“Walking Gear” was the first of my stories published in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Having been submitting for some time, it was a surprise to receive the acceptance, and I remain grateful to editor Sheila Williams for her faith in the story, and the many subsequent stories. I wish her a speedy recovery from her recent illness.
The story first came out in the March issue 2013. That seems a long time back now. The standalone chapbook came out in 2015, with an updated cover, blurb and afterword in 2025.
If you wanted the ebook ($2.99) or the paperback ($11.99) to keep, they’re available from the usual locations. If you wanted you can grab the ebook directly from the website here.
Cover Image copyright Artem Popov | Dreamstime.
Walking Gear – blurb
A twisted tale of family, amputation and a mysterious blue alien cat.
When Den offers his estranged sister Jenni the opportunity of a lifetime, how could she refuse?
A stubborn battle of wills between siblings, that tears right into the heart of family and community.
Told with a wry, amusing eye for detail, “Walking Gear” was originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
Walking Gear
[Note, contains drug references and other adult content]
Jenni had become a low-rent hooker by the time Den found her again. She was working out of the back of a ramshackle duplex two blocks off China Lake Boulevard, taking what she could get. She’d lost her right leg from the knee down on account of a festering abcess started from a track of needle sticks. Even after that, she was still getting high most days. If she could score. If she’d had enough clients to front the cash. With the missing leg, and her age anyway, the few clients she could actually get were either the kinky fetish guys who found the stump a turn-on, or officers who’d come up through the ranks, having known her since they enlisted, and felt bad for what happened. Not many of them, but they paid regular rates.
“Yep?” she said as she opened the door. She’d done her hair, done her make up. That made he look kind of classy. She had a second-hand plastic prosthesis strapped up around her knee. Den figured that was probably part of the whole thing. Clients would find out soon enough, and if they didn’t like it they’d get violent, or storm out without paying.
“You don’t remember me?” Den said. Even through her years of wear and tear, he could see the family resemblance. His father’s eyes, his father’s chin.
“Honey, please. Much as I’d like to be a sweetie and remember your face and your name, that’s not a particular skill I have.” She smiled, her teeth wide and straight, though a molar was missing and the rest were yellowed. “However, I’m sure I’ll remember what you like.”
Behind her a blue cat leapt up onto the table. It fixed Den with its eyes for a moment, then sat, focused on a paw and began washing its head. He could smell meatballs cooking.
“I’m your brother.”
Jenni blinked. Her eyes closed and she put a hand up to the door frame. “Dan.”
Before he could respond, she corrected herself.
“Den. Yes. How old are you now?”
“Twenty-two,” he said.
She nodded, a kind of wavering nod that began at her waist. She wasn’t high, but she was probably coming back down. Probably looking for some Benzedrine or some amorophyl to take the edge off while she got it together to go to work or score again. “You were fourteen,” she said.
“I’ve come with an offer,” he said. Having seen the cat he knew she would be open to it.
Jenni laughed. “Well,” she told him. “It’s so very rare that I get offers.” Her laugh went on.
Out on the street a car went by. Too fast. Jenni’s laugh trailed off. She stared at him and frowned. “Little brother,” she said.
He nodded and glanced out at the tail end of the car. An old Mustang. Probably owned by a seventeen year old enlisted man heading back to base from visiting one of Jenni’s neighbors.
Jenni’s mother had been killed by a car. Jenni had been eight, her mother twenty-four. They’d been walking home from Wal-Mart and a Corvette had been racing a Subaru, lost control and bounced over the sidewalk. Her mother’s hand had been torn out of Jenni’s. The woman went under the car. The car went through a fence and been found the next day, burned out at the Inyokern city dump. The owner had reported it stolen, but not until hours later. Official documents showed he’d never left the base, though Jenni’s father didn’t believe that. The air force looked after its own. In a way.
The kid had died a couple of weeks later in a live fire exercise.
“You better come in,” Jenni said. “You’re scaring away business.”
Den closed the door behind him. “Dad says hi,” he told her. Their father was living in Caspar now, fly-fishing through his retirement. He owned a share in a bakery, and with his military pension he was doing all right.
“Yeah. You should tell him to send me some money.” Jenni went to the kitchenette and pulled a juice bag from the electric cooler.
“I’ll do that.”
“It’s hot out. You want some?” She held up the bag, reaching around for a plastic tumbler.
“I’m good,” he said. “I can get you a leg.”
“Got a leg,” she said. She held out her good leg, balancing on the prosthesis. “And a spare.” She switched. The plastic leg swung like a pendulum. She drained juice into the tumbler. “Mangorange,” she said. “With watermelon.”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a lottery. Chaiston is looking for volunteers, but you have to go into the ballot. I want you to get on it. I can make sure you’re number gets pulled.”
“My number.”
“The new organics they’re making are perfect. Viable. They integrate.” Den walked over to the cat and scratched it under the chin. It leaned forward into his hand, closing its eyes.
Jenni sighed. She put the tumbler to her mouth and drained the juice. “You know what I think? I think that you only ever went to work there because of me. I think you feel sorry for me. You feel sorry because your mother is still alive and mine isn’t. Because you’re closer to Dad. Because you’re some Ph freaking D who makes two hundred and fifty G pipetting liquids from one test tube to another and I’m a lousy call girl with one leg. And yes, I do know all about you.”
She knew some, he thought, but had plenty of details wrong. He kept himself framed, but also ran faux snippets with fake data.
“I just-”
“You think I’m not happy? You think that you can come in here and promise me a leg. How am I going to make a living? How do you think I’m going to get by if you get me a leg?”
The cat pulled away and jumped off the table. Its fur flashed iridescent for a moment, the roots showing red and gold. Greer-Klein had been pumping peacock feather genetics into felines.
“Now,” she said, “this is where you tell me that this is no way to make a living. That I’m too old anyway. Did you know that I’m thirty four? Thirty four years old. I’ve been doing this for close to twenty years.”
“I know.”
Den put his deck onto the table where the cat had been. The deck unrolled and booted.
“Fancy,” Jenni said, stepping over.
He waved up the Chaiston menus and swept around to legs and arms. “Not real, you understand,” he said, expanding to the below-knee grafts. “That would be kind of creepy. These are illustrations.”
“Pretty creepy anyhow.”
“This is what we’re doing.”
