Catch the Lightning Page 3

  Nug laughed, then traced his finger down my neck. “You don’t need brains.” His leaned his head down as if he were going to kiss me. “You’re so damn pretty.”

  I tried to duck under his arm, but he pushed me against the wall. “You know what you look like?” he said. “Those models in that clothes catalog I get.”

  The thought of Nug ordering a clothes catalog would have been funny in a different situation. “You mean like the Sears catalog?”

  “Sears?” He laughed. “No. From that place in Hollywood, I can’t remember the name. Freedman or Frederick’s or something. Man, those models look even better than the girls in Hustler.”

  “Nug, I have to go.”

  “They got play clothes in there.” He reached under my dress and snapped my garter belt. “Like these.”

  I pushed his hand away. “Cut it out.”

  “You wouldn’t believe what they got. Lace and g-strings and fake leather. I didn’t know real girls even wore that stuff.” He pushed my purse off my shoulder, then pulled my arms over my head and held my wrists against the wall. “Be nice to me, chiquitita. You don’t know what Big Daddy might have to do if his little girl is naughty.”

  “Stop it!”

  “You gotta be nice to me.” He let go of my wrists. “See, I know stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  Impatience grated in his voice. “Like you lied about your age to get that job. Like your papers are faked and you ain’t here legal, baby. Like if you don’t do what I want, I’ll just have to talk, you know. You want to go back to taco land? What you gonna do there, Tina? Turn tricks in Tijuana?”

  .“Don’t. You’re scaring me.”

  “Damn it!” He hit the side of the building, shaking off old paint. “Why don’t you say, ‘Yes, Nug. Whatever you want, Nug’? You always did whatever that shit cousin of yours said, going to Mass every Sunday. I mean, who fucking goes to church every week? Well, he ain’t here to keep me off no more. He’s gone and he ain’t coming back, and neither is your mother, and Los Fuck-ones can’t do shit.” He grabbed my shoulders and shook them. “I’m king around here, baby. So don’t play hard to get no more.”

  “No!” I gasped with the force of his motion. “Stop.” Something yanked Nug away from me. One moment he was shaking me, the next I was free and stumbling forward. As I caught myself, I saw a startled Nug facing off with someone. Althor.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Althor said. “Can’t you feel how terrified she is?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Nug said.

  I didn’t stick around to hear any more. I ran inside the building, letting the door bang shut behind me. When I slapped my hand on the light switch nothing happened, so I ran down the hall in the dark, reaching for my keys—

  I swore under my breath. My keys were in my purse, and my purse was lying outside where Nug had dropped it.

  I went back to the door. Outside, I heard someone falling down the steps. Althor was bigger, but I doubted he had much chance against Nug. He was lucky Nug didn’t have a gun.

  A car door opened, followed by Nug saying, “You’re gonna wish you never fucked with me.” The door slammed and the engine started.

  I hesitated. Nug wasn’t one to leave a fight, not unless he was sure he would lose. But against one man? It made no sense that he would drive away. I eased the door open—and in the same instant someone on the other side pulled it open all the way. I found myself staring up at Althor.

  “Tina?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  I backed up and tripped over some debris on the floor. As I fell, I banged into the wall and dropped onto my knees. I pressed my fist against my mouth, trying to stop shaking.

  Althor came over and knelt in front of me. He started to reach for me, but when I stiffened, he let his arms drop. His face was strained, as if with pain, yet no cuts or bruises showed anywhere on him.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “He’s gone.” Standing up, he offered me his hand. “I don’t understand. Why does your brother treat you like that?”

  I stood up and stepped back from him. “My brother?”

  “That was one of your brothers, yes?”

  “No.”

  “No? Maybe that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Why he had no caring of your fear.”

  “He likes people to be afraid of him. It makes him feel big.” As Althor pushed his hand through his hair, I saw his arm shake. But it wasn’t because of his own reactions. I felt what he felt. He wasn’t afraid of Nug at all. He was shaking from my emotions.

