| Subject: Bolt From the Blue |
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Date Posted: 23:43:04 03/25/01 Sun
In reply to:
BonnieBo
's message, "Bolt From the Blue" on 22:53:55 03/23/01 Fri
His mouth tugged again as if he was amused. And that brief, patronizing amusement thoroughly annoyed her. Nikita frowned. "Well, who areyou?" she said shortly.
"I am Samuelle. Michael Samuelle."
"Oh." She looked blankly at him. "Is that supposed to mean something?"
One brow snapped upwards. His back straightened suddenly. And if Michael Samuelle looked a little lost before, he seemed completely baffled now. Baffled and annoyed. A small sound leaked out of him. "I have come about ..."
"...the old farmhouse. You must be the new tenant. You're thatSamuelle." Nikita opened her notebook and flipped through the pages. Some loose papers fluttered to the ground. Ignoring them, she looked on. Yesterday's experiment, results, conclusions. Today's plan. No, it wasn't there. She flipped back a few pages. "Oh. Here you are. Pencilled in red, plain as day. M. Samuelle. That's you, all right. And this is yours." She untied the key that was attached to the same page, and handed it to him. Then she scooped up her loose papers, stuffed them back into the notebook, and closed it with a snap. "I'm sorry. I was thinking about other things."
He looked meaningfully at the workshop behind her. "Of course," was all he said.
Nikita turned and looked also. The workshop seemed exactly the same: whitewashed wood planks on the outside that hid steel sheeting on the inside. The smoke had died down long ago, and all the sounds of destruction had stopped. It was quiet again. "Oh. That. Don't worry. It won't burn down. It can't. At least, I think it can't as long as the safety alarms are on. But a couple of times, they've been turned off."
"Off?"
"Yeah, I came back and the alarms were off. Maybe I forgot to turn them on. Sometimes I forget things. Oh well. No harm done," said Nikita, starting to stand up. Samuelle followed, and even though he began after her, he managed to finish standing before her. He moved quickly and gracefully like a large cat. His hand guided her elbow. Why was he doing that? No one had ever done that before. She looked up at him. "Oh, well. Um, thank you."
He slanted his head as if to say "you're welcome." He seemed to look her over carefully, a faint surprise still shadowing his deep green eyes. "Be careful."
"Of course," she laughed again, surprised and a little touched by his concern. Wasn't that sweet? He looked so serious. She wondered if he always was this serious about everything. "Well, let's take care of business, shall we? the rent's twenty bucks a month, meals included, and we'll need the first and last up front. Will that suit you?"
He scrutinized her with a thoroughness that made her completely uncomfortable. She kept from squirming - but barely. Joules.The way he was looking at her ... it was worst than Miss Madeline. Much worse. She must have a lot of soot on her face or something, Nikita thought glumly. Maybe her eyebrows had been singed off again. She always looked a little peculiar without her eyebrows.
"It suits. Definitely," Samuelle said at last. And again, the way he said it made her wonder what exactly he was really talking about. He seemed to be talking about something else all together. And it wasn't just the way he was talking. The way he was looking at her seemed to have nothing to do with renting a room at all. It was as if he was working on an alternate circuit - maybe a completely different circuit board - than hers. She didn't understand him at all. It was the strangest thing.
Bemused, she watched him reach inside his coat packet, and pull out a bill. He handed it to her. She glanced down at it. Her eyes widened. She looked up at him again. "I don't carry change."
"Put it towards the next few months."
"But that's too much. Way too much ... Well, okay. It's your funeral." She stuffed the money into her apron pocket before he could change his mind. "That's great. We could sure use it. Take that road south. You'll find the farmhouse about half a mile. Let's see, there's fresh linen on the bed, and, oh, what else? Supper's at six. Sharp. Bubbe - that's my grandmom - is very prompt. If you're late, it's cold borscht for you. Although it's not so bad cold. It just tastes even more purple. Good-bye."
"No. Au revoir.Until we meet again." He bowed over her hand, turned and left with a strange economy of motion. He avoided the dirt tract, and instead took his own shortcut through the fields. As he walked on, the grass seemed to barely part around him. Probably an optical illusion, she thought. Her ears strained. She couldn't hear his footsteps either. She stood there for a long time, watching him grow smaller in the distance until his vague shape disappeared into the shadows of the stately elm trees by the creek.
She still stood there for a long time after he'd gone. His words echoed inside her head. Be careful,he'd said. How odd. She wondered why in tarnation he'd said that.
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