“Yeah,” Sam said in a way he hoped was nonchalant. “Maybe one or two. If she was on her game.”
“Yeah,” Renny said, “she’s unbelievable.” Renny’s eyes got a little glassy, but Sam could tell he was fantasizing about Gaia’s stunning end play, not about her lips or her eyes.
Unlike Sam.
“Yeah,” Sam repeated awkwardly.
“See you.” Renny clapped him on the back agreeably and waded into chess world. Sam watched Renny take the first open seat across from Mr. Haq, whose taxicab was predictably parked (illegally) at the nearest curb. That was the downside of playing Mr. Haq. If the cops came, he abandoned the game and put his cab back into action. And no matter how badly you were creaming him, Mr. Haq would always refer to it afterward as “an undecided match.”
Sam found his way to a nearby bench with a good view of the chess area. He opened his physics book, lame prop that it was.
What had happened to his resolution to forget about Gaia? He’d decided to put her out of his mind for good and focus all of his romantic energy on Heather, but Gaia was like a drug. She was in his blood, and he couldn’t get her out. He was a junkie, an addict. He knew Gaia was bad for him. He knew she’d undermine his commitments and basically ruin his life. But he obsessed about her, anyway. Was there a twelve-step program for an addiction like this? Gaia Worshipers Anonymous?
He remembered that antidrug slogan that had scared him as a kid. This is your brain. He pictured the sizzling egg. This is your brain thinking of Gaia.
Clearly his decisions, vows, determinations, and oaths to forget Gaia weren’t enough. Maybe it was time to try a different tack.
What if he attempted to relate to her as a normal person? Just talk to her about everyday things like school and extracurricular activities and stuff like that? Maybe he could demystify the whole relationship.
Maybe he and Gaia could even have a meal together. You couldn’t easily idolize a girl while she was stuffing her face. She would probably order something he hated like lox or coleslaw. She would chew too loudly or maybe wear a bit of red cabbage on her front tooth for a while. Maybe she would spit a little when she talked. Afterward she would have bad breath or maybe a grease spot on her pants, and voilà. Obsession over.
Yes. This was a practical idea. Demystification.
Because after all, although Gaia came off as a pretty extraordinary person on the outside, on the inside she was just the same as anybody else.
. . . right?
A LAME COME-ON
SHE WAS A MESS.
She was a nightmare.
She should have her license to be female revoked.
Gaia turned around to look at her backside in the slightly warped mirror that hung on the back of the door to her room. Earlier that day she’d picked up a pair of capri pants off the sale rack at the Gap in an effort to look cute and feminine. Instead she looked like the Incredible Hulk right after he turns green and bursts out of his clothing.
What kind of shoes were you supposed to wear with these things? Definitely not boots, as she could plainly see in the mirror. Was it too late in the year to wear flip-flops?
Sam was not going to fall in love with her. He was going to take one look and run screaming in the opposite direction. Either that or laugh uncontrollably.
Why was she torturing herself this way? In her ordinary life she managed to pull off the functional style of a person who didn’t care. She had no money, which occasionally resulted in the coincidental coolness of thrift shop dressing.
But now that Gaia actually cared, she had turned herself into a neurotic, insecure freak show.
Caring was to be deplored and avoided. Hadn’t she learned that by now?
She stripped off the pants and pulled on her least-descript pair of jeans. She pulled a nubbly sweater the color of oatmeal over her head.
Better ugly than a laughingstock. That was Gaia’s new fashion motto.
She had to get out of the house before Ella sauntered in and recognized the beaded necklace Gaia had “borrowed.” Ella was a whiny, dumb bimbo, but she had a nose for fashion trends. Gaia had every intention of returning the necklace before it was missed, so why cause a big fuss by asking?
Gaia thundered down the three flights of stairs, slammed the painted oak-and-glass door behind her, turned her key in the lock, and struck out for the park.
And to think she’d come home after school to work on her appearance.
