Blue Tina

“That sounds a little fucking paranoid, you know that, right?”

Wren frowned and, turning back to the bed, remembered why she’d probably let that pass. Melissa seemed unconcerned about Wren’s physical satisfaction, and so, paradoxically, there were no self-conscious fumblings, no insecurely showy moves doomed to failure, and utterly no hesitation in extracting the most out of the situation – a mutually beneficial selfishness.

A flash of lightning illuminated Melissa’s contours like a private shoot, bringing their dual commonalities into focus. Beyond this, whatever it might be, the former Pulitzer-nominated photojournalist’s supreme confidence eliminated any competitive tension. A good day at the Millington Square Farm Market or the Campustown Arts Festival, an above-the-fold front-page spot in the Chicago Trib or a screen-filling rotation over a couple of national news cycles – to Melissa, two separate universes with no threat of colliding.

“It almost had to be her,” Wren protested. “It was in the front closet this morning, then I catch Blue Tina skulking around the hallway while I’m bringing in the groceries, and it’s gone. Hey, freeze, right there.”

She instinctively reached for the Nikon on the dresser, and the prone blonde waggled a menacing finger. “Not until I get the fucking cast off, and then, don’t even think about it. Last thing I need is revenge porn from some disgruntled sophomore.”

“I think it makes you look, you know, vulnerable.”

“Felt vulnerable enough when that crazy old cunt tried to run me down,” Melissa grunted, swinging her knitting leg over the comforter. “Besides, that seriously what you really want? Vulnerability? Maybe Blue Tina can give you a little of those warm, weepy feels, and maybe she’ll give you your coat back, too. I’m outta here – got a paper to finish.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Wren stated. “I just got a tornado alert on the phone.”

“Thought that was your folks. I left my windows open, so I’ll have to risk the flying cows.” Melissa stumped to the window. The third story window faced the solid, tagged brick rear of a downtown law firm, and she glared up at the hint of cumulonimbus stirring in the slate-gray sky. The Passat was nestled behind the downstairs’ thrift shop/bakery dumpster, and Millington’s unhoused apparently had smelled the raw ozone in the air and made for the Salvation Army or the Welcome Home Mission.

“You left it someplace, probably last winter, and you just think you saw it,” Melissa suggested, tugging on her Hanes for Her. “Probably that concert at The Royal in March – you were pretty fucked up. What? You were. Not that I could—“

“All right, OK,” Wren murmured. “It’s possible. Wonder if they got a lost and found.”

“Or you could drop another $37 at Walmart and snag yourself a new one.” Melissa buttoned her jeans and brushed past the younger woman. “I go, you promise you’re not gonna get into it with Blue Tina?”

“Can’t promise anything,” Wren smiled with a pass at wickedness. Melissa laughed harshly, snagged her bag from the living room couch, and stepped briskly into the hall.

Wren started to call after her, but that wasn’t in their contract. And as Melissa turned the corner for the steep narrow stairs, the door to 3 snicked closed, but not before Wren caught a snatch of cobalt hair half-obscuring a single brown eye…

**

The Ameren went out first, and with it the store Wi-Fi. Wren’d left the pad at the studio down the block, anyway, so she settled into the armchair by the alley window to binge some 5G Hulu on the iPhone.

About the time the latest AHS rolled – some fairly obvious Rosemary’s Baby shit – the alleyway went black, as if the world beneath the dirt-gray luminescent ceiling had simply ceased.

Wren craned for a glimpse of the fire escape below. The grill, of course, was long gone — she smiled fleetingly, revisiting the fantasy that Gabriel and his crusty Weber were dispensing steaks and carnitas and brats wherever he’d landed. Chicken for the gatekeeper, scraps and bones for the beasts at the mouth. Snow, rain, 20 degrees or 100 — the last time Wren’d saw him, he’d been crafting pork and pineapple into something no doubt heavenly. It was a charred lump by the time the homeless guy “found” him bled out in the alley dumpster (the prosecutor air-bracketed it repeatedly before locating a new home for the lost man).

