Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

the sun. A gentle breeze blows my hair around my shoulders and I inhale, feeling my lungs expand, feeling my whole body breathe. Whatever concerns I have about the purpose of Timmi’s visit, whatever terrors further association with the demon holds, these fears are hard to hold onto as I breathe in the clean, clear Air.

“Isn’t this weather just marvelous? I adore autumn.” She begins walking down Ridgeway Lane and even though she’s a head shorter than me, I have to stretch my legs to keep up with her. Stupid kitten heels. If her feet are sore, you’d never know it from her stride. “I don’t come over to this side of the River often enough, you know. Look at that! Have they just gilded the Dome? It’s as shiny as a new penny.”

I glance up at the golden dome that tops the state house. Remember Jou admiring it. “It does look nice in the sunlight.”

“You’re not impressed, I can tell,” Timmi says, with a very slight chiding tone to her voice.

“Monuments don’t do a lot for me,” I admit. “And I’m not crazy about what goes on in that particular monument.” Thinking of Ro and her manipulations, I shake my head. “Politics.”

“Ah, yes, indeed. What do you think of this most recent scandalbroth?”

“About Andy Smith, you mean? I’m not really following it.” Even though, indirectly, I might have caused it. “Grace Ross has my vote.”

“Because she’s a woman?” The chiding gives way to amusement.

“Because she’s not a Republican.” Neither is Andy Smith, of course, but the Democrats have swung so far to the right since nine-eleven that it’s hard to tell them apart. “I’m afraid the Big Dig has soured me on the mainstream parties.”

“It has been very inconvenient, hasn’t it? But won’t it be lovely to have this emerald necklace running through the city?”

“If it’s ever done.” I shrug.

“Surely restoring the green to the heart of the city is worth some inconvenience.”

She says ‘the green’ like it should be capitalized. Is she Wiccan? “I guess.”

“Change is inconvenient, isn’t it?” She winks at me. “Especially at my age, I long for constancy. But that’s an inclination that must be fought. If we stop changing, we stultify. Change is necessary. No matter how inconvenient. Or frightening.” Her blue gaze sharpens, turns penetrating.

I use the turn onto Bowdoin Street as an excuse to look away. Whether she’s just talking generally or has somehow picked up on my personal issues, I don’t know, but I don’t want to continue this conversational path. “How do you get to be a museum curator?” I ask, without any attempt at subtlety.

She laughs, and it’s an honest laugh. Slightly infectious. “You attend a very snooty and overpriced liberal arts college, from which you graduate with honors in art history. A distinction which guarantees you will never be able to earn a living wage.”

I laugh. “I had a lot of trouble getting a job out of college, too.”

“Ah, but did your well-meaning but utterly misguided family secure you a position as a unpaid research assistant to compound your misery?”

Most of my family was dead by the time I graduated. “No. I’m afraid I fell into the food service ghetto for a while.”

“Flipping burgers would have been preferable to my first few years at the Museum. I spent them in the basement, cataloguing African beetle carcasses, of all things. I’m not sure what was more repugnant, the breath of the curator I reported to, who had the most shocking halitosis, or having to handle all those desiccated insects.”

I laugh helplessly.

“I abhor arthropods,” she continues. “And homo sapiens with bad breath. Particularly when they positively malinger over you. But I endured, and outlasted assistants with much more glamorous assignments. Don’t you find that it’s sometimes simply a matter of persistence? Once I had the opportunity to move on, I discovered I’d developed quite a passion for moldering old oddments. So here I am.”

“Was his breath really that bad?”

“Worse than a dung beetle’s. And I can say that from personal experience.” She grins merrily. “And you? How did you rise from the food service ghetto to running a fabulously successful fertility clinic?”

I immediately dispute the point I’m always careful to argue with outsiders. No one needs to know how successful we are. “Our track record is a little better than traditional fertility treatments, but I like to think that’s because we take a holistic approach. As for how I ended up doing this, well, it wasn’t by design. I graduated college with a similarly useless degree.” A double-major in English Lit. and alchemical magical theory, but she doesn’t need to know that. “I couldn’t find a job so I took whatever I could to pay the bills. Once I got on my feet, I did my own thing for a while. Consulting. But it was very isolating, being on my own.” Sometimes I didn’t talk to another human being for days. Which was why catching Brian cheating – facing being so alone in the world, and being so lonely – hit me so hard. Not that anything can excuse trying to drive home after drowning that loneliness in a pitcher of margaritas. “I got lucky when I met Lin.”

“Isn’t it amazing what a difference one person can make?”

I nod. Becoming Lin’s partner made all the difference. Saul dumping me hurt but it didn’t shatter me the way finding out about Brian did. I had Lin and the clinic to fall back on. Life went on. At least until the demon came crashing into it.

“Are you married?” I ask. She’s not wearing a wedding ring, but neither did my Dala and she was married to Goppy for more than thirty years.

“To my work.” She gives me a gentler, more self-deprecating version of her infectious grin.

“I know how that is.” And work’s proved a better balm than margaritas.

We turn at the top of School Street. Walk past One Beacon in the building’s long shadow. Timmi nods towards the glass and granite