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Evan lay there for a time with his head bowed, the sun beating down on his shoulders.
19
Charlie Foxtrot
Evan stood inside his dry shower, one hand holding a spherical ice cube, the other hovering over the hot-water lever. A respectful hesitation before he broke the seal and crossed the threshold into his other life.
It struck him that perhaps the delay wasn’t motivated by respect but by fear of reentry.
Before the thought could find purchase, he gripped the lever. Embedded digital sensors read his palm print. An electronic hum indicated the green light, and then came a suctioned pop as the hidden door revealed itself, its camouflaged edges coming clear as a rectangular section of patterned tile yawned open.
He stepped through into the Vault.
A hidden room, concrete and dank, one swath of the ceiling an inverse mirror of the public stairs above leading to the roof. Server racks, munitions lockers, a sheet-metal desk crowded with computer hardware. Three of the walls wore a skin of paper-thin OLED screens that glowed to life when Evan sank into his chairand nudged the mouse. He brought his attention to Vera III, his pinecone-shaped aloe vera companion who rested pertly in a bowl filled with rainbow-colored glass pebbles selected by Joey. He was still adjusting to the disorderly palette, a disruption from the usual soothing cobalt blue he preferred. The garishness made his teeth hurt.
He set the ice cube in the clutch of Vera III’s fleshy serrated leaves to water her.
She seemed irritable from the lack of attention.
“Got hung up,” he told her.
Unimpressed, she shunned him, moodily absorbing carbon dioxide.
He brought up an encrypted videotelephony app, braced himself, and rang Joey.
He was more reliant on her hacking skills than he liked to admit.
Plus, maybe he wanted to see her face.
Joey tapped to answer, and all he saw was a ceiling fan. “X! Hang on, hang on. I have Cheeto fingers.”
Some fumbling noises off-camera. He knew the drill, how she scraped the orange fuzz off her prints with her lower incisors. And then didn’t wash her hands. And then touched things.
Suddenly her face loomed large, giving him a vantage up her nostrils before the screen rotated vertiginously and found a perch.
She was in a different hotel room, sitting at a circular Formica table amid the wreckage of her lunch order. Her fitted T-shirt readSTRONG WOMEN INTIMIDATE BOYS … AND EXCITE MEN. She’d ripped the sleeves off to show her toned arms. Her fingers still bore hues of orange, and she had a streak of mustard on her lip. Dog the dog hovered behind her with a scavenger’s impatience, snout visible at her elbow, nostrils quivering.
She tossed a Cheeto over her shoulder, and he vanished. The half sandwich in her grip sagged precariously, leaking turkey and lettuce. She nibbled at the overflow, rotated her overladen fist, bit off a chunk of bread, then found some mustard on the heel of her hand. She chewed, cheeks squirrel-pouched.
Wearily, Evan said, “Josephine.”
“What?” She spoke through a jumble of half-masticated food.“I’m having sandwich-ratio problems. Ya know, where the fixings get outta whack and you can’t get all the good stuff into the same bite. Don’t youhatethat?”
Evan let out a breath.
She rotated her hand, licked a bit more mustard off her index finger. “What? Doesn’t that happen to you?”
“Never,” Evan said. “I never have that problem.”
Munching, she managed to insert a Cheeto into the mix. “Well, it all goes to the same place.”
“True,” Evan said. “But some processes are more inelegant than others.”
“Well,excuuuuze-moi, Miss Manners. Didn’t realize that the garrotter of child traffickers whose bladders release as you sever their life thread would be off-put by the inelegant consumption of a club sandwich.”
“The bowels.”
“Huh?”
