I ducked onto my knees and bent over the mess, hoping my long hair would hide my chagrin. Not that it was thick enough to muffle her sigh. If only my boss was upset at the merchandise pitched across the floor! But no . . . my lack of cooperation in finding a man was infinitely more frustrating to her.
I’d folded two sweaters before she finally led him away with “Did you have someone special you were shopping for today?”
Please. A man who looked like that? Dream on, Maureen. With a face that smooth, he was definitely much younger than me. Besides, he was too pretty. Too good-looking. There was no character in his face. And his eyes were so focused. Like lenses dialed-in to study an insect, or something. No wonder I couldn’t decide whether to be interested or irritated. Too many mixed signals.
A brilliant speck of red flared in front of me, but I shook a sleeve at it and kept folding. The last thing I needed was one more signal! And exactly when had I become so incredibly neurotic? I used to be able to talk to people like a normal human being!
Hadn’t I?
Well, I couldn’t remember that far back right now, but the point was that this behavior was ridiculous. I stood up, tightened the sash on my blouse, shook my hair from my face, and marched back out into the store.
“Too late, Lila.” Maureen turned from the window and jabbed a fuchsia-slicked fingertip at me. “You. Are. Hopeless. Tell me, do you enjoy being alone?”
“Actually, yes. I do.” Please, dear God, let it be time to get Eileen from school. I glanced at the watches in the display case, but it was only a little after eleven. Today was clearly going to require more coffee than usual.
Acceptable
He paced away from the apparel store and toward the area known as Riverwalk. He needed to find a less populated place to sit and think. Her reactions today had been inordinately perplexing, and an excess of fractals would be a distraction.
Long ago, he had hypothesized that humans shared a genetic memory of his kind. Such an imprint would account for their collective aversion to acknowledge him—whether as different from themselves, or even to acknowledge his presence at all—unless circumstance or direct interaction required them to do so. Rare was the human who did not fit this norm, and of those scarce few, all could additionally be categorized as societal nonconformists; however, not all nonconformists exhibited indications of awareness. As with most human complexities, other factors were involved.
But which factors? Somehow, this woman’s alternating dislike and interest, panic and curiosity, seemed to be a specific response to him. Not to the perceived strangeness he represented, but to himself. He could only surmise that her childhood memory was intact. The fractal which had struck at him was impulsive and impudent while another had stretched both arms up to explore his face with unfelt fingertips.
Then there was the mystery of what she saw, or otherwise sensed, that his own superior faculties did not register. What had she believed was present in the space between them?
He settled on a weathered concrete bench under the shade of a dogwood tree. Soft yellow sunlight maneuvered through the creamy blossoms and dappled across his face with dancing steps. The breeze carried the mingled metallic, salty scents of the Atlantic Ocean and the cypress-stained, diesel-tainted Cape Fear River. Behind him, he could hear the motion and mumbles of cars and people and bicycles and horse-drawn carriages that gave this historic port city its eclectic flavor. In front of him, the river rolled thickly around a refurbished steamboat on its pre-tourist-season run, the great white paddlewheel churning rainbows of spray into the cool air.
His senses were enriched with all the information he could absorb. His skin felt everything around him, from the puff of azalea and pine pollens dusting his nose, to the water molecules marshaling in the air as the day warmed. He could hear everything around him, too . . . from the startled nicker of a horse as a cyclist whirred past its slow-moving carriage, to the murmuring bass rumble of machinery two blocks away in a micro-brewery. But he had closed his eyes, the most perceptive part of his body, which could have cataloged any minute component of the spring morning surrounding him, so that he could contemplate this singular human.
How could she be so prescient as to step away from a door before it opened, yet not be aware that she was in imminent danger on that ladder? Presumably, she had not considered the irregularity presented by the five fasteners that varied from the other seventy-nine, nor noted the torquing of the loosened supportive mounting. And yet, even then, should she not have known?
He mulled this, rationally, as was his way. Humans did sometimes appear to possess extrasensory awareness, and even when the anecdotal evidence was well-documented, the purported abilities were generally considered to be sporadic and unreliable. Yet, he thought that there was more to this woman than could be explained by the prevailing theories on methylation and variant neural pathways. She might be truly unique. Doubtless, he should have investigated sooner.
Or not at all.
The light permeating his eyelids was red and prickly warm on his skin. It made him think of her hair against his face, thick and slightly coarse. When she fell, an herbal breeze of chamomile and patchouli had rushed over him, and with her surprised gasp, he had tasted the coffee and sugar on her breath.
Disturbed, he forced his eyes to open, embracing the sting as sunlight strafed his optical sensors. The sensation passed quickly, but his irritation lingered. He was supposed to be scouting for the progeny of experiments, not indulging old perversions. His mouth twisted. He should not have sought her out at all. What he had done was risky enough without compounding the effects.
But she was not
