Tag: Midnite Moving Co

Anh was still working through how to deal with alien murderers, as their publicist-in-training, and seemed to be having a rough go, if her facial expressions were anything to go by.

George said, in a strange voice, “Jesse.”

Jesse started. What the hell did George want him to do about this situation?  Fix it? It was best to start with a question.

“Anh?” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said impatiently. She wasn’t making eye contact with anyone.

“No, you aren’t. Your breathing is shallow and you’re jumpy.”

“I’m like that all the time.”

George shook his head slightly.

Jesse said, “Fine, let’s put that to the test. How would you deal with this little —“

“Background problem,” George supplied.

“Works for me,” Jesse said.

“Is there any physical evidence linking you to these alleged murders?” Anh asked.

Michel grinned. “Oh, no,” he said.

“No,” George said.

“Then how do I know it happened at all and you’re not jerking me around?” Anh said.

“Because it was a very important event in making me understand how summary justice, however sweet in prospect, is virtually always a bad idea in practice,” George said.

‘Because I was jealous of George for breaking the taboo even if he obviously felt like shit about it afterward and I wanted to try it.”

“You waited 20 years to try it yourself, you dirty great clownbag,” George interjected. “You had lots of time to understand what a terrible idea it was.”

“You told me about it, remember? You could have hidden it, because of that thing we don’t talk about in front of the humans.  The trouble was I liked it a lot, way more than I thought I would, and way more than you ever would, and then one day I sat down and tried to do the math on how many lives I’d wrecked by killing some asshole.”

“That was when you called me to ask me how to do it,” Kima said.

“Well, yeah, and also —“

“Chut,” said Kima, and George gave his one-bark laugh.

Michel pushed red, glowing eyes out of his face until they bounced off George’s face.  George did not startle or move; he looked like a plasticized concrete statue of himself.

“What’s the thing you don’t talk about in front of the humans?” Anh said.

“Which one?” Michel asked with interest. “Is it regarding physical deformities? Mental health troubles? Being too cozy with his mother?”

“Shut the hell up,” George said.

“Make me,” Michel said. The conversation switched over to Greek.

“This,” Anh said.

Sparrow said, “I don’t envy you. The water taxi is all the alien shenanigans I want.”

“What kind of a deal did you make with George, anyway?” Jesse asked.

Sparrow grinned and his eyebrows briefly flashed upward. “A decent hourly rate plus fuel,” he said.

“You know that’s not what he meant,” Avtar said.

“You’re all settlers to me. If George won’t tell you don’t expect me to fill you in.”

“What,” Anh said. “George cut a deal with the —”

“Jesse, Anh,” George said, briefly breaking away from his huddle with Michel, “Give it a rest. There’s lots you’ll never know, try to get acclimated to that.”

“I need full disclosure,” Anh said.

Sparrow got up, said, “Goodnight everyone.  Michel, Kima, I’ll see you back at the boat.”

He stopped in the doorway, turned and said, “I want you to know, I think you’re all fucking crazy.”

The door closer sighed. The door banged shut.

“Well, that’s kind of ableist,” Anh said blankly.

“Avtar,” Jesse said conversationally. “Let’s go drink beer.”

“I’m not invited?” Anh asked

“Engineers never hang out with PR and marketing people.  It doesn’t work out for us, and we keep getting asked to meetings about our feelings on website layout,” Avtar said.

“And I’m not going to tell you why I won’t drink beer with you unless you buy the first round,” Jesse said, his face unnaturally straight.

“No, the first two, there’d be three of us,” Avtar said.

“And then we leave after the second round? Diabolical old chap, let’s see if  she falls for it,” Jesse said.

“You’ll only go drinking with me if I buy the first two rounds — are you fuckers negging me?”

Jesse and Avtar exchanged a look.

Jesse said, with suspicious dignity. “I thought I was trying to lighten the mood by teasing my new colleague, but I can see I went too far. By all means, let’s go drinking. We’ll tell the server we want separate cheques, so Anh can be spared from breaking her perfect record for never having had to buy a man a drink.”

Smiling now, Anh said,”That’s bullshit. I’ve bought men drinks before.”

“Well, what’s stopping you then?” Avtar asked, with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.

“Check, and mate,” Jesse said.

“This meeting is officially over, get lost,” Michel said.

“What he said,” George said. “Avtar, put the whole thing on my tab.”

“You’re the boss,” Avtar said.

“No, I am,” Kima said.

They all looked at her.

George laughed.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.  “She’s joking.”

“Really?” Michel said.

