Page 24

19

Alternative Lifestyle

B ack in her apartment, Marisol returned to normal life, which meant a straightforward shower and putting on her own damn clothes. Normal life also meant a charged phone. A charged phone after a few days of no service meant incessant beeping and rattling from messages, mostly Marisol’s mom, dad, and sister, Nicole.

A detective came by, Maria Soledad. He said you're at a safe house. Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros. Uh-oh, Mom used Marisol’s full name and called on the Mother of God and none of the members of the Trinity. She must be freaking out.

A notion confirmed by Dad’s curt, Return your ma’s call, Mare.

Nicole left, A guy claiming he was a cop called and asked if I knew where you were. All cops are bastards, so I told him nothing, but Mom and Dad said you got into something bad. Please be okay .

Marisol was due for a day-long session of telling her family vague stories about a safe house and an attack. That included a heap of I’m sorry and It’s not that bad while leaving out the most thrilling details of murder and mayhem. In doing so, she couldn’t mention the 500-year-old super-powered billionaire caretaker who worked the third shift as a masked vigilante.

She made it to the last few messages. The phone asked to delete the voicemails left untouched for a few days in her storage cloud. She clicked them.

Hey, it’s Tobias . She internally screamed every expletive in existence. She had forgotten about Tobias. The message continued, Back home now. I’m toying with the bad idea of showing my badge to your landlord in the morning to make sure you’re okay. I assumed after that kiss you’d be the type to admit you’ve got cold feet and changed your mind. Or was this your idea of a crazy kink? Invite a man over and ghost? Anyway, best of luck to you. No hard feelings . Sure, he said no hard feelings that night. If he knew she invited him over in the middle of the night and sucked face with Vincent before the Bloodsucker shoved her down an elevator shaft, he’d label her the coldest, craziest bitch in the city.

And that label stung with the next message. Hey, it’s Tobias. I just want to talk to you. No funny stuff .

And the next message. Hey, it’s Tobias. I hope you ’ re not waiting chained up with a whip because a neighbor came down with her dog, took one look at me in uniform, and made sure the security entrance was locked. She probably thinks I’m a stripper. Or some cop gave her a ticket for not picking her dog shit off the sidewalk. Anyway, let me in.

And the ever hopeful. Hey, it’s me. Buzz me in.

She debated deleting the last voicemail to never relive the cringe of that night until…

“Marisol.”

A short stream of air cooled her parted lips. The voice was Annie’s. I’m having a night of it. I ’ m in the dark, the electricity ’ s been weird, and that mouse is acting strange. The serum did something to it. It has increased strength and muscle mass. I’d call 911, but I ’ m not even sure what to say. Do I say it broke out of its cage and attacked the other mice? Because they ’ re dead. Something in the serum made it unhinged. I should ’ ve killed it when I stomped on it, but it came right back up. It ’ s my fault. Dr. Varian buried the research for a reason. I don ’ t know what to do. I thought... Hold on, I hear someone.

If only she had checked her stupid messages before charging into the lab, she could’ve sent Vincent in to clobber them. What was she thinking? She didn’t need–never needed–that sociopath. She could’ve easily sicced Tobias and the rest of the SPD to stop them .

And that wasn’t the only part barbing into her. Annie’s mouse had increased strength and advanced healing like Vincent. Those serum results that she alluded to at the ball may have led the Bloodsucker to seek Annie out. Yet the mouse became unhinged, as if a higher power punished them for harnessing magic with science. If Marisol studied the mouse, she could understand magic and whatever happened to the Bloodsucker.

And whatever happened to Vincent. Vincent and his kind eyes, playful quirks, and odd ideas of gifts. She swallowed the lump in her throat. Vincent and his curse that murdered Annie. She dashed out of her apartment on a mission.

First, she needed a mousetrap strong enough to withstand the strength of ten mice. The fool who owned one bought it to catch a rat under the back steps many years ago. A decision that had forced the family to go to food pantries for the rest of the month. She called him “Dad.”

She hopped on the bus to her parents’ home. The morning bus to the Westside was practically empty. She took a spot near the front across from the one other rider, a woman who wore compression hose and buried her face in the newspaper. The bus hit a pothole. The impact jostled Marisol forward, and she bristled against the newspaper. She noticed the headline:

SOUTHSIDE BLOODBAT H

She projected her voice over the roar of the accelerating bus. “Ma’am?”

The woman inspected Marisol from behind her set of tinted eyeglasses. A chain draped from her glasses to her neck and swung whenever the bus hit a bump. She squeezed her handbag to her body with her elbow, probably expecting Marisol to snatch her purse.

“Can I borrow your paper for a minute?”

