“Where are you headed?” said Burke from the front of the van. He was driving confidently down the local roads without any navigation help that Marley could see.
“Just ... south,” Lyric said. “We mainly want to get away from the war and the fires.”
“Surprisingly sensible for young people,” Sophia said.
“What about you two?” said Lyric.
“We’re still thinking through our options,” Burke said.
Marley got the sense that was as much as he was going to say about that changed the subject. “So, Sophia, you were electrician?” they said.
“I was. Now, I guess I’m retired,” said Sophia.
“Are you enjoying retirement?”
“Retirement isn’t something you enjoy,” said Sophia. “It’s something you put up with. You’re out of work. You should understand.”
Marley didn’t volunteer that they’d were supposed to be doing interviews for a streaming show. Even an unpaid job might be unkind to mention, given how Sophia seemed to feel about her own profession having been made obsolete years before.
“What about you, Burke?” Lyric asked. “Are you retired, too?”
“I’m a chemist,” Burke said. “I’m semi-retired.”
Sophia shot him a dirty look. Burke sat a little straighter and kept his eyes fixed on the road. Marley was even more curious about what was in the aluminum case now, but it was none of their business, and they had other things to worry about. Not every question had to be answered.
The conversation flagged from there, and after a few minutes Burke said, “Robby, put on some music, would you?” Robby didn’t seem to need further instructions: from a speaker somewhere in his body, music came on, some old-time singer with a surprisingly wobbly voice. Marley was sure they’d heard the singer before, but they didn’t know who it was.
I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood. I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold ... the singer crooned. Up in front, Sophia and Burke were having a whispered conversation.
“We have to find Gia,” Lyric said to Marley in a very quiet voice. “Anthem, too. I hope they’re together. They’d both feel a lot safer that way.”
“I’ll go back and look for them when you’re settled,” Marley whispered back.
Lyric looked back at Marley with a surprised expression. She seemed on the verge of crying.
“Or ...” Marley said, thinking. “Actually, once we’re somewhere safe, we can just turn our lenses back on and call Gia. Maybe she’ll have hers on, too, and we can find out if she’s OK and if she has Anthem.” Marley shoved down another in a series of thoughts about the terrible things that might be happening to both their friend and their dog. “Did you see her get the leash? Do you think she has her?”
Lyric took Marley’s hand and squeezed it. “I don’t know,” Lyric said. “I do know that if Gia had even half a chance to go after Anthem, she did, and she’ll make sure Anthem’s safe.”
Marley nodded.
“Gia idolizes you,” Lyric said. “You knew that, right?”
“I don’t think Gia idolizes anyone except Gia,” Marley said. They smiled, even though they could feel tears trying to break through. “But who can blame her?”
“OK, don’t believe me,” Lyric said. “Anyway, I bet we’ll turn on our lenses and have a message from her, and she’ll be fine.”
“Probably,” Marley said without conviction. “You think we’re safe with these two, right? There’s nothing nefarious going on?”
“I’m pretty sure there is something nefarious going on,” Lyric said, “but I don’t think it has to do with us, and it’s probably not as nefarious as they think it is.”
What do you think is in that case? Marley wanted to ask, but glancing up, they saw Sophia watching them in the strange little oblong mirror hanging from the roof of the car near the windshield. A “rear-view mirror,” Marley remembered belatedly. Those had been in all the manually driven cars in Deaf Ears. Marley never knew they could be used for spying on people. They resolved to be more aware.
Marley woke when the van jarred to a halt in a way that an autonomous vehicle never would. They realized they were slumped against Lyric, who had an arm around them.
“Did I fall asleep?” Marley said, sitting up reluctantly.
Lyric nodded.
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” Lyric said.
Burke turned around from the front. “Pee break!” he announced. “Get out, stretch your legs! Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!”
Marley sat up, yawning and stiff, and looked out the grimy window. A tiny cinder block stood alone in a scrub-filled field. Other than that little cube of a structure, there was no sign of civilization except for power lines stretching monotonously along the road. Marley pulled the door open, shoving hard to shift its unwilling mechanism, and sidled past the robot to climb out. Lyric followed.
The fresh air was surprisingly cool. Maybe that was just compared to the confines of the musty van, but it could be the weather had shifted. Marley gestured for a weather report, but nothing happened. Sophia watched them from her seat. When she saw the confused expression on Marley’s face, she nodded, satisfied.
