In her mind, she could see him clearly. The big puppy-dog eyes stared at her. She saw his muscles flex under that too-small T-shirt. She wanted to go back over and talk to him some more, see him again, but that was silly.
In the end, she climbed out of the bath, toweled off, and went to bed. She slept fitfully. She was no longer used to a regular bed, with its too squishy springs. But mostly she kept dreaming of things too long repressed.
She woke to a knocking at the door. She climbed hurriedly out of bed and began pulling her clothes on. She heard Lexa answer the door.
“Thanks for the wakeup,” Lexa was saying to Luke’s retreating back as Amy opened her door.
Lexa turned and held up a small jar of oatmeal and a half-full egg basket. “Luke brought us breakfast.”
Amy laughed. “That’s Luke’s idea of breakfast, all right.”
“Oh well,” Lexa concluded. “It was a nice gesture, and I can use some of the canned veggies in the cupboard to make omelets while you shower.”
“I bathed last night,” Amy said. “I’ll cook the omelets while you bathe.”
“Thanks.”
A half an hour later, they were outside on the front yard with the others. Most of the men were bleary eyed. Amy wondered if some of them had gotten any sleep at all.
“Good morning!” Lexa shouted. Mark and Patrick both winced.
“Did you have fun last night?” she continued in the same loud voice, smiling wickedly at Amy, who suppressed a giggle.
“Knock it off, Lexa,” Lorn told her.
“You’re no fun,” she said, but quieter.
“I’ve seen you there,” he replied.
“Not every stinking chance she got, though,” Amy muttered.
Jake and James Armstrong were the last to arrive. They all loaded themselves onto the bus, and James talked while Jake drove. “All right,” he said. “We have tentative assignments drawn up.” He consulted a clipboard. “Amy will be with me and Jake in the auto salvage.” Amy cheered mentally. “Lexa and Spider, you two will join the electronics shop. They have plenty of work for you there.” Lexa nodded. Amy felt torn momentarily. She and Lexa had worked together for weeks now. “The men will be going with the building salvage crew. It’s pretty much brute labor, so you should be able to handle it all right.” The men groaned.
Amy, Jake, and James piled into an old pickup truck and headed to the salvage yard.
“It’s about two miles away,” James explained as he drove. “As more and more people turned to electric, we just didn’t have the call for those parts. We had to make room around here, so they went.”
Jake pulled a small case out of the glove compartment. It was full of more of the round shiny discs.
“What, a DVD in here?” Amy asked.
“No silly,” he replied. “CDs.”
She gave him a blank stare.
“Same thing, only music.” He put one into the dash of the car.
“Not too loud,” James warned.
“Oh, Dad.” The music blared to life. It was nothing like anything Amy had heard before. If Jake hadn’t told her already, she would have been hard pressed to call it music. It was entirely unlike the music they played at the ranch. It had a driving beat, like a lot of the music the Greenbowes played, but more mechanical and jarring. The high-pitched female voice sang so fast that Amy couldn’t make out the words. Nevertheless, she was sure from the beat alone that Minister Posch wouldn’t approve.
“Don’t worry,” James shouted over the music, sarcasm in his voice, “it gets much worse.”
“Dad had a crush on her when he was young,” Jake told her.
“I wasn’t the only one,” James said. “She was very popular. It’s hard to imagine now . . . you guys grew up never knowing MTV or superstars or any of that.” He shook his head.
“Dad’s always talking like that,” Jake informed her. “Don’t worry; he’s just old.”
The salvage yard was a vast wasteland of dead and dying cars. Amy’s presence quickly proved an incredible benefit. The ranch had just over a half dozen vehicles. Amy had seen them every day of her life. While the others had to read the make and model on each car, she had only to look around for familiar cars.
“There,” she said, and they pulled up alongside a car.
As they got out, James pulled a toolbox out of the back of the pickup, and Jake, a boom box. He put in a different CD, one that was, if possible, more jarring and pounding. He jumped up and down, his hair flying as he shook his head wildly. He held out his hands and mimicked playing a guitar.
James shook his head. “I told you, it gets worse.”
That music is awful
, Amy thought,
but I’ll never tell him that.
She watched his arms and chest flex to the beat. It was hypnotic.