The woman handed it over. Marisol pored over the paper. According to the article, retaliatory gang violence reigned. Somebody attacked a restaurant that was an alleged front for the Bratva AKA the Russian Mafia, killing eight people. Police determined the Mob did it after a similar attack on them the previous night. If the story of her attack wasn’t the actual story, something more sinister and unexplainable happened. Bodies torn apart? That wasn’t the modus operandi among Shadowhaven’s gangs. Lately, they got along. Before then? It would’ve been a sloppy shootout.

Below the fold, however, reported a different chaos. In fewer than a hundred words on page two, the news covered the still-missing virus stolen from the World Health Organization’s site in Manila. Damn. Buried among the news snippets of page four, Israel Ramirez, aka Izzy, alleged kingpin, missed his court date. Shadowhaven’s police were searching for him after finding a smashed, bloody vehicle on the city’s outskirts that was registered to a known associate. Double damn .

At least his news made the main section. Annie made the back page of the local section: Gang Violence Linked to Varian Lab Attack. Marisol wanted to light the paper on fire right then and there. It didn’t mention either of their names. They were unnamed victims, victims with a single familial connection to the Shadows. Dead Goon, Yevgeny Smirnov, and imprisoned Goon, Jonathan O’Banion, were members of the Mob. The gangs had followed their old rules with the Mob attacking Shadows and vice versa, and the world continued to spin. Violence toward people like Marisol and Annie happened because of the neighborhoods they were from. They only should’ve chosen a different place to be born. No conspiracy. No Bloodsucker. Nothing. It was an open-and-shut case. She couldn’t believe Tobias would peddle such horseshit, but then again, she barely knew him. And what she knew about him wasn’t him at all.

She handed the newspaper back. “Thanks.” She rang the bell and hopped off the bus. As she neared her parents’ house, she saw someone she didn’t recognize moving around the front steps.

Had the Bloodsucker found her already? She flipped up her hood and kept her gaze low, fidgeting with the commlink button tucked inside the wrist of her sweatshirt. Triple damn. She lasted all but a few hours before needing Vincent. Maybe she could bolt inside to get the baseball bat Dad kept next to the nightstand instead. She lowered her weight, ready to sprint .

The man was freakishly tall. He bent over and drilled a plank of wood into another one. A construction worker. Phew. She rolled her shoulders back. He was good-looking, too, with the tailored fit of his long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans emphasizing his thickly muscled thighs and massive shoulders. Not Vincent, but still worth appreciating, like a work of art or a sunset. The title of this work? A heavyweight with cropped salt-and-pepper hair.

And... ohshitohshitohshit ... she just ogled Detective Tobias Quinlan. Watching him work from the sidewalk, she felt something akin to leaving the oven on.

Except the thing she forgot to turn off was a person.

And damn if those voicemails from that night didn’t come back to haunt her.

Of course, she greeted the person who scraped her near-dead body off the pit of an elevator shaft with, “What are you doing here?”

The oh-shit feeling wasn’t going anywhere soon. At least, not with the way his speckled eyes glowered. “Marisol Novotny. What in hell’s ass are you doing here?”

She ground down a dried-out weed poking through the crack of the sidewalk. “I figured the city’s safe now that I barely make the paper.” She glimpsed back up at Tobias. Vincent looked diminutive in comparison, relying on a costume and mind games to make him the Patron Saint. Tobias was already an intimidating height and mass, but that just made him Tobias.

Someone needed to smack her and tell her not every white guy with a chiseled jawline looked the same. Tobias’s skin tanned from being out in the sun, and the grizzled start of a graying beard hid the telltale jawline. To compare Vincent and Tobias was to compare the Apple of Eden and a decent orange at the supermarket.

Marisol asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I told you I’d look after them.”

Quadruple damn.

The door behind them opened a crack. “Tobias, I have fresh tortillas when you’re ready for a break.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Novotny.” He spouted the phrase with such ease, he must’ve said it a thousand times in the days she disappeared from the city.

The door swung wide open. “Ay Dios Mio, Maria Soledad.”

Mom burst from the door, unhindered by the drop to the ground from the missing stairs. She embraced Marisol on the sidewalk. Shorter and stouter than Marisol, she reached up to hold Marisol’s face steady with her dry and cracked hands. Marisol scrunched up her face in exaggerated resistance, pretending to hate every kiss Mom planted on her cheek. Mom’s tired eyes widened. “Oh, my Maria Soledad. Your father is inside. ”

Mom yanked Marisol into the house and straight to the kitchen. “Pete! Maria Soledad!”

Dad ran into the kitchen. Without words, he hugged Marisol, suffocating her against his barrel chest with his burly arms.

