Broken (8 page)

He face crumpled in pure fury, his eyebrows perfectly downturned and his lips a jagged line. “I’m ‘bout to beat that superiority right outta you, bitch—” He took a heavy step toward me, a long one, long enough to carry him to me in about four good strides. It was perfect, really, just enough fury to carry him on. The first step he landed on the same piece of lumber I had walked on, and it made a straining crack as he did it. Lucky, I thought. His next step was not so fortunate.

He came down with his right foot, all his weight on it as he prepared to charge at me, to smear my smug, taunting face all over the construction site we were standing in. He landed on the canvas that covered the ground rather than the boards that I had been walking on, though, and his remaining eye widened as he disappeared through the ground, falling through the trap I had laid for him. The board I had walked on followed after him, along with the canvas that covered over the new public swimming pool that the citizens of St. Paul had commissioned to be built in the summer, the one that hadn’t opened yet, and that the construction company hadn’t bothered to move their equipment out of yet. Times were tight, after all, and with winter coming it hadn’t been likely that they’d get another contract to build something before spring thawed the earth. Which was why they locked all their tools and supplies up in the corrugated metal container and hoisted it a hundred feet up in the air with the crane. No one was going to steal a crane, after all, even if they knew how to use it—which I didn’t.

I took limping steps over to a rope I had tied to the release for the cargo container. I didn’t know how to use a crane, but I knew how to pull a lever, and I’d attached a rope to it earlier that day expressly for that purpose. Doubtless whoever had secured it hadn’t considered the possibility of a girl with my athletic prowess coming along to drop it.

I heard stirrings in the empty pool below, the sound of angry grunts as Clary righted himself and ripped his way through the canvas tarp that had hidden the pool from his sight. “Dammit, girl, I am gonna skin your ass alive now, that and the whole rest of you, too. I’m gonna lay a whooping on you so hard that you’re gonna wish your ass had been trampled to death by a herd of cows, because it’d be faster and sweeter. Old Man Winter said not to kill you, but dammit, I’m gonna do everything short of it—” His head appeared above the lip of the pool and I tossed him a cordial wave with my broken arm as I pulled hard on the rope with the other. There was a subtle groan a hundred feet above us and Clary looked straight up. I could imagine his remaining eye widenening as it came down on him, but he didn’t move, not nearly in time.

I had estimated, when I had been up on the rig earlier to attach the rope, that the container weighed at least a couple tons. It was laden with all manner of machinery, and when it hit Clary it made a loud noise, about what you’d expect from tons of metal hitting a man-pig-sized object also made of metal. The force and sound of the impact was something that would have set off the car alarms all around if there had been any. A cloud of dust swept over me from the impact as I eased up to the edge of the pool. The cargo container had caught Clary perfectly; he was pinned beneath it, both arms trapped under his body. The beam of it ran over his shoulders, arched from landing on him, bent from hitting the immovable object that was Clyde Clary.

“
Girl … “ Clary said, and his voice was low and menacing, “you are gonna PAY for this.”

“
You keep saying that,” I replied and took a slow walk around the edge of the pool. His head swiveled to follow my progress as I walked toward the small hut that housed the mechanical equipment to keep the pool clean. “And I’ll admit, you did a hell of a number on me, Clyde.” I paused. “But that’s the last time you’ll ever lay so much as a fingertip on me.”

“
Oh, I’ll take that bet. You know this ain’t gonna keep me down forever,” he grumbled, and I saw him strain to lift it. It moved, but only subtly, and he stopped. “Just a matter of time before I work my way outta this, and I will find you. And I will HURT you. Worse than you have ever been hurt before in your entire mean-girl life.”

“
No, Clary,” I said, resting my hand on the long handle of a wrench I’d left attached to the fire hose spigot built into the side of the mechanical hut. I assumed it was required by zoning regulations because it didn’t make an overabundance of sense to me why a fire hose would ever be needed on a pool, but since it worked to my advantage I didn’t intend to complain. “You won’t.” I turned the wrench and opened the spigot. The water surged on, spraying past me to the edge of the pool, drenching the sidewalk and running over the edge. “You’ve just about oinked your last.”