“Forgot your lenses were off?” she said.
That was what it was. Marley nodded.
Burke had hustled off to the cinder block building, which Marley could now see had two doors with labels that each said “restroom.” Sophia eased herself out of her van and down to the ground, groaning.
“Would you be comfortable if I turn my lenses on for a couple of minutes?” Marley said. “We were separated from our friend and my dog, and we just want to be sure they’re OK.”
Sophia grunted. “We’re trying to keep a low profile,” she said severely, but then she thought for a moment and said, “What kind of dog?”
“She’s a mutt,” Marley said. “She’s sweet.”
“Anyone looking for you?” Sophia said.
“Me?” said Marley. “No.”
Sophia looked at Lyric. She groaned again, stretching her back. “OK, I guess just get away from the van when you’re connected. Only a couple of minutes, right? And check the bulletins while you’re at it.”
Marley nodded. Lyric followed them past the restrooms and at least eighty meters out into the field, where they stood together under an alder tree. Marley tapped twice on their earpiece to restart their lenses. A moment later, the start-up interface appeared. There was a large stack of bulletin icons, too many to go through in a short time.
“It looks like it’s up!” Marley said. They gestured up the messages icon, which brought up a listing of a dozen or more messages, but none was from Gia. Marley gestured for a voice command. “Please answer any messages from family or good friends who seem like they might be worried about me to let them know I’m all right and that I’ll get back to them when I have a chance,” they said. Then, just to be sure. “Any messages from Gia?”
“Nothing,” Marley’s interface said.
“Send a priority message to Gia now: ‘Are you OK? We’re heading south and are safe. Is Anthem with you?’ End of message.”
An icon appeared to show that the message had been sent. Marley waited. Seconds ticked by.
“Nothing?” asked Lyric unnecessarily.
“Nothing,” Marley said, dismayed. “I’ll get a quick news bulletin while I wait.” They gestured for another voice command. “Give me a very brief summary to read, with maps, of what’s happening with the invasion and the wildfires and any other immediate dangers,” they said.
They scanned over the results, relaying them to Lyric as they read. “Wildfires to the west and south of Seattle. Cyberattacks have taken down some power stations and banks and things, and there are drones ... but it looks like we fought back most of the cyberattacks and took down a lot of the drones. The flotilla hasn’t landed yet. The American president made some kind of address ... He’s claiming we provoked the attacks with cyberwarfare. Western Oregon and Western California are still mostly safe, except for some of the cyberattacks.” They gestured for another voice command. “Where are we now?”
“About 15 kilometers north of Corvallis, Oregon, near route 99W,” said Marley’s earpiece.
“We’re a little north of Corvallis,” Marley told Lyric. They flipped back to messages, but there was nothing from Gia yet. It hadn’t been necessary to check: there would have been a notification.
They waited under the tree for several more long, chilly minutes, until Sophia walked around the bathroom building and yelled back, “Are you coming?”
“We’re coming!” Lyric called back.
Reluctantly, Marley powered down their lenses. They and Lyric trudged over to use the grim little restrooms, and then they both shut themselves back into the van.
After more whispered discussion between Burke and Sophia, Burke declared they’d be taking the Redwood Highway and asked Marley and Lyric where they wanted to be dropped off.
“Doesn’t that go through Eureka?” Marley said.
“It does,” said Burke. “You have friends there?”
“Yes!” Marley said. They clarified for Lyric: “Alice, from my old job at Deaf Ears.”
“You worked on Deaf Ears?” said Sophia.
“I was one of the writers.”
“On Deaf Ears?” Sophia said disbelievingly. “What’s your name again?”
“Marley Jun.”
“I’m going to look that up later to see if it’s true.”
“Sure,” Marley said. “So is Eureka OK?”
“Sounds fine,” said Burke.
“You really worked on Deaf Ears?” Sophia said. “I didn’t expect that.”
She had some kind of snack in a small bag, and she crunched some of whatever it was pensively. “That’s a decent show,” she said finally. “Good job.” She seemed uncomfortable giving the compliment.
“Thank you,” said Marley.
After sharing what they’d found out with Sophia and Burke, Marley fell back asleep against Lyric. Their dreams were uneasy: they were lost in smoky, tangled forest, looking for someone or something, constantly hearing Anthem behind them and turning to find her not there.
