I grip the gun tighter and I’m about to stand and get a bead on it when Ruby zips into its field of vision.
“Hey, look at me,” Ruby says, its voice booming, flashing multicolored lights. “Don’t you want some of this delicious pork?”
The raptor returns its attention to Ruby, and man, I’ve got to stop being so hard on that thing. I bear-crawl toward the kitchen, making sure to not hit any more chairs.
At the bar I stop.
I haven’t been past here since the night Mena died, and I knew this was what I was suggesting, but suggesting it and being on the threshold are two different things.
Afraid for what I might find, I take out another Retronim, knowing it’s probably thrashing my kidneys at this point. Not like I’m going to need them much longer, with the path I’m headed down. I take the pill, then get into a crouch, make sure the raptor can’t see me, and step inside.
The kitchen is dim. No sign of the kid. Hopefully she got smart and hid somewhere.
The room looks different. The tile has been replaced. It used to be a sea green with black accents, but now it’s subway white, and there’s more chrome. The configuration has been changed too. The fridges are moved to the other side of the room, next to the walk-in freezer, on the far side. The ovens are still there, but there are more of them and they look more modern.
The ovens…
…It’s late. I don’t know what time it is. Late enough the place is empty, so I make my way through the kitchen and pat my pockets, looking for my lighter so I can bang out a smoke on the roof, with enough time to wash up before Mena gets back. Even though she caught a bad cold a few months ago that shot her sense of smell, she still knows when I’ve smoked.
But I realize I forgot my lighter so I head over to the stove and…
No. Don’t slip now. Focus.
What the hell. I’m taking Retronim like candy. I should be good.
Got to move fast.
“Ruby, get this fucking thing in here,” I say.
I move toward the freezer…
…when Mena calls out behind me, “Babe, seriously?”
I turn, the cigarette dangling from my mouth, reaching down to the pilot, where I know that if I light it and inhale hard as I hoof it across the room, I can make it to the roof access door without exhaling smoke in here, which I know is against the rules, but fuck it, sometimes you have to live a little.
With Mena watching me, I can’t do it. As much as that nicotine craving is clawing at my center, I can’t smoke in front of her. I tried it, once, and it was worse than someone seeing you naked for the first time. She never told me I couldn’t smoke, but I also knew she didn’t like it.
She didn’t like it when I did things to hurt myself.
I hold the cigarette out to her. She crosses the room and takes it out of my hand with a little roll of her eyes and tosses it in the closest trash can. Then she leans into me, snaking her arms around my waist, pulling me in for a kiss, and I taste cherries.
It feels like I’m forgetting something. This little itch.
“There,” she says. “Isn’t that better?”
“It’s nice, sure, but it doesn’t change the feeling like I want to throw a chair through a window.”
Mena frowns. “I’m going to tell Alexi to stop stocking your brand in the gift shop.”
“I can always switch.”
“My love…” Mena says, trailing off.
“What, Mom?” I ask.
“Don’t you dare,” she says. Then she looks around the kitchen. “I need to tell you something. Now seems like as good a time as any.”
There it is again. What is it I’m forgetting?
I take her around the waist. “Tell me.”
“You can be a real asshole sometimes.”
I throw my head back and laugh. “Well yeah, but that’s why you love me.”
Mena sighs. “There was once a teacher…”
“Hey,” I tell her. “No kōans. You have something to say to me, say it directly.”
Mena nods, the way a parent might smile at a student who got a passing grade on a test. “You know what that was like for me, my mom convinced I was some kind of demon. I mean, when I first came out, she went to a priest to have him perform an exorcism…”
“Your mom was an asshole.”
Mena nods. “And I know you don’t have a good relationship with your parents, even if you haven’t said why. We share that. But these people have always been here for me, no questions. And because they’re my family, they’re your family too. You don’t treat them that way. You think it’s funny, but it’s really not.”
“My sense of humor is my best quality.”
“Stop making jokes,” Mena says. “People reach out hands to you and you bat them away. Sooner or later they’ll stop reaching. And you might find that when you need that hand, it’s not there. Have you even gone to check on Brandon?”
“Good god, what’s wrong with Brandon now?”
“See, the fact that you don’t even know is part of the problem.”
Mena wraps her fingers around the back of my neck, fingertips coming to rest in the dips and folds of the muscles. “There’s a painting I want to show you,” she says. “It’s in Chicago.” And she pulls me close, kisses me softly…
…Something big and heavy slams into me, throwing me against the stove. It hits so hard it takes me a moment to remember where I am. I scramble for the freezer door, hoping I’ll get there before this thing gets its footing.
As I’m doing it I see Ruby shattered on the floor.
The ceilings in here are too low. I want to yell at it, to tell it that it should have stayed outside. Stayed safe.
The raptor is on the other side of the room, having slid on the floor, and it’s getting up now, focused on me. I yank at the freezer door, trying to get it open, but it’s stuck. There’s a bolt holding it closed. I pull that out and crack the door, turn to see the raptor bearing down on me, coming fast, and I reach my hand up but I am no longer holding the gun. Must have gotten knocked free when the raptor barreled into me.
So, here we are. I am going to be dino food.
I put my forearm out, thinking maybe it’ll clamp down and I can drag it into the freezer with me, when something flashes out from behind the fridges. Grayson, wearing gray sweats, a T-shirt, and sneakers, swinging a fire extinguisher. He hits the dinosaur hard, and it goes flying against the wall. With the raptor clear of me, he pulls his gun out of the holster and is training it on the scrambling reptile when I yell, “No!”
He turns to me, confused, but then shakes his head and aims. The raptor is already darting at me, so I jump up and grab an outcropping on the inside of the fridge, the cold burning my hands, but the frost is coarse enough that I’m able to maintain my grip. As it bears down I tense my core and just before it can dive for my midsection, I throw my legs up, let it pass underneath me and slam into the shelving on the far wall.
Then I drop, slam the door closed, and reinsert the bolt.
With that done I turn to Grayson, who is now holding the gun out, pointing in my direction.
And I wonder if this is it.
But in the slip he was wearing a suit.
Though he could be changing his mind.