“What are you going to do about all of those threats?” Anh asked, after a silence. She looked at Michel, who was petting Kima again, and wondered why, when George said she was his mate, he wasn’t the one touching her.

“The biggest problem is a local problem, so I’m coming up with local solutions. I can’t talk about all of them since many of the people I’m negotiating with are far richer than I am, and much more shy.”

“Could you at least give me a rough idea of your strategy?” Sparrow asked. “I’m the one who has to stay here, whatever you have planned. The rest of you are settlers.”

George sighed. “Rich people aren’t very nice,” he said. “But they consistently focus on three things: fondling the levers of power so as to acquire or spend other people’s money, protecting their children from harm, and finding ever more esoteric way to cheat on their taxes. So my solution to the local problem is to come up with a way to grease people who are already rich so they don’t bother me or my …”

“Retainers,” Jesse said.

“Minions,” said Avtar.

“Enablers,” said Sparrow.

“Are we playing a game now? Staff,” Anh said.

“Chums,” said Michel.

“Associates,” said Kima.

“These and more besides, but I’m going to say associates since it doesn’t automatically imply a hierarchical relationship,” George said.

And Kima said it, everyone else in the room thought, eyeing each other.

“I’d feel better,” Avtar said, “If your style didn’t peg out between anarchic trope-smasher and secretive plot-hatching supervillain.”

George acknowledged the hit, throwing up his hands. “Me too. It’s a shame that my birthright of spaceflight is being held up by my sentimental desire to prevent Vancouver from becoming an ongoing mass casualty event. After all, if I went to NASA and told them I’d make all their rockets fall over unless they sent me into space, I’d get my wish, but I’d also be condemning my children to either making peace on my behalf, at the cost of many lives, or deciding that human beings are feedstock for whatever plans  they make for themselves.  I want to leave a legacy of some form of legal way of dealing with disputes between humans and Sixers.” Michel wrapped his arm several times around his neck and and mimed hanging himself.

“Summary justice aside, another sapient species on this planet is going to cause all kinds of problems. If I can’t make one major city safe for Sixers, there will be no way to convince them that it’s safe to live with humans anywhere.”

“I thought humans couldn’t kill you,” Sparrow said, confused.

“If we’re sick, asleep, tricked or trapped, humans can kill us, and have killed us. We don’t kill you because there appears to be a species wide lockout. Which I’ve broken.”

“What?”

“I’ve killed human beings.” George spoke flatly.

All the humans looked at each other.

“So have I,” Michel said.

“I ate a dead human child once,” Kima said.

“Holy shit,” Sparrow said blankly.

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “Not shit you want on your resumé. Who did you kill?”

“I killed two concentration camp guards, during the Second World War,” George said.  “I was very, very angry, and I’ll never do it again. Michel, you probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

“What? This is the fun part. I was a hit man for the Mafia, in Montréal, back in the sixties and early seventies.”

“Oh my god,” Anh said. “You can’t spin that.”

“I’m a reformed character,” Michel said primly. “I don’t even eat meat anymore.”

“Did you eat the men you killed?” Anh cried in horror. “Please tell me you didn’t eat them.”

“No, it was bury and dump,” Michel said, frowning.

“And Kima!” Anh said, clearly horrified.

“It was before I got my brain,” Kima said.

“What, just picked it up at Save-On?” Avtar said.

“It is an expression,” Kima said. The rise in volume indicated annoyance. “I was swimming in the ocean and found the body of a drowned child. I dragged it to the bottom and ate her over time. I would never kill a sentient child, although I probably would kill an orca calf if I had to.”

“We hate orcas.”

“That’s an inconvenient loathing, here in Vancouver,” Avtar said.  Kima had already shared that tidbit with him.

“You’re very fluent.”

“Fluency implies not having to work to speak. I have to stop using the rest of my brain to leave enough room to speak English and follow a conversation properly. I don’t have problems with mathematical notation or chemistry and I prefer text to speech as it is much less emotional while being processed.”

Anh tried a different tack. “George says you can be any colour of the rainbow.”

“Or I can look like a human.” A glamorous woman, with radiant skin and immense dark eyes, dressed with rich elegance in the style of the late forties, appeared to perch on the barrel.  Her expression was rather waxen, and her motion almost too smooth, but most people would have looked at her twice just for her makeup, not realizing she wasn’t human.

“Wow!” said Jesse.

Colin said, “Brava!”

Anh was speechless.

Kima reverted to her normal appearance. It was very tiring to stand in the air and she only did it to show off.

Stephanie and George quietly returned to the apartment. Stephanie came no further in than the entrance way, and as everyone turned to look at them, said, “I’m not feeling well enough to participate this evening, so I’m going home.”

