Take me to your other self’s house

The wiper blades chopped against the rain like measured gunfire, smearing the liquid world of headlights and knife-blade reflections across the windshield. Heavy droplets, unseen in the blur, but pictured in Gradie’s mind as the size of gumballs, sang on the roof of the car.

They had left the jeep under a tarp in a mud covered back yard turned used car lot tucked away on the north side, one of Philip's assets. A Honda fit with the back seats already down stood waiting one spot over and they had loaded everything into it in near-solid darkness, just before the rain really picked up. Out in the wet distance, amber street lamps and streaming headlights had glowed like holograms. Gradie had felt completely severed from it all, immersed in a world of darkness. Once again, he felt like a ghost walking beside the living.

But being a ghost wasn’t good enough for Philip.

“Yo, Max. Are we heading back to the storage place or what?” Sam asked her earbuds.

“No. The girl driving that car has never even been there. Got it?”

“Ok, so where does a girl like me go to get out of the rain?”

“How should I know? I’ve never even met her.”

“Maybe like a safehouse, or—”

“Wherever her little heart desires. She surely isn’t worried about the cops.”

“Ok, got it, thank you Max.” She dropped the line with a sigh that boiled into a groan.

“Mr. Teacher man loves to teach.”

“What’s the lesson?” Gradie asked.

“Become your disguise. So, I’m just a lil’ party girl in a Honda Fit. Out too late and very sleepy.” She made a big fake yawn sound. Gradie laughed, still giddy from the shooting.

“So where would miss party girl go to sleep?” he asked. “A hotel?” Scenarios of the two of them sharing a hotel room were already playing an encore in his head.

“Nope, somewhere that would make Mr. Max very grumpy if he knew I was going there, but party girl doesn’t know that.” She leaned over towards Gradie and grinned impishly at the windshield. “Party girl has never met Max and just wants to go home cause she’s been out drinking and needs snacks.”

“We’re going to your house? Like your self’s—”

“Yep, and It’s a big ol’ mess, so if you make any comments you’ll be sleeping in the car.”

“I thought Boss said to avoid places associated with your Self?”

“That’s mostly because you don’t want any family members or friends dropping in and getting the self all stirred up and dropping you out. I don’t have to worry about that.”

Gradie let the noise of the rain, road, and breathing fill in the silence. He nodded when he felt her glance at him then looked out the window like he didn’t care. He searched the glass for fragments of her reflection, until he felt he had to break the silence.

“You got anything to eat there?”

“Not really. I’m gonna order something.”

“It’s a Chinese take-out kinda night.”

“What does that mean?”

Gradie looked her in the eye for a second before she looked back at the road. She was eager to draw the talking away from her home, towards anything else.

“You know, it’s raining, were out here working a case and getting in shootouts. Very noir.”

The pause that followed left him wondering if she would take offense to him being too nice to her. She seemed the kind to hate people being careful with her feelings, and he might have let too much of his own seep into the words.

“Oh, you mean like in an old movie? So you wanna share some lo mein and talk about the case? Maybe fall in love?” She drew the last word out like a taunt.

“Oh, I’m already in love with you,” Gradie said. Sam laughed like a scream.

“Shut the fuck up! And keep your hands to yourself or I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

“Which head?”

“Uh, which one would you rather I shoot you in?”

“Not the one I do my thinking with.” Gradie made sure he had a big smile on when Sam looked over.

“You are such a doofus!” She cackled into the steering wheel.

“Zoey likes me,” he said with mock pride.

“No she does not!”

“Oh yeah she does. She was whispering all kinds of dirty things in my ear when I was looking—”

“You asked me what I was wearing, you creepy little—” EP’s voice rattled his ear buds. Sam laughed and almost swerved out of the lane.

“You’re listening in on us? Is it jealousy?” Gradie whispered with mock concern.

“MPEEEEEEEEEEEE”

Stolen story; please report.

“Fuck!” Gradie threw his hands up to his ears instinctively, but the shrill siren was coming from inside his head. EP cut it off suddenly.

“Did you buzz him!?” Sam yelled and laughed into the steering wheel.

“Yep. Oh, and for the record, Alan, I’M WEARING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!”

Gradie threw his hands up again as EP’s voice battered his ear drums. There was a chime and she dropped off.

“Your ears ringing bud?” Sam said.

“Now I have to find out where she is.” Gradie sighed.

“She will fucking kill you!” Sam laughed. Gradie smiled and bounced his eyebrows.

“Don’t do that, oh my god!” Sam laughed. There was another rain spoken silence until Gradie felt a responsibility to break it.

“Hey, remember that time you shot those cops?” He said suddenly, deadpan. Sam laughed at the overhead visor, then at him, then ran a red light.

“Shit!” She looked around in a panic. Gradie drew his pistol. Nothing happened. No sirens or flashing lights. Only afterward did Gradie remember where he was.

“Fuck.”

“What?” said Sam breathlessly.

“I should have just pushed that there were no cops around.”

“You really think you could have done that?” Sam laughed.

Gradie just looked at her.

“That’s a lot bigger than finding some clothes in a car,” she said, and shook her head at the road.

Gradie holstered his pistol and stared out the window. Soon he was lost in thought experiments that tested the malleability of the Hardworlds and the theoretical power of his Spirit. Before he could decide to what extent Sam was right, the car slowed into a turn.

They pulled into a small apartment complex and lightning flashed behind the wooded area at the other end of the parking lot, silhouetting the jagged arms of forgotten oaks against billowing storm clouds.