“How did you find out about my leg?” She waved at the screen. The Chaiston menus swirled off and she plucked at the piano icon. The keys appeared and the screen expanded left and right to give a full two octaves. With a ripple, the keys textured and lifted up. Not quite like a real piano, but the couple of millimeters difference between the white and black keys created a tactile distinction. “Nice,” she said. She played few bars of Hey Jude and followed that with a classical piece he didn’t know, running into something by Pink Floyd and changing into a music hall honky-tonk rag. Perfect invisible segues. The music stopped and she lifted her hands away. “I used to play,” she said. “Be nice to have a piano again.”
Den left the piano on the deck’s screen. “You came up on the lists. Local amputees.”
She nodded. “I’m registered, of course.” She squinted. “With a privacy frame.”
Den shrugged. “Sure. That’s not so much of an issue for Chaiston.”
“Well, that’s just-”
“Because I know you. You’re my sister. I overrode. You’re going to want one of these legs.”
“How much?”
“We pay you.”
Jenni grinned. “That’s what I meant.”
“So you’ll do it?”
She kept grinning.
It took Den a moment. “Thirty thousand.”
“And if I don’t like it?”
“You’re going to like it.
Again she didn’t stop staring.
“I guess you could take it off again,” he said. “Maybe.” He knew she wouldn’t want it off after.
“Okay. And I want a deck like yours. With a piano.”
“Sure.”
“Let me get my things.”
Again it took him a moment to realize what she meant. “Now? Listen, I was just trying to talk you into it. We can put you into a slot in a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks.” Her eyes glazed.
Den nodded. “It’s a full program.”
“It’s a medical program, right?”
“Mm-hm. Of course. It’s-”
“So why are you talking about weeks? I might have changed my mind in another hour.” She pulled up her sleeve to show him tracks.
Den didn’t know how to respond. He’d pushed the limits of his clearance and called in favors to get her slotted in at all. If he tried to squeeze her in sooner he was going to lose his job. But now, standing here in front of her, he couldn’t argue. She was right, and he was probably lucky to have timed his arrival for a moment when she wasn’t either high or working to earn enough for her next hit. “This can help with that too,” he said. “Get your things.”
“I’m ready to go,” she said, picking up a big handbag from one of the dining chairs. “Always ready. Where’s your car?” She glanced towards the front door.
Parked out at the curb he had a Toyota rental from the Avis kiosk at Inyokern airport.
It was due back in the morning, but he’d planned on taking the next plane out. There were only two flights a day, both in little zippons, direct to LAX. But that wasn’t going to work now. He needed time to think, and time to figure out how to slot her into the schedule.
He was going to have to call Melissa and see if she could be sweet-talked into switching some of the patients out.
“We flying?” Jenni said. She had the bag on her shoulder and was heading for the door.
“Thought we’d drive.” Den started thumbed the deck and it flattened, shrank and rolled up.
“Good. I need to run a couple of errands on the way.”
“Errands?”
“How long’s this going to take, you think? Gotta find someone to feed my cat.”
“Right.” The cat jumped back up onto the table and butted its head against Den’s hand.
Jenni locked the door behind them and came out to the car. Her swaying gait was odd to watch. “Nice,” she said. “Yours?”
“Avis. I drive a Camaro.” Inyokern was a small airport. The range had been limited.
“Of course you do, honey.”
She nestled into the passenger seat. As Den pulled out, Jenni pointed ahead. “You make a left up here, before the main road.”
Den eased the car around the high curbs, into another street of duplexes and trailer homes.
“Guess you earn a lot of money,” she said. “Guess you’re pulling a quarter mil?”
“Million and a half.”
“Now see, I should be complaining you don’t send me any money.”
“You’d just put it in your arm.”
“Yeah, well, putting it in my leg didn’t work out so good.” She pointed ahead. “Straight through here, then make another left on Herschel.”
The car cruised along at twenty on the back streets, reading the curbside markers. Some kids scooted by on wheelies. A crow danced around the middle of the intersection and the car slowed, easing by the bird.
“Tell me,” she said. “Is this grafted limb going to fix me?”
“Fix you? Well, you’ll be able to walk.”
“Oh, I walk fine. After this left take the third right. What I mean is, my receptors. This is that alien technology, right? Stuff from the stars? Super dynamic DNA growing stuff that will thread its way through me and make me a better person.”
“It’s vat-grown, if that’s what you mean. It’s not a donor limb.”
“Donor.” She looked at him, then back out the windshield. “Oh, yeah. Like someone from a wreck.”
“It’s grown for you, from your cells. It grafts on and bonds right to you.”
“But the addiction, right, that’s part of what it does too. Cleanses me, takes it away. Kind of like a self-regulating methadone pump in my body.”
Den hesitated. Was that why she was doing it? Would it put her off to find out that it would only give her a leg, but he couldn’t promise a cure? “There’s some other research going on,” he said. “Elsewhere. Treated organs. A leg’s just muscle and bone, really. Sorry, but it’s not going to do that.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” he said.
Jenni nodded. “Just up here. Eleven sixty-two.”
Den watched the numbers on the gates and pulled up behind a rusted out Camry jammed in at the curb.
“This is sweet of you,” she said. “It’s good to spend time with you again.”
“Likewise.” How long could she keep hooking anyway? How long would she survive doing what she did at all?
Jenni leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Little brother.” She laughed. “Little brother come to straighten me out.” She leaned back and popped the door open. “Be just a few minutes.”
Den felt a wash of heat as the door opened. He watched her cross the sidewalk and go through the steel gate on the Hurricane wire fence. The latch clicked shut after her and from somewhere in the yard a dog barked.
Den leaned back into the Toyota’s headrest. It was weird seeing her again. He’d been a kid, really, the last time. Their father had decided to drive back down to Ridgecrest to patch things, maybe. At least to make contact.
Jenni had been almost clean in those days. At least that’s what he thought. But she had been an occasional working girl. She had nicer digs, and she shared with another woman. Jenni had taken a week off her job at the hospital to show them around. Not that there was anything much to see in the little desert down. The Trona pinnacles, a tiny museum. They’d driven in through Death Valley, which seemed to Den the most interesting part. Below sea level. He’d stood on the roadway, imagining two hundred feet of water above his head.
It had started off fine, but it ended up with his father and Jenni arguing. He didn’t like the way she was living, wanted her to come up to Idaho with them. She didn’t like being told what to do. Didn’t think it was any business of his. Hadn’t he abandoned her anyway?
“It wasn’t like that,” he’d said.
“Wasn’t like what?”
But his father hadn’t replied. Hadn’t been able to. Den wished he’d been able to think of something to say. He’d been fourteen, and still stunned to discover that his sister was a prostitute. It had seemed so exotic, so dangerous. The girls he knew in school were developing, and most of them had enjoyed taunting the boys, but none of that was anything like as grown up as what his sister was doing. Prostitutes, to him, were in the movies. They had pimps who beat them up, and they took drugs and hung out on street corners in ridiculous sparkly taffeta and sequined outfits that just stretched to fit as if they were actually meant to be worn as a sock. Those people weren’t his sister. Except, as it turned out, they were. She was. And, in the intervening years, she’d just gotten in deeper.