The spray was blasting now, the loudness of the surging water drowned out his next response. I walked back around the edge, closer to where he lay in the deep end of the pool. Water was beginning to collect now, running toward him, starting to gather around him. His face was wet from it, just a little bit thus far, and I saw the eye calculating as he strained against the container that had him pinned. “This ain’t funny, girl.”

“
No,” I agreed. “It’s not.”

He pushed against it again, as the water climbed another few centimeters to reach his chin. He spit as he tried to breathe, a spray of water shooting from his mouth and misting in the air. “Come on.” I watched him, unfeeling as he struggled against the tons of weight on his shoulders. “Ha ha ha. This is a good one, I gotta admit!” he shouted. “You got me! You got me good!” I didn’t answer, just kept staring at him, and the first sign of nerves appeared on his metal face. “Come on now, girl—”

“
My name is Sienna.”

He looked at me in near-astonishment, the full gravity of what was happening starting to dawn on him. “Come on, now, Sienna! You can’t leave me like this!”

“
Leave?” I kept staring. “Why would I leave? I’ve got the best seat in the house.”

He stared at me in dull disbelief as the water covered his mouth and he forced it above the roiling surface of the water. “Sienna! Sienna!” His face lowered into the water again for a few seconds, and then he pushed the container up enough to get his mouth above water one last time. “For the love of—!” With that, his mouth went under, and he struggled to keep his nose above the rising water.

“
I think the line you’re looking for is, ‘For the love of God, Montresor!’“ I watched as he took a deep breath, watched the water rise above his eyes, and he continued to struggle against the weight that trapped him. The container moved a little, here and there, as Clyde Clary fought against it. He jerked left and right, up and down, for almost two minutes as the hose continued to spit his death upon him until finally he stopped moving. There was a ripple under the surface and I watched his steel skin turn again to pink flesh as Clyde drowned. With the creaking of shifting metal, the container settled on him and blood bubbled up to the surface, turning the water as red as the rage that still fed my soul.

10.

The world was a bending, twisting mass around me. I knew I was sleeping, and I had the presence of mind to realize I was dreaming. It was getting a little easier to discern these dreams. You would think, since one of my powers is to reach out to others in their dreams, that I’d know my own when I saw them. These were so strange, though, so unrelated to dreaming, that I didn’t.

There was a heavy smell of cologne in the air, overpowering, enough that it made me want to cough, even in the insubstantial form I was in. There was a mirror in front of me, and I could see Zack in it, the whole world around me a purplish haze from neon lighting. It was a bar, the one I’d met Kurt in just a few days earlier. I shook my non-existent head to clear some of the fog, but failed; the world around me remained shrouded in a haze. I looked right and saw Zack sitting next to me, an amber beer filling the tall mug he had in front of him. He picked it up and took a sip, and I could smell it like I was drinking it myself, the sour scent hanging in my nose.

“
You don’t look happy.” Kurt’s voice was audible over the music but just barely. I looked out onto the dance floor, and there were actually a decent number of people dancing. A DJ was waving his hand in the air as he spun his records and a crowd of dancers filled the floor. I noted they were mostly women. They all seemed older, I realized. Past their twenties, for certain. There were a half dozen of them on the dance floor, all dolled up, clearly drunk. I turned back to where Zack and Kurt sat at the bar, and tried to listen to the big man speak to my dead boyfriend.

“
I’m fine,” Zack said, taking another sip and overpowering me with the aroma of beer as he finished the glass.

“
Your alcohol disagrees with you, lightweight.” Kurt gave him a cocked eyebrow then a shrug before he went back to his own glass. The stool Kurt was on looked like it was bending under his weight, but it might have been my imagination.

“
Okay,” Zack said, and halted as he waved to the barman for another round. “Okay, so … “ He paused, and I could see on his face a look that was the same as when he struggled to tell me something. I felt a pang; I always thought it was cute.

Hannegan didn’t. “Spit it out already, will you?” The older man scowled. “Lemme guess … girlfriend problems?”

