“Now, it wouldn’t normally be the sort of thing I would go in for myself, but the owner was quite clear,” chef Taylor said, arms folded over his chest, looking like he’d sucked on a lemon for the last ten minutes. “The Loon will not be open tomorrow, and nobody’s PTO is going to be used for it. Everybody gets paid the straight eight, but he wants to make sure that everybody understands what this is all about. You are getting tomorrow off because it’s election day, and he’s hoping every one of us understands the importance of that, and goes and participates in the process. Personally, I don’t care what you do; just be careful driving anywhere after we close up tonight, and tomorrow. Nobody expected we’d get bitch-slapped with the snow and freezing wind this early on, but welcome to Minne-snow-ta, I guess.”
Crick, Cody, Shawna and Chad all nodded, then split apart for their various tasks that they had been in mid-process with when chef Taylor called them together by his office door to address them. Their timing turned out to be spot-on, as the buzzer went off, and Crick once again spotted the familiar horned heads of the Harper brothers, the minotaur trio who had quickly put down an attempted slaughter in the café just weeks earlier. The trio had become well-known around town since the incident, and though they had tried to argue against any special treatment for their collective heroics, every other prep task was abandoned in order to get started on their usual order right away.
Sasha was still chit-chatting with the minotaur brothers when Cody reached up to ring the bell, alerting the hostess that their food was ready. Crick signaled to the others that he’d be back in a minute, and he saw himself out into the dining area, following Sasha over to their table. The three minotaurs nodded and thanked her, then turned their attention to the shorter, greener fellow, who stood there with his hands tucked partway into the apron tied around his waist. “Guys, you know we appreciate a great deal what you did for us a few weeks back,” he began. He quickly held up a hand to stay any protest from them. “Are you boys native-born? Or are you originally Caldean?”
“I’m Caldean,” said the tallest, broadest of the three minotaur brothers, seated against the wall. “But I was only maybe three or four years old when our mom, dad, myself, and the rest of the village got ripped over here. My little brothers here were born up in Duluth. I’m Ch’gar,” he said, reaching across his brother’s face with his hand extended. Crick took it quickly and shook.
“Crick Solomon. So, have you guys ever heard of the Children of Outworlders?” Crick chatted briefly with the brothers about the group, ultimately wresting a tentative agreement from the trio to come attend that week’s meeting in a couple of nights. When he was finished, he ducked back into the kitchen, setting to the next of his assigned prep tasks. It ended up being another relatively quiet shift, as the last couple had been, thanks to the nasty turn in weather after Halloween concluded. Mother Nature had allowed autumn just enough rope, and as soon as the season of spooky wrapped up, she used said rope to hang everybody in the state of Minnesota with it, blanketing the region with a near-blizzard over the course of three days.
Quite possibly irritating the people behind him on the road on his way home that night, Crick maintained a reasonable speed of just 35 miles an hour as he navigated the dark, slushy road home, sliding only the once as he turned into the lot fronting his building. He spotted Velis’s car in the lot, parking just a few spaces down from her; he had given her a spare key to his apartment, and she appeared to be making almost immediate use of it.
As he started up the walk into the building, he spotted Billy Thompson once again, sitting on one of the benches fronting the structure, but by himself this time. This struck him as unusual in itself, though the cigarette in the boy’s hand didn’t surprise him at all. Slowing down and coming to a stop a few feet away from the front doors, Crick cleared his throat. “Isn’t a bit too cold out here to be hanging out like this, Billy?”
“It’s this or listen to my mom and her boyfriend screaming at each other for the thousandth time, man,” the surly adolescent muttered, shaking his head. He took a drag on his cigarette, making the motion look somehow amateurish. Recently started, Crick thought. “Your folks still together?”
“My dad passed years ago,” Crick answered. “Mom’s not the remarrying type, says it was my dad or nobody for her. Why?”
“Just wondering. I mean, sure, people get divorced all the time, it’s totally normal, but,” Billy said, coming up short, looking off into the darkness. “It just, it’s all fucked up now.” Crick had no response for the kid, though he did empathize with him a little. For the moment, all he could think to do was pat the kid on the shoulder and make his way into the building. Better to keep quiet than give bad advice, he mused as he rode up to his floor.
When he got in, he heard the television softly from the living room, taking note of the neat, tidy way that Velis’s two pairs of shoes had been lined up, along with his slippers, on a small gray floor mat just to the side of his little side table. He hadn’t owned the mat before; this was a new element, brought in fresh by his lady friend. He shrugged off his coat and hung it on one of the hooks he had put up when he moved in, then took off his work shoes and carefully placed them side-by-side behind his slippers. Making his way down the hall, he stepped into the living room doorway, and found Velis seated on his loveseat, curled up with a throw blanket he didn’t recognize, a black number covered in little skeletons. Probably Halloween clearance at Target, he thought.