  “How did you know I needed help?” I asked.

  “I input it. Even from so far away. Can you always broadcast so strong a signal?”

  He was doing it again, saying those strange things. I backed toward the stairs.

  Althor looked around at the shadowed hallway with its scarred walls. “I think you should go someplace safe.”

  “Esta bien. It’s fine.” How was I going to get my purse? He was between me and the doorway.

  Althor watched me as if I were a puzzle. Then he went outside and got my purse. When he came back, he set it down in the hall and moved off again. Still wary, I grabbed it and backed away. He made no attempt to follow, just watched as I backed up the stairs.

  On the second floor, moonlight came through a window at the end of the hall. Junk cluttered the floor and black patches showed on the wall where an old fire had scorched it. A baby cried somewhere, a wail that broke off into softer sobs. Upstairs a man and woman were yelling.

  I ran to my apartment and unlocked the top bolt, then the bottom one, then the police lock, then the door. As soon as I was inside, I locked back up. I sagged against the wood and started to shake. Once it began, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even get up to take the few steps needed to reach my bed. I sank down in the darkened room and laid my head against the door, shaking, too tired and too frightened to move anymore.

  2

  Blue Lace Stockings

  I opened my eyes to a sunlit room. It looked the same as always, just my TV table in the center of it and my bed against the south wall. My mother’s dress hung above the bed, a huipil, a white dress she had woven with cotton and feathers. It covered the worst of the peeling paint. Across the room, the east wall made a “kitchen,” having a counter with space behind it for a stove and refrigerator. A window above the sink let sunlight sift through its gauzy blue curtains.

  My watch said 9:00 a.m. That meant seven hours until my shift at the Blue Knight. I changed into a nightgown and crawled into bed. Sleep, real sleep this time, settled down like a quilt.

  The sound of a dog barking outside woke me at two o’clock. I went to wash my face, and the bathroom mirror gave a sobering reflection. I looked ten years older. To this day I wonder if that was why Nug was aging so fast, because the strain of his lifestyle squeezed out his vitality.

  He was right; I couldn’t go to the police, or at least I didn’t think so at the time. My family had come to America in 1981, so we were eligible for amnesty under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Neither my mother nor Manuel had understood English well enough to keep our file up to date. I was trying to straighten it out, but since I was underage and without a legal guardian, I didn’t want to do anything that would draw attention.

  After I finished getting ready for work, I opened the door of the apartment—and almost jumped back inside.

  Althor was outside, asleep.

  He was sitting next to the door, knees drawn to his chest, head resting on them, like an overworked bodyguard who had succumbed to exhaustion. Seeing him in the light, I realized his hair wasn’t blond after all. The sun had streaked it gold, but underneath it was purple.

  He was older than I had first thought, too, well into his thirties. The previous night I had assumed he was Anglo, but now I had no idea what to think. His skin had a metallic tint, like bronze or gold. It glinted in the bar of sunlight across his arms.

&nb
sp; I knelt next to him. “Althor?”

  He opened his eyes and blinked.

  My mouth fell open. I knew he had eyes; I had seen them last night. But when his lashes lifted that morning, all I saw was a gold shimmer. No pupils, no irises, no whites, no nothing. Just the shimmer.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  As he looked around, the shimmer rolled up to reveal normal eyes. Or almost normal. They were a vivid purple. Stretching out his legs, he rubbed his eyes. Then he looked out the window at the end of the hall. “It’s late.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at him. “Why does your skin shine like that? And your eyes?”

  “They’re like my grandfather’s.” He turned to me. “He has—I am not sure what is the English word for it. Differences from birth.”

  Birth defects? I winced, afraid I had offended him.

  “Your day is so short.” He yawned. “I need to reset my internal clock.”

  “It’s spring. The days are long.” I rubbed my finger along his biceps. The gold didn’t come off.

  He curled his fingers around mine. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Much better.” I took a breath. “Thank you. For last night. I don’t want to think what would’ve happened if you hadn’t helped me.”

