Author: Allegra

The shed was not a cave of wonders, but it was an impressive monument to cupidity. It appeared to be the stash house of a high end fence, and was filled with watches, jewellery, electronics, restricted weapons, ammo and art.

And drugs.  “Cocaine, meth, opium and I’m not actually sure what this is.” George held the bag at arm’s length and viewed it with disfavour. “You know that if I can’t tell what it is, it’s probably really eeeevil shit and ten bucks said the H.A. brought it here.”

Jesse said, “I’m grabbing some of the opium, I’m going to need it,” and stuffed about a g-note’s worth into his upper jacket pocket.

Then they pried open another strongbox, or rather, George did while Jesse held a handkerchief to his face, and they discovered gold bars and coins.

“Jesse, I could kiss you! — except I already did, sort of, when I suctioned all that blood off you,” George said, in that greasy voice.  Responding to the voice rather than the sentiment, Jesse said, “Ew.”

“Is that homophobia or alien squick I detect?”

“I am not a homophobe,” Jesse said, calmly. “Licking blood from someone is not kissing. Shouldn’t we be going? Anybody with a stash like this won’t sit on their ass while we take it and I’d like to get fucked on opium with all due fucking speed. Fucker broke my ribs.”

“Want me to straighten your nose for you?”

“What? No — Ow! you fucker! I knew you were going to do that,” Jesse yelled, and then felt more blood and gagged.

“All that respect and gratitude, I knew I could count on you,” George said fondly.

“I was coming to an equilibrium with the pain and you fucked me up. Yes — I know you saved my life, how could I not? — but you didn’t have my consent for touching me like that and if I’d known I coulda braced myself and that was all way, way too much like my mother.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Mothers are complicated,” George said. It was a vague stab at being conciliatory.

Anything he said now George would attribute to loopiness from pain and relief. “You don’t talk much about yours, so I don’t know,” Jesse said.  He was starting to shake with post-trauma reaction, and trying to control it.  His ribs and his nose were fighting for the title of king of the heap of pain.  His nose was winning by a nose, or maybe two noses since the pain was sometimes making him see double.

“She made me. Wouldn’t that teach you enough?” George said bitterly. With less emotion and more practicality he said, “They’ll turn up soon, let’s load the gold and go.”

Lifting anything made his ribs go insane, and his nose start to bleed again, so George made him sit it out. It made Jesse snicker internally to watch George plod by with the weight of the strongbox pressing him to within a half metre of the ground, while he rested at his ease in a neighbour’s lawn chair. Of course he’d had to take a nasty beating for this spectacle to occur but he’d already chowed down one ball of opium and figured Madame Thursday would be happy to see him if he showed up with even a fraction of the rest. In his briefly upbeat mood of anticipating some relief from the pain he realized that he was the one supposed to drive the truck back and said, “Fuck.”

“You’ll be fine,” George said. The truck made it back in one piece, so he’d been right about that.

Later, he remembered the drive back as an inebriant’s best stab at safety and legality.  Then he thought perhaps stab was not the best word, and felt again the edge against his throat, and his mortal balance being arrested by death.

After this existential pinioning, he was driving reasonably well down Highway 91 when he felt his nose drifting off toward the inside of the windshield. He remembered batting at it ineffectually when George said, rather stiffly, “Would you care to look at the road as a change of scene?”

He applied the brakes just in time and told his nose to get stuffed. George acted as spotter for the rest of the trip home to Burnaby.

“I want to keep an eye on you overnight,” George said.

“Hardly necessary. Going to smoke some and go crash,” Jesse said, and he did. George, true to his word, spent the night, and if he felt relaxed enough to sleep, as Jesse’s rudely applied drugs took hold, he did not boast about it in the morning.

Jesse completely forgot about the two guys in the back of the van, and the gold.  After he fell asleep George dealt with both, and returned to Jesse’s apartment to watch him as he slept. When he finally remembered to ask, George said that the gold was buried in Robert Burnaby Park, and the two men had been driven close to the corner of McBride and 6th and shoved out of the van where the surveillance penumbra didn’t fall.

“As far as I know,” George said, “They’re still alive. What the people who hired them, and the people they stole from are likely to do, I couldn’t guess.”

“Awesome,” Jesse said.

“Who drove the truck?” Jesse asked. after a minute.

“Parker,” George said in surprise.  “You didn’t think I was going to do it.”

