“So, uh, how’d it go? With Nora’s teacher?” Like he cares.
He does. He fucking cares.
Robin sets the empty glass on the coffee table and plops down on the couch, back-to-back with the piano. “Well. It wasn’t the worst parent-teacher conference I’ve ever had. There’s only so much trouble you can get into over Zoom.” One small plink is followed by another: her earrings hitting the coffee table. “At least until she learns to spell. Which won’t be long.”
“She’s bright.” Satisfied with the last note, he plays a quick set of scales, pianissimo, before stowing the tools.
“She plays her cards so close to the chest, it’s hard to tell. Seth’s obsession with numbers tends to overshadow everything else. I think Nora got all the social skills. Or cunning, anyway.” Springs creak as she changes position, and her feet pop into view as she props them over the left arm of the couch. She puts a toe to the opposite heel and one black dress shoe drops to the floor, followed a moment later by its mate. “Play me something.”
“Uh, aren’t the kids trying to—”
“Sleep?” She lets out an incredulous ha. “Not if they can help it. Play.”
He shrugs and puts the front board back on—even if he doesn’t have sheet music, somehow it helps to look at the flat, blank surface—before launching into some late Beethoven.
Robin raps the back of the piano. “Less depressing, please.”
“I’m not your goddamn Pandora account.”
“Clearly you’ve got skills, Cyril. Play me something like you played for Nora.”
He considers treating her to some Chopin, but after herding the kids through their bath and bedtime routine, the last thing she needs is more childish pouting. He consults his mental catalogue and summons up a soporific Brahms instead.
“Oh. Yes. So much better.”
He waits for the lull of the next whole rest to reply, on the beat: “Fuck you.”
She laughs and exhales a noisy yawn, toes spreading as she stretches.
He plays a Mendelssohn solo after that, and one of Mozart's less frenetic sonatas. His hands will give out long before he reaches the end of his mental archive, but he hits the damper pedal and lets the notes trail gently into silence. Robin says nothing.
If she’s fallen asleep, he doesn’t want to rouse her by getting up, so he waits, feeling his feet begin to tingle and go numb. The bench protests as he shifts, and he covers it with a few soft notes which, somehow, become Cat Stevens’ How Can I Tell You. Which is not exactly what she asked for, but it’s right.
Her feet disappear, and a moment later her head rises over the back of the piano, as she apparently kneels on the cushions to face him. Not asleep, after all. She folds her arms and rests her cheek on the back of one hand, eyes closed, feeling the chords vibrate through the polished wood. “Sing it,” she whispers, when he reaches the end of the first verse.
“I don’t... remember the words.”
Her eyes open, and she looks at him, and they both know it’s a lie. “Then tell me what you wrote,” she says. “When you stayed up the other night. I promise I won’t get mad.”
“Like I give a shit about your feelings.” He shoves himself away from the keyboard, though it’s the piano and couch that move. “You wanted to know what I said, maybe think about that before you light shit on fire.” He stomps into the kitchen, because this is what he does.
“Fine. You be mad.” She is silent for a moment. And then: “Wanna watch a show?”
He ignores her. But when she spins up Jessica Jones, he returns to the couch with a package of Oreos.
“What the—” She pauses the TV and snatches one from his hand. “Where’ve you been hiding these?”
“White casserole dish.”
“No wonder you haven’t touched the ice cream.” She gives him a sidelong glance. “How much junk food do you have stashed in my kitchen right now?”
He decides she’s not asking for a complete inventory. “A lot.” And not just in the kitchen.
“Is that a prison thing or a fat thing?”
“Both.”
“Gimme another one.”
It’s not a happy episode. None of them get farther than dark, self-deprecating humor, really, but this one’s all dark. When the end credits flash, Robin is curled up against his side, the Oreos are gone, and he’s not quite sure how either one happened. He lifts his arm, but Robin doesn’t move. He can’t separate himself from her without physically shoving her away, so after a moment he places his arm back around her shoulders. She is warm.
