Blue Hearts of Mars (4 page)

“You see what I’m seeing?” A voice said loudly from the entrance to the coffee bar.

“It looks like a machine is trying to coax one of our women into an unholy relationship. Or worse,” another voice answered.

I closed my eyes and shoved my palms into them in exasperation. It was Stig. How the crap he was always lurking around every corner, I have no idea. I mean, we ended things over three months ago. And it was him who ended them.

“What do you want?” I asked with an exasperated sigh so he’d know he was pissing me off. If he could just be civil, that’d be one thing. But he never is. He charges in wherever he pleases, being loud and rude.

“We just came in for a drink, Retta. Dancing with all those beautiful women got me hot,” he strode forward, walking in that arrogant way of his where he sways from side to side. His hair was done up in anime spikes, and he’d dyed half of it blue and the other half hot pink. He looked good. But, well, also like a total moron. How that’s possible, I don’t know. I think it just tells me he’s too vain for my taste. I’m glad we’re no longer together.

His friend followed him in and they closed in around Hemingway. Stig on one side and his dumb little friend on the other side. I thought his name was Peesley, but I wasn’t sure since they just recently started hanging out together.

I could almost feel Hemingway freeze up with the two of them positioned like sentries on either side of him. What did they think they were going to do? It was all extremely ridiculous. I’ve never been a great diplomat, though, and all I could think to do was stay calm and let things play out. That or throw hot coffee on both of them until they left. I’m sure my boss would have appreciated that.

“So how you two kids doing?” Stig asked, leaning real close to Hemingway, getting in his space.

“What do you want, Stig? A coffee? What? Come on, hurry up, the song’s almost over, there’ll be a rush,” I egged him on, hoping they’d clear out once they got a drink. “Peesley is it? What can I get you, Peesley?”

I mean, what sort of name is Peesley? He had black eyeliner around both eyes and one iris was white while the other was blue. He was really going for the freak-out look. And I had no clue why Stig had suddenly taken him as a friend.

“Yeah, I’ll take a triple shot latte with distilled water. On ice,” Stig said.

Still nothing from the incredibly wordless Peesley, so I began making Stig’s drink. As I made the drink, I started to wonder if Hemingway would leave or stay put. If he stayed, would Stig keep being aggressive? If he left, would Stig follow him? I suddenly had visions of Hemingway in an alley somewhere, totally beaten up and barely breathing as Stig and Peesley ran off, laughing, with enormous clubs and bats in both hands. The clubs and bats had ugly spikes on them and both Stig and Peesley were hulking monsters with more muscles than either of them could ever dream of having. It was more of a horror film than a vision.

“Hemingway,” I said, over the slight hum of the espresso machine, “I just remembered. I need you to come back to my apartment when I’m through with work. Uh, for that thing I told you about.” I emphasized
thing
and raised my eyebrows really high so he’d get the point that we never had that conversation, but please just go with it. I know. So creative and clever. That’s how quick I am under pressure. I come up with genius plans when I need to.

“Thing?” Hemingway repeated, taking a sip of his drink. There was something cool about his response, but I could tell the situation was stressing him out just a bit. His eyebrows had never fully relaxed, and I know because I had managed to memorize everything about his face in the few minutes he’d been in the bar with me.

“Yeah, you know. We—we were talking about it the other day. My Gate, it’s been um, malfunctioning and you said you wanted to help me with it. That yours did something similar, recently, right?” I finished Stig’s stupid drink and found myself wishing I had some poison to drizzle into it real quick. But I didn’t. My boss knew better than to stock poison when I was around.

I handed the drink to Stig and glanced at Peesley, who had started to chew on his knuckle like some kind of wild beast. Where had Stig dragged this kid from? The northern ice caves? I was beginning to wonder if he was the missing Martian link.

I watched Stig as he took a sip. His nearly-white eyebrows were drawn together as though he suspected something was up.

Hemingway had begun to nod like he finally understood. “Of course, yes. I can definitely come over today,” he said with a pleasant smile.