She hurried past the picture-perfect row houses. Lurid red geraniums still exploded in the window boxes. Decorative little front fences cast long shadows in the late day sun, putting Gaia’s shadow in an attenuated, demented-looking prison.
After a few blocks, Gaia suddenly paused as the sound of heavy guitar music blared through an open basement window, followed by a raspy tenor voice. “framed/you set me up, set me out and/blamed/you tore me up, tore me down and/chained/you tied me up, tied me down and . . .” It was that band again — Fearless. For a fleeting moment Gaia wanted to shout through the window and ask them where they got their bizarrely Gaia-centric name, but she had to keep moving.
She didn’t have much time. CJ probably wasn’t crazy enough to open fire on her in daylight, but once the sun got really low, she had to be ready for it, especially hanging around the park. How typical of her new life in the biggest city in the United States that the guy she wanted to seduce and the guy who wanted to shoot her hung out in exactly the same space.
Her stomach started to churn as she got close. What was she going to say to Sam?
“Hi, I know you have a girlfriend and don’t like me at all, but do you want to have sex?”
On the one-in-ten-billion chance that he agreed to her insane scheme, what then? They couldn’t just do it on a park bench.
Suddenly the actual, three-dimensional Sam, sitting on a bench with a clunky-looking textbook open on his lap, replaced the Sam in her mind.
Oh, crap. Was it too late? Had he seen her?
“Gaia?”
That would mean yes.
Swallow. “Hi.” She tried out a friendly smile that came off more like the expression a person might make when burning a finger on the top of the toaster.
He stood up, his smile looking equally pained. “How’s it going?”
She hooked her thumbs in the front pockets of her pants. “Oh, fine. Fine.” What was she? A farmer?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Great.”
Oh, this was awful. This come-hither Gaia was a complete disaster. Why couldn’t she be cute and flirty and have a personality?
He was clearly at a loss. “Do you, uh . . . want to play a game of chess?”
She would have agreed to pull out her toenails to escape this awkward situation.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” she said lightly. God, what a wordsmith she was.
“Or we could just, like, take a walk. Or something.”
“Great. Sure,” she said. Had her vocabulary shrunk to four words?
“Or we could even sit here for a couple of minutes.”
“Yeah,” she proclaimed.
“Fine,” he countered.
“Great,” she said.
They both stayed standing.
This was pathetic. How was she possibly going to have sex with him when simply sitting on the same bench involved a whole choreography of commitment?
She sat. There.
He sat, too.
Well, this was progress.
She crossed her legs and inadvertently brushed the heel of his shoe. With lightning-fast-reflex speed they both swung their respective feet to opposite sides of the bench.
Or not.
Gaia studied Sam’s face in profile. It made her a little giddy to realize what a hunk he was. A classic knee weakener. He belonged on television or in a magazine ad for cologne. What was he doing sitting near her?
He looked up and caught her staring (slack jawed) at him. She quickly looked away. She pressed her hand, palm
down, on the bench and realized her pinky was touching the outer edge of his thigh. Uh-oh.
Should she move it? Had he noticed? Did he think she had done it on purpose? Suddenly she had more feeling, more nerve endings (billions and billions at least) in her pinky than she ever thought possible. All of the awareness in her body was crammed into that pinky.
Now it felt clammy and weirdly twitchy. A pinky wasn’t accustomed to all this attention. Did Sam feel it twitching? That would be awful. He’d think it was some kind of lame come-on. Either that or she’d lost muscle control.
Well, actually, this was some kind of lame come-on and she had lost control.
The problem was, if she took away her pinky, he would know she noticed that she was touching him, and that would be embarrassing, too.
He moved his leg. Suddenly Gaia’s pinky was touching cold, lonely, uncharged air. She felt the piercing sting of rejection. Jerk. Loser. She was ready to give up on the whole project.
Then he moved it back and practically covered her entire pinky. Oh, faith! Love! Destiny! Could she propose to him right there?
He smiled at her. This time it was sweet, open, real.
Her stomach rolled. She smiled back, fervently hoping it didn’t look like a grimace and that her teeth didn’t look yellow.
