“Yeah, they’re taking good care of us. I mean . . .” Chloe spread her arms wide, taking in the space around her. “Take a look at this room! I heard the food’s good, too.”
Kira forced a smile. Where had Chloe lived that made a glorified dorm room seem upscale?
Kira changed back into her street clothes and hung the uniforms on the front rod of the closet.
Chloe talked while unpacking another box. “So, the class list says you’re from New York?”
“No, I grew up in Iowa. Ames. My parents worked for Iowa State.” Kira rolled her suitcase under the uniforms and shoved it to the back. “I went to New York to be an actress.”
“Well, that sounds cool.”
Kira let her shoulders fall along with her face. “It didn’t turn out the way it does on vid.”
Chloe placed a statuette of Mary into what looked like a small shrine on an open shelf. The space already held a cross with a rosary draped on it and what looked like an icon of a saint Kira didn’t recognize. Did gunfighters have a patron? They certainly needed one.
Her unpacking done, Kira pulled her chair from the desk and sat. “What about you? Where are you from?”
“Des Moines. South side. Born and raised.” Chloe folded a box flat and stacked it on top of the others. “They say sometimes they have to send gunfighters out of town, and the Guild makes them get fancy places for us. You know, those hotels where it’s more than one room.”
“Suites?” That was a sudden move from the topic of where Chloe was from.
“Yeah.” Chloe’s face brightened. “Suites. You think it’s true? You think they really put us up in suites?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that much about being a gunfighter. I’m more worried about getting through training.” With the big cut after the sixth week looming ahead, staying focused on graduation was a plausible reason not to talk about what they were training to do.
Chloe didn’t respond. Instead, she opened another box, set a picture frame on top of her dresser and turned it on. A gray-haired man and woman stood together, beaming. Two younger men stood to their left, with Chloe standing in front of them. Standing next to Chloe, Lorenzo looked even younger than he had a few minutes ago.
Kira smiled at the image. “So that’s your family.”
Chloe brushed the edge of the frame wistfully. “Yeah, that’s us all right. Mom and Dad, Michael and Desi, and me and Lorenzo.” The picture shifted. An older man hefted a red wooden ball a little smaller than his hand, his gaze focused outside the frame. “That’s my uncle Luca, about to whip Desi’s butt in bocce ball.” The picture shifted again, this time to a baby on a blanket. The camera had caught the infant with a smile breaking out on its face and its pudgy hands in midwave. “That’s my nephew, Alex.”
“What do your parents think about you being a gunfighter?”
Chloe shrugged. “They’re worried about me. But they can’t take care of me forever.” Chloe slumped into her desk chair. “Ever since I dropped out of school, it’s been the same thing. I get a job, or I get two jobs, or I get three. I get a little money together, get a place and maybe I get a roommate, and things go pretty good for a while. Then I get laid off, or my hours get cut, or I get sick and miss a couple shifts or something and boom! I’m back in Mom and Dad’s basement, or somebody’s couch, and I crawl out again, and then . . .” She waved her hand, as if to push her own words away. “Mom and Dad can’t work that much longer, and if they quit, they can’t have me showing up to put a hole in their groceries. Michael and Anna have the baby now, so crashing there is out. I’ve gotta figure out how to take care of myself.” Chloe’s face brightened a little. “I’m doing it, too. I used my signing bonus to put a down payment on one of those duplex places. It’s a dump, but Lorenzo and Desi are fixing it up. I’m paying for some of their school, so it helps all of us.” She went to the frame and brought up a picture of a nondescript brick building with two entrances and a battered exterior. “I want to rent out one side and live in the other. So, when I’m done here, it’s all paid for and I’ve always got a place to be, and I’ve always got some money coming in.” Chloe worked her fingers, as if they were stiff.
“But they’re OK with you shooting people?” There. It was out.
Chloe sat up straight. “The way I figure it, we’ll be kind of like cops, you know? We’ll deal with the people who won’t follow the rules and keep insisting they’re right after everybody’s told them they’re wrong. It’s better if they duel with one of us instead of showing up at an office someplace and gunning a bunch of people down, isn’t it?” She looked to Kira for agreement.
Kira maintained a neutral expression.
Undeterred by the lack of an answer, Chloe kept her attention on Kira. “What about you? Why are you here?”
Kira squirmed. Might as well go with the truth, as ugly as it was. “I got behind on a lifetime services contract loan and the property recovery teams were coming for me.” She shuddered at the notion of becoming property that had to be recovered by enforcers working for her contract holders. “The signing bonus was enough to stop it.” She pulled into herself. What would Chloe think of her now?
Her roommate’s eyes went wide. “A lifetime services contract? For what?”
“Student loans. I went to Paget for undergrad, then I got an MFA . . .”
Chloe’s brow wrinkled. “Couldn’t your parents, like, help you out a little bit?”
Kira took a deep breath. “My parents are dead. Staph infection. Dad got it after surgery, Mom got it from him. I’ve been on my own since I was nineteen, and I guess I made some bad decisions.” People were usually less judgmental if you took some responsibility.
Chloe looked stricken. “I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .”
“It’s OK. That’s just how it is for me.”
Chloe’s tone shifted toward incredulity. “Don’t you have any people at all? I mean . . .”
“Some cousins in Portland, but we don’t see each other much.”
The shock didn’t fade from Chloe’s face. “How much debt do you have, anyway?”
Kira looked at the floor. “That’s kind of personal.”
“Sorry.” Chloe sounded genuinely pained. “I forgot. Rich people don’t like to talk about that stuff.”
Kira frowned. “Rich? I just told you; I’m broke on my ass.”
Chloe waved the objection away. “That’s not what I mean. You get out of this, you get the right job, or find the right guy, and you’ll fit right in.” Chloe rolled her shoulders. “Me? I could have more money than the president of TKC, and the minute I open my mouth, people would know right where I come from and wonder why I don’t go back there. And that’s if they can’t tell just by looking.”
Kira squirmed again. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well, I do. But it’s OK.” Chloe stood. “Do you really want to come to Sunday dinner?”
Kira nodded. “Yeah, if you’re going. I guess I’m afraid that on Sunday this place will clear out and I’ll be here by myself while everyone else is away, and . . . I don’t know, I don’t want that right now.”