Steve looked across the tiny break room and watched Jesse play with her sugar glider, Cory. The little rat bugged him. It would hide in her pocket and jump out at the least opportune times. Still, she doted on the thing. Charlie kept telling him to make a play, but it seemed too weird. She was almost a coworker, and that never went well.

Looking for something to distract himself, he grabbed the remote for the television and flicked on the news. Every news station focused on the meteor. Meteor this, meteor that. He tried the local station first. The anchor, a slick older gentleman with a porn star moustache, had just handed off to the bright young thing sentenced to handling human interest stories.

“In other news, an area entrepreneur has started selling meteor protection helmets. Our reporter on the scene, Katrina Wells, has more.”

Katrina took the handoff perfectly. If her looks were more middle America and less Hispanic-Asian mutt, she’d have a decent chance of going network. “Thanks Jerry. I’m here with Troy Jackson, an employee at a local auto reclamation facility. Troy, why don’t you tell us a little more about your invention?”

That startled Steve a little. He knew Troy, sort of. The guy worked as one of the hourly grease monkeys at Charlie’s junk yard. If they’d called him an entrepreneur, the economy must have tanked. “Sure Kat. It’s pretty simple, really. I started thinking about the big meteor, and how there’s all that space junk up in the sky. Y’know, bits of satellites that got knocked off, that kinda thing?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, true fact, you can look it up on NASA’s website. Anyway, I got to thinking that even if the big meteor is gonna miss us, it’s gonna stir that stuff up something fierce. When it does, we’re gonna have little bits of metal falling left and right for a while.”

“Isn’t NASA working even now to move as many satellites out of the path of the meteor as possible?” Katrina had done her homework. She might make network if she worked the exotic look rather than trying to minimize it.

“Well, yeah, but they’re looking to save the ones that work. They’re not playing garbage man. It’s the junk we’ve got to worry about.”

“I see. That makes sense. You’ve got a solution for us, then?”

“Sure do! I came up with the idea when my boss, Charlie, got an old armored car to scrap. If something’s coming down from space, nothing short of a bunker is gonna stop it, but if you’re walking outside you don’t need to stop it. You just need to deflect it a little. So, I got Charlie’s OK to pull the plates off the car, did a little welding work, and viola!”

At this point, Troy whipped a sheet off a horrid looking metal monstrosity. Steve could tell it started life as a helmet, probably a construction helmet. It had flat bits of metal welded to it to form a ridge about two feet above its crown. Some kind of frame dangled from the sides. When Troy lifted it onto his head, Steve figured out why. Shoulder supports kept the weight of the thing manageable.

It still looked ridiculous.

“Is that Troy?”

Steve looked over at Jesse. She smelled really nice. Still, he didn’t date coworkers. They both volunteered here at the hospital, not really employees, but he liked the gig. It got him brownie points with the fire chief, and that meant he could spend more time at the gym or hitting the clubs with his wingman Charlie. If he asked her out, and it didn’t work out, she had more friends here than he did, so he’d have to find a new volunteering gig.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

He sighed. Sometimes he wished things were simpler. “Yeah, he’s gonna try to sell those.”

She shook her head, feeding Cory a cube of papaya as she spoke. The thing was cute as a button when it wasn’t being all creepy and hiding. “Does Charlie know?”

“He’s got Charlie’s blessing, apparently.”

Jesse winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. But…” Steve paused, caught her eye, and together they chorused Charlie’s catch phrase. “It’s a really good idea!”

From way down the hall, echoing out of the maintenance access for the old elevator, Charlie’s voice echoed faintly, “What is?”

***

Katrina thanked Troy again, climbed into the cramped passenger seat of the news van and closed the door behind her. She held her professional reporter’s grin in place while Damien slammed the back doors, secured everything, and started the engine. As they drove out of the parking lot, she waved and smiled at the skeleton crew staffing the junk yard. Once they made it to the local highway, she muttered to her driver and cameraman without moving her lips.

“Are we clear?”

Damien had lost most of his soft New England drawl from his time living in New Jersey, but when he decided to get laconic it still came out. “Ayep.”

“Are you recording video or audio?”

“Nope.”

She slumped, collapsing into her seat like a deflating doll. Damien’s sharp bark of laughter came from her comic relaxation as much as anything related to the story, but it still set her off. It started with a snort; another followed in short order. Before she could stop herself, she clutched at her sides, aching from the laughter pouring out of her. Her eyes watered just a bit, and she pulled herself back under control. If she started crying, she wouldn’t stop.

Being stuck as the human-interest correspondent for a local news station could do that to a girl.

When Damien saw she had herself back under control, he pulled over at the next fast-food joint. Katrina could never eat before a shoot; she got violently ill on camera when she tried. As a result of that and a fast metabolism, the end of every shoot left her starving. By now Damien knew her like a book, in more ways than she wanted to think about right now.

They rolled through the drive thru, their oversized order and goofy grins drawing chuckles from the girl working the window. They pulled up to one of the parking spots reserved for drive through orders and attacked the food. Midway through her second burger, Katrina saw Damien doing something odd with his hands and the fast-food bag out of the corner of her eye. When she looked over at him, he had his hands steepled over his head and the bag folded to cover them like a tall, skinny pyramid.

Burger and soda spewed over the dashboard in front of her as her laughter ignited once more. She wheezed at him through her laughter.

“Stop it. You jerk. Stop. I can’t breathe. You’re killing me. Stop!”

Damien grinned at her and crumpled up the fast-food bag, throwing it in a box full of similar crumpled balls behind the seat. While she composed herself and cleaned up the mess she’d made, he settled in and ate his cheap fast-food salad and apple slices. As he finished, she turned her seat to look at him.

“Thanks D. I really needed that.”

“Ayep.”

“OK, if you go all New England on me now, we’re not going out tonight.”

“Prolly not.”

“Oh, no. You’re not sneaking me back to your place either. No going out means no going home afterward.”

A look of mock horror crossed his features as he realized she might just keep her word if he kept up his laconic New Englander act. He relented with a grin. “Well, I can’t have that now, can I?”

Katrina stared at him, openly leering. She ran her gaze over him from head to toe, lingering on the width of his chest, the strength of his features, the bulge of his biceps. When she spoke, her voice had the singsong she worked so hard to keep off the air. “Well, I don’t know. I think we could make arrangements for you to have just about anything you wanted.”

Damien’s wicked grin came back in a flash, his humor dragging her closer to him, despite how foolish it was to be so open about their relationship. “How about a legion of Oompa Loopas that look like Snooki and will do my bidding, no matter how depraved or bizarre?”

Katrina was glad she’d put the fast food away. If she hadn’t, she’d be decorating Damien, and that…

Wasn’t such a bad idea now that she thought about it.

“OK, Mister. You’re taking me to the movies in New York City tonight, but first we both have to get home and change. Now drive.”