Like a Surge Page 12

  Cooper shook his head. “Suppose I take care of it. I can cook, and you don’t have to worry.” His face was all kinds of pinched again as he scanned the bags of groceries.

  Ash grabbed two arm-loads. They continued in tense silence. Only when they faced off across the crowded kitchen counter, he met Cooper’s gaze. The tight set of his jaw and the line between his eyes spoke of stress “What’s wrong?”

  Cooper sighed. “We spent more than I figured we would.” He hesitated. “Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten the beer.”

  Ash raised his eyebrows. Of the two of them, Cooper was a beer guy. “Maybe we shouldn’t have gotten the wine, either. But that’s not the crux of what’s bothering you.” He hesitated. “Is it? Do you think we drink too much, or is it the money?”

  “The money,” Cooper said with a sigh. He shook his head ruefully. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be a spoilsport right before the holidays.” His protective shield had strengthened enough for Ash to feel the subtle hum of his power signature, and just then, Ash knew Cooper wasn’t putting all his cards on the table.

  “Okay. Straight talk time – what happened, exactly?”

  With a frustrated wave of his hand, Cooper turned on his heel and stalked into the living room. He pointed through the wall accusingly. “That’s what happened! All those power-grid retrofits are sapping our house-building budget. And I know Paul needs it. There’s no way he can stay here without those kinds of safeguards, and we can’t ask him to leave because he’s here for a reason.”

  Power calls to power. The saying was on the forefront of Ash’s mind. He thought hard. Money out... money in... “Okay. Okay. So... I have a little coming in from a grant, which we’re legitimately using on getting those soil samples to the lab.” Samples, which would show progress, and a reduced heavy metal contamination level in the area. “And you have that mall redevelopment, right?”

  “That’s the thing,” Cooper said all too quietly. “They liked my design the best, but they ended up going with a more ‘reputable’ company.” A mirthless laugh tore out of him. “The reputable company is a one-man-shop outfit, just like I am, except he has a downtown office and a receptionist who answers his phone, Ash. It’s all about perception, and this is the third client I lost because nobody wants meet to at Starbucks to talk about a bigger project.”

  Ash slid behind him and hugged him from behind. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  Cooper faced him and returned his embrace. “I know. And I know you can’t rent out those two houses. We need to maintain secrecy.”

  Ash thought hard. “But we don’t do much in public anyway. And think, it will get your folks off our backs, and we can do a self-renewing quarterly lease. That way it won’t be hard to give notice to tenants who are too nosey. And we can screen them carefully. We’ll do a background check, look at their social media, the works.”

  “But –”

  Ash pressed their lips together to stay his objections. The houses were his. His and Coopers – but they were in Pittsburgh for a purpose. Once their job was done, they would move on, but with fossil fuel extraction in full swing, they would probably have to stay for years. He ran various scenarios in his head, trying to make a list of characteristics of the kind of a person they would want to avoid at all costs. Then, over the course of silent minutes, as his thoughts slowly settled into a logical pattern, he cleared his throat. “I think we’ll have to avoid anyone from Brian’s side. They pose the biggest threat. After that, it’s a toss-up. Who do you think poses more of a threat? A normal person, or one with an untrained talent?”

  It was Cooper’s turn to think quietly for a while. “Depends on the person,” he finally said. “I think it’s a risk either way.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Russ labored over the Thanksgiving break, hauling the delivered wiring and copper mesh from the downstairs and up to Paul’s bedroom. He had sort of hoped to do all this by his lonesome self and surprise Paul with a gorgeous work where his own art and science combined to a greater whole, but building a brand-new wrought iron bed took a lot of muscle. Bending pipe, stretching wire mesh, and collaborating with his metal-sculpting friend Fred took not just muscle, but also time and beer breaks, because beer was old Fred’s fuel of choice.

  “Instead of just clamping this, we could wire it on and twist the ends,” Fred said. Then he burped. “Good brew, man. Very good brew indeed.” He squinted through his bottle-cap glasses, scratched his grey beard, and lit up with inspiration. “And I have those copper grape leaves, too. We could turn it from a cage into a gazebo-type thing, make it nice and hospitable.”

