When I got to Garrett, the biker had vanished into the crowd. Garrett was staring into space, all his enthusiasm for the concert gone.
'You okay?' I demanded.
Garrett nodded, dazed. The parrot waddled back and forth on his shoulder, eyeing me accusingly.
Maia came up next to us.
'Who?' she asked. 'And what did he want?'
'Nothing,' Garrett said. 'A friend of Clyde's. He was saying- he asked if I needed any help. That's all.'
He was lying. I hadn't been brothers with him all my life and not learned to tell.
'Look,' I said, 'if there's a problem…'
Maia put her hand over mine.
She was right. It did no good to push.
Buffett kept singing about warm climates, but Garrett didn't seem able to focus. The little bit of spirit the concert had managed to instil in him had drained away.
After another verse, he mumbled, 'God help me, but I think I need to leave early.'
He asked if he could stay with me out at the dome for the night. I told him he could. I didn't ask why.
As we made our way back to the parking lot, the cheering and music getting farther and farther behind us, I tried not to think about what Garrett had said earlier-about coming here just to plan his funeral.
CHAPTER 29
When my eyes opened the next morning, it was already full light. John, Paul, George, and Ringo beamed down at me from the poster on Doebler's ceiling. Cheers, mate.
Feel like crap today, yeah?
I crawled out of the bed sheets, which were conspicuous for the absence of a sleeping feline.
The last things I remembered from the night before were Maia and Garrett arguing defence strategies in the living room, Robert Johnson curled contentedly in his longlost mommy's lap, the parrot scuttling along the railing of the sleeping loft, looking by no means certain about his new feline housemate. I didn't remember going to bed at all.
I found exercise clothes and snuck downstairs. Garrett's sleeping bag was empty. I didn't see Maia either, but there was a bodyshaped impression in the other sofa, indicating she'd stayed the night. Robert Johnson was curled on the kitchen counter, a bowl of familiar tan liquid next to him.
I took a sniff. Sure enough-Maia's cafe au lait for kitties, Robert Johnson's favourite.
I dipped in a finger. Still warm.
The parrot was sitting next to the cat. Apparently they'd come to some sort of truce.
'Mornin', boys,' I said.
The parrot eyed me, then waddled over to Robert Johnson, put his beak close to the cat's ear, and whispered, 'Go away.'
I blinked. I was afraid if I stayed there any longer, the three of us would start having an intelligent conversation, so I picked up my keys and went out the front door.
The sky was overcast with ugly clouds, the air heavy with humidity. It was going to be a killer of a day-storm or sauna.
I crunched my way down the path toward the lake. The water was teal, a weird reflection of the clouds, as if the world had turned upsidedown.
At the concrete slab, Maia Lee had beaten me to the practice routines.
She was wearing Jimmy Doebler's clothes-his green Ocean Pacific swimsuit and a large white polo shirt. One dead man's wardrobe fits all.
Her hair had been brushed out and reponytailed. Her face was fresh, alert, no worse for her long evening. She practiced barefoot, her black espadrilles set neatly on the base of the kiln.
The morning was quiet except for the rustle of the plastic over Jimmy's pottery shelf, the sleepy drone of crickets.
Maia was in the middle of a Chen form-slow, fluid movements punctuated by bursts of speed. Tiger stance. Punch under palm. A quick attack sequence of fists and snap kicks, then back into slow motion with White Crane Spreads Its Wings.
I did my stretches, rolled my head around, and got a sound like sugarcane snapping. I ran through some stances to get the burn into my leg muscles.
Maia crouched into Snake Creeps Down-her front leg fully extended, her weight on the back, low to the ground. Her spine was perfectly straight, her back hand forming a bird's beak, front hand a palmstrike to the ground. She held that position, which was not easy to do.
I stood there admiring her until I realized she was inviting me to join.
I walked to the slab, sank into position. Maia unfroze. Together, we finished the form.
Maia's style was different from my usual routine, but I found it easy to follow-smooth and logical. For her, tai chi had been an afterthought, something she learned to augment the harder Shaolin style she preferred. Despite that, her execution was humbling-the flow of her movements, the graceful stances, the fire and spirit that can't be faked. She practiced as if her life depended on it, yet her face stayed perfectly serene, her eyes fixed at all times on an imaginary target.
We ended the form facing the water. I was drenched with sweat and a mosquito was floating around my eyes, but I felt good. I'd forgotten what it was like working with someone who was better than me, who made me push the limits.
We unfroze, but still didn't talk. I enjoyed the silence and chithe feeling of breath and warmth and focus all concentrated in the centre of my body.
Maia wiped her forehead with her wrist. Her face glowed from the workout, a tiny trickle of sweat ran down her neck behind her ear, but she looked neither tired nor winded.
'Good morning,' she said. 'Sifu.'
She smirked, gently kicked my shin with her bare toes. 'You don't want me as a teacher. You're overextending your knees. You need to keep your elbows down.'
'Yes, master.'
'Push hands with me,' she said. 'And stop with the master shit. I could grow to like it.'
We faced each other in cat stance, right hand to right hand, touching at the back of the wrists. We began with small movementscircling our hands, pushing gently on each other's wrist, trying to feel where the other person was going to move. Once that was established, anything was fair game.
Maia advanced a step and I retreated. We reversed. She tried to push me off balance and I stepped back, forcing her to come forward. We corrected positions, kept going. I waited for the next attack, sensed it coming, then withdrew before Maia's push, twisting to the side as Maia committed her weight forward. I pushed. She lost her footing, went over sideways, and landed hard on her hip against the concrete.
A strand of black hair from her ponytail stuck to the side of her cheek with sweat. She brushed it away. There was white cement dust on her thigh.
'Okay?' I asked.
She nodded. 'I was too aggressive.'
'Shaolin will do that to you.'
She stood, dusted herself off.
This time we circled longer. Her fingers were delicate curls, her wrist warm. I should've kept my head clear, used my chi to sense what she was up to, but I happened to catch her eyes and was instantly hooked by them- warm and bright and amber. She smiled just before she pushed me onto my butt.
My teeth clacked. My spine felt like it had been sunk into the cement with a pile driver.
'Not fair,' I said.
'Oh,' she said. 'Now we'll talk about what's fair.'
She offered me a hand. I smiled, took her by the wrist and somersaulted backward, pulling her over me.