Those thoughts were soon buried under grease and sweat. The sun beat mercilessly on them. James was only slightly less merciless. A strong, hard-working man, James simply didn’t understand little things like taking breaks or stopping for lunch.
By the time they went back to base, it was midafternoon. Amy felt filthy. Jake walked her home and asked her over for the evening. “I have way more music and stuff,” he said. “I’ll stop at the store and get a few beers.”
“More mellow music, maybe?” Amy asked with a hopeful smile. The thought of spending the whole evening with that jarring stuff was too much. She had a headache as it was.
“Sure,” he replied with a mystifying twinkle in his eye.
“Boy, you are filthy,” Lexa greeted her as she came in the door.
“Thanks,” Amy responded dryly. “Good to see you too.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. I am just beat.”
“How bad was it?”
“As bad as I look.”
“Ugh!”
“Yeah, but on the upside, all we have left is to strip an old refrigerator tanker for a better compressor unit. Won’t take long. But right now, I need a bath.”
“Want some help?” Lexa asked. “Or are you happy to be some place where people still bathe alone?”
Amy was unsure how to answer at first, but feeling her hair clinched it. “I’ll never get this grease out by myself,” she moaned.
“Daisy can always get it out of my hair,” Lexa answered. “I’ll just have to remember what she does.”
While sitting in the tub as Lexa scrubbed her hair, Amy said, “Oh by the way, Jake invited us over to listen to music tonight. Even said he’d get a few beers. What do you say?”
After a short hesitation, Lexa said, “Sure.” She didn’t sound thrilled. “I thought you didn’t like to drink.”
“Once in a while is okay.”
When they arrived at Jake’s house a little later, he didn’t seem any more thrilled about Lexa’s presence than she was about being there, but he accepted it in his usual good-natured way.
Upstairs was his bedroom, if one could call it that. His mother had died while he was still young, and James had perhaps been a bit too permissive in his fathering. At any rate, some time in his early teens, Jake had systematically removed every non-load-bearing wall in the second floor, making the whole thing his room.
One corner was a dance floor. Jake had removed the carpet and sanded the wooden floor smooth. Over this hung a glowing ball. “A disco light,” he beamed, pointing at it.
“A disco,” Lexa explained, “was a sort of dance club. And dance clubs, as near as I can tell, were the only redeeming feature of pre-collapse society.”
Jake flicked a switch and a set of colored lights came on. The ball swung, and a strobe light started up. The effect was dizzying. “Lexa loves to dance,” Jake said. “She helped me build this.”
He started for the stereo system, but Lexa raced after him. “I pick,” she called.
Amy was grateful for the move.
Jake’s idea of music makes my head spin.
Unfortunately, Lexa’s taste was, if anything, worse. She liked something called techno—all electronic sounds and driving beat.
Lexa closed her eyes and began moving to the beat. It was, Amy decided, like a cross between the seductive “Middle Eastern” dance that Daisy had shown her and someone having an epileptic fit. Even so, it had its own strange appeal.
“I could never dance like that,” she muttered enviously.
“Sure. It’s easy,” Jake said.
“Oh right.”
“Just watch.” He jumped onto the dance floor and began to shake wildly in a very poor imitation of Lexa. Amy laughed so hard she nearly fell over. He blushed and Amy felt sorry him, but she couldn’t help laughing all the more.
“I see you have wowed her with your awesome dance moves,” Lexa teased. Jake laughed sheepishly.
Lexa took Amy by the hand. “Come on, it’s easy. If you are not a doofus, that is,” she added, glancing at Jake.
“He was cute,” Amy protested, which made Jake look a lot happier about being the butt of the joke.
“Just close your eyes for a moment,” Lexa said, ignoring the last comment, “and feel the beat. Once you got the rhythm, the rest is easy.”
Is not,
she thought to herself as she tried in vain to follow Lexa’s graceful movements. They danced for a long while.
“Who’s up for a beer?” Jake asked as he staggered off the dance floor.
“Me,” Lexa and Amy answered together.
Amy swayed as she left the floor.
“You okay?” Lexa asked.
“Those lights and that music,” Amy answered. “I haven’t even opened a beer and I feel half drunk.”
“I know, isn’t it great?” Lexa said.
Jake opened three bottles and set them on a ledge by the dance floor. Then he went to the stereo again.
“Amy said she wanted something a bit mellower,” he said as he selected another CD.
