Link to previous Chapter 1
After a
short drive, Bast pulled into a concrete parking lot around what looked like a
one-story country house with pale grey siding and red awnings over the windows.
Inside the front door, there was bar-style seating along an old-fashioned
Formica countertop to the left; through a doorway to the right stood tables and
booths with bright, red-and-white checkered tablecloths. The whole place
smelled delicious, like coming home to something simmering in a crockpot after
a long day. A waitress appeared and led us to a booth, dropping laminated menus
in front of us and taking our drink orders – water for me and iced tea for
Bast. I picked up the menu to peruse their offerings, but Bast left his on the
table and sat back comfortably.
"Come here often, do you?"
I asked.
"No, not really, but when I do,
I know what I'm getting. Their fried chicken is amazing, you should try
it!" he responded, happy to share his expertise. I shrugged in agreement,
since I wasn't specifically in the mood for anything in particular, and scanned
the available side dishes.
"Huh. They're surprisingly heavy on the vegetables, for a rural restaurant." I said. "Including, wow, pickled beets? That's unusual."
"Yeah, I've never tried
them." Bast answered. "I'm not a big fan of beets in general, and I
can't imagine pickling them would improve the flavor. I usually just go with
the vegetable of the day and mashed potatoes. You can't go wrong with mashed
potatoes and friend chicken."
"Fair enough. I'm not a huge
fan of mashed potatoes, though, something about the texture doesn't sit well
with me. I'll have fries and applesauce," I decided.
"Wait, hang on, you don't want
any veggies?" he asked, teasing.
I made a face and shook my head.
"I rarely eat vegetables, really." Smiling at his look of surprise, I
continued, "Think about it: I talk to flora. What are most vegetables?
Plants. I mean, fruit is just something to spread seeds, for the most part, but
a lot of vegetables are the actual plant itself. It feels like I'm eating my
friends, so I don't do it." I shrugged, finding it much easier to explain
my dietary preferences to someone who knew my secret. I usually had to make up
something about not liking the taste, and got hassled for it anyway. "You
don't have a similar problem with eating meat, though?" I asked, since
he'd recommended the chicken.
“Nah,” Bast replied airily. "I
don't usually talk to farmyard animals, so it's never been an issue with me.
I'm sure if I were to make friends with a cow, I'd look at a hamburger a little
differently, but it's never come up, honestly."
I frowned, remembering the hours of
philosophical debate I'd had about what to eat with myself and my mother,
especially around dinnertime when I was younger. I had wracked my brain, trying
to decide if it was the right thing to do, eating something that I'd talked to
in the garden beds as it was growing up. Similar to Bast's argument, I had
tried simply staying away from the garden one year, but it was like staying
away from friends; the perennials had sulked when I didn't come visit, and I
missed the peace and companionship of spending time out there. In the end, my
mother and I had reached a truce: I wouldn't have to eat vegetables, as long as
I ate plenty of fruits, and she let me know to stay away from our plot when it
came time for harvesting. It wasn't perfect, but it gave me peace of
mind.
The waitress returned and took our
orders, bringing me back to the present. Bast and I passed the next couple
hours eating and chatting. The lunch rush emptied around us as we compared hobbies
and differences in the worlds we moved through. We were both avid readers of
sci-fi and fantasy and played video games in the evening, although he liked
console games where I preferred my computer. Once we’d covered the more mundane
hobbies, though, the conversation naturally turned to our respective abilities.
Bast was around my age, 26 to my 28, and we'd both come into our
gifts in our early years. Growing up in the suburbs of Ohio, he had mostly come
into contact with domestic pets - dogs and cats - so his life hadn't been too
disrupted by the discovery of his gift. "It was a bit of a shock, the
first time it happened," he said, shifting slightly in his seat. “It
started when I was about ten. We always had a couple dogs and cats in the
house, growing up, and one day two of the dogs were chasing each other when I realized
I could hear more than barking. There was a sense of joy in the freedom of
running, and variations on the ‘I’m gonna get you,’ ‘you can’t catch me’
theme.” He smiled at the memory.
“Mom and dad didn’t believe me, of course. They thought it was
just another child’s imagination run amok, and with four kids and a menagerie
of pets, I don’t really blame them for not spending more time figuring it out.
I’m pretty stubborn, though, and since we happened to be studying
the scientific method at school around then, I decided to prove it – if only to
myself.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I occasionally wonder if things would
have turned out differently if the timing had been different. I was so
infatuated with the idea of using science to prove I was right, and so
frustrated when they dismissed my evidence as more imagination that it kind of
set me down the path to proving things. Hence, private investigator.”
