X-Men: Striking the Balance

'T-Blood, man, are you okay?'

'Need some help here Nate. Blade went in straight. Not sure how clean it was. Urkk. I think I lost it somewhere over here.' His hands tapped the dusty floor.

'Street scum won't mess around again.' Dawnsilk said. 'How the captain?'

I looked at the path we'd taken in the few pristine minutes of our route home. Bodies, a friend injured, an enemy wasted, a man I'd never met. Something worth risking your time for.

'Yeah... Not good Dawnie. Not good...'

***

The present:

Polished and sinuous, the Vauxhall Astra sat next to the kerb, July sun making the driver pant. Tabitha sat with the seat pulled back, hands on the wheel and eyes narrowing on the bend of the road. Next to her, Cable recited scripture from the Highway Code. He twisted in the seat, left leg raised and the right hovering over the space where the dual accelerator would have been. His focussed on her cheeks, reddening with each rebuke and the crunch of her eyebrows indicating a building tension. She used the same kind of anger to muster up the little glowing balls in the palm of her hands; plasma spheres of bio-chemicals that popped like a bubble-gum balloon. She was feeling the burn behind her eyes. Hearing the road riot act having stalled three times in the space of twenty metres. Seeing a film reel of her inaccuracies and fuck-ups play in the front of her mind, a boring theatre production of how not to drive a car starring Nick Nolte as the wooden instructor.

'Raise the clutch... s-l-o-w-l-y.' Cable said.

She liked Nick Nolte (?).

'And foot off completely when you've moved about five metres.'

Fast off the clutch or slow off the clutch. Which is it?

'Slowly, Boomer.'

'Yeah I know.'

There was no breeze. The car was an oven, she tasted a tongue of sandpaper and stickiness, foul toothpaste turned into bile from exertion. Cotton.

'...Boomer? Start the car.'

She produced a mechanical yes.

Hand to key -- she was going to turn the car on.

The ignition key turned.

The car came on. Success so far, she thought.

'Hang on,' he said 'what have you forgotten?'

Was she sitting properly?

Did she have the car in gear? So did the clutch need to be down? Had she got the windscreen wipers on? It was a lovely day outside.

'Um. What? I don't know. What? What?'

Cable closed his eyes and reopened them. It was really grating after a while. Just a second of irritating behaviour clearly designed to belittle her.

'What's the first thing you do when you get in the car?'

'Close the door? Adjust the seat? What?'

'Yeah -- the door's closed, then what?'

I wish he'd just say, she thought. Nick Nolte would open his mouth and then she could pop a ball of explosive plasma in it. Spit Nolte. Nick Molten. Mick Mack Mo.

'Put the clutch down?' She said.

'Put the clutch... no! What? No, you check that the gear stick is in neutral and the handbrake is firmly on.'

'Right. Fine.' She wiggled the gear stick left to right and gripped the handbrake and wobbled it.

'They're both on. Let's go, yeah?'

Had she been eating a lot of sugar that morning? It might account for her irritability.

Cable tried to get them to eat a balanced diet. No Joke-a-cola, no pop-tarts, no early-morning cappuccino laced with cream and a chocolate-shaving four-leafed clover or X-Force "X", no buttered buns with more than one raisin in the centre, no Chelsea anythings, no processed cheese or diary products that ran (except milk), nothing coated in yeast like marmite or twiglets, no tic-tacs, no gum, no chews, no bars, no hunks of nothing and definitely no shakes made from anything which sounded like a fruit but wasn't.

'In your own time.'

Did she make a face?

The engine purred into life with her right hand on the steering. Foot hovering somewhere near the bite. She shuffled right to left, six-point observation. Blind spot, nearside mirror, interior mirror, windshield, offside mirror, blind spot. Signalled left, last look over her left shoulder and go!

The wheel rotated left.

'Push and pull Boomer it's not a jet...'

The car inched forward.

'Look around you, don't assume everyone gives way.'

Tabitha turned the wheel back to right.

'What are you doing?'

'What?! What?'

'Where are you going?' Cable asked, staring out the windows and all around. 'You want to pull out and drive forward, not park.'

The car wavered on the spot. She put her foot on the gas and pressed.

He dual controlled her.

'Take your foot off the accelerator.'

'My foot's not on the accelerator!'

'Take your foot off the accelerator, Boomer!'

She looked down at her feet, gripping the wheel until her hands went white.

She took off her foot and placed it next to the pedal muttering: goddamn it...