George pocketed all but two balls of opium.  Before he left, he said, “We’re going to have to have a company meeting.” 

It fucking hurt, and it was probably going to earn him a beating, but it was worth it.  The back end of the steamer trunk they carried hit the walkway with a thud, just missing Jesse’s right foot.  Parker, or whatever the hell his name was, fell forward onto it, smashing his teeth and chin. He rose up cursing, holding his mouth.  After spitting out a broken incisor, Parker punched Jesse in the face a couple of times and booted him in the ribs.

Jesse had never been blind from pain before.  There was a tremendous roaring noise, and then he heard Balaclava Man say, “Forget about him. We need to get this stuff onto the truck right now and leave.” Jesse could feel a slow-motion waterfall of blood from his nose dripping onto his lap and down his shirtfront. He felt sick, but knew if he puked he might actually die, and so managed not to.

Good luck with that, Jesse thought, suddenly remembering something.

George, who had no trust in the travelling public, had put another padlock on the truck.  In order to open it, they would have to know where the other key was or take a hefty bolt-cutter — or cutting torch — to it.

They were back in a minute. Parker said to his partner, “Give me the knife.”

Holding the knife to Jesse’s throat, Parker said, all the perky cuteness gone from his voice, while ripping the duct tape off, “Where’s the fucking key.”

“You broke my nose, and now you want my help,” Jesse said, quietly. As he took a breath, his cracked ribs protested.

“Where’s the key or I’ll cut you.”

“Criminal Code of Canada section 264, uttering threats. You’re already up for 5 years apiece for forcible confinement section 279, and common assault section 268, and since you’re abetting, it’ll be share and share alike when it comes to sentencing.”

“You a fucking lawyer? Shut up, asshole,” said Balaclava Man. “Put the tape back on his mouth and cut him a couple of times, he’ll tell us fast enough.”

“That so?” came a voice out of the darkness.

Jesse laughed through his own blood as his assailants spun to face where they thought the voice was coming from.

In a quiet voice, he said, “Gentlemen, meet George, my boss.”

Balaclava Man lost his headgear.

“Aw, look at you, all naked in the face,” George said. The knife clattered on the ground, far away. “Close your eyes,” George said, and turned himself into a twenty thousand watt light, blinding the other two, since Jesse was the only one who obeyed him.

The two men staggered about, and George searched them, recovering Jesse’s stolen items and tossing them into his lap.  He relieved Parker of the duct tape and wrapped the miscreants to each other, back to back, and covered their mouths. Then he shoved Parker hard on one shoulder and the two of them fell down; Naked Face bashed his head on the stucco, as Jesse watched with a tight smile. They had started to screech behind the gags, but George said, “Shh, shh, unless you really love jail that much.”

“How’d you find me?” Jesse said, as George released him. He had felt his cold clammy skin pulling gently at his face, removing the blood. George tidied him up a little and then clapped him on the shoulder.

“Of course I installed a tracker, what am I, a moron? Even if they’d killed you I would have found them eventually and avenged you in true grindhouse fashion.”

“Oh.”

“You didn’t book this run, like you were supposed to. The truck pinged me because it was moving in the middle of the night without authorization. I get a notification when your phone goes offline, too, just in case.”

“Oh.”

“But it’s good you didn’t book this, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“George, I was really stupid,” Jesse said. “Really, really stupid.”

“Is that your idea of an apology?  Seems more like a daily affirmation. Let’s see what their loot looks like.”

It was obvious that Naked Face and Parker thought this was a really bad idea.

“I’ll put them in the back of the truck,” George said. He picked the two men up as if they were kittens, walked them the thirty metres or so to the back of the truck, and opened the tailgate. He then dropped them inside. Jesse heard something snap and one of their prisoners groan.

“Oops,” he said. “Are you going to kill them?”

“I haven’t decided,” George said. He closed and locked the door. In a conspiratorial tone, he said, “Of course I’m not, but they don’t know that.”

George, during his approach to the property, had ensured that no security cameras were working.  He noted a silent alarm, but decided not to worry Jesse about it, since he’d be the one dealing with the undoubtedly armed, and even more undoubtedly pissed-off guys who were headed their way.

Michel was busy and Jesse figured he and the client could handle it, so he didn’t call George. Parker confirmed that it would be fine with just the two of them. It was a few sticks of furniture and bags of clothes and sports equipment, he said, easy-peasy.

