“Just the two of us?” Yuri asks, holding his phone casually to his ear as he divides his attentions between the call and ordering coffee at a neighborhood coffee chain. The cashier is annoyed but forces a smile. “Hey, can you heat me up a bagel?” he asks the cashier, momentarily sweeping the receiver of the phone away from his mouth. When he returns it, he says to Alia, “I got the impression that you and your body guards are attached at the hip.” He is referring to Gertrude and Vita, the women with whom Alia spends all of her time away from Clay’s home, as reported by his eyes in the neighborhood; the many drug dealers who work for his associate Jamar.
“You’re not the first man somebody sent to kidnap me,” Alia says playfully. “I’m like 1 and 0 now, the last one was a jinn. He’s dead now, I think.”
Yuri shakes his head and smiles at the phone. She never ceases to amaze him. “That’s good don’t you think!” Yuri barks at the person behind the counter toasting his bagel. The young man jumps and quickly retrieves it from the toaster, then gives it to Yuri with shaky hands. Yuri walks away gruffly with his coffee and bagel and sits at a table next to the window.
“Why do you yell at people?” Alia asks, remembering other times over the past week or so that she and Yuri have been talking and then interrupted by the sound of him intimidating someone. Their conversations are easy, mainly because they both understand the point of them and they both have the same objective; they each want to know the nature of the others’ relationship with Eakran. They have talked so often because Yuri is amazed at Alia’s candor, and Alia likes the cadence of his voice and the way he puts words together, she has always been a sucker for a southern drawl.
“People are careless Alia, you know that. I give you one chance to doze off on me, and then I shock you so you don’t forget. I ain’t one to sleep on.”
“I heard: I’m a brat and an only child.”
Yuri laughs and spits coffee on the table.
“So it’s a date then?” he says when he recovers. “Me and you, dinner then a movie. After that, who knows what we can get into? I mean, if you human. If Eakran chasing you, you might be something else.”
“Something else,” Alia says. “What about you? What are you now with that thing in your head?”
Yuri doesn’t laugh this time, but falls silent.
“I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Alia continues, “but it’s done now. Kevin probably had to lose his brain so you could have that thing. They don’t come out easily.”
When he doesn’t respond, Alia says, “You’re not a kidnapper Yuri. If you wanted, I’d be in Georgia by now, hooked up to some machine while somebody takes notes on how to replicate my brain. You have that power. What do you want from me?”
Yuri is a kid. Even if he is now a big time drug kingpin, he is still only twenty four years old. In his short life, Yuri has killed men, he has lost loved ones, he has been scarred. He doesn’t complain anymore, those scars are calluses now and he can withstand a lot more pain than he used to, but he is still very young and occasionally it shows. Like now, as he sits silently on the phone, unable to explain his failures. He isn’t in love with Alia, not enough to forsake the business that he is inheriting, but he is wary of his ability to live up to his uncle. The device in his brain would help, but who knows what effect it would have on him long term, and it meant that he was always beholden to the creepy Dr. Eakran who was probably the only doctor in the world who could help him in the event of malfunction. Talking to Alia made that reality rush to his mind and he is suddenly very unsure.
Just as the Alia had hoped. She can read minds, she can enter them and feel the feelings, but she cannot influence action. Yuri came to her prepared to defend against her mind reading ability, most likely aided by Eakran, and she finds herself unable to penetrate it enough to truly discern his motivations. But she can join the chorus of doubts that bounce around the edges of his consciousness and she does, and Yuri is left squirming.
“We don’t have many more conversations left, Yuri,” Alia says delicately. “Either you are my friend or my enemy. I want to meet you as my friend. I hope to speak with you soon.”
Alia ends the call and gives the phone to Ivan, who sits across from her at the dining room table.
“You like him?” Ivan asks.
“I do, but not like you think. His mind is locked down for the most part, but he has a thing for dangerous women, that was clear enough when Vita shot him. And he thinks I’m like an alien queen or something. If he’s dumb enough to be manipulated, I’d been dumb not to take advantage, especially when it comes to Eakran.”
“Are we going to get Kevin?” Ivan asks. “If the alien didn’t rip the thing out of his head and kill him, I mean.”
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” Alia says. “There’s no way Eakran caught him, Kevin must have gone to him. And if that’s what he wants, that’s fine, I’m not in the place to convince him otherwise when the most pressing concern is the Kevin knock-off and why Eakran is making his move now. He could have sent someone a long time ago, but he didn’t. Why now?”
“He has Kevin, he has the imagination maker,” Ivan postulates.
“Maybe, but I don’t want to risk Eakran getting his hands on you or Clay. I don’t want him doing experiments on you guys, too. He might clone you or something. I’ll keep it up with Yuri, it should be over soon enough. Either he’ll come as a friend or we have another fight to fight.”
Alia doesn’t have any clothes, nothing nice enough for church anyway, though it’s inconceivable that a church would turn someone away because of their clothes. Clay insisted that she try and fit in at the local church where he hopes she will be able to gather intel on the woman Laura, who is the right hand and baby mama of his nemesis Jamar, a local drug dealer. Laura had shot Clay in the back at Jamar’s request, but he lived and he probably shouldn’t have made it considering that she left him to die and he was alone.
Clay had Alia try on his sister’s formal wear and she reluctantly squeezed into dresses that honestly looked very nice on her, until Clay thought they had found the right one that was modest and made her look like a librarian. Alia’s hair hangs just past her shoulders when she straightens it down, and Ivan made it into a neat bun at the nape of her neck like his mother usually wore. The transformation was complete. With a Bible she was the proverbial Sunday school teacher.
Alia stands looking at herself in the mirror on this Saturday night. Ivan and Clay had gone out and she is alone, preparing herself for tomorrow. She isn’t really nervous about it, she knows what church is even if she had never been to one before, not even with the fake family that she had lived with before coming to live with Clay. She wonders if she will know all the songs, or if she will look out of place even with the get up Clay had chosen for her.
It’s nice to finally do things that most people do, to have common experiences. The life that she had led was extremely sheltered and she had found herself stuffing twenty years of experiences into the last year. She had fallen in love, been a hero, she’d moved back home with a family, she hitch-hiked, she slept on a college campus. And now she is going to church.
Ivan had left Alia his phone for emergencies, and it rings to life on the edge of the dresser in her room. It’s Yuri.
“Let’s talk in person. Where are you?” he asks.
“Not tonight,” Alia says as she removes her church clothes and replaces them carefully on a hanger that she puts into the closet. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Whatever you tell me we doing.”
“Then meet me at Third Baptist tomorrow morning. I’ll be there with my bodyguards.”
She hears Yuri chuckle.
“I can’t remember the last time I was in church.”
“It’ll be good for both of us then. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She ends the call and she sighs. Tomorrow will be interesting.
PRL Serials 