“...and Connor’s just so cute.”
“Uh-huh?”
I took another bite of my dry mashed potatoes as I half-listened to Tibbs’ slightly distracted story about her first couple of days volunteering.
“Gosh, it’s such a rush to get back to the community. Scoutmaster Harrison really knows his stuff, too, he’s a doctor and everything, even if he is a bit of a geezer sometimes.” Tibbs let out a contented sigh. “So how have you been dealing with being stuck in the meat house?”
“It’s uh, it’s fine I guess. I met this girl and she helped me find my Mom?”
“Well that’s amazing! Good on you for reaching out.”
Tibbs gave me a quick pat on the shoulder, and turned to look out of the bright window with a sad smile.
“...I’d like it if you didn’t go, but… I can’t make you stay, now can I?”
“I– I haven’t decided if I want to leave yet.”
“But don’t you…?” Tibbs looked away. “Sorry, I– maybe I’m flapping my gums here, but even so, don’t you want to go back home? See your family?”
Home… Do you want to know what ‘home’ was to me? Once upon a time, we used to have a nice place in Alexandria. My Dad was a reporter and my Mom was a complete narcissist who lived through her perfect, do-no-wrong kid who would get into trouble and bully other kids at school for petty reasons to make up for the fact he had a terrible stutter and nobody got around to teaching him respect or consequences beyond might-makes-right. Then they had another kid, we lost everything, and we all fucked off to Lynchburg because ‘family’. I’m sure you guys would just love to hear what her idea of ‘family’ was: a whole gaggle of addicts and trashy rednecks from Southside. God, I hated that stupid trailer park, and I despised my stupider, irresponsible parents – but at least I had friends, and I finally chilled out when I took to my high school’s wrestling team and learned some real respect for myself.
Then come my junior year, my stupid parents finally got their act together somewhat with a little reality check from me about how my tiny little sister was not going to hold up well in that toxic environment, my Mom actually starting to try instead of dismissing all of her shortcomings and my Dad brightening up a little from the depression around his having screwed everything in Alexandria. I cleaned up my own act, I exercised, I focused in school, I got a job to help out financially in-between school, wrestling practice, and band stuff, I started a relationship with a girl I liked, and I even tried straightening out my cousins’ attitudes a little; I busted my ass to fix everything about my life, because nobody else would. For once in my life, I was happy, really truly honest-to-God happy. Exhausted as Hell and with basically no time to myself, but happy.
And then the aliens ruined my entire existence, and now I don’t have a life to go back to. Everything I did was just… gone now, swept away by time and decay. So no, I didn’t know if I wanted to go back, because I was split between wanting to lay down and cry and worrying about if Mom slipped back into her tendencies again. And besides, I already made pretty good friends with Tibbs and Vil, and I’m not sure if normal people will want to be friends with me anymore.
But I kept that to myself, and just told Tibbs, “Maybe… it wouldn’t be the same, though.”
“...I–”
A hollow knock sounded against the door, and an odd figure opened the door. A woman dressed in heavy white robes with her face painted in the likeness of a skull, wrapped in a yellow shawl and carrying a wicked-looking black scythe glided forth uninvited.
Tibbs, being the most unflappable person to ever walk the face of this Earth and beyond, just glanced up to her, stood up, and asked, “Who the heck are you?”
The specter slowed, and stared piercing eyes into the huge scoutmaster (or is it former scoutmaster now?).
“Escucha mi, señorita. A friend has asked me to perform a small favor for her. This is the room of Señor Radomir, is it not?”
Uhh… okay, that’s weird… Why does she look like the Grim Reaper crossed with an abbess? Oh fuck, did that Condor lady get sour about not taking me in and send a Mexican hitwoman to finish the job?! Uh–right, sixth storey, head injury, yeah I’m not escaping this for the life of me. Maybe I was just being paranoid, and the incarnation of death with a huge scythe wasn’t here to take me to the afterlife? …Oh, who am I kidding, let’s get this over with.
I sat up and raised my hand for her to see. “Ehm, yeah, that– that’s me? W-what do you want?”
The white-robed woman laid her scythe against the wall, and without saying a word, levitated to the other side of my bed across from a very sketched-out Tibbs. She touched my scalp with a bony hand, and leaned down until her lips were less than an inch from my ear.