Wren’s lump returned, now malignant in the darkness. Gabe had been taken away from her, and this thing had taken its place. Melissa had helped fill the remaining cracks with a different, charged, unchained passion. At times, Wren entertained the notion that she might be cheating, as well, but the term itself had no relevance to their air quotes relationship.

Of course, they would have survived Gabe’s unfaithfulness — he’d wept ugly after Wren confronted him with the blonde hairs, insisted things were definitively over with “the other one,” and they’d caulked his broken vow over a night of lovemaking.

Wren seldom speculated on The Other One, even after the detective had come to her cell to break the news and prod through the haze about romantic rivals or angry exes. In what had been more personal pride than booze-and-grief-impaired memory, she’d withheld the blonde. The alley dweller’d confessed a week later, and Wren’d found solace in her fellow shooter a week later.

Now, something was nudging, scratching at the malignancy, the existential drywall. Blue Tina had moved in a month after Gabe’s murder, existing at Wren’s periphery with her vampiric late-night homecomings, apparent subsistence on Amazon, GrubHub, Pasterelli’s, Thai Dragon, and Midnight Cookie, the middle-aged boyfriend(?) pushing bulky mid-afternoon deliveries inside Apt. 3, the wordless nods by the downstairs mailbox or in the hallway where she’d taken recently, unnervingly, to lingering.

The hail began jarringly, pummeling at the double-panel alley window, no doubt dinging the shit out of her decommissioned SUV, Blue Tina’s crappy little Focus, the vehicles whose owners had unwisely decided to party through a WEEK severe storm alert. Wren recalled one of Gabriel’s witty if crass observations one day at the Coffee Dawg down the block, about ill-matched drapes and carpeting. It seemed unlikely, she seemed unlikely, but who knew, under the Marge Simpson tint and the baggy Urban Outfitter wrapper…

And now, the coat. Cheap knit fleece jacket she’d been wearing when the cop yanked her over three blocks from The Royal. The ticket was still in the pocket — she kept it both as a reminder of Gabe and a penance for rocking it out while her love was draining out. The coat could be easily replaced, but the Roiling Blackouts stub was her stamp back into the past.

It had to be Blue Tina. Had she wanted something linked to Gabe, or, Wren pondered with a new chill, to her. Single White Female time? Wren shook it off. Eyes on the prize, and she was certain the prize was now hanging in Blue Tina’s closet.

Then it came, like some atavistic omen Wren would normally no more entertained than the idea of Gabriel saucing wings for St. Peter or Cerebus. A rooster-sized projectile slammed against the outer alley window panel, and Wren’s gut leapt as she caught one quick glimpse at the windborne crow’s soulless opaque eye before it rebounded into the nothing.

And the rhythmic, robotic cries began.

**

 Wren followed the faintly luminescent blue spot below as it hurtled from the alley’s mouth to the barely illuminated yellow beater. A weak white aura bloomed about the car as Blue Tina threw open the door, but the vehicle continued to scream in the murky darkness as shadows played in the glow.

And Wren reached a decision. Blue Tina surely wouldn’t have locked up, and in her haste to investigate and silence the alarm might even have simply blocked open the stairwell door. There was no shortcut back within a half-block.

Wren felt her way to the kitchen and located the wooden block from which five chromed handles projected. As she made it to the apartment door, Wren backtracked to the bedroom and retrieved her one still-functioning device, inspired by some old Jimmy Stewart movie at the campus theater years ago.

Wren stared down the steep, inky stairway to a gray rectangle at its base. The city had not yet brought light back to The Drag, but there was always an idiot or ten or 100 with a death wish for alcohol, and passing beams guided Wren down. Indeed, the old grey brick normally tucked in the blind spot beside the entrance was wedged between the frame and the battered steel/ glass door. Wren cussed, groped her way to the rail that damnably began a foot into the darkness. Blue Tina’s car continued to scream in the abyss.

