In Hot Water Pt. 05

"Just you." Her voice is half a whisper.

"And how long has this been a thing? Since you moved?"

"Not exactly." Jessica swallows hard. "It's been--"

"A while," I say, pulling my sister's hand off her leg. I run my fingers between hers, and she squeezes me.

"Wow." Jane leans back and her whole expression melts away. "I don't know what to say."

Getting to know my painfully honest sister.

"Are you creeped out?" asks Jessica. "Are you going to tell people?"

Jane pulls her numb face into something half exasperation, half confusion. "Creeped out? Yeah, if I'm honest. But no, I don't think I'm going to tell anyone."

"You don't think?" asks Jessica. I want a little more assurance too.

"Okay." Jane sighs. "I'm not going to tell anyone. But you guys know you're twisted as fuck, right?"

Jane's words pull a cowl of shame over my head, as I imagine how she sees us. I'm the creep who ruined her friend.

I say, "I hope we're at least entertaining."

"Oh." Jane stares knives at me, then turns back to Jessica. "You guys are better than any reality TV show I've ever heard of."

Kevin crash lands on the bench next to Jane, and slams down a white paper bag of takeout food. I hadn't seen him approach. Fried fish and batter wash over us.

Then Jessica's phone rings. She lets go of my hand, and climbs free of the table, ducking behind the rose bushes with the phone against her ear.

"Why does everybody look so down?" asks Kevin. He tears open a box of fish and dumps tartar sauce all over the inside.

"Just some family drama, Babe," says Jane, in a muted tone. She gazes over my shoulder.

"Car treat you okay?" comes out of Kevin's full mouth.

"Yeah, thanks again." I put the key in front of him on the table, and try to shake myself back to reality. "It likes to go fast. I had to watch it." I turn around in my seat. Jessica paces behind a bush and is talking, but I can't hear details.

Kevin swallows. "So what's your day look like, Alex? Get your shit sorted out?"

"Not exactly," I say. "I'm going to work, then I guess I have to go meet my dad, if he hasn't been arrested. And then turn my phone in to the cops."

"No shit?"

I pick yellow paint flakes off my palms, while Kevin devours his lunch. Jane sits lost in a thousand-yard stare and hasn't touched her food. Then mulch crunches behind me, and I turn to see Jessica returning to the table a few paces away. I bolt off the bench, and pull my sister by the sides of her arms, back to where she'd been behind the bush.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"That was the police. I have to go in right now. They want my phone."

I rub Jessica's arms, and she leans her chin against my good shoulder. A rose bush bulges between us and our friends, though it doesn't offer much cover.

"What do I tell them?" asks my sister.

"I guess what we know about Dad and the checks. Not that much. I didn't tell them anything else."

"What are you going to talk to Dad about?"

"I'm not sure. I guess I want answers. Why is Kirsten in jail, but he's not?"

"Get him to talk. Tell him how it was clearly all Kirsten's idea, or something. He'll hate that, and admit to things."

"Then what?"

"Then we'll know more, I guess."

"What if." I take out my phone and hold it between us. "What if I record us talking?"

"Wow, there's an idea. Then the cops get it when they get your phone."

"There's no way to control what he'll say. It'll all just go on there."

Jessica presses her lips together. "Do what you have to."

I hold my sister by the sides of her arms as we stand face to face behind the row of shoulder-high bushes.

"Hey, Wonder Twins," says Kevin. He's standing on the bench of the table peering down at us. "We gotta hit the road. You guys need a ride somewhere?"

"I need to go downtown," says Jessica. She speaks to him, but she looks at me.

"I need to go to work," I say. "Can you drop me at the MAX station down the street?" I let go of Jessica, and turn back to our friends. Jane's eyes dart back and forth between my sister and me, as we rejoin them at the table.

Kevin boxes up Jane's food. "Where's my car?"

The four of us squish through muddy grass to the path, and up the road to our driveway. Kevin clicks his key fob as we approach and the car chirps. I climb in behind Jane, the same as I'd done on the way to the beach. Kevin pulls us around, and heads us toward the light rail station. I keep catching Jane's gaze in the side mirror. I don't want to look at her, but I force myself to act normal, whatever that is. She said she's not going to tell anyone, but I don't know if that includes Kevin. I check my phone. Still eight percent battery.

