S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (63 page)

“We'll talk later, Rame.”

Another deep breath. “Okay.” He paused, then added, “I truly am sorry about how this turned out. Believe me, I had no idea.”

“I'm sorry, too.”

“I'll make it up to you. To you both.”

Lyssa nodded and swallowed. “Yes, you will.”

She hung up and started back out, then stopped and slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and checked her messages. The call log showed nothing— not from Drew, and certainly not from Ramon.

Liar.

* * *

The building was as silent as a tomb. Lyssa locked the front door behind them, then hurried over to the alarm panel and punched in the code to deactivate it.

“Shinji needs to stay here in the lobby,” she said.

It had been too hot to leave him in the car. There was shade, but it was outside the perimeter fence, and she didn't want Cassie wandering around there unsupervised. She could accidentally fall into the water or be swept away by a wave.

“In there,” she told Cassie, pointing to the inner courtyard where the staff took their lunches on nice days. The enclosed space was mostly paved, but a few raised beds had been planted with flowers which the staff members occasionally remembered to water. A large picnic table sat in the far back corner, shaded beneath a faded umbrella. Around the opposite corner, behind a wooden screen, were the trash bins. “If you get too hot, come inside, but stay here in the lobby. Nowhere else.”

“Why are you whispering?”

Lyssa frowned. She hadn't realized she was talking so quietly. There was no reason for it, really, and yet on some level she must've felt something in the quality of the air, sensed something about the silence of the walls and the blank stares of the empty doorways which seemed to demand silence. She cleared her throat and, in a louder, more defiant voice, said, “We're not supposed to have him inside here is all. So please watch him, okay?”

Cassie nodded.

“Good. Now, I'm just going to check in my office for messages and then the lab. I'll be quick. Five, ten minutes. Sit tight and when I'm done, we'll go in and say hello to the animals in the back.”

“Is Daddy your boss?”

Lyssa turned. “Excuse me?”

“Is Daddy the boss of you? Because if he's not, then why do you always follow his rules?”

Lyssa chuckled and shook her head. “It's good to follow rules, honey. If we didn't, then everything would just fall apart.”

“What if the rules are wrong?”

She stepped over to her daughter. Kneeling down, she placed her hands on Cassie's arms. “These rules aren't wrong. They're
our
rules, honey, not just Daddy's. Mine, too. And if I break my own rules, how can I expect anyone else to follow them?”

“But aren't you breaking your own rule by letting me and Shinji be here?”

“As long as you keep him out here, not in the labs or offices, we'll be okay.”

“Is that why you don't ever bring me here?”

“I do.” But Lyssa frowned. There had only been that one other time — recently, in fact — though it hadn't been a very happy day for either of them. And stopping at the site on the way home had only added to the trauma, but she'd had to. She needed to be sure.

“Listen, honey. It's not because we don't want you to be here. It's just that this is where people work. I wish you could be here with me every day, but you'd just be bored. And the drive is so long.”

“I don't mind,” Cassie protested.

“When Mommy and Daddy come here during the week, we need to be able to concentrate. If you're with us, we don't want to work. We want to be with you, and play, and have fun. But if we don't work, we won't have money.”

“Daddy says we already don't have money.”

“That's not exactly true. We have what we need.”

“For clothes and food?”

“Yes.”

“And roads and our house and—”

“Taxes pay for roads. But, yes, for the rest.” She peered into her daughter's face to see if she understood.

Cassie's eyes narrowed as she tried to think. “Doesn't the dancing statue want roads?”

“I don't understand. What statue?”

But Shinji was sniffing at the ground and whining. Lyssa stood and opened the door to the inner courtyard. “Take him outside before he piddles on the carpet, Cass. And don't touch anything! I'm serious. Understand?”

Cassie nodded.

“I'll be back in a few minutes.”

She hurried down the unlit hallway to her office. All she needed was some sort of confirmation that Drew had come in and taken care of the animals. But when she checked her desk phone, there were no blinking lights, no waiting messages. No handwritten notes on her desk, either.

