De Facto

Gaia stepped out of the dank subway station and into an equally dank, overcast morning just typical for late March on the East Coast. She strode downtown on Lexington, the sidewalk cluttered with strollers, nannies, and purebred dogs. It was early in the morning, but they were already out in full force: the perfect people, spending wads of money on Lexus strollers and canine cologne.

Downtown, where Gaia used to live, the buildings were smaller and the people a little more on the ball. Within blocks of her brownstone were immigrant neighborhoods whose streets brimmed with personality. Exotic smells drifted out of shops whose signs were handwritten in different languages. Chinatown. Little Italy. Up here, everything looked as bland and generic as a J. Crew catalog, and Gaia had given it her own name: Little Connecticut.

She had a job to do this morning, and she wasn't looking forward to it. When she'd first gotten parked in the superfancy digs of Natasha and her daughter, Tatiana, she'd been pretty peeved. Her dad had a habit of ditching her in the well-appointed apartments of his friends while he indulged his five-year-old habit of totally ignoring her existence. But what had started out as annoyance at the two Russian women's insistence on interfering with her life had become decidedly more sinister.

It was bad enough Russkie the Younger (that would be Tatiana) had her eye on Gaia's would-be boyfriend, Ed. Russkie the Elder (the lovely Natasha, for those of you playing along at home) was not only digging her enameled nails into Tom Moore's heart, she was betraying his every stupid, lovesick move to Tom's evil twin brother, Loki.

Gaia didn't want to believe it. She would have much preferred to be one of the world's trusting idiots, a blissful moron convinced of the basic goodness of humanity. But there was optimism, and then there was reality. Gaia had learned, once and for all, not to hope for the best when the worst was, invariably, about to smack her upside the head.

The only thing she could do now was confront Natasha and get her the hell away from her dad.

Of course, there was the nagging question of why she owed Tom anything. Thanks to Oliver's surprise visit to the apartment the night before, Gaia wasn't even sure that he was her actual dad. Oliver, otherwise known as Loki, was his identical twin, and he claimed to be Gaia's dad, too, and neither one had done much of a job of convincing her.

Then again, Gaia had to admit, the letters Tom had given her -- sheaves and sheaves of paper dating back to when she was twelve, detailing how much he loved her, missed her, and hated to have to leave her, neatly typed and hand signed every single day that they hadn't been together -- were pretty convincing evidence that he, at least, gave a crap where she woke up and who she hung out with, even if he had disappeared for most of her adolescence. The letters were way corny with emotion. Not to mention that other epistolary collection -- the letters from Tom to that snake Natasha, detailing his hopes for his daughter, filled with such longing, it hurt to think about them. So Gaia had to figure that even if he wasn't her biological father, he at least had a stake in her well-being -- despite the fact that it was Oliver who appeared, like magic, whenever she most needed him.

She stepped into the ornate foyer of the building, her sneakers squeaking on the marble floor, and hit the elevator button. She studied her reflection in the thin strip of brass behind the button. High forehead, dirty blond hair hanging to her waist, and an angry set to her jaw. This was the face that Tom thought about every day? Nothing like the so-called normal girls at the Village School. Gaia wasn't convinced -- but she wasn't about to be taken for a ride by Natasha.

If getting to the bottom of the situation meant, de facto, helping her "father," then so be it.

Regular Guy

It was amazing, Tom Moore mused, that you could be surrounded by so much physical beauty and still be dealing with ugly, menacing danger. He stepped out on the terrace of his hotel room, scanning the white beach and turquoise water for any sign of spies or hit men but saw only frolicking tourists, and hotel employees, dressed in spanking-white tunics, carrying trays of umbrella-topped drinks and piles of fluffy white towels. For a moment he allowed himself to relax as Natasha came up behind him and wound her arms around his torso, caressing his chest as she kissed the very center of his back. Their first night together had been filled with more passion than he'd felt since Katia's death, followed by the first full night's sleep he'd had since then, too.

"You're up early," he said.

"Not as early as you," she responded in her lilting Russian accent, running her fingernails up his chest.

"I suppose I have a touch of jet lag from my trip down from New York," she added, pouring coffee from the tall silver decanter that room service had placed outside their door. "Anyway, we have work to do," she said with a sigh.

Tom just gazed out the window.

"You are thinking about Gaia?" Natasha asked.

