Lust (8 page)

“The ones David Letterman throws at the audience,” Jake added.

“I guess. Anyway, so there were, like, forty-nine cards, and then these three bright white ones with the suits and numbers written on them, so whenever you
tried to play anything, it was so obvious that the other person had a nine of clubs or whatever. It just didn't work.” Gaia gave a quiet laugh. “I guess it's not really funny, it's just—it was funny that we thought it would work in the first place.”

“It
is
kind of funny,” Jake said. “Who did that, your dad?”

“Oh, no. It was . . . someone else.” Gaia studied her cards.

“I mean, duh.”

“What?”

“Obviously it was your mom.”

Gaia's forehead wrinkled slightly, as if a headache were whooshing through it, then smoothed as if nothing had happened.

“Yeah. My dad was too organized and anal to come up with a goofy plan like that.”

“You've never talked about her. Not to me, anyway.”

Gaia shrugged.

“I'll tell you about mine.”

“You don't have to.”

“Okay.”

Jake went silent again. Gaia reorganized the cards yet again, this time putting the two black suits together before moving on to the red. She marveled at how interesting a pack of cards could become when you needed a distraction. Something to keep you from blurting out your feelings in some kind
of ill-advised self-revelatory soul-vomit. She forced herself to put the cards down and leaned back in her seat, putting her sneakers up on Jake's side of the compartment.

Cha-chug. Cha-chug. Cha-chug.

“I don't remember her as well as I'm supposed to,” she mumbled. “I mean, I knew her until I was twelve. It's not like she—it's not like I lost her when I was a baby.” It was a good lie. It kept Gaia from having to reopen the wounds, and it was believable enough. Jake couldn't possibly know about Gaia's sterling memory.

“The memories fade a little,” Jake agreed, without pressing further. “It's disappointing.”

Cha-chug. Cha-chug. Cha-chug.

“Did you, uh . . . I mean, do you ever think about stuff you said? To her? Your mom?” asked Gaia.

“You mean bad stuff? Like when I acted like a baby?” Jake asked.

“Well, you
were
a baby. But yeah.”

“Um, I guess I do. But my dad sent me to a therapist for a while, right after it happened. And the therapist kept telling me that I was just acting like a normal kid, and that my mom knew I didn't really think she was a giant mean poo-head.”

Gaia gave a snorting laugh. “Well, you got your money's worth out of that therapist.”

“I know.” Jake laughed, too. “But I gave myself a really hard time, anyway. I think I replayed every bratty
moment I ever had with her, after she was gone. I was sure that I had made her life absolute hell.”

“Huh.”

The cards became fascinating again. This time, Gaia started poking them into the space between the glass window and the wall so that they stood plastered against the scenery outside. Then she studied the king, queen, and jack of diamonds as they stood there, gazing calmly back at her like a little nuclear family.

“Yeah,” she said.

“What?”

“I can see how you'd do that.”

Cha-chug. Cha-chug. Cha-chug.

“Did you do that?” Jake hazarded.

Gaia looked up at him, then snatched the cards out of the window and put them back into the deck.

“Forget I asked,” he said.

“Sorry.” Gaia gave an apologetic shrug. “It's not something I ever talk about. But the last conversation we had was a fight.”

“You and your mom?”

“Yeah. I mean, I was twelve. Have you ever met a twelve-year-old? They're horrible.”

“I'm sure you weren't—”

“Oh, please.”

Jake laughed. “Well, I guess judging from the Gaia I know now, you might have been a tiny bit difficult.”

“I was just annoyed all the time. Pissed off around
the clock. My body was doing all these wacky things, and my training was going horribly.”

“I think that's normal.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Gaia was silent as she remembered the rest of it. The whole idea of becoming a woman had freaked her out. She'd thought her boobs looked like fat blobs, and her center of gravity had been totally off. And her hips—she couldn't shop in the boy's department anymore. Her mom had seemed so comfortable in her skin, so beautiful and perfect; Gaia had seen herself as a ridiculous imitation. But she hadn't been able to find the words to explain how she felt, so she'd just acted like a bratty bitch.

