Empire Games Series, Book 1(77)
“It’s Angie, remember?” Angie hugged her. “And a five-merit-point fine every time you forget! You’re looking gorgeous! Have you eaten? No? Let’s roll, then.”
Angie’s wheels were recent enough to drive themselves, with a truck top and a fire-red paint job. “You’re looking good, too,” Rita said, trying to fill the silence. “Been keeping well?”
“It was hard at first, but I got my certification two years ago. You would not believe how much work there is for an electrical contractor in this town! Chariot, drive us to Emma’s. Listen, Rita—”
The pickup’s engine lit with a whine as it backed and turned out of the narrow parking lot, and Rita noticed, to her confusion, that they were still holding hands. How did we even get in the truck?
“You never called? Never even sent me a selfie bug?”
Rita swallowed. “I wanted to, but it kept getting harder the longer I waited. Then my folks moved and your folks moved—”
Angie leaned across the bench seat and turned Rita’s face to hers and kissed her as if to hit “undo” on the last decade. “You do not leave it ten years next time, girl.”
“I didn’t mean to. Where are we going?”
“The best gay bar in town, not that there are many to choose from out here in the sticks. Uh, unless you’re…?”
“No, I’m fine.” She tossed her head, then let go of Angie’s hand long enough to shove her hair back. She caught Angie’s eye. “There’s a lot of catching up to do and I, uh, was hoping for somewhere private…”
“Really?” That smile. “Chariot, make all windows opaque.” Angie’s thumb clicked on her seat belt button as the outside world dimmed to night. Then the thumb clicked on Rita’s belt button. “Will this do?”
Rita made a quiet eep of assent as Angie scooted sideways toward her. Then they kissed again as the steering wheel spun, unattended.
PHILADELPHIA, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
Much later—after dinner and drinks and dancing, and a drunken auto-ride home—they sat together naked in the middle of Angie’s bed, as Angie rolled another joint. Rita traced her finger across the tentacles of the Hokusai octopus. They trailed from its bulbous body, centered on Angie’s left shoulder, coiling around her ribs, and rose to cup the underside of her right breast. She was luminous with sweat and sweetly aromatic with the new-mown-hay aroma of marijuana. “I feel like I’ve been living in a coffin for months,” Rita said softly. “Too much work and no play makes…” Her fingertip lingered at the crinkling, stiffening edge of Angie’s areola, then gently nudged the silver barbell.
“Too much of that and I’ll spill the bud, girl.”
“So I’ll have to lick it off you, so what?” Rita leaned against Angie. “Like this.”
She demonstrated. Angie tensed. “You never did say what brought you to town.”
“Work.” Rita paused. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Angie raised the open cone to her mouth, ran her tongue along the seam of the papers. “If it’s such a shit job, why don’t you quit?” Angie asked as she rolled it between her palms.
“I’m not sure it’s the kind of job I can quit.”
“Mob?” Angie asked softly. “Because if so, listen, I know a cop who—”
“It’s not like that. I, uh, I work for the DHS now. I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”
“Oh.” Angie fell silent for a minute, until the gathering sense of dread nearly convinced Rita that she’d confessed to something inexcusable. Working for The Man. They both understood—it was expected of them, like marriage and babies to so many other young women—but even so. “Okay.” Angie’s tone fell oddly flat. “Thought I’d heard the end of that when I got out of the Army.” She extended her arm and placed the joint on the bedside unit. “Phone.”
“What?”
“Phone.”
Rita looked over the edge of the bed, picked up her purse. “What?”
“Give it here.” Angie took it, flipped it upside down, and popped the battery. “Glass?”
“Don’t wear it.”
“Okay.” Angie reached over her side of the bed and picked up her own phone. She held it where Rita could see it as she popped the battery. Then she pulled a thickly quilted craft bag out from under the bed and swept the phones and batteries into it, then closed it and shoved it in a bedside drawer. “I don’t think they could have done an in-and-out here while we were gone. Wouldn’t bet on it in future, though. So I think we’re alone now. Just us and the stars above, like back when we were in camp.”
Rita shivered. They’d been in the same Girl Scout troop: sent to the same weird summer camp down in Maryland, with other girls whose folks had serious faces and didn’t talk about what they did. “You know we were nearly the only girls there whose parents didn’t work in Spook City?” Spook City was the huge, formerly NSA-only compound at Fort Meade where the CIA and a bunch of other secret agencies had moved after 7/16. It had taken her years to figure that out: why she and Angie and a couple of others had perpetually felt like they didn’t quite fit in. “Little lone wolves,” Kurt had jokingly called them when Rita told him about it.