"She's so far away," Tom said, stepping inside, leaving the sliding doors wide open so that the humid tropical air filled the room. He picked up the delicate coffee cup in one hand and slugged down the rich black liquid. "I don't like being where I can't rush in if something happens to her."

"But you're almost never near enough to her -- physically, I mean -- to do that," Natasha pointed out as she stirred two lumps of sugar into her coffee and broke a biscotti in half. "It must be torment. I don't even like being away from Tatiana for a weekend."

"It's been like having an arm cut off," Tom agreed. "If I can just take care of Loki, I'll be able to be her father again -- I won't have to worry that just by being near her, I'm putting her life in danger."

"Then that's what we'll do," Natasha said, with such conviction Tom believed they'd really do it this time.

"At least I know we're close," he said. "Somehow that takes the edge off the stress. I don't remember when I've ever felt so..."

"Carefree?"

"Not exactly. But something approaching it." He put down his coffee and stroked his finger softly along the delicate flesh that peeked from the top of Natasha's bathrobe.

Tom's Blackberry beeped. He jumped and broke away to see what the minicomputer had to say to him. "What is it?" Natasha asked, seeing a shadow cross his face.

"There's a delay," he answered her. "The operative we're supposed to track isn't going to be here for another day."

Tom felt the familiar clutch in his gut, telling him he could do nothing but lay low till someone, somewhere, did their job. Normally he hated downtime; action quieted the noise in his head. But this time? This time the agony of impatience was almost immediately replaced by relief -- and even joy.

In the five years since his wife's murder, Tom had never allowed himself to get close to anyone. Sure, he had his colleagues at the Agency. And he could always depend on George Niven to give him honest, fatherly counsel when he needed it. But since he had been forced to distance himself from his daughter, it seemed that his heart, unable to shower its love on the one he most wanted to be with, had just hardened into a dull lump in his chest.

But now? Something had changed. He didn't know if it was just the passage of time, or Natasha's passing resemblance to Katia, or something else -- like true love -- but he was feeling his heart begin to beat again, and he began to actually believe there might be an end to these years of constant struggle.

Yes. Maybe this wasn't a waste of a day. Maybe his work here in the Cayman Islands wasn't the only thing he had to think about. Maybe for once he could stop being Tom Moore, government agent, and just for a little while become Tom Moore, regular guy.

Über-Gwyneth

Heather was giddy enough to actually be bouncing as she walked into the Starbucks near school. It was time to meet Josh, and every nerve ending in her body was alert with anticipation.

He had already ordered up a grande for her, remembering the dash of cinnamon and extra foam. She loved how attentive he was. Suddenly being slighted by Sam and Ed in favor of Gaia didn't matter -- Josh was more intriguing than either of them had been, and he was interested only in her.

"Good morning," she said, taking the foamy drink from his hand and sticking her cheek out for him to kiss.

"Same to you, gorgeous," he answered, nuzzling her hair so that she shivered with the delicious warmth of it. "And what's on the schedule for this hot student body?"

"I predict a pop quiz on T. S. Eliot in my advanced English class," she said. "We're reading The Waste Land."

"Oh, yeah -- 'April is the cruelest month' and all that?" Josh asked, his cheeks dimpling in the most adorable way as he flashed his gorgeous grin. "I remember getting lost in that poem. Parts of it are so sad. You're lucky to be reading it for the first time."

"Oh, I read it in seventh grade," Heather revealed, shaking her head. "It's brilliant. And 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' too. 'In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo....' "

"Yeah, I think I overheard those women when I took a shortcut through Bergdorf's." Josh laughed.

"Ugh, don't remind me," Heather said. His joke hit home for Heather. Her own "friends" were like cardboard cutouts, yapping about paraffin manicures, Brazilian bikini waxes, and parties in the Hamptons. And somehow she was their queen. Which meant she had to pretend to be as vapid as they were just to survive in their presence.

She looked at Josh, gazing deeply into his eyes. It was so clear to her that he really cared about her. That was why he was going to help her. Help her outdo Gaia once and for all.

"So I've been thinking," she said, leaning forward conspiratorially. "About that little visit we made? To your friend's... apartment the other day?"

"Oh, yeah," Josh said, pulling back from her a bit. "I'm sorry if that freaked you out. I wouldn't be surprised if you never wanted to talk about it again. Unless..."

"Unless what?" Heather asked.

"Well." Josh let out a sigh as he seemed to collect his thoughts. "I just -- I feel like -- ugh, this sounds so stupid."

"No, go on," Heather encouraged him.