"Hey," I say in my most authoritative voice. "You guys have a phone charger?"

"For that thing?" Kevin glances back at me in a way that takes his view far off the road. "I think I tossed my parts for dinosaur phones."

Jane rummages around below her knees, and comes up with a tangled cable. "We've got this." She holds the cord back between the seats, while looking ahead.

The charger plug is far more modern than anything my phone accepts. "Not going to work. Thanks for checking."

Jane silently retracts her offering.

I launch the blue dot app, and set messages to disappear after two minutes. Then I text Garrett.

"You at work? Can I buy you that coffee I owe you?"

Garrett responds immediately. "Yeah, you coming in early today?" His message matches my two-minute expiration timer.

"Got some stuff to do. I'll be there in a bit."

A thumbs up emoji comes in, and counts down from ten seconds, then vanishes. I lock my phone to save what remains.

Kevin pulls up at the curb of the light rail station, and I can already see the train approaching. I touch Jessica's leg, as a parting offer, the most I'm willing to risk inside the car. Then I'm outside standing on the platform, surrounded by people. Several in the crowd move in front of and behind me at the same time, causing me to stand upright more than I'd like. The whirr of the MAX comes down the track at me, as it glides the last couple blocks.

A woman with a dark shiny department store bag bumps into me, and knocks me back a step. The offender apologizes, then continues on her way.

A car door opens and shuts behind me.

Then a hand touches my back.

"You going to be okay?" asks Jessica.

"Yeah. What about you?"

The train slows in front of a buzzing swarm of waiting travelers.

"I'll be fine, yes."

A homeless man pushes a shopping cart near us, and Jessica hops into me to avoid him. The sea of people passing by my sister and me bubbles and swirls, as people wait for the doors to open. But they're not open yet, and we're still standing here. Then something comes over me. I don't know what I'll find at work. Or what my dad will say. Or what the cops will do with my phone. Or anything, now that Jane knows about my sister and me. But Jessica is here for this moment. I grab her by the waist, and pull her against me.

Then I kiss her.

My sister sucks in a breath, and kisses me back. Five sharp talons dig into my back, and the swarm of people around us dissolves. Our friends wait in the car, a few feet away, but they're gone too. Jessica climbs on me, and pushes my mouth open with her tongue. The talons turn to daggers, and it becomes every morning at the bus stop. Then it's that first time together in the shower, the kiss in the park, the smear of makeup in Jane's kitchen. This is every time I've touched her, or wanted to touch her, but could not.

I break away, and a crowded world reappears. Inside the car, Jane wears a sad smile on her lips. Kevin slouches over the steering wheel, mouthing, "what the fuck" in an exaggerated, slow charade.

