“Well, come on in. Look around, make yourself comfortable--” A beeping sound attracts her attention. “Oh! I have a message. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay…”

Marion watches Clementine disappear into another room (a bedroom, judging from the glimpse he gets of a bed before she shuts the door) and proceeds to remove his coat and sit on the nearby green futon. The extent of his invited looking around is limited to what he can see of the main living area from his seat, which is fine enough for him. Why should someone who desires privacy as much as he be so nosy in another’s home? Still, Clementine’s flat is surprisingly well-furnished and well-maintained. There exists a cozy feeling about the place. Books are everywhere; in stacks on the hardwood floor, on shelves resting against the burnt sienna walls, on the kitchen table… Marion’s gray eyes catch a stack on the coffee table in front of him. Leaning forward slightly, he cannot resist smiling a little as he recognizes his name on the topmost book.

The sound of a door opening makes Marion jump in his seat. It is only Clementine, dressed more casually in sweatpants and a t-shirt, with a sleek white laptop in her hands. She nods her head in the direction of the books on the coffee table.

“Move those to the floor for me, will you? At least one or two of them…” Clementine sets the laptop on the loveseat opposite the futon and helps Marion clear the stacks. “I own too many books.”

“There isn’t such a thing as too many books,” Marion answers.

“Says the man who owns a legitimate library!” The coffee table cleared, she places the open laptop in the books’ place. “Okay, now…let’s see. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Hm?”

“Water, juice, milk, coffee--”

“N-no, thanks. I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

Marion nods, but at the last moment decides, “Coffee. I’ll take, um…I’ll take coffee.”

Clementine brightens. “Great! Let me set this up on the computer first, and then I’ll set the pot.”

“Okay.” He watches her work swiftly at the computer, his restrained curiosity piqued and his artistic eye following the lines and curves created from the way she bent at the hips to enter in keystrokes. “You seem very…”

“Intelligent?”

“Yes.” Suddenly realizing the connotation, Marion backpedals. “No. I mean…yes, you seem so, but I mean…well…f-for a cabaret dancer, you…you’re very… (He sighs.) I’m not very good at this.”

Clementine shrugs, tucking her red hair behind her ear. “It wouldn’t be the first time I hear something like that. After a while, you get used to it.”

“Oh…”

“Ah-ha!”

“Hm?”

“I knew it! Skiba’s so fucking predictable…”

“Wh-what is it?” Marion asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Just this message… It’s encrypted in a Caesar shift code.”

“A what?”

Clementine presses a button on her laptop and swivels the screen around to Marion’s view. Taking his glasses from his vest pocket, he leans forward to read what is on the screen:

AJCKCLRGLC:
BGB QMKC BGEEGLE YPMSLB DMP UFYR WMS YQICB. QRPYLEC QRSDD, ZSR LMR YQ FYPB RM DGLB YQ WMS CVNCARCB. WMSXJJ DGLB UFYR WMSXPC JMMIGLE DMP GL LMPUYW. AFPGQRGYLY GQ RFC MX UFCPC WMSXJJ DGLB RFC UGXYPB. ASPC UMLXR AMKC AFCYN; WMSP DPGCLB ZCRRCP FYTC BCCN NMAICRQ.

QRSDD GQ QRGJJ CVNCPGKCLRYJ, QM G AYLXR QYW GRXJJ UMPI. PCQSJRQ JMMI NPMKGQGLE, RFMSEF. MBBQ YPC EMMB DMP QSAACQQ. (QCC YRRYAFKCLRQ.) EMMB JSAI.

QIGZY
A.N.Q

NQ: BMLXR DMPECR, WMSP UGPCQ YPC BSC DMP PCNJYACKCLR. AMKC ZW RFC UMPIQFMN RFGQ UCCI.

“I-I can’t…” Marion looks around, realizing her absence. “I can’t read it. It’s all…gibberish.”

“Exactly! That’s the point!” Clementine calls from the kitchenette. “It’s code--a Caesar shift; essentially, one letter means another.”