Jesse pulled up in Richmond, in a residential neighbourhood close to Number 3 Road. The driveway was three times wider than normal, with weeds growing through the cracks in the asphalt. There were no lights on in the house.

He killed the engine and waited. He did feel rather naked without the all-seeing eye that George had proven to be.  To be surveillance-proof in the modern world seemed among the best things about being a Sixer, along with almost everything else, except their general lack of friendliness and their sex lives.

The lack of friendliness he could deal with. Anyone friendlier than his mother was +1 out of the gate.  But the sex — the sex really bothered him.  Most of the being bothered about it was his knowledge that he was trying to throw his mental map of how things should be on an alien species. Even when he knew he was being an idiot, he couldn’t help it.

Expending so much as a single calorie worrying about how other people achieved consensual sex seemed a big waste of his tiny emotional poke, and when it came to humans he had no trouble realizing it. 

His continuing anthropomorphic and apparently useless attempts to categorize alien sex, on the other hand, were really starting to bug him.  To understand it he had to observe their courtship, if that was indeed what the hell was going on, talk to lots of other people, and correct for how most of it happened at depth in the ocean, where he’d never see it, unless somebody got footage of it. He had no hope he could twist events to make such information available. 

He had to take George and Michel’s word for it, and that made him profoundly uneasy.  There were other shapes and sizes of Sixer than the two blobular beige jelabis he knew.  To accept what they said on faith transformed him into one of those ancient chroniclers, who believed whatever they were told by exotic people they met in brothels. 

If he was going to be a stooge, he was going to be a good stooge, a learned stooge, a useful stooge, and a stooge forever prepared for disappointment, because that’s the way life trended over the long haul.

He and Colin had talked about it during an evening of serious drinking.

It had been quite the conversation. He was still buzzing with it; how much they had consumed; how much they had laughed. The relief of having someone to talk to about it who accepted the base-line of craziness without balking or scoffing had been immense.

They’d shared notes, fitting together snatches of overheard conversations; certain subjects that only came up to be set aside.

They had agreed that by human standards, they were all asexual except for Michel and Kima, and as many times as they had sex, they couldn’t manage babies. Jesse wasn’t convinced Michel wanted to be a father; George’s desperation to accomplish it as a single task seemed comical at times. Colin’s imaginative description of the mysterious and thus far invisible Kima had made him choke on his nachos.

His client appeared. The house being dark really bothered Jesse, but Parker called, “I’m keeping the lights off to make it look like there’s nothing going on over here.”

He came toward the truck.  He was dressed in dark clothing.  Ill-at-ease, Jesse slowly got down from the truck and said, “Where’s your stuff?”

“There’s a shed at the back.  I still can’t believe my dad moved all my shit out there.”

Jesse’s unease grew.  “So what happened?”

He got closer to Parker, who moved away and turned his back on him.  Jesse got out his Maglite® and Parker said, “Turn it off, man, my neighbours will think someone’s trying to rob the place!”

After leaving the flashlight on Parker long enough to be able to give a description of everything but his face, Jesse complied.

“So where do you work,” Jesse asked.

“For a telemarketing company,” Parker said.  “Like I told you.”

“Which one?” The walkway was uneven underfoot, and the shed seemed very far from the house.

“Consumer Research Canada.  They are a complete bag of dicks, too.”

Jesse had still not seen Parker’s face.

That seemed weird, and there was something else bugging him too.  He sensed that there was something really wrong but didn’t grasp what it was until Parker said, “Look, about your fee, I feel kinda bad about it because I don’t actually have the money on me. Before you get all mad, we can stop at a bank machine between here and my girlfriend’s place.”

Jesse fished the truck keys from his pocket and said, “Gimme a sec,” and casually turned to go back to the truck. On the way to the truck, he collided with another man, who was entirely dressed in black and wearing a balaclava.

“Stop right there,” the man said, in a disguised voice.

“Fuck,” Jesse said.

Balaclava Man pulled a knife and told Jesse to sit down and shut up.  Jesse obliged. His phone, flashlight, wallet and keys were taken from him.

As he reviewed his naïvety, duct-tape was stretched over his mouth (he remembered to tuck his lips in, at least) and wrapped swiftly around his wrists and ankles. After a moment he faintly heard the groan of a metal door being pried away from its lock, and then came a faint light from the backyard, which he couldn’t see the source of, as he was leaning against the side of the house. 

