All Good Children Read online

  Last night is the only night in three years that Omalis has not slept in the same bed with Marla. Some nights they only sleep together, side by side, not even touching. These nights are torture for Omalis. It is not that she wants Marla, it is not that she sleeps better after they fuck. It is the silence, the silence in which Omalis turns herself off, in which she is not haunted, not reflective, not concerned. In the silence, she might as well be dead.

  Omalis did not share Marla’s bed last night not because she was afraid it would be another night of numbing silence or that her tongue could not take another scar, but because she passed out in her car in the apartment’s parking lot. One of the mandates of her job prohibits the ingestion of drugs or alcohol, and Omalis usually adheres to this rule. But last night, something was off.

  She was off-duty, just returning from her trip to one of the camps. The airport had a bar and when she started to walk by it, she stopped. In the corner near the top-shelf liquor was a television. A pharmaceutical ad was on, rolling by images of happy people on happy drugs, people playing with their children, people playing with their pills. Omalis watched the commercial and then went up to the bartender.

  “What do you recommend?” She asked him.

  “How about a gin and tonic?” He had a lazy, distracted way of speaking, as though perhaps he had something better to do but he’d forgotten it, so might as well do this. He wore a plain blue t-shirt and simple jeans, a military-style hair cut that framed a face too young to have served at any significant time, and a wedding band. His brown eyes took in her chic form, and he added, “Most popular drink with the ladies.”

  Omalis arched a brow. “And if I were a gentleman?”

  “Bourbon, neat.”

  “Give me a bottle of tequila. Something expensive.”

  When she showed him her ID, he blinked and insisted she keep her money. Some of them do this, because they think it will buy them leniency, down the line.

  When he turned his back—a dark sweat stain already spreading down the spine—to fetch the tequila, she asked, “Do you have children?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He said to the shelf. “Seven daughters.”

  “No sons?”

  He shrugged, turned around to set the bottle on the counter without meeting her eye. “Maybe someday.” But Omalis could tell, could read it in his face, that that day had come and gone. Whatever sons he had, they belonged to the Over now.

  Omalis gripped the neck of the warm tequila bottle. “How old are they, your daughters?”

  “The triplets are eight, the quads are eleven.”

  Coming up on the time, then. Two more years and his family will really have to start to worry about her. As politely as possible, she asked to see the bartender’s ID. He handed it to her slowly, his movements mimicking his speech pattern. She slid it back to him across the bar, and when he put his hand on it, she touched his fingers.

  “John Davenport,” she said, looking at his forehead because his eyes refused to leave the bar. “Relax. I won’t be taking your children from you.” He did not relax. She leaned in close and whispered to his sweating face, “You’re not in my jurisdiction.”

  Her intention was not to drink the bottle herself. It was a gift for Marla, to whom she knew she had recently been a dick. On the plane back to Utah, Omalis briefly thought about calling her back, apologizing for being short earlier, cooing and placating and making Marla feel better. Ultimately, though, she decided she was too tired for all of that. With the bottle of tequila, however, she wouldn’t have to say anything, or very little. She would present it to Marla right before she headed out the door for her shift at the Shake It Lounge, kiss her cheek, breathe hotly into her ear, and mumble something about having a nice night. In six hours, when her shift ended, Marla would come home, dancing slightly on her heels, too tipsy to remember that they might have been having a fight, too thirsty or too tired or too giggly to care.

  Omalis drove from the airport to Marla’s without thinking about the bottle, which lay unimportantly on its side in the passenger seat. She thought about the billboards that she passed, the car with the broken taillight in front of her, the current talk-radio program on UTAM. She looked both ways at an intersection before crossing; she tapped her indicator light a full five seconds before her turn. She swished the saliva around in her mouth, realizing she was hungry, remembering she had some mints in the glove compartment. Upon searching, she came up empty. She checked the pockets of her slacks, thinking she might have transferred them there yesterday before she left the car at the airport’s long-term parking terminal. No, her jacket. She would have put them in her jacket.