  Knowing that his pride had long taken a back seat to expedience, Russ flashed him a grateful smile. “This is what you’re here for. Just point me in a direction, man, and I’m on it.”

  On Thursday, Russ returned to his family’s bosom, where the whole pot-luck crowd asked him about his life and offered up their single co-workers and friends as potential relationship material. Russ went through the motions of a family dinner, but his thoughts were with Paul, wondering how Paul was managing with Ash’s and Cooper’s crowd.

  By Friday night, the main gazebo over Paul’s bed had acquired an interesting, cocoon-like shape which gave it structural soundness. By Saturday, Fred and Cooper were helping him stretch the wire mesh over it, while Fred was festooning the twisted copper branches with entirely gratuitous vines, metal leaves, and several bunches of crystal grapes which refracted the light from the overhead lamp with a twinkle of green and purple.

  “Isn’t this a bit much?” Russ fussed as Fred threatened to turn the whole room into a cornucopia. “I don’t want it sprawling. It has to stay on this carpet.” An expensive, conductive carbon fiber carpet with an insulating rubber mat – but Fred didn’t need to know that.

  “Oh, come on, boss,” Fred joshed him with good cheer. “If the bed takes over the room, it’ll be like one of those funky paintings with a 3D element, you know, like when there’s a sculpture of a hand reaching out of a canvas!”

  Russ nodded, rubbed his chin in thought as though he was considering the matter carefully, then shook his head with obvious regret. “I can see what you have in mind, but this isn’t the right space. There will be other furniture too, and if the bed gets crowded, the whole effect will be gone.”

  Fred sucked air through his teeth. “Shit, man. I didn’t know about the other furniture. That would just about suffocate this gorgeous beauty!” He bent over and detached some of his creative excess with obvious regret. “So beautiful. I just wish I got to help him break it in! It hurts my balls to know that he’ll take some chick up here. This here is a man’s space, plain and simple.”

  “He won’t take a chick up here.” Russ’ voice came out with a growl.

  Fred paused, then gave him a careful look up and down. “Oh, really? Seriously, you and that kid?” His bellow-laugh filled the whole house. “Russ my friend, you’re as bad a cradle-robber as I am!”

  “Shaddap, Fred.” Russ knew the topic of relationships made him irritable. After all, he had never been in this situation before. Likewise, never had he had a person of interest who was being eyed by another. “He’s special to me.”

  Fred sighed and nodded. “All the good ones are either straight or taken. Or not interested, like you. I had even though you were asexual.”

  Russ shrugged. These labels were meaningless to him. Up till now, his situation had not allowed for an attachment of any kind. Nobody was going to date a mentally ill man who hallucinated colors and auras, and whose only solace had been his compulsive urge to run.

  Until now.

  Now he had Paul, and he wasn’t crazy, and he was building Paul a bed.

  A safe bed – the kind where Paul wouldn’t annihilate the power grid once they finally got together.

  ON SUNDAY AFTER Thanksgiving, at four in the afternoon, Paul let Cooper tie a bandanna over his eyes. “This is just so you don’t cheat,” Cooper said with a chuckle. “You’ve been dying o
f curiosity for weeks now!”

  He had been. He still was, even as he stood on the stoop of the second house. Ash and Cooper’s house was on his right, and Hank’s house with the catacombs was on his left. The rough texture of brick snagged against the soles of Paul’s rubber-soled shoes, and as he heard someone unlock the door, he couldn’t help but have his breath quicken.

  A place to live. He’d have a place to live where the rest of the world would be safe from him, and Russ was making it so.

  Paul trusted Russ and his science as much as he trusted Uncle Owen and his mumbo-jumbo magic. Both systems of seeing the world had their rules, and both seemed to work most of the time, although Russ’s science was more measurable. More standard –probably because most people didn’t have Owen’s mumbo-jumbo magic and science was more common. Didn’t somebody once write that magic was only a technology which was not yet understood?