A door slammed and Den looked back up at the house. Jenni glided down the front walk. She reached slowly for the gate, sliding it aside and continuing through. He reached over and pushed the door open for her.
Taking the window edge, she stood for a moment, breathing, then slipped into the passenger seat. “Well,” she said.
“Cat taken care of?”
She looked at him with a goofy smile, slumping down a little in the seat. “All taken care of.”
“Oh, Jenni,” he said. He’d seen her eyes. Dilated. He was surprised she was upright and able to converse.
“I feel like a coffee,” she said. “We could stop at Starbuckeroo’s.”
“Did you-”
“Drop it.” She stared through the windshield.
“Yeah.” He felt sad, almost choked up a little. He wished that the graft would be able to do something to make her well. “Do you want to close your door?”
“Mm-hm.” She didn’t move.
Den reached, then pulled back. He got out and walked around to close her door. She glanced at him, still grinning a little.
He drove to Starbuck’s, nestled in a corner of the Wal-Mart lot with Taco Del Mar and new a Century 21 office.
“Mocha,” she said. “Litewite, cinnamon, no sugar.”
He doubted it would wake her up at all, but he was back in a couple of minutes with a Venti mocha and an espresso for himself.
“You’re a hon,” she told him as he set the styrene cups into the holders in the dash.
He headed out of town. She got it together enough to pick up the coffee occasionally and sip from it. She didn’t speak until they’d gone through Mojave.
“Guess you still see Dad plenty?”
“Couple of times a month.”
“Good. I should get up there and see him. Maybe after we get this leg fitted we can turn around and go up and see him.”
“Sure.”
“Oh.” She looked at him. The first time in miles. “Better. Ditch the rental and you can take me up in the Camaro.”
“My car’s in Caspar.”
“Too bad.” She drifted off into unconsciousness.
Den called Melissa. She sounded chirpy, but her tone changed as soon as he asked about the schedule
“Seriously?”
“As a favor,” he said.
“I know what you’re doing,” she told him. “You want me to bump someone from the ballot. Someone who’s been waiting for months, anticipating the opportunity.”
“Exactly.”
Melissa didn’t reply.
“Why don’t you just call me when you’ve figured it out?”
“You might as well turn around and go back home.”
“This is my sister. She’s been through a lot.”
“I suppose you’re going to try to tell me that she’s a vet? That she lost that leg to a landmine in Somalia or Pakistan?”
“Look up her record. It will be on the military lists. You’ve got all the access to those.”
“Sheesh, you think I’m not doing that already? Of course I’m… oh.”
“Yeah.” Den sighed. At least something had worked. Melissa had the car wreck details.
“Yeah.” Melissa expelled a breath. “Okay. I don’t think I can do much. Do you know how long this has been scheduled?”
“Yes.”
“Call me back in an hour. I’ll let you know.”
Through Palmdale and Sylmar, Jenni slept on. She woke when the car came to a stop in dead freeway traffic through Pasadena.
“Parking lot,” she murmured.
“Pasadena.” Six lanes of it. “They’re building another overpass.”
“Well, that’ll relieve things for sure.” She smiled. “And you live here?”
“Commute. Lot of time in planes.”
“Out of Wyoming?”
“Lifestyle,” he said.
“I’m sure. A shining knight.”
“What am I doing?” he said. “I mean, aside from trying to give you a leg here?”
“Just trying to rescue me. It’s kind of nice, but also a little creepy. It makes me think you’ve been spending years trying to work out just how. Years and years.”
“It’s my field.”
“Yeah, but how long ago did you get into it? You didn’t tell me that yet.”
He didn’t have an answer.
“See,” she said.
“I could let you out here,” he said.
“You’re such a kid.”
It was an hour before she spoke again. Traffic picked up and they were coming into San Bernardino, near the complex. A standard pair of five story buildings in a commercial park, the labs were discreet and almost anonymous. A small sign over the door–ChaistonLabs–was all that distinguished if from any of the other building housing records management and accounting firms.
Melissa met them at the door. “Don’t look so surprised,” she told him. “I tracked you.”
“You’re invading my privacy.”
“You’re jeopardizing my livelihood.”
“Hi, I’m Jenni.” His sister held out her hand to shake.
Melissa took it. She glanced down at Jenni’s leg. “Car wreck?”
“Yeah,” Jenni said with a grin. “Let’s go with that.”
Melissa glanced over her shoulder. “We’ll go in the service entrance.”
“Wow,” Jenni said. “You’re going to lose your job right?”
“No. I’ll deny everything. I’ve already wiped all my phone records of contact with him. To do with this anyway.”
“They can still track it,” Den said. He followed along behind the two women. Jenni was still a little shaky on her feet. He knew they were going to do blood work on her before they started with the attachment. He hoped that wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. Technically, he knew opiates in her system wouldn’t interfere with the graft, but it would bring flags up.
“If they want to track it, they can,” Melissa said. “But of course they won’t need to.” Now she looked around at him. “Because if anything goes wrong, you’ll take full responsibility.”
“Will I?”
“He will,” Jenni said. “He’s good like that.”
“Yes he is,” Melissa agreed.
They came to a loading dock and Melissa went up a set of narrow concrete steps. She wanded her bracelet at the service door and it opened with a clank. “Welcome to ChaistonLabs,” she said and ushered them in.
Den followed Jenni into a warehouse space. There were tidy racks and a little forklift parked in a corner. Melissa gave Jenni a laminated visitor card riveted to light chains to hang around her neck. “In case anyone stops us.” She pointed to a long, bright corridor on the far side. “That way.”
Jenni looked at her card, then turned for the corridor.
Melissa grabbed Den’s arm as Jenni moved on ahead.
“Mel?”
“Is she high? Seriously?”
“A few hours ago. She’ll be fine.”
“Was she high when she crashed the car and lost her leg?”
“You didn’t see her file?”
“Den. You could have put anything on that. And you probably did. I didn’t even read it. I knew she was related to you. That was enough.”
Den nodded. He felt like he was on prickly ground. Melissa could just pull the plug any time. “I did fabricate the cause.”
“Figures. It’s going to light up every medical board from here to Chicago if she’s got opiates in her system when we start sampling.”
Den didn’t say anything. He should have stopped Jenni when she’d gone in to arrange the feeding of the cat. Or gone with her. Simple.
