Half the Day Is Night by Maureen F. McHugh Read Free Book Online

approved. Fine with her, she was delighted to see him take the initiative. “Lead on,” she said.
    â€œIf I go past, there is no, how do you say,” he held out his wrist, “it will not make it go off?”
    The officer shook her head, there was no sensor in the booth.
    â€œWhat trips it off?” Mayla asked again.
    Places like banks, jewelry stores, shops that would have a security system.
    â€œAs long as we avoid banks we’re basically okay?” Mayla said.
    â€œPretty much,” the officer said.
    *   *   *
    Wallace was a pretty neighborhood. The fronts of the flats were clean and bright: blues or corals to about halfway up and clean whitewashed white above. The windows were covered with ornate grilleworks, metal lattices of roses and leaves or curling vines with butterflies.
    They found a café with pseudo-wooden tables and yellow walls with fantastic clocks painted on them. Mayla sat down and found she was worn out. Traveling made her tired. Maybe she wouldn’t go back to work, it was going to be late. But she’d call Alex, her boss, and let him know about the meeting with Polly Navarro.
    A burro made her feel better. David seemed a little taken aback by the waitress. She wore a peasant skirt and blouse but her hair was bright red and she had ocher and green stripes that ran not just across her eyelids but from temple to temple. War paint. She didn’t look very much like a peasant girl in a cantina unless perhaps the cantina was in the infamous neon district in São Paulo.
    Still in all, she thought as they walked back to the checkpoint, a little lunch made all the difference in the world.
    Riding the pedestrian mover she couldn’t see the checkpoint. She checked the time, it was just about thirty minutes, just the time they’d been told to be back. Then she saw that it was lying on its side, folded flat. A crew of three in coveralls was getting ready to load it on a skid. There wasn’t any sign of Marine Security.
    â€œThey are gone?” David said.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said and started to walk down the moving sidewalk. The flats fled past them, and then she was stepping off, feeling the strain in her knees as she changed from the speed of the ped mover to solid floor. Two women in maroon coveralls were strapping the folded checkpoint to the skid and a third, wearing a headset, was supervising.
    â€œExcuse me,” Mayla said to the stocky woman in the headset. “We were supposed to meet an officer here?”
    The woman looked at her. “No officer here now. We are all closed up now.”
    â€œNo,” Mayla said, “they told us to be here now. My security man has a telltale on and someone was going to be here to take it off.”
    The woman looked at David. “I don’t know nothing about that,” she said.
    â€œCan you call and check?” Mayla said. She didn’t want to get irritated. If she got irritated they’d never get anything done.
    â€œThe officer,” David told the woman, “his name is Titon.”
    She looked at David as if she wasn’t sure about him, then pulled her headset mic up. “This is Lupe at Sant Nic,” she said. “I got two people here say they are waiting on an officer named Titon.” She listened, eyes on nothing. Her hair was cornrowed, with little silver fish at the end of each short braid.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, not sounding particularly concerned. “We are just maintenance, my dispatcher does not know about the uniforms.”
    David looked at Mayla, sighed. “Maybe there is someplace we should go. Nearby is there a post, for police?”
    â€œYou mean a police station? On Tarrou.”
    â€œWhere is Tarrou?” Mayla asked.
    The woman waved vaguely back in the direction they came. “Down three levels at the hub,” she said. To the other woman she said, “Is it secure?”
    Streets