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fiction: serial fiction
the crown, book one: chapter 6
James and Tonya pulled up to the light at Rodeo and Crenshaw, her attention on a group of school children walking east, his fingers tapping the wheel.
"I just can't figure it," he said, turning down the radio a little as the drive-time DJ smoothly segued from song to news. "You're filthy rich, and you rock a dusty Chevy Malibu."
"Baby, remember, my goal is to be low profile," Tonya said absently. "This car is reliable as hell, and ... baby, what's that?"
They both watched, agape, as a huge concrete truck, its drum spinning solemnly, barreled towards them. James looked around quickly, seeing no way to back away from the oncoming mountain of metal. The truck jerked back and forth, clearly struggling for control, going too fast. It zoomed past the intersection and jumped the curb, plowing through parked cars and shopping carts to smash through the front of the dry cleaner near the street. Concrete began oozing out of the now shattered drum of the truck, and the engine combusted, starting a huge fire in the wrecked storefront.
"That's some ... damn!" James exclaimed, his mouth hanging open.
"Park the car," Tonya said, "by the donut shop, fast."
James looked to see the light was green, but no one was moving. He edged the Malibu forward and swerved right into the Yum Yum lot behind the flower shop. Tonya leapt from the car and walked over to the curb, watching the fire start to consume the building.
"Where's the nearest firehouse?" she asked as James walked up behind her, clicking the alarm and locking the car.
"Uh, there's one in the Jungle, down by Dorsey," James said, unable to look away from the accident. "Baby ... fire won't hurt me, right?"
Tonya looked sadly at James. "Fire, no. Smoke can. You wanna go in there?"
"It's the middle of the afternoon, no telling how many people were working in there." James looked grimly at the fire and then back at Tonya. "I can hold my breath, if I go fast enough."
"The fire won't hurt you, if you don't fall down and get stuck," Tonya said. "Just be careful, people are fragile. Go on, but if you hear a loud whistle, run like hell for three blocks and then hide on somebody's roof. That'll be me warning you."
James nodded and jogged across Rodeo, through the frozen traffic. A large woman in an orange sun hat at the bus stop pointed as he approached the window, and he thought to himself, "Damn, a cape and a mask would come in handy right about now ..." Dauntless, he held his arms in front of his face, and dived through the plate glass window.
Inside, everything was blackened and smashed as flames crept into every corner and across every surface. James took immediate note of two women behind the counter, slumped over, unconscious. He moved towards them when he heard the cry of a child, and cursed. He grabbed the younger woman, a pretty girl in her mid twenties, wearing jeans and a t-shirt tied at the waist, and gingerly lifted her over his shoulder. The older woman was a bit more unwieldy, but he managed to get an arm around her, despite the slippery polyester shirt she had on. James gazed around to see the crying toddler, still undisturbed in his stroller, next to the body of what had to be the mother. The diaper bag was still in her clenched fist, as a section of the roof had fallen on top of her and crushed her to death. James hovered himself over to her, grabbed the strap of the diaper bag with his foot, and kicked it free, making a catch with his free hand. He then lowered himself to the ground behind the stroller and made his way towards the opening.
Sunlight smacked his head seconds later as he emerged, carrying the people. Two men nearby saw what he was doing and came to help, each one taking a woman off his hands. He hooked the diaper bag on the baby's carriage and whirled, running back inside.
Closer now to the truck, he saw the body of the driver, a kid no more than fifteen, holding a bottle of Seagram's in his cold grip. The body hung limply out of the driver's side door, and a kind of strange milky haze hung around the body, but James took no time to consider it.
He leapt over the counter to quickly check the back of the store. Unable to see very clearly, he struggled to not cough until he stumbled over an attractive teenager in an Inglewood High tank top and jeans, one Vans sneaker missing, smoke smudging her face. He carefully picked her up as he heard sirens in the distance, a faint high pitched moan barely audible over the crackling of the fire. James was able to dodge past the counter and get the girl outside, sunlight once again beating down on his shoulders. As he handed the girl to one of the men waiting outside, he heard Tonya's whistle and decided to make himself scarce. Diving back into the flaming storefront, James noticed a hole in the ceiling where the fire had loosened the building's materials. James felt a little woozy, swaying from holding his breath, but levitated himself quickly out the hole and made a somewhat clumsy landing in the alley behind the cleaners. Finding his way to his feet, the cry of sirens buffeted his body, and he jogged down the alley before jumping over a low fence and making his way to a small two-bedroom home surrounded by flowers. James glanced quickly around, seeing no one, and floated up to the roof. He gently landed and laid down, face skywards, breathing heavily. After a few minutes, scanning the cloudless air for helicopters, he dozed off.
* * *
Tap.
James swatted at the air in front of his face, unsure if it was a gnat he felt disturbing his sleep or a fly.
Tap. Tip-tap.
James began to slowly emerge from the womb of slumber, his eyes still closed, recognizing the heat of the sun blanketed across his body. He stretched and yawned, and felt the next pebble bounce off his chest.
Tap.
Surprised, he sat up with a start and almost shook himself off his precarious shingled perch. He looked down into the immaculate garden below and saw Tonya, standing with a handful of gravel, looking upwards.