“You hearing me?”
Den nodded. “I figure there’s some way around it.”
“I’m going to have to talk to Ron.”
“This is my sister.”
“Who, I’m guessing you didn’t have anything much to do with until a few weeks back.”
“She came up on the databases. Amputee.”
“So you decided to play little brother rescuer.” It wasn’t a question.
“She’s family,” he said. “If we can’t do it now, then some other time.” He glanced behind. The door from the corridor to the loading dock had closed. “You brought us in here. You could have asked all these questions on the phone.”
“I hadn’t seen her wavering yet. Even then it took me a minute or two. She’s a hard-core user. High, but upright, almost lucid.”
“We had coffee.”
Melissa snorted. “Yeah, that’ll wake her right up.”
“You two should stop talking about me like that,” Jenni said without turning around. “I’m an addict, but I’m not deaf.”
“The procedure won’t cure you,” Melissa said. “A new leg, that’s all. I don’t know what you might have read. We’re not organs, just limbs and digits. Organs are a whole other setup.”
“The aliens, right?”
“That’s right.”
“She’s not expecting to be cured,” Den said. “She’s just humoring her little brother. The rescuer.”
Jenni laughed.
“Make a left up here,” Melissa said.
In a few moments they were in a small clean-room. Melissa locked the door. Jenni had already clambered up onto the locked gurney.
“I need to strip?” she said.
“Just the leg,” Melissa told her. She whipped up a screen and waved her own badge at it. The screen unlocked and she quickly began compiling data. “Have you got your medical info with you?”
“My what?” Jenni said. She grinned at Den.
Den gave Melissa Jenni’s memory flake. Everything he’d been able to glean and scam from various databases.
Jenni unstrapped her leg as she stared at him. “You get that I’m only doing this for you, right?”
Den nodded. He didn’t trust her anyway.
“Because I’m just an experiment to you, really. You think you’re doing right by your family, doing something to help me out. But really it’s all veneer.”
“Huh?” Melissa said.
“Oh, you can listen too honey. You probably know what he’s like. Yeah, I see you nodded. Did you two date? Are you still dating? ‘Cos that would surprise me.”
Melissa pulled back from the screen. “We dated.” She looked at Den. “For the briefest moment I thought we might have another run at it.”
“You should, girl. My brother, he’s an ace. A catch and keeper.”
“Jenni,” Den said.
“Where have you been? That’s what I want to know.”
“Tell you what,” Melissa said. “I can finish this up in the theatre. I’ll send in the nurse to get her prepped.”
“Melissa,” Den said. “It’s all right.”
“Don’t. I’m trying to help you out here. I don’t need to listen to all this family drama.” She slipped out the door.
“Well,” Jenni said. “Sorry for screwing things up with your girlfriend.”
Den stared at her.
“Oh, what a face.”
“I don’t know what you think,” he said. “But she’s not my girlfriend.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d known that he would regret doing this. Perhaps on some level she was right; perhaps he was doing it to try to assuage some kind of guilt from the past. As the thought passed through his head, he realized that she hadn’t even said that. It had been implied, but not explicit. Perhaps it hadn’t even been implied. She might have scratched into something he’d been trying to avoid.
“Why don’t we get this leg pinned onto me, then we can talk on the way home,” she said.
“Not as simple as that.”
“What? The leg, or talking?”
He was about to be dismissive, but managed to say, “Both.”
“Yup.”
A nurse came in with a trolley of equipment. “Hi,” he said. “Andy.” He got busy with setting up things. He handed Jenni a waiver brick, took her temperature, and drew blood.
“That’s gonna be pretty cooked,” she told him as she scanned through the document.
Andy just raised his eyebrows and continued with drawing more blood and doing other tests.
“I think,” Jenni said. “That it’s all going to work out.” She slipped the stylus from the corner of the brick and signed.
“Oh, it is,” Andy said. “We’ve got all the FDA bull to get through, but we’ve done enough of these now, that it’s no trouble. You’re going to be amazed by how quick it takes. You’ll be back on your feet in a day or so.”
“That for real?”
“Maybe. Dr Travers wants to get it down to outpatient speed. Come in at eight am, get your new arm or whatever fitted, and be home in time to watch the game. Or pick up the kids from school. I’m serious.”
“Den?”
“That’s the plan,” Den said. He was off thinking about other things. Could he talk to her about family stuff? Could he tell her that he hadn’t seen their father in years either? The old man kind of stayed visible with his online posts. Fishing, football and flying. Den kept an eye on it, but never answered, never posted himself. In a way he just wanted to keep track. Some days he felt like a voyeur, spying, but he didn’t know how to shut it down. Shut down his own thoughts. He just had to know.
“So we can go home right away?”
“Pretty much,” the nurse said. “Tomorrow morning, right?”
“Well,” Jenni said. “That is convenient.”
The nurse drew lines on Jenni’s stump, marking out where the new leg would be fitted. “You need to keep still,” he told her.
“Tickles.”
Andy managed a smile.
The door opened again and Melissa came back in. “Theatre’s ready. You two work out your stuff?”
“In ten minutes?” Jenni said. “That’s years of bedevilment tangled up in there.”
“So let’s wheel her through,” Andy said. “She’s ready to go.”
#
While she was in theatre, Den sat back in Melissa’s office with a vanilla Pepsi. The leg had been taken from stock, fed with her cells from the nurse’s sample to make it quicken to her. She would be under a local anesthetic–not that she really needed one, he thought–and the doctors would be making their incisions around the stump to expose the bone and vessels. The artificial leg would be slipped into place, and the knitting would begin immediately. The straps and tubes of the thing were almost intelligent in the way they could bind to the right places. Capillaries would sneak their way up through her flesh, gluing themselves to her own. The pieces of artificial bone would use their own building blocks to fill the gap to the remains of Jenni’s bones. Muscles and tendons would all seek out their natural analogues and stitch in and stretch out.
The doctors would have drips running into both the new leg, and her own thigh, bringing bonding chemicals and nutrients directly to the site. Healing would be more rapid than any natural healing her body could manage on its own. And her own body would become strong and faster healing in general anyway. Den could see a time that people would opt for artificial replacements for injuries less traumatic. A broken bone that might take weeks or months to heal would become unnecessary. Remove the site of the break, implant some of this technology and the new bone would graft through in moments.
A pity it wouldn’t correct her addictions. She was going to have to do that on her own. Or not. Den was surprised that he cared. She was sick, but more than physically. Mentally. Something missing in her that the drugs filled. A cliché.
