Chapter 42 Orphan Standards
Orphan Standards
Candy followed Anca through the grocery store.
Anca sniffed heads of lettuce and pressure-tested pears, tomatoes, avocados, holding each food up to an unerring ideal.
She didn’t seem to be checking merely for freshness or plumpness but for some intangible that was particular to each item, a maximum ripeness for the respective flavor profile.
It was a different kind of perfectionism from Candy’s; different from Evan’s, too, which sometimes lapsed into OCD.
Like X, Candy had been trained to choose her food primarily for purity, a discipline useful in Third World areas of operation with questionable quality standards.
Orphan standards resulted in a consistent flavor, too, she supposed, a cleanness on the palate, but they were more about maximizing vigor and minimizing maladies than they were about culinary delight.
Minerals and earthiness drawn out of salmon, basil, spring water—or, for X, vodka.
Rigor and excellence joined in one true thing.
Anca was deliberating mightily over a box of cremini mushrooms. Something shifted in her affect. Eyes darting around, breath coming harder, hand hooking over the edge of the produce display.
Candy said, “You okay?”
“I think so. Light-headed.” Her mouth pulsed as if tasting something. “Waiting to see if the colors start coming.” She sloughed off her new backpack, removed her seizure plan, and slipped it around her neck.
Candy nodded at the laminated card. “You don’t need that. I’m here.”
When Anca looked up at her, her face was washed pale with distress. “What if you leave?”
The question resonated in the hollow of Candy’s chest.
She said, “I will not.”
Anca drew in a deep breath, blew it out. Around them shopping carts clattered. Hidden speakers played a relaxed instrumental version of “Hotel California,” sacrilegious in its laxative smoothness. Nothing happened.
And then more nothing happened.
Finally Anca’s hand unclenched from the rail of the mushroom bin. “Just a panic attack. From being out. Out here.”
“It’s okay. You’re safe.”
“How do you know?”
The grocery store had five aisles of which one remained in clear sight now, the others out of view or partially visible given the convex security mirrors in the ceilings.
Candy had tallied seven people in the first row, four in the second, five in the third, none in the fourth, and two in the fifth.
Of the eighteen, six were men. Two were with spouses, confirmed by wedding rings and affect.
One was elderly, a non-threat. Another homeless, broken flip-flops connoting he was not undercover.
A military-aged man in Condiments and Spices wore running shorts and a T-shirt insufficient to hide a gun; an Apple Watch on his right wrist profiled him as left-handed in case she needed to fight him.
The zit-faced teenager in a hoodie browsing Pet Supplies was sufficiently skinny that she could snap him like kindling should the need arise.
Three checkout ladies in the front, a butcher, and two stockers working the floor, all uniformed and wearing clip-on IDs with proper photos.
There were two sets of automated doors in the front, one bathroom unoccupied and fed by token coins, a door behind the butcher counter leading to storage, and a side door letting out into an alley with a cargo bay.
They had a subway stop a block and half east, another one a half mile to the north, and multiple streets, stores, and lobbies in which to lose themselves.
If she had to hijack a vehicle, they were less than a mile from Interstate 87, 1.
2 from the Bronx River Parkway, and 3.5 miles northeast of the Willis Avenue Bridge in case they needed to bolt for greater population density and Manhattan police presence.
Candy said, “Because I do.”
“There are a lot of men in here.”
“Six,” Candy said.
Anca nodded. “It feels like I’m being watched. Everywhere I go.” She assessed another box of mushrooms, found them wanting, put them back. “Will that ever go away?”
“It’ll decrease with time. And it’ll help once the men who did this to you are … dealt with.”
“Is that where Evan is now? Dealing with them?”
“No. He’s dealing with the company that profits from videos like the ones they make.”
Candy heard the front doors part, watched another man enter in the surveillance mirror. Distorted form ambling in, glancing around, big, burly, bearded. The elderly man and one of the married couples had left. Down to five.
“I overheard you and Evan disagreeing last night. About whether I should talk to a law-enforcement woman. Give a statement. About the men who … did this to me.”
Candy said, “Yes.”
“There are many others?” Anca asked. “That they have done this to?”
Candy took Anca’s arm, moving them toward checkout. “Yes.”
As Anca unloaded her basket onto the conveyor, Candy backed up, peering up an aisle, trying to spot the newest man to enter. She caught a glimpse of him cutting the corner, heading to Paper Products. Young guy, scraggly beard, what looked like a port-wine-stain birthmark on his cheek.
She heeled back to Anca, helped gather up the bags.
They stepped outside into the cold, Candy surveying pedestrians, parked cars, passing vehicles.
A half block behind them, the grocery doors dinged open. Candy glanced back.
The young man with the beard and the birthmark emerged. He wore a thick canvas jacket, hands stuffed inside. Weight back on his heels, he stared after them.
Was he checking Candy out? It happened plenty.
She swung around, walking backward, eye-fucking him.
He stared back. Unmoving.
The air tasted of rain. A wet breeze pulled at her hair, tugged at her sleeves, but there was a stillness between her and the young man, an unseen crackling of menace. She felt electricity between them and up her spine, a tightening of her skin at the back of her neck.
She could drop the grocery bags and run him down. But that would leave Anca here unguarded. And besides, he could be any rando city freak eyeing her.
His teeth came visible in that scraggly beard. He flicked his chin back in acknowledgment, wheeled into a turn, and disappeared around the corner.
Anca had pivoted as well, staring at the blank spot on the sidewalk where the man had stood.
“Was that”—Anca’s voice quavered—“one of them?”
Candy shook her head. “Don’t know.”
“That’s the problem. Could be anyone. Could be everyone.”
They kept on toward Anca’s apartment.
Anca plodded at Candy’s side, bags swinging, head lowered. “They are still out there.”
Not a question so much as an observation that she was still getting her head around.
Candy said, “Yes.”
“They will do this to others.”
Candy said, “Yes.”
“Okay,” Anca said. “Yes, then.”
“Yes, what?”
“I will do it. I will talk to her. The law-enforcement lady.”
They reached Anca’s building and she shouldered through the door into the lobby.
Candy gave another sweeping glance around behind them, the sidewalks dark, the asphalt gleaming with humidity, the pedestrians with faces shadowed by hats and umbrellas.
That electricity pulsed once more, tingling up her spine.
Paranoia took hold, feeding on itself as it always did.
She stepped inside, drawing the door shut against rain and darkness.
Could be anyone.
Could be everyone.