  At a stoplight, she reached into the backseat and pulled her blazer into her lap. Something fell out of the pocket onto the floor. When she grabbed it blindly, she felt its cylindrical shape and thought it must be the mints. It was a syringe, the small needle neatly capped.

  Omalis was curious but not alarmed. She set the syringe on the passenger seat next to the tequila, finally found the mints and popped one in her mouth. She pulled into the apartment complex and parked in one of the guest spaces. Cut the engine, pocketed the keys. Picked up the syringe. Hm.

  She didn’t remember having this when she left for the airport. She didn’t remember being out of sight of her blazer long enough for someone to have slipped the empty syringe into the pocket. She saw that the syringe was pressed down, and pulled back on the plunger. Maybe it had been filled with something at one time, maybe it was brand new. Maybe someone injected her with something while she napped on the plane.

  Omalis flicked the needle cap off with the tip of her thumbnail and stabbed the needle through the cloth of her pants, into her thigh. It was such a small needle that she did not even feel it. If she pressed down on the syringe, air would flow into her blood stream and suffocate her. But the Over had done a fine job of eradicating her and any other Liaison’s suicidal tendencies. She took the needle out.

  Grabbing the tequila bottle, she stuffed it between her legs and twisted off the cap. She took the needle out of the syringe, tossing it carelessly onto the passenger seat. Plunging the head of the syringe through the neck of the bottle, Omalis pulled back and loaded the instrument with tequila. She thought of the pharmaceutical ad, happy people, happy pills. She squirted 500 mg of tequila straight down her throat so that she did not even taste it.

  She drank one more from the bottle, then tipped it back again. The sun had been down for a while when she threw up the first time, rolling down the window only half way before it shot out of her. She considered going up to the apartment then, but it was three flights and the elevator was only for handicapped residents who have a key. Though, they would probably make an exception for her. She took another drink.

  She does not remember passing out. She remembers a giant fish using maracas to bang on a steel kettledrum, and then her eyes peel open and the sun materializes before her. At her left ear, Marla bangs on the driver-side window.

  Cold air rushes in when Omalis pushes the door wide with her foot. She can smell Marla’s sweat, sweet with her strawberry perfume, slightly muted by cigarette smoke.

  It takes a moment for Marla to speak, her eyes roving over the pathetic woman before her, the pathetic scene, what a mess. God, how Omalis wants to kiss her, but she can still taste bile in the back of her throat.

  Marla says, “Let’s get you inside.”

  This is how it is with Marla. Sympathetic smiles, conveniently blind eyes, often stitched up mouth. Few questions, when she can see how Omalis is hurting. She is good at that, Marla is so good at that. At seeing through Omalis, at knowing what to say, what not to say. The right places to touch, to heal.

  In her kitchen, Marla boils water in a silver-plated teapot. Omalis watches her take down a bag of coffee from the cupboard. Marla has a French press; she likes to work for her addictions. Waiting for the water to boil, she fills a cup from the tap and brings it to Omalis in the adjacent living room. She hands it to Omalis witho
ut saying anything; Omalis sips at it, still tasting bile. Marla starts to untie Omalis’s shoes.

  Omalis met Marla three years ago at the Shake It club. She wasn’t even supposed to be there, Omalis. It had been a hard week, everyone in the jurisdiction was going. Her colleagues, her friends. She never called them friends, but she thought of them that way, because that was supposed to help. Before eleven o’clock, Shake It was just a bar with hot waitresses. After that, the dollar bills came out and the clothes came off. It was so thoroughly American.

  They did not drink or smoke and perhaps that was why they frequented places like Shake It. Places like that could make them feel normal. Normal enough, until they caught someone looking at them, until they let themselves feel the tension in the air, the stolid distance the other patrons kept, that let them know they’d been found out.

