Wonder City Stories

From the depths of Nemo and an old Victorian house with a dead furnace, I send forth this episode, and hope that you enjoy it.

Wide Awake in Wonder City

Angelica grabbed her black leather car coat from the closet, and followed the last office staff and patients out of the clinic, making sure the door shut and locked behind her. She walked quickly, because the night was brisk and the neighborhood wasn't great. Well, no neighborhood was great any more. This was why she was wearing her low office heels, which were easy to run in if she had to, and her favorite loose black skirt for ease of motion. As she went, she subtly raised the light level of the entire block she was traversing, especially when there were a lot of doorways and alleys. It wasn't a neighborhood where she expected to meet the men in black, but it never paid to be lazy, since the men in black weren't the only hazards.

She reached her destination, a little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant, and found Kit Castaneda, in faded blue jeans and a clean blue buttondown shirt, lounging on the one uncomfortable straight chair that constituted their waiting area. He sprang up when she came in the door.

"Hi, you!" he said cheerily, and kissed her on the cheek.

"'Hi, you'?" she said, mock-archly, kissing his sandpapery cheek. "Is that any way to apologize after last time?"

Kit rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry."

Angelica smiled at the bored waitress who came forward with a couple of menus. "Two, please."

The waitress handed her the menus and gestured at the nearly-empty restaurant. "Wherever you want."

They didn't even consult -- both of them headed for the corner booth where both seats had a good view of the front of the restaurant and there were no immediately neighboring tables. Angelica watched Kit sprawl into his chair from under her lashes, and had to wonder if the man ever sat up straight.

She set her menu down, already knowing what she wanted. Kit was almost hiding behind his, giving it the closest scrutiny she'd ever seen someone devote to food selection. "The pho is the best I've found in town," she said.

"What's the biggest bang for the buck?" he said, still studying the menu.

Probably you, she thought, contemplating him, but said, "The shrimp bowl."

"Excellent!" he said, closing the menu with the air of a man who'd come to terms with his probable execution. "Can I get a beer?"

She shook her head. "They lost their license a couple months ago because of something stupid, and you know how hard it is to get a license nowadays."

He sighed and nodded. She thought about noting that she had two six-packs in her fridge at home, but decided to wait until she was a little more certain about inviting him back at all.

"So," she said, folding her hands under her chin. "Any good poker games tonight?"

He had the grace to look abashed again. "Nooo. But it was a really good poker game."

"Anyone coming after you with baseball bats tonight?" she inquired sweetly, wondering again why she had agreed to go on another date with this man.

"I don't think so," he said cheerily.

The waitress arrived and took their orders. He did, in fact, order the shrimp bowl.

"Why were they after you anyway?" she said after the waitress left them with a large teapot and two very small teacups.

"Oh, you know," he said dismissively, examining his teacup gravely, then filling hers before his own. "Things. Stuff."

"Money?" she said, taking a sip of tea.

He grinned that bright, devastating grin and said, "And things."

She smiled back, and thought about how she'd seen him bumming cigarettes off those same guys a couple days later, laughing and joking and apparently best buds, even while he was sporting a shiner and a cut across his forehead that must've bled like a bitch.

"I've been dying to ask you a question," she said finally.

"Shoot!" he said, adding sugar to his tea.

She leaned forward a bit and said, "Is Castaneda really your last name?"

"Nope!" he said, swigging down the tea.

"Then why use it?" she said.

"It was funny at the time," he said, pouring himself more tea. "And once it was on my fake ID, it was too much trouble to change."

Angelica scanned the room reflexively before replying, "It's not that I disapprove personally, but you might want to be careful about saying things like 'fake ID' aloud. Nowadays."

Kit grinned and snapped his napkin open like a magician about to do a trick. "All ID is fake ID. You can't cram a whole person onto a little plastic card, you know?"

Their food arrived just then, and they both applied themselves to it. Angelica, however, seemed to have more leisure for studying her companion than he for her. He dug into his food like he was starving, his long calloused fingers as steady and determined in their grip on his chopsticks as the chopsticks' grip on the shrimp and noodles. His black hair was loose around his shoulders and one lock kept stubbornly trying to fall into his pho.