Hemingway lifted his mug to take a sip and without warning, Stig twisted toward him, his arm knocking into Hemingway, causing him spill his drink. His white T-shirt turned dark and clung to his stomach where the liquid soaked in. I shook my head, watching the whole thing take place. Rather than reacting, Hemingway smiled faintly, and rested his drink and hands on the counter.

At last, the song outside ended.

“Sorry guys, work’s about to get crazy for a few minutes. Enjoy!”

I heaved a sigh of relief and positioned myself where I could begin taking orders. My boss materialized from the back room and stood behind the espresso machine. He ran his fingers through his short black hair and groaned. I sincerely did not know what his problem was. He was only five years older than me but somehow exuded the air that he was a ninety-year-old curmudgeon. He hated everything about kids my age, and also managed to see the worse aspects of people older than him. There was no middle ground.

His redeeming characteristic, in my opinion, was that his surliness made me laugh. “Matt,” I said, stepping next to him, “Maybe you can find a reason to kick those two guys out,” I moved my eyebrows in the direction of Stig and his oddball friend.

Matt ran his hands over the steam levers and pretended to see some water spots or something. He loved to act like I never did anything. “What, your ex-boyfriend and his handsome, new boyfriend?”

I saw him glance at Hemingway. “No, not the one in the middle. I like him. He’s cool. It’s the one on the other side. The guy chewing on his knuckles like an ape? Yeah, him.”

Matt nodded. The crowds were flooding into the bar. “We’ll see.”

I managed to prevent an altercation before the next song began, somehow. Well, Stig left when that happened, so it wasn’t really my doing, but I take credit for it. Stig had caught a glimpse of a girl wearing next to nothing and dancing in the corner like she was a flower child. You know the girls I mean. They’re
au naturel
and no one can stand them because everything’s about peace and free love. “You’re harshin’ my vibe, man” they love to say. It’s like they wish they’d been born during the last revolution, when the Martian colonies rose up against Earth and won (we’re all friends again but a total sovereign planet that doesn’t take orders from anyone; don’t mess with Mars, that’s what we say). Girls like her love a good drum circle and some hallucinogenics and they wear no undergarments.

I watched Stig leave when she left, trailing after her, Peesley trailing after him, and muttered “good riddance” to all of them under my breath. I also felt enlightened. That’s obviously what Stig wanted all along. Not some chick like me who worked a lot and usually studied hard and didn’t jump into bed with him when he said he wanted some action. No free-love here.

Hemingway came back to the bar. He brought his empty mug with him. When the crowd had gotten too massive, he’d retreated to the cozy white armchair in the corner. I’d felt his eyes on me the whole time. It made me sweat a bit more as I worked, and by the end of the night, I became certain I smelled like a pile of dirty rags.

“So, uh, did you really need me to look at your Gate?” he asked as he handed me his mug. His blue eyes searched my face. I put the mug in the to-wash bin.

I laughed. “No, that was me trying to keep Stig from beating the life out of you if you left and he followed. He’s a total creep.”

“They were both sort of, well, Neanderthal,” he said, scratching the back of his neck and giving me an apologetic look.

“I know. And what’s with his friend? Total weirdo. He didn’t say a single word. Just chewed on his hand like he doesn’t understand how to be human.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I suddenly felt like a complete jerk and I froze, afraid I’d say something worse.

“He was weird,” Hemingway agreed. Neither of us acknowledged my mistake.

Well, I had to. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hemingway said. “I just wanted to see you again, for a minute. You’ve been busy, it looks like. Maybe I’ll go so you can work and I don’t distract you.”

What? Why was he saying this!

“Oh. Right. I thought you could walk me home. Or something. That sounds stupid, but I just mean, I don’t want you to leave,” I said, feeling like anything I could say was totally inadequate. “That’s probably asking you too much, though. To wait around for me.”

He sat down at the bar and I felt myself relax slightly.

“I can wait,” he said. He rested his hands on the bar and I saw his perfect fingernails again.

