Joe Haldeman - The Coming

She smiled and put a cup of milk in the microwave.

“Pepe, I haven’t danced in years. I had an accident, and I’m still an operation away from the dance floor.” The bell rang and she took the milk out. “Thanks for asking, though.”

“Professor Bell told me about that… horrible thing. They ever catch who did it?”

“No.” She stirred a heaping spoon of Bustelo into the cup and brought it over with the sugar. “I think I know. But I could never prove it.”

“Gracias. Who?”

She looked around. The two customers had left and José was buried in his tabloid. She lowered her voice. “You’re no Boy Scout, are you, Pepe? I mean, you know how the world works.”

“As much as anybody, I suppose.”

“We have to pay protection, to keep the café from getting gang-banged. Is that shocking?”

“No. Sad, but no.”

“There’s a slimeball comes in here at noon today, every first of the month, to pick up his five hundred bucks. He calls himself ‘Mr. Smith,’ but everybody knows he’s Willy Joe Capra.”

“He did it?”

She nodded. “Or at least knows who did it. He’s made that pretty clear.”

“And you can’t go to the police?”

She shook her head wordlessly for a moment, and then knuckled at tears, her mouth in a tight scowl.

He handed her the napkin that she’d just handed him. “The bastard.”

She pressed it to her eyes. “I, maybe I should. But what I’m afraid of, I go to the police, they pick him up, he gets off. And a week or a month or a year later, I’ll have another accident. During which, Willy Joe will be in church or talking to the Lions Club or something.”

“The devil never forgets a face. People like him eventually get what they deserve.”

“No.” She balled up the napkin and stuck it in her pocket. “This is the real world, remember?”

Pepe poured sugar into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “Nothing people like you or me could do. Shoot the bastard, we wind up choosing the door.”

“Instead of getting a medal.” She wiped the clean counter in front of him. “You want something to eat with that?”

“No, thanks. Just had breakfast.” He’d skipped it, actually, needing to lose a few pounds. He only had one suitcase of clothes, and wanted them to last another couple of months. The kilt and trousers were getting tight around the waist, and suspenders had gone out of fashion last year.

He drank the coffee fast enough to get a little buzz. It would be nice if he could do something about this Willy Joe character. He allowed himself an adolescent fantasy about Sara’s gratitude. But that sort of thing wasn’t really in his job description.

He put a ten under the saucer and waved adios to Sara and her partner. Not for the first time, he wondered whether they had something going. Their mutual affection was obvious.

Her body would be unusual. But that could be an attraction.

In that erotic frame of mind, he stepped out of the café and stopped dead in his tracks, paralyzed by a woman. She was dressed like any other student, jeans and halter and sun hat. But she had a classic chiseled beauty and perfect carriage, and she radiated sex.

It barely registered that the handsome Cuban took one look at her and stood like a deer caught in headlights. Whenever she walked through campus she was caressed by eyes. Did any of them ever recognize her from the films? Not likely. She’d only had face parts twice.

She hated physics, but couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to take a chemistry elective next semester, and the only ones she could take required physics.

So they were doing fluid dynamics today. A doctor does need to know about fluids. In her other persona, she knew plenty about them. Semen stings your eyes and makes your eyelashes look as if semen has dried on them. But it was better than the fake stuff Harry sometimes squirted on her. Soap solution and glycerine and some white powder. It stung the eyes even worse, and made you smell like a cheap whorehouse.

That was one of her father’s favorite observations: You smell like a cheap whorehouse. Just before she left home, she was able to make the obvious rejoinder: You would know, Dad, wouldn’t you? Someday she’d have to find a cheap whorehouse and go in for a sniff.

One nice thing about physics was the building, air-conditioned to the max. She went through the door and it was like walking into a refrigerator. She put her books and hat down on a table and patted the sweat from her face and hair with a handkerchief.

A carefully beautiful woman walked in and gave her a familiar look: appraisal, hostility, neutrality. Blue cancer tattoo on her cheek, Dr. Whittier.

“Oh, hi. You’re in 101.”

The beautiful girl nodded. “Gabrielle Campins.”

She put the name and the face together. Pre-med, having trouble with the math. “See you there.”

Trying to act normal just after learning you killed a man. Killed him by blackmailing him into illegal activity. Directed against a friend and colleague.

The door to Rory’s office was open. On impulse, she tapped and stepped through the little entryway. Rory looked up from a journal.

“Hi, Rory. You ready for His Holiness?”

“His ass -holiness. Ready as I’ll ever be.” They had a meeting with Reverend Kale and some of his minions tomorrow. “I heard about Ybor Lopez. I’m sorry.”

Deedee trembled for a moment and a chill ran down her back. Could there have been something between them? The phone chimed, saved by the bell.

“Gotta teach,” Deedee said, voice quavering. “See you later.”

“Hasta luego.” She picked up the phone.

It was Marya Washington. Could they come by in twenty or thirty minutes? Rory said sure, and put the “Do Not Disturb the Bitch” sign on her office door. How much of an article could she read in twenty minutes?

She actually got through the first page of an Astrophysical Review article by a friend at Texas, who had found a consistent correlation between galactic latitude and duration of one class of short-term gamma-ray bursters. That could imply local origin; at least not extragalactic. Or hopeful mathematics, anyhow.

Security called up and she took the sign off her door, and ushered in the young woman and her “crew,” one man shepherding three cameras. “So welcome to Gainesville, Marya. How’s New York?”

“God, don’t ask. It’s a miracle we got out.” A two-day blizzard had just stopped. “We were able to get an old chopper into JFK this morning. Otherwise we’d still be in traffic. If you can call something ‘traffic’ that doesn’t move.”

The cameraman suggested where to place the cameras and Marya nodded. “I know there aren’t any revelations,” she said, “but do you have anything new? Or that I can pretend is new?”

“Any time now,” the cameraman said. “Just be natural, ma’am; we’ll edit later.”

“Well, Marya… this isn’t new exactly; it’s from last week. But I’m not sure anybody got the whole story.”

“You mean the bounce-back from the thing.”

“Exactly.” How to phrase this diplomatically? “You reported it, and so did others. But it was more important than you gave it credit for being.”