  People tolerated the Liaisons—deferred to them, even—because of the laws. But Omalis knew—they all knew—they were hated. Hated more than the Over. Because the Liaisons were human; they could be killed. But they could also be replaced. They were always in danger, despite the laws that kept them theoretically protected. This danger, though, this was why they went out. For Omalis, at least, it was intoxicating, better than any alcohol she had ever tasted. The people’s fear, her own mortality. Finest cocktail ever mixed.

  On that first night at Shake It, no one knew what they did because they dressed down and they left their IDs at home. They sat in a booth to start with, with the guys breaking off in twos or threes to sit up at the stage. Occasionally, one of the women went with them, laughing. Omalis watched the girls dance, strip off their one layer, make their living. She watched all of them, until Marla came on. When Marla came on, she felt ashamed. She turned away. But Marla, she found out later, was still looking at her.

  “Most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen,” Marla said through gasps, later, in the passenger seat of Omalis’s Mazda. She straddled Omalis, kissing her neck, letting Omalis play with her panties beneath her skirt.

  “Why?” Omalis asked.

  Marla stopped kissing, ran a hand down Omalis’s cheek, through her hair.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s your eyes. Maybe it’s your tits.” She lifted Omalis’s shirt off over her head and cupped her breasts. “Definitely the tits.”

  That was how she was when they started. Funny, carefree, a laugh a minute. She did not even know who Omalis was and she never asked. Omalis never would have told her the truth but she was recognized. A mother at the supermarket—Silver Lake, what a fucking small town—a mother who used to have five kids, shopping with her remaining son. Omalis remembered sitting with the woman in her dark living room, holding her limp hand, delivering the news that the Over, for all their monstrous bravado, were too chicken shit to deliver themselves, never mind the excuse that they don’t have mouths. At the market, the woman had to be restrained by store security, but she was still shouting as they led her away. Omalis took Marla aside then and had to tell her, explain the woman’s mad, justifiable ravings. She wished she could have been drunk to tell her, or a gun held to her head.

  “We all have to make a living,” Marla said. She kissed Omalis. “I love you, baby. You’re sacrificing. I know you’re sacrificing.”

  It was enough for Marla to know that Omalis did not want this life, hated it, could not escape it. But Marla did not know, or refused to acknowledge, that she herself was part of Omalis’s abhorred life, not an exception to it but a rule, a cog that kept Omalis’s wheels turning, for better or for worse.

  Back in the apartment, her shoes on the floor, water slowly soothing the burn in the back of her throat, Omalis slouches on the couch—the one they bought together at a flea market two years ago when Marla moved in here (“But it’s a flea market, Heaven. Kind of doesn’t bode well for the condition of the couch. Flea.” “But I like it.”)—and tries to avoid Marla’s eyes.

  “I’m assuming you don’t want to talk about it,” Marla says. Omalis sighs. Marla echoes her, and clicks on the television in the corner, just so someone is talking.

  Sometimes Omalis imagines Marla becoming angry. Not exasperated or irritated, as she often is with Omalis, but all-out, red-faced, straining-neck-veins angry. She imagines Marla yelling, shrieking unintelligible insults, picking up things in her vicinity at random—the lamp, the tea kettle, an idle chopping knife—and hurling them at Omalis. She sees Marla drawing blood, she sees Marla crying, sees her breaking down and taking Omalis with her. Omalis thinks if this ever were to happen she could love Marla, not blindly, the way Marla seems to love her, but knowingly.

  In the kitchen Marla pours the water into the press and selects two mugs from the cupboard. Omalis sets her glass of water down and rubs at her eyes with her fingers, not quite able to reach the ache that’s building up behind them. On the television, a male monotone recounts the scores of yesterday’s football matches.

  “Can we change the channel?” Omalis asks.

  Marla comes into the room and hands Omalis one of the hot mugs. She takes the seat across from the couch, a mid-size recliner in which she usually reads because the light is better nearer the window.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asks.

  “I’m always okay.”

  “I mean…I mean with them. The drinking….”

