Neighbors

[wolfs_daughter]

Spring was here. The change in temperature had happened, and while there were no shade trees to sprout green leaves, there was a sparse offering of grass in some places. Even in the desert, things could grow.

Echo had gotten the job at the daycare center. She'd lucked out and they hadn't wanted someone with a teaching certificate, just someone who was good with children and could drive the communal van to take them on the occasional outing. The job wasn't going to make her rich, but she enjoyed it and it got her out of the house.

She'd finished dinner, and was now contemplating a run out in the desert. She'd kept up with the practicing, and shifting didn't hurt anymore. Searchlight was so quiet at night that she no longer worried about being spotted. One of the benefits of living around so many retirees was that they all seemed to go to bed before it got dark.

There were two lawn chairs on the trailer's front yard, and a plastic table for drinks and sometimes sandwiches. Echo didn't really have visitors, but sometimes one of her close neighbors would stop by to talk.

Life was pretty good.

Comments

[dori_bell]

“No, he’s in Las Vegas,” she replied. “He mixes music for a night club. I’ve never been to one. I don’t know if he’s any good.” Of course she had heard tapes he made, but Dori didn’t trust her judgment on his talents because his tastes ran counter to hers. Although once, James made her a special cassette and called it: ‘You Put the Fun in Funeral Dirge’. It led with a track called Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child sung by Jimmy Scott. Dori had kissed his cheek, the most affection she had known how to give.

“I’d like to go to a night club,” she said wistfully and scratched her arm, a slow-motion gesture inside her sleeve. Her eye contact was unblinking. “I’ve heard all sorts of characters turn up there.”

[wolfs_daughter]

"I like music, but clubs aren't really my thing. I usually end up hugging the wall all night and wasting the money I spent on the cover charge."

Now that Echo was really looking at the blonde, something seemed amiss, but she couldn't put her finger on what. The smell of flowers lingered, and she wondered if the blonde was wearing some sort of perfume. Maybe it was the eyes, the directness of her gaze.

Wait. Brother. A brother who worked at a club. The hybrid's expression brightened.

"Are you James' sister?"

[dori_bell]

Dori nodded. It was common for others to know James better than Dorothy, or before her, considering his lust for good company. When they lived in the same house, all the neighbors liked him while they treated her as a strange growth protruding from his body: best to politely ignore. Now came the inevitable questions as to why he was black and she was white. She headed it off with a simple, “We were adopted.”

As she stood there, she found herself looking the girl over, searching for signs of sickness, badness. There was nothing but health, a good thing considering the last time Dori had taken one of James’s friends, a girl named Meka who hadn’t been sick at all, only very, very present. Always. Later she had trouble explaining the flash of jealousy that had come over her; she was thirteen and her brother, whom she hated half the time, had forgotten about her, and that was unacceptable.

Nowadays Dori kept her hands to herself unless death was imminent, or someone was rude, or she was being paid to do it.

She tilted her head. “Do you want to sleep with him?”

[wolfs_daughter]

Echo simultaneously blushed and scowled. Why did random people ask her if she wanted to have sex with some guy or other? Did she need to get 'Not interested' stamped on her forehead?

"No," she said politely but firmly, shifting her posture as she tried not to hunch her shoulders defensively. "He was nice to me, that was all. I offered to buy him a sandwich because I felt bad abut eating in front of him, but he said no. He mentioned you, actually."

The difference in skin color didn't really faze her. After inheriting Papa's Wolf genes, Echo would have felt like a complete hypocrite if she'd pointed it out. Family was what you made for yourself, it wasn't limited to DNA.

"Do you work here in Searchlight?" she asked. "I don't think I've seen you in the grocery store or anything."

[dori_bell]

“Sorry,” Dori offered blandly. “You just looked so pleasant when you realized I knew him.” The innocence of her voice battled with the thing she had implied and the glaze on her eyes. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I can never tell when people are interested in that until it’s too late. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

She let the moment pass, although she had a powerful urge to step forward and lay cold hands on the backs of Echo’s cheeks, to sap their heat.

“I work at the community center,” she said. It was a lie; she volunteered there on some weekends during elder events, breathing in the general age and repose of the place. “You wouldn’t see me unless you played Bridge or Bingo.”

Then, awkwardly late, "What did he say about me?"

[wolfs_daughter]

"He said you liked the quiet."

Now the weird thing was even more present. Echo was too shy to be off-putting, and that might have been part of it, but the blonde seemed almost alien. "And I don't get to the community center much, not since I got a job in Las Vegas. It seems like a good place t spend a hot afternoon, though. Lots of air condtioning."

The hybrid heard the crunch of wheels over gravel, and when she looked in that direction, one of the park's other residents was returning home. The sun was almost completely down. It made the other woman look strangely menacing.

"My name's Echo, by the way."

[dori_bell]

“I’m Dori.”

She extended her hand and wondered if Echo would recoil, the way some people did. In private Dori wondered if she could blend into people if she tried harder, if she wanted to the way that James did. Back in school she had been called autistic once by a psychologist, a wrong diagnosis but one her guardians had embraced for lack of a better explanation.

“I won’t hurt you.” Her pale hand hung in the space between them. “I promise.”