“Colin,” George said. Colin nodded, rose and said, “Let me give you a lift.” Stephanie looked at George, who said, “He’ll get you to your door.”

“I could take a cab,” Stephanie said.

“I guarantee that my grandad’s Lincoln is more comfy,” Colin said. “And it’s got wifi,” he said, as if this would be the clincher.

Stephanie gave a wan smile of agreement and went to gather her things. They departed.

“Well,” George said. “The smartest and hardest working woman in Vancouver thinks we’re all a bunch of idiots.”

“She can speak for herself,” Sparrow said heavily.

George said, “I concur, but for the meantime, the secret’s safe and she’s scaled back her involvement. If you run into her, which doesn’t seem likely, since she never does anything except go to work, go home, and go to City functions under protest, pretend you don’t know her.”

“I’ve forgotten who she is already,” Michel said, coming in off the balcony. “I don’t mind being around humans who hate and fear me when they deserve to feel crappy, but that was a bit much.”

“Please don’t mock her,” George said. For a moment, he seemed both exhausted and downcast. Brightening, he said, “There’s always the magic agenda.”

“You’ve made it more sound more interesting than when she first suggested it,” Avtar said.

“It’s not the agenda that’s interesting, it’s the assumptions she made doing the ‘SWOT’ analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Let’s not forget that she’s received the Feds’ briefing for municipal leaders on terroristic and other threats to urban civilians.”

Jesse said, “Do you suppose a properly trained realist could ever really fit in with your crew?”

Ignoring him, George said, “There are, according to her, six separate threats to the project of getting me into space. One is me, two is all you including you two,” and here he stabbed a finger at Kima, who ignored him, and then Michel, who shrugged elaborately, “three is local law enforcement, four is the Canadian Forces,” and here Jesse snickered, thinking of the four-tanks-and-a-popgun Canadian military, “five is international sanction including whatever your biggest ally, bully and trading partner, the US, chooses to hand out, and six is well-funded non-state actors.”

“Holy crap,” Avtar said. Jesse felt stupid for laughing.

“Put like that,” George said, “It does seem like a really dumb idea. Which is why I’m trying to figure out how to prevent the worst of what could happen. Jesse, I hope you understand why I wanted you to bring your colourful phiz to the party.  Being my associate is an existential risk and I thought a reminder might be useful.”

“Well, I’m already fucked,” Avtar said cheerfully.

“How so?” Jesse asked.

“Who do you think is spoofing the telecoms for your free secure phone service?” Avtar said.

“With my help,” Kima said.

“Well, yeah,” Avtar said.  “You told me how to do it, I just implemented it. But I suspect I’m the one that will do the time.”

“Oh,” Sparrow said. They all looked at each other. “Thanks for giving me all these names and faces for me to rat out during an ‘enhanced interrogation’,” he said.

“It would have been hard to have a really effective criminal conspiracy without secure coms,” Avtar pointed out.

Jesse said, smiling his toddler smile, “I suppose we can all be thankful you’re helping aliens instead of the Hell’s Angels. George, you said I’d never spend a day in jail over something I did for you.”

Kima’s uncomfortable voice said, “If George is dead he can’t help anybody.”

“But you’ll avenge me, right?” George said. It was obviously a running gag. Michel was swinging his head from side to side in a large, unequivocal ’NO’, while shooting out his lower lip.

“That isn’t traditional for our people,” Kima said. “Either the killing or the vengeance,” she added, to clarify. “At least since we got to Earth,” she added, which clarified nothing.

George answered the implied question. “Jesse, I can’t protect you, and even if I had an army of Sixers at my command — possibly one of the most horrific images I can conjure in a lifetime that has spanned the Armenian Genocide, the Great War, the Second World War, about a hundred and fifty coups and revolutions, the Ukrainian famine, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur — I probably still couldn’t protect you. It’s possible that every last one of you, sooner rather than later, will be jailed, in secret, for life.”

“Which is one of the reasons you have a retired judge in your corner,” Michel said. “Very handy.”

“Colin’s not here to be offended, so I may as well say it: His grandad won’t live forever. Once he’s gone I’ll be paying for my legal help, just like everyone else.”

“He’s working pro bono?” Jesse said, startled.

“Not exactly,” George said, “but he’s been very modest in his demands.”

“Having warned us,” Anh said suddenly, “What would you do if we walked out the door?”

“To you? Nothing. You’re all independent actors.”

“Oh man,” Sparrow said. “I almost wish I could believe something that stupid.”

