He left it at that, and never brought it up again, an act of kindness that she kept with her for a long time.
By then they were both done with school; she worked in a clothing shop catering to upscale clientele, while Jared found work in a bar near 3rd Bridge, and soon he was making enough that he could afford to move out on his own. He rented a room in a shared house, leaving her alone in their grandfather's home. She had little trouble adjusting to the solitude; in some ways she enjoyed it, eating slowly while she watched television and going to bed whenever she wanted to. At times she had people over, friends from school or the occasional boyfriend, but for the most part she led a quiet, solitary life. Nor would anyone who saw her, a beautiful 20 year old woman with tattoos running like sleeves down the length of her arms, guess that she spent the majority of her time alone in a small house that still had the air and smell of the old miner who'd lived there until he died.
She discovered her mother's box of recipes while she was cleaning. It was tucked with a number of other books, mostly out of print self-help manuals, in the back of the upstairs closet. It contained more than 200 lined cards, only half of which had anything written on them, simple recipes for casseroles and soups, along with the occasional pasta or desert. Her mother had always been careful to prepare dinner for her two children, feeling that a home-cooked meal was as beneficial to them as exercise or education, and eating together as a family had been one of the few times in her life that Lauren remembered as explicitly happy. Finding instructions for all the meals of her childhood was like winning some wonderful, personal lottery, and she immediately abandoned her cleaning, rushing to the store to buy the necessary ingredients to make the first recipe on the list, a lentil soup liberally spiced with cinnamon and coriander. When she was finished, she called her brother and invited him over for dinner. He told her that he was busy, but she insisted, and at last he relented. When he arrived two hours later, his face, normally so restive as to be nearly unreadable, broke into a small, tentative smile.
"The lentil soup?" he asked.
"I found all her recipes," she replied.
That evening the two of them finished off the pot of soup, as well as 3 bottles of cheap red wine that Lauren had bought at a store in Northside. It was then that her brother chose to tell her that he was gay.
"I've known that forever," she said. Her brother snorted, and went searching in the cupboards above the sink for more alcohol.
She quit one job and took another very much like it at a store only two blocks away. She dated, and once or twice she even told herself that she was in love, but the truth was that none of the men she saw meant much to her. At times she was lonely, a feeling which inevitably descended on her at night, washing up after another meal eaten alone. She stood in the kitchen, unable to move, her hands encased in warm, soapy water, as a band of something like sadness tightened around her chest. She endured it, knowing that sooner or later she would be able to exhale, doing so smoothly and with concentrated effort, expelling all the air she'd held in her lungs and removing her hands from the water, wiping them calmly on a dish towel or the back of her jeans, and carrying on as if nothing had happened.
One night her brother called her just as she was emerging from one of these fits, or episodes (she could not bring herself to name them, knowing instinctively that to place a label on a thing was to grant it weight.)
"How are you?" he asked, but in a terse, perfunctory tone that made it clear he wasn't interested in the answer.
"Fine," she told him.
"Listen," he went on. "I need to drop by tonight."
"That's fine," she said again.
"I might have to stay for a few days."
"Also fine. It'll be good to have some company."
"Glad you feel that way, because I'll be bringing some with me."
"Who?"
"My boss."
"Your boss."
"It's a long story. I'll tell you more when I get there."
"Fine," she said.
Jared's boss was a man named Nathaniel Parker. He was well into his sixties, and an accident suffered years earlier had confined him to a wheelchair. Lauren had met him a few times, always at the bar where Jared worked, and although she couldn't say that she liked him, at least she found him amusing. She was not opposed to having him in her home, but she wondered why Jared wanted to bring him. However, when the two of them arrived they offered no explanation, only good-natured evasion Parker's part, and guarded looks from her brother. Besides his chair, which Lauren could see would be difficult to move around the small space, Parker brought several glass fish tanks, each of them housing a different animal - a pair of turtles, a lizard, even some kind of insect. Peering closer, Lauren noted that each of them, regardless of their species, were coloured the same drab, rusty shade of orange.