Turning to her filing cabinet, she frowned. The drawer with the personnel files was unlocked and slightly open, but she couldn't remember leaving it that way. Only she and Ramon had keys, and the lock didn't appear to have been forced. She found Drew's address and hastily copied it onto a piece of scratch paper and stuffed it into her pocket. Then she made sure the drawer was shut tight and locked.

On her way out, she noticed that the light on her printer was blinking that it was out of toner, but she didn't bother to fix it. Whatever it was trying to print could wait till the morrow to finish. It was always such a hassle trying to figure out which ink cartridge in the supply closet went with which printer. The document would hold in memory until then. She shut the door to her office behind her and turned toward the laboratory at the opposite end of the hallway.

But before she could get there, the silence was shattered by Cassie's scream, sending Lyssa racing back to the lobby.

“Cass!”

“It's not my fault,” the girl yelped, as soon as Lyssa stepped into the courtyard. She was nearly in tears. “I only blinked for a second!”

“Shinji!” Lyssa growled, seeing the mess. “Come here! Bad dog!”

The puppy padded over and sat behind Cassie. He actually managed to look guilty.

“Please don't make him go away, Mama,” Cassie begged. She clutched to Lyssa's leg. “Not like Daddy.”

“Go away?” Lyssa snapped. She was livid. “Look at this! Who's going to clean this up?”

 

Lyssa stepped out of the downstairs bathroom and into the hallway, where she was promptly attacked and almost knocked to the ground by a large brown furry object.

“Hey!” she shouted at Shinji. Her patience was already worn thin from the near disaster he'd caused the previous afternoon at the lab. “Bad dog! Cassie, come get him!”

She reminded herself to calm down, to keep things in perspective. Yesterday's scare was a good reminder not to get upset over every little thing. The mess could have been much worse. And Lyssa had handled it poorly.

She chuckled to herself. No wonder Ramon was walking on eggshells around her today, the way she was overreacting lately. It was almost sweet, the way he'd been so apologetic after getting home, sweaty from the mile-long hike from where the bus dropped him off in town. He looked absolutely miserable.

After a halting start to dinner, they finally managed to talk things over to their mutual satisfaction. They agreed to try and start over with a fresh slate.

But the new day was conspiring against her, wearing on her patience, which was still too fragile to suffer so many challenges so soon. First was the shattered cereal bowl and the soggy mess she was left to clean up in the kitchen. Shinji kept trying to get to it before she could finish. And Ramon was no help.

Then, while she was dealing with that, suddenly there was blood all over the place, and she'd realized Shinji had sliced his tongue on a sharp piece of the bowl. He obviously didn't mind, but he was smearing it everywhere lapping up spilt milk.

And then, halfway through Lyssa's shower, the electricity went out again. How the hell was she supposed to shave her legs in the dark?

“They're supposed to hook up the panels today, hon,” Ramon assured her when she complained from the other side of the shower curtain. He stuck his head around the end and tried to look sympathetic, though he just ended up looking even more pitiful than Shinji had the day before.

Shampoo was getting in Lyssa's eyes. She wasn't in the mood to be sympathetic.

He leaned in and kissed her between the breasts. His hand brushed her nipple, sending waves of electricity through her body, and suddenly she wanted to pull him in with her. She needed him. But then he was gone, and she was left with rinsing her hair with the trickle from the faucet.

Now it was rabbit droppings smooshed into the hallway's white carpet.

“Cassie!”

Ramon appeared at the bottom of the stairs, the ends of his tie dangling from his fingers. “I think she's outside in back.”

“She's going to be late for school.”

“Ronnie'll get her there on time.” He checked the clock. “It's us who are going to be late.” He frowned at her. “You're not even dressed!”

Lyssa looked down at her robe. With all the commotion and setbacks, she hadn't had time to change. “And what's wrong with this?” she said, after first considering yelling at him for not helping her. “Maybe I'll just show up like this.”

He rolled his eyes.