Jesse stood up, balancing against the house, and painfully hopped in a sideways, staggering motion toward the back of the house. He moved as quietly as he could, scuffing his knuckles against the razor-sharp stucco and grunting softly behind his gag as he went. He heard them coming with the first load and turned and sat down. As they went by, he stuck out his feet and tripped Parker.

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Can I speak to the General Manager of  Midnight Moving Co.?”

Jesse, hearing call centre noises in the background, said, “Do you have a thousand dollars cash?”

“I wondered if you could let me speak to the General Manager of Midnight Moving Co., sir?”

“We’re a legitimate company getting telemarketing calls, now?” Jesse asked, appalled. “What is this world coming to.”

“You’re on the list, sir,” the voice chirped.

Jesse pulled at his beer. “Unless you are a customer, who needs to be moved out of your house, apartment, double-wide, overturned excavator bucket, refuse bin, hobbit hole, parents’ basement —“

“Sir, may I speak to the Manager at Midnight Moving Co?”

“Sure, why not.” Jesse caved.

“Do you have any temporary staffing requirements?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have any cardboard box or storage requirements?”

“Nope.”

“Are you happy with your current cell phone service provider?”

Jesse considered this.

George and Michel were giving him burner phones every couple of weeks. Unlike most burner phones, these suckers were so big and heavy he’d had to fire up the sewing machine to make a holster, and people sometimes scoffed at his matte-black brick when he was talking on the phone. They did fit his hands though, even if they felt like a mini-workout.

Of course he had asked why these supposedly cheap phones were like the front end of a Panzer.

George was not very forthcoming. “They’re enormous because they’re custom. The batteries are supposed to be good for three weeks, which is longer than you’ll ever own one.”

The telemarketer spoke into Jesse’s silence with the same cheerful drone.

“Sir, are you happy with your current cell phone service provider?”

“Yup,” Jesse said.

“Do you have five minutes for a consumer survey?”

“Do you have a thousand bucks? Unless you want me to move you out of your apartment in the middle of the night, I have nothing to say to you.” Jesse hung up.

Four hours later, when Jesse was quite impaired, the phone rang again.

“Midnight Moving Co.”

“You move people out of their parents’ basement even when they’ve locked all their belongings in a storeroom?” came the chirpy telemarketer voice.

Jesse gathered his wits from behind the sofa cushions.

“Hello?” the voice said again.

Jesse said, “That sucks. How old is the person being moved?”

“Twenty.”

“Of legal age. Is there a place to move to?”

“My girlfriend’s parents.”

“You’re the client. How old is your girlfriend?”

“What? My age.”

“Do you have a thousand dollars?”

“I’m a telemarketer, what do you think?” and here the irritation bled through his voice.

“This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes,” Jesse said.

“Are you drunk?”

“I can do that on my own time, just as long as I’m completely clear when I’m driving,” Jesse said.

“I don’t even think I care, it’s kinda none of my business. I’ve got five hundred dollars and not much stuff.”

“Is your stuff all locked in a storeroom?”

“Yeah, I got into a fight with my mother and my dad locked all my stuff in the shed.”

“Not exactly legal.”

“They don’t exactly care.  They call the cops on me if I raise my voice to them. They’re going out of town tomorrow for a family wedding in Kelowna; I have to work at seven the next morning so I can’t go, otherwise they’d be dragging me along.”

“I hate weddings,” Jesse said conversationally.

“Once a year my parents make me watch the video of their wedding.”

“The hairstyles alone must be against the Geneva Convention.”

His client snickered. “The hair wasn’t so bad, but the music selections were a war crime, and the bridesmaids’ dresses made the camera go completely crazy.”

“Shiny?”

“Burned a hole in my eyes.  Every year since I was a baby.”

“How far to your girlfriend’s house?”

“It’s maybe five kilometres away.”

“Anybody else living in the house who might give us a hard time?”

“No, but we have to be quiet or my neighbours’ll rat us out, and I think my dad’s set up surveillance.”

“What the fuck is it with people?” Jesse said.

“Word.”

Jesse got the coordinates.

“I’m Jesse,” Jesse said.

“I’m Parker.  Dude, it’s not even all that much stuff, I just need to get it out of there and get the hell away from my parents.”