Lexa looked at her. “We listened to music all day,” Amy explained. “And it was starting to give me a headache.”
“I think he has a different idea all together,” Lexa replied, nodding at Jake, who came across the dancefloor as the slow song started, arms outstretched toward Amy.
“I’m not a good dancer,” she warned him.
He ignored her comment and drew her in close. Closer than any dance that was allowed at the ranch. Then it hit her.
He invited me, not Lexa and me. On top of that, I’d asked for mellow music and . . . oh god, what does he think?
Well, it was pretty obvious, now that she thought of it. Did she want him? Truthfully, yes, but it wasn’t that simple. It might be down here, or for the men, but not for her.
“Ouch,” he said.
“Sorry, I told you I am not very good. Hey! Ouch.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. In the background, Lexa laughed.
After several more ouches and god knows how many stumbles, Lexa broke them up.
“You two have four left feet,” she laughed. “Come here, big boy.” She took Jake around the waist and counted aloud while they danced. “Are you watching?” she asked Amy.
“Yes,” Amy replied, hoping the envy didn’t show in her voice.
“Good, then you can do it.” Lexa swung away from Jake and practically fell into Amy’s arms. She leaned in close and whispered into Amy’s ear, “One, two, three.”
After several awkward steps, she fell into the rhythm. “Good,” Lexa told her then broke away. “Now, you two,” Jake and Amy moved together. Lexa counted aloud again. They made a few halting steps before Jake tripped her up.
“I can see this is going to be a long night,” Lexa said, taking a drink from her beer. She pulled Jake in close again. “Just relax and listen to the music.”
The sky was dark as Lexa and Amy wove their way back to their apartment. This time, it was not the lights or the music that had her dizzy.
A figure crossed the parking lot ahead of them.
“Kurt!” Amy cried. “Kurt, how are you doing, old buddy?”
“You’re drunk,” he grumbled. “I thought you were too good for that sort of thing.”
“I am not drunk,” she declared boldly, patting Lexa on the chest. “Lexa is drunk. I am . . . I am . . . what was that word?”
“Plastered,” Lexa supplied.
“That’s it,” Amy agreed.
“Well, I am going to bed,” Kurt said.
“Want to come to ours?” Lexa asked. Kurt looked shocked.
“She’s just teasing,” Amy told him.
“Was not,” Lexa insisted.
Kurt left them there, arguing.
Amy woke to knocking the next morning. She rolled over and ran into Lexa. “Stop stepping on my toes, Jake,” Lexa mumbled. She rolled over and fell off the bed.
Amy drug herself to the door. Spider peered in at her. “Aikido in thirty minutes,” she said. “Big class here. You’ve got to come.”
Amy mumbled something about being there and shut the door. She stumbled back to wake Lexa and get ready.
The class was worth it, despite her aching head. They had practitioners of every rank, even several higher ranked than Spider. They were phenomenally good. Most were eager to work out with someone new and only once during the whole class did she work with Lexa.
While Lexa had her pinned to the ground, Amy told her, “If I ever tell you a beer once in a while is okay again, use this move on me.”
“Deal,” Lexa replied.
Between the early morning exercise and a good breakfast, she felt almost normal by the time they headed to work.
She saw Kurt and hurried over to apologize. “It’s okay,” he told her. “I wasn’t mad at you. It was kind of funny really.” He shook his head and moved on, still looking upset.
“What do you think is his problem?” she asked Lexa as he left.
“Well,” Lexa began delicately, “I have said these guys are barbaric. One of the things they share with your people is their sexual attitudes.”
“They don’t go for casual sex?”
“No, that’s one thing. They understand about open relationships and preventing inbreeding and all that. It is homosexuality in particular they object to.”
“And if Kurt didn’t know that . . .” Amy finished. “Oh my, that must have been nasty.”
“Yeah, that’s another one of the reasons Lorn doesn’t like it here. One of the many reasons, that is.”
At the shop, Jake looked a little green as well. As they drove out to the work site, his father joked, “What? No music?”
Jake groaned but didn’t answer. “Here let me,” James continued, reaching for the knob.
“Not if you value your life,” Jake replied, blocking the move with his hand.
By the time they were finished for the day, Jake had recovered his usual good humor and even suggested another round. Amy vetoed this firmly. They met Lexa and Spider as they walked toward their mutual homes.