  He lifted my hand and pressed his lips against my knuckles, not kissing exacdy, more like biting. It was strange. But nice. I couldn’t believe he was out there, though. Back then, even in my wildest imaginings, I would never have guessed the reason why he chose to guard my door that night.

  “You were watching over me,” I said. “Protecting a girl you don’t hardly know.”

  “Why do you call yourself a girl?” Althor started to reach for me, then paused. When I didn’t object, he pulled me into a hug.

  I held him tight, the curls behind his ears tickling my nose. Closing my eyes, I willed that moment to last forever, as if I could preserve it in amber and take it everywhere I went, to bring out whenever loneliness threatened to overwhelm me.

  After a moment, I pulled back my head. “I have to go to work If I’m late, I’ll lose my job.”

  “Can I walk you there?” he asked.

  I laughed, that kind of soft embarrassed sound you make when a person you want to like you acts as if he does. “Okay.”

  “I am sorry. About last night. I should have asked then.”

  “I wanted you to.”

  “You did?” He smiled, his teeth flashing. “I kept thinking, She will say something. But nothing. So I thought you had not the interest. Sometimes I forget how different customs are here. That things are expected from the man which feel unusual to me.”

  I had no idea how to answer that. So I said nothing, just stood up with him.

  When we came out of the building, into afternoon sunshine, his face blanked. Then he said, “It’s fourteen hours since I meet you.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  He pushed his hand through his hair. “No.”

  It was obviously a problem. His unease made a pale silver mist around him. Yet despite that, he still meant to stick around. It seemed encouraging. I didn’t really believe what he had been telling me about himself. Why would a futuristic fighter pilot lost in the wrong time and place hang around to walk a waitress to work?

  As we went down the street, an old Ford drove by. Althor spun around and walked backward, watching until it disappeared around a corner. Then he turned back. “I can’t get over it. Another car.”

  I was about to ask if he was into old cars when I saw something in his hand, a gold box with rounded edges. I had no idea where it came from. His clothes had no visible pockets and it hadn’t been hanging from his belt. Its color was changing and its sides becoming more angular. “Is that your transcom?” .

  He looked down at his hand. “Oh. Yes.” He turned his attention to it, making lights blink as we walked.

  “My friend Josh makes gadgets like that,” I said. “Radios and stuff.”

  “I doubt he can make a transcom.”

  “Are you still looking for signals?”

  “No. I check my Jag.” He paused. “I am check my Jag.” He squinted at me. “I checking my Jag?”

  I smiled. “I am checking my Jag.”

  His face blanked. “Yes, that is the correct grammar. I am checking my Jag.”

  I almost jumped. His voice had come out in perfect English, with almost no accent.

  Then his accent returned. “I speak English better than it shows. I just don’t use it much. It takes a while to reintegrate the programs.”

  Reintegrate the programs? “You mean, on your plane?”

  “My plane?”

  “You said you were a pilot.”

  “It’s not an airplane. It’s a ship for space.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, Althor. If you really have a ship, how is it up there while you’re here?”

  “I sent it back up.”

  “How?”

  He lifted his transcom. “With this.”

  “How can that box make a ship take off?”

  “The hull acts as an antenna. It receives transcom signals on a narrow bandwidth and sends them to the onboard web system.”

  “And that’s flying your ship right now?”

  “No. The Jag can fly itself.” He glanced at the street with its broken manhole covers. A gust of wind blew pieces of an old newspaper along the gutter. “I think it is more safe in orbit.”

  “It’s not safe up there. The military will find it.”

  He shook his head. “It has *****”

  “What?”

  “I think this translates as ‘shroud.’ It polarizes a molecular film on the hull, causing it to change state, making the hull a nonreflecting surface. It also projects false readings for detection devices at various electromagnetic wavelengths. And it activates an evasion program which monitors a predetermined volume of space around the ship and alters course to avoid objects—” He stopped, staring ahead of us, his mouth opening.