"I feel like there's a connection between us," Josh said. "There's something about you that I really respond to, and I just -- I really like being around you, you know?"

Heather's heart pounded. "I, uh -- yes, I do know," she said, trying with every fiber of her being not to sound like an immature dork.

"And I think what I'm feeling from you is just, like, this energy, this spirit, that sets you apart from other girls. And I feel like if you could magnify that energy..." He looked at her, his blue eyes wide with possibility. "I just think you'd be unstoppable. I think you'd be a bright, shiny creature that would make people gasp with awe."

"I... oh!" Heather had no idea what to say. She couldn't believe Josh saw that part of her, the part she never showed anyone.

"But hey. This is your decision, you know? Anyway, I interrupted you. Were you going to ask me something about it?"

"I was," Heather said. Then she paused. Josh made it sound so enticing -- like this experiment would change her life and turn her into one of those charmed creatures for whom everything seems to go right and over whom everyone seems to flip. Like some sort of über-Gwyneth.

"I just wish I had a little more information -- like it'd be nice to know exactly what it is that they're giving me," she said. "And whether there's some sort of release I'll have to sign? How do I know they're not going to implant a homing device in my skull? Little things like that."

"Ah. Shoot." Josh looked disappointed. It felt like the sun had just gone behind a cloud; Heather couldn't stand to see his face fall like that.

"I'm not saying no!" she insisted. "I just have a few questions."

"Oh, gorgeous," Josh said, putting his arms around her and dragging both Heather and her chair into the warm place where she was totally surrounded by his presence. "You don't have to do anything...."

"I'm not saying no," she repeated.

"Yeah. But you're second guessing yourself," he said, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. "That kind of thinking is for the cookie-cutter people, the ones who inspect every opportunity while feeling too terrified to ever actually act."

Heather sighed, running her fingers along the highly toned bicep that was draped across her chest. "You're making it all sound so tempting," she said. "I just want to think it over some more. Is that all right?" She looked up, meeting his eyes and hoping not to see that awful disappointment again.

He sighed, too. It wasn't quite disappointment. Maybe more like hope. "I wish you'd do it," he said. "I want the best for you. I want everyone to see what I see in you."

With that, he locked lips with her, and Heather felt like she was drinking turbocharged Gatorade.

"I'll keep taking these," she promised, opening her bag so he could see the prescription bottle. "That way I'll be ready at a moment's notice when it's time to do it. All right?"

"That's totally cool," Josh said. "Think it over. I know you'll make the right decision, whatever it is."

Heather relaxed and nestled into his muscular warmth. As she sat breathing in his musky scent, her mind wandered into a reverie: Her and Gaia facing off, Gaia focused and determined until Heather began fighting back with amazing speed. Then she saw Gaia's face fall apart like a puzzle, confused and startled by Heather's new grace, speed, and bravery. Heather finished her off with a kick to the gut, and Gaia fell. In her daydream Heather turned to see Josh, who nodded, took her by the hand, and drew her in for a passionate smooch. Heather shivered as a delicious thrill ran through her.

"Cold?" Josh asked, rubbing her arm.

"Stone-cold," Heather answered with a grin.

Maxim-Level Hotness

Ed lay on his back on a table, his legs pumping at a beeping machine. He was trying to concentrate on making his legs work on the weird StairMaster thing, but mostly he was trying to ignore the fact that a woman with the body of a Playboy Playmate was kneading the muscles of his thighs. This was like the beginning of a really bad late night Showtime movie.

"So, uh... where's Brian again?"

"He's out in San Francisco for the next few weeks," said Lydia, his substitute physical therapist. "Taking an advanced seminar in dynamic massage. You're stuck with me today."

Stuck? Lydia was hot. Which in any other setting would be a fine way for Ed to take his mind off his confusion over Gaia and Tatiana. But in this case, it was cause for distraction. Ed tried to think about baseball.

"Feel the burn?" Lydia asked.

"Sheee-yeah," Ed grumbled.

"All right. We have to talk." Thankfully, Lydia took her hand off Ed's upper leg and crossed her arms. She glared at Ed, and he wondered if his overactive hormones were somehow showing. Hey, I'm just a healthy, red-blooded American, he thought.

"Do you want to tell me why you're still on those crutches when you clearly don't need them anymore?"

What?
"Uh, hello, Earth to medical professional," Ed said, rolling his eyes. "I was in a massive skateboarding accident? Big hill, no brakes, Ed meets gravel? Two years in a wheelchair? Is any of this ringing a bell?"