The doors of the train stand open and waiting, and I step through. I try to play it cool, as though Jessica and I hadn't just done what we very clearly had, but the smile on my face betrays me.

~~~~~~

CHAPTER 25

I say, "We need a word or something. For when it's too much."

"I trust you," says my sister.

"Isn't it better to have one, just to be safe?"

The button blinks amber at me again, but the blinds remain closed. I push once more, and the light goes solid. A motorized buzz comes from above somewhere, and the blinds shimmer, and wiggle, but do not move.

Something thumps behind me, and my sister has straightened the nearer bed back against the wall. The far bed remains askew, pushed several feet toward the front door.

I let go of the button and press it again. It clicks through my thumb. The blinds continue shimmering, but the front curtains remain closed.

"Can I pick the word?" she asks.

"Anything you want."

Another thump from behind me, and the second bed is straight against the wall. Three empty wine bottles sit next to my sister's bag, on the table between the beds. All the visible covers in the room lay heaped in a pile on top of the closer bed, rising as high as my chest. My clothes may or may not be in that heap. I've lost track of them.

"You going to tell me?" I ask.

"You'll know."

"I don't think that's how this works."

I release the amber button and press and hold the green one next to it. More grinding from above. I don't let go, and the front curtains bunch in front of me, each section stacking on top of the one before it, like an accordion. I keep holding.

A gust of wind rushes past me from behind, rippling through the marching curtains. The front set continues its shuffle to the sides of the room. The back set glows orange at me, as it's slowly revealed by its departing sibling. Rustling from behind me, and the outer blinds tuck themselves into the walls on each side of the room.

Hot breath blankets the back of my neck. Her warm hand against my ribs.

I push and hold the amber button. The second set of blinds begins to retract, wiping a mirror across the floor-to-ceiling window that makes up the side of the room.

My sister says the magic words, and the orange and the mirror dissolve. She lets go of my side, and streaks two fingers across my back, then holds out her hand in the dim light.

I take her offer, and she pulls me down onto a pile of blankets, pushed against the side of the bed in a makeshift sofa. She's layered it upside down, so we sit on the sheets, with the comforter underneath, against the carpet. I don't notice her clothes either. They must be hiding with mine.

We cuddle, shoulder to shoulder, knees up, with our backs to the bed, facing the view across the river. Lights from the east side of the city shimmer in the water, half a skyscraper below. The freeway overpass splits around an onramp above the far bank. One side burns red, and the other white. Past the ramps, and the lights, next to the science museum, a submarine lurks in the water.

Five knives scrape the inside of my leg. She grabs hold of me, and starts working. I push my arm between my sister's back and the bed, and cup my hand over her bare shoulder.

I let her work.

She keeps at it for a while, but I'm still mostly soft. My sister groans, and lets go.

She leans forward, and gathers her hair, like she's going to put it in a ponytail. But instead of tying it together, she twists it around several times, and taps the back of my hand with her finger.

I turn my hand over. She pulls my fingers open, and lays her hair in my palm. I grasp the bundle, holding it tight. The last remnants of the shower trickle down my wrist.

My sister ragdolls herself against my side, her face tethered on a wet silken rope.

It takes me a moment to realize.

My free hand feels her knee, then between her legs. She's not as wet as she has been, but it's enough. My sister squirms onto my fingers, more than I push them inside her. I grip her with the middle two, and pull her hair for support with my other hand. I'm playing her like an accordion. Like the blinds.

I hook her inside, and slide out her wetness, spreading it around in flat circles. When it stars to lose its slip, I go back in for more.

Then I pull her hair straight down, around the other side of her shoulder. My sister's face twists up toward mine. Her gaze tilts back to meet me, but her jaw stays low, making her look shocked. The lights from across the river glimmer in her eyes.

I pull her hair down harder.

A whimper escapes her mouth, but she doesn't move, or flex, or do anything.

So I pull and rub harder.

And harder.

My sister takes it. She's in both pain and pleasure, but I'm the uncomfortable one.

She'll let me do anything I want, but I let go, and pull my fingers out.

She pinches her chin down, and sucks in a breath. Then another breath. She's more the color of the brake lights than the headlights from our view.

My sister pushes the bundle of hair against my hand, and stares at me.

I twist the black rope, then wrap it around the back of my hand. My other fingers slip inside, and rub, as they had been.

I pull her hair, slowly at first. I'm worried I've already hurt her.

Her neck arcs back, and her head touches the bed, as I work back up to where I was.

She stares at me the whole time, lights in her eyes.

There are tears in them now.

Then I pull harder.

And she screams our mother's name.

~~~~~~

CHAPTER 26

There's no phone charger anywhere in my shitty cubicle. I never kept one there, and neither did the last asshole who occupied this shoulder-high box of frayed blue upholstery.

I almost asked this rope-haired, lanky pale guy on the MAX to borrow his power bank. Three phones dangled off his battery in a jumble of cables, and one of them looked as old as mine, so it might have worked. But he was actively using one of the phones to host a heated argument with his girlfriend, or whoever, on speakerphone. She said something about a change of plans, and he tore into her, brandishing the bullhorn he'd had on the seat next to him. I decided not to bother him.

"I'm going to have to do this fast." I text Jessica. "No charger, and no time."

My message gets pushed up a line. "They dropped me off. I'm walking to the station now." My sister's text counts down from sixty seconds.

Then I text Garrett. "Café?"

"I'm there now, doing some work."

And then I'm outside my cubicle doing my best impression of an Olympic speed walker.

