Sunshine

They gave me my soggy clothes in a plastic Mega Food bag and I managed to jam my feet into the clammy, curled-up sneakers so I could walk. Jesse offered to call a taxi, but I wanted some outdoor air. Even midtown civic center outdoor air.

We had to go back to the coffeehouse: the Wreck was there. Mel had walked over. Well, I don’t know about walked. He had come over without vehicular assistance anyway. He was still putting out major anger vibes, even after a successful rescue of the damsel from the dragon-encircled tower. The dragon had been blue, and essentially friendly. The real problem was about the damsel…I had never wanted someone to talk to so badly, never been so unable to say what I wanted to talk about.

And if I managed to tell him, what was he going to say? “I’ll start ringing up residential homes for the lethally loony tomorrow, see where the nearest openings are”?

“Don’t even try to tell me what happened till you’ve had some sleep,” said Mel. “The goddam nerve of those guys…I thought Pat and Jesse were okay.”

“I think they are okay,” I said, regretfully. In some ways it would have been easier if they weren’t. “Jesse and Theo did get me out of there—um—and they couldn’t help being, you know, professionally interested.”

Mel snorted. “If you say so. Listen, the whole neighborhood is talking about it. Whatever it is. The official SOF report—what they’ve already fed to the media goons—is that you were an innocent bystander. None of us is going to say anything, but there were a lot of people in that alley by the time Jesse and Theo got you away, and it’s unanimous that you were…”

There was a pause. I didn’t say anything.

He added, “Charlie seemed to think Jesse was doing you a favor. That SOF could protect you better than we could.”

Yeah. Further destruction of personal world view optional.

Mel sighed. “So we hung around the phone at the coffeehouse, waiting—Charlie and me. We sent everybody else home—including Kenny, sworn on pain of having his liver on tomorrow’s menu not to tell your mother anything. The phone didn’t ring. So then we rang SOF and got yanked around by some little sheepwit on the switchboard, and that’s when I came over…”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The coffeehouse was dark and the square silent and empty, although there was some kind of distantly audible fuss going on somewhere it was easy enough to guess was a block or two over and down a recently defiled alley. We went round the side of the coffeehouse and I could see a light on in the office. Charlie, drinking coffee and pacing. He had his arms wrapped around me so tight I couldn’t breathe almost before I was inside. Charlie is such a mild little guy, most of the time.

“I’m okay,” I said. Charlie gave a deep, shuddering sigh, and I remembered him backing me up with Mr. Responsible Media. I also remembered all the time he’d spent in years past, encouraging my mundane interest in learning to make a mayonnaise that didn’t crack, how much garlic went into Charlie’s famous hash, my early experiments with what turned out to be the ancestors of Bitter Chocolate Death et al. There was no magic about Charlie. Nor about most restaurants, come to that. Human customers tend to be a little twitchy about anything more magical than a waitress who could keep coffee hot. I wondered about my mother’s motive in applying for a job as a waitress all those years ago: I was already making peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies while we were still living with my dad (if there was a grown-up to turn the oven on for me), and if she was looking for nice safe outlets…“Tonight. It’s—it’s connected with what happened—when I was gone those two days.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Charlie.

“Jesse wants me to try to find the place it all happened. Out at the lake. They’re taking me out there tomorrow.”

“Oh bloody hell,” said Mel. “It’s been two months. They don’t have to go tomorrow.”

I shrugged. “Might as well. I have the afternoon off.”

“The lake,” said Charlie thoughtfully.

I’d told everyone I’d driven out to the lake. I hadn’t said that what happened afterward also happened at the lake. Till tonight my official memory had ended sitting on the porch of the old cabin.

“Yes. I was—er—held—at a house on the lake. They want me to try to find it.”

Either Mel or Charlie could have said, when did you remember this? What else do you remember? Why did you tell SOF when you haven’t told us? Neither of them did. Mel put his arm around me. “Oh, gods and frigging angels,” he said.

“Be careful,” said Charlie.