  I looked. We had come around the corner, into view of San Carlos Boulevard. “What’s wrong?”

  “The cars.” He motioned at San Carlos. “I’ve never seen so many in running condition before. This is why the air smells, isn’t it?”

  I grimaced. “That’s right.”

  “Your trees don’t have ****?”

  “Have what?”

  “Filters. Gengineered molecules that sift pollutants out of the air and convert them to nontoxic chemicals.”

  “Well, no. It sounds like a cool idea, though.”

  Up ahead, the bus pulled into the curb at the corner of San Carlos. I started to run, and we made it just as the bus was pulling away. I paid for both of us; not only did Althor have no money, he didn’t seem to know what it was.

  Everyone stared at Althor as we walked to the back. With his large size, his black clothes, his purple hair, and his metallic skin, he stood out like a neon sign. There were no empty seats, so we hung onto a bar while the bus bumped down the street. Althor gazed out the window, his fascination with what he saw making arcs of light, like translucent arrows circling through the bus. I had never picked up such vivid images from anyone before.

  We didn’t talk while we rode. It would have been difficult with the way we were bouncing along the street, and I didn’t want him to start in about starships when people could hear. He wasn’t holding the transcom anymore, but I couldn’t see where he put it.

  We reached the Blue Knight restaurant at about ten to four. Its canopy snapped in the breeze, and Robert, the doorman, was already at his post. I took Althor around the back. As we entered the building, we ran into Brad Steinham,.the manager. He was helping the bartender carry boxes of cans, jars, and other goods from one of the storerooms to another.

  “Hey, Brad,” I said.

  He looked up, started to smile, then saw Althor and frowned.

  He didn’t tell Althor to leave, though. Instead he glanced at me. “You okay? You look tired.”
r />   “Yeah, I’m fine.” I smiled. “Althor, this is Brad.” *

  Brad put down the box he was carrying and straightened up. Althor nodded, sizing up Brad while Brad sized him up. And Brad was sizing him up, literally. He might as well have come right out and asked Althor how much he could bench-press.

  Glancing at me, Brad motioned at the storeroom they were clearing out. “We’ve got leaks back there. Have to move everything before it rains tomorrow.” He looked at Althor again and Althor looked back.

  “You want a job?” Brad asked him. “Tonight. Seven dollars an hour, to help clear out the storerooms. I need my bartender at the bar.”

  “You want me to do manual labor for a wage?” Althor asked. “That’s right.” He tilted his head at me. “Tina’ll be here eight hours. You work that long I’ll pay you sixty dollars.”

  “All right,” Althor said. “What you want me to do?”

  Brad pointed to the storeroom where the bartender was heaving up a box. ‘Just follow him. He’ll show you where to move the boxes.”

  Althor went into the room and spoke to the bartender. The man nodded toward a stack of boxes, his face red as he struggled to pick up one of them. Althor picked up two with no sign of strain, moving more like a well-oiled machine than a man. He carried them easily, walking with the bartender.

  “Man,” Brad muttered. “Where do you find these hulks?” He turned to me. “We won’t be able to finish this tonight. If he works out, I can maybe give him a few hours tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” I hesitated. “You still thinking about hiring Mario full-time?”

  It was a moment before Brad answered. “I don’t know.”

  “You said he did a good job that night he filled in for your bouncer.”

  “Tina, he’s got a rap sheet a mile long.” Brad exhaled. “Possession of a dangerous weapon. Loaded firearm in public. Carrying a concealed firearm. Assault with a deadly weapon. Felony battery. Attempted murder, for Christ’s sake.”

  I knew how it looked. Most of the charges came from a fight between Los Halcones and Nug’s men after my cousin Manuel died. Mario was busted for carrying a Mac-10. The police hit him hard for the gun because they couldn’t make the attempted murder charge stick. They also wanted Mario and Nug off the street before the fighting went out of control. Both served time at Soledade, but no one went to jail for Manuel’s death. The police never found enough evidence to make an arrest.