After he'd gone through about half his bowl, he finally looked up at Angelica and seemed startled by her gaze. He grinned around his chopsticks and said, "So after dinner, what would you like to do?"

She put down her cup of tea and said, "I was leaving that up to you. You asked me out, after all."

He slurped up an enormous mouthful of noodles and said, "I know where were could get a beer, but it's kind of a hike."

"Let's see if we want dessert before we decide," she replied, putting off the point of no return. A hike, at night, these days, did not thrill her.

"I always want dessert," he said, and he managed to imply both a touch of innuendo and the cheerful greed of a seven-year-old, and she wasn't sure how he managed that.

They ordered dessert. She played with her food, putting off the moment when she had to have The Talk. Kit kept up a stream of conversational storytelling even while consuming his little balls of mochi ice cream whole. There was something about a road trip, and a helicopter, and a motel room full of snakes, Angelica recalled later, though at the time, she was mostly paying attention to his warm brown eyes, the tiny lines around his mouth and eyes, and the glimpse of the hollow of his throat she could see above where his shirt was buttoned.

Finally, the ice cream was gone and he was paying the bill -- something he insisted on and she hadn't fought at all, given that she'd ended up with the bill the last two times. She took a deep breath, wondering whether she was insane or not, and said, "So, I've got some beer back at my place."

He grinned. "Sounds good to me."

"I, uh, kind of feel like we should talk before we go, though," she said. "There are some things you should know." Before we're in a private place that's been soundproofed and you decide you don't like what you find.

He looked up from counting out the tip from his change. "Like what?"

She started with the easy thing. "Well, I'm para."

"Oh," he said, finally just dropping a five next to his plate. "So'm I. Is that something people have talks about here?"

"Yeah," she said, thinking about the boyfriend before last who'd had a herd of cows over finding her para reg card in her wallet. "But there's something else that most people want to know..."

He held up one hand. "Do you actually believe that, with the way people talk around here, I haven't heard a dozen or more stories about you?"

She shut her mouth. "Um, well, I suppose," she said, for lack of anything more intelligent.

Kit smiled -- a real smile, not his usual default grin -- and said, "Most people I know have reinvented themselves. Hell, I've lost count of how many times I've done it. I don't much care who you were. I'm interested in you, right now, as you are."

Angelica was impressed. He'd possibly just given her the most graceful reception she'd ever gotten from someone who wasn't "in the family." Or was he? She'd ask later. She had just one more thing to find out. "And you don't have some kind of fetish?" she said. "Because I've got a lot of experience with that too."

The smile went to the usual grin. "Oh, naw, I buried all those in the desert and couldn't find 'em when I went back."

She stared at him, perplexed. "What?"

Kit laughed. "Never mind, dumb joke. No. I don't. Your call, hon -- bar or your place?"

She stood up, sliding into her coat and grabbing her purse. "My place. Let's go before the not-curfew kicks in."

They went out and hurried through the streets. She continued to boost the light level as they went. Somewhere along the walk, he took her hand. His grip was firm and strangely comforting. She hadn't felt so safe with anyone in a very long time, despite all that she knew about him and didn't know about him. There was also a part of her that vaguely resented the fact that, because she was a woman walking hand-in-hand with a man, the cop they passed only gave them two looks, instead of the long, hard, interrogating stare she was used to when she was out alone too late. (And she was sure that if they'd been white, they wouldn't have gotten even the first look.)

She unlocked her door with one hand on the doorknob so her biosensor security could read her fingerprints. The keyed deadbolt unlocked, and then the rest of the deadbolts unlocked in response to her touch. Kit eyed the doorjamb as they passed through the door. "That's some serious security there," he said.

Angelica wondered for a moment if she could go through with getting beers and chit-chatting and so forth, but impulsively decided that she couldn't. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pushed him against the steel-clad fire door. "Can't be too careful," she said as she did what she'd wanted to do all evening: leaned in and kissed that sarcastic mouth.

"I'm a fan of caution sometimes," he murmured some moments later. "So you just let me know where the Do Not Cross tape lines are, okay?"

Committing to Sparkle Motion

"Just the person I was hoping to find!"