They woke in the middle of the night, when the van jerked to a halt in front of a bedding store. Like the other businesses on the block, it was closed and dark.
“This stop, Eureka” said Burke, sotto voce. Sophia had tilted back her seat and was fast asleep, snoring. Lyric yawned and stretched.
“We can’t thank you enough for giving us a ride,” Lyric said. “Is there anything we can do for you? Maybe there’s something Marley can check on their lenses before you go?”
Burke glanced at Sophia. “Maybe just get the news for us,” he said. “Not near the van! But come back over when you’re done and let us know what’s going on. And ... see if they mention us.”
“In news bulletins?”
“Just in case,” Burke said. He hesitated, then, seeming to realize it was necessary, added “I’m Burke Fawcett, F-A-W-C-E-T-T, and Sophia is Sophia Lingenfelter ... L - I - N - G - E - N - F - E - L - T - E - R. Don’t tell anybody you saw us, though. Deal?”
“Absolutely,” Marley said, and Lyric said, “Deal.”
Marley wanted to ask what Burke and Sophia had done that might be newsworthy, but they were fairly sure whatever the reason for the request, Burke and Sophia wouldn’t want to share it.
They walked down the sidewalk with Lyric and sat at a picnic table outside a darkened Venezuelan restaurant. There, they restarted their lenses.
“Anything from Gia?” Lyric said hopefully.
Marley called up the message interface just to make sure, then shook their head. Was the lens network still offline up north? They searched on that, and yes, there were pockets where the lens network was out. Still, wouldn’t Gia have had time to get to a place where there was service? But then, she wouldn’t have been able to find out where service was still up without her lenses working, and it was the middle of the night, and she must have been exhausted. Maybe she and Anthem had found safe shelter and were just asleep. Marley dictated a quick follow-up message.
“Lyric and I are in Eureka now, and we’ll try to stay with a friend of mine here, or maybe find a hotel. We’re worried about you! Call me as soon as you get this, OK?” They sent it, then did a quick scan of the news for Burke.
The wildfires were still burning, though one was partly contained. There had been new American cyberattacks: nothing on the scale of the initial blitz, but a constant barrage of new exploits. The worst news was of the American flotilla, which had met with a lot of trouble, especially with Cascadians hacking on-board systems, but had still managed to attack the city. They had hit Seattle with electromagnetic pulse weapons designed to take out Cascadian electronics and computerized defenses, and American soldiers had landed and were now occupying some parts of the city, though Cascadian troops in the area seemed to have stopped the American advance for the time being.
Marley felt sick to their stomach.
Last, they checked to see if there was any mention of Burke or Sophia in recent news, but there was nothing. There were some older pieces, though, one a feature on a local news site about Robby, one from the late 2040s about Burke retiring from teaching, and some others. Some other time, Marley thought, they might want to look at those.
Marley turned off their lenses again and walked back to the van to pass on what they’d found out. Burke seemed encouraged there was no mention of Sophia and himself, and he shook Marley’s and Lyric’s hands through the window before driving off. As the van pulled out onto the road, Robby stuck his torso out the window and waved goodbye with all four hands by rotating slowly like a miniature ferris wheel. The silent vehicle turned a corner, and then they were gone.
It was just as chilly there in the parking lot as it had been outside the little restroom building.
“I’ll call Alice now, OK?” Marley said.
“Definitely. And I was thinking it’s probably safe for me to turn my lenses back on. Can you think of any reason not to?”
Marley considered. The only reason to turn their lenses off in the first place had been to avoid the danger of attracting the attention of American soldiers, and they were well away from the front now. “It seems fine to me,” they said. Lyric nodded decisively and tapped her earpiece. Marley gestured up her contacts and called Alice, voice only.
“Hello,” answered a voice Marley didn’t recognize, at an androgynous pitch that wasn’t very far from where Marley’s had settled since they started hormone replacement therapy back in college.
“I’m calling for Alice,” Marley said. They felt disorientingly like they were making an old-time “telephone” call, the way characters were always doing in Deaf Ears. Some telephones had been used by multiple people, so you might call for one person and end up talking to another. That was never the case with lenses, though—so who was the voice?
“She’s not taking calls just at the moment,” the voice said. “This is Sobat, Alice’s AI.”