I’ve always been one of those idiots that loves hands. My attraction order goes like this: Eyes. Smile. Hands. Butt. Legs. Feet. Obviously I keep seeing Hemingway’s eyes, his smile, his hands. And every time it’s like a fresh experience and I feel smitten all over again. And I’m too proper to mention his butt, but I see it when he walks away and it’s nice. I look away quickly, though, in case anyone else is noticing me notice his backside.

In the end, he waited for me to finish my shift. At first he sat at the bar and we bantered a bit, then a new crowd came in and it got crazy. He moved to one of the window seats and I caught glimpses of him interacting with the Gate, surfing the Web and whatnot. When the last mob of customers shuffled out, I felt like I’d just wrestled a gorilla. My hair was everywhere. I knew I looked ragged because I felt ragged, and I smelled like a cross between a pile of coffee grounds and a dirty clothes hamper. As the time neared for us to close, Matt saw Hemingway waiting for me and said, “Get the hell out of here, I’ll close up,” and jabbed his thumb toward the door. He meant it to be sweet, I know, even though he sounded like a total jerk.

I tore my apron off, threw it in the dirty clothes bin and headed out with a grateful smile at Matt, which I quickly suppressed. Best not be too grateful. He gets irritated with that.

We left the mall behind and found ourselves in the canyons of the industrial section of New Helsinki where the geothermal vents breathed warm air up from the center of Mars and heated the dome. Above us, through the atmosphere of the dome and the slowly thickening atmosphere of Mars, the stars twinkled and Phobos glowed as it rose, arcing slowly toward the east. At some point, Hemingway took hold of my hand and I let him, my heart racing as we strolled casually around the vents, hearing the rush of air. Our faces were red from the heat.

“Is this the way to your apartment?” Hemingway asked. I could tell he knew that it wasn’t from the way he grinned.

“No, it’s back that way,” I said awkwardly. “I, uh, wanted to go for a walk. A long walk.”

“This is nice,” he said, looking around. It seemed like he was being sarcastic, but I wasn’t sure.

“I never come here, do you?”

“Does anyone?”

We both laughed and glanced around. It was sort of an industrial part of the city. The vents were big and loud, and the lights never went out. They lined the catwalks where I figured the workers frequently went to make adjustments. So it was kind of creepy. But there was also something beautiful about its mechanical nature and the cold glow of the lights.

“Let’s go back,” I said, getting chills when I noticed a hulking worker moving slowly along one of the upper catwalks. He wore a city-worker uniform and kept pausing to look down at us. There was something malevolent in his posture as he tilted his neck toward us. Or, well, I might have imagined that.

Soon we were back in the human-filled avenues of the city, cutting through the lower class section into the scientist borough where I lived. People were out walking to the shops and restaurants along the edge of the borough. Men and women glanced at their Links conducting conversations with faces staring back up at them. Some people had the new model of Link, with the hologram option and I stared, enviously at them. I laughed my jealousy off when Hemingway made a snide remark about living in the here and now.

We passed the windows of a really posh place and stopped to look in. Smartly dressed couples dined over candlelight and we laughed, pretending to have their conversations for them.

A woman at a nearby table wore an expensive hat with a large feather shooting out of it like an arrow. It looked ridiculous to me. She gestured animatedly at her plate with a fork. “Dawling,” I said, “this crab tastes like it was on the transport carrier for ten months.”

Inside, her well-dressed male companion responded. “My dear,” Hemingway said as though he were the man, “that isn’t crab, it’s a recycled shoe.” The man touched his leg under the table, adjusting his napkin or something. “Here, have a bite of
my
shoe. It will taste better because I’m rich,” Hemingway said.

The couple turned suddenly, noticing us objectifying them, and glared. We jumped away in unison and began running, laughing, checking over our shoulders to make sure the host didn’t pop out and try to chase us down. We kept running until we’d put several cross-streets behind us. Finally, we fell into a little alcove between two apartment blocks, and we bent over, gasping, catching our breath, an occasional giggle sneaking out here and there. Hemingway leaned against the smooth, concave wall at the back of the alcove. I straightened—it took me a while to catch my breath and I rested my hands on my knees as I did—and went to lean against the wall beside him.