Free Crawlers by John Shirley Page A

come from Macy’s, a gold link belt, a white silk blouse, tennis shoes that didn’t quite go with the rest of it. Just a little makeup. Mom almost never wore any either.
    Lacey’s nails were oxblood, too, but pretty short, because she typed a lot, Adair supposed. She was a journalist.
    “Hi, you guys!” Lacey said, wheeling two hefty American Tourister bags up to them. “Thanks for picking me up.” She beamed at her sister. “Suze! You look great!”
    Lacey embraced her sister, and after a moment Mom returned the embrace. Lacey stepped back as if to appraise her, looking a little puzzled by something.
    “Glad you could come,” Mom said. She said it brightly, but with no real conviction.
    “Well, I guess I’m committed, ’cause I put a lot of my stuff in storage. I’ve been sort of mulling moving out here. Into the city, probably, if I can get a job that’ll pay for the rents you guys put up with around here.”
    “I can’t advise it,” Mom said. “The rents are . . . horrendous.”
    Lacey’s eyebrows went up. “You were just saying what a good thing it was for me to come, just last night.” She chuckled, hiding her hurt behind a mask of amused indifference, and grinned at Adair. “Your mom has turned mercurial. Wait a minute, that can’t be Adair, not after just three years. Not this gorgeous babe. No way.” She turned a facetious scowl on her sister. “What’ve you done with my niece, and who is this imposter?”
    Adair smiled at the joke, but Mom had a peculiar blandness in her face as she looked back at Lacey. “What do you mean?”
    “Hello, Mom?” Adair said. “It’s a joke?”
    Mom smiled. “Hello? I was joking, too.”
    “And look at Cal!” Lacey went on. “All-star something or other. Damn, they grow kids big now. You helping your dad with the business still?”
    Cal looked away. “Not lately.”
    Mom turned to Cal. “Cal? Isn’t there something you’re supposed to do?”
    “Uhhh . . . no?”
    Adair turned him a look of slack disgust. “Get her bag, dumbass!”
    “Oh, okay, I was going to, whatever,” Cal mumbled. He took the larger of the two bags, and they started toward the parking lot.
    “There
are
wheels on those bags, Cal,” Lacey said, smiling, seeing Cal was carrying it by his side. “High technology. It’s the latest thing.”
    “Oh, yeah, huh.”
    “What a dumbass,” Adair said.
    “That’s twice you called me that. Next time you want me to fix your computer you can just shit-can it.”
    “Then you suck,” Adair said matter-of-factly.
    “You suck.”
    “You suck.” She dropped back to walk beside Lacey. “Hey, you’re gonna be here for Thanksgiving?”
    “I will.”
    “It’d be so cool if you moved out here, Lacey!” Knowing she was bubbling a bit but meaning it. There was something reassuring about Lacey, right now.
    “You could help me pick out an apartment, if I decide to do it,” Lacey said. “I sold my car just to have enough cash to pay down on a nice place. You have to have big security deposits, I’ve heard. Key fees and all that.”
    “It’s not so bad now, with the dot-com collapse,” Adair said. “Rents have gone down some.”
    “I’ve got some applications in with the local papers, but I’m not even sure I want to work for them. To tell you the truth, I think I’m going to take a couple of college classes or something, till I figure out what else to do. I’ve already found a little local school to give me that ever-elusive sense of purpose.”
    “I recommend the colleges in San Francisco,” Mom said, unlocking the car. “They’re much better.”
    “Oh, no, Diablo is good. It’s one of the best ones!” Adair burst out. Wondering why Mom so obviously didn’t want her sister to go to school around here.
Is she trying to push Aunt Lacey away?
    “Diablo is exactly the one I picked,” Lacey said, smiling at Adair. “Give me the school named after the devil, every time.”
    Cal and Adair laughed. Mom just smiled