Joel’s hand landed heavily on her shoulder and curled into it. “My bodyguard and I have some cases to lift,” he said, suddenly all seriousness.
They had to fetch the cases of bourbon from the retail area and bring them to be weighed, then take them all via hand truck and jitney to the Aviation and load them into the barback’s area. Why Rivaudais never had the barback himself do the job, Hwa didn’t know. She suspected he simply didn’t trust him not to pocket something on the way. That was why she did a lot of small jobs like this, she explained to Joel, as they wheeled all the cases of liquor to the weigh station. People trusted her.
“I think it’s ’cause I don’t have any augments. I have an honest face.”
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” Joel tugged on a pair of gloves one of the men had given him, and lifted a case. He began walking it to the weigh station.
“Hold on!” Hwa darted around from her cart. “We have to zero it out, first. Keep lifting that. It’s good for you.”
“Am I lifting it right?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “You are. You lifted from your knees. That was the right way to do it.”
He huffed his bangs. “Well, get to it. My arms won’t hold out.”
Hwa jumped on the weigh station. It was nothing more than a black platform set away from the racks of barrels. Two flats of barrels stood beside it. Each barrel had a weight-by-liquid-volume stamped on it, and then a secondary stamp indicating whether it met the acceptable minimum. They’d all met the right weight. Captain Matthews, for all his shirtless, barefoot lassitude, ran a tight ship.
“Shame you can’t pick up some more from us,” she heard him say.
“Les loyers,” Rivaudais said. Hwa turned. Rivaudais was jerking his thumb up in the air. The rents were going up. No wonder Rivaudais couldn’t afford more merchandise. Joel watched her, oblivious. Of course they wouldn’t say this in front of him. His dad was the one raising the rent.
“I’m getting another cart,” Joel said.
“What? Okay. Hold on.” Hwa tapped the panel on the weigh station. She tilted her head and took off her specs. Maybe she was looking a little healthier, but she hadn’t tripled in size since her last weigh-in. “Get off the platform, Joel.”
The numbers danced in the panel. Fell. Back to her normal weight. Then they rose again. Like lottery numbers, rolling up and up and up. How was he doing that? It was like he was bouncing high in the air over the platform and then silently crashing back down onto it. Maybe he had some special high-tech Lynch Ltd. toy that made it all possible. She’d dragged him here and now he was punishing her for it. She put her specs back on.
“I mean it, Joel. Quit it.”
He was right behind her. She could feel him—the glee at his stupid teenage boy prank radiating off him as heat. She turned to face him. “Seriously, quit—”
No one was there.
“Quit what?” Joel was hunched over another cart of cases. He frowned and moved to join her on the platform. “Who are you talking to?”
Behind her, there was a long, yawning creak. An audible sloshing. The sound of something snapping. Wood. Something cold and hard solidified in her stomach. Time seemed to stretch out, as though adrenaline itself could somehow pull the fibres of space and time just a little bit more taut.
“Joel! Run!”
But he just stood there, staring, and he kept staring even when she stumbled off the platform and rushed him. She grabbed him around the waist and snapped him up like she was doing a lift in a match. Then she veered to the left and carried him into the retail room and shut the door.
From behind reinforced glass, they watched the whole flat of barrels nearest the weigh station roll down from their perch and spill across the floor.
“Oh, no,” Joel said. “All that product…”
Hwa whirled. “Are you shitting me? You’re worried about the bourbon?” She bent down and rested her hands on her knees. “We almost got pancaked there, you know.”
“Yeah.” Joel looked at himself, and then at her. To her surprise, he grinned. His smile stretched wider than she’d ever seen it. “You know, you could have thrown your back out, lifting me like that. It wasn’t exactly the correct technique.”
Hwa reached over and tousled his hair. “Very funny.”
*
In a ride on the way back to school, Joel asked her not to tell anyone what had happened. “Because nothing happened,” he said. “It was just an accident. And besides, you’ll get in trouble. I don’t think moving crates of bourbon was what my dad had in mind when he hired a physical trainer.”
“You’re right,” Hwa said. “But lying will make things worse.”
“I didn’t get hurt,” Joel insisted. “Isn’t that what matters? I’m less sore now than I would be after a day of training. And I learned something about the city! Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? I’m the one who’s going to take over here, someday. I should start learning everything I need to know.”