Busted Flush

Drake shrugged. “I was hungry. I just want to try and feel normal again. Food helps. At least, it used to.”

“I understand. Let’s get as far from this place as we can before morning. Those knots are tight, but he’ll get out of them eventually.”

“Found these. They might help.” Drake jingled a set of car keys.

“Good boy,” she said, extending an open palm. He reluctantly dropped the keys into her hand.

They headed over to the garage and swung the creaky doors open. Inside was a beat-up blue Suburban. Niobe unlocked the driver’s side door and let Drake in. She inserted the ignition key and turned it. The engine made a feeble effort at turning over, then died.

“Out of gas,” she said.

The air went out of Drake. “This is Texas. How can people here be out of gas? There’re oil rigs everywhere.”

“Looks like we’re still on foot,” Niobe said, easing out from behind the wheel. “Wipe anything in the car you touched and let’s get out of here.”

Drake used his shirttail to do as she asked. “Are you okay to walk?”

“I’ll be fine.” She started off again, slowly, Drake at her heels.

He felt like there was a bottomless, black pit ahead of them somewhere in the distance, waiting to swallow him up. When the time came, Drake wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just walk right in.

Drake’s skin was bright red from panhandling all morning. Niobe stayed hidden—the Feds had their descriptions plastered everywhere—so her sunburn was milder. She watched him from the shadows of an alleyway, where she sat on a trash can, trying to ignore the pain in her ankle.

The plastic shopping bag jingled when he set it at her feet. They’d fished it out of a trash can in front of the Walgreens around the corner. Now it was heavy with coins.

“Got a few quarters in here,” he said.

Niobe fished through the bag. Mostly pennies. And a few paper clips. And lint. And gum wrappers. But here and there, sunlight glinted on dimes, nickels, and quarters. She counted out a couple of dollars.

“Good job.” Niobe handed him the coins. He looked to be on the verge of heat stroke, the poor kid. “Why don’t you go into the store and get an ice cream sandwich and some water. It’s air-conditioned in there.”

“Want me to get you anything?”

“Nah. I’m good,” she lied. “Enjoy the ice cream but don’t wander off, okay?”

“Yeah. I know.”

She waited for him to disappear around the corner before taking up the bag and walking to the far end of the alley, where the shadows smelled like urine and worse things. The coins were heavy. The handholds in the plastic dug into her fingers.

The bag jingled again when she set it down in front of the crude cardboard shelter under the fire escape. It was basically just a refrigerator box, but the bundle of rags inside was a man.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m back.”

The man sat up. His face was streaked with grime. He picked at his hair. “You again. What’d you bring me?”

Niobe nudged the bag with her toe. “There’s a little more than four dollars in here. That’s ten dollars, counting the six I gave you yesterday.” Which meant sticking around here for an extra day, she thought. A day better spent on the move.

When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “That was our agreement, remember? Ten dollars.”

The homeless man hunched over the bag and picked through it rapidly with two fingers, like an inexpert typist. “Lotsa pennies. Can’t do much with pennies.”

“Please,” she whispered. We won’t last much longer without this. Every second wasted in negotiation made her nervous. Drake would come back soon and she didn’t want him to know about this. He’d feel guilty about it.

The man’s gaze flitted between the bag full of change and Niobe’s face. She tried to angle her body to keep the worst of her acne in the shadows.

The man grunted. “ ’Kay.” He motioned Niobe to lie down in his nest.

“I—I can’t do it that way.” She playfully waggled the tip of her tail at him. The look in his eyes made her worry that he’d back out, and she regretted the vain attempt at bonhomie. But he shrugged, and relented.

After that, they worked out the mechanics quickly enough. He breathed with his mouth open, grunting in short little bursts. It smelled like he had a rotten or abscessed tooth. Niobe prayed it was his only health problem, and that if he was an addict, he wasn’t using needles.

She jumped to her feet as soon as she felt the first egg forming. Her erstwhile partner rolled over, cleaned himself on his bedding, and didn’t stir after that.

Trash cans rattled as she doubled over in pain. Her ovipositor widened and deposited the first egg under the fire escape. She already had the names picked out. Avender, Aubrey, and Abernathy, for boys; Agatha, Akina, and Allie for girls.

Another egg followed the first. Only two children this time around: a smaller than average clutch. Maybe they’ll be twins, Niobe mused.

She felt the first tickle of consciousness, a tentative hello at the world, as the eggs hatched.