Halfway down, the earth fell momentarily from under her foot. Her ass, shoulder blades, and skull established contact simultaneously, and she became the luge. Then Wren remembered the utensil still clenched in her bruised, scraped fist and rammed it into the old, soft wood. Her spine jerked and retracted roughly back into place as she came up 10 feet short of the glass.

Wren climbed to her feet, and as she leaned against the plaster, one shattering, droning tone abruptly dropped out of the cacophony of driving rain, thunder, and hail. Wren stumbled down the remaining steps, bent with a yelp, and tugged the brick free. The door clicked into place, and she was profoundly grateful the owner had been too fucking tight for an electronic keypad.

With a groan and a pop, Wren righted herself and glanced into the street. The sodden woman, stared back through matted indigo locks. Blue Tina banged on the frame, the glass, and her face transformed into something dark and violent. Wren then remembered the other object in her grasp, praying it had survived the fall. She whipped the camera up, snapped off a shot, and the narrow space exploded in blinding light. Wren’s eyes popped open to the young woman staggering back and colliding with a comatose lightpost.

Wren hurtled back up into the depths. She had no idea how much time she might have left. She levered herself back into the black hallway with the rail.

Looping the camera around her neck and shifting the knife, Wren found the knob to 3. As she wrenched the door open, she herself was blinded by the sudden presence of light. Chuck Collins was gravely jabbing at the WEEK weather map that displayed just how much of the five-county area was under attack.

“The. Fuck.” Wren recoiled at her own stunned whisper, glancing back into the black hallway. Then she spotted the huge black box in the center of the sparse living room, white LED display signaling God knows what. Cords extended from the base of the device toward all corners. She traced one to a laptop open on a TV tray in front of an afghan-draped couch, and crept toward its gray-green screen glow. Wren’s lumbar flared as she bent before the monitor and stared at what seemed initially to be one of those found-footage horror movies that instead was a grainy, deeply shadowed feed from a spartan room lined with some sort of scientific gear. Hanging on the back of the room’s closed door, a hooded fleece jacket.

Wren realized she’d walked into far more than merely the lair of Gabe’s side piece. Who was this bitch?

The sound of shattering glass ended Wren’s speculations, and she rushed further into Blue Tina’s space, fingers white on the knife. Three doors beyond the living room. One open to a bedroom of modular cubes and a cheap but cleanly dressed queen mattress. One the bathroom, tidy and utilitarian.

The third was locked, and Wren could see the hardware was recent. She yanked and rattled futilely at the knob , then summoning her desperation and waning courage, lifted her leg and wobbled as she sought a weak point in the flimsy wood.

“You get the fuck away from there.” The voice was hoarse, breathless, crackling with terror and wrath. The specter at the living room archway was from a different horror flick, pale, cobalt locks plastered over red, implacable eyes. But this ghost girl was aiming a large steel revolver at her neighbor.

“Why’d you take it?” Wren rasped, foot still absurdly elevated.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Blue Tina growled tremulously. “You touch that door, I will fucking blow you away.”

“Hey, look,” Wren managed, lowering her boot. “All I want’s the coat. That’s all. Why’d you take it? No, doesn’t matter. Give it back, and I’ll forget all of this. I’ll even pay for the door downstairs.”

“Step away,” Blue Tina ordered, coldly. “Now.”

“Sure, stay chill,” Wren pled, half-raising her hands, then whipping the Nikon up and firing off a blinding barrage. Blue Tina snarled, banged against the hall wall as the gun clattered to the worn wood. Wren launched herself, snagged the revolver, and, trembling, shoved the barrel into Tina’s throat.

“What was it?” Wren demanded frantically. “How did you—?”

Blue Tina’s eyes darted to the locked door. “I’ll give you the coat. Just get the fuck out.”

Wren regarded the bedraggled girl. “Yeah, I’m thinking it’s kind of too late for that. Jesus, what did it fucking matter to you—?”