Lydia laughed and turned to face him. "Yeah. But that's all in the past now. You've progressed a lot further than you're willing to admit, but you won't take that first step."

Ed stared at her, flabbergasted.

"I see this a lot," Lydia said. "The heart wants to get up and walk out of the chair, but the mind is still scared. Ed, there's nothing to be scared of. You can walk without your crutches, and if you let yourself, you can move on from your accident and all the pain it brought you."

Ed blinked. "Is that true? Why didn't Brian tell me?"

"He was probably just being soft on you," Lydia said. "Hoping you'd figure it out on your own. But that's not my MO. If you don't try walking before I see you next time -- take a break from the crutches -- I'm going to recommend that you get cut off from any more physical therapy."

A break? Ed wanted to toss the stupid crutches into a vat of sulfuric acid. But did Lydia know what she was talking about?

"How come you're so sure?" Ed asked. It seemed too easy, like the end of an episode of "Touched by an Angel." He stared at her. "How do I know I can do it?"

"You don't know you can do it," Lydia told him. That's the problem. But I do." She sighed, giving a decidedly unnurturing and rough massage to his calves. What this woman had in Maxim-level hotness, she sure was missing in bedside manner.

Ed stared at the ceiling. He couldn't ask Lydia any more questions. He knew he sounded like a total baby. But even if what she was saying was true, he didn't have the slightest idea what to do next.

Her tough-love treatment was suddenly softened by a couple of words of advice. "All right," she finally told him. "Here's the five-step plan. First, you get out of this environment. I know you've been working on the parallel bars, but that's the last thing I would recommend for a young guy like you. The sight of all those old geezers getting over their strokes is messing with your head. You need to try this somewhere that's home to you -- where you used to be able to walk."

"Got it," Ed said. "Nix the hospital setting."

"You're smarter than you look," Lydia told him. "Now, the second thing is, don't re-create the hospital in your home. Most people will strategically place large items of furniture all over the place, figuring they can lurch from the kitchen table to the counter and pretend that's walking. It's not."

"No?"

"Not even a little." Lydia looked down at him. "When my little brother was learning to walk, he always had to have something in his hand -- didn't matter whether it was connected to anything or not. If he was holding a block, a piece of blanket, even a carrot, he could waddle around, no problem. But if you took away whatever was in his hand, he thumped to the ground like his butt was a magnet and the floor was made of steel."

"I'll bet you took that little hunk of blanket away from him every chance you could," Ed wagered.

"Yep. I figured he'd be better off." Lydia shrugged. "Call it early training."

You scare me, Ed thought. "So what's three?"

"Step three -- fix your eyes on something across the room," Lydia said. "Focus on it so it's all you see. Never look down. Pretend the floor isn't there. Just fixate on getting to that point on the wall, and you'll make it."

"Uh-huh." It sounded like a good idea. Then again, eating boogers had sounded like a good idea when he was five.

"Number four is you have to just see your legs doing their work in your head. Forget trying to force them and straining to work each muscle," Lydia said. "You never did that before you lost the use of your legs. Just see them walking in your mind, like you're watching a movie, and it'll jog their muscle memory."

"Get it? Jog," Ed cracked before he could stop himself. He wanted so desperately to charm her, he was willing to go with his weakest material. Lydia didn't even pretend to smile.

"And five," she said. "Leap."

"Leap? I can't walk first?"

"Leap of faith," she told him. "Stop thinking so much and just do it."

Ed lay quietly, running through the five-step plan in his head. "Okay," he said. "I'll try it."

"Jedi warrior no try," Lydia told him. "Jedi warrior do."

Finally, an opening for a decent comeback -- "Thank you, Yoda. But I can't make any promises."

Still nothing. She didn't even skip a beat. It was as if she had blocked all her joke receptors. "So don't. It's no skin off my nose if you stay on those crutches the rest of your life. It's yourself you should be making the promise to."

Okay, he thought. Ed, I promise I'll... walk. Even inside his head, he sounded like a total doofus.

Nuclear Strike

So this is America, Tatiana thought as she sat alone in her giant, empty apartment. No mother, no friends, a boy who kissed her but still loved someone else, and no parties to take her mind off her problems. If this was the great USA, she'd just as soon get back on the airplane and make the thirteen-hour flight back home. At least there she had a life.

