#greenharrow

“Never mind how unbelievable that is,” Claudia says. “The important part is, why didn’t I know about this ‘Warehouse stuff’? And does she need help with it?”

“I don’t have good answers for those questions,” Myka says.

At that very moment—timing!—Helena breezes in, hello-ing everyone but Myka, then swans upstairs.

Silence falls.

Myka waits it out, even as she ponders the mystery of even the briefest experience of Helena’s presence. That she gets to breathe, from moment to moment, in the presence of that presence will never cease to be a miracle. Warehouse-infused, and thus not without its difficulties; Myka’s no theologian, so for all she knows, that’s simply the way of miracles: Here, says the deity, but by the way, you might want to watch out for—

“That Warehouse stuff,” Pete interrupts into the void. “What exactly was it?”

“And did it involve getting whammied by an artifact that turned Myka invisible?” Claudia asks.

“I can see her,” Pete says. “She’s right there. She’s got a blob of oatmeal on her shirt. Or am I hallucinating?”

“To H.G.,” Claudia clarifies. “I mean you could also be hallucinating. What’s on my shirt?”

Pete waves a hand. “Whatever vampire band you’re into today. Wouldn’t she have asked why a blob of oatmeal was floating in the air where Myka usually sits?”

“My musical choices beat yours, boomer, but do you really think floating oatmeal moves the needle on the weird-o-meter? Around here?”

“No, but H.G. ignoring Myka does, so hey Mykes, what gives with that?”

Myka’s been waiting for it, and she’s prepared. As prepared as she can be. “We had a disagreement,” she offers.

That gets silence again, as well as glances between Pete and Claudia.

“Why’d you try to cover it up?” Pete asks.

“You’re honestly asking me that? After this interrogation?”

Pete shakes his head. “Not after it. As part of it. Because you know what they always say.”

“I could not begin to know what ‘they’ could possibly ‘always say’ in this situation.”

He taps his nose. “The cover-up’s always worse than the crime.”

It really is something, she thinks, that after this many years he can still surprise me. “There is no crime.”

“There’s definitely a cover-up though,” Claudia says. “Of a disagreement? Which was about...?”

This is what she’s been locked in for. “Diamonds,” she says.

Claudia clasps her hands, and her eyes go starry. “OMG!!” she exults.

Myka snorts, both because that’s exactly where she’d expected Claudia to go, and because it’s helpful. “Please.”

“Fine,” Claudia pouts, even as Pete waves his hands like a pick-me-pick-me crazed hyena.

Do hyenas have hands? Myka wonders, but “Yes, Pete?” she says, because why not. “Something to share with the class?”

“A heist!” he sings out.

“You’re so right,” she tells him, dry as the Badlands. “We’re quitting the Warehouse and becoming jewel thieves.”

“Bet that’s what the fight was about though: H.G. wanted to, and you turned her down. Because you’re the law.”

“H.G. fought the law,” Claudia says, “and the law... got ignored?”

“She’s the order too,” Pete says. “H.G. fought the law and the order, and so I’m wondering if she beat Dick Wolf.”

“So, but diamonds?” Steve asks. “Disagreement?”

Myka can’t thank him aloud, because normally she’d be glad that the conversation was derailing. So she says, “Yeah. How they form.”

Claudia scratches her head. “You disagreed about how diamonds form? I thought that was just... science.”

“It’s science,” Myka agrees, “but it’s not the thing people think they know, about subjecting carbon to extreme pressure; the science really, they’re pretty sure now, is that they form when carbon crystallizes out of superhot fluid. From the mantle. Mostly. Also they don’t even all form in the same way.”

“Well, blow my mind why don’t you,” Pete says. “So H.G.’s mad at you because you blew her mind about diamonds?”

“No. Because we disagree about whether the popular idea is a useful metaphor.”

“For...?” Claudia asks.

“Positive results from difficult situations.”

Claudia twists her face, then demands, of Steve, “Is she telling the truth?”

“She tends to,” Steve says.

Pete looks doubtful too. “Is that the story H.G.’d tell, if we got her down here?”

Myka says, “I can honestly say I have no idea.”

At which Claudia sniffs. “I don’t even need to check the lie-o-meter on that. Who ever has any idea about what story H.G.’ll tell?”

