“My God,” she said with genuine concern. The look on her face was far more sincere that I’d expected from a recently exiled cultist. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, then remembered all the fish art that had been on display at the warehouse, not to mention the stolen fish from Irene’s that we had chased all the way back to Jane’s old employers.
“Do you recall anything from your time with the Sectarians about a fish?” I asked, hoping for something useful.
Jane thought it over a moment and then shook her head. “For a while, we had a lot of fish coming in. I remember the one you were after, but I’m afraid they kept me in the dark as to what they do. I only received and processed the shipments. Sorry.”
I was disappointed, and she saw it on my face.
“We kept pretty accurate records, though,” she added encouragingly. “You’d be surprised what OCD sticklers Sectarians can be about keeping track of things. They’re like the Felix Ungers of the cultist world.”
Maybe there was something useful in that, and I wrinkled my brow while I thought about it.
After I had been silent for several minutes, Jane spoke up again. “You okay?”
I snapped out of my thoughts, none the wiser about what to do. Jane’s concern for me was touching, but it was me who should have been concerned about her.
“How’s your recovery coming?” I asked.
Jane struck a superheroic pose, hands on hips. “Nothing short of miraculous, thanks to that bag of mystical healing thingies you left with me. I’m running out, though.”
I doubted I could easily get access to another emergency kit in a hurry. I still hadn’t told anyone in the Department that I was secretly nursing Jane back to health.
When I said nothing, she said, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking for anything more. You’ve done more than enough already…it’s just that I’m kinda dwindling my savings here…”
I still wasn’t sure how to help Jane other than hiding her, but maybe if I got her out and about, we’d hatch some kind of plan.
“Let’s get you out of here,” I said, “go for a little walk, see how well you’re healed up. I’ve got a couple of errands to run anyway.”
Jane looked a little frightened by the prospect. She hadn’t really stepped foot from the hotels I had been moving her to. “You sure it’s okay?”
I nodded. I doubted anyone from the Department would run into us, and none of the Sectarians would probably do anything during daylight hours if they saw us either. Plus, I had made sure that no one had followed us downtown.
“C’mon,” I said. “It’ll be fun. We can try to one-up each other over who’s been more damaged lately-you for falling off of the roof or me from smoke inhalation.”
The metallic blue-checkered framework of Manhattan Super-Storage took up the entire northeast corner of Twenty-Third Street and Tenth Avenue. The sun shone off the boxy building, casting streaks of light from its many windows down onto the sizable crowd gathered out front. I led Jane into the throng as she looked around warily but with a growing good humor in her eyes.
“What is all this?” she asked.
Storage places were never this busy normally, but this was no normal day. The sidewalk was awash with an almost street-fair-like atmosphere-full of food carts, performers, and people pressed together tight like books on a shelf. The scent of grilled meat and roasted corn rose off the food vendors and filled the air with mouthwatering goodness, but I pushed aside all thoughts of getting a bite. Eating could wait.
“These things keep getting trendier and trendier.” I sighed.
A small table was set up by the entrance to three of the loading bays, and I walked over, found my name, and signed in. The bays themselves had been closed off and turned into a common feeder line that wove around a variety of tables. Each was covered in plentiful piles of other people’s belongings. The rest of the crowd, those who hadn’t signed up in advance, lurked near the line in the hopes of getting a chance to browse as well.
“Lot of people don’t ever come to claim their storage items once they default on payment,” I explained. “The crap that accumulates is auctioned off to make room for actualpaying customers. Ever sinceTime Out wrote it up as a kitsch thing to do, it’s like the Ringling Brothers took over. All these assholes come here hoping to avoid Ikea, but to me, anything I luck into here just goes into supporting my apartment. Hey, maybe I can score you something to help you out with your money sitch until things smooth over.”
“Maybe I should just head back to Kansas,” Jane said, sounding defeated.
“Are you really ready to throw in the towel on the Big Apple already?” I asked, even though, if you’d asked me a couple days ago, I would have said that the city could definitely use one less Sectarian. Like many people who were transported New Yorkers, I felt Jane had something to prove to herself here, and was reluctant to leave. She would probably be safer if she left town, but that stubborn part of her that I could totally identify with was still holding out.
I checked my watch and realized we had a little time to kill. My stomach growled and I led Jane off in the direction of the food vendors. I was hungry enough to eat whatever rat on a stick or cockroach knish they might be selling.
My God,I realized.This feels more and more like a date, doesn’t it? I found that despite Jane’s previous alignment with the forces of Darkness, the idea didn’t scare me as much as I thought it might. Maybe if I approached this like it was a date, Jane might be more likely to give herself over to the forces of Good. In a moment of spontaneity, I approached a guy standing nearby making balloon animals. The twist of green and red he was working on looked vaguely like a wiener dog, and he handed it to a kid with a big grin on his face, who then ran off in the direction of his mother.
“Hey, pal,” I said, fishing out my wallet. “I’ll take one of those. Can you make a flower or something like that?”
The balloon guy was shorter than me, chunky, and wore a fanny pack to store his balloons in. He looked at me and shook his head-his black, shoulder-length mullet swaying back and forth like seaweed in the ocean. “Sorry, pal. I wouldn’t want to send any of the little kids home sad or crying because I ran out of balloons giving something away to an adult.”
I looked around the crowd. There were only a handful of children scattered here and there, most of them already with balloons. “It’s for the lady,” I said insistently. I gave him my most sincere c’mon-be-a-pal-don’t-fuck-this-up-for-me smile.
He shook his head again and I could feel myself going a little Hulkish around the edges.
“C’mon,” I said, lowering my voice. “Not even for the young at heart?”
This time he simply rolled his eyes and began to turn away, but I wouldn’t be deterred. I couldn’t control myself. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
“Dude,” I shouted. “You’re a guy whose only freaking job seems to be-and correct me if I’m wrong here-blowing and twisting. It’s not that hard. I think you can take two minutes out of your busy schedule here to whip one up for us big kids who are more likely to tip your sorry ass for the trouble than little Billy or Suzy here. Let’s not be a Balloon Nazi about this, okay?”
Jane beamed like a kid on Christmas Day as she attempted to keep hold of the barely manageable variety of balloon-made items in her hands. Streaming along with her were a flower, a wiener dog, a pirate sword, a musketeer hat with a balloon plume, a poodle, a sleeping cat, an airplane, a goldfish, and something the balloon maker had feverishly assured us was a flying mouse.