“I am reading you loud and clear.  I promise faithfully that I’ll leave the drinking until you’re at your girlfriend’s house,” Jesse said.

“If you get me out of there, drinks are gonna be on me. You know I’m going to be asking you to break the lock so I can tell my parents I didn’t do it.”

“My pleasure.”

Jesse texted Michel with the details, and mentioned that their customer was a policeman. Michel wanted to know which flavour, as he preferred the VPD to the RCMP. When he heard it was the RCMP he refused to take the job.

You can’t do that, Jesse texted back. We don’t discriminate on the basis of sex, being a cop is no different.

Fine, Michel texted back. I’ll go to the address and find a reason not to help him.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jesse said aloud.

“What’s happening?”

“My partner hates the RCMP and doesn’t want to help you.”

“She’s trying to kill me,” the cop said, slowly and distinctly.

“Then report it, or tell me why you can’t,” Jesse said.

“Her whole family is cops.”

“Oh,” said Jesse. “So the plan is to harass you to death,” he added.

“She cut the brake lines once already,” the other cop said. He looked like he was anxious to be elsewhere, but stuck in his partner’s drama.

“What? That’s a little harsher than harassment.  You do understand how it looks, right? — the hypocrisy of encouraging citizens to report attempted murder to the police when you’re not doing it.”

“Her dad’s a cop, and he covers for her. Her mom works in the office,”

“Oh,” Jesse said again.

“She’s working an overnight shift.  I want to get my stuff out tonight.”

“We’ll be there. I’ll handle Michel, he’s just being an ass,” Jesse said. “You’ll have all the help you need.”

They left.

An hour later, Michel texted.

There’s something wrong at this apartment.

Jesse replied, Wut another db?

There’s poison in the yogurt and poison in the rye.

Jesse exhaled, not knowing whether to laugh or groan.  He replied, ??

This is a crime scene but nothing’s happened yet.

You going to stay? Jesse texted. Nothing that had happened since the bang on the door had brought him any ease.

For my curiosity.

Hm, Jesse thought. Maybe they’re both trying to kill each other.

Half an hour later, Michel texted again.

I’m in the kitchen, wife comes in. She goes straight to the rye and checks it. I think she’s who poisoned it.

Oooh, now she’s beating up the side of the fridge and yelling where is he?

Not there, she cut his brake lines, Jesse replied.

Cue the husband! Like magic. Came through the side door.

Why is everyone in the world fucking crazy, Jesse texted, sighing.  He knew that Michel could run thirty kilometres an hour while texting and stopping bullets; he had no concern that he might be distracting him.

MAN I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH TO REPEAT THIS DIALOGUE 

They’re going at it? Jesse replied, pleased by the compliment.

NO SERIOUSLY she’s trying to taunt him into drinking. I won’t let him don’t worry. FUCKSTICKS 

Jesse’s heart felt like it was bouncing between his spine and his ribcage. Twenty seconds went by, and then thirty, with no text from Michel.

They drew down on each other, and fired.

I stood between them. Liable to bring the administration of justice into disrepute if they actually kill each other.

They emptied their clips, the little dears. Fucking smarts man when you get hit from both sides rapidfire.

Pricks almost broke my phone.

Jesse realized that he seemed to have quit breathing.

The tac squad. More guns, more yelling, more threats. I got a plan.

Nothing for almost a minute. The kitchen clock ticked so loud Jesse wanted to smash it off the wall.

Then, I pretended to crawl out of a kitchen cupboard like I’d been hiding there.

??

I’m standing on their guns now. Seems to have made things worse.

Since everything’s fucked already I asked them about the poisoned food.

The noise in here, unbelievable.  These two fuckers deserve each other.  I should not have interfered.

Now you’re looking around for the brass. I ate it you dumb cluck. 

At least I understand what happened here, client’s partner broke down and called the cops. 

There goes our thousand dollars, Jesse texted. What are the cops going to do to you?

Nothing, I’m already standing outside. Called for a cab on my other phone, don’t feel like walking far.

Jesse texted, They’re going to wonder where you went.

Used a different face, voice.  Also I sandwiched my appearance so I looked different from the other side.

Good luck getting a useful description of me you clownbags.

I’m gonna rest up for a day and go see Kima.  If you need to move in the next 48 call George I’m busy.

