Page 7 of Outside the Veil
“Do you eat all of the salt?”
“You don’t have to. It brushes right off.”
Finn nibbled a corner and grimaced. “The things you people consume.”
“Put it in your pocket. Maybe we’ll stop on the way home and feed the birds.”
“Pockets,” Finn mused as he stuffed the pretzel in his coat pocket. “Ingenious invention. I’ve always thought them the only legitimate reason for wearing clothes.”
“Hey, D-man!” A bundle of cardboard and wool called from the sidewalk.
“Josh. Where’s Tiff?” Diego crouched down where he could see the too-young face peering out from under a mop of brown hair and handed over a pretzel. Runaways. Sometimes he could coax them into the shelters, sometimes they refused.
“She’s gone to, y’know, freshen up.” Josh snickered and attacked the pretzel with gusto.
“It’ll be single digits tonight. Make sure you get inside, please.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, Mom.”
“You might make it. Tiff and the baby she’s carrying won’t. At least say you’ll go to the mission.”
That got through. Josh shot him a guilty look, grumbled something unintelligible and disappeared under the blankets with Tiff’s pretzel.
“Everyone else simply goes by the ones on the walkway,” Finn said after a few more stops. “Or walks over them. And they don’t seem to notice anyone either. Except you.”
Diego shrugged. “I think it’s important to know your neighbors.”
Finn regarded him for a long moment. “How charmingly naïve. You’ve no idea what you are.”
And what am I?Diego kept this to himself, fairly certain he didn’t want the answer.
“Holding up all right?”
“Well enough.” Finn rubbed at his chest. “One could wish to draw a full breath.”
“Almost there. Just need to see if Rodney’s home.”
Rodney West lived in the alley across the street from the clinic. His domicile consisted of cardboard and cloth, corrugated pipe and plastic sheeting. Every inch crawled with complex designs and figures of symbolic significance made with any medium Rodney could find—leftover paint, pen, charcoal, crayons, colored bits of food wrappers and bottle tops. The History, he called this indecipherable work, though Diego never got it quite clear whether the title referred to a history long past, an ongoing one or one describing an apocalyptic vision of the future.
“Wait here a sec.” Diego stopped Finn ten feet from the wild construction. “We have to follow certain steps to see him.”
He picked up an empty can and rolled it toward the door, its hollow rattle serving as doorbell and alarm.
“Who’s out there?” A bass so deep it could have originated from the center of the Earth rumbled from the shelter.
“It’s Diego. Original and unaltered. Accept no substitutions.” Rodney insisted on this formula to prove identity. Otherwise, apparently, Diego could have been a government clone or could have been under coercion by some shadowy, threatening agency.
A corner of cloth lifted, a bloodshot eye peered out and the artist emerged as far as his doorframe-wide shoulders. “Diego. You don’t look well.”
“Seizure last night. I’m just tired.” Diego closed the distance to crouch by Rodney’s door.
“Who’s that?” Rodney pointed with his chin.
“This is Finn.” Diego waved him closer and Finn joined him by the door, examining the artwork in his curious-bird way.
“And where’d he come from?”
“The valiant Diego pulled me off the bridge. The Brook Lynn Bridge? Do I have that right?”