“
Yes,” Zack said as a new beer was set before him. “Kind of.”

Hannegan shook his head and took a sip. “She’s damaged goods, man. Take her back and exchange her for store credit.” He turned his head around to look at the dance floor. There was a woman on the edge of the crowd, trying to pretend she wasn’t looking right at Zack. “Maybe get something in blond instead.”

Zack kept facing the bar, eyes down, unaware of anything around him. I could see the look, like he was in his own head, trying to root things out. “I just … I mean, she’s in training right now, okay? For M-Squad, and I think—”

“
Man,” Kurt said, turning back to him. “There is a cougar out there on the dance floor who is hot for you.”

“
What?” Zack said, blinking, staring at Hannegan in confusion. “I’m talking about Sienna here, okay? Try not to distract me.”

“
Right,” Kurt said. “You’re talking about the girlfriend you can’t touch.” He cast another look back to the dance floor. “I thought you were just with her because of Old Man Winter’s orders?”

Zack froze, his mouth slightly open. “You know about that?”

“
Oh, yeah,” Kurt said, turning back. “You told me yourself, before you went down to South America to retrieve M-Squad a couple months ago.” He set his beer back down on the bar. “Not surprised you don’t remember; you were pretty drunk when you told me. All emotional and guilty.” He took a deep sniff and turned back to the bar. “I honestly felt bad for you. Being told you have to date a girl to keep your job … it’s kinda like if your boss was holding it over your head to take a girl to prom because she’s his daughter. But for you … even worse. Not only is your girl a broken piece of a human being—I mean, locked in a tin can in the basement by her mother after being imprisoned for a decade with no one to talk to but a mommy who doesn’t love her?” Kurt snorted. “She’s a special kind of damaged. But to have to pretend to be her boyfriend AND know that you’re never going to get laid because it’ll kill you?” He let out a bellowing laugh. “It’s like icing on a crap cake. Poop frosting.” He leaned closer to Zack. “Tell me it doesn’t weigh on you.”

Zack seemed a little flushed; I could see that the alcohol was taking effect, even as he took another long pull from his beer. “Yeah. I mean, yeah, hell yeah, it does.” He tossed a look back to the dance floor and locked eyes with the cougar; she was blond, and hot, willowy where I wasn’t, wearing tons of makeup and doing a pretty great job of hiding her age, at least in the darkness of the bar.

Kurt leaned in closer to him and nodded to the blond in the distance. “You know … I bet you could have her.” He slapped a meaty paw on Zack’s shoulder. The blond gave Zack a come-hither sign with her finger that was about as subtle as a kick to the groin. Which I would have delivered to him myself had I really been there at that moment. “A real girl. You could touch her and everything—”

“
I know what I can do,” Zack said, turning away, back to the bar, and taking a long drink from his beer.

“
That’s the spirit, kid,” Kurt said, “liquid courage.”

“
Yeah,” Zack said, and he stood. “It’s not like … I mean, it’s not like I’m cheating on Sienna, is it?”

Kurt blew the air out through his lips in utter disbelief. “Aren’t you getting paid to go out with her?”

Zack’s eyes darted up, as though he were thinking about it. “Technically, yes, but—”

“
Then it’s not cheating because she’s not your real girlfriend.” Kurt’s voice of authority sent ripples of outrage through me. I was stuck, though, frozen here in the dream state, watching this all unfold. “Have a good night, champ. You’ve earned it.”

“
Yeah,” Zack said quietly as he stood, straightening his suit coat and checking the first button on his shirt; it was down just a little, the way I liked it. He took a slow, ambling walk toward the dance floor and the blond that waited for him.

It was like being stuck watching a TV that you desperately wished you could turn the channel or look away from. I couldn’t, though, couldn’t even close my eyes. I watched, watched as they danced, hands fumbling in all the wrong places, drunken, watched her kiss him, then again, and again, as the music turned slow. I wanted to scream but there was no sound as time moved on and I was forced to follow them back to his apartment, making out in the back of a cab all the while, and then the stumbling walk up his stairs—