35. Nothin’ up my sleeve

“I’m sure you’ll meet her sometime soon,” Michel said. “As for the getting shot part, it won’t happen if I’m around.”

“Duly noted,” Jesse said.  “Are you armoured?” He started feeling around Michel’s clothes and patting him.

Michel slapped him away and said, “I didn’t give no permission for you to fondle me. No! I am not armoured.  Not like you understand armour.”

“It must be built in, somehow. How can you feel so – bleugh!” Jesse exclaimed in disgust.

“Dogshit,” Michel said genially.

Jesse flung his hand away in horror. His upbringing had left him with very little ‘give’ when it came to nasty smells and bodily functions, which was part of the reason he’d been so traumatized by the hoarder move.

Michel was still working his head around it, too, but for different reasons. “I hate having to kill animals,” he’d said. Jesse was past being rational on the subject, except to thank Michel and George for doing what he had neither the strength nor the compassion to do.

Jesse loved a good prank, but dogshit was too much.  Michel tried to correct his error.

“Hold still, quit twisting,” Michel crooned. Jesse went rigid, and Michel somehow mopped him up, including the spatters of dung he’d gotten on his own clothes in his panic.

Jesse turned away, sniffed, and composed himself.

To the alley wall, he said, “I guess it should come as no surprise that you keep dog crap on your person. I’m sure you are full of surprises.”

Michel silently scanned for functioning cameras.

He pulled out a diamond engagement ring.

“You never know when you’re gonna meet the right girl,” Michel said.

“You can’t mate with humans,” Jesse said, perplexed.

“You worked that out by yourself… no, I can see George said something. Since reproductive sex is not the sine qua non of human marriage, and since inter-species marriage is probably only a couple of decades away, I’m taking the long view.” His voice became bland and professorial, and his accent shifted into a weird mid-Canadian/vaguely European blend, in open mockery of George.

“I’m sure Kima feels fine about that,” Jesse said. George had warned him that the best way to frame a genuine dialogue with his kind was never to ask a direct question.

“She feels fine about everything, because apart from learning new kinds of math and having babies, she gives precisely no shits about anything.”

“She gives a shit about you.”

“She likes the way I make her feel,” Michel said.  “I got more style than George.”

That was a difficult point to argue, as it bent the word ‘style’ like a pretzel.  Michel was a vision — if you thought a man forcefully stuffed into a beige and yellow polyester disco suit, hung with a kilo of garish chrome chains, and sporting a dirty blonde afro and matching pornstache was the height of masculine aesthetics.

“You look like you ran naked through a 70’s disco and randomly ripped clothing off strangers, including that colony of caterpillars catching z’s on your upper lip,” Jesse said.

“Zeds. Please,” Michel said.

Jesse got tired of pretending he was fine. He could hear sirens, and knew the pistol whipped guy was going to get medical attention, which was a relief.  His moral compass swung wildly.  Was it okay to pistol whip a rapist? Michel was so expansively casual about it, as if this was how to be. It fit a Hollywood narrative, but Jesse didn’t want to be an extra in such a violent view of reality, or to find himself taking such glee in someone else’s brain damage.

“I need to breathe for a while. I’m still flashing on the gunshots and the dogshit.”

“Sorry about that,” Michel said. He was often quick to apologize, without seeming in the least to have understood what an apology was supposed to mean, or its components.

“I’ll show you what else I got, while you get your vitals into spec,” Michel said.

“Kima gave me this,” Michel said. It was a gold coin, heavy and shiny and perfect. “Pirate treasure. Minted in Mexico City in 1716.”

“Wow,” Jesse said. The coin disappeared, apparently into a pocket. He began to smell trickery again. 

“From the same haul, she also gave me this.” It was an enormous pearl, easily 4 cm across. It almost looked like an eyeball.

“They look like expensive gifts. She must be one hell of a deep sea diver,” Jesse commented.

This struck Michel as amusing. “I’ll say,” he said, chuckling. “They weren’t expensive.  They were lying around on the sea floor. She can smell a wreck a long way off.”

“A useful skill,” Jesse said. “George has a highly accurate sense of smell too.”

“Oh, he’s the best. It’s the hair,” Michel said, as if that explained everything.

“I don’t understand, but that’s okay,” Jesse said. “It’s not like reality depends on my understanding.”

“That attitude is the best thing about you,” Michel said.

Jesse sent his eyebrows in opposite directions and then frowned at Michel.

“I’m sure you have more goodies to show and tell,” he said, after a moment.

“I got a lot of pockets,” Michel said.

He pulled out a syringe.

“Shit,” he said. “I picked this up a week ago and forgot to put it in a sharps container.” He hurriedly stuffed it back into a pocket.

Jesse said, narrowing his eyes and trying not to sound overly concerned, “I’m impressed that you walked around for a week with that in your pocket without giving yourself a good dose of Hep C.”

“I can’t get that. Nor anything else, from leprosy to syphilis.”

“You must have an amazing immune system.”

“So amazing I don’t even know it’s there,” Michel said.  “That’s one of the many things George wants to find out, when he finds his scientist.”

“You make it sound like he lost a scientist.”

“No, but he still hasn’t found one,” Michel said.  “Or he’s waiting on some other development, or he needs money.”

“That pirate booty must be worth something.”

“Oh sure. Mebbe ten grand for both of them if I had to sell in a hurry, more if I could take time to fake up provenance documents. That’s George’s trick, not mine.”