“I’m not a man, which is why the whole stupid issue comes up,” George said.

He let that sink in, and tried to shift the meeting back to its original purpose.

“I’ve asked for your help because I want to prevent something like Chelyabinsk. I want to become an astronaut and then fly a mission to keep an eye on everything that’s any size moving at any speed upsun of Earth.”

“You want to address a planetary threat,” Avtar said, smiling. He was on board, stating the mission with pride. Jesse started to feel jealous, that Avtar was more in the know, and then he tucked it away. George was talking again.

“I think I’m uniquely qualified for the job, as well as wanting it so badly that I’m prepared to suborn half the public officials in a town the size of Vancouver.”

“So you are bribing people,” Colin said, straight-faced.

“One might consider it filling a war-chest, although variously distributed among interested parties,” George said. “Except it isn’t for a war.”

Colin finally woke to the reason there was a Musqueam man sitting among them. He took a breath, and then George shoved a tiny diaphragm on the end of a tiny invisible tentacle into his ear and said, “Not.another.word.” Looking shocked and sitting back with a twitch of his shoulders, Colin thought better of speaking.

Stephanie returned to the circle and sat down.

“I trust you are feeling better. You mentioned an agenda,” George said politely.

“It seems pointless,” she said. She deliberately looked anywhere but at the barrel. “And nobody is taking notes.”

Kima put her diaphragm over the side and started playing back the audio of the meeting. “I asked a number of people to come tonight,” they heard.

“What?” Stephanie said blankly

“George, a little honesty, please,” Jesse said, shifting uncomfortably in his tiny chair. “Sixers have the ability to take continuous audio and video recordings.”

Kima hung a laptop-screen-sized blob of herself over the side of the barrel and showed a more or less colour image of the room. It panned around until she was looking at herself. They all stared at it, including Stephanie, with varying degrees of fascination and dread. 

Then the lens dove into the barrel and started weaving itself through her tentacles. You could see light coming up, and sparkling on the ceiling. A tiny airplane, pulling a banner stating GEORGE IS A DOOFUS / GEORGES EST ÉCÅ’URANT, appeared to fly through an equally tiny space in the water. Jesse, Colin and Avtar all cracked up. There was a flurry of splashing in the barrel as Kima chased down Michel’s tentacle, which was responsible for the visual, and ejected it.

“Ow,” Michel mouthed through the glass. Jesse wondered where Michel had squeezed his tentacle through and just how narrow a hole he could squeeze through.

“Holy crap,” said Anh. “Do you have video of other Sixers? Of any gatherings of Sixers? Documenting all of this is really important.”

George said, “Yes and no. Without the express permission of any other Sixers shown, we can’t share it.”

“Point being,” Avtar said, “that anything you say to a Sixer can be recorded.”

George said, “Assume that we are recording. Memory doesn’t work in Sixers the way they do in humans.”

“You’ve recorded everything I’ve ever said to you?” Stephanie said.

“Yes. I need to keep the recordings, as I use them to track action items,” George said apologetically.

“You can delete them?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” George said, after a pause. “I can shove them away into a corner, but I’m not convinced I can delete them. I can make them unavailable to other Sixers through the social tentacle, but other than that, I couldn’t say.  May I remind you that one of the reasons I’m coming out is so that we can all learn, Sixers and humans, what our physiology consists of.”

Stephanie said, “George, may I speak to you privately?”

Colin turned to her with an expression of disbelief, and was going to say something when George poked him.

“Sure,” he said. ‘Talk among yourselves,” he said, and they stepped out into the hall.

“We’re toast if she quits,” Sparrow said.

“Who is she?” Colin said uneasily.

“The City Manager,” Sparrow said.

“Of the City of Vancouver?” Colin said, sharply.

“Yup.”

“George’ll find somebody else,” Jesse said. “And he’s kinda got her over a large blue barrel.”

“Like all of us,” Avtar said, but if anything he seemed amused rather than irritated.

“So Kima, who did you meet first?” Anh asked. The crosstalk started.

“I met the man in the costume and then Avtar,” Kima said.  “Then Sparrow and his people.  And then you guys.”

“When did you learn English?”

“I’m still learning English.  It is a ugly language,” she said.

“The agenda,” Stephanie said, with a degree of enunciation which in itself commanded attention.

“After we go round the room,” Anh said, moving her forefinger in a circle and looking at everyone, “and I need to know which of you are aliens. I’ll start with me. I’m Anh. I’m the media intern.”

“You getting paid?” Jesse and Colin said. They looked at each other and Colin said, “Jinx.”