She heard a noise behind her. She jerked up her head.
She realized that the sun had dipped below the Hudson River and the streetlamps were illuminated. Oh, no. Could it be? Already?
She had to go. Fast. She wasn’t going to turn into a pumpkin, but she was very likely going to get shot in the head. That could easily put a damper on this fragile, blossoming moment.
The sound resolved itself into a footstep, and a person appeared. It wasn’t CJ, but just the same, it put an end to the encounter as powerfully as a bullet.
It was Heather. The girlfriend.
COLD BLOOD
Her adrenaline was pumping now. Her muscles were buzzing with intensity. She was an easy target this close.
CUNNING INTELLIGENCE
THERE WERE MOMENTS IN LIFE WHEN words failed to convey your thoughts. There were moments when your thoughts failed to convey your feelings. Then there were moments when even your feelings failed to convey your feelings.
This was one of those, Heather realized as she gaped at Sam and Gaia Moore sitting on the park bench together.
They weren’t kissing. They weren’t touching. They weren’t even talking. But Sam and Gaia could have been doing the nasty right there on the spot, and it wouldn’t have carried the intimacy of this tentative, nervous, neurotic union she now witnessed between them.
Maybe she was imagining it, Heather considered. Maybe it was a figment of her own obsessive, jealous mind.
She’d almost rather believe she was crazy than that Sam, her Sam, was falling in love with Gaia. It was too coincidental, just too cruel to be real. Like one of those Greek tragedies she read for Mr. Hirschberg’s class. Gaia was the person she most despised. Sam was the person she loved.
Had she done something to bring this on herself? What was it the Greek guys always got smacked for? Hubris, that was the word — believing you were too good, too strong, invulnerable. The world had a way of teaching you that you weren’t invulnerable.
Heather was paralyzed. Anger told her to get between them and make trouble, Pride told her to run away. Hurt told her to cry. Cunning told her to make Sam feel as guilty and small as possible. She waited to hear what Intelligence had to say. It never spoke first, but its advice was usually worth waiting for.
Her mind raced and sorted. Considered and rejected. Then finally, Intelligence piped up with a strategy.
“Sam,” Heather stated. Good, firm, steady voice. She stepped around to the front of the bench and faced them straight on.
Sam looked up. Shock, fear, guilt, uncertainty, and regret waged war over his features.
Staring at them, Heather made no secret of her surprise and distress, but she overlaid a brave, tentative, give-them-the-benefit-of-the-doubt smile.
The effect was just as she’d intended. Sam looked like he wished to pluck out both of his eyeballs on the spot.
“Hey, Gaia,” Heather said. Her expression remained one of naive, martyrlike confusion.
Gaia looked less sure of herself than Heather had ever seen her before. Gaia cleared her throat, uncrossed her legs, straightened her posture, said nothing. Heather detected a faint blush on her cheeks.
Now Heather looked back at Sam. She applied no obvious pressure, just silence, which always proved the fiercest pressure of all.
“Heather, I — we — you —” Sam looked around, desperate for her to interrupt.
She didn’t.
“I was just . . . and Gaia, here . . .”
Heather wasn’t going to help him out of this. Let him suffer.
“We were just . . . talking about chess.” With that word, Sam regained his footing. He took a big breath. “Gaia is a big chess player, too.”
Heather nodded trustingly. “Oh.”
Sam looked at his watch. There wasn’t a watch. A moment’s discomfort. He regrouped again. “I gotta go, though.” He stood up. “Physics study group.” He offered his textbook as evidence.
“Right,” Heather said. “Wait, I have something for you.” She fished around in her bag and brought out the red sealed envelope. “Here. I was looking for you because I wanted to give you this.” She smiled shyly. She shrugged. “It’s kind of stupid, but . . . whatever.” Her voice was soft enough to be intimate and directed solely at him.
He had to come two steps closer to take the card from her hand. This required him to turn his back on Gaia.
Sam glanced at his name, written in flowery cursive, and the heart she’d drawn next to it. When he looked at Heather again, his eyes were pained, uncertain.