Jesse woke around three in the afternoon. He checked his messages.

“No news means wake and bake!” he said cheerfully. As he was getting everything ready, the RCMP banged on his door and demanded to speak with him.

After shoving his drug paraphernalia into a drawer, Jesse went to the door. “Unless you have a warrant, you’re not coming in, and unless I have my lawyer present, I’m not going out,” Jesse said. “I’m perfectly happy to talk to you through the door, though.”

“Open the door, sir. We just want to have a quick word with you.”

“Really? I have a copy of David Eby’s BCCLA Arrest Handbook and unless you have a warrant or tell me what this is about prior to me going anywhere, the admissability of any conversation we might have would be subject to doubt, and I will certainly sue the buttons off your uniforms.”

“There’s no need to take that tone, sir, you found a body down on 14^th and we’d like to talk to you about that incident.”

Holy shit. “We can talk about it through the door, then.”

“Can you answer a few questions?”

“Since you haven’t actually identified me as the person you think you want to be talking to, sure.”

There was an unhappy, rustling pause in the conversation.

“Sir, all we want to do is talk to you.”

“Hang on, let me get the pamphlet out about how to sue the RCMP in BC when they prevent you from leaving your house to go about your lawful business,” Jesse said. “By the way, I have a security cam and I’ve got your badge numbers, so if I ever run into you again I’ll know what to say.” He picked his tablet up from the front hall junk shelf and, cursing the slow boot time, waited to log in to the security application.

“People talk like that when they have something to hide,” one of the cops said.

Jesse lost his temper. “If you’re a cop in a relationship, there’s a two in five chance you’ve hit your spouse in the last six months. Should I be worried that you have something to hide?” Jesse was using statistics from the US, but didn’t really care, and didn’t doubt the stats sucked in Canada, too.

The consternation on the other side of the door was now palpable. He heard a murmur. The app woke up. The cops, neither of whom were older than thirty, popped up on the tablet screen in bleary colour. One was professionally expressionless.  The other looked like kicking the door down was rapidly scaling his bucket list.

“I have a customer for your business,” one of the cops said.

“And I’m going as Nicki Minaj for Halloween, so why don’t you call the business number and book an appointment?”

There was a short pause. “We don’t want a phone call linking us to the booking,” one of the cops said.

Now it was Jesse’s turn to frown. He considered his options. George had promised him that he’d never spend the night in jail.

“I’m going to open the door on two conditions. I’ve uploaded the cam footage to a secure server, so if you guys are lying, off it goes to youtube to sow your prospects with salt for the rest of forever. Also, and this is critical, repeat after me, “Mr. Jesse Silver has a medical condition which could kill him if he’s exposed to sunlight for longer than twenty seconds.”

“You have a medical condition which could kill you if you’re exposed to sunlight,” the sensible cop said glibly.

“What, is he a vampire?” the other one muttered, but Jesse heard it.

“Police harassment is real, vampires are not,” Jesse said.  “Because of my solar allergy, I have a floor to ceiling light-blocking cloth baffle in the doorway, which will prevent you from seeing into the apartment. This will make you, as cops, very, very uneasy. I honour and validate that unease. You don’t want to walk into a place where a hostile citizen is, without knowing what the hell is on the other side. I’m telling you it’s just me and my dirty laundry. No mantraps, no weapons, no tricks.  And just so we’re square, if you rip my light baffle down as you are being allowed to enter my home without a warrant, you are putting my life in danger, and the coroner will know you were warned.”

There was a sleeve in the baffle which allowed him to open the door.

“Go right and then left,” Jesse said.

The cops came in, gingerly, and scanned the apartment.

“Siddown. Did you park out front?”

“No,” said the cops, simultaneously.

“Two streets over,” one of them added.

They sat.

“Can you move me tonight?” the angry cop said.

“Prob’ly,” Jesse said. “Got a thousand dollars cash up front?”

“You’ll have it at the start of the move.”

“What’s the exigent circumstance?” Jesse asked.

“My wife’s threatening to kill me.”

Six months of working with George and Michel had refined Jesse’s ability to stay calm in the face of absurdity, violence and terror. He did not scoff.

“Well, you’re not the first man we’ve helped and you won’t be the last,” Jesse said. “Give me the address and the rendezvous time. Have you packed?”

“I can’t pack. If I put a sock in a drawer wrong she knows about it.”