“Tell me what you wrote,” she whispers.
God. “Look, it was just—lies. All of it.”
He feels her shoulders rise slightly as she inhales. “Was it, though?”
“You think you know me.” Like the parents at school. She thinks if she understands the danger, it can’t hurt her. “But you don’t.”
“Don’t I?” She holds up an Oreo, which she had apparently saved, hidden in the palm of her hand. “I know the way to your heart.”
She’s joking, but he’s actually offended. “I’m not Tavis in a fucking fat suit.”
“Yeah, well.” She twists the cookie open and licks the filling. “Turns out not even Tavis was Tavis in a Tavis suit.”
He dreams of prison. Corridors narrowing steadily, looping in on themselves like a living Möbius. A feeling of oppressive, impending doom. The high-pitched wail of the unit alarm begins to sound, and somehow it’s still prison, but also his childhood home, and he is trying desperately to shut out his mother’s hysterical sobs.
A slight jolt brings him out of it, followed by footsteps across a wooden floor. He snorts and blinks, squinting in the morning light as his pounding heart slows to a steady thud. The wailing continues, only it’s a child’s reedy cry.
“What are you doing?” Robin’s voice, enhanced by the echo of the bathroom. The toilet flushes. “No, I’m not—Seth, can you just—yes, I told you—okay! Nora—”
Seth shouts something incomprehensible and slams a door. Nora is crying unconsolably. She stops long enough to shriek, “I wanted to pee first!”
He, Cyril, is not in prison but on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table, partially covered by a blue duvet he recognizes from Robin’s bed. His left arm bears the long imprint of a seam. When he puts a hand to the cushion next to him, he finds it still warm.
Chapter 13
Cyril feeds the kids breakfast while Robin showers, and then they switch; she runs them to Greta’s, and by the time he’s out of the shower she’s already on the scaffolding outside, hammering plywood. Once he's dressed, he brings her coffee in her largest mug.
She drops to one knee and leans over the edge as he hands it up. “Mm. Just what the doctor ordered.”
“You do realize you’re having major surgery tomorrow morning.”
She stands, balancing the mug carefully to avoid spilling the hot dark liquid. “Siding’s gotta get done one way or another, and I’m gonna be out of commission for a while.” She takes an experimental sip. “You wanna give me a—”
“No.”
He has an excuse for not helping, this time, although he doesn’t tell her that. Originally, he’d decided not to identify himself to any of his former associates while he was living in Robin’s house, but cancer has tipped the balance on that equation. Crashing on her couch seems like it’s going to be more long-term than temporary, and although she has implied financial stability, it’s uncertain how long it will be until she’s working again. In short: he needs money.
He’d reached out to a couple of his most reliable contacts—recruiters, essentially, who could connect him to nominally legal gigs that paid. Anonymously, of course, though he’d dropped enough identifying information that they, if not the FBI or the press, could ID him. All he wanted was some generic securities work, like he’d done off and on for Cooke’s company, poking holes in the client’s system to make sure it was hacker-proof before it went live. So far, h
e’d gotten just one response: an invitation to a private IRC. This time of day, he’d been told, was his best bet for finding it active.
His contact is not wrong. He drops into the chat, and, as an obvious noob, is immediately challenged. The irony of the dark web is how populated it is by people like him—which is to say, compulsive rule-breakers with authority issues—and yet how strictly it is governed by inane social protocol. They feel him out, and he lets them, putting up only as much fuss as is socially acceptable. The slightest misstep and his newly assumed persona will be shadowed by suspicion and distrust. The benefit of anonymity is that he can always try again, but the circles he runs in are necessarily small and wary.
It takes two hours for one of the obviously senior members of the chat to invite him to a private room.
Are you who I think you are?
Depends, he types back, on who it is you think I am.
One of my Boulder roomies? 07?