“By the way,” Steve says, mildly, “I’m not actually a lie-o-meter.” He has to offer a version of this reminder at least once a week, generally to Claudia and/or Pete; Myka knows he doesn’t mind it hugely, but. It’s like when they treat her as a memorization machine: an irritant.

“I’m getting a vibe,” Pete announces.

Myka braces herself.

“Or maybe it’s just me seeing what’s clear as day.”

She braces harder.

“Fighting about metaphors is the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Bullet: dodged.

“It really is,” Clauda says. “Don’t you two have better things to do with your time?” Myka opens her mouth to take this golden opportunity to agree, but Claudia’s on a roll: “Don’t bother answering, because you absolutely do. Because you know what? Wasting time... that’s the crime,” she concludes.

“Plus it rhymes!” Pete enthuses.

“Not a selling point,” Myka tells him. “But you’re both right. I should go apologize.”

She tries not to look back, over her shoulder, to see what sort of landing has actually been achieved.

****

Myka’s decamping leaves Steve in charge of the situation.

Claudia looks at him and at Pete, searchingly. “Does she think we bought that?”

“The cover-up’s definitely stupider than the crime,” Pete agrees. “If there even was a crime at all.”

“Doesn’t Myka know we know how much she hates apologizing?” Claudia says. “She’s always sure she’s right. Like she never even really argues; she just says stuff and acts like everybody always already knows it’s true.”

“Even with H.G.?” Steve asks. “I think we don’t know enough about their relationship to make that judgment.”

Pete says, “I think we know way too much about their relationship. Thin walls. Thin floors. Thin ceilings.”

“So thin I’m surprised the Big Bad Wolf—or at least some South Dakota gust—hasn’t blown us down by now,” Claudia says. “What’s the over-under on how long it takes for them to start ‘making up’ from their pretend argument?”

“I’m going to the Warehouse,” Steve says, as abruptly as he can.

Claudia stares at him. “On Saturday? In the A.M.? Who do you think you are, H.G. in a fake fight with Myka?”

“I don’t want to trade bow-chicka-wow-wow bets with you two. And I also don’t want to go upstairs, because you’re not wrong about this place being the flimsiest.”

“Not the flimsiest,” Pete says, “because the flimsiest is Myka’s sad excuse for stealing time with her sugar bear.”

“Come with me,” Steve suggests. “It’ll beat sitting around here with earplugs in: I’ll let you play with the artifacts that need exercise.”

Pete gasps. “Sold!”

“They do tend to be the fun ones,” Claudia says, but she still looks a little pouty.

“And we can stop for doughnuts on the way,” Steve offers. He’s been keeping that in his back pocket, and fortunately, it seals the deal.

As they depart, Steve sends a thought both into the universe and upstairs, a little hope that Myka’s part of her plan will go as smoothly as his has.

“Thus by lack of specificity regarding portion size am I slain. Or rather, left to starve. Incidentally, why couldn’t we have fought over breakfast? In their presence, one or both of us storming out in a huff... far less misdirection required.” She crosses her arms, leans back a bit.

The relax of posture lessens the physical anticipation that is building, inevitably, between them; the grace of it is for Myka a relief. Almost always, but especially today, she needs more runway than Helena does. “Because neither of uns can sell that, not when we’re in the same room and not actually fighting. And even this time, Pete accused me of a cover-up. Said it’s always worse than the crime.”

“Is it? What was the crime, then? Presumably not ‘misrepresenting ourselves to steal time.’”

“It should’ve been that; ‘steal time’ sounds more crime-y. But actually they went with wasting time. That’s what they worked around to, once they got over being disappointed we aren’t becoming jewel thieves.”

“Oh but we could—”

Myka cuts off that glee with something that is not exactly regret. “We could not.”

“Are you certain?” That’s a wheedle.

Charming, but: “We don’t need to.”

That occasions a not-quite-pouty jut of lower lip. “Well of course no one needs to become a jewel thief. Unless one has no other way of making a living, I suppose. Which would seem odd, wouldn’t it... surely there would be other career paths. Although it isn’t inconceivable one might be coerced onto the nefarious path.” She pulls up, like she knows it’s a dangerous verbal wander.

Myka’s been trying, lately, to acknowledge, then shift, those rather than ignore them (as she tended to do in the past, for fear of pain). She’s glad to be able to perform that shift now. “What if I were to coerce you onto a different path? ‘Coerce’ loosely defined.”

