Wolf of the Tesseract

Chapter 4

Claire struggled to raise her head off the table. She groaned as she reached for the cup of coffee and struggled to keep her throbbing head upright enough to see her foam cup. There wasn't enough caffeine on the planet to help with the hangover she battled.

She turned her face to Jackie who sat slumped in the adjacent chair. The outdoor table's undersized umbrella provided little help against the morning. Claire grinned stupidly; her friend looked dead: pale, slouched, and motionless. Jackie's broad sunglasses hid most of her face from the late morning sun which had heated the table to the same approximate temperature as magma.

Grimacing, Claire felt the crosshatched metalwork of the hot tabletop searing her cheek like a griddle. Moaning, she slumped back into her own hang-over pose and raised the cup to her lips.

Claire glanced right. Vivian remained straight faced as ever while she sipped an espresso. In that moment, Claire knew Vivian wasn't human; she'd drank enough tequila at last night's bachelorette party to make a buffalo blind. Yet, here she sat. Claire could feel Vivian's judgmental eyes scan her critically.

"Shut up," Claire croaked as she held her head in her hands.

"I didn't say anything," Vivian remarked, coolly.

Claire groaned again. "You were thinking it."

She merely nodded.

Jackie snorted a half-asleep snore and then sat straight up—waking herself. She mumbled something unintelligible and reached for her cup on the table.

Vivian's phone chirped a few times. Claire winced at the shrill noise.

"I've got to go," Vivian stated, eyes scanning her text message. "There's been another... incident."

They let her leave in silence, save for the scraping of her chair on the concrete. A few minutes later, slightly sobered by the coffee, Claire and Jackie laughed about the previous evening's events. The conversation quickly descended into another Vivian bashing session, but eventually turned back to other issues.

"How is your dad doing, anyway?"

Claire absentmindedly twirled her pendant around her index finger. "He's not able to get away for long, but he'll be at the wedding. The local government at the dig site is in some political disarray and that means they've got to dig as much as possible and as quickly as they can. They're trying to ignore the hostile activity all around, but if the rebels have their way, there would be a civil war," Claire glanced down at the paper. There was a small, world-news headline about a foiled coup in that country on page thirteen. "If there's war, all their work will be lost, even if their town misses any hostilities, which would be unlikely. By the time it's sorted out and the archaeologists can get back to business, he might be..."

She trailed off. Jackie finished her sentence for her, "Retired." Nobody wanted to think of another option, and Jackie knew how important of a figure he'd always been in her life.

A grating noise startled the two girls: metal chair-feet scraping on the sidewalk. The homeless man, Robert, had snuck up on them unnoticed. He quickly took a seat across the small, outdoor table.

Both girls sat frozen. They were not terrified, but rather stunned at his incredible audacity; neither knew quite how to react.

For several long moments he stared at Claire. "Amazing," he finally said. "You look just like her—in so many ways you are her."

Claire responded, "Of course I am. Uh, Robert?" She threw out the leading question, trying to make sure they had properly identified him. She looked him up and down, finally close enough to see him clearly. He was not unattractive, despite his longish hair and several days' worth of stubble; he clearly possessed all the qualities that had Jackie sighing wistfully to her left.