Velis looked up at him and smiled. “Hey, honey,” she said, patting the seat next to herself. “Come get cozy with me here for a few before bed.”
“I usually hit the shower right after I get home,” he replied, to which she tossed the blanket off herself.
“Okay, I’ll join you.” Together in the tub, as he scrubbed up under his armpit with an abrasive loofah, and she finished rinsing shampoo out of her shoulder-length red hair, she said, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m basically making myself at home here.”
“That was sort of the whole purpose behind giving you a key,” he replied. They slipped past one another, so that he was now directly under the shower head, rinsing off his underarms while she wiped water spray out of her eyes.
“I know, but still, it’s never good to be presumptive.” She began kneading conditioner into her hair, while Crick turned his back to the water and just relaxed in it, letting his shoulders droop a little. “And I was thinking, maybe we should just, I don’t know, make it official? Maybe ask your landlord if I can be added to your lease?”
“Is there any sort of rush on that,” he asked. They once more switched places, and Velis snickered as they did so; the effect of being naked in the shower with her had become ‘apparent’. “I mean, I’m good with it if you are. I think my mother’s gonna have a conniption when I tell her a woman’s moved in with me, but I always get a laugh out of surprising her.”
“Well, there’s no rush per se, but,” she began, closing her eyes and leaning her head back to let the conditioner run out of her hair with the water. “Okay, I’m going to say something here, and I don’t want you to freak out.”
“Okay.”
“Because a lot of guys, whether they’re a goblin, or a hume, or a lizardman, or whatever, they tend to freak out.”
“Ever consider that the buildup is what makes them freak out?” Velis lowered her head, looking him square in the eyes, and gave him the soft little smile that he had come to find himself enamored with in their time together.
“Crick, I love you.” He didn’t freak out, as she had been fearing, though he would have confessed, if asked directly, that his heartrate increased a little at hearing the words spoken aloud. They had been dating, officially, for a little over a month, but in that time, he had come to learn a great deal about her. What he had learned thus far caused a vague unease at times, however, because with only a couple of exceptions, their shared values lined up almost perfectly. The last time he had felt so sure of something, that everything was lining up just right, his application to Chez Henri had finally gotten a reply, and that reply was a flat, simple ‘No’. He had been worried, he realized now, that something similar was going to happen with Velis. “You don’t have to say anything right now,” she went on, halted by Crick as he stepped forward and wrapped himself around her, holding her tight. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said quietly. “And not to ruin the moment, but I’m going to go ahead and turn around now and bend over, and I don’t think I need to explain what should happen next.”
**
“It’s awful early for a Facetime, honey,” Crick’s mother said, looking like she was wearing some kind of marshmellow mask as she sat at her kitchen table on the computer. “Oh,” she added, blinking rapidly and peering at the camera on her own end. “This must be that Velis girl you were telling me about before. Hello, dear,” she said, waving to Velis as the goblin pair sat side-by-side at the kitchen table. She was already dressed in her uniform to head in to work for the day, but Crick had convinced her to get up early so that they could see his mother’s reaction to the news together.
“Good morning, Mrs. Solomon,” Velis said, waggling her own fingers. “It’s a pleasure to finally talk to you. How is it out there in New York?”
“Not bad, dearie, not bad, but I heard about the pounding you guys took out there a few days ago. We get snow here, sure, but it’s gotta be a lot worse where you’re at.”
“We get by, Ma,” Crick said. “So listen, we wanted to tell you something, and, well,” he said, looking to Velis, who smiled at him and nodded. “She’s moving in with me as of this week.” His mother, whose eyes had been quickly widening, seemed to deflate a little, letting out a heavy sigh of relief. “You okay, Ma?”
“Well, for Shelk’s sakes, son, I thought you were gonna tell me you got her knocked up,” his mother said bluntly.
“My birth control shot’s good for another month at least, so no worries there, Mrs. S,” Velis said with an impish grin. “Your son can raw dog it all he likes!”
“Love of God, Vel,” Crick groaned, stifling a laugh. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then waved to his mother.
“Gotta get going, hon,” she said quickly. “I want to grab a few of my things from my sister’s place on my way in.”
“Gotcha. See you after. And don’t forget to get to the polls on your way home; I’m going before I grab lunch later.” Velis headed out, leaving Crick alone with his coffee, cigarettes, and his mother scowling at him on the laptop screen. “Something wrong, Ma?”
“She’s a little vulgar,” his mother said, her expression softening quickly. “But I think that’s good for you. And you’re lucky you found her when you did,” she said. “Your father and I, we worried sometimes you and your brother would have a hell of a time finding mates.”
“Our population being what it is in terms of raw numbers, you mean,” Crick asked.
“Yeah. It’s a sad thing, and something we shouldn’t ignore; there’s a lot more boys born to your generation than girls, so things are a little lopsided right now. And that’s not even mentioning that some of our women end up pairing up with humes or hobs, too.” On screen, he saw her reach for her own cigarettes, prompting him to grab another of his own. “You think you might see yourself with this one long-term?”