I nodded, understanding the lure of being right and knowing more
than those around you, especially at that age. “Why not join the police, then?
You said you work with them; that’d be a good place to prove things, gather
evidence, and use your insight.”
He waved one hand dismissively. “You’d think so, but they’re so
bound up in rules and regulations, and there’s so much grunt work you have to
wade through before you can get into investigations.” I nodded, conceding the
point, and he continued. “I didn’t want to go through training and deal with
the politics in that system, so I looked around and found a PI agency. I still
had to go through some amount of training and ‘new guy’ hazing, but I have a
pretty good success rate; as long as all my evidence is in order, they pretty
much let me do my own work. The pay is decent, and the hours are flexible, so I
can’t really complain.”
“What about you,” he asked, leaning forward in his chair. “How’d
you find your talent?”
I made a face at the table, not used
to telling stories about my life. “I think I was eight, the first time it
happened. A neighbor had brought over a clipping from some houseplant for my
mom. It was sitting on the kitchen sill in a cup of water – you know, to get
roots to grow – and it sort of felt
sad. I pulled a chair over to the sink so I could pet it, thinking that would
cheer it up, and instead ended up listening to it tell me stories of its old
house for half an hour. Mom came in and found me like that, sort of spaced out,
touching the clipping. Turns out that her mom – my grandma – had the same
ability, so she believed me right off. I spent a couple years going to gr andma’s
every summer, learning stuff she’d picked up about the skill. She died when I
was 13, though, so I don’t know if there were more things she figured out that
she never taught me, or if that’s all there is.”
I
shook off the memory and sat up straighter. “The consulting stuff just kind of
happened. I never set out to work for myself or be a PI, but apparently word
gets around, if you help out extremely outgoing people.”
Bast laughed, and asked, “So what can do you? You can obviously talk
and listen to them, anything else?”
“Ehh, there’s more I can do, but I don’t really like to,” I
replied. “In an emergency, I can sort of boost a plant’s ability to grow, but
there’s a trade-off, of course.”
“Of
course,” echoed Bast, making a wry face.
“Basically, I’m speeding up the
plant’s lifetime. Yeah, I can help grow an extra branch to give me a leg-up
over a wall or something, but if it’s, say, five years’ thickness, the tree
will die five years earlier. I can’t make a wildflower grow a trunk, or
anything like that: it has to be something that would be naturally achieved in
the plant’s lifetime, and it dies that much sooner.” I looked down at the table,
remembering how I’d accidentally killed off half the strawberry plants in mom’s
garden one year before I’d learned that lesson. “So you can see why I hesitate
to use that. In an emergency, I don’t have time to ask the plant if it agrees
to the shortened lifespan, and if it’s not an emergency, I can usually find
another way around it.”
Bast gave a low whistle and nodded.
“I can see where that’s not really helpful very much. Anything else you can
do?”
I shook my head, thinking of one
other thing my grandma had taught me, and told me to share with no one, not
even my mother. It was nice to have someone to talk to about all this, but
realistically, I’d still only met this guy that morning. “Nope. That’s it. As
far as ‘super-hero powers’ go, I’m pretty garden-variety. And yes,” I added, grinning
as Bast face-palmed, “I’ve been holding on to that pun for ages, waiting until
I could tell someone about it.” I chuckled as he face-palmed then asked in
return, “How about you, anything other than talking to animals?”
“Nope, that’s it for me, “ he replied. “I’d love to be able to
shape-shift or something spectacular - be able to fly with the birds, or run
with horses - but it appears I’m stuck as a human, chatting with animals like
some kind of crazy person.” He didn’t seem terribly bothered about being
thought of as crazy, though he didn’t seem to be bothered by much in general
for long, always coming back to a smile and enthusiasm for the next topic. I debated
asking if that was a by-product of moving in a world full of conversation, but a
large group of people crowding the door to the diner caught my eye. I checked
my phone and saw that the dinner rush was starting, and we needed to get going
to make our appointments with our wayward couple.
“Looks like it’s time to head out for the next step on both our cases,”
I said, turning my phone so Bast could see the time. “I’m not a particularly
fast driver, and I’ve been told that following me for long periods of time
isn’t much fun. Do you want my office address so you can head there yourself?”
I asked.