"Shh!" she hushed, one finger over her lips.
James nodded and glanced around. The flat land of central Los Angeles gave him quite a view from this height, and he noticed no one in his field of vision. Carefully, he jumped down from the roof and used his newfound abilities to soften his landing.
Tonya dropped her pebbles back into the tiny gravel pit from whence they came and walked over to James.
"There's an older couple home next door," she whispered, brushing dust off his shoulders. "We gotta be quiet. C'mon."
Taking his hand, Tonya carefully led James past the colorful blooms and out to the street, where her Malibu was parked. She opened the passenger door for him and he fell in.
A few moments later they were pulling on to Coliseum, heading east.
"Are you OK?" Tonya asked quietly.
"Yeah, I'm fine," James said carefully, checking himself. "I musta got some smoke in me, or something."
"Smoke is one of the few things you do have to worry about," Tonya responded, her eyes on the road.
James looked at her, noticing her rigid body language and her unwavering stare. "Is everything OK? It was OK that I helped those people, right?"
"It's wonderful, baby," Tonya said, still watching the road. "You did something wonderful for those people, you saved that girl. I was just worried about you."
James nodded. "I know you've lost a lot, I'm sorry if ..."
"To be honest," Tonya interrupted, "I'm kind of proud of you. You barely even thought about it, you just rushed in there."
James nodded, responding, "I sense a 'but' coming ..."
Tonya sighed. "It always makes me a little sad when I start to see which way somebody I love will go. Before then it's all a mystery, I never know how it'll turn out. It's scary and new and fun. You're such a good, wonderful person, you're gonna be motivated to help people. That has ... certain consequences, some you can avoid, some you can't. On the good side, I'm even more in love with you, since that's so wonderful. On the bad side ..." Tonya trailed off and bit her lip.
"I don't get it," James admitted.
"The way you got out of there was brilliant," Tonya started, "and I don't think any cameras got a good look at you, especially with the smoke. There's two reasons why ... why knowing makes me sad. First, there's a pretty big possibility you'll make a mistake early on that could draw unwanted attention to us, which is all bad if that happens ..."
After a moment, James asked, "What's the second thing?"
"Second ... there's a lot more possibility that I know how long we'll have together, and that's really depressing. If you were a little more selfish, a little less ... well, everything that I love, you might be around a little bit longer."
James dropped his head. "You've been alone so long ..."
Tonya sniffed, a single tear dropping down to her chest.
James set a hand on her knee. "Can you pull over a second?"
Tonya just made the light at Normandie, and brought the car to a halt in front of one of the faceless, endless run-down homes along Exposition, abandoned train tracks off to her left.
"Listen to me," James said, taking her hands. She looked down at his hands, holding hers, and said nothing.
"Tonya, I ... I have received a blessing more incredible and more amazing than anything I ever dreamed could happen. I met you, thinking we'd kick it for a little bit, have some fun. Then I fell in love with you, and then you gave me this ... this Crown. Now my life is something new, something unheralded. Something I want to share with you, every moment possible.
"I know you've been lonely so long," James continued, "that it seems like there's nothing else. You have these brief moments of joy and these endless decades of solitude. I know you well enough to know you don't wanna be alone. I know I probably won't live to stay with you ... it's hard to say that, even, to talk about the certainty that I will die. Anyway, I promise I'll do my best to be here for you and give you as much time as I can. Okay?"
Tonya nodded solemnly.
James looked at her for a moment and patted her hands, confident he'd done well.
"Oh," Tonya asked, wiping her eye. "Did you see anything funny in there, when you were saving people?"
"Funny?" James returned quizzically. "Now you mention it, there was a weird kind of haze around the kid who, I guess, stole that truck. Why?"
"Just curious," Tonya said quietly, turning back towards the windshield.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa ... just curious with you is not just curious," James sputtered, reaching for her hand as it sought the ignition. "Talk."
"Part of why I like you is because you're able to stand up to me without being dominating," Tonya said, dropping her hands into her lap. "Once people figure me out, that's hard to do."
"The white haze," James said calmly. "What was it?"
"I didn't see it, but I could kind of smell it, kind of feel it was there, as it drove past us. It was just a chaos sprite, a kind of mischievous ball of energy. Hadn't seen one in a while, just wondered if that's what it was, or just normal human craziness."
"What's a chaos sprite?" James asked calmly, rubbing his eyes.
"Like I said, a little ball of energy with a bad attitude. They encourage people who already have some nuttiness in them to kind of run with it. They used to be everywhere, now there's enough natural chaos in the world that they don't need to work so hard."
"So the teen with the booze ..."
"Was probably already up to no good, saw an open, running truck, got an extra kick of inspiration, and here we are."
"There's not a lot of these things?"
"Last one I saw was in 1992. The riots. Stuff was already crazy, but there was one of 'em, actin' up. They're nothing to really worry about."
James just looked at her for a moment. "Right," he said, finally.
"We were gonna go eat?" Tonya asked brightly, putting on a brave face.
"Okay," James agreed, and they pulled off into traffic.
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