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SEVEN
GABRIEL
After hours of frustratingly unfruitful work in the lab, I shifted gears and followed an avenue of research I had never personally tried before—watching reality television. I analyzed every clip of Layana Hartley fromWhat the What?I could find, and acquired enough data to know everything I needed to know about her, including the situation I was walking into.
Or at least, I thought I did as I walked down Papaya Street toward the address I’d found online for her at six-thirty that evening. But then I noticed the bars on the windows, the intense stares cast in my direction, and most strangely—the maniacal laughter.
I followed the sound of laughter around the apartment building where Layana supposedly lived.
And then I saw her sitting on a second-story fire escape looking like a marshmallow in a puffy white coat. She wore her long hair pulled up in a ponytail, blue ends hanging over her shoulder. It was then I realized that watching videos of her did nothing to prepare me for the gut reaction I felt to seeing her in person. My chest clenched. She was a splash of orange juice on freshly brushed teeth.
She was doing something with her hands…and laughing like a hyena with a grudge.
Perhaps Layana had an unhinged twin, and this twin would direct me to the perfectly sane reality television star I was searching for. Unfortunately, the thought was utterly ridiculous. A lump formed in my throat. For the first time since settling on this course of action, my conviction wavered.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I said, “Layana Hartley?”
She snapped her attention to me. Her eyes appeared sunken in dark circles, giving her balanced face a haunted quality. Not an ounce of the enthusiastic woman from television remained in the feral beast before me.
“Running Man?” she asked. “Itisyou. Your yellow and gray spandex get-up makes you look like an aging bumblebee.”
Why insult the running gear I wasn’t currently wearing? I gritted my teeth. “Bees don’t lose color with age. Only theAndrena cineraria, or Danubian miners, have gray coloring instead of black.”
She just blinked at me. “What do you want, Bee Man?”
Apparently I’d been demoted from Running Man to Bee Man.
“Did I not hit you hard enough the last time?” she asked. “Need your nose broken instead of bruised?”
She wasn’t orange juice on a minty tongue. She was lemon squeezed into an open wound. And she hadn’t only bruised my nose. She’d made it bleed as well.
“I come with a proposal,” I said.
She snorted. “You want tomarryme? I swear, nothing good comes from being on TV. First it was the unsolicited dick pics, now this?”
Her words struck like a slap. “I would never send photographs?—”
“Notyourdick. Other dicks.”
Where was this coming from? “I would never send you photographs of other men’s genitalia, either.”
“Good to know. For the record, I meant other men sent me pictures. While you upped the creep factor andfollowed me home.”
What sort of alternate reality was this woman living in? “I didn’t follow you. I acquired your address from the internet so I could speak with you, and I didnotintend a marriage proposal.”
“Cool story, bro. I’m busy. You should go.”
My jaw clenched harder, stabbing a sharp pain through my temples. Perhaps I should have waited to contact her at her place of business instead of at her home.
I was here because I was desperate. But it was clearly a mistake to come, and it was a greater mistake to believe there was even a chance that she could be the answer to my problems.
She was impossible. There was no way this was going to work. How could I have believed such a horrible, hostile person could possibly help me in any way?
She shot up to her feet and lifted a wrench victoriously in her fist. A rope ladder unfurled from the ledge, the end reaching the ground.
The temporary ladder wasn’t to code. It wasn’t adequate.
“A permanent ladder is legally required on buildings such as this,” I said. “For safety.”