“The staff meeting's at nine,” he reminded her, “but I want to stop off at the bakery, be a good host. I'm going to go ahead and take my own car. Please don't be late.”

There was a knock at the front door.

“And that'll be Ronnie,” Lyssa said, studying his face. He nodded and went to let her in. Lyssa wasn't sure if she'd seen a flicker of something in his eyes.

Cut him some slack. Ronnie's in a relationship. She doesn't want Ramon. And he doesn't want her.

She hurried back to her bedroom to get dressed, reminding herself that she should be grateful that the mess in the kitchen had been much easier to clean up than the mess at the laboratory the day before.

Despite Lyssa's warnings to Cassie to keep an eye on Shinji, he'd managed to dump the trash bins and strew garbage across the pavement. Cassie had screamed out of fright, fearful of what her mother would do. And Lyssa had fed that fear by shouting: “I'm going to kill that dog!”

It was a terrible, horrible thing to say, spoken in anger.

If it had just been trash, that might've been the end of it. Lyssa would've cleaned it up. She would've calmed down and issued apologies, retracted threats. But it had turned out to be more than just harmless garbage.

She'd found, scattered among the papers and pencil filings and remnants of lunches, contaminated glass slides and culture flasks. The Ames group was up to its old tricks again.

“These are the people your father is whoring us out to,” Lyssa growled, as she donned latex gloves and rebagged the waste, this time in a proper biohazard container. She threw it outside the door of the small lab the Ames scientists rented. She would've added a harsh note of reprimand to it, but in a moment of clarity, she knew it would only make matters worse between her and Ramon.

Of course, in all the turmoil, she'd completely forgotten to check the rabbits.

“Cassie,” she called out through the sliding door, “Miss Ronica's here.” Cassie looked up. She was lying in the shade beneath her slide. “Come in, honey.”

“My eyes hurt.”

“They're dry, Cass.”
Yeah, from all the crying she did yesterday
, Lyssa thought guiltily. “You need to drink more water.”

“I'm tired.”

Lyssa apologized to Ronnie. “Yesterday was a bit rough for her. Just let her do what she wants today. Maybe keep her home from school.”

Ten minutes later Lyssa was on the road and heading east. Tucked into a crease on the dashboard so she could read it without looking away from the road was the scrap of paper with Drew's address. She wasn't that familiar with much of Medford — aside from the part where Ramon had rented his apartment, of course — but she did happen to know the road where Drew lived. She and Ramon had looked at a house on the same street five years ago before settling on the one outside Woodbury.

It took her about forty minutes to get there, another couple to remember exactly how to get to the street. By the time she pulled up outside his house, it was already a quarter to eight. She'd need a little luck to get to the lab before nine, when she was supposed to be there to meet the people writing the checks.

She killed the engine and stepped out, checking her phone one last time to see if she'd missed any calls or messages. She hadn't.
I need you, Drew. Don't be sick.

It was a well-kept house, if small. The front lawn was neatly tended, though plain. In fact, everything about the place was nondescript, from the beige paint job to the lack of flowers or plants. Just grass. And the driveway was faded gray instead of black, as if the tar was frequently scrubbed clean with soap. The windows were dark behind drawn curtains.

To keep out the heat.

She knocked before noticing the doorbell and pushing it. The chime tumbled away into the house, sounding as empty as a dime dropped into a deep, dry well.

“Drew?” she called, squinting into the darkness through the tiny window in the door. “It's Lyssa. Hello, you in there?”

She tried the bell again.

Nothing.

She scanned the street. His car wasn't parked at the curb in front; it couldn't be, since hers was. But neither was it parked anywhere else she could see. To the left was a dusty light blue sedan with its rims so close to the road that it might as well be sitting on flats. To the right and across the street was a single black car with dark tinted windows. Thin gray wisps of exhaust were puffing out of its muffler. She hadn't noticed it or the quiet rumble of its engine before.

“Drew?” she said again, breathlessly. She rapped her knuckles again on his door while keeping an eye on the black car.