Released from the safety of Dad’s hug, Mom’s onslaught began. “Where were you? Why no calls?”

Marisol breathed deeply to prepare for her rehearsed apology.

Tobias entered the kitchen. “She can’t compromise her safe house location.” Win for him, saving Marisol from the wrath of Mom.

“I’m fine. I worried about you guys, but I guess I didn’t need to.” Marisol eyed Tobias, who smirked as he lowered himself into a chair.

They gathered as a rag-tag family around the table where Mom had buffed the veneer raw in patches. Marisol picked at a tortilla smeared with butter while Mom piled more on the serving dish, and Dad and Tobias discussed the Rooks’ starting players.

Life was working out for them. She didn’t need to pull her family from disaster to disaster. For once, she could let them be. Her new problem would be getting Tobias to stop looking at her like she was the buttered tortilla.

After breakfast, she washed the dishes and watched from the kitchen window as Tobias and Dad drilled the last of the stair planks in place. How would Dad get along with Vincent? Vincent would hire someone to fix the stairs, and he and Dad would discuss a famous boxing match in such minute detail that Dad would be confused because it occurred before Vincent’s fake birthdate. Better yet, Vincent would superpower his way to building stairs, cooking breakfast, and cleaning dishes so both parents would stare dreamily at him. Or not. They would probably stand in awkward silence before Dad asked Vincent about his money, deduced the rich bitch had a hand in busting the stevedore union, and finally chase him off shouting, “No daughter of mine dates a scab!” You tell ‘em, imaginary Dad.

Despite that strange vision, reality proved even more surreal. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, her legs extended over Nicole’s chair.

“Mom, why aren’t you at work?”

Mom ran her fingers through the tangled ends of her dark, graying hair pulled into a tight ponytail. “Your dad said I didn’t have to work two jobs anymore. Since my back’s killing me, I’m finished with the nursing home.” She flipped her hair back almost with a proud air about her.

Great, within the week of emptying her savings account to pull Dad from Izzy’s clutches, he had already concocted a hairbrained scheme. “He’s said that before.”

“I haven’t quit yet. I’m using up my vacation days. Mainly to worry about you and what happened to your friend, Maria Soledad.” This time, her full name reminded her of who the parent was.

Marisol stacked a freshly clean plate on the drying rack, wiping with the efficiency she had learned from Abuelita. While recalling a childhood where work robbed Marisol of Mom’s time and affection, a tinge of jealousy emerged. Abuelita’s love made do but had never been the same. “Okay, but why are you making them breakfast? You never made me fresh tortillas.”

“Unlike you, I find being a wife relaxing.”

Marisol had to be strategic about her eye rolling. If she was too obvious, she’d get the shoe, even as an adult. Besides, it wasn’t an interaction with Mom without some comment on her love life. “And why are you giving a police detective chores to do around the house?”

Mom shrugged. “He asked how he could help us, and I told him.”

“It’s odd.”

“I guess, but it felt right.”

Must’ve felt right because before life had broken their family into fragments. To feel right was to feel whole, as if their zip code didn’t influence her brother’s decisions or push her sister away to safety. “Like if Caz was around?” Marisol asked.

Mom sighed and nodded. She scratched a red spot on her hand where her skin had reacted to cleaning chemicals. Marisol needed to get her new gloves. Mom’s tired eyes welled with tears.

Marisol sprang from the sink and hugged her. Mom released a sob. “We were so worried about you. We didn’t want to lose another.”

“You’re never gonna lose me, Mom. Mami.” But she couldn’t keep such a promise. If anything, the last year taught her that everything was fragile. Yet, could she really tell the truth? Death is inevitable and could happen at any moment. She hugged her mother a little tighter. A lie was better. God, why couldn’t Vincent have lied to her one more time? Just say, “No, in fact, I didn’t nonchalantly leave my DNA around to send your best friend to her oblivion.”

Mom sniffled, her sobbing subsided. “That detective’s cute. If I wasn’t a married woman—”

“Mom!” Marisol stomped out of the kitchen, playing the role of petulant child. As the door closed behind her, she laughed. Mom had never joked with her.

Outside and away from Mom’s jumped conclusions and intrusive questions, she asked for the mousetrap. She could hear Mom already. What’s with the mousetrap? Doesn’t your landlord take care of that? Pete, her apartment is infested. She should live with us. Thankfully, Dad retrieved it from the basement without Mom noticing.

He presented it to her with the same reverent air of a knight who found the Holy Grail. “What you came for. ”

“Thanks, Dad.” She checked the metal box for weak spots.

“Use a pungent cheese, not that bland crap Protestants always insist on.”