“Sounds good,” he replied, standing up and stretching. I hadn’t realized
how much time had passed so I followed suit; after all the hiking that morning,
my legs felt a little stiff from sitting in a wooden booth for hours. Bast
pulled out his own phone, and I gave him my phone number and address as we rejoined
the world around us. We walked out to our cars, no longer standing alone in the
lot as the dinner crowd pulled in.
“Alright, if you’re a slow driver, I’ll definitely get there before
you,” he said, opening his car door. “I’ll have a quick look around, see if
there’s anywhere I can set up before they get there.” He squinted at the sun,
still well above the horizon. “That’s one downfall of working in the summer –
it’s harder to stay unobserved when the sun is out until ten o’clock!” I chuckled;
“To each their own, I guess,” I replied. “I love the sun being up later
because it gives me energy to stay up and get more done. Anyway, barring
traffic, I’ll be there in about an hour and a half. See you then!”
Bast waved and had pulled out of the lot before I’d even gotten in my
car. He’d set a reasonable pace on the drive from the park to the diner, but by
the time I pulled out onto the main road, he was already out of sight. I
shrugged – most of my friends also drove quickly, but I preferred to take my
time and enjoy the ride instead of focusing on the destination or getting ahead
of the next car in front of me. Maybe it was because I was used to slowing down
to talk to plants, but the thrill of the road had never gotten to me.
Instead, I used the drive back to relax and sort out the day. Bast was
energetic, but not in an over-the-top way that made him draining to be around.
I’d wondered for years if I was naturally prone to being quiet and introverted,
or if talking with plants had made me that way. My brothers – one older, one
younger – had always been loud and rambunctious, running through the house and
yelling at each other while they played. I preferred curling up with a book or
going out for solitary walks and chatting one-on-one with plants along the way.
It was probably a “chicken or the egg” type of question: impossible to prove
but interesting to talk about.
I was grateful that Bast wasn’t an energy vampire type of extrovert; he
seemed to accept that I wasn’t as exuberant as he was and kept going. I hadn’t
realized how good it felt to be able to talk about my skill and act like it was
normal, instead of having to work around it in conversation. “It would be nice
if we could be friends and hang out now and then, maybe see if we can learn
from each other,” I told no one in particular, a habit I’d always had while
driving alone. I shook my head, as I always did, thinking that one day someone
or something would answer back and I’d probably run off the road in surprise.
“All that aside, however, let’s focus on the case in front of us,” I
continued, checking the clock. “Once I get there, Bast and I will have about 20
minutes to set up whatever he needs before they show up. They were a few
minutes early to their appointment this morning, so we should probably plan for
the same again tonight.” Thankfully, the parking lot and entrance to the
building my office was in were fairly open, so Bast shouldn’t have trouble
finding somewhere to maintain line-of-sight without being too close. I moved on
to thinking about some of the computer consulting projects I had going on as I
made my way off I-70 onto Route 29, and then onto the smaller streets of
Ellicott City.
Bast’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, which surprised me a bit, but I
figured perhaps he was driving around the area, getting a feel for the town. I
parked away from the door – gotta make it easy for clients to come inside - got
out, and had almost reached the main entrance when my phone beeped. I pulled it
out and found Bast had sent me a picture of myself stepping out of my car, not
10 seconds earlier. I smiled and started to text back, then heard “Found you!”
from nearby. I looked up and saw him walking over from across the street,
smiling broadly with a fancy-looking camera in his hand.
I smiled and waved, glad he was there and already set up. “Normally I
would ask if you found everything okay, but I think you’ve already answered the
question,” I chuckled.
“Yup!” he said. “I figured the Wellness Center across the way had
enough cars and a clear view of the lot and front entrance that I could set up
in my car and no one would notice. You always get a mixed bunch at those types
of places, and there’s less chance of someone interrupting you, since they’re
all doing their own thing anyway.”
“Can’t really argue that,” I replied. I opened the main entrance to the
building and stepped inside, motioning for him to follow. “We’ve got a bit of
time before they’re supposed to be here – do you need anything else?”
He followed me inside, then up the stairs. “Nope, I’m good. I just need
to be in place about 10 minutes before they get here in case they’re early or
something.” I unlocked the door to my suite in the back corner of the building
and motioned for him to enter my little office. He sat down in one of the two
chairs facing my desk – I’ve never had more than two clients present at once –
and looked around with a somewhat disappointed look on his face. I raised an
eyebrow at him as I moved to put my stuff on the desk, and he said, “I guess I
was expecting some sort of tropical jungle, what with your plant skills.”