'I taught you to keep your eyes peeled -- this is no different. You cannot blindly charge out into the road and expect the traffic to part like Moses. Look all around not just straight ahead,'

'There's no other cars! We're a million miles from anyone!'

'Didn't you see James walking behind the car?'

'What? No I didn't see --' Shoving her head out the window she looked around for the big Indian.

She leant back in, recomposing herself. 'Wherever he was he's gone now.' And she made a sheepish pout, the eyes stinging with saltwater. 'Sorry.'

'I'm sorry too. He was never there in the first place.' Incredulity plastered across her face. 'That's why you have to look around. All this space and some idiot walks out behind your boot. You get knocked by oncoming traffic and it's a little jolt, enough to dent both cars, but you're pushed back, you stall and then mash some poor bastard against another bonnet. It's all about control.'

Yeah, it's all about control. Controlling the urge not to blow your head off Nick Nolte style. Pieces flying off into the great outdoors on such a lovely day and all this space and one mistake and you kill someone.

'We live in one another's pockets, literally. To do this,' he gestured 'you have to exercise absolute control. You have no space to do it your way because you and everybody else learn only one way. The way.'

***

(The Listing Of Ships):

'What are we, Nate?'

'Excuse me?'

'What do I mean to you?'

Domino straddled him, Cable lying on his back on the mattress. He looked up into her polarised eyes, short hair in a scruffy bed-head. Her expression was soft, questing. Lips were pursed, she wanted a response, both hands pressed at his breast.

'You mean to me... an end to loneliness. You mean the world to me Dom. Why are you even asking? Is it that profile from SHIELD? What they say about you and me?'

She wasn't usually the type to be so sensitive toward this.

'It's just nice to know where a girl stands. Friend. Confidant. Sometime lover. What does that mean? How can I be a friend and a lover at the same time?'

Seeing into his puzzled frown, she got a stab of doubt and ridicule, then tried to brush it off. 'Forget it,' she laughed, cracking a smile 'it's nothing. Just a joke. Heh.'

He knew when she was serious though, and as unsettling in its own way as it was for Domino to present them with a question on their relationship, it did leave Cable pondering for a moment as to the what and why. Throughout his brief stint in the present, Nate had done a great many things with a great many people, but he didn't feel any connection was quite so potent as the one he shared with the lucky merc. Irene Merryweather. A name flashing bright and big in bold on his mind, a girl whose existence validated Cable's protective nature and undying devotion to his root objectives in this time zone. Sam Guthrie and Garrison Kane, people for whom Cable had found a way to replace the void in his part-heart for son Tyler. The rest of the X-Force kids and the ideals represented by Xavier and his foster parents Scott and Jean. The X-Man, another time-lost soul thrown in the deep end. Caliban, his simple friend whom Cable always had an eye out for. Domino. Domino. A mystery, but quite a reliable one. Things fell into place for the two of them. A woman who might rival Aliya for the dependency on love, sex and guns. All leather and sass, engine grease and grenade pins. She wasn't a replacement for his dead wife, she wasn't in addition to the wedding ring he kept in a box in his drawers, she was who she was. Friend. Confidant. Sometime lover.

'You've had love before.' He said.

'Yes.'

'So have I. We stick together because we work well together. Isn't that what you mean to me? You are someone I can depend on.'

'That's... not so great. I won't always be here.'

'No. Neither will I. What we do makes that a risk.'

'So where does that leave us? The uncertainty of our companionship. We could die any minute so why bother staying around one another because it'll just hurt.'

She sat on the edge of the bed.

'That's a pain I'd gladly take Dom because it'd mean we had something precious together that we're both sad is gone. If we've both known what it's like to love and get broken-hearted then let's not call it that.'

'What would you call it?' She asked.

'Nothing. Being friends, confidants, sometimes lovers. Whatever.'

'Whatever?' She raised her eyebrow. 'You're gonna call it whatever?'

'What do you think its name should be?'

'It's like we're naming a baby.' She smirked.

'See you're not even bothered anymore.'

'I care! It does matter.'

'Why?'

She fidgeted out of his sight and then got up to the window. Large droplets impacted on the double glazing. The view of Manhattan stretched out in a vast airy infinity, the clouds low and the birds high.

'It just does Nate. I want to feel loved. I miss Milo.'

'You are loved Dom. I know you cared for him, and nothing can bring that back but a person has to keep going. I'm not saying "move on" or replace him, I'm just saying that remember you've got a life to live.'

