Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer Page B

weird, I admit. But also informative.
    Rosetti wore perfume. Nice perfume. Not that I expected her to smell like coffee and gunpowder, but it was surprising how subtle and soft her scent was. Undergarments were now something to wonder about. What manner of lace was rubbing up against her holsters?
    â€œBoth clean,” she said as she moved the device past my ankles and stood up. Man, did I want her to spin the thing in her hand and blow on it like the smoking barrel of a pistol, but all she did was slap it to her hip and carry it back to the Tesla.
    Dylan had joined us at this point, hands in pockets, looking adorable and a tad nervous.
    â€œNice to see you again, Dylan,” Tess said.
    â€œAnd you,” Dylan said, and he did a little bow. Which ignited the polite young lady in Tess and she responded with a little curtsy. I joined in by dancing little pirouettes, because . . . well, because I’m odd.
    â€œEnjoying ourselves?” Rosetti asked when she returned from her car.
    Pirouettes are usually best not left unfinished, but Rosetti deserved my respect, so I stopped one halfway through, plantedmy feet, threw my arms to the side, and said, “Sorry. I get carried away.”
    Rosetti waved a dismissive hand and said, “You’re a child.”
    So harsh, but at that moment, unfortunately true. I didn’t say another word.
    â€œAnd who are you?” she then asked Tess. “Friend?”
    â€œUm . . . I’m Tess McNulty and I like to think of myself as more than—”
    â€œWhat’s your deal, Tess McNulty?” Rosetti asked. “Give it to me quick.”
    The poise that had guided Tess through so many math olympiad victories and slam-dunk babysitting interviews leaked from her body like the whites from a cracked egg. “Well,” she said. “I’m, well, I told you my name and I guess I’d say . . . well, I’m hoping to go to RIT in the fall. Oh, and I was on the field hockey team but, you know, the season was canceled and . . . I like music and movies and . . . stuff?”
    Rosetti did her shittiest to feign interest, stare-squinting, and clearly waiting for Tess to shut up. When she was finally given an opening, she said, “Tell me this, Miss McNulty. Do you blow people up?”
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œGood to know. Moving on.”
    â€œWhy are we here?” I asked. It was the middle of the day, sunny and perfectly pleasant, but the place was giving me the creeps. It wasn’t the weeds or the cracked bricks of the building, or even the overall hauntedness of the place. It was the odor: metallic and animal at the same time, a rusty rot.
    â€œGlad you asked,” Rosetti said, and she pointed at the building. “Do you know what this used to be?”
    â€œMy dad always told me they made fertilizer,” Dylan said.
    Rosetti smiled and said, “Dad was a good liar. Or maybe he never knew the truth. Truth is, this place was into far dirtier things than that. And when you’re located on a river and you do dirty things, well, I don’t know all the details, but let’s just say there was a time in the fifties when kids downstream were born with their organs on the outside.”
    I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the rush of the Patchcong River through the trees. We were at the bottom of the gorge on the edge of town, not far from the reservoir where all the county’s water originated.
    â€œShit,” I said. “So you think we’re all drinking tainted water and that’s why—”
    â€œNo,” Rosetti said. “They dealt with all that years ago. Cleaned up and covered up. But this place
is
a symbol. Something is tainted in your town. But it’s something new. Even nastier than what came before.”
    It made me think of that novel I had been working on. You know,
All the Feels
? It was set in the town of Cloverton, New