I laughed softly and shook my head. “It would be too distracting,
working around that many thoughts. I like quiet when I work. Plus,” I waved a
hand at the two whole windows, one on each exterior wall, “there’s not enough
light in here to really make them happy. I’d imagine it’s like putting animals
in a zoo – they’ll live, but it’s not the same.”
“Good point, good point,” he replied. He looked around the room again,
but there wasn’t much there. The office was about 10’x 15’, a later addition to
the house-converted-to-offices on the top of the hill. I had a fairly large
desk to divide it into client and personal workspace, the chairs, and a few
generic landscapes on the wall to make it seem more lived-in. An empty coat
rack stood in one corner and some low bookshelves behind the desk were the only
other pieces of furniture. “What happened? Had an argument with your interior
decorator?” Bast joked.
I scrunched my nose at him as I sat down and started my computer.
“Funny, but no, I don’t like lots of clutter.” I replied. “I need space to
spread out and work on a project, but I prefer to clean it up at the end of the
day. A clean workspace is the sign of an organized mind and all that.”
He laughed, and shot back, “That’s not the saying I’ve heard about a
clean desk… You’d be dismayed at what our office looks like!”
“Again I say, to each their own. I worked in a place like that,
briefly. I don’t mind it in other people’s areas, but when it starts spilling
over into mine, I get a little edgy. This way, I know exactly where everything
is, and I don’t have to worry about one client seeing another’s business.”
“Technically, I know where everything is on my desk, it just takes some
time to find it.” He grinned. I rolled my eyes and chuckled as my computer finished
booting up. Bast stood up and wandered over to a window as I opened my standard
invoice form and filled it in with the hours from the day. It wouldn’t be a
large payment, but every little bit counts. I turned on the printer, and asked
Bast if he wanted some water or to use the restroom before getting into place.
“Nah, I’m good, thanks. I probably should head out, though,” he
replied. “Providence has seen fit to drop this opportunity in my lap – I’d hate
to miss it at the last moment. The guys at the office would never let me live
it down!” I laughed and waved toward the door.
“Alright, good luck. Call if you need anything, I’ll do the same if
they say they’re running late or something.” Bast grinned as he walked out of
the office, and I listened to the sound of his boots as he thumped
energetically down the stairs and back out the main entrance. I turned back to
my computer and printed out the day’s invoice, then put it and the client’s
phone in a folder, ready for when they arrived.
---------------------------------------
I was catching up on my work email – mostly for the IT consulting, but
a few lost-and-found inquiries as well – when I heard the main entrance door
open and close, and two sets of footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, they
were in front of my desk, the woman looking excited to get her phone back, and
the man looking somewhat bored but willing to be there for her sake.
I opened the folder and held the phone out toward Bethany. “Would you
please unlock the phone and confirm it’s yours?” I asked.
She all but snatched the phone out of my hands, quickly entering the
password then opening some app and scrolling briefly. She sighed in relief,
looked at Evan, and nodded. “Everything’s there,” she said, then glanced at me
guiltily. I raised one eyebrow; Evan rolled his eyes and responded:
“She thought you might have gone through the phone for some reason. I
tried to tell her that wouldn’t be good business sense, but…” he rolled his
eyes again and gave me a “you know how it is” look.
I put on my most bland, professional face, and said, “Not only would
that not be good business sense, but it would also be illegal. Client
confidentiality is not only for lawyers, you know.” Bethany blushed and looked
away, but nodded in agreement. I mentally rolled my eyes and continued.
“Anyway, if you’re satisfied with my services, I have your invoice here. Would
you prefer to pay now, or do you need time to look it over?” I handed them the
invoice; Evan barely glanced at it before leaning over to retrieve his wallet
from a back pocket.
“No, need, we can pay now.” he said, handing me a credit card. “Thank
you for finding that so quickly. How did you do it?”
I typed in the invoice number, and ran the card through the reader.
“Patience and persistence,” I responded, the white lie rolling off my tongue
easily after years of repetition. “A metal detector and a very methodical search
pattern is usually all it takes, along with a lot of time. Fortunately, yours
was still fairly close to the trail, and the trail wasn’t all that long.” The
card reader beeped that the payment was accepted, and printed out a signature
slip. I tore it off and handed it and the card back to Evan, who signed it
quickly while the reader printed out a receipt slip. I tore that one off and
held it out to Evan, but Bethany intercepted it quickly and tucked it in her
purse, along with the invoice.