'And what if I said to you that that life doesn't involve you?'

'I'd want to know why...'

'Because I cannot be sure where we stand with each other.'

'Is it not enough that I do love you?' He asked.

'But do you actually love me, or is it just this conception of familiarity and support that masquerades as your real feelings?'

'Whatever the truth is, can't you say the same? If it bothers you so much why haven't you said anything about it before?'

'Things have changed. The anniversary dredged up the past. I'm facing it in a way I haven't before. Maybe I tried to run, I don't know.'

She hugged herself over in the gloomy corner.

He stood up and suddenly feeling the need for freedom and an umbrella rather than difficult emotions battering him, he grabbed the door handle.

'You're an independent woman Domino. I've always known that. If you want to run away from me, I shan't stop you. If you want to run toward me, so much the better, I'll be here for you.'

The knob twisted and a gust from down the hall blew in, unsettling the hairs on the back of her neck. She watched him grab a jacket. 'I... need to know your answer.'

'You already do.' He said.

***

On the streets at night the whores hustled and the hustlers whored. Bass boomed down from a windowsill stereo, Puerto Ricans crowding the stairs to their apartments. A grey cloud issued to the air, puffs in their mouths and wisps in the fingers. A ball hit the pavement and Domino knocked it back.

The vendor on the corner in his little green shack that closed soon said hi how ya doing and listened to his wind-up radio. She browsed the remaining papers; something to read, get her mind off it. New York Times, Amsterdam News, the Daily, the Post, the Wall Street. The sweets and drinks, a cool-box of ice and an open lid, this that and the other crammed in with condensation. The comics at the back. Zeroes on Fire. The Indescribable Bulk. Fable.

The rain had stopped. She could hear the crackle of the transistor radio. Thirteen dead, ritual homicides, police car exploded, pub-goers, bus stabbing, honour killing, father of three, feral youth, state of emergency, democrat exile, Paris riots, shaken baby. All too much. She buried her head and tossed some coins onto the papers, picking up random material and dragging her feet as she stepped into the city poison. War all the time. Shootings and lootings. Soldiers dead and partisans dead. Insurgents and refugees. Oil. The price of gas and electricity. The price of blood.

Leaves skated on the puddles. She cast her gaze skyward, the looming black tower with a beacon of home inside. Low-power light bulbs. A fridge stocked. A hot water bottle. Cable. It wasn't too late to have a good night's sleep.

She walked toward the doorman who lifted his cap. The blessing in disguise.

'How do you keep that room all year around, Miss, if'n ye don't mind me saying?'

She half-opened the door, turned her head. 'I'm well connected.' She said.

***

(The Birdcatcher's Oath):

(Domino)

I bang on the wall into the next cabin: 'turn your music down, man!' even though it's groovy and I do like house, but it must be two in the morning and Cable and the rest of us are on our way to Moscow. Out the window the shrubs and heath shoot by, our Nicolaevsky Express ploughing through the still and starry at 235km/h. Pressing my face to the window, the expanse of the lighted terra firma fades away into endless steppes. It is a beautiful but harsh realm. The temperature must be in the extremes.

The roll of the cabin on the rickety wheels moves in time with the thump. The train lists, the thump keeps on firing. Like the Lars Von Trier track, the one from Dancer in the Dark with Bjork and that guy from Radiohead. The chugging of the train, my foot taps, and as I close my eyes on our trans-Russian adventure I remember:

Andergraund, Belgrade, 1995. Nick Warren.

The most intense experience I ever had on drugs. Some guy weaved through the crowd, smoke and mirrors all of it and handed me some pills. Security lax. I took them, alcohol was making my skin itch. All these young kids dancing like the end of the world, no-one sleeping outside, just underneath the Kalmegden Citadel. Restaurants orbited the plaza, chains of coloured bulbs linking every building all in one long neuron of energy; edgy for the night-craze. If the beat hit hard enough every one of those bulbs would shatter and all these diners, all the waiters the chefs the busboys the painters outside would cram into the club and pace and fret and wail to the piercing trance. I didn't know what the tunes were, but they flew by my head ten at a time, stirring all these feelings I never realised I had for everyone. These retro kids, laced with vodka and neon, sweat t-shirts and tits out, roll-ups and hands holding in a bestial-mad dark daisy-chain.

