Free Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds by Weston Ochse Page B

apartment almost simultaneously...the events were too strange. Her gut said that Andy wasn't involved in David's death, but he was involved somehow . He had to be, unless she planned on becoming a connoisseur of coincidences. So she'd watch and listen and maybe he'd let something slip.
    "You're staring at me," Andy said, worry coloring his hazel eyes.
    "Trying to figure things out is all."
    "Having any luck?"
    "Some."
    "Good. If you need my help, all you have to do is ask."
    I'll bet , she thought. "I'd just as soon leave if we can."   She stood and brushed the wrinkles from her pants.
    "Are you excited?"
    "That's a word for it. Maybe a little scared."
    "I had Panchet run a check. Your grandmother is okay."
    Just what she needed to hear. "Thanks, Andy."
    "It's what we're here for."   He headed towards the back door, then paused and looked back at her. "Are you coming?"
    She'd been caught staring at the way his jeans hugged his legs and the curve of his behind. She blushed fearsomely, smiling to hide her embarrassment. "I'm coming. Are you?"   She remembered the kiss she'd given him on the street and blushed even more deeply. She squeezed past him out the door, her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her.  

Chapter 8
     
    T hey caught a bus at Melrose and made their way west along Oakhurst, then went north to Sunset Boulevard. Buildings blurred past as memory and reality merged. Some styles were familiar from before her incarceration, but others were like she'd seen recently, either concrete industrial or neo-Japanese. This part of Sunset used to be known for its gauche colors and crazy architecture. From giant billboards to hotels like The Grafton, to the old Washington Mutual building which looked like a neon green flying saucer that had crash landed and was held captive by shrubs, all Rebecca's landmarks had vanished. Their absence reminded her that this was not her L.A. and yanked her from somnolent feelings of nostalgia. Even as she gazed out across the bowl of Los Angeles to Rancho Palos Verdes, she realized that hardly anything she'd known had survived.
    Gone was the patchwork effect of the city streets. From Malibu to Venice, a glistening three hundred-foot wall of metal and steel shrouded the once famous arc of beaches, probably meant to stave off another tsunami. Where planes had been queued in the air from Palm Springs and waiting to land at LAX, the skies were now empty except for the air tunnels she'd thought originally to be ribbons of light. Now she could see the cars shooting through the translucent tubes heading towards the valley. Slums on a scale beyond imagination sprawled in the area she'd known as west of the 405 , encompassing Inglewood, Compton, Hawthorne and slummier points east.
    So many things had changed, from the little to the large. Back at the safe house she'd compared her predicament to Twain's famous book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . Rebecca realized now she'd had it backwards. She hadn't gone back in time. She'd essentially gone forward. Like all of those B-movies she'd watched on cable as she'd grown up, she'd stepped in a machine and stumbled out twenty years into the future.
    Only her machine had been a place called prison.
    Rebecca shook her head and appraised her fellow passengers. They seemed like the usual bunch of POD people living their life elsewhere, mixed with some regular folk and some not so regular. A boarder leaned against the rail near the exit door. When his eyes met hers, he grinned.
    She elbowed Andy and pointed at the boarder.
    "Yeah," he whispered. "They're gonna be watching out for us for awhile. When you get a chance, look behind you. The one who's looking at you is Scoundrel. He's the one who helped me yesterday. The one behind you is Pony. You've already met."
    She stared at Scoundrel for several moments, noting his colors and his rail thin frame. Of Hispanic origin, his olive skin was weather-worn and creased, like the skin of a much older man.