3rd World Products, Book 17 Read online

  “Yeah, prob’ly so. If not here, later at home. It’s their problem and you’re only making it worse by beating on him. Look at her, then think about why they’re still together. When she’s had enough of him, she can call a cop and move back home or into a shelter.”

  “That’s not good enough!”

  I shrugged, called up my board, and said, “In this society, that’s as good as it gets. See you later.”

  Lifting away, I didn’t look back. She’d either stay and play or follow me; in either case, I was ready to find some food. I was barely halfway to the Firehouse Subs place when Marie pulled alongside. She flew in angry silence and remained silent until it was time to order her sandwich. The place was full of people and noisy, so I headed outside with my food and drink.

  Marie followed and asked, “Why are we out here?”

  “Peace and quiet. We can eat aboard the flitter.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A few minutes later we were a mile up and quietly munching our sandwiches when Marie said, “You didn’t seem too concerned about her welfare, Ed.”

  “No point. They reverted to business as usual the minute you left. She probably begged you not to hurt him anymore. He’ll remember that and hate her for it. You didn’t just kick his ass, Marie, you damaged his ego. His self-image. In front of her. They prob’ly won’t ever get past that.”

  In a flat, chilly tone, she said, “I couldn’t let him hit her.”

  “I was about to stun him when you smacked his arm. He’d have fallen in the parking lot and wondered why. He might even have thought it was rage-related and tried to calm down, but that’s nothing to count on.”

  “So why didn’t you stun him?”

  “Cuz if I had, you’d be on my ass for interfering. Remember Wade Thompson? Remember how you almost went ballistic on me and bitched about it for a week?”

  Marie sat straight and said, “That’s not the same at all. He…”

  “Crap. It’s same enough. He was a macho asshole and he got in your face. Then he got in my face for being with you. I put him down because he swung at me. You acted as if I’d denied you the honor.”

  She yelped, “You did, damn it! I’d been waiting for a good excuse and you screwed everything up!”

  I chuckled, “Well, beggin’ yer ladyship’s pardon and all, but he tried to hit me before your grand little scheme panned out.”

  Marie simmered for a time, then took a bite of her sandwich. After a sip of her drink, she said, “I still don’t like your attitude about what just happened.”

  “Too bad. They became what they are over time, Marie. A fairly typical story would be that she was a high-school hottie and he chased her until she caught him. The way he sees it, he’s now stuck with a fat wife, four kids, bills out the ass, and a low-end job. You saw the van. You saw their clothes. You saw her. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  After a pause she said, “That doesn’t give him the right to hit her.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but that’s her problem, not yours. Having a hottie like you take him on and kick his ass in front of her just made things worse.” With a shrug, I added, “On the upside, that might bring things to a head sooner. Maybe even before the kids become copies of their parents, but I doubt it.”

  Another pause happened, then she stated, “So you think I screwed things up even worse for them.”

  Pretending to give that some thought, I replied, “Nope. Maybe hurried them along is all. Or maybe not. She’ll do or endure whatever she has to in order to keep her meal ticket. He probably already knows very well he wouldn’t be any other woman’s first choice. Could be they’ll just settle back into their same old routine, whatever it is. For a while, anyway.”

  We finished our meals in silence. I wadded my food wrappers and tossed them at the flitter’s hull field. Marie flinched hard at the sound and flash, seemed to give the matter some thought, and then tossed her own wrappers at the field.

  Sipping the last of her drink, she said, “I like that. No trash. Does it work with cups full of ice, too?”

  “Yup.”

  She nodded. “Cool. What’s next? Where to from here?”

  I shrugged. “More board time if you really think you need it. I don’t. You picked it up fast and nothing about it seems to scare you.”

  “What about going underwater?”

  “Okay. But Tanya could show you, if you need shown at all. You know the boards can do it, so it’s just a matter of trying it yourself.”

