Re: sushi-time: adrian, patrick, lou
Lou's family ran on blood. Born, bitten, it was a curse in currents and cell-counts. She hadn't been tested in a lab set-up since but she figured maybe it showed under a microscope, the curling fat scythe of a waxing moon. She had never been good at bio or chem or anything else that required hard time in a classroom. The family that had knotted together in the center of a city rode in on bite, and the family that was around a table with beef that smelled sweet and heavy in the air and made the back of Lou's throat prickle with saliva - even if she would have taken the beef close to raw - that was blood. Didn't matter how thin. Blood in water was still red.
Lou hadn't asked about Connie. Could read a room, even if she couldn't get all the small print. Connie was way off the table. "Isn't that more dangerous?" Lou worked chopsticks like a pro, despite the bullshit about sushi, and she forked beef to her mouth as elegantly as anyone else in the restaurant. "Not having your own kind to fall back on." It seemed simple to Lou, safety in numbers. "I'm missing something here, why is the government better than the other people?"
It sounded like a headache, the kind of heavy expectation that settled like silt in the quickening of a bad decision. "Don't invite trouble, kid. It already sounds like you're under a microscope. Keep some room," Lou advised, but her bad decisions were rear view, mostly. She looked at Patrick.
"You're on government pay-roll." It wasn't an accusation. Statement of fact.