Sunshine

“But we don’t want to. Because we need you. We need you in the field. Dear frigging gods and angels, do we ever need you in the field. We need anything we can get because, frankly, we’re losing. You didn’t know that, did you? At the moment we still got the news nailed shut. But it isn’t going to stay nailed shut. Another hundred years, tops, and the suckers are going to be running our show. The Wars were just a distraction. We think we won. Well, maybe we did, but we skegged our future doing it. It blows, but it’s the way it is. So little grubby guys like me and Jesse feel we need you in the field a hell of a lot more than we need you disappeared into some study program while they try to figure out how you’ve done what you’ve done and how they could make a lot of other people do it too. Which they wouldn’t be able to because it’s gonna turn out not to work that way. And we guess you don’t want to be disappeared either?”

I shook my head on a suddenly stiff neck.

“Yeah. So, anyway, if you can off suckers with common household utensils, we want you out there doing it. We’ll even lie to the goddess of pain about you to keep you to ourselves, and babe, that takes balls.”

Would they still want me out there doing what I could do if they knew what else I could do? If they knew the truth about the second shackle?

Were the vampires really going to win within the next hundred years?

When we got back to the car it started the first time. There wasn’t much conversation. We were most of the way back to town when Pat said, “Hey, Sunshine, talk to us. What are you thinking?”

“I’m trying not to think. I’m—” I stopped. I didn’t know if I could say it aloud, even to make my point. “I’m trying not to think about those stains on the walls in the alley, last night.”

There was a pause. “I’m sorry,” said Jesse. “We do have some idea what we’re asking you. Don’t let Pat’s pleasure in his own rhetoric get to you.”

“Hey,” said Pat.

“I haven’t been your age in a long time,” Jesse went on, “and I grew up wanting to join SOF. I knew it was going to be bad, what I was going to be doing, if I stayed a field agent, which I wanted to be. And it is bad, a lot of it, a lot of the time. You get used to it because you have to. And SOF doesn’t throw you in like you’ve been thrown in. Last night was rough even for a grizzled old vet like me.

“Rae, we aren’t asking you to make a decision to save the world tomorrow. But please think about what Pat said. Think about the fact that we really, really need you. And think, for what it’s worth, that we’ll back you up to the last gasp, if you want us there. If last-gasp stuff turns out to be necessary.”

“And just by the way, kiddo,” said Pat in his mildest voice, “I’m not accusing you of anything, okay? But it must be fifty miles from here back to where you live with that weird siddhartha type. I ain’t saying it’s not possible, Sunshine, but that’s a hell of a hike for anyone, let alone someone who’s spent two days chained to a wall expecting to die. I’m thinking your last gasp is pretty worth having.”

I stared out the window, thinking about the second shackle.

* * *

I got through dessert shift that night on autopilot. Nobody asked me how my afternoon had gone and I didn’t volunteer anything. The atmosphere of Repressed Anxiety was thick enough to cut chunks out of and fry, however. I wondered what you’d have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Cole slaw? Potato-strychnine mash? Things were so fraught that Kenny came into the bakery long enough to say “Hey big sis” and give me a hug. He hadn’t called me Big Sis since the time he was eight and I was eighteen and I’d caught him spying on my then-boyfriend Raoul and me and he went around the house yelling Big Sissy Kissy Kissy and I sent Raoul home and went into my brothers’ room and destroyed the backup discs to every one of their combox games that I could find. Which was a lot. You might think this was overreacting (Mom, Charlie, and Billy did), but I was lucky he’d only caught us kissing, and I wanted to be sure I’d been discouraging enough about this sort of fraternal behavior. Anyway neither Kenny nor Billy spoke to me at all for about six months, by which time I’d graduated, the Big Sis era was over, and shortly after that I’d moved into my own apartment.

Mary took her break in the bakery again, and told me the latest Mr. Cagney story, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Really.”

“I know you are,” she said, but she hugged me anyway, and got streaks of flour and cinnamon all down her front.

I was due to stay till closing but they packed me off an hour early. I didn’t argue. I fetched the Wreck and drove home slowly. I was so tired—bone tired, marrow tired, what comes after that? Life tired? That’s the kind of tired I was. It wasn’t just lack of sleep tired, though I did have a few fuzzy cobwebs at the corners of my vision.