“Speaking of better days,” Jenine said, “have you been by the Nest lately?”
Mission shook his head. He finished his water with another long pull and filled it halfway back up. “I will tomorrow.” He turned and studied his friend and had a sudden sense of how grown up they had become, standing around like that, both with jobs, sipping water from dented cups, swapping memories of the long ago. “You?”
She nodded. “I was up last weekend. A few of us are trying to go more regularly, help with the kids, though there aren’t as many of them around as there used to be.”
“A few of you? Did Rodny go?”
He braced himself for her reply. An old rumor had spread that the two of them had been spending time together, back before Rodny was swallowed up by his work. Jenine was going to tell him that yes, she and Rodny were in love, had made it official, had registered with the Pact. She was going to tell him and break his heart—
“I haven’t seen Rod in a while. I was going to ask you. Whatever they have him doing in IT, they don’t seem to let him out much.”
Mission shrugged and feigned indifference. In fact, he had grown concerned. The last two times he’d been through the thirties and stopped to see his friend, he’d been told Rodny was “unavailable.” Even when Mission insisted he didn’t mind waiting, they’d told him it wouldn’t happen. Mission worried his old friend was becoming a recluse or a workaholic, one more piece of his childhood wrested away. He used to laugh when Rodny boasted he’d be Mayor or a department head one day. It didn’t seem so funny anymore.
“I have to get back,” Jenine said. “I only get a ten.” She grabbed a small towel from a hanger over the sink and rubbed the cup inside and out. She set it back on the pile and held her hand out for Mission’s. “You got another delivery today, or are you done?”
“I’m done.” He finished his water and let her have the cup. “I’m crashing in the waystation on nineteen. I might do a run up-top before heading down to see the Crow tomorrow.”
“So what’re you doing tonight?” She waved her consent as Mission held up his thermos questioningly. “You wanna hang out? Me and some friends are going up to twenty-three to drop paint bombs.”
“I can’t tonight.” His metal thermos sang as it was filled, and he felt doubly bad for not bringing her anything. “I’ve got this thing later.”
“What thing? I thought you were gonna sack out.”
“I meant that I have to get up early. And haven’t you gotten a little old for paint bombs?”
Jenine smiled. “There’s this place on twenty-three where if you release at just the right spot, the bomb goes almost a hundred levels down before splatting at one-twenty-two.”
Mission shifted his weight to his other foot. “Yeah, I’ve seen it.” He wanted to tell her that he walked through that spot on one-twenty-two all the time, that people he knew down there complained, that Sharen, another porter, had nearly been hit by a paint bomb dropped from the Mids a few weeks ago. Instead, he told Jenine about the time something had whistled by his head in the dead of night as he worked his way through the eighties. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea,” he told her.
Jenine’s smile melted. She didn’t say anything, didn’t have to—the silence was enough. It was as if she were beginning to understand something even better than Mission did: he was no longer just of the Up Top. He was a child of the entire silo, now. It meant more than being a target everywhere he went. It meant having no one to conspire with anymore, no one to pick out targets with in whispers.
“Well, you’ve gotta get up early tomorrow, anyway.”
“Yeah.” He brushed his hair off his forehead. All the barbers he passed in a typical week, never enough time to stop. He would look like Frankie soon enough. “Hey, it was good seeing you.”
“Same. For sure. Take care of yourself, Mish. Watch your steps.”
Mission smiled. And this time, when she leaned in to touch his neck and kiss his cheek, he was ready to reciprocate. “You know I will,” he said, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “You watch your steps as well.”
•5•
Later that night, Mission could still feel the soft touch of her hand on his neck and the press of her lips to his cheek. In the quiet and deathly darkness of the silo’s nighttime, he could hear Jenine whispering for him to be safe.
The lights had been dimmed so man and silo might sleep. It was those wee hours when children were long hushed with sing-song lullabies and only those with trouble in mind crept about. Mission held very still in that darkness and waited. He thought on love and other forbidden things. And somewhere in the dark, there came the chirp of rope wound tight and sliding against metal, the bird-like sound fibers made as they gripped steel and strained under some great burden.