Angelica looked up from editing her manager's excuse for a budget spreadsheet and recognized the not-quite-elderly Asian woman standing in front of her receptionist's desk at the Queer Energy Community Center. "Oh, hey, Pearl," she said, briefly admiring the therapist's purple tie-dyed silk scarf and many-shades-of-purple crazy quilt jacket. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to talk to you about something that isn't business for the center," Pearl said sedately. Pearl did everything sedately, as far as Angelica could tell.

"Well, technically, I'm off the clock right now," Angelica said, saving her work on the spreadsheet and logging out of the computer with a few quick keystrokes. "We can walk and talk, if you want. I just have to fix my face."

Pearl nodded and followed her to the ladies room. Angelica looked at herself in the mirror and scowled -- she had a bad habit of chewing her lips while she revised Jed's chaotic documents, which played havoc with her lipstick, of course. She opened her purse -- noted to herself that she needed to switch purses, because this was her trusty winter bag, and she needed something lighter and brighter now it was spring -- and pulled out her makeup case. In the mirror, she could see Pearl glancing under the stall doors for feet.

"So," Pearl said, leaning her hip against the counter, "how are things with you?"

Angelica managed not to sigh. There was no rushing Pearl. "Same old, same old," she said, repairing her eyeliner. "Still going to classes when I can afford it. Still single. Well, mostly," she amended a little guiltily, thinking of Simon, and thinking of the date she was looking forward to on Friday.

Pearl nodded, watching Angelica's face, her back to the mirror. She had a habit of really listening to people, even when she wasn't "on duty." It made it easy to tell her more than one really meant to.

Angelica put away her eyeliner pencil and fished for her lipstick. "How about you?"

Pearl pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I'm busier than ever right now," she said. "I mean, yes, I'm glad to have a full slate of clients. But I'm frustrated. I like to be doing some good with my sessions, and people keep coming to me with the same problems, week after week."

Angelica shot a look at the older woman. "Yeah, I hear there are other businesses that are really booming right now," she said slowly, thinking of her friends and acquaintances who were sex workers. "People aren't happy."

"That, my dear, is an understatement," Pearl said with a raised eyebrow. "Water riots in LA, food riots in a dozen other cities, and general violence to self and others on the rise."

"Prices on everything on the rise too," Angelica said, applying the darker red lipstick and studying the effect in the mirror. "I know so many people who're out of work right now."

"How's your grandmother doing in all this?" Pearl said, and Angelica was touched that the therapist had remembered her grandmother.

"She's holding on all right," Angelica said with a little smile. "Tough old bird, my abuelita. She says I'm her only family left."

Pearl looked startled. "Did something happen to your mother and sisters?"

"Yeah," Angelica said, a sarcastic twist to her voice. "They went to one of those tent revivals for this 'Shining Brethren Church' and came out born again or some shit. Abuelita says that I'm the only one who's stayed in the Church, so I'm her only family, even if I've done some other things people might not think of as Catholic." She shrugged and put her lipstick away.

"Ah," Pearl said. "Look, Angelica, I'm not going to dance around the subject. I've got some friends who are... well, they're ex-superheroes, and we're trying to figure out how to make things better. But we're mostly... well, old people. It would be good to have a younger perspective."

Angelica examined her face in the mirror one more time, then turned to Pearl. "You know, in my neighborhood, there're these guys all in black who wander around 'saving' people," she said gravely. "They're government agents. They could mess up my life, the lives of everyone I know, really bad."

Pearl let her gaze drop, nodded, and stood up straight. "I understand completely."

"When and where?" Angelica said, snapping her purse shut.

Pearl blinked at her, startled. "What?"

"When do you people meet and where?" Angelica said, slinging her purse over her shoulder and adjusting the neckline of her blouse. "Because I'm tired of living in fear. Even just talking about it with some people who still have their minds would help."

Pearl smiled. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"Yes," Angelica said, grinning down at the older woman. "I wanted to see if you'd jump to the conclusion."

"We're getting together this Thursday around 7," Pearl said, shaking her head. "Why don't you come over to my place and we can drive there together?"