“Oh.” The term was not unfamiliar to him. “So the gibberish--”

“Is really a message hidden underneath all the gibberish. Skiba has a preoccupation for codes.”

“Who’s--?”

“A friend” Clementine says quickly. “The man you met at the Zero Hour. He’s nice enough; just over protective sometimes.”

“I’ll say…”

Setting the coffee to brew, she returns to the living area. The dancer sits down on the loveseat across from her guest and returns the screen to its default position. The important thing in dealing with Caesar shifts, she remembers Skiba telling her ceaselessly, was to figure out the key--that is, the number of times the alphabet has been shifted to encode the given message. Simple guesswork could be used to figure out the shift key, though it was time consuming--

“And since I have no real patience or time for that…”

“Sorry?” Marion asks.

“Huh? Oh.” Clementine shakes her head. “Don’t pay attention; I tend to talk to myself.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. But this code shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I’ve got this computer program… It’ll just take a few minutes to decode the thing. Though…apparently…it still wants me to guess a number for the key.” She frowns. “Great.”

“Three is always a good number to start with,” he suggests.

“Okay. We’ll go with three and see what happens.”

What settles then is something of an uneasy silence. In it, Marion ponders the need for encoding a message, ponders the legality of acquiring the cure he has so desperately sought for his wife. Thinking of her, he also makes the mental note to replace some of the drearier looking flowers from around the cryostasis tube. Wilting flowers would never do…

“So…” Clementine hesitates a little, trying to find some tactful subject of conversation--a rare difficulty. “How long has she been sick?”

“My wife?” Marion asks. Clementine nods. “Two and a half years, but she has only been in stasis for about a year. It was…her decision. I merely carried out her wishes.”

“Must have been tough.”

“I am hopeful for a cure. We both are.” He pauses. “What about you? How long have you been a, um…a dancer?”

The look Clementine fixes him with seem to indicate he has misspoken again. Her dark eyes flash a little defensively. “Okay. I know it seems like my job is sort of seedy or ‘beneath me’ or whatever, but it’s not like I’m a stripper, alright? In three years, I have never taken my clothes completely off for anybody or worked in seedy bars with skeevy guys or done drugs or prostituted myself.”

“No, I didn’t mean--”

“I practice an art form, and I’m held up to some pretty strict and serious standards just so I can keep working.”

“Please, I…I didn’t mean anything like that. I--” Marion falters. He shakes his head, runs fingers through his dark hair. “I’m very interested. Genuinely, I mean. I’m…I’m interested in what you do.”

A beeping sound distracts them both from the conversation. Clementine looks at the screen, her face lit by the blue-gray light. Her eyes narrow in frustration by what she sees:

TCVDVEKZEV:
UZU JFDV UZXXZEX RIFLEU WFI NYRK PFL RJBVU. JKIREXV JKLWW, SLK EFK RJ YRIU KF WZEU RJ PFL VOGVTKVU. PFLQCC WZEU NYRK PFLQIV CFFBZEX WFI ZE EFINRP. TYIZJKZRER ZJ KYV FQ NYVIV PFLQCC WZEU KYV NZQRIU. TLIV NFEQK TFDV TYVRG; PFLI WIZVEU SVKKVI YRMV UVVG GFTBVKJ.

JKLWW ZJ JKZCC VOGVIZDVEKRC, JF Z TREQK JRP ZKQCC NFIB. IVJLCKJ CFFB GIFDZJZEX, KYFLXY. FUUJ RIV XFFU WFI JLTTVJJ. (JVV RKKRTYDVEKJ.) XFFU CLTB.

JBZSR
T.G.J

GJ: UFEQK WFIXVK, PFLI NZIVJ RIV ULV WFI IVGCRTVDVEK. TFDV SP KYV NFIBJYFG KYZJ NVVB.

“Son of a bitch,” mutters the dancer, entering keystrokes.

“What’s going on?” Marion asks.

“Ah, it’s this… Either the key was wrong or he layered the message under a couple different shifts. Though knowing how he’s practically an expert in basic codes and I’m not…”

“Try…try ten?” When Clementine looks at him oddly, he elaborates with, “Ten is another predictable number.”