I was juggling my body side to side, surrounded by people I never met before. Milo and I taking a break all of a sudden amid ridiculous scheduling. I didn't know what to say when he volunteered the trip. Take it, yup, go for it, swing out a little. When's the next time I'd relax? So bring over the drinks and lean over the counter to wait for them to serve you sos I can stare at your ass and the way those jeans fit your shape so perfectly. And then this guy like I said just came out of the crowd and he was covered in those tubes, one round his neck and at least three round each wrist and probably one on his cock too.

Difficult to tell, y'know, they started with the dry ice flowing it over us as if we were crops being sprayed with insecticide. I remember they were playing Underworld then. The track that was in Trainspotting, but not the track that they used in the club when Karl Hyde goes mental shouting LAGER LAGER LAGER, MEGA MEGA WHITE THING -- which I heard was not about ecstasy although at the club with half of Way Out West pumping us higher and higher I sure wished it was. No, the track was the one off the album that the three of them remixed called Dark Train, at least twice the length of the original and then it was used in the bit when the baby crawls along the ceiling crawling along the ceiling crawls and crawls along the ceiling and then you get that Scottish guy what was he called and he's screaming and screaming and wetting his pants and his parents are knocking on the door but no-one lets them in and poor Ewan, he's screaming and screaming and the baby's crawling on the ceiling crawling crawling on the ceiling when Milo turns and grins and I think to myself maybe I should have kept one of these pills for him? I don't know. And a pause, and another hit of the snare and Nick Warren pulls some insane tune out of the archives and the crowd moves like a meadow in a fresh breeze, this distorted wave washing over everyone's hands as they're raised, and it circles around and around, the owners flashing the house lights up and down and Milo shoves the drink in my hand and I lean over into his ear: what's in it? Vodka and gin and martini and something else he says jesus that sounds potent what are you having? The same come on lets get in there. His dreadlocks waving, he moves like a blur flicking his pieces this way and that getting deeper in some acid beep klaxon shooting out -- someone touches my ass -- then squeezing in-between sweaty teenagers looking half my age: are you allowed in here? Yeah, course!? They look pissed, androgynous, hyper and sugar-crazed; I say: great! and give them a great big hug and a kiss on each cheek. Aw don't tell me you're jealous I shout into Milo's ear, no he says and puts one of those big black burly arms round my waist pulling me closer and there's a layer of drums on top of the bass, it's still got that four-four rhythm but now the crowd are getting more aggravated, I spill a little of my drink and scream out waaaay! Have you taken E? Milo shouts in my ear and I step on his toes the strobe pulsing and even when I close my eyes I can see it flashing about like fireflies in summer haze -- yes! Some guy was just giving them out, sorry I didn't get you one, but I didn't know whether you'd had it before or whatever I don't know, look c'mere yeah, let's kiss whoa!

Where is he, he says, I want one!

You've got your drink! Have mine! Have me, kiss me Milo! I love you!

House lights come up and Milo's so sweet, we dance close, there's hardly any room and I feel the beating of my own heart echoing with each reverberation of the speakers, the thump goading my feet faster and faster and Milo's a bit sloppy with his tongue but I kind of like it; we had a lot to drink before we got here, three or four glasses of wine each, and I don't know whether he can handle his alcohol properly like me but I guess I'll find out. Nick Warren has got this proper deep acid track on now, and then one of the bouncers barrels through the crowd like a runaway train and gathers the dealer by the collar and they make off with him their tracks covered by spinning lights and oh damn I feel sorry for the guy but hey that's his problem not mine he should know better.

'Come on!' Milo shouts grabbing my hand.

'Where we going?' I smile.

'I need you so bad right now. I wanna fuck.' He says.

'Great!' I say.

The tracks of the train rallying over and over again and again. Cable steps in, the slide door shutting. I'm underneath a plaid wrap.

'They still going on with that music? I just asked them to turn it down!'

'Nevermind Nate. Come on, sit with me a bit.'

He eyeballs me.

'You're in an awfully good mood. What's wrong?'

'Nothing!' I laugh. Eventually the rhythm is going to get you. Who was that, Estefan?

I pat the seat. 'Sit with me Nate.'

The cubicle door flies open, the floor is so polished I think I can see the future.

Wow! I shout would you look at that? And the guy inside who dries your hands is taking care of someone else, pampering his wrists: would you like aftershave -- his English sure is good -- how about a lolly? Some deodorant (I can't imagine what it smells like out there?) Cigarettes mostly, and the smell of dry ice.