“Why is Alice having her AI answer calls?” Marley said. “Why not let it just go to a message?”
“She asked me to take your call if you got in touch some time when she was busy,” said Sobat.
“Isn’t she sleeping?”
“She’s working,” Sobat said. “You can call her at work.”
“Call her at ... ?” Marley said. “Wait, you mean with the other app?”
“Yes, please,” Sobat said. “Good night, Marley.”
“Thank you,” Marley said, and they disconnected.
“Alice’s AI is answering her calls?” Lyric said.
Marley nodded. “I have a different way to get in touch with her, but I should probably be somewhere more private.”
Lyric looked at Marley quizzically.
“I don’t think I can explain without sharing things she might not want me to share,” Marley said.
“Well, now you’re just making me more curious,” said Lyric.
“I’ll go back to the picnic table. Meanwhile ... maybe you can come up with a theory about what Burke and Sophia have in that case.”
“Oh, definitely drugs,” said Lyric. “Or a doomsday device. Or a bunch of tiny robots.”
Marley was too concerned about too many things to laugh, but they felt a hint of a smile pass over their lips. They walked back to the picnic table and sat down. They had temporarily forgotten about Alice being involved with the Louvre. Between the interview and the war and the fires and Gia being missing, it had been crowded out of their head. They sighed and brought up the red and black icon. After hesitating for a minute, they let their gaze settle on it long enough to activate it. The icon had a chance to cycle through only three or four colors before the black bubble enveloped Marley and the stylized version of Alice appeared.
“Honey! I’m so glad you called,” Alice said. “I was worried, with everything that’s going on. Did you think more about that opportunity?”
“No,” said Marley. “But I’m here in Eureka, with a ... friend ... I was just wondering if it might be OK to come stay with you.”
“Oh, I’m not there,” Alice said. “I’ve been pretty busy. You could stay at my apartment if you want—but I really wish you’d think more about helping us. We could use you.”
“I don’t—” Marley began, but then they stopped.
“What?” Alice said. “Do you need something?”
“I have some things I’m worried about,” Marley said slowly. “We’re missing a friend, and she’s not answering when I message her. Anthem’s with her.”
“And you think she might not be OK?”
“We were separated trying to get away from the American invasion. We were up near Seattle at the time.”
“Marley! Are you all right?”
Marley nodded. “And I have another friend who might ... well, if the Americans do take over, she might need help.”
“You have some interesting friends,” Alice said. “I mean, me most of all, but it sounds like some other interesting friends, too. So we might be able to help you with your friends, and in return you might be able to help us?”
“Not with anything destructive! But if I can help with something that’s not, you know ...”
“Terrible?”
Marley nodded again. “I mean, if there’s nothing like that, don’t—”
“No, I get it, Marley. I’ve been reflecting on that a lot since we talked. I should have thought more before I contacted you in the first place. The work they were doing here, before I joined up—that’s not really up your alley. We’re doing some new things now, though. We want to help protect Cascadia—you know, from the Americans. There might be something. But you’ll come talk to us? I’m pretty sure I can get some help for your friends. I’ll definitely try.”
“I have to check with my ... friend—the one who’s here with me—to make sure. Maybe you can take us somewhere the Americans wouldn’t be able to get to, even if they, you know ...”
Alice nodded. “That sounds good. Call me after you have your talk.”
#
When Marley brought the question to Lyric, they did their best to explain everything in a nutshell.
“I don’t like the idea of you getting involved with this group just to find a safe place for me. I can just turn off my lenses and hide somewhere.”
“No, I think I might want to help them,” Marley said. “I mean, I have to hear what they want me to do first—”
“Is that safe?”
“Alice isn’t going to put me in a situation where I have to do anything I don’t want to. I mean, I don’t know if she’s making a good choice, but I completely trust her. She’s almost like family.”
“Oh, so you’re already bringing me to meet your family?” Lyric said, and she grinned.
Apparently they were going, Marley thought, and they realized they were actually a bit excited to introduce Alice to Lyric.
Marley sent a message to Sobat, who sent one back a few minutes later letting them know a car was on its way to pick them up. They sat at a picnic table while they waited. Far above, stars glittered.
“What would you be doing for the Louvre?” said Lyric.