“Don’t feel obliged to answer,” George said peaceably, as Anh drew a breath.

“Then I won’t,” she said, and looked directly at Jesse, who said, “Jesse, driver.”

“Who punched your face in, Jesse?” Anh asked.

“I never saw his ID,” Jesse said, in the blank tone he had once used when his mother was grilling him. “We’re giving our names now,” he said, frowning, and glanced at Colin.

“Colin, research and logistics.”

“Congratulations, Kima’s asleep,” Michel said, pulling his hand out of the bucket. “You guys are fucking boring. I’m going out on the balcony.”

Jesse and Colin waved at his back, more or less at the same time. “The entrainment is complete,” Colin said under his breath.

George said, “That’s Michel, and he’s an alien using a human appearance. Michel, without scaring the neighbours, show your true form.”

Michel obliged, held the pose for a couple of seconds, and then they could hear the balcony door open and slide shut; Michel vanished. George heard Stephanie gasp, and then try to control her breathing.

“I am not asleep,” Kima said. She braced herself on all of her tentacles and  balanced on the edge of the barrel.  Stephanie’s blood pressure tanked and George caught her before she slid out of her chair and hit her head on the floor. Kima, sensing that rearing up like that was not very friendly, slid back into the bucket with a bubbling sound.

Jesse and Colin fetched water and sat Stephanie up. Sparrow sat with his eyes closed, no more than perceptibly shaking his head.

Everyone else was trying to look at anyone else but Kima. Kima had all the manners of a toddler, and it was quite unnerving, except to Jesse, who had to assume that Michel standing outside was either a signal of trust that Kima wouldn’t do anything stupid or a desire to have no responsibility for the outcome if she did. Or both. He was a canny bastard, that Michel.

Those in the circle made anxious noises of concern until Stephanie came to. She excused herself to the bathroom, fending off the assistance of both young men with thanks and a wan smile.  In her absence, Colin, with what appeared to be his normal commonsensical officiousness, picked up her agenda from where it had fallen next to her chair and wondered aloud if they should continue with the check-in and then start in on the agenda.

George looked at Colin for a long moment.

“Everyone in this room is in danger because of me. Stephanie fainted because that’s a reasonable thing for a human being to do the first time they see Kima. She’s out of the room, so let me just say she’s one of the people that’s going to make O-day a success or a failure. Success means nobody dies.  Failure means the city burns down.”

“The only real agenda today is that you get to know each other. I can’t predict what makes certain people like each other and others not, and in that way Sixers are just like people.”

“I like Avtar,” Kima said.

Avtar briefly showed all of his teeth, and then settled into a more social smile.

“Because he’s intelligent and helpful,” Kima added.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Sparrow said.

Kima said something in Halq’eméylem and Sparrow looked thoughtful.

“Is that the Sixer language?” Anh asked.

“No,” George said. “We’re learning downriver Halq’eméylem.”

The balcony door slid open, and Michel said, “I already know both official languages. My brain is “officially” full.”

Full of something, that’s for sure, Jesse thought.

“There’s no Sixer language that matches the auditory range of human beings,” Kima said.  She was trying to be helpful. Everyone was looking at her again.  She interpreted this to mean that they wanted her to keep talking, so she added, “Sixers communicate with light through a modified tentacle. We link up, in pairs, and speak through a pipe analogous to a biological fibre-optic cable.”

“Is there any way to translate that into English?”

“Once we’re living openly among humans, it will be the only means of communication we have which can’t be hacked,” George said placidly. “There is not a snowball’s chance that other Sixers would sit still for us translating the language of light.”

Jesse felt really, really sorry for her, whoever the hell she was.

Colin thought, I should know who this is.

Sparrow and Avtar, who both knew Stephanie virtually but had not previously met her, looked at each other and smiled, and then gave welcoming smiles to Stephanie, who accepted them with some relief.

“I took the liberty of bringing an agenda,” Stephanie said.

Michel said, “If you think it will help.”

The buzzer sounded again. Once again, all the humans jumped, and in reaction both Colin and Jesse started to giggle into their hands. Kima took her diaphragm along for the ride this time and as her tentacle hovered over the button she bellowed into the speakerphone, “Who is it?” in her unnerving voice.

A young woman said, “Who’s this? Is George there?”

“This is Kima. George is here. Who are you?”

George made his eyes pop out, with no subtlety but brevity. “Let her in, Kima,” he said.

Kima buzzed the anonymous woman in.

“Notice how all the women are late,” Jesse whispered.

“Steady on old son they actually have lives,” Colin whispered back, and they started giggling again.