The sun blinks through the windows behind the crisscrossing steel beams, as I leave cube city. The first archway welcomes me between its two rows of elevators, and I take extra careful note of the silver globe hanging from the ceiling on the far side. No carts or beeping, and I coast around the corner into Building One. A quick left turn, and I'm in line at the café, scanning the room for Garrett. I spot him at the far end, hanging sideways off a stool at the wall bar, his nose pushed into a black laptop, and a paper cup of coffee steaming up his glasses.

I wade through the sea of people waiting for coffee and scones, then I stand in front of Garrett's half lean on the stool. He's sort of one leg on, and one leg off. Computer code scrolls up, in the reflection in his glasses.

"Hey, man," I say.

He jerks his head up, and studies my face for a moment. "Oh, hey. Sorry, lots going on here. I had to get away from my desk."

"Do you have a charger that works with this?" I hold out my decrepit phone.

Garrett glances at my hand, and laughs. "No, sorry. I purged all my legacy cables a while back."

"You're actually working down here?"

"Yeah, it's noisy, but people keep coming by my cube. I can't get this shit done when they're bugging me every five minutes for updates."

"I was going to buy you coffee." I lean closer and glance at his screen. Some kind of a spreadsheet, but within each cell lies a block of code. I can't begin to decipher what I see.

"I've been drinking it non-stop since I left the beach the other morning."

"Same project?"

"Yeah, big fire drill." Garrett talks to me, but keeps his face buried in his laptop. "What did you want to talk about?"

"If I give the cops my phone, they'll be able to unlock it and see everything on it, right?"

Garrett puts his coffee down, and looks at me. "Yes. Almost certainly. If you've got some really state of the art stuff, they might have to work for it, but you should assume they'll get into it."

"What about the blue dot texts?"

"Those are only as secure as both ends. If they have access to either side, they can see them."

"But," I say, "in theory. If both sides are safe. They won't see anything. Like, if it's all deleted, or the vanishing texts."

Garrett smiles. "Then there's nothing to see."

"Aren't you going to ask what's going on?"

"Nope, I know better." He turns back to his screen.

"One more question," I say.

"Shoot."

"Contractor badges. What do they look like?"

"They've got the red stripe, instead of yellow, like ours." He holds out his badge, yellow stripe running down the front of the side, like someone had rubbed a thick highlighter over the card inside the laminate. I steady the badge dangling around my neck, and it glows with the same yellow.

"You said there's also an indicator for the contracting company somewhere."

"There's always a label in small print, usually at the bottom." Garrett takes a big pull of his coffee cup. His eyes don't leave the screen. "It's got the name of the agency, and even a logo, if it's a bigger one. Has to be there, for accountability reasons."

"Thanks a million, man."

"No problem."

"I'll owe you that coffee."

Building One perishes behind me, as I work back to the main intersection. Tan colored cubicles breeze past my right side, and my phone buzzes. I pull it out, expecting my sister's name.

"Are you around?" -- Dad

I stop at the edge of a row of cubes. Water trickles into a tiny paper cup to my side, as a woman in a yellow and white polka dot dress stands in front of a water dispenser with "CORVIS" printed across the upside down blue five-gallon bottle. The refrigeration part of the unit buzzes to refresh what she takes out.

"Yeah, but I'm at work." I type out. I stare at the unsent text for a moment, then I remember my battery problem. "Did you still want to meet?"

"Yes, can you meet me downtown at the plaza right now?"

I shake my head, and the woman refilling her water looks at me. "I'll catch the MAX as soon as I can."

My march returns me to the intersection where I assaulted the forklift, and I take a hard right into the manufacturing complex. Machinery beeps in stereo, and somehow also from above me. I'd prefer to run, but I'm not looking for another accident. Something gives a raspier beep from nearby, and I turn to discover a man holding his badge against a black scanning node next to a door handle. A distinctive red stripe streaks across the front of the badge, where mine is yellow.

The machinery fades behind me, as I reach Building Four. I duck into the studio where I got my badge, and the same technician with the very thick glasses reclines behind his double decker arc of computer monitors. A square white takeout box with red Chinese characters sits next to his keyboard. Two chopsticks poke out the top of his lunch. The man holds his face mere inches from some kind of a form displayed in a web browser.

I hail, "Excuse me."

"Yeah." The man doesn't move his head.