The morning her mother died, Gaia had thrown a fit over something. God, she couldn't remember what. Breakfast, maybe? She'd wanted coffee and her mom had insisted on something more substantial. That's what moms do. And Gaia had acted like she was being asked to eat worms. She'd flown into a rage and left the house to go for a run. Loki had pulled the trigger just as Gaia had stepped back into the house. Her mom was dead before Gaia ever had a chance to apologize to her.

Gaia had never told anyone about that fight with her mother. In fact, even when she thought back to that day, she rarely touched on that episode. She felt too ashamed. What had she been so angry about? Why hadn't she—?

“You know, if you buy a pack of cards in Italy,
there's no queen,” Jake said, taking the pile of cards from the seat next to Gaia and handing it to her. She took it gratefully and started shuffling them back into random order.

“No kidding,” she said.

“Yeah, these are American cards. Or British.”

“Why would you know that?”

Jake shrugged. “I have no idea. It's just a random fact stuck in my head.”

Gaia envied Jake's state of mind. He seemed so relaxed and carefree. Why did she have to be so somber? Why was she forever wreathed in deep thought and regret? It wasn't as if Jake hadn't had tragedy in his life. And yet here he was, fully capable of levity. Why
was
she thinking of this now? Because she was missing her dad? Because she was bored and had too much time on her hands? Or was it because Jake made her feel comfortable enough for old feelings to bubble to the surface?

Ugh. If that were the case, Gaia was in big trouble. Now was
not
the time to start getting comfortable with Jake. She was glad when the feeling started to dissipate and she could think about something else.

“I hope you don't regret coming along,” Gaia said to Jake.

“I don't,” he said. “This is way more exciting than going to school. Besides, how could I miss all of this?” He waved his hand, taking in the dingy compartment, the musty smell, and the grimy window.

“I didn't mean for you to get sucked into my screwed-up world.”

“I'm not sucked in. I'm fine.”

“Well, I'm not.” Gaia returned to studying the scene outside her windows, trees whipping by too quickly to discern one from the next, while mountains sat serenely in the distance. “After this, I want to chill out. For a long time.”

“What's a long time?” Jake asked, arching an eyebrow. “You wouldn't last a weekend without a crisis to distract you.”

“Try me. Try me and see how happy I'd be.”

They rode in silence again. Friendship settled over them like a blanket, making the silence relaxing and not awkward. When Oliver slipped back into the compartment, they both just looked up at him, unsurprised.

“I got some sandwiches,” he said apologetically. “I'm not sure what's in them, exactly.”

Gaia bit into one and chewed thoughtfully. “I'm not going to think about it too hard,” she said.

“Good move.”

“Can't I just wait for the rations?” Jake said.

“No. Here, eat. Jake, we're going to be arriving at Obestoblak in about two hours,” Oliver said. “Gaia and I will travel from there to the prison on snowmobiles.”

“Oh, awesome,” Gaia cheered.

“I want you to stay in town and wait for us,” Oliver went on. “There's no reason for you to come along. You
haven't been trained for this kind of mission, and if you want to stay behind and just keep things coordinated there, it would be a great help.”

“That's a load of bull,” Jake said, realizing a little too late that he needed to show Oliver the proper respect. “And I mean that with all due respect, sir. You don't need to make up phony excuses about needing things coordinated. Just level with me.”

“Jake!” Gaia shot him an infuriated glare.

“I'm serious. Oliver, if you think I'm going to be a liability, that's one thing. I don't want to drag you down. But I think I can do this, and there's no way I'm going to sit around cooling my jets in a hotel while you guys go up to the prison. I want to come along.”

“I don't know if you understand what this entails.”

“I understand enough. I want to come along.” He held Oliver's gaze steadily.

Finally the older man shrugged and sat down. “Fine. Then we'll spend the next few hours going over the plan. But you'd better not crack under pressure.”

