#I am thinking that H.G. needs some new business cards

[apparitionism]

Streets 4

This is a story. In it, people talk a lot. Plus they get into and out of cars, for the purposes of driving and walking in San Francisco. Part 1, part 2, and part 3 came before this part.

Streets 4

Obtaining the implement from the gentleman holding it is quite easy—Claudia gives him two twenty-dollar bills, and he does not bother to look twice at her purple-gloved hands as he surrenders the prize. Claudia, for her part, does not bother to look twice at his high-speed scamper away as she drops the torch into a static bag, shouting, “Ha! We win!”

Nothing happens.

Helena pats her on the shoulder. “A lesson in the inadvisability of drawing conclusions based on insufficient evidence. You were so enamored of your Former Files idea.”

Claudia utters a confused “what?”, but then her expression clears. “No, it’s not Ex-Files like ex-husband,” she says. “It’s X-Files like X-ray.”

“Your Roentgen Files idea, then.”

“Well if it wasn’t that guy with the flashlight, then I don’t get it. Somebody just showed up all random and did some abducting? What’s here?”

“Buildings. Sidewalks. Roads. Many, many automobiles, all the drivers of which Ramon has angered. No offense intended, Ramon.”

“Least I ain’t a tourist, man. No offense intended.” He smiles his small smile at Helena, and she smiles back. He goes on, “So we done? If it was a great ride, five stars much appreciated. You guys get five too, just for the entertainment.”

Claudia asks him, “Do you mind hanging out for just a minute while we... scout around? I don’t know where else we’ll need to go.”

Ramon considers for a moment; then he shrugs. “My day off from my real job. So you keep paying me, saves me having to cruise around. You know, angering people.”

Helena laughs. “So we will be paying you to lower the city’s average blood pressure. Money no doubt well spent. But Claudia, public health benefits aside, this is striking me as very similar to hiring a car and driver. Whereas under Pete’s transportation regime, no one compensates him for the labor of driving.”

“Shut up,” Claudia says. “Ramon gets us.”

Helena notes, “Ramon gets money.” Ramon nods. “And of course a rating of several stars.”

He nods again and says, “Plus a little vape right now. Take your time, man.”

They inquire at nearby establishments; no one has seen anything strange. Or they have all grown so accustomed to the vagaries of the human condition that they have trained themselves to overlook anything not immediately harmful.

A convenience-store cashier notes that “anyway, weirdos are nicer than normals.”

At that, Claudia high-fives the cashier. She then turns to do the same to Helena—who does not raise her arm in response, so Claudia folds her flat, upraised hand into a fist and chucks Helena under the chin. “You do you, Pops,” she says.

She can indeed be quite charming, Claudia can.

Claudia turns back to the cashier: “So nevermind the weirdos. Seen anybody get abducted by aliens?”

“Yeah,” says the young lady. She reports it as banal news, but Claudia leaps halfway across the counter at the poor thing, whose eyes widen in non-banal alarm. Helena grabs Claudia’s collar and pulls her back down. “Abducted, you say?” she asks, attempting to match the weary tone, while Claudia makes squeaking noises that sound suspiciously close to “Now we win!”

The cashier shrugs. “I mean some guy staggers in and says he was. Probably just on drugs. He bought sunglasses—the alien lights, way too bright. He said.”

Helena says to Claudia, and she means it as a tease, “An illuminated abduction. Yet another lesson in why it is best to avoid premature conclusions.”

“And gluten-free pretzels,” the cashier volunteers. “Two bags.”

Claudia says, “Maybe the aliens experimented on his digestion.”

“Surely his condition predated the abduction,” Helena says. “To what purpose would any aliens deprive anyone of the ability to process prolamins and glutelins?”

“How can you know exactly what gluten is but not X-Files?”

Helena huffs. “How can you know the things you know and yet imagine that sensitivity to particular proteins is a recent development? Consider my friend Dr. Samuel Gee. My late friend, that is, given that I knew him in the... past. He was the pediatrician who... well. He was an important figure, at any rate, and an area of particular interest for him was coeliac disease. We spoke of it on occasion. I was interested to discover if he, or anyone, had made further progress, in my... absence.” She has cleared her throat several times during this recitation. She feels that her eyes may be reddening. She should never have mentioned such a part of the past, not here, not now; there are things she speaks of only to her therapist and to Myka, for these things make her think, and that is not productive, for now she will be thinking of—

The cashier asks, “Are you high?”

Helena clears her throat again. “Alas, no. Quite low in fact.”

Claudia says, “She means are you on dr—”

This attempt at a helpful definitional interjection does have the effect of sending Helena toward nostalgic amusement rather than... well. “Claudia darling,” she says, “do I truly strike you as someone who does not understand the concept—or pleasures—of being under the influence of substances?”