“Great, thank you so much for all your help,” she said as she stood up,
eager to get away from her embarrassment. “We’ll be sure to leave you a good
review and pass your information along to our friends. Have a good night!” Evan
stood up and she all but dragged him out of the office. As soon as the door was
shut, I heard her loudly whisper, “Oh my god, baby, why did you have to tell
her that?” I didn’t catch his response as they went down the stairs and out the
main entrance, but his tone was amused. I mentally sighed and got back to my
email, glad that another job was done and paid.
---------------------------------------
Roughly half an hour later, I was debating the merits of taking on a
contract to upgrade the entire network for a small business when I heard the
main door open again. Someone took the stairs two at a time, and I was
unsurprised to find it was Bast, grinning again as he bounced in and dropped
himself into one of the empty chairs.
“Success?” I asked, since he seemed pretty pleased with himself.
“Success!” he replied, giving me a thumbs up. “And….” he drew the word
out, looking mischievous and gleeful at the same time. “Not only did I get
great shots of them coming and going at the front door together, as well as
some decent audio of them talking on the way out, but I also caught them… ahem…
coming and going in the parking lot, afterwards, if you know what I mean.”
I stared at him for a moment, eyebrows
raised, caught between disbelief and surprise. “No. No way. Seriously? While
it’s still light outside?” The shadows were definitely getting longer, but it
was still daylight out.
Bast laughed. “You didn’t notice?
They were parked in your parking lot!
And they stayed there for at least 20 minutes. Why did you think I took so long
getting back?”
I shook my head, still amazed at the
brazenness of doing so before the sun had set. “I don’t pay attention to
vehicle noise - the court is across the street, so there’s a fair amount of
traffic, and the window over the parking lot is on your side of the desk; hard
to see from where I’m sitting.” Bast nodded, conceding the point. “Still… wow…”
I sat back in my chair and brought my mind back to the present. “But hey, I
guess you got what you needed, eh? And then some, from the sound of it.”
Bast laughed again. “Yeah, I can’t
complain. It’s not easy getting clear shots of, mm, intimate relations in a
car, but thank goodness for zoom lenses and video cameras. Anyway, that should
be enough to wrap this case up. I know you can’t break confidentiality, but do
you mind if I mention your business, as why they were here?”
“Sure, I don’t mind,” I answered. “He
paid my invoice already, if anyone needs to cross-reference, say, credit card
statements.” We shared a smile, having observed all the formalities of not
officially passing on information while still giving a fellow investigator
assistance.
“Cool, thanks. And again, thank you
for helping out on this. I’ve been trying to find this guy for a few weeks now,
and you just dropped him in my lap. I really appreciate it. Can I, I don’t
know, buy you a drink or something?” he asked – the first time someone had
asked me that particular question without it sounding sleazy.
I smiled gently and waved a hand.
“No, no; no worries. We’ve all benefitted from lucky breaks, it’s kind of nice
being able to help someone else out with one. And thank you, but I don’t drink,
and it’s been a long day; I’d like to head home and get changed. Are you busy
this weekend? I’d love to talk shop with another skilled communicator.” I
hadn’t openly talked about my talent since my grandmother had died when I was
thirteen, and she’d left me with a lot of unanswered questions.
“Sure,” Bast said, grinning irrepressibly.
“I’ve been keeping my weekends free in case I got a lead on this Evan guy. Now
that that’s done, I’m wide open. At least until they drop another case on me. There’s
an Irish pub down by the Inner Harbor that’s pretty good, and has outdoor
seating; want to meet there? Say, Saturday at noon?”
“I’ve been there once or twice. Make
it Saturday at 11am and you’ve got yourself a deal.” I replied. “By noon, the
wait is too long, and I’m not terribly patient when I’m hungry.”
Bast laughed, “I can sympathize with
that. Ok, I’ll see you Saturday at 11am. Thanks again, and have a good
evening!” He bounced out of the chair, waved goodbye, and the sound of his
boots thumped down the stairs and out the door again.
I sat still for a moment in the
empty office, considering how much one day can change things. If you’d told me that
morning that I’d be making weekend plans with someone I’d just met who also had
the ability to speak with non-humans, I’d have… well, first I’d have asked how
you knew I could talk to plants, but then I’d have called you crazy. “Not that
I have room to talk, considering I’m speaking to myself again,” I said, turning
back to my computer. I hesitated for a moment, then shut it down – I’d already
worked an eleven-hour day, and I wasn’t ready to make a decision on the network
overhaul job. It seemed like a good time to go home and decompress. There would
always be tomorrow to finish emails.
Nice! Flows well, a fascinating tale!
ReplyDelete