“Does it make a difference?” Joe asked.
“It does when it rains.” The woman smiled and extended her hand. “Melanie.”
“Good to meet you.”
“What? You don’t got a name?”
Joe smiled. “None that matters. Call me Joe.”
Melanie harrumphed. “You shoulda picked something whiter.”
“I was fourteen. So you’ve been through this before?” Joe glanced toward Devin to make sure he was listening, too.
“Third time. Miguel here” — she pointed to the larger of the two children — “his daddy lives up in the domes and he swears to me this time, I come to the gate, he’ll meet me and take Miguelito to live with him.”
Flix leaned hard into Joe’s side and spoke across him. “You’d ditch your kid?”
The blond lady with the ponytail stopped arguing with the round man in her company and watched Joe and Flix.
Joe laid his hand on Flix’s knee and squeezed. Shut up. “Will the government allow that?”
Melanie glared hard at Flix, then shrugged. “Miguel’s father, Mr. Davenport, says so. But twice I have waited in a tunnel to send Miguel to his father, and both times, I have failed. The guards do not look kindly upon us.”
One of the teenagers in line behind Aria coughed, a great hacking thing, then spit onto the floor. A thick ball of mucus and blood oozed down from the grate to the sewage river below. Aria bustled closer, and Flix scooted, too, until his shoulder was wedged behind Joe’s.
“We’ve had vaccinations,” Joe reminded them.
“You sit by Mr. Snots-a-lot, then,” Aria hissed.
The line moved forward about eighteen inches. Joe slid along the bench, stopping a respectable distance from Melanie, and leaned back, only to bang, again, against Flix’s bony shoulder. He sighed. They were not going to be able to make it through fourteen miles rubbing bone on bone against each other. “Flix, get off me.”
Flix shifted so now their hips bumped, too. “Let me in front of you, then. That kid is going to puke, and I am not getting it on me. This place doesn’t seem like it’s going to have showers and laundry.”
Joe started to stand, but Devin nudged his leg. “Sit. All three of you be quiet and get along.” His voice carried.
Everyone was staring at them now, not just the blond lady.
Joe’s face burned. Was Devin enjoying this? No. They were just playing the game.
“Sorry,” Flix whispered.
Joe ignored him. He focused on Devin’s leg against his own. He kept his mouth shut and obediently slunk forward every time the line moved. In his mind, he replayed the time back at Flights of Fantasy where he and Devin had ridden the merry-go-round at the carnival, Devin’s eyes dark in the carnival lights, the blue hidden until the ride ended and he was up close, pressing Joe back against the plastic pony; making Joe forget for a moment that he had responsibilities, that he wanted only to go north and find his father, that he didn’t fall in love.
“Hey,” Devin said.
Joe looked into those blue eyes that had captivated him that night. “Hey.”
Devin patted his chest, right over his heart.
Joe smiled.
“That’s it!” This time the interruption came from the blond woman with the ponytail. She snapped her fingers and pointed at Joe before walking over to stand right in front of him. “Oh, my God, talk about a lucky day in the tube. You’re the boy in the commercial.”
Joe heard himself gasp. The rest of the woman’s talk, Flix’s arm tight like a vise around his waist, Devin’s furrowed brow, it all receded until it was just him and Bea and that damned commercial. Boggs watching, filming without Joe knowing.
A sharp pain in his side brought him careening back to the present. Flix’s sharp fingernails released their hold on his skin.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you must have my friend mistaken for someone else,” Flix said.
Devin stood, but as soon as he did, the woman’s extra-large companion moved close.
“Park it, sonny, I ain’t gonna hurt your poc none. Nah, I don’t make mistakes with faces.” The woman grabbed Joe’s jaw and twisted his face left and right. “Those bones. My goodness, but you’re even lovelier in person. Too skinny, though, honey. Is it the drugs?” She frowned but kept moving Joe’s head this way and that. “You gotta lay off the drugs, baby.”
Joe opened his mouth to say, “I don’t use drugs,” but all he got out was “I don’t” because as soon as he started talking, the woman shoved her thumbs in his mouth and pried it open wide. “Oh my God, look at those teeth! They must’ve cost a fortune! Boggsy’s such a cheapskate, too —”
Joe yanked his head back so hard it hit the wall. He was on his feet and didn’t remember standing. “Boggs?”
The woman stepped closer and lowered her voice. “I get it. Your current daddy over there doesn’t know you maybe make a little on the side.”
This couldn’t be happening. Joe grabbed on to the easiest part. “Please don’t call him my daddy. He’s younger than me.”
She glanced back at Devin appraisingly. “It ain’t the miles, honey; it’s the money.”
“He’s” — Joe swallowed — “okay. Please, Boggs? You know him?” Even saying it, it felt like Boggs would jump out from behind one of the other people in line. Appear in the ether, armed and ready to drag Joe back.
“Sure. All us people pleasers network together.”
Oh God. “He’s not here, right?”
The woman laughed. “Like Boggs’d be caught in the tube. Thinks he’s about royalty, doesn’t he, him and that snooty wife of his? Look, darling, I’d talk terms. Whatever he’s paying you, Boggs or your gentleman friend, I bet I can beat the offer. I treat my employees real good, too.”
“I’m not looking for work right now.”
“Take this.” She stuffed a business card into Joe’s pocket. “You ever change your mind — you give Helene first dibs, yeah?” Her eyes veered to Flix. “You’re not bad, either. I could get rid of that scar, bleach your skin a bit. You