“I’m going to make you swap spots with Avtar if you don’t quit,” George said.

“I’m fine over here with Michel. C’mon guys it’s like you’re passing notes in school,” Avtar said.

“I was homeschooled, but I appreciate the metaphor,” Jesse said raising his hand in acceptance. Being around Colin was bringing out his inner snarks. His qualms about Kima, who was every bit as compelling and remarkable as rumour had encompassed, were making him jittery and talkative, rather than terrified and silent.

“Both of you, be quiet, unless you have something to say germane to our purpose,” George said.

Colin rose five seconds before the knock, and ushered in a woman in her twenties, notably short and Asian. Once again he hung up the newcomer’s coat. “Colin,” he said. “Anh,” she said.

Colin brought up another chair. Jesse thought he was enjoying the sidekick gig too much, and slapped himself mentally for being so narrow-minded.

Colin after all was able to make himself useful in field conditions around aliens, a skill which would likely keep him employed in the future — if it didn’t wind him up in a black site for the rest of his short life, as he had darkly predicted over beer at some hipster dive in East Van.

Jesse remembered frowning as Colin got all gloomy.  “Didn’t he give you the speech?”

“What speech?” Colin said. He was trying to drink everything on the board that wasn’t an IPA.

“Didn’t he tell you you’d never spend a night in jail on his account?”

“I always thought that meant that he’d kill me,” Colin said, apparently serious.

“Lemme get this — fuck man I don’t think I could — I mean why the hell would you work for a guy that you think would kill you if you crossed him? He told me he’d come get me, with lawyers or without.”

“You think he’d do the same for me?” Colin said. “Remember, I work for my granddad, not him.”

“I’m not sure George sees it that way, but whatever. He can’t keep all the gradations of ownership,” here Jesse turned his hands into mock fireworks, “and employment and government straight in practice, for all he knows the codes. I’m certain he thinks of you as part of his familia. The rest of us crew of even-tempered non-conformists would prob’ly not be happy at him ditching you, and even if no-one else cared I would.”

This heartening speech, followed by a few others, allowed Colin to toss his angst overboard (they were drinking at the Rowing Club at that point, neither of them could remember afterward why, although Jesse thought it had something to do with losing a bet about running around Lost Lagoon.) Colin was further cheered by the thought that Michel would pry prison bars apart to win his freedom, and their pub crawl continued until both of them got puking sick within minutes of each other.

“I’m a lightweight — haaaaggh-khuhk-khohk,” said Jesse. His size was no defence, and he’d gotten a late start on alcohol, since bioMom didn’t drink and Rhonda didn’t drink at home, preferring to binge elsewhere. Colin was almost a stealth puker, which seemed at the time somehow admirable.

It was also during this record-breaking evening of debauchery that Colin tried to tell Jesse how hard it was to be a white guy who liked Asian girls while living in Vancouver.

“I’ll have to stop you right there,” Jesse said. “What you’re saying is gross, sexist, not news and not calculated to make me like you.”

“Whaaat? This is a boys’ night out,” Colin said, slurring.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting drunk and looking at women. I’m just asking you not to talk about it or leer while you’re doing it.”

“There is just no fucking escaping from feminists,” Colin said, disgusted.

Jesse emitted a cartoon laugh and said, “I’m living proof you can escape from feminists.  Escaping from feminism, though, unless you want to live in a remote compound free of birth control and Person of Interest re-runs, that’s a little harder to arrange.”

“You’re a right fuckin’ killjoy, you are,” Colin said.

“I have all the joy I need to stay sane, and I wasn’t put on earth to piss on someone else’s. When you act like a jerk toward women, or talk about them among men or women as if they neither need nor deserve agency, you’re hurting women’s joy. You can have all the goddamned sex you want — and then some — without hurting any women’s joy. Once you figure that out — and get serious about what you need out of sex, companionship, parenthood and partnership — your requirement to talk tough about women in front of other men will vanish.”

“I don’t want any of those things but sex and companionship,” Colin said, serious.

“Then find a woman who wants to get laid and have a well-mannered companion for family gatherings, and doesn’t want children or a live-in boyfriend.”

“Where the hell do you find a woman like that?”

“I’m not you. And I’m not the one with a thing for petite Asian woman so why don’t you start by looking where they are.”

“I suppose I could go back to school, except at this point I’m ancient.” Colin was twenty-seven. Of course, he was an old soul, Jesse thought, trying not to guffaw. Half a second later he was sniggering.

“You think I sound like an idiot. I’m not a hyper-buff lumberjack dude with forearms like fucking cord wood,” Colin had said, reacting to the mockery. 