When they had parked, Sam leaned her seat back and jumped into the hatch and started moving things around. Gradie just sat there trying to get a look at her ass till she snapped at him.

“Come around and fucking help me with this! And keep your gun in reach.”

He got out into the rain, and even with his jacket collar buttoned tight, he felt the water run down the back of his neck. Raindrops popped like the wet sounds of bullets hitting flesh and he remembered the men he had gunned down over their ATVs. Somewhere, his Self screamed.

At the back of the car, Sam shoved a heavy pocketed tool bag into his chest. He found the strap and got it over his shoulder while she hopped out with a canvas rucksack on her back and a large satchel purse over one shoulder. Her other hand was firmly in her jacket pocket and stayed there as she shut the door and walked up the stairs to the second-story unit.

As he waited for Sam to unlock the door, Gradie scanned the parking lot for any sign of danger, but the street beyond was liquid black besides a mist-ringed streetlight and the few fragmented slivers of glare that zipped by on a passing car. Sam got the door open and slipped inside. She shut he door so close behind Gradie when he came in that she almost caught his jacket in it.

He stood there dripping while she set her bags down on the ground and took her jacket off.

“Hang your trench on that rack so you don’t get water all over my house please, thank you,” Sam said. She put her own jacket on the coat rack hanging off the closet door and took the Beretta out of the pocket where she had been holding it and put it under her waistband, showing the outline of her hip and the soft skin of her stomach. Gradie gawked but she didn’t notice. He had only ever seen her in baggy coveralls. Even in the Otherworld, she had dressed like a retro-futurist bomber pilot.

By the time he had hung up his coat and picked the bags back up, he had collected himself.

“This way! Tour time!” Sam said in a sing-song voice and led him down a small hallway, with a bathroom on one side and another closet then the kitchen on the other. The space at the end was divided between the living room and what should have been the dining area.

“Bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen, ok done!” she said pointing and bouncing as she went.

Gradie looked around without being too obvious about it and let a smile snap across his face. This place was made of Sam.

The mismatched couch and lazy boy looked like they had fallen asleep years ago and never gotten up. The coffee table was covered in bottles and cans, game cases, ash trays, controllers, and ammo boxes. The walls were lined with shelves holding books, games, more bottles, and trophies (some with pistols on them). The top shelves and upper surfaces of the fixtures all held folded towels, cushions, or small beds. In one of them, on top of a half-height bookshelf in front of a window, a cat stirred and started to watch them.

“Say hello Bojo.” Sam set the bags on one end of the couch.

“Holy shit, is that the cat from the clubhouse?”

“Yep. That’s my baby. Set it there.” Sam pointed at an old office chair leaned against the wall below the bar counter between the dining area to the kitchen. The round kitchen table was covered in laundry and there was a Mossberg Shockwave hung from its sling on a command hook on the wall and he spotted at least three other guns peeking out under the clutter.

Sam must have seen him staring.

“Yeah, I know it’s a mess, don’t judge me, Mr. suburb McMansion.”

Gradie smirked at her.

“Don’t worry, I don’t give a shit. I was just counting the guns.”

Sam met his eyes for a second, a confused look flashing across her face, then turned away and picked up a phone charging on the counter. She thumbed through it for a second while the thunder grumbled outside, and Gradie watched her, wondering what she had seen in his eyes.

“All right, well, drinks in the fridge, pick what you want.” She handed him the phone. A Chinese place was already pulled up on the delivery app.

“I’ll be right back.” She turned without looking at him, and he watched her bounce back down the hallway.

“Zoey. Can you have Max—” She opened the door at the other end of the apartment and slid in sideways and closed it fast.

The daydreams came back with a vengeance and he looked for something to distract him. He read the menu so hard he absorbed nothing, and it took him ten minutes to pick the kung pao chicken and char siu bao. The phone was in a wallet case and he found himself staring at the distorted image of Sam’s head and whispering her last name like it might tell him something about her.

A stomp in the back room broke his focus and he set the phone down and walked up to Bojo. Was it really him, or Sam was just fucking with him? Can you push animals? If she could do that then why did Gradie finding clean clothes in that car surprise her so much? Maybe it didn’t and she was fucking with him then too. He could think it, but he couldn’t believe it. The idea of Sam being anything less than straightforward to a fault dissolved in his mind.

Bojo trotted away from him when he held out his hand, stopping just out of reach and looking back, so he studied the room again.

In between a dusty peg and board display of medals, all for competitive shooting, and a floating shelf that seemed installed purely to collect cat hair, a framed photo caught his eye. He smiled at the face looking at him. Sam standing with a group of other people, her hair an un-styled orange clam shell, medals on her neck reflecting summer sun, open side by side shotgun in her arms, holding a plaque.

He looked around and saw other photos. Sam aiming a pistol, completely focused, captured from a low angle. Winner’s photos for competitive driving, off-road driving, archery. The photos were framed, and stood up, but not displayed in any kind of vanity, more like they had been put up out of respect for the people who had given them to her.

A low bookshelf sagged under the weight of thick textbooks. Car manuals, HVAC maintenance, Electrician courses, locksmithing, gunsmithing, bristling with rainbow page tags peeking out of the dust.

He tried to look past the objects of Sam’s career and skills, and focus on other things. Band posters, manga, dust-stained stuffed animals, sketch pads and pencil cases, to find what parts of her Real self she had let slip through the crafted, primed façade of her Hardworlding avatar.

The door down the hall opened suddenly and Sam marched towards him. Her eyes darted from him to her display wall and back to him, and her mouth made a slight pout, but she didn’t say anything about it.

“Ok, time to prepare for the worst. Follow me.