  Marie shook her cup slightly and sipped some dregs, then tossed it at the hull field. It made a much bigger flash and bang that startled her again, but she recovered quickly.

  Turning to face me, she asked, “Do you have something else to do today? Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  Shaking my head, I replied, “No and no, respectively. Fact is, I seem to be enjoying your company, ma’am.”

  Her left eyebrow arched. “You sound surprised.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I am surprised. A little.”

  Marie held her arch gaze for a moment, then relaxed in her seat and crossed her ankles as she said, “Me, too, really. I expected us to be fighting about something by now.”

  “Can’t think of anything to fight about. Can you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I haven’t forgotten you slept with my daughter, but it suddenly doesn’t seem to matter so much.”

  I couldn’t think of a useful reply to that, so I sipped what was left of my drink and tossed the cup. It loudly turned to plasma and I checked my coffee mug. Still some left. I noticed Marie trying to use her cell phone and asked Galatea to let it work.

  When Marie gave me another arched eyebrow at that, I said, “The default mode is ‘off’ when you’re aboard my flitter.”

  As she dialed, she asked, “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “You gonna call a cop now that it’s working?”

  She grinned and held up a finger as she said, “Hi, Dan. Oh, pretty well, really. One o’clock is fine. Okay, thanks. Bye.”

  Thumbing the ‘off’ button, she put the phone away and said, “You haven’t mentioned your thousand dollars.”

  “Didn’t think I’d have to. Despite all your other faults, you always seemed fairly honest.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Smart ass. I still am. Let’s go back to the house. I have to let someone bring in a new fridge in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay.” I directed Galatea as Marie fished in her back pocket.

  She said, “Your thousand,” and produced a folded envelope, which she handed to me.

  I took it, said, “Thanks,” and put it in my shirt pocket.

  Marie asked, “You aren’t going to count it?”

  “Nah. Like I said, you always seemed fairly honest.”

  Galatea set us down in front of Tanya’s apartment just as a bobtail truck with a company name on the sides entered the parking lot.

  Marie commented, “He’s early.”

  Did that need a reply? I decided not. As Marie opened the front door, I sent a probe to the truck. The driver and an assistant sat in the cab. After consulting a clipboard, they got out and went to the back of the truck, where the driver lowered a lift-type tailgate. I sent Galatea to hover above their efforts and walked to the truck. The guys had selected a tall cardboard box and moved it onto the lift.

  Just to be sure, I asked if that was Tanya’s new fridge.

  “Yes, sir,” said the driver, reaching for the lift controls, “We’ll have it in there in about ten minutes.”

  I said, “I can save you some trouble,” and had Galatea field-grab the box and head for the apartment’s back yard. The guys freaked a bit as I explained that the glass doors were bigger than the front door, then followed the flitter on my board.

  Marie opened the glass doors with, “I saw what happened. Are they coming up here?”

  Directing the flitter to put the new fridge in the kitchen, I replied, “Hope so. If they don’t, we’ll be stuck with a big box and an
extra fridge.”

  Walking around the new fridge, she said, “No, just with a box. The old fridge was staying anyway. Tanya’s donating it to a food bank.”

  “Would these guys deliver it?”

  “I don’t know. We could ask.”

  The front doorbell rang. Marie let the two guys in and they almost cautiously came into the kitchen. Marie asked if they could deliver the old fridge and one guy phoned the shop as the other unpacked the new fridge.

  The answer he received was ‘no’; I could see that in the guy’s expression.

  I said, “Tell him he can write a delivery charge off his taxes.”

  The guy put a thumb over the phone’s mic and asked, “Is that true?”

  “Should be. I used to donate computer repair time and old units that way.”

  After a short discussion, the answer was still ‘no’. The guys set about disconnecting the old fridge. Once it was ready to move, I sent a field pad under it and slid it away from the wall, then used a similar pad to move the new one into place. The guys had danced back when the green field appeared. Now they yammered questions. I ignored them and moved the old fridge further out of the way.