“That’s right, you were a wild one, weren’t you? Artie hates that. He muttered ‘opium eater’ about you once when he didn’t know I was there—I was practicing my Mrs. F poof-ins.”

“Are you improving?” For Claudia has expressed great frustration at not yet being fully able to surprise her colleagues into shrieking and dropping whatever they might be holding.

“No. Batting less than .300. Like I get the theory, but all that usually happens is that I stand there and feel like I might go somewhere. Like I’m waiting for a bus that never comes.” She brightens. “But it worked that time with Artie. So did you really do that?”

Helena had hoped Claudia would forget her query. “What is the better answer here?” she queries back.

“Tell the truth. Otherwise I’ll just ask you again in front of Steve.”

“If I refuse to answer, he can discern nothing.”

“That just means the answer’s yes. I may not have been born over a hundred years ago, like some people, but I wasn’t born yesterday either.”

The cashier mutters, “Both high...”

Back on the sidewalk, Claudia is the picture of pique crossed with consternation. “So here’s what I say we do now,” she says. “We go find Myka and Pete. Steve didn’t say whose ping happened later, so maybe they’ve got the actual good spot and we can swoop in and get the snag.”

“Investigation is truly not your calling, is it,” Helena remarks as they reenter the minuscule maroon back seat. It is coming to feel quite homey.

“Guess not. My destiny’s written in the stars. Or the aisles of the Warehouse, so whoo! Lucky me.”

“Fortunately, my own destiny at the moment is to act solely as a referee. You could employ best practices, if you wished to, but I am not responsible for insisting that you do so.” So much for competition, she thinks, but then she reconsiders. “Although I suppose preempting Pete and Myka might indeed be a path to victory.”

“I knew it! You do want to win!”

“Well, given the choice. Then again, my investment in Myka’s happiness is ongoing. Perhaps I’ve been sabotaging you the entire time.”

“I don’t buy it. You’re too competitive. I know how you get.”

Helena sees that she will need to modify how she gets. If only so no one will use that expression about her again. She proposes,“Or perhaps it is simply that I want to see Myka. Because we have been apart for nearly four hours, and I miss her.”

“You might be yanking my chain on that—but I doubt it. You’re such a schmoop. I can’t believe I used to think you were this smooth player.” She pauses, as if she expects Helena to object. “At least we know they haven’t won yet. Otherwise Pete’d be gloating.”

“You of course would never stoop so low.”

“Are you kidding? My gloats limbo under everybody else’s.”

Helena sighs. “Would that you were speaking of the holding space for those who have died in friendship with God but prior to Christ’s resurrection.”

“Hey, most people just talk about it being for babies,” Ramon says. “Or they used to, before the Pope said we don’t believe in any those limbos anymore. You Catholic, H.G.?”

“Just overeducated, I’m afraid. For example, Islam has a similar site, or rather concept, known as barzakh.”

Claudia snorts. “I like how you think showing off whatever esoteric whatever makes up for your sad lack of smooth play, but let Ramon concentrate on driving and not some Islamic bar.”

“Limbo,” Helena corrects her.

“I can’t. I’m in a car.”

Ramon chortles. Helena sighs again and consoles herself with the prospect of soon seeing Myka.

She is pleased out of all proportion when they pull to the curb near where Claudia has located Pete’s telephone: because there Myka is, with her hair and her eyes and her sweet, sweet self. And then Myka sees that Helena has emerged from the absurdly small maroon vehicle, and her expression makes clear that Helena has—and possibly they both have—already won the prize most worth winning. “Hello, my love,” Helena says, and she kisses Myka, but quick, on the cheek, so as to give no cause for embarrassment.

It works; Myka responds with bemusement rather than upset. “Aren’t we competing?” she asks, but she is smiling. “By the way.”

“I don’t see how that alters my love for you. By the way. And also by the way, I am aware of no rules prohibiting osculation between competitors.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “There should be a rule against not saying ‘making out’ when you mean ‘making out.’”

“We aren’t ‘making out,’” Myka tells him. “Mostly because we aren’t teenagers, but also because we aren’t.” As if to prove her point, she kisses Helena’s cheek—but her lips linger for an extra second, soft on soft. Yet another prize.

“Ahem. No rules prohibiting osculation, chaste or otherwise,” Helena notes. “I am in fact aware of no rules at all. Whenever I imagine I discern some vague legal boundary, Claudia assures me that I am mistaken.”

Myka says, with completely inappropriate, but quite welcome, affection, “Like you’d know a legal boundary if you tripped over it.”

“Bet you could limbo under it, right, H.G.?” Claudia chirps.

“That seems more your preferred option.”

Ramon says, “We talking options, I pick that Islamic bar.”

Myka, smiling a degree less brightly, looks among the three of them. “I think your car’s having more fun than mine is.”

“That can hardly come as a surprise,” Helena says, and barely a second elapses before the easy-to-predict squawk of “Hey! I’m fun!” from Pete.