She whispered, so faintly and slowly I could only just barely pick up the unfamiliar words, “Madre Santísima, concédele a esta descarriada alma tu infinita salud y vitalidad, para que pueda obrar de nuevo en favor de tus designios.”
I felt a chill wash down from the top of my head, and every hair of mine stood on end. The slight pressure and dizziness that had followed my getting decked a week ago flared around my head injuries, then quickly deflated with a thin burst of pain. I shivered, and stared at the unfamiliar woman as she released me and gave only the slightest exhale upon my cheek.
“Amén.”
The theurge pulled away, and just as swiftly as she entered, glided back toward the door. I broke out of my stupor and yelled after her.
“Wait! Please wait…”
She flowed to a stop and rotated her levitating body in one fluid motion to look back at me.
“What…” I asked, “Who are you?”
The robed woman remained silent for a moment.
“I am the Bony Lady’s representative in this land, señor, her Angela Muerte. I protect the meek, heal the sick, and smite evil wherever it nestles itself.” She grabbed her scythe in a fluid motion, and rested a hand on the door’s edge. “Pass down this generosity, and remember that Santa Muerte watches over all of her children.”
“...Thank you. I will.”
Angela Muerte closed the door behind her with only the smallest of clicks, leaving me feeling better than even when I’d first come back and Tibbs staring after her in awe. I experimentally prodded at where my slow-healing head wounds were, and felt only smooth, closed skin, not a hint of either rough scars or the painful stitches that had held them closed. Even the bone beneath felt solid and whole.
“Huh. Well that was cool,” I said.
“Was that an angel?!” Tibbs exclaimed.
“No, it’s just…” I snapped a finger and tried to dig up the right word as I looked back at her. “You know what the, uh, Alozziani are?”
“...The Chicago mobsters that dressed up in gaudy costumes in the twenties?” Tibbs gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t follow.”
“No, I mean the– the guys that took it to ‘em. The vigilante cops. They dressed up too, and it was a whole public interest thing for a while?”
“...Okay?”
“Basically that, but people with superpowers. You know, like me and you? Sometimes they’re in the news? She was one of those.”
“Oh! Those… mystery men… huh.”
“Heroes,” I corrected. “Or marshals, if they’re working for the government. Well, I guess they’re not all paranaturals, but a lot of those who aren’t use paranatural equipment and devices…”
“Heroes…” Tibbs pondered for a moment, then shrugged. “What was all of that about a favor?”
“I don’t– ohh wait, did Sonia put her up to this? Hmm…”
I set aside the nearly empty tray on my lap and stood up with a stretch. It was like I’d been worked over with a full body massage; all the tenseness and drowsiness was gone from my body, and I felt sharper, more alert. I could move around just fine earlier, sure, but I’d been a bit dull, and it was good to feel whole and better weeks early. Heroes really are something else…
I sighed, and sat back down on the bed. “Anyways, I feel a lot better, and she fixed my fractures, that’s what matters. I’ll have to call Sonia and thank her, but I guess I should stay here until I get a definitive time set up.”
“And then you can come stay with us?”
I met her pleading eyes. I… I didn’t know if I could bring myself to let her down like that, but I couldn’t see myself living with anyone anymore. They’d still be my friends, but I think I wanted to be alone for now. Alone was good. Alone was… painful, but I wouldn’t spread my pain that way. Alone was free of expectations. Alone was safe.
Well, maybe not safe, but it was avoidant, and that’s what I wanted.
“...We’ll see.”
“Alrighty…” Tibbs paced over to the door, and looked back at me. “How about we go over and bug Leon again if you’re feeling so much better, huh?”
“Ooh, that sounds awesome, count me in.”
----------------------------------------
“...I told you, the name’s Biekart.”
I watched the Texas ranger on-screen perform a dramatic quick draw on the corrupt government agent, all the while flipping the TV’s remote through my hands and into the air in skillful tosses and twirls, mostly out of a need for some kind of stimulation. My newfound health since yesterday afternoon had left me with a lot of energy to burn and nowhere to burn it, and what Sonia had said bothered me. Even a casual late night theft of a stick of beef jerky from the hospital gift shop after that weekly test hadn’t really calmed my nerves, and I ended up not having slept much… again. I called her and she said the visit from Angela Muerte was a little surprise gift to get me on my feet – she apparently knew a lot of the local paranaturals – but her later texts had taken a… a bad turn. So here I was, watching more reruns of that Western show that seemingly always aired on this station in-between trashy Hallmark movies, semi-decent action flicks, and the occasional sci-fi TV episode, trying to field some kind of distraction from the growing sense of discontent that had begun to plague me.
