"When you wake up, it's breakfast," Anne said.
"Hello, Zoe," Croyd said.
Zoe dropped her purse on the floor and sat down at the table. She looked him over, unable to stop herself, looked for horns or a tail or feelers, whatever. Needles had told her stories about Croyd that she wasn't sure sure she wanted to believe. He was thin, yes, and he had a prodigious appetite, but the parts of him she could see looked nat.
"Hi."
"Another batch, Mr. Crenson?" Anne asked.
"No, thank you. This last dozen should be enough to take the edge off."
"Dozen?" Zoe asked.
"He has a good appetite," Anne said.
"Where are the kids?"
"Busy," Anne said. "Busy and fed. They ate early."
If Anne didn't like where they were, Zoe would have heard it in her voice. They were somewhere, they were okay.
"Some for you, Zoe?" Anne asked.
"Two."
Anne handed over a plate with three blintzes. Zoe scraped the last of the sour cream from a depleted carton on them and tucked in. They were very, very good.
Croyd attacked his plate, and while he ate he went through some funny facial stuff. A sort of tic, Zoe thought, but it might have been facial exercises. She couldn't tell. Anne made suds in the tiny sink and washed the mixing bowl.
Anne looked good. The docs were calling it remission. Her hair was growing back, the thick lovely hair that she had lost with the chemo. And she looked oifferent with a nat-style torso, two breasts, fake but shapely. She wasn't even unhappy about the line of scars where her other five pairs of breasts had been.
Humming a tune. Zoe hadn't seen her this happy - since she cooked for Bjorn. Zoe swallowed coffee and tried to swallow the sudden lump in her throat.
Croyd polished off the late plate of blintzes, drank down the juice, chased it with coffee, and got up. He brought his empty, make that gleaming, plate to Anne.
"Excellent blintzes. Wonderful blintzes. The best blintzes I have ever had." He bent and kissed Anne's cheek, as if he were a son, a long-lost member of the family. Anne just glowed.
"I like a little exercise when I wake up," Croyd said. "Is it spring?"
"It's May," Anne said.
"Good. I need to walk. Come with me, Zoe." He twisted his hands in odd circles, stared at his palms, lifted up on his toes as if he were trying to fly. Weird.
"Uh ..."
"Please?"
Well. She might just be inclined to follow that grin almost anywhere, and she didn't want his twitchy behavior to disturb Anne.
"Sure."
Zoe gave her plate to Anne and hugged her.
Croyd hurried toward the souk at a fast pace, his hands in his pockets, alert, watchful. He sniffed at the air as if to catch every scent.
"So those were blintzes," Croyd said. "I've never had blintzes before."
"Did you like them?" Zoe asked.
"Yeah."
She was glad she had her sneakers on. They were moving at almost a trot.
"What's the hurry?" Zoe asked.
"I'm hungry," Croyd said. He looked up at the rooftops along the narrow street and suddenly swerved to get close to the wall. "We're being watched."
"Yeah. Fist guards." She couldn't see anything, just purple twilight and a clear sky. "They watch everything."
"I don't like it."
"They're on our side, Croyd."
She followed him under a vendor's awning. On our side? Well, yes, maybe. The bastards. She'd been unable to figure out a safe way to contact them again. They weren't exactly in the phone book, and she didn't think another trip to the Gate was a good idea.
Needles hadn't said a word to her since her visit to the Gate. He was trying to be subtle about it, but he just wasn't around when Zoe was awake. Angelfish had found things to say to her, had been very nice the last few days, had been available to chat, which wasn't like him at all. Guarding Needles from her, her from Needles. But Needles looked okay. Sort of.
Croyd bought three skewers of shaslik, lamb and peppers and tomatoes, richly spiced, dripping and grilled almost black. He dipped the sticks in a paper cup of yogurt sauce and munched them down. "Want one?" he asked.
"No, thanks. Why were you wiggling around at home?"
"Checking to see what powers I've got this time."
"Did you find out?"
"Nope." He turned to the vendor and thanked him effusively in a language Zoe had never heard. The old man bowed, slapped Croyd on the back, and replied at length, smiling a gap-toothed smile.
Croyd did a little bow, one of those maneuvers with gestures toward his forehead, heart, and middle. He handed over the skewers and grabbed Zoe's hand, pulling her toward the back of the stall and through a gloomy doorway.
"Well," Croyd said. "I never spoke Basque before."
"Basque?" Zoe asked, but they were in a dim space filled with brass and carpets, and Croyd was chatting with a very large man dressed in a caftan of a most violent shade of purple. Something went from Croyd's hand to his, and something went in Croyd's pocket.
Out the back door, into an alley, through another door, and then another, Zoe had never known the Joker Quarter to have so many passageways, or so many places to eat.
Croyd tried a piece of baklava and then bought a pan of it. He ate cucumbers, tomatoes, scallions dressed with oil and coriander at another stall.
"Do you always eat like this?" Zoe asked.
"When I wake up, yeah." He stopped to buy something wrapped in soft, puffy flatbread, something that reeked of garlic and fenugreek. He seemed to like it.
They turned another corner, into a section of the Quarter that Zoe didn't know at all. She felt like a tourist. Croyd's sunny enthusiasm put a different light on the sights and smells. He was having fun. So was she, come to think of it, chatting and walking his hand reaching for hers when she flagged behind him. Croyd wasn't coming on to her; the interaction felt more like teenage buddies touring Disneyland. Nice.
The next doorway opened into a restaurant. Croyd stuck his head in, sniffed, and grinned. The waiter motioned them toward a nest of pillows and a low table, and left them. He returned carrying a pitcher in one hand, an atomizer in the other, and a basin, which he held in the curl of his prehensile tail. The arrangement made the process of hand-washing and rosewater spritzing a one-step operation.
Zoe nibbled while Croyd demolished platter after platter of wonderful things.
"Bastilla," Croyd said. "Pigeon pie. I love Morocco."
"We're in Jerusalem," Zoe said.
"Yeah. Right."
He talked. He talked a lot. He was full of questions about all of the Escorts, about Anne, about news since he'd gone to sleep. Orient me, that was the gist of what he asked. Tell me about the world. In a corner, three musicians played some sort of drum, a flute, something flat with strings. They finished a song and said a few words, the order of the next set or something. Croyd stopped talking and listened to them.
"Dumbek, but it once was called a naqqua. The naq is the flute, and that thing on the woman's lap is a qanan, sort of a zither. The city is called Al Q'uds, except by the Jews and the Christians.... I think I know every language on Earth. Now that's strange." Croyd's brown eyes were bright. He popped another square of sweet pastry in his mouth. "It's time to powder my nose. See if that guy will bring us another tray of these while I'm gone."
He unfolded his legs from the pillow and darted away. Zoe sipped sweet mint tea and listened to the players, the sinuous melodies of the desert, ancient, resonant. This land could be a place to love, if it were at peace. If.
She felt full, and amused, and almost happy. A little spaced but maybe that was the relief of a few hours away from - don't think about the past, she told herself.
She saw Croyd threading his way through the tables, circling back toward her. Something was wrong, she sensed it. Croyd crouched beside her pillow and whispered in her ear, danger all too apparent in the relaxed way he moved "There's some nasty muscle asking for you. Three of them. Here's what we do. You leave. Left, right, left, left, count three doors and you're back to the moneychanger's place, the dude in the purple. Act like you're mad at me and get. I'll follow you and try to pick them off."