He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you walk with me, and I’ll open it when I get to my dorm?”
Heather nodded brightly. “Okay.”
He pressed the card carefully between the pages of his physics book and anchored the book under his arm. Heather took his free hand and laced her fingers through his as she often did, and they started across the park.
Sam said nothing to Gaia. He didn’t even cast a backward glance.
But Heather couldn’t help herself. She threw a tiny look over her shoulder. Then, without breaking her stride, she planted one fleeting kiss on Sam’s upper arm, just the place where her mouth naturally landed on his tall frame. It was a casual kiss, light, one of millions, but undoubtedly a kiss of ownership.
“See ya,” Heather said to Gaia, silently thanking Intelligence for dealing her yet another effective strategy.
It was funny, thought Heather. Intelligence and Cunning so often ended up in the same place.
NOT YET
WHAT GOOD WAS IT BEING A TRAINED fighting machine when you couldn’t beat the hell out of a loathsome creature like Heather Gannis? Gaia wondered bitterly as she stomped along the overcrowded sidewalks of SoHo.
What a catty piece of crap Heather was. No, that was too kind. Cats were fuzzy, warm-blooded, and somewhat loyal. Heather was more reptile than mammal — cold-blooded and remote with dead, hooded eyes.
Gaia was supposed to be smart. When she was six years old, her IQ tested so high, she’d been sent to the National Institutes of Health to spend a week with electrodes stuck to her forehead. And yet in Heather’s presence Gaia felt like a slobbering idiot. She’d probably misspell her name if put on the spot.
“Oops. Sorry,” Gaia mumbled to a man in a beige suit whose shoulder she caught as she crossed Spring Street.
Trendy stores were ablaze along the narrow cobblestoned streets. Well-dressed crowds flowed into the buzzing, overpriced restaurants that Ella always wanted to go to. Gaia strode past a cluster of depressingly hip girls who probably never considered wearing boots with capri pants.
Gaia caught her reflection in the darkened window of a florist shop. Ick. Blah. Blech. Who let her
out on the streets of New York in that sweater? Exactly how fat could her legs look? High time to get rid of the —
Suddenly she caught sight of another familiar reflection. He was behind her, weaving and dodging through the throng, staying close but trying to avoid her notice. His face was beaded with sweat. One of his hands was tucked in his jacket.
Oh, shit. Well, at least you couldn’t commit fashion blunders from the grave, could you?
She walked faster. She jaywalked across the street and ducked into a boutique. She wanted to see whether CJ was just keeping tabs on her or whether he intended to kill her immediately.
Gaia blinked in the laboratory-bright shop. The decor was spare, and the clothing was inscrutable. In the midst of all the chrome shelving and halogen lighting there seemed to be about three items for sale, all of them black. It made for poor browsing.
CJ stopped outside. He knew she knew he was there.
“Excuse me, miss.” An impatient voice echoed through the stark, high-ceilinged room.
Gaia spun around to see a severe-looking saleslady pinning her to the floor with a suspicious look. Salesladies in SoHo had a sixth sense for whether you could afford anything in their store. It was a superhuman power. It deserved to be investigated on The X-Files. This particular woman obviously knew that Gaia couldn’t afford even a zipper or sleeve from the place.
“We’re closed,” the saleslady snapped. Her outfit was constructed of incredibly stiff-looking black material that covered her from her pointy chin to the very pointy tips of her shoes. Gaia couldn’t help wondering if she ate breakfast or watched TV in that getup.
“The door was open,” Gaia pointed out.
The woman cocked her head and made a sour face. “Apparently so. But we’re closed.”
“Fine.” Gaia glanced through the glass door. CJ was pacing in an area of about two square feet. He was ready to pounce. She was pretty sure that the hand concealed in his roomy jacket held a gun.
“In the future, when you’re closed,” Gaia offered, trying to bide a little time, “you should consider locking your door. It’s a common business practice. It not only alerts your customers to the fact that your store is closed but can help reduce crime as well.”
Sam Page 3