It was with these recent words in mind that Jesse observed how his friend had become mute in the presence of the newcomer.

George said, looking around the room, “Do you wish to meet Kima?”

Sparrow said nothing, presumably because he’d met her. Avtar said, “It’d be an honour,” and Jesse heard Michel make a noise of disbelief through the open balcony door. He and Colin glanced at each other, and nodded at George, who followed them out. In the doorway, Jesse turned, and having noticed that George was tense, said, “Quit worrying, she’ll be fine.”

Michel appeared to be holding hands with a forty-five kilo cuttlefish. Four smallish tentacles, beige speckled with brown, boiled over the side of the barrel. They reached out to grasp the hands of Colin, Jesse, Avtar and George, all of whom, with varying degrees of comfort, surrendered to the gesture.

“Hi,” said Kima.  Her voice was pitched the same as a woman’s, but sounded robotic.

“Hi,” Jesse said. “Can I pick you up?”

Everyone but Michel looked at him as if he was nuts. Michel, of course, was grinning and waiting to see what would happen next.

“What? She wanted to know if I could carry her!” Jesse said, and stood next to the barrel. Kima flowed over the side and, grasping his clothes and his shoulders, draped herself around him. She put her diaphragm against his ear and whispered, “George likes you. I want to like you too.”

He whispered back, “If you tell me how to be your friend, I’ll try.”

“Okay.”

She nearly pushed him over as she dived back into the bucket. Michel, who had been expecting it, turned himself into a shield and prevented the displaced water from flying all over their guests.

“Nicely done,” George said. “It’s a little chilly for the folks, so I’m going back inside for the meeting. Michel, if you’d do the honours.”

“Did I err?” Jesse said, into the atmosphere of general disapproval.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” Avtar said.

“Me either,” Colin said.

Sparrow had watched from inside and was slowly shaking his head from side to side as they came back in.

“Did you disrespect her by picking her up?” he asked in a low voice.

“She’ll be the judge of that,” George said, softly.

“She’s an elder, you can’t just throw her around,” Sparrow said.

“That isn’t what happened,” George said.

There were new folding chairs in the apartment, set up in a circle around the coffee table, which was water-damaged enough to have been rescued from an alley.  George gestured for everyone to sit.

“I asked a number of people to come tonight. The most distinguished guest is Sparrow, so I’ll ask him to open the meeting.”

Sparrow looked at George, and there was a long silence.

“Should I open with a blessing?” Sparrow said.

“We’re on your land,” George said. “I’ll follow your lead.”

Michel tip-walked the barrel in, sloshing a little, set it between himself and George and sat.

Sparrow rose, intoned his way through three sentences of what might have been a prayer, and sat down again.

“I’ve asked the Creator and our ancestors to watch over what we do,” he said.

“Thank you,” Jesse and George said, simultaneously.

“Are you guys having a bromance or something?” Colin said resentfully.

“No, that’s me and Michel,” Jesse said. Michel rolled his eyes and then yawned.

“Jesse’s beating raised a fairly serious issue for me,” George said. “Being associated with me is going to put every one of you at risk.”

“I thought Jesse being a silly bugger put his own self at risk,” Michel said.

“Kinda how I was thinking about it,” Jesse said.

The entry buzzer sounded and all the humans jumped. Kima extended a tentacle across the room and held down the button. Sparrow put his hand over his mouth to hide a smile.

George sighed. “Kima, you’re supposed to check who it is first.”

“It’s the frightened one,” Kima said. “I was looking out the window,” she added.

“Seriously,” Jesse said. “The frightened one? You guys scare the shit out of me all the time.”

“Stephanie,” George said. “Her name is Stephanie. She doesn’t want to be here, so give her a welcome.”

“With no food?” Sparrow said.

“Yeah, George, you know about humans and food,” Colin said.

“There’s pop in the fridge, and snacks on the counter,” Michel said. “Don’t all thank me at once.”

“Thanks, Michel,” Jesse said.

“But — there are no plates,” Colin said, having gotten up to inspect the food. He brought out a couple of cans of pop and a bag of nacho chips, which Jesse promptly ripped open.

There was a timid little knock on the door, and Colin, who was closest, answered.

A polished professional woman, white, in her early forties, eyes wide and expression guarded, was standing there.  Colin said, “Hi, I’m Colin,” and shook her hand to prove that he wasn’t an alien.

“Stephanie,” she said.

She gave a tight little smile as Colin took her coat and hung it up, and walked, with obvious reluctance, into the room.

“Please, take a seat. We were just getting started,” George said.

“I’m George.”

