Page 24 of The Salt-Black Tree
It was like a special effect. The damage of sedentary age reeled itself back, dents popping out, chrome brightening, glass clearing. Fresh life ran through blue paint, and the tires made soft breathy sounds as they expanded, the rims squeak-groaning as they flexed. Puffs of dust rose inside the cab, cracked upholstery turning plump and seamless, and from under the hood rose a medley of pinging, crunching, sparking, and other shifting metallic noises.
Nat tried to lift her hands; they wouldn’t budge. “Am I…”Am I doing that?
“Of course you are.” Marisol performed a few hopping, happy dance steps, the canvas now a neat square clasped to her middle. “You’reSpring. You’re renewal and germination. You used to have a cat-drawn chariot, but this is ever so much better.”
“What does it run on?” Maybe the other woman would get tired of her questions, but Nat couldn’t help herself. “I wondered what Dmitri’s—”
“Oh, his is different. But we’re not mortal, we don’t have to fill up at every pump. She’ll endure as you do. I’m gonna close the door and go make breakfast. Come upstairs when you’re done.”
Yeah.Nat leaned against the hood, her arms straight and stiff, her palms throbbing. “Thank you.” The words were too pale for the big bursting feeling inside her chest. A car. Abeautifulcar. There had to be some sort of cost or drawback to the gift, but at the moment, she didn’t care. “This means I can outrun those things, right?Those who eat.”
“Once you’ve finished your tour they won’t bother you.” But Marisol’s expression clouded, and she glanced at the driveway under its drench of gold brilliance. “You’ve got time for breakfast. I’ll help you all I can, little sister, but some things you’ve got to do yourself.”
“I know,” Nat murmured. The car, humming under her hands, seemed to agree, and the garage door descended slowly, closing her in deeper darkness.
PLEASANT BREAKFAST
He hadn’t been to Pasadena in a while, and the town’s outskirts had mushroom-spread. The winds of urban gentrification had also torn through downtown a few times; it was a relief to be out of the fucking sticks. A small brass bell tinkled on a swinging glass door as Dmitri stalked into the diner where one of his uncles had once shot a man, and found the place’s bones still remembered him even though the rest of it had changed out of all recognition.
The sun was well up; his hands pulsed with last night’s murderous work and his boots were grimy. The muck would flake free in the next hour or so, and his suit would heal itself in fits and starts unless he wanted to be fresh again in less than a heartbeat, stepping out of damage and dirt with a slight effort.
At the moment, he didn’t. Sometimes it was pleasant to roll in the filth and let it dry naturally. The scavengers were stupid, but there was a certain charm to even that manner of combat. It was like rube video games, very little risk but pleasant reward in performing as well as possible.
An already-fatigued rube waitress, scanty blonde ponytail gathered low at her nape, eyed his dishevelment, compared it to the rest of him, and visibly decided he wasn’t worth pissing off. “Coffee?” she drawled, and saved herself a serious bit of ill-luck by hurrying to set a bundle of silverware wrapped in a napkinand a gummed paper band in front of him as he settled at the breakfast bar.
“Yes, please.” He was polite enough, considering. The bell on the door jangled again, and he knew who it was even before a finger of chill touched his dirty back. “Two.”
The rube, her bloodshot gaze rising over his shoulder, backed up a few steps, turned sharply, and marched for the coffeepot with determination.
The stool to his right squeaked slightly, accepting a sticklike frame. Baba’s black silk shirtwaist dress would look old-fashioned to the rubes, yet would imply a certain amount of money. It wasn’t her hard-edged business suit, but neither was it her party attire. Her gray hair, pulled severely back in a bun the size of an overly generous cinnamon roll, held only a single iron stick thrust through its nest, but that pin was sharp and its head bore a single deep-red glitter. She folded her thin, swell-knuckled hands on the bleach-wiped counter and studied the long rectangular window to the kitchen, where a heavy copper-skinned cook with a ferocious black mustache was absorbed in a sheet of newsprint looking suspiciously like a racing form. Tattoos crawled up the cook’s beefy forearms, mostly in blurred prison blue.
He was a nephew, of course. Dima almost smiled.
The rube waitress came back, her thick-soled white shoes squeaking. Two mugs of coffee were placed with more care than they warranted, and she reached below the counter, probably for plastic-coated menus. “Getcha something to eat?”
“Pancakes. Bacon. Hash browns, crispy. Four eggs over easy.” It had been a long night. Dima gave his most charming smile; the rube didn’t melt, but she did straighten, nod, and scrawl on her anemic order pad with a tired blue Bic.
“You, ma’am?” At least the girl was respectful; Baba might sew a rude bitch’s mouth shut just for the pleasure of the act.
“Toast. White, dry—nobutter. Triple order of bacon, verycrispy.” Baba reached for a dish of shelf-stable creamer tubs, her fingernails gleaming chocolate-cherry like the gem on her hairpin. “That will be all, Sydney. Thank you.”
It was no great trick—the rube had a name tag—but it made the mortal woman flinch. She finished jotting on her pad and hurried for the kitchen window, where the cook sighed, putting his paper aside.
They had the place to themselves this early, in the valley between predawn truckers stopping for a bite and those with more leisurely schedules just beginning their day. Baba folded her hands around her coffee; Dima dumped four packets of sugar into his—real bleached caneblood, none of that ersatz shit.
It wasn’t wartime, after all.
Steam hissed; kitchen implements clanking and clanging like prison doors. The cook began to hum, an old ranchero song about wandering without a woman. Sydney retreated to the other end of the counter, finding makework with ketchup bottles, napkin dispensers, and syrup pots needing refilling. The breakfast rush would start trickling in soon, like snowmelt cascading off mountainsides when winter’s grip loosened just a little, just enough.
Baba’s dark eyes half-closed; she stared into her mug like it was her shining, scrying desk top in the Morrer-Pessel building. “You’ve been a busy boy.”
Dima snorted, but softly. The rubes didn’t need to hear this parley. “No less than you, old woman.”
“Hmph.” She didn’t disagree. The beldame’s long, pale, naked toes, each nail painted just as carefully as her fingertips, rested against the brassy-colored rail running along the counter’s bottom. The rubes wouldn’t even notice she was barefoot. “Maria’s trapped in a hospice bed. Intubated. It must be maddening for her.”
It was his turn to make a noise of non-disagreement. He didn’t addit serves her right. What was the point? Baba knewMaria’s sins—if such a word could apply to one of their kind—better than anyone.
She’s my mother, Dmitri. Can you just not?Oh, hisdevotchkahad a tender heart. How long would that last?