“I’m pretty sure Protestants don’t eat bland cheese.”

“Fooled me.”

Marisol tucked the trap under her arm. “Things okay?” Her raised eyebrow showed the full meaning behind her question. Have you seen Izzy? Are you in any more trouble?

“Things are okay. Had someone from that Varian corporation stop by the gym. They helped me fill out a grant to teach boxing as an after-school program. Got the grant. Kids will be comin’ in after the weekend, then their parents, and then some money. Finally.”

Vincent. He took care of it and not by writing them a check like that. He pulled invisible strings to show that he cared.

She should return to the estate and apologize for leaving. She’d play the role of homebound companion to show her gratitude and be his caged bird. Isn’t that what these heroes had in their stories—caretaking sidekicks? Life could be beautiful, like at the lake house. All she had to do was tra-la-la away Annie’s life. It could be that easy.

No way. She had a bus to catch and a mouse to trap .

A gruff voice called after her. “Wait!” Tobias pulled on his trench coat. “C’mon kid, you can walk me to my car.”

She opened her mouth to protest. She had a plan. It didn’t include refrigerator-sized police detectives who had cozied up to her parents.

“What? I’m a vulnerable individual. I need the protection.”

She tilted her head, granting him permission to walk beside her.

Tobias let out a long sigh. “Roaches in the safe house scare you away?”

“Actually, our friend did an okay job. Top care. Excellent amenities. I’m thinking about leaving a five-star review.”

“Our friend spent a lot of time looking out for you?”

“You could say that.” Her mind drifted to list all the ways Vincent looked out for her—food, physical therapy, the other kind of physical therapy. The weight of the memory pulled on her chest.

“It’s just... I don’t mean to stare... but how the hell are you on two legs, kid?”

That was why he eyed her throughout breakfast. She shouldn’t be walking. So she, inspired by Vincent, constructed a half-truth. “The leg thing? A misdiagnosed sprain.”

“Baloney.”

“Scout’s honor. Just a little ice and rest. I’m as good as new. ”

“I wish I could say the same. I’m on admin leave. Your case is now getting handled by the biggest couple of humps counting down to retirement that our department has ever seen. Sad, really.” Tobias kicked a broken piece of the sidewalk. It skipped the surface, hit the base of a parking sign, and bounced to a stop.

“That might explain the bullshit I read in the newspaper. On leave? What for?”

“Procedure. Turns out that when you kill a guy, it gets reviewed. I could be on desk duty, but I may have called my lieutenant a limp dick cuck, and well… they say I gotta go see a shrink to prove that I’m doing alright.”

“Are you doing alright?”

He put his hands on his hips and looked toward the end of the block. “I’ll get my badge and gun back.”

“But are you doing alright?”

“You were bleeding in my arms not too long ago, and you ask me if I’m alright? Jesus, kid.” His eyes beamed again. “Not sure if a shrink is right for me. Old habits and all. Haven’t been to confession going on… twenty years? Why start now? Especially with someone who can’t even claim to talk to God.” He scratched the back of his head.

She shrugged. Therapy worked for those who had the time and money for such a “treat.” Lacking both became one more thing that separated those who were scraping by from those who were healthily maladjusted. She and Tobias would just have to handle their PTSD through sporadic glib conversations. Wasn’t that the true Shadowhaven way?

He leaned back against the passenger side of his weathered sedan and wiped at his cold-reddened nose. “When they identified the body, her mom cried so hard in my chest, I had to change my shirt.”

Marisol stiffened. Annie’s mom.

“I swear I should be used to it by now—the sound parents make when they find out their child’s dead. It’s like nature knows everything’s out of order and splits the world open with a wail. I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”

She nodded. She had. If it wasn’t the most ear-splitting cry wrenched from a single human’s voice box, it was a barely audible sigh that sucked out the parents’ life force, pickling them from the inside. Had Vincent felt that, watching as people aged and died? What he’ll feel when she…

Tobias laughed, but it was small, and he kept his eyes fixed on the block ahead. “And they brought me food. Their kid was murdered, but they fed me.”

Marisol propelled herself off the curb and hugged him. Even with the boost, she stretched her arms to reach around his neck. He tensed in her embrace. She vowed to hold on until he relaxed, to thank him for being there when she couldn’t.

While he held her, he said, “But the strangest thing happened. When I explained who I was, they told me my partner came to her apartment and asked them questions when they were there. In Korean.”

“Your partner is fluent in Korean?”

“The oaf’s barely literate in his first language, let alone anyone else’s. Not to mention, the bearded man they described in no way fit his fat, ugly mug.”