  The warm air wafted out the door, and with it a tempting scent of cinnamon. “So, can I come in?” He drew a deep breath, savoring the memories the sweet smell evoked. “Are you burning a candle?” he asked, turning blindly around, hoping to aim his question at Russ.

  “Yes,” Russ said from behind him with a self-conscious note to his voice. “I’ve looked up some articles online, and scented candles are supposed to have this, I dunno, home-like feel to them. And you said you liked cinnamon, so...”

  Laughter erupted from around Paul, but to his surprise, Hank quashed it with a sharp “Shaddap, you idiots. He’s trying.”

  And it was true. No other person had ever tried harder on Paul’s behalf than Russ–except Mark, who was stuck with him, being a twin brother–and nobody, not even Mark, had made Paul feel like he wasn’t a colossal fuck-up. “I like cinnamon,” he said dutifully. “Can I take off this stupid blind-fold yet?”

  “No.” The word was grave and serious as it rolled from Ash. “Russ wants to give you a treat. Let him.”

  “It’s an early Christmas present,” Russ said behind him, and now that uncertain self-consciousness in his voice was replaced by excitement. “Let’s see if you like it!”

  His rubber-soled shoes squeaked on freshly finished wooden floors, then on a renovated staircase as he held onto the bannister. The cool metal soothed his palm, draining his excess charge at the same time. “What, no wood? Is this safe?” he fretted.

  “Very safe,” Russ said. “But come upstairs!”

  Someone – Mark, from the touch of him – steered him straight ahead, through a narrow doorway. More wooden floors squeaked underfoot, then fingers unfastened his blind-fold and he blinked at the light pouring into the room through a window behind the bed.

  “Wow.” The bedroom was painted in the same sage green he had seen at Hank’s house, but the bed was unlike any other. A cocoon of copper tubing and wire mesh, it looked like a fairy abode from an enchanted forest. “It has leaves,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “And look!” A wirework tendril replicated the structure of grape vines perfectly. It was beautiful.

  He touched it.

  The excess charge, borne of nervous excitement, drained through his fingertips so fast it tickled. The metal structure absorbed it, greedily sucking him dry.

  The incessant hum in his mind began to recede, and for the first time in his life, he realized it had always been there and now it was gone.

  “So, this is what it feels like to be normal. It’s so... quiet.”

  “We don’t know what it feels like to be normal,” Ash said reasonably. “We can’t. But we can imagine.”

  “It’s peaceful. It would be dull if I was like this all the time, but I’ll take it.” He paused. “So... tell me about this bed. Will it make me safe, or will I keep knocking out the grid every time I have a wild dream?”

  “We obviously hope it will work,” Cooper chimed in. “For your sake, as well as for the rest of us. You’ve been stressed, and it’s hard to control your power flow when you’re already worried about it. It’s a chicken and an egg kind of an issue.”

  Suddenly, Paul’s bedroom felt too small. The whole team jammed inside it, touching the exotic, slightly extravagant metal canopy over his queen-size bed. His ears filled with their voices, which were rising in assent. Everyone had high hopes, they all agreed, they all wished him well – and he wanted them gone.

  The press of people was too much.

  The pressure of expectations was even worse.

  Subtly, carefully, Paul edged his way to the head of his bed and made it as though he was looking out the window into what passed for a backyard. The scruffy hill rose, covered with trees that started about twenty feet away from the house before they sprawled their way to another street. With leaves down for the season, they didn’t provide as much privacy as they had during the summer, and Paul found he missed that private, invisible feeling a lot. The top street had just a warehouse with a business inside it, but still.

  Energy buzzed through the power meridians Uncle Owen had described to him not so long ago, but to Paul, the feeling was more akin to his veins itching.

  Could he do this? Could he dump his charge with everyone crowded inside his room and chatting? It reminded him of trying to take a quiet piss in a public restroom. He snorted, then leaned against the copper pipe, and tried to relax.

  Just relax.

  Just –

  Aah. He felt the power drain down his arm, out his palm, and into his bed. Presumably, it traveled through the wrought curlicues of the plant hanger and through the wall, then down the thick lightning rod wire, and into the buried plate in the ground. He wished he could’ve seen it, the way Russ could see these things. It would give him instant feedback and learning to control his static discharge would be so much easier.