And he had something similar, he thought. Not that he’d taken the avenue she had, but she was right: there was something missing in him.
“Hey,” Melissa called from the doorway. “Mr ‘Lost in thought’. Let’s grab a bite to eat.”
He glanced around. “Jenni?”
Melissa shrugged. “In recovery. She did fine, but I think they had to knock her out with gas. Wasn’t responding to the locals. Which I think they kind of knew anyway, once they’d seen her blood work. I’m going to be backtracking and filling in paperwork over this for days. Anyway, she’s asleep for the next few hours. Maybe you and I can catch up over a burger and fries? Denny’s?”
“Sure.” Den laughed, but it came out as a squeak. Nervous, he thought.
Melissa gave him a smile.
#
After they’d eaten, Melissa pushed back into her seat. “You’re a small talk champ, you know that?”
“Excuse me?”
“You talked sports and weather, and a little bit about the Middle East situation, but nothing from here.” She thumped her chest with a closed fist.
Den shrugged. “What do you want to hear? I’m distracted by my sister? All right? I don’t know how to reach her.”
“Or your father.”
Den stared at her. He managed a shrug again. “He’s happy.”
“I’m sure he is. I don’t understand you, though. You go to all this trouble trying to get her into the program. You somehow manage to get her onto the table with a couple of hours’ notice.”
“With your help, of course.”
“Naturally. You jeopardize your career, your livelihood to do this for a woman you hardly know. The only connection you have with her that you have the same father. A father whom neither of you have any contact with at all. Ever. The two of you are so different–I mean, she’s so fluid and casual, and you’re so wound up and kind of control-freaky, but you’re really quite alike in many ways.”
“Control freak,” he said.
“Admit it. Anyway, you snipe at each other like a brother and sister should. You have similar mannerisms. It’s kind of cute. It’s almost like you grew up together.”
“Seriously?” Den thought that his sister seemed as related to him as the alien genetics they were using in the limbs and organs. More than just from a different species; from a different planet entirely.
“I’ve got an idea,” Melissa said. “Where’s your father now?”
Den scowled at her, wondering what she was up to. “Don’t you go calling him. We’re doing fine.”
“Sure you are. Where, though?”
“Green River, Wyoming. He’s probably out in the woods somewhere fishing. You won’t find him. He won’t even have his phone with him.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Melissa said. “You let me organize something, and I’ll go out with you again.”
Den raised his eyebrows. “Second dates aren’t usually a kind of negotiation thing, you know.”
“Well, this would be more like an eighth date, after those false starts last December and June.”
“Technically.”
Melissa smiled. “Here’s the thing. I like you. Still. But It’s taken until now for me to figure what’s up with you.”
“Oh, you’ve got me figured out?”
“Hardly. Just that seeing your sister kind of unpeels a layer of you.”
Melissa stopped speaking and stayed silent. Den watched her. She had silky eyes, that seemed to flow in their sockets, the pupils wide, her lids lowered. The waitress came to ask if they wanted coffee. They ordered.
“Okay,” Den said after she’d gone. “What’s your plan.”
“You should see him.”
Den didn’t answer.
After a moment their coffees came and Melissa sugared hers up, tipped in litewhite and sipped. She closed her eyes. “Never as good as home,” she said. She opened her eyes. “But not bad. We should be getting back. She might be waking up.”
Den took a slug of his own coffee. It was all right. Not flash, but far from the worst he’d had. He took another gulp, then set it down and stood. “Let’s go.”
#
Jenni was awake when they came into the recovery room. “Where have you two lovebirds been?” she said. “I’ve been awake for ages.”
Den told her. “We didn’t think you’d have woken already.”
“Strong constitution,” she said. “It feels kind of weird though. It’s like a reverse phantom limb. I used to have that, you know, the sense of the leg still being there, even though it wasn’t. Now it’s like I’ve got the sense of the prosthesis, but it’s an actual leg. You want to have a look?”
“Of course,” he said.
Jenni swung around on the bed, slipping the leg out from the covers. She flexed it up and down. “Don’t know how come it’s so healed up already. Takes me months just to heal up a scratch these days. You know, with my compromised system and all.”
The leg looked fine to Den. The skin tone was a little off, and he could see the seam, but the leg itself would still be working on that, looking at Jenni’s system and adapting itself to her. Aside from that, it seemed perfect. There were no indentations or bumps around the join, except for the tiny scar. She moved it around for them, lifting her toes up and twisting her ankle.
“Did you put any weight on it yet?” Melissa asked.
“Already? Hang no. That would be just inviting disaster, don’t you think?”
“Has the physio been in to look you over?”
“I think so. Cute guy, twenty-three or so?”
“Carl.”
“Yeah. He came and twisted and pulled at it. I think he said he would be back later. I was still pretty groggy, though I’m pretty often pretty groggy.” She grinned, but it faded quickly. She put her hand up to her mouth. “Uh-oh.”
“Problem?” Melissa said.
Den stepped back. He eyed the door. So much for what Melissa wanted to happen in his family.
Jenni stared at him. She dropped her hand and pushed herself off the bed.
“Steady,” Melissa said.
Den moved for the door. He got his hand on the latch, but that was all. Jenny swiped at him. Her fist caught his elbow and his arm swung down. Pain sheared up his upper arm. He yelped and stumbled to the floor.
“Den,” Melissa said.
Jenni staggered back. She lost her footing and fell beside him. It felt like she twisted intentionally to land right on top of him. He yelped again. Jenni started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Melissa said. She bent and helped Jenni to her feet.
“Him,” Jenni said. She looked down at her feet. “And look at me.”
“Look at you.”
Den rolled to a sitting position. His arm still ached. He didn’t know that she could punch so hard.
Jenni took a step, then another. “Wow,” she said. “This is only a couple of hours old. How can that be?”
“Complicated,” Den said. Clutching his injured elbow, he got to his feet.
“Den can explain it all to you on your trip up north,” Melissa said. She still looked mystified.
Jenni nodded. “Good. He’s got a whole lot of explaining to do. Like what’s going on in my head. He can drive me home slow.”
“She doesn’t mean back to Ridgecrest,” Den said. He stared at Melissa. “Or do you?”
She shook her head. “I’m getting you tickets. Den’s treat. What do you mean, ‘in your head’?”
“My treat?” Den said.
“You want to argue?”
“Something’s off with my head,” Jenni said. “Something missing.”
“Sit down,” Melissa said. “You’ve got a whole battery of tests coming up. We can get you MRI-ed first up. See what’s happening. It won’t be a big deal, I can assure you.”
“Oh, it’s going to be a big deal all right.”