It wasn’t working, though; I compulsively checked on our texts for the fourth time today, fully aware nothing had changed since we chatted late yesterday evening:
> Hey Ketty?
> Look there’s something bad going
on with your family or something
> I scrolled through your mom’s
page and
> Well I’m not sure if I should be
the one to tell you but
What <
What is that supposed to mean? <
> I don’t know
> I asked a bit about you and she
got all hostile
> Hold up
> What’s your favorite flavor of ice
cream?
Blueberry? Why <
> pointed questiond
> ok uhh favorite color
green <
Are you serious rn <
> hmm
> ok what did you get for your 16th
birthday
A Fender <
Seriously what’s wrong <
> umm
> ok apparently that was enough
> So she’s still skeptical but isn’t just
shooting me down anymore
> But like
> Oh my god I’ll just say it
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
> Your mom’s in chemo
> She’s apparently really happy to
know you’re out there but she
can’t visit or pay for a ticket for
you
> I’m really sorry
> I can give you her number if you
want, she really wants to talk w/
you
> Hello?
I laid back in my medical bed and flipped my phone shut. Maybe I would’ve taken it better if she was just dead or something, but knowing that I could do nothing here except give out false hope killed me inside. Cancer… God, life’s just not fair. How much time did she have left? Maybe I should just check out now, and… I don’t know, try hitchhiking across the country? Ah, that’s so stupid… a one way plane ticket across the country is what, three, four hundred dollars? Maybe? I can do that… Now how do you get money quickly when you don’t have any legal documentation? Rob a… hardware store? No, I… I mean, I don’t want to give myself a criminal record… but if I had to steal from somewhere? Maybe a restaurant? They deal with a lot of cash, right? Or maybe I could stow away on a train, are there trains around here? I do have a laptop now, I can look that sort of thing up…
My idle agonizing over what level of criminality I could get away with was interrupted by a polite knock on the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I was just slightly startled by the noise; the door opened to hail Dr. Plesintyne, looking a bit cheerier than usual.
“Afternoon, Mister Radomir,” she beamed, carrying a clipboard.
“O-oh, good afternoon.”
“I’m just here to follow up on your scans from last night, and may I say, you’ve sure made a miraculous recovery.”
“...Oh. That. Um, y-yeah, there was this woman who came in–”
“The Angel? She’s not official staff, but she comes in every once in a while to lend a hand, yeah. Ain’t you just plumb lucky to get’cherself a visitation?” She flipped a page on her clipboard. “She usually does a bang-up job of healing her patients, but hospital policy’s to have patients stay a couple more days for closing examinations, how’s that sound?”
“...Well actually, I was thinking about leaving today…”
The doctor tapped something on her clipboard, and smiled.
“Fair enough, dearie, I get it’s hard to stay cooped up in this place for so long. Tell you what, let me go ‘n get–”
A nurse, one I didn’t recognize, poked his head around the doorframe and waved.
“Hey doc,” he greeted, “and, um, Keaton, yeah?”
“Mhm,” I nodded, and Dr. Plesintyne turned around.
“Hi, Marc,” she pursed, suddenly much less cheerful. “Somethin’ important?”
“Well, I don’t mean to interrupt, but his sister’s downstairs and wanting to visit, said she flew in from out of town?”
“For real?!” I sat bolt upright and stared through the overly friendly nurse. Maybe it wasn’t a proper thing to do, but I’d just been about to resign myself to giving up and finding something to content myself with in this dumb city while trying to scrape up some kind of money to make a trip home, so this was like a beacon in the dark waters of regret and extreme poverty for me to follow to some kind of happy resolution.
“Yep,” Marc nodded, “showed a license and everything: Joanna Radomir, all the way from little old Virginia. Pretty cute sister you got, furball.”
“Marc…” Dr. Plesintyne growled.
“Alright, just letting you folks know,” he yielded with both hands raised before backing out. “So, ah–”
“Just call the front desk, Marc.”
“Fine, fine.”
