Red’s arms shook visibly as she lowered them to her sides. When she curtsied for her clapping audience, she wobbled.
Rooster stepped up to the stage and caught her around the waist when she turned to him. The second she was no longer facing the crowd, the smile dropped away, eyelids flagging and mouth going slack with exhaustion. It was always this way after she used her power; she was always weak, and shaky, hardly able to walk.
“Come on, Little Red,” he murmured, setting her back into her boots, right where she’d left them on the spongy grass. “Let’s get you something to drink.”
“Did I do okay?” she asked, leaning into his chest, letting him hold her weight.
“You always do.”
He felt the shape of the smile she pressed into his shoulder, happy and sweet, warm as the hood of a running car.
*
Rooster bought a bottle of Coke from one of the concession stands and found an out-of-the-way spot behind a tent, where Red could sit down on a plastic crate and catch her breath. The day had been warm, but it was cool now, after dark, the wind toying with her hair. She shivered, and Rooster immediately shrugged off his jacket.
“I’m alright,” she said, but tucked her nose gratefully into the Sherpa collar when he draped the jacket around her shoulders.
“Drink your Coke.”
“Bossy,” she accused, but smiled, and took a few more sips.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Fine.” But she tugged the jacket tighter around her.
Don’t be stubborn, he started to tell her, but a man’s voice intruded on their moment of calm. “There you are,” the manager said, appearing around the corner of the tent, moving toward them as quickly as his stubby legs could carry him. In the ambient light of the fair, Rooster could see that the man had sweated completely through his shirt, despite the chill of the evening. “Thought you’d skipped out without your money,” he said in a way that signaled he wished they would have.
Rooster shifted a fraction, sliding neatly into place between Red and the manager as he – his name was Bailey, Rooster remembered – drew up in front of them, red-faced and puffing.
“Jesus, I’ve been looking all over,” he muttered, fishing into his breast pocket and thrusting a square of white paper toward Rooster. “Here. I made it out to cash. The BoA on the corner should take care of it for ya.”
Rooster folded his arms in a way that he knew jacked his shoulders up and emphasized the span of his chest. “I asked for cash. Not a check made out to it.”
“I don’t have cash.”
“It’s a carnival. That’s all anyone pays with.”
Bailey sneered. “Take it or leave it. It’s all I got.”
At another time, Rooster might have told the guy to fuck off, grabbed Red, and stalked off without the money. But he thought about the three quarters in the bottom of his wallet, and common sense won out over pride. A check meant they’d have to stay the night here in Evanston City, wait until the bank opened at nine the next morning. Staying meant sitting still in a city in which Red had been spotted using her powers. It meant a risk he wasn’t sure they could afford to take.
But they couldn’t run any farther on a quarter tank and Red’s magical hand fire.
With a resigned glare, he reached for the check.
And Bailey tugged it back. “We’ve got a gig in Cody next,” he said, a professional gleam in his eyes. “Bozeman after that. Your girl’s got some kinda talent. You two could come with us and there’s more where this came from.” He waggled his brows like the sleaziest used car salesman in the world.
“Gonna have to pass,” Rooster said flatly.
Bailey sighed. “That’s a shame. How’s she do it anyway? Propane lines in her sleeves, right?” But he squinted, like he doubted that. Where would the tank go, after all?
“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Rooster said, and snatched the check before it could be pulled back again. The paper was damp from Bailey’s hand.
The manager snorted. “Suit yourself.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but Rooster glared at him until he shrugged and retreated, waddling back around the side of the tent again.
Out on the midway, fair-goers laughed and shouted, their voices tangling with one another until it was an indistinguishable murmur, the flow of a river over rocks. The air smelled like fried foods, stomach-turning and greasy. The breeze picked up paper scraps – dropped ticket stubs and candy wrappers – and rustled them around their feet, here in their pocket of relative quiet.
Same story, different night.
It wasn’t so bad.
But it wasn’t what he wanted for Red.
Rooster stared down at the smudged ink on the check – two-hundred dollars – and wondered if they’d be able to bum some corn dogs and funnel cake on their way out.
Behind him, Red said, “We’re staying the night?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Guess so.”
*
He called her Red.
He gave her a life, one that was worth sharing, worth protecting. Taught her how to drive. How to shoot a gun. Shared his cigarettes, his bourbon bottles wrapped in brown paper, the glass sticky and him-flavored at the mouth. He taught her the words to every Bad Company song. How to make a bacon-and-grilled-cheese sandwich on a hotel hot plate. Helped her come up with names for all the constellations, because they didn’t know the real ones.
He gave her the world...and then stood against it with her. But it started with a name.
She was his Red.
And he was her Rooster.
She had a real name, if that’s what you wanted to call it. An official name on the driver’s license and passport he’d bought her. On those documents she was listed as Ruby Jane Russell. It was a nice name, she thought; she liked the way the Rs rolled off her tongue; like a character in a comic book. Which, given her talents, seemed pretty appropriate. Whenever they encountered strangers – which was every day – she introduced herself as Ruby. Red was just for Rooster, who’d saved her, given her a home, even if at the moment it was just a four-door Dodge truck coated in road dust. They’d settle somewhere eventually, he always said, but then someone somewhere would look at her just a little too long, and he’d get twitchy, start throwing duffel bags in the truck. Every time they started to think the Institute had stopped looking for her, there was another team of helmeted, black-clad specialists waiting around the corner.
Rooster hadn’t killed all of them.
In the middle of the night, curled up on a lumpy hotel bed, Red wished that he had. She could handle the running just fine, but it was hard on Rooster.
Like tonight: as they left through the portable corral gates that served as the main entrance to the carnival, she could see the little hitch in his stride that meant he was working very hard not to limp.
His hand rested steady on her shoulder, though, keeping her tight to his side – his bad one, leaving his right hand free to wield a gun, if he needed to. “Almost there,” he said as they crossed the field that served as a parking lot, and she knew he was talking more to himself than to her.
Red put her small arm around his waist as they walked to the truck, for all the good that it would do. Sometimes, she thought holding someone up was more about the gesture than anything else.
*
There was a cute and kitschy motel in the heart of downtown, one of those places that boasted authentic western flair, with leather everything and wagon wheel chandeliers. But that was too obvious. Rooster drove out to the Holiday Inn by the Interstate ramp, asked for a room on the third floor with two beds, and then prayed to any god listening that his Visa card still had a little juice in it. It did. He exhaled slowly through his mouth and felt the entire left side of his body tremble. Anxiety had burned through Red’s cure faster than normal.
The woman at the front desk smiled and said, “Have a wonderful stay,” passing back his card printed with the name Joel Rutledge.