Marley laughed shortly. “Coming up with stories, I think. Sort of ... narratives.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well ... I mean, we use stories all the time, right? To tell ourselves who we are and what we’re doing.”
Lyric nodded.
“So it’s like writing a script, in a way,” Marley continued. “Making choices about what to include in our stories and what not to, about who the characters really are, what the basic problems are that we’re trying to solve. If we didn’t tell ourselves stories about our lives, I don’t think we’d know how to react to anything. I mean, I think of it as being about choices.
“For example: we’re going to go see a group of people who are technically criminals and who we know very little about, right? And I’m talking about maybe working with them. There are all kinds of ways we could describe that, but the way I’m describing it to myself is: This group seems like my best opportunity to keep you safe, and they might be able to help us find Gia, and maybe I can even contribute to keeping the whole country safe, in some kind of small way, if I help them. But you could just as easily tell a different story that would also be true.”
“You think about your stories a lot more than I do about mine,” Lyric said. “I think I usually follow whatever feels strongest. When I think, it’s not about structure, it’s about the words.” She leaned back against the table, looking up into the star-scattered blackness.
Marley wanted to ask more about that, about how Lyric wrote, but Lyric spoke first. “What’s the story of the war? Or ... I guess, what should the story of the war be?”
“Um,” said Marley. “Who are the characters?”
“Cascadia and America,” Lyric said. “You know, to stand in for their people. America is the jaded industrialist who was with Cascadia for a while and undervalued them until Cascadia set out on its own and did all these exciting things. Now America wants Cascadia to come back home and for things to be the way they used to be, but Cascadia has changed and grown and can’t just go back to how it was before.”
“Oh!” Marley said. “That’s interesting ... so ... one story could be that America has the power to force Cascadia to come back the way America wants, and then they’re trapped in this loveless relationship. Or we could take it darker, and Cascadia could do something desperate and destructive rather than go back. Or another story could be that Cascadia has grown and become more independent and proves too strong for America to take back, so they part ways forever, and America remains bitter and trapped in their attachments until something else forces them to grow.”
“None of those sound like a story you would write,” Lyric said.
“No, that’s true,” Marley said, a little surprised that Lyric could say that so confidently after such a short time. They stood up and began to pace. The sound of the gravel crunching under their shoes was homely and grounding. They experimented in their mind with different directions the story could take, brainstorming unlikely ideas, looking for a storyline that went somewhere worth going. Lyric waited, still watching the stars.
“Ah,” said Marley. “I know. Cascadia goes back to America.”
“It does?”
“It does, but it goes back on its own terms. It says, ‘I still love you, but if we’re going to be together, things are going to have to change. I’m not the same as I was, and I won’t live the way we used to live.’“
“Would America even accept that?” said Lyric.
“It would have to have a change of heart. Something would have to pierce its self-assurance, its idea that it was always the one who was right.”
“Its love for Cascadia?” said Lyric.
“I don’t think that,” said Marley. “Well, not that alone. Something humbling. Something about America itself. But if it could have that humility, and if Cascadia returned willingly, bringing with it all it had learned ...”
“That’s a beautiful story,” Lyric said. “I mean, hopefully we’re talking about a version of that story where little escaped refugees from the Mountain Republic are not crushed in the process of Cascadia and America getting back together.”
“Definitely a version like that,” said Marley.
A small autonomous van pulled up by the curb in front of Lyric and Marley. The windows were currently untinted, and they could see it was empty. A logo across the door said “Golden Valley Senior Day Program.”
A message popped up on Marley’s lenses, an arrow pointing to the van and the words “your ride.”
“Is this us, or should we be worried?” said Lyric.
“This is us,” said Marley. “But we should probably also be worried.”
“Let’s go, then,” said Lyric. “I’ve always wanted to see the Louvre.”
Marley had never ridden around in cars so much in their life. Mass transportation was the norm in most places. Cars and vans were usually just for connections and last miles and the occasional emergency.
Hours passed as the Golden Valley van drove south and west. Marley didn’t know where they were going, and it seemed petty to interrupt Alice in the middle of who knew what kind of war-related activity to get an answer that wouldn’t change anything. There didn’t seem to be any attempt to hide their route, which Marley had almost expected, so they were able to set the windows to clear or opaque as they liked. All that told Marley was that they were heading south and west, away from the coast.