Marc disappeared without any more fuss. Dr. Plesintyne pointedly closed the door after him, and spun back to me with a much happier look.
“Well that’s exciting, ain’t it? I was ‘bout figurin’ you didn’t have anyone other’n your friends keepin’ you company.”
“Yeah, I– they live pretty far away, so.” I gave her an awkward shrug. Also I hadn’t filled out any of the contacts on the documents they gave me…
“Awh, well this is perfect timing, now, wouldn’tcha say?” She tapped her pen against her clipboard. “I can check you out whenever you’re done, okay?”
“Thank you, doctor… you’ve been really nice.”
“Aww, it’s nothin’, sugar,” she waved away.
The doctor lowered her clipboard and exited with an “I’ll be right back,” leaving me to speculate on what I should expect. I hadn’t really checked on that page thing since Sonia gave me that laptop (because I felt too awkward trying to ask her for the password again), and she wasn’t exactly a little kid anymore; she’d had a whole life without me. I guess it’d be a bit much to expect her to remember me as anything other than a vague memory… which meant I had no expectations to fill. Huh. All I really knew was that my family still lived in Lynchburg, and I could infer from that photo caption and how old she was by now that she was probably in college… I need to clean myself up, I am not meeting her in a hospital gown.
I rummaged through the little box of my stuff under my bed for my articles and quickly locked myself in the bathroom. Off went the gown, and after a quick wash and drying myself off, the actual clothes went on. I chanced a look at my reflection in the mirror; it really did look a lot better with the head bandages off and a bit of grooming. If only it felt like me that I was looking at, and not… whatever raccoon-ish thing this was. I brushed at my stolen jacket, exited the bathroom, and sat back down to wait.
It took a while, even with how much time I’d spent cleaning myself up, but eventually someone came. A slow creak of the door inwards let a flustered woman – the same one from that photograph – in, with a curl of limp, shoulder-length brown hair, familiar hazel eyes, a set of thick, plastic-framed black glasses, and wearing a lime green hoodie with gray sweatpants and black sneakers… what a choice of fashion. She hesitated when she saw me looking at her, but pressed on regardless, and carefully closed the door behind her, before visibly mustering the courage to look me in the eye with an expression that was somehow both flat and tumultuous.
“I-I, um…” she started, in that ever ungraceful Radomir way. “Hi?”
“Hey, Joan.”
Joan opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t manage more than a squeak. Her face reddened, and she took a shallow breath before she sat down next to me.
“I’m sorry, I– I thought I knew what all I wanted to say, but… S-so you’re my brother?”
“Mhm,” I nodded.
“And you’re… uh… a fluffy animal?” Joan looked over at me from the corner of her eye.
I flicked my poofy, ringed tail against the bed – I usually tried to forget I had it, but it felt right to bring up at that moment – with a dull thump.
“I guess.”
“That’s, um, that’s cool…” She shook her head and looked embarrassed for a moment. “Sorry, that– Joan. I’m… I, uh, never heard anyone but Ma call me that before.”
“Well yeah, I was the one who gave you that nickname… Do you remember?”
Joan remained silent for an uncomfortably long time. “I… maybe?”
“And you called me Ketty?”
“...That– that sounds right… just. This is weird, sorry, I-I don’t know what to make of this, it’s just my Ma said I should really see you and I couldn’t tell her no and– and I didn’t expect–” She cut herself off with a deep gulp of air. “Can we… can we start this over?”
I chanced a longer look at Joan; she seemed exhausted and weighed down from worry, though what worry exactly escaped me. “That’s fine, go ahead.”
“Okay, okay…” A sigh fell from her as she closed her eyes for a moment, and scrunched her expression into something a bit less anxious. “Hi, I’m Joanna. It’s… it’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s good to see you again,” I smiled.
Joan frowned a little as she looked at me. “...Do you, uh, d’you wanna go? From here? This hospital’s freaking me out and I booked a hotel room for today, there’s so many hotels by the way I think this is a touristy city or something but all the nice-looking places downtown I could afford were booked up so I kinda got stuck with this iffy motel that had some kinda bad reviews and I don’t wanna be alone there please.”
Her pleading dug a nail into my heart; I winced, glanced outside at the mostly sunny sky… grabbed my things, and said, “Sure thing.”