“Today you’re not,” Myka says. “Today you’re all weird and mopey.”

“That’s because we haven’t had a car chase, and I want one.”

Myka says, “Why don’t you go drive around really fast for a while—”

“That isn’t a chase!”

Myka continues, “And I’ll stay here with Helena and Claudia and... I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Ramon. So wait, if you’re Myka—”

“Yes?”

“You’re the lady in question. The one I’m not supposed to tell this thing to.” He turns to Helena. “Right?”

Helena nods, but then Myka asks “What thing?” in a tone that Helena belatedly realizes is the one she uses when she wishes to compel an answer—

—and indeed, Ramon begins, “This one time I saw—”

“No!” Helena exclaims. She moves to place her hands over Myka’s ears, but before she can reach Myka—and, fortunately, before Ramon can finish his utterance—four Farnsworths buzz. What Ramon says instead is “Those are some phones, man.”

As it happens, Steve has yet more artifact activity to report to all of them, this time at an entirely different location. Helena and Claudia move to reenter Ramon’s car, and Ramon moves quickly too, but Pete moves with more motivation than anyone. Helena and Claudia are in the small back seat, listening through the Farnsworth to Myka complaining that he’s started moving before she could get her legs all the way in the car and close the door, when he shouts, very clearly intended for Helena and Claudia’s consumption, “Did you hear me click my seatbelt? So long, suckers!”

“Ramon!” Claudia calls, “I never thought I’d say this, not in my whole life, but: follow that car!”

“Follow that car?” Ramon repeats. “But he’s speeding.”

Helena tells him, “We are law enforcement. It is completely legal.”

“Prove it.”

Helena shows him her Secret Service badge.

“It looks real,” Ramon says.

“Due to the fact that it is real.”

“Whatever. Will it fool the cops?”

“I do not need to fool them.”

“You kinda do,” Claudia says.

“You are not helping,” Helena informs her. “I thought you were interested in winning.”

“What is this game anyway, man?” Ramon asks.

“Uh...” Claudia scrambles, “scavenger hunt. Sorta. For the IRS. Looking for people who... evade taxes.”

Ramon, wise young man that he is, is clearly unpersuaded. “By getting abducted by aliens?”

Claudia says, “That makes a weird kind of sense—how do you file your 1040 from the alien mothership?—so I’ll go with yeah. Exactly.” To Helena, though, she says, “Wait, if you can carry a wallet with a badge, why can’t you carry your other junk?”

“Women’s garments have too few pockets,” Helena tells her. “Too few, and too small.”

“Carry a bag.”

“I don’t like to carry things.”

“I remember a time you were happy to carry that big-ass grappler around.”

“That was primarily to impress Myka.”

“Though I guess you did dump it on her as soon as you could... waitaminute, you admit it was to impress her?”

“Of course I do. Was there some question?”

Claudia’s jaw drops. “Bets have been placed. On that and lots of other you-n-Myka stuff. I thought you knew that.”

“I strive to forget many, many things. But here is something you might want to remember. It is a tip, regarding any future wagers you may place.”

“Okay...”

“If the wager concerns my motivation? Take the Myka-related side.”

“Now that you say it, that does seem like a no-brainer. Though nobody knew that for sure back in the grappler-day. You might’ve been just a bad guy.”

“You should have known it for certain. I may have been ‘a bad guy,’ but whatever it was you said that my eyes do now, they have done exactly that since first I saw her.” That was an admission she had not necessarily intended to make... but fortunately Claudia’s face has not reacted. She hurries on, “In any case, given my very helpful advice, I’ll expect to receive a reasonable percentage of your winnings.”

“You’re still pretty much a bad guy, aren’t you,” Claudia says, but with good humor.

“Would it help if I say that I would use my portion of the take to increase Myka’s happiness?”

“Maybe. How?”

“I might give her flowers. As it happens, Myka is strangely sentimental about flowers.”

“That does sound a little strange. For Myka. How’d you figure that out?”

“I gave her flowers.”

“Aw, and she liked them?”

“She threw them at me.”

Ramon laughs.

Claudia shakes her head. “I never know what kind of story it’s gonna be with you guys. So what happened? Did you talk her into liking them?”

“No. I talked her back into liking me, a campaign the flowers were originally intended to support. And once that campaign was to a certain extent successful, she directed her attention to the flowers littered around me. And she was appalled.”

“At them.”

“No, at herself. For what she had done to them.” Claudia is looking askance at her, so Helena concludes, “And that is the story of how I came to learn that Myka is strangely sentimental about flowers.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got my head around what’s strange in this story, and trust me, it’s not Myka. All I can say is, thank god you’re not my life partner.”

“And yet in a way I am, o eventual Caretaker. You are, as I believe is said, stuck with me.”