“Well, it’s worth a shot…” Sighing, she enters in the new key number. “Can you check on the coffee?”

Nodding, the recluse rises and wanders into the kitchenette. There are two green coffee cups sitting on the counter by the coffeemaker, along with a jar of sugar, a spoon and a can of evaporated milk. One cup seems already semi-prepared, half-filled as it is with milk. To the empty cup, Marion adds only two spoonfuls of sugar. He contemplates returning the can of milk to her pale green refrigerator but decides against it to avoid accusations of nosiness. For a moment, the smell of the coffee strikes Marion off guard. It is rich, bold, distinct; expensive coffee that could only have come from someplace uptown.

“So you’ve been a dancer for three years, huh?”

“Huh? Yeah, it’s hard work but it’s also rewarding.” Clementine thanks him as he hands her the cup with the coffee and milk. “It’s fun. And I mean…not everyone can dance the way we do, so they come to see us. People get entertained; women sometimes get a confidence boost. They go home after seeing a show with their husbands and find it in them to become more than wives for a night.”

“Hm.” Marion ponders this over a sip of coffee. “Wow.”

“What?”

“This coffee. This is--this is really high quality stuff.”

Clementine grins. “Spare no expense when it comes to coffee. The store is in a place I don’t much favor, but--”

“Uptown?”

“In the ‘gourmet district’, yeah.” She scoffs. “God, I hate it up there. Bunch of stuffy, classist pricks who don’t know what it means to--oh!”

“What?”

“It’s done decrypting…and we’ve got a clear message! Ha ha! Yes!” Clementine claps her hands once. “Take a look.”

She swivels the screen around for him, and again, he leans forward to read:

CLEMENTINE:
DID SOME DIGGING AROUND FOR WHAT YOU ASKED. STRANGE STUFF, BUT NOT AS HARD TO FIND AS YOU EXPECTED. YOU’LL FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR IN NORWAY. CHRISTIANIA IS THE OZ WHERE YOU’LL FIND THE WIZARD. CURE WON’T COME CHEAP; YOUR FRIEND BETTER HAVE DEEP POCKETS.

STUFF IS STILL EXPERIMENTAL, SO I CAN’T SAY IT’LL WORK. RESULTS LOOK PROMISING, THOUGH. ODDS ARE GOOD FOR SUCCESS. (SEE ATTACHMENTS.) GOOD LUCK.

SKIBA
C.P.S

PS: DON’T FORGET, YOUR WIRES ARE DUE FOR REPLACEMENT. COME BY THE WORKSHOP THIS WEEK.

“Christiania?” Marion adjusts his glasses.

“Looks like.” Clementine rises at the tinny sound of music coming from the bedroom. “Excuse me.”

“Sure.”

Marion reviews the message while Clementine is in the bedroom. He can hear her voice but ignores what she might be saying as best he can. He wants to investigate the attachments, spurred on by a surge of hope he has not felt in ages, but resists. Instead, he focuses on the location. Christiania. Norway. Europe. It is far away, a lot distance away from his wife and daughter, but it was there. A cure. A brand new chance, one that was the most real of all the ones Marion has seen and searched through since nearly the moment he first heard of her diagnosis.

“Wires…” His eyes catch on the postscript and narrow in confusion. “What the hell does he mean by wires?”

“Sorry about that. Work…” Clementine exits her room with a cell phone in hand. “They want me to run a package of to Canada or something--”

“You’re a runner, too?” Marion asks, slightly startled.

“Well, I can’t pay for all of these books on a dancer’s salary,” she answers. “Plus being a delivery girl lets me travel. I love it, too.”

He nods. Slowly, he gets to his feet. “I have to go; need to pick up my daughter from her aunt’s and--”

“Sure, um…”

“When…can I see you again? A-ah… I mean, um…to talk about--?”

“Soon as I come back from Canada,” Clementine answers.

“When will that be?” Marion asks.

Clementine merely smiles at him. “Don’t worry about it. When you start seeing flowers on your stoop again, you’ll know.”