  The driver continued asking about the pad. I said that if he — an official fridge delivery person — couldn’t somehow arrange the delivery of the old fridge to a food bank, there was no reason to tell him anything about field pads.

  He responded, “Field-whats?!”

  “That green thing you saw.”

  “Look, I don’t make the rules. I don’t break them, either. I like having a job.”

  I shrugged and went to the kitchen table. To Marie, I said, “When they’re finished, we can deliver the old fridge.”

  She nodded with, “Okay. Thanks,” and watched the other guy hook up the water hoses, then shove the new fridge back another foot or so.

  The driver didn’t look happy, but he didn’t push the matter. After testing his work, the other guy pronounced the job done and gathered up remnants of the cardboard box. Marie signed a form and showed them out of the apartment.

  Closing the door behind them, she turned to me and said, “The food bank would send a truck over, you know.”

  “Let’s just take it to them.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I’ll call them and set it up.”

  Sipping coffee, I watched Marie read some numbers off the fridge while she used her phone. A fine-looking woman. Trim, tight, everything right. Intelligent. Courageous. But well-known for having a hair trigger and the personality of a badger when she was pissed.

  Did I really want to mess with her? Watching her lean to wipe and read a label, then stand straight and sweep her collar-length hair back, I decided that some chances might be worth taking.

  Putting her phone in a pocket as she came back inside, Marie said, “They’re making a spot for it now.”

  “Good ‘nuff.”

  I went to the coffee pot and used what was left to top off my mug. Marie watched in silence, then moved closer to briefly touch the glass pot. She said, “It’s cold.”

  Sipping, I replied, “Don’t care.”

  Again taking a seat at the table, I watched her shuffle stuff from old fridge to new. I had no doubt she was aware of my ogling. Would she object or just ignore it? Or use it?

  Marie finished shuffling stuff and began cleaning the old fridge. I suggested that they’d probably want to do that themselves.

  She said, “I’m sure they will, but I’d be embarrassed to hand it to them in this condition.”

  This condition? It didn’t look particularly dirty to me and they’d sanitize it on general principles. Whatever. I watched her work until she put the cleaning stuff away. Marie came to sit at the table looking a little flushed. Light perspiration made her skin softly reflect the light as she sipped water. Her scent drifted to me across the table.

  She noticed my eyes on her throat and lifted a hand to touch the spot. “What’s wrong? Is there something there?”

  Abruptly standing up, I said, “No. I’ll move the old fridge outside now,” and cast a pad to do so. Once the fridge was on the porch, I stood near it and surveyed the area for no good reason for a time. Well, not exactly ‘no good reason’.

  Marie was sharp enough to know I’d been looking at nothing but her. Pretending I didn’t want her to see my level of interest would likely bring her out to the porch shortly, if only out of curiosity.

  In a spot of the chrome trim on the old fridge, I saw Marie watching me and realized two things; I didn’t want to try to manipulate her and I had to presume she’d know exactly what I was doing. On the raised earthen berm beyond the back fence, a man was doing something around a small tree. Likely strapping it against wind. I waved and he waved back just as Marie stepped out to stand beside me.

  She peered outward and asked, “What’s he doing?”

  “Strapping that new tree so it grows straight.”

  “Do they really have to do that?”

  With a shrug, I said, “Somebody seems to think so. They do it to a lot of new trees.” Gesturing at the yard, I said, “The soil here is mostly sand, so they strap them into position until the root ball spreads enough.”

  After a moment of watching him work, she asked, “Is that the real reason you came out here?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. You were getting to me in there.”

  She snorted a chuckle and, “Getting to you?!”

  “Yup. Looks. Scent. All that. I came out here to clear my head.” Giving her a direct look, I added, “And being upwind, you really aren’t helping that effort at the moment.”

  Grinning, she replied, “Poor baby. Would it help if we got this fridge moving to its new home?”