"Sounds good. I'll be by around 6?" Angelica pulled her StarSeed out of a pocket in her purse and popped the appointment into her calendar.

"Excellent," Pearl said, leading the way out of the rest room.

Turning the corner to the main reception area, they almost collided with a massive wall of a man in faded jeans and well-worn leather who was clearly in a heated conversation. He was a light-skinned black man, so the flush of rage was clearly visible in his cheeks.

"You don't bring this shit in here!" he bellowed. In one enormous hand, he held a stack of pamphlets, and in the other, a fistful of silver-colored rings.

The other man, a nervous white man in a black wool car coat and khakis, said, "I have every right to bring what I want to the community center!"

Angelica peered at the pamphlets. The title, in large friendly sans serif letters, informed her that "You too can be cured!" She glimpsed the outline of a white hand with a black cross in the center of it in the top corner of the front cover, and saw the word "homosexuality" in the line of text along the bottom of the page. She bit down on a curse.

The large man's biker jacket and keys jingled violently as he tore the entire stack of pamphlets in half. "This is private property, you little fucker. You do not bring shit like this into a queer safe space." He doubled the stack and tore it in half again. "You do not bring in shit like that and not expect to be called on it." He shoved the quartered mass of paper into a recycling bin, threw the rings on the floor, and brought the heel of his steel-toed boot down on them with a satisfying crunch. "And you do not expect to be welcomed ever again." He loomed over the man, fists bunched, leather creaking.

With an incoherent cry about a lawyer, the man fled out the front doors like his pants were on fire.

"Sorry, ladies," the big man rumbled to them. "Sorry, Angelica. I know I don't really have the right to kick someone out..."

"Pearl, this is Mel, one of our addiction counselors," Angelica said, "who has every right to throw someone like that out of our center, as far as I'm concerned."

"What a pleasure. Pearl Wong," she said, extending her hand.

"The therapist?" he said, his big fingers almost completely engulfing Pearl's hand. "One of my friends goes to you. He says you're great."

"Thank you," Pearl said. "That was admirable handling, and very cathartic to watch."

"Thanks," Mel said, stepping back and kneeling down to pick up the metallic mess on the floor. "Huh!" he exclaimed.

"What?" Angelica said, retrieving a dustpan and brush for him from the broom closet.

He picked up one of the broken rings, and held it up for the women to look at. Angelica and Pearl obligingly squinted, and Angelica said, "Is that... circuitry?"

He nodded. Then he bent back down and picked up one of the rings that escaped his boot's wrath. Standing, he opened his biker jacket. Angelica was delighted to see the purple silk lining was arrayed with an amazing number of pockets. Mel ran a broad brown finger over a row of pockets with cylindrical objects tucked into them, then selected one. He flicked his wrist and the cylinder extended into a sparkly pink wand about a foot and a half long. It played a few sprightly notes when it hit full extension.

Pearl watched him wave his wand over the ring for a few seconds. "Will that tell you what the circuitry does?"

Mel nodded again, and said, "In a general sort of way. It will tell me what it's doing right now." Rings of hot pink light appeared, moving toward the tip of the wand, and the wand played another little tune. "And it's a transmitter."

"A transmitter," Pearl said, peering at the ring. "Of what, do you think?"

Mel's jaw set and he gently collapsed the wand back into its pocket. "I don't know, but I'm fuckin' well going to find out." He bent and swept all the pieces into the dustpan, then dumped the contents into a paper bag he produced from another pocket. He nodded to them. "Good night, ladies," he said, then stomped out the front door, displaying the back of his leather jacket to them, where the name TINKERMEL was spelled out in purple rhinestones.

They watched him go, and when the door shut, Angelica said thoughtfully, "He might be another good one for your 'group therapy.'"

Pearl grimaced at her. "Don't call it that! I'm hardly the leader there."

Angelica raised both eyebrows at that. "Who is?"

"You'll find out Thursday night," Pearl said, heading for the door. "See you then. And bring Mel if you've a mind to."

---

I've been a little lax on new characters in this volume. I hope to make this up. :)

I Have Measured Out My Life in Coffee Spoons

Angelica peered at her phone for the time. On any other day before yesterday, she would have been late for one of her jobs. Alas, it was the day after yesterday, and she was down to one job.