“I wouldn’t have agreed to have her move in with me otherwise, Ma. She’s a good one, likes to have actual conversation. Mostly after I get home from work, before we turn in for the night to some nonsense on the tv in the bedroom, but it filters through, even so.” After a little more small talk, his mother asked him what was happening with his ‘golem friend’, and Crick found himself wondering about that. “He filled out the application and sent it in days ago, I know that much. But as for when he’s supposed to go and take the exam, and all the other stuff he needs to do, I have no idea.”
“Wouldn’t that lizardman buddy of yours know? The mage mechanic, I mean? What was his name again?”
“Sam, Ma. He might. I’ll send him a text in a few, ask him what he knows. Anyway, I’m gonna finish this smoke and hit the shower, Ma. I’ll talk to you again this Saturday.”
“Saturday morning then, kiddo,” she replied, disconnecting the Facetime. Crick closed the laptop, finished his smoke, and headed off to the bathroom to shower, cranking up the volume on his phone and listening to his latest episode of The Dan Bongino Show podcast. He was just starting to feel the hot water work on easing out a tightened cluster of muscles on the back of his left leg when something the gruff podcaster and ex Secret Service agent said caught his attention. Twitching the shower curtain aside, he risked mucking up his phone with his wet hands by turning on the display and hitting the ’15 second rewind’ icon on his Stitcher app a couple of times, letting the show replay with the curtain aside so he could hear Bongino more clearly.
“I am telling you, folks, we are facing a nearly existential crisis in this country at this point, with these roving bands of thugs, absolute, no bull-ish, no cutesy time, thugs, going around and treating Outworlders and their kids like they can do whatever they want to them, and nobody’s going to fight back. And they don’t! I don’t get it! Have you ever seen a minotaur up close and personal, folks? Especially one who knows how to fight? Most of the time, they don’t bother anybody, they go to their jobs, they pay their taxes, these are decent, law-abiding, red-blooded Americans, no different than you or me, right? But with the Dems’ ruinous policies, a lot of which seem to outright encourage this sort of wanton violence, is it any wonder that these sorts of things keep happening?
“And I gotta tell you, it’s the ones who have any little bit of magic at their disposal I feel worst for, okay? With the anti-combat spell laws the libs have had passed every couple of years, ever since these folks got here back in the 70’s, if they do fight back to defend themselves, as is their big-R God given Right, then they’re the ones that end up getting arrested! This right here is what I’m talking about, this piece was in John Solomon’s ‘Just the News’ website; A hobgoblin man in California was arrested Thursday morning, after an incident in which four young goons, and I mean that, these people are cowardly little goons, okay? They come into his little convenience store, which, this guy came here from a completely other world, all right? Gets just ripped away from everything he has known and cherished his whole life, gets dumped here in our world, and what does he do? He does the American thing, he wipes off his bloody nose, he puts his mind and his will to work, and he starts his own business. And he hits some hurdles here and there, almost loses the place during the first Clinton term, but he perseveres, he gets through it.
“And these goons, they come into his store, two of them armed with guns, and this hobgoblin guy, he ain’t got a gun on him, because he’s never felt the need for one, and besides, even getting one legally in Democrat-dominated Commie-fornia is a Sissyphian task. But what’s this guy got that they don’t know about? He’s got magic, combat magic, and before any of these punks can make so much as a secondary move on him, he throws his hands out and apparently just, like, zaps these idiots with arcs of lightning from his hands, like Palpatine from Star Wars. You know what I’m talking about, right Joe? ‘Infinite powerrrr!’ Heh, sorry about that, Joe and Guy, these guys and, you know, growin’ up, even I loved Star Wars, those movies were great. But he doesn’t, like, kill these guys, okay? He just hurts them real bad, and when they’re on the floor of his store, half-conscious, he goes and disarms the two with the guns, and he empties out the magazines and the chambered rounds, and he tosses the guns in this metal trash can he’s got, and he melts them! He uses more magic, and he frickin’ melts the guns! And then he tells these idiots to get the hell out of his store and never come back, and that’s it! That’s all he does! To defend his own life, and his property, and nobody died!
“And what happens when this guy, a stand-up hobgoblin guy, just trying to run his business, is forced to defend those things? Well, he gets arrested, and charged with Malicious Use of Combat Magic and Attempted Murder.” There came a slam on Bongino’s desk. “Freakin’ ridiculous!” Crick reached out once more and paused the program, closing the shower curtain to finish his shower. The commentator had made nothing but understandable points, from the goblin’s own perspective, but something about the way he presented them resonated with Crick on a level he couldn’t quite identify, not just yet. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was determined to put a name to it, if he could.
It would come to him, though not for a little while yet.