She sighed, wandered into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. This country. What kind of people name a food "La Yogurt"? Did they think they were going to fool anyone into thinking the French sat around eating strawberry-banana goo? Realizing she wasn't hungry, she slammed the door shut and continued her circuit of the apartment.

Maybe she could get a dog to keep her company. But that would never work. People picked up their dogs' droppings in this city. She sighed again and flicked on the radio in the living room, letting the ambient music of the dance-mix deejay fill the room. Twirling the volume dial up high, she noticed that her fingernails looked pathetically raggedy.

"You are going down the tubes," she scolded herself. Then she inspected her hands closely. Dry skin, and about a centimeter of cuticle showing.

Tatiana knew her mother had just gotten a fancy nail kit. She'd probably be annoyed at her for breaking it in, but that was her problem. If she was going to desert her daughter like this, she deserved to lose an emery board or two.

Tatiana entered her mother's ornate, marble bathroom and looked around. The bathrobe hanging behind the door made her heart lurch -- she missed Natasha horribly and didn't understand why these "translating emergencies" and special projects always called her away. Wasn't there anyone else who could do the job for the UN? Someone who didn't have a daughter? Tatiana opened the twin doors of the vanity under the sink and began digging through the bottles, boxes, and tubes piled up underneath.

"Mother, you're single-handedly keeping Sephora in business," she grumbled. "Ah!" she yelped, finally reaching a zippered black pouch.

She sat on the cool tiles and unzipped the patent leather, expecting nothing more than a buffer and some scissors. But something fluttered out and landed on the frilly yellow rug.

Tatiana picked it up and felt a wave of heat radiate from her heart. What was the English word for this feeling?

"Oh, gross," she said aloud.

It was a greeting card. With hearts and angels and flowers. Inside -- Tatiana couldn't help opening it -- was a note scrawled in masculine handwriting.

Natasha, I can't wait until you join me in the islands. The few days we'll be separated will be torture. Thank you for coming into my life. Tom.

Gross? This was worse than gross. It made her want to vomit.

She was used to Natasha dating. That was normal. And anyway, nobody ever really touched her mother, not in her heart. But this sentimental missive -- from Gaia's father -- was more than she could bear.

Perhaps she was misinterpreting the note. She read it a second time. And a third. She turned it upside down and sideways, but there was nothing to misinterpret -- Tom had it bad for her mother.

So what did this mean for Tatiana? In a wildest, worst-case scenario, it meant Gaia wasn't going to be just a temporary irritation. As long as their parents were together, Tatiana and Gaia would be forced to hang around together, too. Any vacation she took -- even back home to Russia, to finally see her family and friends again -- would include the two of them, too.

Thirteen hours on a plane with Gaia? Ach.

Or maybe the two of them would only vacation alone -- as they were apparently doing right now, Tatiana realized with a rush of fury. Last minute emergency, indeed: Natasha had lied to her -- lied to her own daughter's face -- and made her worry, when all the time she was carousing on a tropical island with the father of the worst girl in the entire world.

Argh! Tatiana wanted to rip the card in two. She was poised to do just that when an even more horrible thought produced an image that flashed across her consciousness with all the power and brightness of a nuclear strike: What if they get married?

Tatiana imagined the wedding: her mother in ivory lace, Tom in a dark suit, herself in an elegant blue Shelli Segal dress... and Gaia in combat boots and a flannel shirt.

Ugh! Gaia as a stepsister!

Tatiana was about to rip the note in two, knowing her mother would kill her and just not caring, when she froze. What was...

The music in the living room kept up its steady pounding. But there was some other noise, too. Something like a window thumping closed after having been thumped open?

For a moment she thought her mother was home and would walk in and see all her toiletries on the floor and Tatiana in the middle of them, with the evidence of her snooping right there in her hands. That gave her a moment of high-level anxiety. Then she realized that if her mother had come in the front door, she would have heard the alarm activate. If someone was in the apartment, he had come in through a window. Attempting to arrive undetected.

A burglar, perhaps. Or worse...

She swallowed hard and raced down to the living room, feeling icy cold with fear. She felt a rush of relief as she saw the windows were all safely shut.

Then she saw it.

The vase from the windowsill.

Someone had kicked it to the floor... on their way in through the window.

Sure enough, the window was completely unlocked. Tatiana touched it with trembling fingers, then turned her back to it, flattening herself against the glass as she realized:

She might have started out the evening alone in this apartment.

But someone was in here with her now.