She pried herself out of bed and took a leisurely hot shower, and she was just finishing putting her makeup on when she heard the scratching at the front door. She very nearly dumped her mascara into the sink in her hurry to put it away. The black silk robe slipped out of her fingers as she fumbled for it, so she ended up tugging on the silly terrycloth robe imitation of Jane Liberty's star-spangled costume as she sprinted for the door in her bare feet.

Angelica checked the identity panel recently installed beside the front door and sighed, throwing back the three deadbolts and two chains and opening the door. "Hey, there, fuzzy," she said.

The big golden wolf with the winsome yellow eyes padded silently into her apartment and sat politely, waiting for her to refasten her front door.

Angelica made sure all was secure and then crouched to put her arms around the wolf's neck. "I was getting awfully worried about you," she murmured into the neck ruff. "I was deciding whether to come looking for you or not."

She felt the wolf changing in her arms, losing fur and gaining muscle and bipedality. To her, it felt like the transformation did not happen as fast or easily as before. "Oh, god," Simon whimpered into her neck. "I wasn't sure I could get back here. She started locking the door, and the deadbolt's key only. I'm so grateful for Watson's still being sane. It's like Megan's completely forgotten who I am!"

She didn't ask him -- again -- why he stayed with Megan, but Angelica was distressed to feel tears dripping onto her neck. In all the months since Simon started coming to her, he hadn't been this miserable. He was confused and upset that he was finding day-to-day life so brutally difficult that retreating to the wolf form was his only escape. He was terrified, because he'd figured out that he felt it more or less in different parts of the city. And he was furious when he found that the feeling caught up with him when he spent more time somewhere he felt comfortable, like her apartment, and that the feeling somehow started to carry over to her too. But he'd never been just abjectly miserable.

She leaned back and looked at him. He scrubbed at the tears on his dark face with the heel of his hand, then scratched in annoyance at the uncontrolled growth of his beard. His hair hadn't been cut by a professional in months. She had no idea what she was doing with African-American hair, so all she could do was get an electric razor and a blade guard and try to cut it short without making it look too bad. But it looked bad, and a couple of weeks had made it worse.

"Look, why don't you put on your clothes and I'll take you down to the girls at Hair Today?" she said, as she had before. "They'll put you right. You know you always feel better when you look good."

He shook his head, like he had for several months now. "I can't," he said helplessly. "I just can't... I... the idea of someone else seeing me... please, let me clean up here."

As usual, Angelica took him into the bathroom and let him shower, because he always smelled doggy after a while in wolf form. He used the razor she'd bought him to take the scraggle off his cheeks, and after the shower, stood before the mirror with a towel around his hips to clean up the Van Dyke the way he liked it. She brought some newspapers and a stool for him, and shaved his head as short as she dared, leaving a thin layer of short, tight curls over his scalp. They didn't talk much, and she left the room after setting his syringe of black-market testosterone on the counter.

After he emerged in his sweatpants, scrubbed and shaved and freshly infused with hormones, he stood behind her at her desk and kissed her neck. And without any discussion, Angelica took him to bed, where he was silent and fierce and forceful and terribly, terribly needy.

She stroked his muscular back as he dozed amidst the fortunate abundance of her bosom and watched his face in something like repose. She liked to look at their bodies intertwined: their skin tones weren't that far apart -- she was relatively dark for Latina and he was relatively light for black. Her skin was softer and his smoother. She was glad he hadn't grown a lot of body hair on T, though she knew the hair he did grow -- chest and arms and legs -- was a point of pride for him.

She wondered if he'd ever smile again, like he did those years she'd known him back in college, when she'd fallen so head over heels for him, though nothing had ever happened between them -- or like he had over myriad lunches, telling her about Suzanne, when it was clear he was hopelessly in love.

And she knew he didn't love her now, not like he still loved Suzanne, but she'd take what she could get.

Angelica didn't know what was going on, but she knew that Simon was only the worst symptom of a terrifying wave of something happening.

---

Author's Note:

New POV character for you! More Simon! More annnnnngst!

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