"What's with the zoo?" she asked. Parker laughed.
"A little hobby of mine."
"You paint them orange, or what?"
"The results of an experiment."
She raised an eyebrow.
"He feeds them all powder," explained Jared.
"Why?"
Parker laughed again.
"A profound question," he said.
"Is he high?" she asked her brother.
"Drunk I'm afraid," responded Parker. "You'll have to forgive me for that. It's been a trying day."
After he had gone to sleep, carried upstairs to the guest bedroom in her brother's arms, Jared informed her that Parker's interest in powder had attracted the attention of the Institute.
"A pair of their agents trashed his bar," he said. "They're looking for him now, and he's got nowhere else to go."
"Why is that your problem?"
"It's just for a couple of nights. Then I'll get him out of here."
All Lauren knew about the Institute for Applied Research was that it was based in the capital and had recently leased the rights to the Northside mines from the Tanning Corporation. She had no idea why powder was important enough to them that they would harass an old man or confiscate his collection of animals, but she wasn't in the mood to argue.
"Alright," she relented, and went to get started on the dishes.
The following day Parker confined himself to his room. Around six o'clock Lauren went to check on him. He was seated next to the small bed, sprinkling a handful of powder into one of his cages. Inside was a mid-sized lizard, its back and joints a vibrant orange that faded to a dark brown at his stomach. It was lying on a rock, its neck twisted at an absurd angle, and its mouth agape in an effort to catch the falling grains of powder.
"He seems to like it," said Lauren. Parker shrugged.
"He doesn't have a choice."
"Is the stuff addictive?"
The old man shook his head, but Lauren wasn't sure if he meant the gesture to confirm her guess or simply to avoid having to respond to it. He seemed to be moving in a haze, his motions slow and deliberate. His wide, lined face was drawn with worry or fatigue, and for a moment Lauren wondered how he felt about what was happening to him. Resting in his lap, his forearms had the pale, washed-out quality of bleached wood.
"I'd be happy to sample your cooking," he said at last. "Your brother tells me it's delicious."
"Alright, I'll tell Jared to bring you down."
The old man looked up at her.
"And if you're open to something new, I've brought these for desert," he said, tapping on the glass face of an aquarium. Inside she could make out the shape of an orange-tinted mantis, picking its way among a bed of dead leaves. Lauren couldn't tell whether or not he was joking, and decided that she had no interest in finding out.
"Great," she said, and turned and left the room. Downstairs her brother informed her that he'd invited the guy he was seeing to eat with them.
"That's fine," said Lauren.
"He's bringing someone else," he went on, as if he hadn't heard her. "Someone to meet Nathaniel."
"There's enough food," said La
uren simply.
Shortly afterwards, Jared brought Parker down from his room. The old man seemed to brighten at the prospect of food, smiling warmly and laughing often. He'd brought a few bottles of wine with him, and he poured generously.
"Wine and powder are a delightful mix," he declared at one point.
"I wouldn't know," Lauren answered.
"You've never tried?"
She shook her head.
"But my dear you must. Jared, run upstairs for me. The powder is on the dresser."
"No thanks," she said, forestalling her brother.
"There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of," Nathaniel insisted.
"Tell that to your lizard."
Nathaniel laughed, and seemed to drop the subject, turning instead to the glass of wine in front of him.
Jared's boyfriend and another man arrived shortly afterwards, and the five of them sat down to eat together. Lauren didn't think much of either of her new guests. Taylor, the man her brother was seeing, had a voice modulator strapped over his mouth, and used it throughout the meal to speak in a low, unassuming voice that never matched his body. The other man was around Lauren's age, of average height and build, and seemed to be involved in whatever trouble Parker had landed himself in. Lauren kept out of the conversation as much as possible, quietly angry at her brother for bringing these people into her home. When dinner was finished, she went upstairs, hoping to go to bed early, but sleep refused to come. Her room was too hot, and her thoughts had the ragged, scraping quality of shattered glass. She turned one way and then another, curling into a ball