Double Cross [2] by Carolyn Crane Page B

says.
    “No, thank goodness.” We both worry about an elevated heart rate while exercising. I may zing out my fear, but I certainly don’t zing out my common sense. Or the knowledge that I’ll always be in danger of vein star, and that I very well could have it.
    I buzz Ally in as I get off the phone. She comes up and waits while I get on my sports togs, catching me up on the amusing little stories from Le Toile, the dress shop I used to manage and where she still works. The little stories make me feel connected to my old life, even though there are new girls who star in the stories. Ally also gives me a heads-up on a shipment of dresses from my favorite Italian line. They’re insanely expensive—nothing I could’ve afforded back when I ran the place. But now I have a lucrative job in the security industry—at least, that’s what they all think. I only pretend to be a nurse to targets.
    “Actually, I may just put one aside for you,” she says. “It’s exactly your thing.” She describes it in detail.
    “I am so there.” I’ll go check out the dress and meet the new girls, so that the stories mean more.
    I put on my hat and gloves, and I grab my face scarf. It’s a loose weave, so you can wrap it around your face like a mummy and still see.
    Ally smiles. “The security industry has been good to you, dude.”
    I swing my ice-traction-modified rollerblades over my shoulder and grab my key. “Everything has its trade-offs,” I say.
    I’m aware, as we head out into the bright, wintry morning, that she doesn’t fully believe me when I say that. I used to not believe it when people said that sort of thing, either.

Chapter

Six
    L ATER THAT MORNING , I get in my car and start over to Mongolian Delites to say hi to the gang and grab a pastry before I see Ez. At a stoplight, I reposition the arms on the bendable Gumby doll I glued to my dashboard. I make it so that his hands are on his hips. Worried Gumby. I like to change Gumby to reflect my mood. I can’t get the image of those fingers out of my head.
    The outfit I’ve chosen for this day is one of my favorites—a soft gray cashmere sweater, soft jeans, a nice long corduroy jacket, and a bright hat that Shelby knit out of about nine clashing colors of yarn. I used to think it was part of her Eastern European fashion sense that drew her to colors that clash, but now I see it as a uniquely Shelby thing. A grim, hopeless girl swathed in colors at war.
    I pull open the heavy double doors that once bore Otto’s seal and enter the dim, candlelit dining room of tables and Persian rugs and tourist trinkets gleaming darkly on the walls. The place is just starting to fill with the early lunch crowd.
    Delites is no longer Packard’s prison—he’d never willingly set foot in here again—but the place still serves as a kind of clubhouse for us disillusionists. I make my way around the perimeter of the main dining area to the back booth area, hoping the whole gang is there. They’ve becomefamily to me, and after that dream last night, I just want to be with them.
    I smile when I spot Helmut and Enrique, our ennui guy, in the far booth. Enrique looks bored as usual, dark and suave, with a baby-smooth face and glinting diamond earring. Across the table is Carter, our anger guy, whose ash-blond hair is so pale it’s almost metallic. Carter’s complaining about the lack of snow with jerky arm movements, wide freckled face tight with anger. Good ol’ Carter. I want to hug him. Instead, I order a bagel and coffee from a passing waitperson and settle in next to him.
    Eventually, Carter runs out of ways to articulate the outrageousness of Midcity weather, and Helmut launches into a thing about his current target, the Brick Slinger—the telekinetic highcap who terrorized the city last summer, killing random people with flying bricks.
    Now the Brick Slinger is a prisoner in a tollbooth on Highway 83. And he eats stinky food that annoys Helmut.
    Helmut goes on to describe