Page 38 of Sky Song
Salty frowned. “Let’s wait, give it another day.”
“If you don’t want to do it, I’ll go,” Terrance volunteered. “Kim has no issues writingmeup for tardiness and all the other unimportant stupid shit. Besides, the work’s piling up. You explain that upstairs.”
Salty looked stricken at being handed such a responsibility.
“What if something happened?” In the years Cricket had known Kim, the woman had never missed work except once when she had a small trip planned, and for that, she’d given ample warning. “Do you know if she has a family?”
“No idea,” Terrance said.
Slaty shook her head. “Don’t think so, not since Igor died.”
Terrance snapped his fingers. “Hey, wasn’t he the one who took something poisonous at the lab?”
“Igor?” Cricket echoed, disbelieving. “I had no idea they were… related.”
Salty scratched her droopy nose. “Not related, but they were together. Crazy as bats, both of them, the kind that wear matching tinfoil hats to bed. Kim turned even battier after his death - I guess she took it hard.”
Terrance snickered and took off to report Kim’s absence. Cricket stared Salty down, failing to see amusement.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Igor was an asshole.”
“Everyone’s an asshole around you, Salty. Wonder what the common denominator is.”
“It isn’t my fault I’m surrounded by inept morons with annoying personalities.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“You remember that.” Salty pointed a finger at Cricket. “Go work, the samples aren’t gonna process themselves.”
Several days had gone by in a scramble to keep up with the workload that Kim wasn’t there to share. Every night, Cricket came home later than usual, tired, and devoid of the energy she’d started to take for granted ever since her health improved.
She composed and re-wrote a letter to mama several times. It would be another week before she sent it - an intentional delay to allow her to digest the news from Earth and to carefully select what she would say in response that would fit within the character limit.
She would talk about Paloma, of course, and Mr. Sulys with his pet cattoon Hipper. She’d write about the alien delegation and how she translated for them, and describe some of the aliens. She’d mention the power outage and, naturally, relay the good news of her health.
But when she thought about what she’d share about Lyle, she tripped. For the first time in her life, Cricket was reluctant to tell mama something that held so much importance to herself.
On one hand, Lyle came into her life like an unlikely ray of sunshine. Everything was brighter with him around. And he liked her back, she knew he did. So far, all the good stuff.
But there was a darker side.
Lyle wasn’t just some alien; he was a Rix alien. That alone would set mama’s alarms off. And the way he turned up at her house, with little explanation…
Cricket knew she should be careful. She had no idea where Lyle was and what he was doing, and why. Perhaps his transport made it to Meeus and he left. As he should do, and as he sooner or later would. He never promised her a thing… but his eyes, when he took her in right before quitting the rider, were deep and possessive.
Frustrated with herself for wanting to read so much into nothing, Cricket resolved to include Lyle in her letter to mama and be brief and impersonal, describing their encounter at the symposium like a small and passing adventure. That was all there was. That was all there should be.
But life was a bitch, and she had no control over jerking into a sitting position in bed every time Hipper made a noise in the deep of the night, her heart tripping in hope, anxious to know what had set the critter off.
Why is this happening to me? Why him?She desperately wished for the yearning to pass. But every time she forgot she didn't want to want him, she could smell him, feel the touchof his hand on her back and the substantial bulk of his body underneath hers as she curled up in his lap…
The hospital management, made aware of Kim’s continued absenteeism, tried unsuccessfully to reach her before the case was reported to the authorities.
No one had heard from Kim. She hadn’t picked up her groceries or paid her bills, and neighbors at her place on the outskirts of a remote village reported no recent sightings of her. The peacekeepers made a trip to her residence and had nothing to show for it except for having nearly gotten their toes snapped off by a booby trap fashioned out of razor blades and a fishing wire.
Cricket obtained this information by way of Yanet who unabashedly eavesdropped upstairs and then ran around the hospital, flapping her gums.
“Here she is,” Terrance remarked, going cross-eyes at the sight of Yanet’s undulating chest that had just come into view, no doubt bearing another piece of gossip.