Ramon says, “Maybe you are West Coasty like that. Sounds like a pretty alternative lifestyle to me.”

“You have no—” Claudia begins to tell him, but she is thrown against the side of the car has he accelerates around a corner. “Idea,” she finishes.

Ramon is keeping excellent pace with Pete, who is flying, practically, through the streets. “What does ‘dirty Harry’ mean to you?” Claudia asks Helena.

“Dirty Harry.” She considers. “It might be the name of an unpalatable cocktail.”

“It’s a movie. And a guy in the movie. Lots of movies, like four or five.”

“How does that preclude the previous?”

“And yet another point to you.”

“Yet another unredeemable point. I am replete.”

“And then there’s Bullitt.”

Ramon says, “That’s my favorite.”

“A slightly more palatable cocktail?” Helena tries.

“Also a movie,” Claudia says. “And a guy in the movie. My point is, I bet Pete’s bringing them up too.”

“And you are for some reason required to bring up the same topics Pete does? Is this part of leveling the playing field?”

“I think they’re part of why Pete’s got San Francisco car chases on the brain. Probably why he wanted to get us into one.”

On Taylor Street, they become literally airborne. “This really is just like in Bullitt!” Claudia squeals as they depart from, then thud with solidity back to, earth. She is the only one in the car who seems pleased.

“I’m gonna need new shocks,” Ramon notes. “You guys paying for that?”

“I’ll talk to my boss,” Claudia tells him. “And he’ll say no, and then I’ll go over his head. But come on, you said it was your favorite!”

“Not to drive like somebody in it. Never said it was my car’s favorite.”

Helena asks Claudia, “Did your analysis of the superiority of your preferred transportation include budgeting for repairs?”

At that moment, Pete’s vehicle launches itself off the top of the next hill; they watch it land with great force. Then they watch as its muffler drops, then drags against the pavement, creating impressive sparks.

Claudia says, dryly, “Pete better factor it in too.”

When they arrive at the new site, Pete and Myka are of course already there and have exited their large vehicle. As Helena and Claudia are prying themselves from Ramon’s car, Pete points at them and exclaims, “Ha! I won!”

Claudia looks pointedly at his hands, which are empty. “Oh yeah? Then where’s the artifact?”

“Not that, loser. You didn’t catch me. In the chase.”

“That’s only because Bullitt isn’t Ramon’s car’s favorite movie,” Claudia tells him. Ramon, who is now standing behind her, crosses his arms and nods. They look like two small park rangers sternly confronting a baffled bear.

Helena looks at Myka, who sighs and shakes her head. Helena considers grabbing her and commandeering both Ramon’s movie-disliking car and his services. “To the hotel!” she imagines directing him. She additionally imagines, however, that Myka would insist that Ramon turn the car around so as to make sure Pete and Claudia are not getting themselves into unrefereed trouble.

So the faster they solve the artifactual problem... Helena casts her gaze around the area. What she might see that would be revealing, she has no idea. She does suppose that if someone had been abducted from this spot by aliens a short time ago, the aliens would be gone by now, having absconded with their abductee. Surreptitious person-snatching aliens were not what she herself had envisioned—extraplanetary populations had seemed far more likely to invade and plunder—but she now supposes there might be as many different types of aliens as, not quite literally, stars in the sky.

She supposes too that she should be pleased that she can in fact see, as she glances about. Although night has truly fallen, the vicinity is well lit. A streetlamp looms above her, sheathing her in the shine of its high-intensity bluish beam. If an alien abduction had occurred here, it would indeed have been extremely illuminated. She opens her mouth to tease Claudia again, but before she can utter a word, an idea strikes her.

Bright alien lights. Sunglasses, and the need for them.

She is curious. She looks up, directly up, into the streetlight.

Have her feet left the ground? A physical disorientation has overtaken her—I am not where I am; I am not where I was; I am not as I was, she thinks, and she might have said it aloud, but if her physical body is no identifiable where, and no identifiable thing, how could it, being nowhere and nothing, say anything at all?—and after a span of time that she cannot pin down, she is once again standing on a street. Under a streetlight... she sees the street, and she sees that it is lit, so nothing has happened to her eyes. She hears traffic behind her. She reaches to touch the light pole, and feels it solid under her fingers: she is no hologram. “Myka?” she says, and she is relieved to find that nothing has happened to her voice—but Myka does not answer. Nor Claudia, nor Pete. Pedestrians step around her, heedless of her bewilderment.

Helena looks for a street sign, and there she finds a plausible reason for Myka, Pete, and Claudia’s absence: this is a different road entirely. Presumably still San Francisco, but would she know if it were not? The cars look similar to those she has recently seen, so significant time travel has most likely not occurred.

She considers what to do. Of course she has neither telephone nor Farnsworth... this is her own fault.

Myka is going to be most displeased.

TBC