Then something in Blue Tina’s eyes, the fury, something else Wren couldn’t quite peg, brought it abruptly into focus. “How?”

“I kinda suspected,” Blue Tina murmured. “One night, I’m taking the trash out and I see his car’s still in the alley even though he’d left for ‘work’ two hours earlier. Couple of other weird things fell into place, and I realized. Your light was the only one on in the building, and I pretty much know the folks on the block, sooo.

“The day they found him in the alley, I’d been talking to him. He was grilling some al pastor on his fire escape like he did even if there was a blizzard. I think I was too shocked to see it at the time, plus that homeless dude confessed, but those two knife wounds were too perfect, too symmetrical. What, the barbecue fork blocked the blood flow ‘til he fell over the rail? He lands soft in the dumpster, so when they find him, it looks like a body dump.”

“But the coat...”

“Know what smoke is?”

Wren blinked. “Hah?”

“Tiny particles -- particles of whatever’s been cooked or burned. The wood or charcoal you used to grill it, fat and tissues, the spices you rubbed on the meat or the sauce you used to baste it. The weather turned warm right after Gabe died, but that day, you had to have been wearing your fleece coat. Which would have picked up those particulates. You shoved that coat in the closet for the summer, so all the trace would be intact. I just wanted to put you on that fire escape.”

The gun began to waver. “Just who the fuck are you?”

“Who the fuck are you?” The voice was arctic, disgusted, possibly injured under some glacial layer.

“No,” Wren began.

“I tried texting you after I heard about the funnel cloud sighting,” Melissa said quietly as she stepped into the hall. Her tank top and sweats were soaked. “You didn’t answer, so I decided to check in and I find the fucking glass downstairs. I thought maybe somebody might be murdering or raping your ass or something, so I charged up like the cavalry to find this shit. So, that true? You kill Gabriel?”

“Baby,” Wren whispered.

“’Cause whatever your beef is with Tina here, that doesn’t bode well for me,” Melissa argued, stepping forward and catching Wren’s jaw with her cast.

**

“EcoFlow DELTA Pro,” Melissa Urquardt murmured appreciatively, toeing the wheeled black box. “Gotta get me one of those. What they used in Maui during the wildfires, and I’ve seen a few in warzones. You a survivalist?”

“State police auction. Meth dealers hate production glitches. Hey, by the way, I really hate that Tina shit. Chris, or Christina. Yeah, I can’t afford an outage any more. C’mon.”

Melissa surreptitiously checked the time. In her culture, you save someone’s life, you have to tolerate their banal shit.

The door was now open, and inside, the detective in charge was humming what sounded like some OG Billy Preston to the bundled human in his arms. He scowled up, and Chris held up both palms. Jordon’s eyes popped open immediately, and he began to wail dramatically.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Melissa muttered, and vanished.

Detective Mead passed the infant to its mother. “Nice nursery. Mom told me she’d thought about a gas chromatography mass spectrometer when I was born, but she got me a savings bond and a Big Wheel instead.”

“Asshole,” Chris grunted as she rocked the he-va into silence. “Crib’s in my room, but when all this shit blew up and I had to take care of the car alarm, this was the only room without windows. Had the monitor on.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t supposed to be the takeaway,” Curtis said. “Maternity leave doesn’t mean you set up a branch office. You get this shit?”

“Etsy.”

Curtis sighed with a resigned smile. “OK, you don’t tell me shit, anyway. Like your baby daddy hadn’t fled the jurisdiction, or you knew – sorry, suspected -- who killed him,”

“Don’t call him that,” Chris snapped, then grinned apologetically. “He had the balls to tell me he was going to the concert with his buds. You want the ticket, by the way, I bagged and slipped it into your poncho – hers, too. Seat next to Hitchcock. Gabe was a duplicitous, cheating motherfucker.”

“The child,” Curtis admonished. “Maybe you do need some official structure. I know I liked you better as a redhead.”