“I believe you have done, haven’t you? But—as Pete would say, ‘back up’—why were jewel thieves invited to the party?”

Here we go. “Because of diamonds.”

“What about them?”

“Their metaphorical utility. The extent of it.”

“Ah. Our ‘argument,’ I presume? We do disagree about the most stimulating topics... diamonds as metaphors.” Helena shakes her head, an exaggeration of amazement, as that sly smile once again steals over her face.

“Their formation more than themselves,” Myka says, for accuracy... well. Accuracy only in the sense of keeping her stories straight.

“The production of the gem via pressure?”

I know something you don’t. It’s always a surprise. “Except that isn’t scientifically accurate.”

“Isn’t it?”

The avidity again. Myka would like to imagine she’ll “blow her mind” as Pete would have it, leading not to Helena being mad at her but grateful for new knowledge. And so: “I won’t go into detail, but it has to do with crystallization. Table salt–esque, but carbon in the mantle. From the mantle.”

“Precipitation? Distillation? More common, as processes... thus perhaps indeed of more pedestrian metaphorical utility. Was that your putative position? If so, I certainly understand why my failure to agree might have been considered a crime.”

The wrinkle in Helena’s brow is all it takes to suffuse Myka. “See,” she says, and now she’s the avid one, the one who can’t hold back. “This is why.” This is why. Steve would have no trouble with this either... which demonstrates, hugely and unfortunately, that she’s made him into her internal lie-o-meter. Obviously that has to stop.

“I can’t say that I do. See, that is. Why what?” That’s genuine confusion.

“You will. See, that is.” There a real satisfaction in being able to ape Helena, ape her to a purpose, even if that purpose has to remain obscured. For just a bit longer. “What I’ll say for now is, we have had that disagreement. In the past.”

“Have we?” That’s further confusion.

Speaking of metaphors: “Implicitly,” Myka says. “Diamonds. Pressure. Whether a difficult situation was necessary for a positive outcome.”

“You’ve eased my mind considerably. I’m not you of course, but I might nevertheless have been concerned about my failure to recall. And I do take your point, given my position as the... purveyor. Instigator? Of a number of difficult situations.”

The verbal wander again... and again, Myka has a different path to hand. Today of all days, a different path. “Anyway, come downstairs.”

Helena lowers her eyebrows and opens her hands. “The entire point of the subterfuge was to avoid the assemblage, was it not?”

And now Myka is just a bit giddy. “Was it? Anyway, they’re gone.”

Eyebrows reverse; hands do too. “Are they.”

Myka nods.

“Then why in the world would we go downstairs?”

“I have something to show you.”

Flirtatiously: “Couldn’t you show me something here?”

Myka’s certainly not immune to that tone, and under other circumstances... but no. “Not the same thing.”

“Aren’t you being strangely insistent about this?”

“In a way.”

“Is this ‘thing’ time-dependent?”

Productive... “In a way.”

“Are we playing Twenty Questions?”

“In a way?” Myka is giving Helena reasons to wonder, and Myka herself wonders, briefly, if she could have made a better plan... too late now.

“I suspect ‘animal, vegetable, or mineral’ would not yield a useful answer.” You have no idea, Myka thinks toward that, but Helena doesn’t receive the psychic emanation; rather, she says, “Do you feel well?”

Myka goes back to what was working: “In a way.” With a twist, one that she hopes will be enticing: “In another way, check back with me after a bit.”

“After what bit?”

Yes, she’s enticed, but trying not to seem so. “The bit that happens downstairs.”

The glory of the back-and-forth. If Myka didn’t also worship their physical connection, she’d be happy to talk like this forever. But this and that happiness aside: how well will she feel after that bit? No better than this, surely... but, perhaps, somewhat differently well than this? In another way, so to speak...

Impossible to predict.

Helena’s reaction to Myka’s leading non-answers, however, is not. She heaves an obviously fake long-suffering sigh and says, “I don’t know why I reward you for such nonsense... however, my curiosity is piqued. I suppose I had better accompany you downstairs after all.”

“I suppose so.” She offers Helena her left hand, palm up, as if inviting her to waltz; Helena places her right hand delicately—she can be so delicate when she chooses (with that hand, with her self entire)—inside the invitation, in acceptance.

Offering and accepting: Myka lets a certain hope rise that their hands, now together, are a precursor.