  “It might.”

  “Then let’s get to it. They’re expecting us.”

  Nodding, I called Galatea and we hauled the old fridge to the south side of town and what was once a standard-sized grocery store, where I had Tea set down inside the loading dock. Some guy standing at a podium-style mini-desk was yakking on the phone. He turned to see a flitter three feet behind him and stopped talking as he froze with a ‘what the hell?!’ expression.

  Marie laughed softly and said, “Harry, here’s the fridge. Where do you want it?”

  He managed, “Uh… Over by the cooler. Near the bananas.”

  The spot they’d prepped was fairly obvious. I had Galatea field the fridge into place as Harry came over.

  Marie sidetracked his questions with, “Where’s Rhonda?”

  “Uh… up front, I think.”

  “Okay. Hope you can hook this up. It makes ice.”

  I let Galatea vanish and we passed through the swinging doors. A tall, dark-haired woman near the registers at the front of the store answered her phone, gestured as if trying to calm someone while she spoke, and then turned to see Marie and me. She said something brief and tapped her phone off as she began walking toward us. Marie smilingly gave her a little wave as we neared each other.

  After greetings, I let Marie explain the unexpectedly rapid arrival of the fridge.

  Rhonda looked at me and said, “Tanya told me a little about you.”

  “Good stuff or bad stuff?”

  “Is there any bad stuff to tell?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t think of any just now.”

  She chuckled, “No, of course not.”

  Lights flickered overhead and Rhonda swore softly, then apologized, “Sorry. The lights have been doing that for months.”

  I said, “Looks like a short. I’ll check it out.”

  “We don’t have a ladder tall enough and…”

  Ignoring her further comments, I called up my board and lifted to the lighting fixtures. Sending a probe through their lines found the short; it looked as if something had once been connected near the fixture’s opening. Not far away inside the huge fixture was a bird’s nest with three tiny eggs. The wires were capped, but one of the caps was loose. I took the cap off and used a tendril to twist the wire tips tog
ether, then tightly recapped them.

  Lowering myself back to the ladies, I let the board vanish and said, “It was a loose connection and there’s a nest with three eggs up there. Every time Mama bird went in or out, she moved the wires. They can’t move anymore.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yup. Crimped and covered.”

  Looking up at the fixture, Rhonda said, “This place had some broken windows and missing fittings when we got it. There might still be some openings along the ceiling. Any suggestions?”

  “Yup. Mama’s getting food and water somewhere, so watch for her coming and going. Patch the exterior hole — or holes — and put a bird cage on a rope. You can raise and lower it for cleaning and restocking. Get her used to using it and her kids will use it, too. That’s when you can close the cage door and take them outside to let them go.”

  “What kind of bird is it?”

  “Didn’t see it. Might be a good idea to see if anyone else knows before you invest in bird food she might not eat.”

  Marie said, “I think I’ve seen her. She isn’t very big.”

  Rhonda seemed to give the matter a moment’s thought, then said, “Probably a sparrow. I can get a cage from Tim and I have some clothesline in the office. Let’s go get it and string it up now so it’s ready.”

  And so it was. We picked a spot where nothing below would be splattered with seed or bird poop and I flew the cord up and over one of the support beams, then tied the cord ends down at the end of a set of shelves. Rhonda said she could take things from there and told a couple of workers to pass the word about the rope.

  She and Marie went back to the fridge while I looked around the store. Half of it was stocked with food and the other half contained shoes, clothing, and household items. I headed to the back and found the ladies wrapping up their conversation. We said our goodbyes and Marie and I lifted away on our boards.

  A few minutes later, we were a few miles north of Spring Hill when a northbound SUV on I-75 practically skidded to a halt on an overpass about fifty feet past an exit ramp. The SUV began to back up, but its left rear corner swung out just a bit too far and the front bumper of a passing 18-wheeler hit it.