Vincent? Marisol dropped her heels back to the ground. “Our friend made an appearance?”

“I think so.” Tobias stared down at her. His big palm lingered on her back. He parted his mouth and sucked in a breath. They froze in the same position as when she had kissed him. He said, “I never expected to see you again. If the SPD suggests you leave, you either don’t come back, or you end up —” He lifted his eyebrows. “Anyway, I thought, ‘I’ll keep an eye on her parents. She’ll start a new life far from here, and I’ll learn that she’s doing okay, and it will be enough.’” His hands left her back.

“Enough?” She crossed her arms. Enough of what?

He scratched the back of his head, paced a few steps, and leaned against the trunk. “I spent my whole life on the receiving end of disappointed looks from the women in my life. My ex-wife. That goes without saying. My own mother even. And I deserved it. I started thinking the job is the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing I’m good at. But you have this way of looking at me... ”

She twisted her face, confused. “How do I look at you?”

“Like I’m worth a damn. Like maybe there’s more to me than the job. Like,” Tobias rolled his eyes and continued, “I don’t know, like I’m a good man or something.”

Still puzzled, she asked, “You aren’t a good man?”

“My life’s trajectory would suggest otherwise. Since I met you, though, you have this way of seeing me, and I started believing things.” He wiped his hand over his face and scratched his stubble. “I prayed for you.”

“Prayed for me?” Marisol scoffed. Sure, Mom and Abuelita prayed all the time, papering over problems with superstitious words. But for Tobias to go off-brand and say something sincere? She wasn’t sure if she was worthy of such a sentiment.

He recited, “Dear God, shit on me all you want but not on her.”

She chortled, heartened by Tobias’s lack of finesse. That definitely wasn’t a prayer you’d learn during catechism. “Thanks.” She walked, continuing toward the bus stop, but his large hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“God, she deserves a good life. She deserves a good man. One who will take care of her, who will never break his promises. Who’ll be there for her.”

The words were too maudlin. Marisol warned him away from them with a sharp, “Tobias. ”

He removed his hand and shoved both of them into his pockets, looking at the ground. “I know it’s not me. It shouldn’t be me. But when the world’s best woman looks at me like I’m...”

Marisol searched his face, trying to make sense of him.

He continued, “What I’m trying to say is—”

Then it dawned on her. When she looked at him before, she found glimpses of what she thought was his alter ego. The look? It was Marisol searching for the Patron Saint, and Tobias was on the verge of cutting his heart open. She braced for the impact like a car crash. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

“No. What I’m trying to say is we’ve only had our moments, kid, and I could live off those moments for the rest of my life.” Tobias lifted his eyes. His irises shimmered, fluctuating between brown and blue in the light. “It’s enough.”

Words of advice echoed through her head. Tell him the truth. Tell him he wasn’t the one you looked for. However, after losing his gun and his badge, Marisol couldn’t bring herself to cause him to lose his idea of her. “Enough.”

From a small turn of his mouth, the creases around his eyes flared like sun rays. “I did think I’d never see you again.” He walked to the driver’s side and leaned his arms against the roof. “What’s with the industrial rat trap?”

“Have you ever had to cover for animal control? ”

“A few times back in the day. Why?”

She opened the passenger seat and lowered herself inside his car. “I’d sit down if I were you.” He hustled inside and shut the door. “With the SPD trawling the river for Izzy and the brutal attacks on the gangs, it’d be accurate to say Shadowhaven’s getting a little freakier than usual.”

Tobias nodded.

“It started the night he killed her. Listen.” Marisol played Annie’s message.

“What does that have to do with the Bloodsucker?”

The attack seemed distant this time, like it happened to someone else on some true crime documentary. Her memories were just the cold hard facts of the case: Before the Bloodsucker and his gang attacked Dr. An Jung Park, she fought them off, the narrator would read over ominous synthesizer music. First with her gun and then with what a doctor knows best, a syringe. Marisol sniffled away the emerging prickles of grief as she thought of Annie—her Annie who only abused the ends of pencils—fighting until the end. “The serum?” she said, “She injected him with that stuff.”

Tobias grimaced like he had already exploded a few brain cells trying to understand the most believable part of Marisol’s week.

“You’ve worked with our friend for a few years because you know the goings-on in this city need something a little extra. If we find and trap this mouse, we could get ahead of the game and face the Bloodsucker prepared.” There was an even smaller voice telling her that understanding Annie’s mouse meant figuring out Vincent’s immortality problem, but that voice needed to shut the hell up because he deserved his tortured existence. Or maybe he didn’t. Even exes deserved a little dignity.

Tobias tapped the steering wheel and started the car. “Let’s catch ourselves a rat.”