“So you’ll need us to bring all the boxes, blankets, etc.”

“And as many movers as you can,” his new client said.

Michel jumped over the side of the gazebo (again) and, standing under the master bedroom window, stretched his legs until his face approached the window. Then he started elongating his neck, as well.  As it happened Cy had his back to the house. Only George saw it, and of course Colin, who heard a tap on the window and walked over from the desk where he worked in his grandmother’s room.

He was frightened and jumped back, fortunately not into anything, and then as he recovered from what was obviously a prank, sighed heavily when Michel yelled “Bring more blankets!” through the glass.

His grandmother was in one of her increasingly rare emotionally lucid moments.

“What’s happening?” she asked in a creaky whisper.

“I’m being pranked by aliens,” Colin said, openly irritated.

“Have you invited them in yet?”

“They don’t like it indoors.”

“Bring him in,” she said, in something so like her normal cheerful voice that he immediately went to obey her, and then stopped.

“This is a lovely dream — or I’m being boring and dying. Is there really an alien?”

“There are two,” Colin said painfully.  True to form, she had zoned out again. For a moment he stood and argued with himself about it, and then gave the matter over to his grandfather with the extra blankets. “She wants to meet an alien.”

George tried to respond. “I can’t actually climb the —“ and the next word was smothered against Michel’s roomy shoulder, “stairs.”

“No problem.  Chunk-style to the rescue,” Michel said. Cy called out.

“You’re never going back in my house, Michel. George is welcome and you are not.  We can meet elsewhere, but not here.”

Michel said, “I won’t prank a dying woman.”

George murmured, “Put me down you enormous hatchling. You are the stupidest person. Do you want me to punch you in your hairs? Your little squeaky hairs? Until they stop sticking out and start sticking in?”

Michel, annoyed but aware that the violence George so richly deserved would be hard to hide if only one of them was invisible, did the next best thing. He dropped George on the ground, and was rewarded with no human grunt or moan, but two almighty ‘bloops’ as cauldron-sized bubbles of lava might make.

“What was that?”

“I’d say that was George’s two main diaphragms letting go, but I didn’t have my hands on him — quite the reverse now I think of it — so I couldn’t say for sure.”

“Is he in pain?” Colin asked.

“Nah, he can grow another one in minutes, but I bet he sleeps well tonight.”

“I’m supposed to drive him home,” Colin said. George had lost his human appearance again, but anything they threw on top of him to hide him from any neighbours who might be outdoors in early October slid off like satin on marble.

“Fine. If he stays like this you know you can’t get him into the car,” Michel said, trying to be matter-of-fact.

“It was like trying to move mercury,” Colin said.

“If you don’t have the stickum you can’t move Sixers,” Michel said. “Take me to your grand-mère, I promise I’ll play nice.”

“You don’t get to scare the crap out of me and Cy and then visit Muriel like it ain’t no thing. Learn manners or get lost.” Colin went back inside.

“Is he always this way?” Michel asked.

“He’s a snotty son-of-a-bitch, but he’s also useful and kind in a practical way,” his grandfather said.

“He wasn’t making any concessions to me being a Sixer,” Michel said.

“Why the hell should he, when George has made no secret of you being part of the network that dropped 50 bodies in Montreal in two years, back in the day, events which I read about with horror and dismay as they occurred,” Cy said. Waving one hand airily, “We also know you’ve abandoned violence against humans for politics or sport. George explained that you’ve done it to reduce your footprint.”

“I s’pose that’s one way of looking at it.  George said if I kept messing with humans there’d be lots hard to explain and even more difficult to deny, and that the earlier I gave it up — my killing and wounding and all that — like a good sport, while I kept doing what I like best anyway, which is thumping assholes and banging Kima, the better off I’d be.”

“You make it sound quite reasonable,” Cy said.

“Well, that’s the thing, George can make you think that something ludicrous can be tapped with a wand and made plausible. And he never by definition lies, and he changes languages to communicate depending on the not-definitely-lies he wants to tell, because every language we mutually speak offers tactical advantage in some way.  He never learned French, no matter how much I bugged him, and I’ll think him a moron and a very poor friend until he dies for dodging it. My brain gives me a weird combination of French, Greek and Italian, when I’m thinking in English space, and I know I speak fluently but I don’t want to, mostly to protest how disgusting English is.”