Melissa looked over at him. “Den?”
“Buy the tickets. Whatever.”
Andy came in, carrying a clipboard. He cast a wary eye over the three of them, then zoomed in on Jenni. “Looking fine,” he said. “You think you’re ready to start with the tests?”
“You bet.”
“Have you been walking on it already? Seriously, you can’t do that yet. What if it just snapped off, huh? Then where would you be?”
“It’s not going to snap off,” Den said.
“Well, I defer to the expert, of course. Now, you two scram and let me take care of all this. You can come back in the morning.”
“How many tests are you giving her?” Den knew there were a bunch, plus the MRI Melissa wanted, but nothing like enough to go through the night.
“A couple now, more in the morning. She needs to sleep. That’s the most important thing.”
“I feel fine,” Jenni said. “Alert and bright.”
“You, honey, are getting some sleep. Now, Melissa and Den. Out.”
“Come on,” Melissa said. “Let’s go.”
Den took a step towards Jenni, almost ready to give her a hug, but it felt awkward and forced. She was his sister, but the new leg hadn’t brought them any closer. He shouldn’t expect that so soon anyway. It might take a year. And then it might only be fractional. He didn’t even know why he wanted it.
“Scoot,” the nurse said.
Den followed Melissa out to the corridor. She stopped and watched him for a moment.
“What?”
“Maybe you want to go for a drink?”
He glanced back at the door to the treatment room. He nodded and looked back at Melissa. “Sure. That would be good.”
“We can take my car.”
She drove an ageing Prius, but she drove it fast. She zipped the car out of the basement lot and onto Argyle Avenue doing thirty five before she was even properly into her lane. “You need to relax,” she said. “I’m not going to kill us.”
“Uh-huh. Has this thing even got collision avoidance?”
“Don’t think so. Pretty sure it predates all that. It’s a loaner, you should know that. My car’s in the shop. You think I would drive something like this by choice?”
“It seems like I don’t know anything about you at all.” He clutched at the door handle and the side of the seat as she changed lanes and broke left onto Constitution Avenue.
“Ha, I like it like that.” She didn’t say anything for a few block, then, “You and your sister aren’t that close.”
“We didn’t grow up together at all. She was practically in high school before I was born. And she was never around anyway. Complicated custody. By the time I was cognizant enough to know I had a sister, she’d dropped off the radar entirely.”
“I know. It’s kind of just you, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you’ve only met her a couple of times. And you’re estranged from your parents.”
“From my father. My Mom’s dead.”
“Just like Jenni’s.”
“Yeah.”
Melissa pulled up outside a bar. The lights outside were gaudy, flashing, and he could already hear shouting from inside. “I, uh-”
“Kidding,” she said. “She pulled out into traffic again. Sheesh. We’re going to Marlow’s.”
Den glanced back. “Your beat-up old car would have seemed right at home parked out front of that place.” He looked around at her. “Your tastes are changing, is what I thought.” He saw her smile.
A few minutes later they were at Marlow’s, its chromed exterior a simple set of lines, lit by two corner globes. The complete opposite of the first place. Once she’d parked and they’d ambled over, a bouncer shook them down a little and ushered them in. Melissa ordered them a kind of cocktail.
“Seriously, beer’s just fine,” he told her.
“You’ll like this.” She carried the green and blue glasses across to a quiet, dim booth. A two piece jazz band played slow ballads from the corner, a woman striking the drums with the pace of a snail, while the man upright with a five-string bass crooned at the microphone.
“This is feeling like a date,” Den told Melissa as he slipped in beside her.
She shrugged. “If you like.”
“Haven’t we covered all that ground already?”
“Some, I guess.” She sipped from her drink. “Try.”
Den smiled. He raised the glass and could taste the drink before it even touched his lips. He sipped and the fruity, acidic liquid spread around his mouth as if it had its own plans. He set the glass back down. The taste continued to expand through his mouth. “Strong stuff,” he said.
Melissa nodded. “It’s for sipping, really.”
Den looked around the bar. Lots of patrons. Businesspeople, mostly, a few people in open collars like himself, but mostly people who’d come right from the office.
“Don’t you want to know what’s rekindled my interest?” Melissa said.
“You’re assuming that I’m still interested. I think I’ve moved on.”
“Sure you have.” She grinned at him.
He hadn’t moved on. The smiles, the looks, it was all getting to him. Making him want her again. She was probably just leading him along, though, excited by his interest. He could see that kind of thing in her. He smiled himself. It would be all right to fool around, have some fun, he thought, but he wasn’t going to bring his emotions into it this time. Treat her as someone who’d already promised to leave. Like a summer affair at Key West or Laguna. Enjoy it in the moment.
That put him in a better frame of mind.
“So,” he said. “What’s your plan for the rest of tonight?”
Melissa smiled and sipped from her drink again.
#
In the morning sun, he showered and found himself something to eat in her breakfast nook. While he ate, looking out across Pomona condos from her balcony, he heard her showering. For a moment he considered joining her, but the water shut off before he could make a move. He remembered, then, that she took quick washes. Efficient. In a way it joined up with the old Prius; concern about wastage. Except that she wasn’t, she just didn’t like to linger, felt there were better things to waste her time on than watching her skin prune up. It wasn’t her car, he remembered.
“Hi,” she said, walking through in a robe and drying her hair with a towel. “You found eats?”
He motioned with the bowl. “Honey Trinkets.”
She smiled and looked back at the shelf where the muesli box still stood. “Is there even a cereal called honey trinkets?”
“If there isn’t, there should be.”
She laughed and dropped the towel to her side. “A business opportunity.” She came out onto the balcony with him. “This is good. The air’s clean, the sun’s shining.” She put her arms around him and hugged.
He could feel her lack of underwear though the robe, and liked it. He held the bowl and spoon out and tried to hug her back. She purred a little.
“I’m glad,” she said. “It’s kind of like we laid the groundwork all that while ago and finally you’re ready.”
“I’m ready? What’s that mean? You’re the one who broke it off. Both times.”
“Because you weren’t ready. You were an emotional retard.” She let go and pulled away. “If you’ll excuse the expression. Not meant as an insult.”
Den puffed air through slitted lips. “Really? Because, gosh, you know, I wasn’t thinking of it that way, but probably good of you to clarify it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Really–no.”
Melissa nodded, her face becoming serious. “You were younger. Reserved. And distant. In control. You didn’t give yourself over to it.”
Den took another spoonful of the muesli. He chewed it down a bit, then said, “And you think I might be now? After one night?”
“Oh, I know it. You’re not the man I dated six months ago.”
