Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,95
in her throat, a tiny butterfly moving beneath her skin.
She smiles, a curl of her mouth that is both shy and sensual. “I'm O negative,” she says, trying for some levity. “I'm everyone's type.”
I laugh, and the noise tears something in my chest. She laughs too, and yes, for a moment, I can imagine the same dream she did. It's just the two of us. A romantic vacation. Nothing else exists. Nothing else is true.
And then the distant buzz of a tiny motor outside breaks the illusion. I go completely still and hold her in place too. “Are you expecting anyone?”
Her shoulders sag and she sits back in her chair. “That's, ah, that's probably Pedro,” she says.
“Pedro?”
“He's just a kid. My local scout. I recruited him a day or so after we arrived.” Mere extricates her hands from mine, and the last glimmer of the illusion vanishes as soon as the connection between our flesh goes away. “He comes by around now. Brings us groceries and gossip.”
She gets up and comes around the table, laying her hand on my shoulder in a signal for me to stay seated. “He doesn't know you. You'll spook him. Plus—” She brushes dust off my shoulder. “You're dirty.”
* * *
I settle for listening from around the corner. Pedro sounds like nothing more than an eager teenager taken with the flame-haired American woman hiding out in this villa. His Spanish is inflected by a syllable-swallowing accent, and it's a bit hard to follow the torrent of words that come out of his mouth, but at the very least, it is clear he takes his job of being Mere's eyes in the valley seriously. Either he doesn't know that she understands little of what he is saying or he doesn't care. He delivers his report earnestly and breathlessly. I pay attention when he starts talking about cars. Mercedes and Land Rovers. Or maybe it is the same car; it is hard to be sure.
Mere knows how to work a source, and she makes the appropriate noises during his rapid-fire monologue. When he finishes, she congratulates him on his diligence, and in my mind, I can see him standing taller upon receiving her warm encouragement.
“He's too eager to please.”
I glance over my shoulder. Phoebe is sitting in the chair Mere was recently in. Phoebe's skin is a warm bronze color and her hair is a dark and vibrant purple. She doesn't have it pulled back into a pony tail, and it lies loosely about her shoulders like a bruised shadow. How clean is the air here? I wonder. My chest aches at the thought of being able to walk about so freely in the sun. She's calmly cutting a papaya into long wedges, completely oblivious to my scrutiny.
Distantly, I hear the tiny motor of Pedro's scooter start up, the fierce roar of a tiny lion, and then it quickly starts to fade away.
“Do you think he's drawing attention?” I ask.
Phoebe nods as she finishes sectioning the papaya. She picks up a wedge, strips off the skin with a single smooth motion of the knife, and then—delicately, showing very little teeth—starts biting off pieces from one end.
“Is it going to be a problem?”
She pauses, a tiny slice poised to disappear into her mouth, and shrugs.
Not a problem for us, apparently.
I want to ask Phoebe about what happened on the Cetacean Liberty—where she's been for the last few weeks, how she managed to find us, did she really swim all the way back?—but Mere returns to the kitchen before I can start.
“So,” Mere says as she enters the room, “what did he say?” She doesn't seem terribly surprised to see Phoebe.
“Mercedes,” Phoebe says as she picks up a second piece, unconcerned about the strip of black seeds along the inner edge of the wedge. “G Class. They look like Land Rovers.”
“I thought it might be something like that,” Mere says. “I heard him say ‘Mercedes' a couple of times. Expensive, right? Otherwise he wouldn't have noticed.”
Phoebe nods.
“And not just passing through,” I note.
“Right,” Mere says. “What's our plan?”
Phoebe finishes her second slice. “Where are we going?” she asks.
We both look at Mere, who raises her hands helplessly. “I don't know. I'm still working on it.”
“Work faster,” Phoebe suggests, reaching for another piece with more calm than her words suggest.
Mere grabs my arm and hauls me from the kitchen. “Come on,” she says. “Now that you're awake, let me show you what I've got.”