“She didn’t say how far?” Lyric asked, half an hour in.
Marley shook their head. “Hey van?” she said.
“Hello,” said the van’s AI.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” the AI said. “They’re giving me instructions one turn at a time.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess it makes sense,” Lyric said. “If somebody got to the van, they wouldn’t want it to be able to tell them where the hideout is.”
“Who could get to the van?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lyric said. “I’m just trying to be creatively paranoid.”
That probably was the right point of view for the moment. Marley tried not to think about how they were getting farther and farther from Gia and Anthem by the minute. They stared out the window at the dark landscape and occasional lights of civilization until, with Lyric’s head resting on their shoulder, they eventually fell asleep.
The darkness was only just beginning to gray when Marley and Lyric woke to the van playing a standard birdsong wake-up sound. The door slid open, and they climbed out, legs stiff, into a parking lot. In front of them stood a darkened restaurant surrounded by live oaks, with a sign that said “Sakura Grill.” A two-lane road led past them. Across the way, a yellowed pasture rippled in the moonlight.
Lyric stepped out next to Marley and took their arm. The van behind them slid its door closed, then rolled down a narrow track to the back of the building. Marley could hear the wind and, from somewhere, the rasping screech of a barn owl.
“Shall we check out this dark, mysterious building?” Lyric said.
Marley couldn’t muster a laugh, but they smiled. Together, the two walked to the entrance, but they found it locked. Lyric shrugged and rapped on the glass with her knuckles. They stood there in the chill evening, waiting. A dozen breaths later, there was a click, and the door unlocked and swung itself out, releasing light around a figure Marley was too dazzled to make out at first. The inside of the glass door had been covered with thick, black paper.
The figure resolved into Alice. She gathered Marley in, squeezing the breath out of them. Marley felt one knot of tension inside them relax. Alice held on for a few extra moments before letting them go.
“This is Lyric,” they said. Alice gave Marley a significant look, and they did their best not to react.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Alice said. She turned to Lyric. “OK, first you two are going to need to sign our non-disclosure agreement, in fresh blood, obviously—”
“Does it have to be our blood?” Lyric said.
Alice gave Marley an approving glance, locked the front door, and opened another black-papered glass door to the inside.
Like the sign said, the place had clearly been a restaurant, and it still had tables and chairs, but there were darkened rectangles on the walls where pictures had once hung, and the kitchen area was silent, while the dining room tables were mostly covered with physical screens and boxes with wires trailing out of them. Two large picnic coolers near the center of the room were inexplicably connected by wires to some of the screens and other equipment. At least half a dozen people were sleeping on inflatable mattresses in a smaller, adjacent dining room where the lights were off. Another four or five were seated at tables, working at screens using physical keyboards or having conversations with voices coming from compact speakers—AIs, Marley assumed. Two older people stood in a corner, talking.
Of those people Marley could see, sleeping and awake, almost all were people of color. Other than the two in the corner, most people seemed to be in their twenties or thirties. Everyone was dressed as though for a long day of lounging: leggings or loose pants or casual dresses, tunics, T-shirts, the occasional bandana or scarf.
A handsome young man with bronze skin and an aquiline nose was sitting at one of the screens, arguing with a young woman who had black-and-violet, spiraling hair and was standing well within his personal space.
“It’s not a problem,” he said. “It happens all the time. And I fixed it.”
“Yeah, but if someone’s watching that server ...”
“I said I fixed it!” the young man said. “Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about.”
The young woman shrugged, gave him a brief kiss on the lips, and went to sit at another table.
“Is it everything you imagined?” Alice said dryly. “No, don’t answer that. A lot of us were up late into the night and barely slept. Some of us are still up. If you want to rest, I think we have a mattress or two free in the other room.”
Marley glanced over at Lyric.
“Coffee, maybe?” Lyric said.
“We can definitely do coffee,” Alice said. “And Chinwe will probably make some omelets and things soon. Come on.”
She led them back into the kitchen, where a fifty-something, suited Black man with a dignified bearing and gentle eyes was filling a small bowl with coffee.
“This is Marley, and this is Lyric,” Alice told him. “Marley’s a writer. Lyric is here for sanctuary and moral support. Marley, Lyric, this is the man who’s trying to help us go legit.”
“Hi,” the man said, extending a hand and smiling tiredly. “I’m Gene.”