“You worry about yourself,” Jake said, with that swaggering self-assurance that was beginning to grow on Gaia. Jake was cocky, but at least there was something there to back it up. Which made all the difference in the world.

“I've spoken to some people I used to know in the black market,” Oliver told them. “They've put some snowmobiles aside for me, in a shack near the
inn where I'm going to take some rooms. . . .”

Gaia listened to the plan as it unfolded. The relaxing motion of the train stopped having its soothing effect. The sound of the wheels slowly turned from a rhythmic lullaby to an energizing drumbeat. They were getting closer to where she needed to be. The battle was about to begin, and like an animal with its hackles up, a domesticated dog whose instincts kick in with a primal urgency, she felt her energy start to gather and focus for the task ahead.

She was ready.

I
know I'm sitting still, because my legs aren't moving. My arms are at my sides and my butt is on a seat. But I'm also hurtling forward at a hundred and twenty miles an hour on this train.

My dad told me once that the worst part about his work was the waiting. The exciting stuff, he said, comes in bursts. The rest of the time you're sitting around praying for your investigation to get to the next level or for your informant to crack and give you something juicy. If you don't have patience, you'll never get anywhere, he told me.

Is that why I'm opening up like this? Are my feelings rising to the surface because time is stretching out before me? Do cops on stakeouts have major memories and revelations dogging them in the wee hours of the morning?

I don't know. But it's kind of nice to actually feel my feelings, even just a little. It's cool that Jake doesn't ask for
more. If he did, I'd probably just clam up.

It's weird, the way my feelings are just kind of unfolding of their own accord. Like a complicated reverse origami.

The question is, can I fold them back up when the action hits? We're getting closer and closer to my father, and when the time comes, I want to be totally focused. I'm finally going to get him back, and I don't want to screw things up with stray emotions that I don't know what to do with.

How fast is this train going? I wish it would go faster. Less time on my hands and more action—that's the cure.

Only, these feelings . . . they actually feel kind of good. Everything in moderation, I guess.

Together they used their Oliver-issued night-vision goggles to find their way through the snow.

Haphazard Angles

THE INN WAS A RAMSHACKLE STONE
building that sat dejectedly on the outskirts of what Gaia supposed had once passed for a town. Behind it, a weird annex made of prefabricated corrugated sheet metal walls stuck out from one side, making it look as though an alien ship had landed in the wrong place and then abandoned the wreckage in search of a prettier landing spot.

“Definitely not staying here,” Jake muttered.

“Look at the mountains, though,” Gaia pointed out. In the distance, a range of rocky peaks rose up into clouds so thick, they looked like smoke; they seemed to go on forever. “How close are we?”

“Farther than you think,” Oliver said. “But close enough to get there if we can get our hands on the snowmobiles. Come on, let's go see if we can make contact.”

They went inside. It seemed like the owners of the inn were trying to imitate an American bar they had seen on a postcard. A Budweiser sign was mounted behind the bar, but it didn't light up—it just sat there, dust covered, like an ancient artifact. The room was dim and smelled like stale smoke and old beer. Metal folding chairs sat at haphazard angles; the bar itself had wooden paneling and a plastic top. It was the most depressing place Gaia had ever seen.

Oliver began speaking in a low voice to the man behind the bar, who eyed him suspiciously. He kept shaking his head. Gaia tried to listen in, but they weren't speaking Russian; it was some kind of dialect. Finally she saw some money exchange hands, and Oliver led them back out into the light of the outside world.

“We have to meet a guy here later,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Gaia asked.

“I'm sure that's what this guy told me. Am I sure that's what we're going to do? No,” he said. He led them around to the prefabricated annex.

“This is their idea of expanding the property,” he explained. “Nobody stays here but traveling tradesmen, so there's no need to impress the tourists. These are guest rooms. This whole area's been poor for a thousand years. There's nothing you can't get for a few dollars, but they're also used to getting as much as they can for the money. They'd rather kill us and take all our money than trade with us and just get some of it.”