Free Being Alien by Rebecca Ore

and cradled it in his hands as though it was hot.
    I looked down at it when we stopped at a traffic light, noticed the yellow cap was turning dark. Is he bleeding? Alex dropped the pen out the car window when we got going again and leaned back against the seat. He didn’t say anything about the pen, so I worried as I drove, he directing me. The traffic cop bugged us. The Barcons. The Feds. My parole officer. Shit.
    “If Carstairs is there, the black guys will be too nervous…” He didn’t quite finish the sentence, sucked in his lower lip, and ran his tongue between lower gum and teeth.
    I parked behind the bar. Alex touched my arm just as I was about to get out. We paused there, headlights washing over us as more cars came into the lot, his face half shadows and scars.
    “Go,” he said. Gravel creaked underfoot. I looked back. Alex’s body rolled almost like a Gwyng’s, his legs swinging wide before he planted them. I know my business,” he told me quietly. “You’ll see how well in a moment. The blacks won’t dare mess with me here.” He meant the Barcons.
    The front of the bar was dark glass with spotlit weird harps and tin whistles behind it. As we walked through the swinging doors, I noticed that most of the people were white, divided between college types and older, coarser. Two blacks, no, two Barcons waited for us at the end of the bar, hunched over drinks, with space around them, even though the crowd was hip to ass in the rest of the bar. The Barcons got up and began moving toward us.
    “I won’t pay you for a burn,” Alex said loudly.
    The Barcons stopped. “Nigger dealers,” someone in the bar muttered, face lost in the crowd. I saw the smaller Barcon’s jaw seem to break between the chin and ear, and both their noses pulled in. Why doesn’t someone see?
    “We must talk, outside.” The Barcon male shook his hands as though flipping off sweat.
    “I’m meeting a friend here.”
    A beefy guy stepped through the crowd, pool cue in one hand with a razor scar running across his knuckles.
    “We know Alex,” he said. “Leave him alone.”
    “We have to discuss business with him, a Barcon voice said behind me. A second pair of Barcons stood near the doors. Another white guy in a blue nylon jacket stepped through the crowd, oil on his jacket, hand in his pants pocket— brass knucks, heh, boy, or a gun?
    “Leave us alone,” I said to everyone. The two other Barcons came up behind me. I didn’t want to choose sides.
    Then Carstairs swung the doors back and stopped, arms blocking the entrance. He stared with twisted delight at the whole scene, glasses askew on his nose. He saw me and shoved his glasses back, index finger against the greasy bridge then giggled helplessly as the door on that side flapped against him.
    The Barcons froze, the smallest female at the end of the bar quivering, jaw bones jerking. Is everyone too drunk to see how alien they are?
    I expected the cops any minute—saw the headlines as though they were hanging in neon in the bar smoke ALIEN SPIES CAPTURED IN BAR BRAWL .
    Carstairs got out of the doorway and said, too loudly, “Tom, what is going on?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “No?” He pulled a barstool up and grabbed my hand.
    “If I…” He had a small trocar ready to plunge into me.
    “He’s taking tissue samples,” I said.
    The Barcons behind me grabbed the troccar, broke it against the bar. The crunch sound brought a white boy around to face us. The female Barcon at the end of the bar whimpered.
    Then Marianne came in. “Tom?”
    “Help me get all these people out. Alex needs to talk to the four black guys, but not here.”
    She loosened her shoulders as if cocking them, then did the same for her hips, and said, “Very definitely not here.”
    I couldn’t believe it when she walked up to the guy with the cue stick and took it out of his hands. “Trust me,” she said to him, jutting her hip out against the man’s thigh, “they won’t hurt Alex.”
    The