We left after I got myself checked out and got some document things from the doctor, and I let Joan drive us in peace. Well, I say peace, but the way she drove was best described as ‘terrifying’; she didn’t really hold much confidence in her ability to drive the rental car, and gasped every time she nearly bumped into something, which for an eight minute drive right down the highway was way too many times. Also there was this robot lady voice in her phone telling her where to go? I don’t know, some weird future thing. Mostly what I was thinking about during the drive, though, was that… I really didn’t expect Joan to be such a nervous wreck. It was the weirdest thing to not feel like the most awkward person in a conversation, and I just felt bad for her the whole way there. Just like, ‘What happened to you, girl,’ right? I don’t think she was ever this anxious as a kid.
The short drive, only punctuated by three-and-a-bit serviceable radio pop songs at low volume (as well as the robot voice) ended right down the road at a Motel 6. Like, actually just a Motel 6… I’m not sure what I expected. I shrugged to myself and got out after Joan parked, and quickly followed her up to Room 108, which was a door away from where she’d parked the car. It was, uhh… I don’t really know what to tell you. It looked like a motel; kind of not that great, just a plain red door with a room number and a curtained window next to it inset against a flat, beige wall.
“Well, um… here we are,” Joan said.
She fished a keycard from her pants and unlocked the door with a swipe. Inside was… umm, again, exactly what you’d expect from a moderately competent motel’s room; the drywall was painted the same flat beige color on the inside, with a small TV hanging on one side opposite a bed and striped couch, and over a desk, mini-fridge, and dresser combo with a small kitchenette deeper in and a door that I presumed led to a bathroom. Nothing looked particularly dirty on first inspection, even when Joan flicked the lights on. Even if it did turn out to have a bit of mold in the bathroom or roaches or whatever, it was still the nicest place I’d been in all month, which now that I actually thought about it was… pretty sad. And yes, I am actually rating it over the hospital – at least in terms of price and not being moderately concussed anymore, which reminds me, I am not paying twenty thousand dollars for sleeping in that sterile hellhole for a week. I shudder to imagine what the bill for Leon was gonna look like whenever he got out…
After I closed the door behind us, Joan flopped onto the bed covers with a deep sigh, and looked like she immediately regretted it.
“Oh God… ehm, uh, so,” she sat back up. “I… should w-we talk? I think that’s what we’re supposed to do, talk about ourselves? Like, um… how’ve you been?”
I considered Joan’s question, the way she’d looked and sounded halfway to a nervous breakdown the entire time, and quietly bit back both a bitter, sarcastic joke about being bonked into a coma for three days and the painful truth about my recent quality of living that bubbled after it.
“It’s been… fine, I’ve been with some interesting friends.”
“Um, good. That’s… that’s good.”
“How about you?” I asked.
She looked away, suddenly very interested in the kitchenette. “Um. You– y’know. College… stuff. Boring things, and… yeah.” She suddenly got markedly more antsy. “Actually, I… I kinda need to finish my schoolwork right now… b-but it’ll only take like an hour. Then, uhh… d’you wanna… somethin’? Lunch?”
…God help you, Joan. I mean, I guess I could use some time to take a proper shower for once in my fluffy life?
“That sounds good… uhh, there’s this Thai place downtown that looked fairly empty?” I offered. She seemed like the type of person to agonize over that sort of thing, so… or am I pressuring her unintentionally? “I’m gonna have a shower?”
She nodded, not moving from her spot on the firm-looking mattress. “Mm-kay.”
I strode off for the other door and shut myself in the… uhh… the bathroom was just a tiny bit dirtier than I expected; I could see black spots growing on the yellow-aged ceiling, and there was just a roach casually hanging out on the sink’s faucet. I absentmindedly crushed it with absurd speed and a bottle of discount hand soap, then looked in the shower (which was mostly fine otherwise) and undressed. I really needed some more clothes… I mean, the hospital had been kind enough to wash these, but wearing them for a week wasn’t exactly fun the first time, and I still didn’t have any underwear, which surprisingly wasn’t that much of an issue but I still felt uncomfortable without any.
I turned the shower on and tried to think on the bright side… at least I didn’t have to ration water anymore.