  Paul turned, expecting to see everyone watching, but they were still humming, back-slapping Russ and energized by the potential this created. Would metal catch all powers, or just Paul’s? Could they contain Ash’s rain and Cooper’s earthquakes?

  A wave of fatigue washed over him. He just wanted them all to go – all except for Russ – and he wanted to get the in that bed and try it out. Paul yawned.

  “Tired?” Cooper asked quietly. How did Paul not see him approach? “I bet you tried it. Did it work?”

  Paul nodded.

  “It’s still power manipulation, and maybe you’re giving up more than you’re used to. That’s gonna drain you and make you tired. You’ll want to be careful, maybe keep a written log, then review it with Uncle Owen or with one of us.”

  Cooper’s words washed over him like a storm-whipped surf, strong and merciless, and full of logic. Paul frowned. Cooper meant well, but he was giving him a headache. “Go away,” Paul said. “I need everyone to leave me alone.” He let go of the bed and grabbed his head.

  Ash appeared, and Mark steadied his swaying shoulders from behind. “I think he drained too much,” Cooper said in a whisper that grated on Paul’s senses like salt grit on the road. “He might be suffering a backlash headache.”

  “Do you have a headache?” Ash asked, also keeping his voice low.

  “Yeah,” Paul groaned. Somehow, the mere idea of nodding his head was painful.

  “We’ll get you some reishi extract.”

  Brilliant. What was supposed to be a triumphant move into his new quarters, and a technological win over a rogue gift, turned into a sick visit by every single person in Pittsburgh he remotely cared about.

  His former hope of breaking in the bed with Russ fizzled like a hot drop on his parents’ wood-burning stove. All he wanted was the pain in his head to go away, and then he wanted to sleep.

  CHAPTER 16

  ASH WASN’T DUMB. The stress that had been rolling off Cooper in waves, rooted in business worries, was largely of his doing. Just because he, Ash, had always worked out of a spare bedroom or a seldom-used dining room and didn’t mind company while on the phone was no guarantee that Cooper felt the same.

  When Cooper worked, he relished his silence.

  No music, n
o conversation, no people walking around.

  The noise of the construction site across the street, and the supervision of the critical parts of their new home’s construction, didn’t seem to bother Cooper. The rumbling of machines and the shouting of workers stood in sharp contrast to Cooper’s quiet office environment. Had it been Ash, he would’ve gone mad from sitting at his elaborate computer setup and drafting plans for new structures in a silence broken only by the hum of a fan, or by an occasional phone call. The more Ash thought about it, the more it seemed that Cooper worked in a meditative space, from which he was loath to emerge.

  He wondered whether it was like river-walking for him, relaxing, yet productive at the same time.

  No matter the nature of Cooper’s work habits, it was true that he had lost several promising business leads because he didn’t look “official” enough. It was likewise true that he was not happy or productive working from a home office. He had been shopping around for one of those shared office spaces, he had several options – but they all cost money.

  With Cooper in mind, Ash pushed the button. There. Now his two empty row houses were listed online with photos and specifications, and suddenly, Ash felt very vulnerable to any stranger in need of housing.

  Any untalented, frightened, ordinary stranger could move in, and figure out that they all had a special knack for doing something extraordinary. Or, worse, a talented stranger working for the other side could slip through and sabotage their efforts. They would have to screen them – and having them face Cooper with the unsheathed Jared blade in his hand wasn’t awkward at all. Most landlords ran a criminal records check and snooped on their prospective tenants using social media. Ash would do all that, of course – but he was sorely tempted to have Cooper sit in the room with the sword in his hand. Maybe he could sit on the sofa and hide the blade under a blanket. Or have it stashed under the table.

  Scenarios poured into Ash’s mind, one more ridiculous than another. He wished he felt comfortable calling someone up. Ash’s dad, Nikko, had recommended that they rent the houses to begin with, but Ash still felt as though he was in hot water with his lover’s father.