“Sparrow.”

“Jesse.”

“Colin.”

“Avtar.”

“Michel.”

Kima raised a tentacle and waved it without speaking. Stephanie sank into her seat with a look of polite horror and the faintest detectable twitch of disgust.

The business phone stayed quiet which was both predictable and a blessing. It was now the full-on cold-and-rainy season and people were staying put, the way they do when they don’t want to break up right before Christmas or move house in a howling gale.

As a concession to Jesse, George deferred the ‘Inaugural all-hands meeting’ until three days after his beating, and scheduled it for half an hour after sunset.

Jesse had made the best of his ‘time off’.

Kelli, one of Jesse’s women friends, had brought herself and her entertaining carpetbag along the next day, only to stand in the doorway in perplexity at the story his bruises were telling.

Rather than demanding sex, which he had been expecting, she had tended his wounds with arnica and his many aches with judicious, gentle massage, and left him tucked in bed, blasted, with the earphones in and his favourite mix tape going. She hadn’t slept over, and he hadn’t heard her leave.

He called Lark the next day. Lark was dumping him, mostly by avoiding any communication, and he felt grisly about it. The concussion made him irritable, nauseated, and weepy.

I almost died. Whyyyyy won’t she talk to me. But why give a shit that one of your girlfriends is dumping you when your other girlfriend is being A PAL, Jesse thought. There was sarcasm in there, but it was drowned in self-pity.

He called Raven, who came through the door determined to be full of bustle and cheer, only to burst into tears when she saw him.

“That bad?” He laughed at her expression and burst his lip open again.

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“‘Cause George helped himself to some of the stuff they were trying to steal.”

“What?”

“Also, my phone isn’t technically legal, or even technically possible, and George has made it clear that I gotta smash it before a cop gets hold of it.”

“You have a concussion and you’re working for a thief who steals from thieves.” She took a deep breath, and stared at him with narrowed eyes.

“Mebbe, but he was smart enough to put a tracker on the truck and figure out I was in trouble, otherwise you might be arranging my funeral right now,” Jesse said. He fell silent and lay back.  Raven got him to eat something nourishing and inoffensive, and gave him a two litre jug of lime flavoured fizzy water, and then left for her shift.

The head pain was a staircase made of broken glass that he scaled to rational thought at his peril. The nose pain had settled into being crappy instead of overwhelming. It amazed him that with all this pain, he could still clearly distinguish the head bash from his broken nose. He felt resentful that he hadn’t gone to hospital, and also very relieved. He knew that for unicorns like him, hospitals were places where well-intentioned and underpaid people got carte blanche to make fatal mistakes.

George had tended to him, roughly and effectively, even if he’d sauntered off with all the g.d. opium, which seemed paternalistic after they’d looted it fair and square. He knew what George was doing and it pissed him off.

He was on T3s, sourced god knew where, brought by George the next day. George told him not to move or watch TV for at least two more days.

Kelli hadn’t made him move that much, since he’d had the sense to tell her he was concussed. She had complained about him not going to the hospital either.

Jesse thought suddenly of his mother, shoving her face in his face, screaming, screaming, but never hitting, because that would be wrong. 

It was men who’d hit him; tied him up and hit him.  He didn’t mind that they’d hit him, strangely, but every time he thought about them tying him up so he couldn’t defend himself, he could feel his blood pressure rise so that his nose pulsed in agony.  Michel called him and said the whole affair was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.  He must have heard about the beating from George; there was no way Jesse was going to call Michel merely to listen to him Monday morning quarterback his way through everything he’d done wrong. He hung up on him, with a cold, “This isn’t helping me recuperate, you wad,” and Michel had had the decency not to call back. His voice sounded stupid to him, and he couldn’t really breathe through his nose yet.

It was an alien who’d cared for him, somewhere he felt safe.

He couldn’t concentrate.  His thoughts stammered and pinned themselves to trivia.

He was pleased the meeting was taking place on his terms, and annoyed that everyone would see his bruises. He considered himself to be a meek individual, although stubborn if crossed, and wondered if his unevenly colourful face would hurt his chances of making friends or being taken seriously.

In the event, he was fine.

Colin he already knew. They nodded to each other without much change of expression. Michel was sitting on the balcony next to a large blue bucket, which appeared to have something splashing in it; he looked back at Colin, who raised his eyebrows and micro-nodded. So that was Kima. He was finally going to meet her.

He was introduced to Avtar, who was a ‘communication specialist’, and a native guy named Sparrow, who was a fisherman with a sideline as a water-taxi moving aliens around the Salish Sea.

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.”