----------------------------------------
Rittmaster II Class Vilius Ožerkauskas, a man who had served near to five years of his life with grace and dignity under the banner of the greatest empire to stand upon the face of the European continent since the days of Charlemagne, personally killed at least eleven men by his lonesome, led squadrons of brave Teutonic cavalrymen to glorious victory and terrible defeat, and most recently, masterminded his and his allies’ return from the clutches of Heaven itself, was not having a particularly good day. This wasn’t because of any recent ills that had befallen him, nor was this due to a dislike for his current amenities. Indeed, despite the small size and rather modest decor of his given apartment, Vilius was rather pleased with the utilities made available to him – the ‘television’ apparatus especially intrigued him, though there wasn’t as much intellectual content being broadcast as he may well have liked; far too many flashy characters, advertisements, and middling entertainment shows, not enough haute theatre, though a minor portion of the films presented he found to be quite worthy of his praise after he’d finished marveling at the much-improved technical and design aspects from his early experience of the medium, and a certain cooking channel did rather pique his interest, seeing as his own skill in the art was… admittedly lacking.
No, what had Vilius frustrated at this current moment was his so-called ‘immigration course’.
Now, the noble cavalry officer understood the rationale behind this matter of education, and had even set his mind to the more practical subjects pertaining to the nature and history of this American nation he’d been cast away to… but he was clearly not the kind of person this particular course was designed with in mind. For one, his grasp of English was, if mildly nonstandard (you try finding native English speakers in Silesia; I’ll wait,) and geared towards a more British outlook, absolutely fine; he’d studied it in university, for God’s sake, and having to patiently wait for his darker-skinned and -haired fellow students to wrap their heads around the not-so-fine details of this particular tongue was just plain embarrassing. For another thing, Vilius was a sharp man, but some things he just couldn’t quite understand materials-wise… he blamed that on his apparent misplacement a century and a continent away – How was he supposed to understand what a ‘digital device’ entailed? – and quite honestly, he’d never tried searching for a job in his life (his family was far too rich and well-connected for that to hold any meaning to him)... and, well, he wasn’t about to start now, because the very understanding secret agent man had been oh-so kind as to offer him employment as some kind of bounty hunter working alongside his bureau after only a moderate amount of persuasion.
But all that hinged on him persevering through this… dreadfully dull class intact: English. For poor Vilius, the fight today wasn’t one of confusion against a battery of new and strange information seeking to infiltrate and choke out the folds of his already vastly overstressed mind, but a battle of willpower against the miasmic drowse resultant from having to listen to this woman lecturer’s incessant attempts at drilling some of the more common English homophones and their proper meanings, spellings, and usages into her mostly Hispanic student body. Never mind that Vilius could write a whole dissertation on the subject… Perhaps it might be prudent to offer his services as a tutor, if only to speed along this torturous class; he might not have known any Spanish, but French wasn’t that far off, and he was an effective teacher nonetheless, if his year teaching physics at his hometown’s Gymnasium was anything to go off of.
A sudden shrill beeping startled Vilius from his problem-solving daydreaming, and prompted a number of his class to glance back at him from their seats. The bewildered cavalry officer realized a second later that it was his devilishly small pocket telephone ringing, and quickly excused himself to the adjoining hall when he saw the displayed caller ID.
With a quick press of the ‘accept’ button, Vilius put the telephone to his ear and sighed into the receiver. “Hiello, Ketty.”
“Umm, hey Vil,” the tinny voice on the other end began, “this might be a bit sudden, but… I’m kind of doing a lunch thing in a bit, and maybe you could be there?”
Vilius didn’t quite chastise the fae kid for interrupting his soon-to-be-dismissed class over food of all things, but it was a close thing.
“You know I am not paying for youer meal, yes?”
“Yeah, that’s– it’s fine, it’s…” Ketty paused. “I wanna have one last thing, maybe, as friends? I’m uhh, well I’m not paying for myself but I’m bringing my sister and she’s fine with it. Also Tibbs.”
“Your…?”
Vilius regarded the several implications implicit in the kid’s statements, then sighed and resolved himself to ask about it later.
“Where?”
“Oh… one sec?”
Vilius heard shuffling and what sounded like Ketty faintly speaking to someone on the other end of the line, then two minutes of silence until he gave Vilius an address. Vilius then wrote down the address and cross-checked it with his paper map, realized the location was somewhere downtown, and sighed again.
“I’ll speak wis my drifer…”