“Excuse me? He’s standing right here. It’s me.”
She smiled just a fraction. “Your sister. What you’re doing for her. Even though she’s–excuse me again–she’s a complete mess.”
“A wreck?”
“Just this side of it. She could have gone downhill very fast.”
“She still could.”
“No,” Melissa said. She moved towards the cereal boxes. “The leg will block the opioids. I didn’t tell you last night.”
Den shook his head. “I wish.”
“It will. As soon as I saw her details, I altered the build. I added in one of the corrective organ systems. In the bone.” Melissa poured out a bowlful of the honey cereal, the crisp little pieces making a glassy tinkling sound. “Still experimental, but figured it was the least I could do.”
“The least?” Den thumped his bowl down on the terrace table. “It could kill her. Who knows what it will do in her leg? That’s experimental. She hasn’t-”
“Slow down.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Melissa squinted at him. “Listen buster. You’re the one sneaking around, breaking the rules. Dragging me into it. Well, this way I’m covered. Her record now states experimental recipient. I’ll keep my job.” Melissa took a mouthful of cereal. “So will you.”
“You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t even think to tell me last night?”
Melissa hung her head, staring at the bowl. “I wanted to,” she said in a whisper. “I couldn’t find the nerve. We were having such a nice time.”
Den nodded. She was right. “Hey,” he said, walking over to her. “We did have a nice time. I just wish you would have told me.”
She looked up at him and managed a smile. “Yeah, sorry.”
“It’s okay. I guess this way, everybody wins.” He looked around. “Let’s finish breakfast. He went back out to the balcony looking out at the other buildings. Down below a dog raced along the alley, tongue lolling. Den had some more cereal. Melissa was right. Jenni was a wreck, only just living. She had kept things together simply by medicating herself.
“But now,” he said as much to himself as to Melissa. “Now that’s behind her. She has no choice. It’s eliminated her response to the opiate.”
“We hope.”
“Did you see her face when she came up? She knew that it had gone. She felt it.” He should have known right then. It was obvious now why she’d beaten up on him.
Melissa agreed. “Are we going back?”
“Now, you mean? Sure.”
“I’ll get dressed.”
In fifteen minutes they were back on the road, heading to the lab. Melissa, Den noticed, really knew how to read the traffic. She skipped out of fast lanes and into slow, and moments later the slow lane picked up speed while the lane they’d exited rippled down to a near standstill.
“I know,” she said when he mentioned it. “Someone told me once that half the reason lanes slow down is people shifting unnecessarily. That might be true, but I like to feel like I’m doing something.”
“I get it.”
Melissa swung off the freeway into a strip mall and parked outside Radio Shack. “You’re getting her a deck, right?”
“I mentioned that?”
“She did. Don’t scrimp. You get her the best they’ve got.”
Den nodded. He went inside and found an Akai, a generation up from his own. Back in the car, Melissa approved. She pulled out for the freeway.
“Are you going to come back?” she said coming up to traffic speed. “Or was this just a fleeting visit?”
Den hesitated. He felt like he was on the verge of something here. Getting back with Melissa. That was something he hadn’t expected or planned. It felt better this time too. Now that he’d done what he’d done for Jenni, he was feeling more even. It was like the proverbial weight from his shoulders. Ever since he’d realized what he might be able to do for her it had burned at him.
And now it was done.
“Did you hear me?” Melissa said. She changed lanes again. “I mean, I understand if you’re going.”
“I think I can stay. Come back. But I need to go visit with Dad for a week or two. With Jenni. See how that goes.”
“You think she’ll do that?”
Den nodded. “Definitely. I think she’s glimpsed something else. Seen opportunity. Seeing Dad is another step.” He saw the mile and a quarter warning sign for their exit.
“For you too, I think,” Melissa said. She looked at him, a half-smile on her lips. “Then maybe you come back.”
Den didn’t reply. It did sound like a good idea to him, but he still needed to see through the next stage.
Melissa swung them through the lanes and scooted down the exit ramp. A few minutes later they parked in the ChaistonLabs lot.
There was another patient in Jenni’s room
“Guess they moved her,” Melissa said.
But Den knew that wasn’t it. “Let’s find out.”
The desk clerk pulled up the records. Jenni had checked herself out.
“Maybe she went to Wyoming?” Melissa said.
Den sighed. “Such a bright outlook.” He had a feeling where she’d gone. She wouldn’t have caught a flight to Green River.
“Feel like taking a drive?” he said to Melissa.
#
It took them three hours to drive to Ridgecrest. Den reflected that it would have been marginally faster by air, considering, but driving helped to clear his head.
It wasn’t what Jenni wanted. He knew that now. They hadn’t had any kind of relationship before, but the chances of anything now were nil.
Melissa tried to reassure him.
“Maybe at least call your dad,” she’d suggested several times on the trip.
“After, maybe,” he’d replied. “I need to see.”
He pulled up outside her duplex. The yards along the street were mostly filled with dry grass and faded cheap playground equipment. He half-expected Melissa to say something, but she didn’t. He liked that. She’d been conversational on the way up, and he needed that, but now he needed quiet.
“Guess I’d better go in,” he said after a few minutes.
“I guess.”
It took him another minute, but he popped the door open and went around the car. A dog barked at him from a neighboring yard, and someone in the house yelled at it. Den went up Jenni’s front walk and knocked on the door. No one answered. He knocked again, waited, then tried the handle. The door opened.
“Jenni?” Den stepped inside. The curtains were drawn, the lights out. He could hear water running in the sink, and smell pancakes and blueberries. Someone had been cooking. Recently. In the last hour or so. “Jenni?”
He shut off the water and went to look in the bedroom. No one. The bathroom was empty too.
“Jenni?”
Perhaps she wasn’t here at all. Perhaps one of her lowlife friends had come in and cooked and left the water on. He went back to the front door and cast his eye around the room again. There was someone sitting in the shadows on the armchair.
“Jenni? Is that you?”
He went over and found her. His sister. Almost unconscious.
“Oh,” she said, barely a word, more an exhalation. Her eyes were slits.
“What did you do?” he said.
She just smiled back at him.
“Jenni?” He wanted to shake her. He felt dumbfounded. Flummoxed. She’d run away and come right back here and shot up. She shouldn’t have even been able to. As Melissa had said, the leg’s architecture should have blocked the cycle. The receptors should have all been blocked.
She sat up just a fraction. “Den.” He voice was quiet, husky.
“Oh, Jenni. I tried so hard.” He crouched to her, putting his hand on hers on the chair’s arm.
“Listen to me. You’ve done it all wrong. You think you can just arrive, drag me off and that will change everything?” She swung her new leg forward. “This is weird.”
