Powers (39 page)

“I can stay here for a few more days. But, I have some people I need to guard.” She glanced at him, emphasis. “A couple of people I need to hide. And a job. Which sometimes helps with the first two. Things to do that you probably don’t want to know about.”

Probably related to “illegal aliens” and “racial profiling” and some people considered “terrorist suspects” because they have brown skins and funny names and worship in the wrong god-house . . .

She nodded, seeing him work through that. “And I haven’t seen a phone anywhere around here. So I have to get back to my apartment soon—shouldn’t have been away as long as I was.”

Pause. Clanking dishes in the sink. “And I know
you
can’t live with
me.
Your forge.”

Yes. My forge. My altar. My temple. Why I keep coming back here. I didn’t know that, before. Nothing really to do with Mother.

She might have
thought
it was. But, no.

Mel was still talking to the wall, the sort of hesitant things easier said without eye contact. “I’m not breaking up with you, horrible phrase. But I don’t think our worlds and days fit together all that well. Even if
we
do. You’re welcome in my world any time you want to visit. And I hope I’m welcome here.”

She paused, and he saw some laughter come into her stance at the sink. No sound, but he knew the way she stood, the way her hips and shoulders set . . .

“Just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Al? You just put your lips together and . . . blow.”

“Bacall, to Bogart.
To Have and Have Not.”

Did
she
see
him
as Bogart? The world twisted, just a bit. That she could fit him into Bogart’s role, him the little gimpy gnome with ears too big for his head . . .

He’d seen that movie, new, on the silver screen. Likely she had, too. And he wouldn’t have to cook up a lie about how he knew the reference, renting tapes or DVDs of oldies to play on a TV set he didn’t own . . .

He stood up. He whistled.

She turned off the heat under the bacon grease and, mountain wind-goddess fast, flowed up against him and squeezed him hard enough he felt bones creak.

THE END

James A. Burton is also known as James A. Hetley. This revelation makes it easier to explain why Jim Burton’s website is www.sfwa.org/members/hetley and his blog is to be found at jhetley.livejournal.com.

He lives in the Maine setting of his Hetley-authored contemporary fantasy novels
The Summer Country, The Winter Oak, Dragon’s Eye,
and
Dragon’s Teeth.
His residence is an 1850s house suitable for a horror movie, with an electrical system installed while Thomas A. Edison still walked the earth, peeling lead-based paint, questionable plumbing, a furnace dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, a roof perpetually in need of shingling, and windows that rattle in the winter gales. He’s an architect. Not just any architect, but he specializes in renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings. Go figure.

Other diverse connections to his writing include black belt rank in Kempo karate, three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, a ham radio license, and such jobs as an electronics instructor, auto mechanic, trash collector, and operating engineer in a refrigeration plant. He continues a life-long fascination with antique crafts and the hand-tool skills of working wood and metal.