Hector Romero

I have to find someone to follow me around the base and translate slang as people use it.

It gets very tiresome having to ask what people mean all of the time.

Who: Hector & Tane
When: Early evening
Where: Outside the installation
Warnings/Rating: New Zealand slang abounds...
What: Meet up for the first time and overcome the language barrier with food.


They told him when he came to Kodiak that he was not to smoke anymore. Think of this as a military installation, the woman had said. She'd been very tall and carried a clipboard like it was a weapon. You're in boot camp now, Mister Romano, and your instructors will expect you to behave as such. So no cigarettes, no alcohol, no fooling around unless you were a married couple. He'd heard that the facility housed a few of those. Drift compatible lovers.

Smoke drifted from his nostrils, stinging his sinuses. The alcohol and sex wouldn't be an issue for him; he'd never been much of a drinker and relationships were frowned upon when one was training to become a priest. It was the cigarettes that were giving him fits. He'd been smoking since he was fourteen, half finished butts snagged from ashtrays, stale and excitingly forbidden. He'd started buying packs after he'd gotten a job, and still recalled the taste of the first cigarette bought with his own money, like victory. Like adulthood.

He'd been a stupid kid, but not entirely without brains. Mama had been dead set against smoking, so he'd learned to conceal it. The trickle of smoke from the nostrils, or the corner of the mouth, leaking it out instead of blowing great clouds. The cigarette, cupped in the palm of the hand, fingers twisted to funnel the smoke down to the earth, where it would disperse instead of surrounding him in a great cloud. It felt like being fifteen again, surreptitious and on edge. Part of him loved it.

There were footsteps coming up the path to the athletic fields. Chances were good that it was just another trainee, but Hector didn't trust chance. He pinched the cherry off the cigarette and covered it with dirt, casual motions that could easily be mistaken for shifting to get comfortable. The rest of the cigarette disappeared inside his coat like a magic trick. He looked expectantly down the path.