“I didn’t expect…” Den trailed off. He had expected, he realized. A naive kind of knight on a steed, both in that shining armor. “You told me to begin with that you didn’t need rescuing.”
She huffed. “I came back to try a couple of things. Whatever this leg has done, I can’t get high. Which is kind of crappy, though my skin’s not crawling the way it used to.”
“You tried?”
“Of course I tried. That’s a whole part of it, that the leg, or whatever else you’ve done, can’t change. You know that most addicts relapse after rehab and it’s simply because they go back into the same environment.” She waved her hand, indicating the apartment. The blue cat sat on the table.
Den didn’t say anything.
He took the Akai deck and removed the packaging. He put it on her lap and plucked the piano icon. It spread out. Jenni tinkled a few notes and dropped her hand. “Thanks.”
“I wanted to do something good for you,” he said. “I know we don’t know each other at all, but you lost your leg. And I could give you a new one.”
“Steal me a new one, you mean.”
Den hesitated. He had twisted the rules all out of shape. If someone did a little extra checking the chances were he would lose his job. And lose his place in the whole prosthetics and artificial limb industry. He’d be lucky to find something sweeping labs. “Yes,” he said. “I stole it.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “I wish I could understand what it was all about.”
Den swallowed. He could see that her pupils were dilated, but that was probably just from the low light. Although, if the drug was in her system there might still be some physiological symptoms.
“Guilt?” he said.
Jenni pursed her lips and nodded.
“Your mother,” he said. “Your… life. I had it so lucky.” He stood. “I guess I really should apologize.”
“You should. You’ve barged in here and changed everything, simply from some misplaced sense of guilt. I was doing okay. You think I don’t suffer from guilt too? How could it be that she died and I didn’t? I wished I could have saved her. How stupid is that?” Jenni stood now, holding the deck. “I was a kid, a little kid. And I’ve spent my whole life wishing that I could have been the one who went under the car.”
“No, Jenni.” Den shook his head. He stood himself and stepped away.
“Exactly.” She jabbed the center of his chest with her finger. “The kids don’t die first. The parents have to die first. That’s how the rules work. Not always, but you don’t want to be a parent who’s lost a child. Never. And yet that’s what I’ve been stuck with. Something that eight-year-old thought thirty-something years ago. And it just keeps going around and around in her head until it’s worn a groove that’s so deep she can’t even see out of it anymore.”
“I’m-”
She jabbed him again. “Now you’ve taken away the only thing I had. I can’t even make it go away anymore.”
“It was killing you.”
“So what?”
“I-”
“You think I’m blind to that?” she said. “I’m not an idiot. I’m just a mess. And you know what? You are too? In a different way. In a nasty, creepy, smarmy way. You come across all nice and pretty and helpful and loving and you just wreck things.”
“Jenni. I’m sorry.”
“Will you stop it? I don’t need you to keep apologizing. I just need you to leave.” Her shoulders slumped and she exhaled. She stepped around him and went into the bathroom.
Den heard her throwing up in the bowl. He wanted to go and help, but he felt seared after her attack. As if her words had been flames cooking off his skin.
He went to the front door and opened it. Melissa was sitting in the front with passenger door open, her feet out on the strip of dead grass by the curb.
“How you two doing?” she called over.
Den shook his head, but didn’t say anything. He should probably leave. It felt good to have Melissa to go to. Even if it did all come out at the lab, they had–twee as it sounded–each other.
“You going to see your Dad?” Melissa said. She pulled forwards into the sun and stood, leaning one arm across the car’s roof.
“Maybe,” he said. He waved, then went back inside. He heard the toilet flush and the sound of an air freshener aerosol hissing. The smell of apples wafted out. Then the sound of water running in the tub and she pushed the bathroom door closed.
Den took out his phone and called his father, imagining that he would have to leave a message.
“Fishing,” his father’s message voice said. “After the tone and all. I might eventually get back to you.”
“Hey, Dad,” Den said. It took him a moment to figure out what to say. “I’m at Jenni’s. She’s doing okay, I guess. We caught up a bit.” He paused again. “Um, I think I’m going to come up and see you for a few days.”
Jenni came out of the bathroom. “You still here?”
“Just calling Dad,” he said.
She managed a smile. “I already called him. Is he on the line?”
“I’m leaving a message.” Den held up the phone.
“Is he really fishing?”
“Yep. That’s pretty much what he does.”
Jenni nodded. “I didn’t leave a message. May I?” She held out her hand.
Den gave her the phone, dreading what she might tack onto the end of his message.
“This is Jenni.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Did I overhear you say you’re going to see him?” she whispered.
Den nodded.
“Okay.” Then, to the phone. “I’m going to tag along with Den and his girlfriend.” She looked at him. “I guess you came with Melissa?”
Again he nodded, feeling a little stunned.
“Okay, yeah, so get ready for three of us. That’s three pairs of legs. All pairs. Your boy here’s a bit of a swindler and he swindled me some new walking gear. I’ve got to show it off.” She took a breath and handed the phone back.
Den ended the call. “You’re coming?”
“If you can wait for me to scrub up. I’m running the bath.”
“Sure, I can wait. What made you… how come you changed your mind?”
Jenni squinted, still smiling. “I didn’t really change my mind. You’re still an interfering, insensitive, know-it-all, but you’re my brother and I guess your heart’s in the right place.”
“I hope. That’s all I was-”
She held her hand up. “Don’t keep talking.” She looked down at her leg. “The thing is, it’s much easier to get around now. Lose something, gain another.”
“Gain a brother.”
“Eww, really corny. Now get out of her and let me take a bath. We can leave right after.”
She stepped forwards and drew him into a hug. Her arms felt spindly and fragile, and her body was thin against him, but she still clung on like a bear. He hugged her back, surprised to find himself choking up a little. He felt like that little kid again, back at the very first time he’d seen her and she’d been that angry, agitated teenager, but she’d still been able to give him a hug back then. Years had gone by and this was all he’d really wanted, he realized. He just wanted for his big sister to give him another hug.
“Okay,” she said, pulling back. “Get out of here and let me get scrubbed. I’ll be out in fifteen.”
He stepped away and headed for the door.
“And stop grinning, will you,” she said. “You’re not properly forgiven yet. You’re just my brother.”
Den couldn’t stop grinning, but he said, “That’s enough.”
Jenni laughed and went into the bathroom, and Den headed out to see if Melissa felt like a drive to Wyoming.
I hope you enjoyed “Walking Gear” Thanks for reading.
Sean Monaghan - Writer 