for the kitchen, tripping and clamoring over each other.
A Samoan guy shoved someone to the ground. “Wait your turn assholes, I said I got this!”
“Be nice! Be nice!” Jared hollered.
The crowd stopped, almost in a comical impersonation of a freeze frame. A multitude of apologies slowly filtered through the people. They detangled from each other, a couple friendly pats on the back here and there, and they headed to the kitchen in orderly groups.
Banch pushed up slightly from her arm and wagged her head. “Damn. That was a split razor on the aperture.”
“Huh?”
“Another saying of ours—any longer and the disassociation would have been irreversible. What about you? Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? Banch, you and the twin almost went out, like a puff of smoke.”
“Oh, believe me. I get that.” The banshee pulled down her torn uniform at the shoulder to reveal a colossal blue-brown bruise.
“Did… they?”
“Don’t worry about them,” she said pointedly. “They’ll be scraping their asses off the ground for a few hours would be my guess. That gives us time to eat and then head to our next stop. It’s not far. Remember our detergent.”
He took off the air tank and gradually sat into the other seat, his legs burning from fatigue. “Did you get a look at the twin? How she looked, I mean?”
“Why?”
“She said you shared thoughts for a while.”
“That’s true, but no, I got no image of her.”
“I see,” said Jared.
“Why do you ask?”
“Nothing.”
“What did she look like?” Banch narrowed her eyes and folded her arms neatly under her breasts.
Jared took a much welcomed breath of fresh air and smiled. “She was beautiful, just as you are.”
Banch’s lips twisted and she hummed. “Be careful talking that way, charmer—if I had more strength I might jump your bones right here.”
“Oh, well then lucky for me.”
Banch tossed a linen napkin off the table at him. He caught it at his chest and laughed. His phone vibrated again but he couldn’t imagine picking it up right now. He was just so happy. So happy, beyond happy, that he was sitting across from his banshee once again.
A pair of bickering people brought forth steaming bowls of gumbo and set them down.
“There’s bread, too,” said a dazzled-eyed business woman with her hair chopsticked in a bun.
“Want a Caesar salad? Seafood salad? Coleslaw? Cajun style?” said the other, who Jared recognized as the sleepy eyed surfer guy who’d given him the scuba gear.
Jared glanced at Banch, but before she could answer the surfer said, “Well dumb of me, of course you want some.”
The two hurried off, once again arguing the finer points of what he and Banch preferred. As the swinging double doors of the kitchen closed behind them, the woman said, “Did you see their faces? They have no interest in salad and—”
A second later the doors opened again and more people emerged bringing platters of fried foods and shell fish. Banch started on her gumbo and eyed the other plates, which became increasingly copious and had to be placed on an adjacent table: boudin, jambalaya, red beans and rice, crawfish Étouffée, and several different sugary sweet manifestations of the beignet.
“Can I just get a muffuletta sandwich?” Jared asked. That was what Kaitlin always ordered for him. He hadn’t tried anything else on the menu.
“Like a huge one?” someone asked in the crowd.
“No, normal size, please.”
“How about a beer? Red Stripe? Purple Haze? Black Voodoo?”
“Diet Dr. Pepper or Coke.”
When they were alone again, Banch asked him, “Why no beer? I recall you trying wine once, but never beer.”
He shrugged. “I need the right occasion for one.”
She smiled. “You are living on borrowed time, my love. I don’t see when there’s a better opportunity.”
He offered a small smile of his own.
“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“It’s okay. In some realities, I went out of this world a long time ago.”
Banch stared at him with delicate eyes. “I’m lucky to have met you. Until I end or time does, I’ll never forget you, Jared Kare.”
“Ditto.”
“Well,” said the banshee. “With that s
aid, I’m getting Purple Haze when they come back.”
“Have yourself a ball.”
His phone hummed again and he slapped the rectangular bulge in his jean pocket. “Fine,” he sighed, and dipped his hand inside to retrieve it. He checked the screen.
Kaitlin.
He considered whether he should answer it, then relented.
“Hi, Kait.”
“Jared,” she said, sounding panicked. “Where are you?”
“Why? What’s the deal?”
“The deal? Aren’t you seeing this shit on the news? Those guys from earlier are terrorists or something. The reports say there might have been a bunch of chemical weapons used in the city. People were out there suffocating in the streets—they’re bringing in the National Guard right now. Are you crazy? You really haven’t heard about any of this? Where are you? It isn’t safe out there.”
“I’m just with Banch.”
“At the beach?”
“No, not yet, we—look Kaitlin, we’re fine. Really.”
“This is too weird. I’m gonna bite my fingers off at the knuckles. Tell me where you are so I can pick you guys up. Seriously.”
“I said we’re fine. Kaitlin, just, I’ll call you some other time.”
“Oh, what is this? Big man with a new girlfriend? I’m telling you there’s some crazy shit out there and if you care at all about Banch—”
“We’re FINE,” Jared said, so loudly Banch blinked and self-consciously took another sip of her soup.
“Here’s your muffuletta,” said a woman, and she proudly set down a plate with the biggest sandwich Jared had ever seen. “Thanks,” he whispered to her and cleared his throat. “Hey Kait, I’m sorry for raising my voice.”
But the call had ended. Kaitlin had hung up. Jared’s hand dropped to the table.
“She’s pretty mad?” asked Banch.
“Yeah, pretty.”
Banch reached over to the other table and grabbed a plate of blackened shrimp. “No doubt, you’re being a jerk.”
“Pardon?”
“She was just looking out for you. Try and have more patience when you talk to her.”
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