  Omalis has to make a report to the Over later that day, as she does every day. They would know about the drinking, of course, but Omalis was not worried about any repercussions. Her performance for them so far has been pristine. She may be punished but not severely, which is just as well.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “How am I not supposed to worry about you, Heaven? You’re acting…spastic. And now you’re drinking yourself into a stupor in the parking lot? Yes, this is entirely normal behavior.”

  “The tequila was for you.”

  “How thoughtful. Heaven, you have to talk to me. Something’s wrong.”

  Something is wrong. But Omalis doesn’t want Marla to analyze it. She doesn’t even want Marla to be a part of it. How many times has she lain awake, Marla’s sweat still drying on her own skin, and thought about a way to leave her? How much easier would it be to go this alone, to ride out the shame by herself? But Omalis, for all her fantasies of pushing Marla aside, doesn’t want easy. She doesn’t deserve easy.

  Omalis pats the cushion beside her. “Sit next to me.”

  “No.”

  “Come on.”

  “No. Tell me something. Did you have a bad meeting at the camp?”

  “I want to hold your hand.”

  “Was there an incident with one of the parents?”

  “I want to smell you.”

  “Did you get a new assignment?”

  “You’re gorgeous.”

  “Heaven.”

  “Marla.”

  “You’re avoiding me.”

  “I’m calling to you.”

  Marla sets her cup down on the coffee table. She leans forward, running a hand through her loose hair. “Heaven,” she says, not looking at her. “You’re slipping.”

  Omalis wants to respond to this but the monotone voice issuing from the television breaks with barely contained panic and Omalis’s attention splinters.

  On the screen, a male anchor, forty-ish, hair already silvering around the ears, presses a finger to his earpiece and stares at the camera, eyes gleaming. The little video box in the corner of the screen plays a video of a Fourth of July parade, sans sound. Finally, somebody stops tape, and the video freezes on the jovial green face of a made-up Statue of Liberty, throwing candy on the street for the children.

  “…Sightings are being confirmed…in…Kyoto, Japan,” the anchorman continues, eyes scanning the camera face, as if reading from the TelePrompTer. His fingers grow pale and his ear red from pressing so hard on the earpiece. “….Oh…Oh my… It appears that the Over are launching an attack…”

  “What?” The question slides out of Omalis like a last hope. She
goes and stands directly in front of the television. From behind her, Marla uses the remote to turn up the volume.

  To someone off-screen, the anchorman now asks, “Do we have audio? Can we get audio on this? Loyal viewers of UT-41, this is…this is breaking news. The Over have been conclusively spotted in the area of Kyoto. They are amassing as a…a swarm. Do we have video? Do we have anything?”

  “Change the channel,” Omalis says, almost dreamily, “CNN.”

  “Heaven, maybe we shouldn’t…”

  “Do it.”

  Marla flips to the appropriate channel. Immediately an image of downtown Kyoto appears on the screen, a man-on-the-streets camera shakily zooming by buildings and pedestrians, all running. The camera tries to angle up but keeps being jostled by people running by. On the bottom of the image, a news ribbon scrolling quickly by, dramatic all caps text screaming: THE OVER ATTACK DOWNTOWN KYOTO, COMMUNICATION WITH LIAISONS LIMITED.

  “We’ve lost audio,” says the anchor, this time a woman, trim and refined, stern professionalism masking emotion in eyes and voice. The image of Kyoto is now in the top right corner of the screen. The anchorwoman directly addresses the camera. “We’ll try to get that back for you, in the meantime… Wait… Okay, we have visual, visual confirmation of the swarm.”

  Back on the screen, an immense darkness, writhing, squirming. The anchorwoman’s voiceover: “Can we pull it back?” The camera zooms out to reveal the tops of skyscrapers, neon lights flashing the only brightness against a sky gone oil black. Like violent storm clouds, the Over spiral in the sky, cavorting, swarming. As dangerously graceful as ravens, their jagged knife-shaped beaks piercing the sky around them, their giant wing-spans stretched to the limit, circling, circling, vultures biding time. God, how Omalis wishes they could screech.