Bringing All the Bad, стр. 14
“We forgot socks,” she remarked when she saw Mel’s eyebrows rise at her boots.
After quickly correcting that with a couple of packages of assorted socks, Baby asked about lunch. That was good. Mel had gotten more from Baby over a meal than at any other time. Maybe that would work twice.
Plus, Mel was hungry.
“I have an idea,” Mel said, eyeing Baby. The girl put on a new, and very fashionable, pair of ad-blockers. She looked like any other trendy kid out for the day.
“What?” she asked, quirking up an eyebrow.
“What are your thoughts on sushi?”
It had occurred to Mel that Baby’s feelings about cattle might be more than a simple matter of food choices at a restaurant. If she felt kinship with cattle fattened for slaughter, then being around meat might cause real pain. She wanted nothing to distract the girl’s thoughts. Luckily, fish in this city was an easy alternative.
Baby brightened at that. “Oh, I adore sushi! I was suspicious before I tried it, but that only lasted until the first bite.”
“Suspicious?”
Baby waved her hand. “Oh, you know, parasites, poisoning…the usual.”
Shaking her head, Mel opened the car door for Baby and shoved all the bags into the trunk. A good sushi place was only minutes away, and it was probably past the lunch rush by now.
As they drove, Mel turned on the radio. A pop song was halfway through it’s run. Baby’s hand shot out and she hit the button to turn it off with a hard jab. It surprised Mel so much that she jerked the wheel. Glancing over at Baby once she was sure they were in their lane, she said, “I’m sorry. You don’t like music?”
Baby smiled to diffuse the tension and said, “Oh, I adore music, but I don’t like radio music. You never know what’s going to come on next. I like to know exactly what songs will play. There are some songs one must be well-prepared to hear.”
Mel reminded herself to be more careful. It was entirely possible that Baby associated certain songs with bad things. Such small things could mean everything.
Luckily, they pulled into the parking lot before the silence got awkward. The lunch crowd had indeed dissipated, though the servers were obviously still busy doing the clean up, sweeping and scouring tables. Once seated, Baby surprised Mel by barely glancing at the menu, then ordering a rather sophisticated array of foods.
“Are you going to be able to eat all that?” Mel asked, smiling.
As before, Baby was busy arranging everything around her to her exacting standards. “Oh, you’d be surprised how much I can eat. Under certain circumstances, I’m fairly certain I could out-eat you.”
Given her small stature, that was almost funny. “Well, you haven’t seen me eat tacos yet. No one can out-eat me when tacos are on the menu.”
It was the first time Mel heard Baby laugh and it lifted her heart to an unreasonable degree. It was real, unforced, and entirely herself. It was good.
Appetizers of vegetable tempura and salted green soybeans arrived. They wasted no time and dug in. Before they were done, two beautifully arranged plates of sushi joined the crowd on the table. Once Baby slowed down a little, Mel started looking for her opening. She was strangely reluctant to begin. Baby was enjoying herself too much for Mel to disturb that.
It turned out she didn’t have to. Baby did it herself.
“You haven’t said anything about what I told you.”
“You mean the 1927 thing?” Mel clarified.
Baby only nodded as she poked another piece of sushi into her mouth. She was incredibly adept at using chopsticks, even using them to eat rice, a skill Mel had never mastered.
“Well, I confess to being a bit confused on that point. I’d like to hear more.”
Dabbing at her mouth with a napkin, Baby sat back a little in the booth. She patted her belly and said, “Well, I should slow down anyway.” There were only two pieces of sushi left on her plate and a single forlorn soybean in the bowl.
“I’m all ears,” Mel answered, keeping it light. The Captain had told her to listen, so she would. Open ears, open brain, closed mouth.
“It was the magic that did it,” Baby said.
That sentence didn’t make a lick of sense to Mel. “What?” So much for her intention to keep her mouth closed.
“I don’t remember how it started, but I do remember the years after it started. The house I came to when I saw that newspaper was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was big, as big as a hotel, and very grand. Marble, gold leaf, silver on the tables. Wide porticos faced the ocean and you could always hear the waves. I was there for years, but I don’t know how many years.”
Mel was confused, but committed to listening. When Baby paused, her eyes unfocused, Mel said, “And the magic?”
Baby shook her head, breaking the reverie she’d fallen into. “Yes, the magic. I didn’t know about it really. I didn’t even understand what was going on. All I knew is that this young man used to do terrible things to me, but he said that doing it made him not want to do it to anyone else. He said I was magic, that I took his impulses away for a time.”
Mel was no longer hungry. In fact, her food felt like a lead weight in her stomach. It was entirely possible that she would never be able to eat sushi again. She sipped her water, hoping it would push the food back down. “And?”
“Well, after some time, though I don’t know how long, only that winters and summers passed while I was there, people began to look at me strangely. By then, I understood something of what was happening. The young man—who shall remain nameless—was a problem for his family. Or he had