Idolon by Mark Budz Page A

Nguyet was preparing dinner. Fish patties and fried cactus.
    " How's he doing?" Marta asked.
    Nguyet looked up from the hissing skillet and shook her head, somber.
    Yesterday her father hadn't been able to stand on his own. Marta had to help him to the dinner table.
    "He refuses to get out of bed," Nguyet said, her mood sour. "Except to go to the bathroom."
    "Again?" It was the third time that week.
    "I called Don Angelo, the chiromancer. But Rocio refused to see him. Your father spat on the poor old man, and then tried to choke him."
    The chiromancer was in his nineties. Hardly a match for a warehouse worker, even a bedridden one.
    "What about you?" Nguyet peppered the fish.  "Are you okay? You don't look so good."
    "Headache." She hadn't told either of them she wasn't feeling well, hadn't wanted them to worry.
    An uneasy truce existed between them. When her  father had first started seeing Nguyet, Marta resented the woman, refused to accept her. She didn't want, or need, another mother. She'd gotten along fine for years. Even when Nguyet officially moved in with them, Marta had treated her as a guest, a temporary housemate. To accept her fully, as a permanent addition to the family, would hammer the final nail in the coffin that held the remains of her real mother.
    To her credit, Nguyet didn't try to become Marta's stepmother, surrogate sister, or best friend. Quietly, yet inextricably, she slipped into the role of careetaker, an arrangement Marta could live with now that her father was on disability and antidepressants. Without Nguyet, it would be impossible to take care of him. Concetta's disappearance had hit him hard. He blamed himself. Marta's meager income wasn't enough to live on and pay for the drugs to treat his damaged spine and melancholy. Even the blackmarket generics in the Flats were high-priced.
    "I have a neighborhood planning meeting toonight," Nguyet said. "From eight until ten. I can't be here to babysit him."
    "Okay. I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can talk some sense into him."
    "Shit." Nguyet returned her attention to the skilllet, where the cactus had started to smoke.
    Typical. Marta couldn't tell if the remark was directed at her or the burning cactus. Let it go, she told herself. It wasn't worth it.
    She made her way down the narrow hallway that led to the closet-sized bedrooms in back. Her father wallowed in bed. His back was uncomfortably straight, held rigid by the brace his workman's comp had paid for. He was watching a newscast on a cheap Vurtronic display he'd pasted to the ceiling so he didn't need to sit up. The d-splay was low-res graphene with equally flimsy bandwidth. Light from the d-splay peeled the color from his face and the rattan veneer on the drawn window shade next to him.
    He didn't look at her when she entered the room and took a seat on the chair next to the bed. He kept his attention fixed on the news story, a preview of an upcoming Paris fashion show where the latest philm and cosmetique offerings from fashioneers like IBT and Skincense would be unveiled.
    She searched his face, trying to read the thoughts behind the ferrous-hard eyes and gritty, scar-nicked stubble. "You look like shit," she said, breaking the standoff.
    He rolled his head sideways on the pillow. "You don't look so great yourself," he said. ,
    Marta knotted her hands into fists. "You can't just lie there."
    "What a joke." Her father scoffed and returned his attention to the d-splay. "Your sister saw it comming."
    Marta's throat tightened. "Saw what?" Her voice husky, barely a whisper.
    "Philm."
    She swallowed at the ache, trying to force it down. "What about it?"
    "Everybody wants to be somebody else. They can't be satisfied with who they are anymore."
    She stared at him. "What does that have to do with Concetta?"
    "People think they can change from the outside in," he said. "Instead of the inside out."
    "Why are you telling me this?"
    "You should turn that radio down," he said. "It woke me up this