This, right here, is the real test. Cyril has never been out of the state of California, let alone Colorado. He did, however, perform a rather significant DDoS attack on a large banking system—known for its predatory loan practices—based in the city of Boulder. Three other hackers were involved. They were never caught, and the bank never made the attack public. But it wasn’t in 2007. Summer of 2009, he types, as I recall.
His chat partner, who is currently using the name BSheezy, but whom Cyril still thinks of by his previous handle, FoShizz22, falls silent. Presumably running a hasty check on prison release records. And then: Didn’t realize you were out.
It’s no secret, but I’m keeping a low profile.
And yet here you are.
I need work.
BSheezy goes silent again. Cyril flips to his inbox. It contains a couple of automated emails from his bank, a request from the seller of his Android phone to review his customer service experience—and a group email from Anna, Jake’s mom, which has ballooned to a chain of twenty-seven replies. She has taken it upon herself to be the official organizer of the whole kiddie D&D affair, which is apparently slated to commence the following week, assuming, of course, that Cyril is available. (Not that anyone’s waited for him to reply.) If he doesn’t want to make a complete ass of himself in front of a bunch of fourth graders, he’d better start prepping. Ordering manuals feels like a ridiculous luxury.
Just as he hits the Amazon purchase button, yet another new email winks into his inbox. Anna had shared the entire chain with Seth’s teacher, who is now contacting him individually to beg him to let her submit a proposal on his behalf for their Friday enrichment program. He’s not concerned with enriching children, but he would very much like to keep his own bank account in the red, and it sounds like they might be offering some green. Probably not much, but he can hardly afford to be picky. He sends a reply: Is this a paid position?
In response, his phone rings. “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching right now?” He toggles back to the chat window. BSheezy still hasn’t responded.
“The kids are working independently. If your proposal is accepted, and I very much think it would be, then, yes, you would be paid. Not a lot, but—”
“Having a criminal record seems fairly disqualifying.”
“Nope. I checked.” Of course she did. “Our enrichment program is contracted through a third-party provider, not the school district. As long as you’re not a violent offender, you’re good.”
That seems like a hell of a loophole, but he’s not going to object. “And you’re taking care of the paperwork?”
“If you’d like me to, yes. There is one form you’ll have to fill out first, which I can send over now—”
“Fine.”
“Excellent! I’m so thrilled, and the kids—”
He ends the call.
“Was that your lawyer?” Robin had come into the house to use the bathroom on the tail end of the call.
He shakes his head without looking up from his laptop. “Seth’s teacher. Wonder how she got my number?”
“Hm, it’s a mystery.” She grabs the bottle of lotion from the end table and rubs a drop into each elbow. The scent of cocoa butter fills the room. “What did she want?”
BSheezy has finally answered. I’d legit like to help, but you’re kind of risky. No offense.
“She’s trying to con me into a job.” Like I don’t know how to keep a low profile, he replies. He gets another inbox notification, and clicks open the promised document from Janusevskis.
“Oh, good.” Robin gives his shoulder a patronizing pat as she passes the couch. “You can start paying for your own groceries.”
Well, there was that one time, BSheezy replies.
They didn’t find me. I outed myself, Cyril shoots back. Which BSheezy knew perfectly well. Asshole, he adds. “Take it out of my babysitting fund.”
“Oh, you’re hilarious.” Robin starts up the stairs, and then jogs back down again. “Hey, do me a favor. Two favors, actually.”
Honestly, it’s... not really about that. Sorry. BSheezy drops out of the chat.
“Sure.” Cyril clicks back to the group IRC. It’s empty. He’s been ghosted. “I... clearly have nothing going on here.”
“One, make lunch. Two, pack the kids’ stuff. Let’s say three nights’ worth—Greta can do laundry if it’s more than that.”
He twists to shoot her a confused frown.
“What, did you think the kids were gonna stay here with you?”
“I mean, after that whole speech about me being the guy in their corner? Uh, yeah.”
“There’s being in their corner, and then there’s whether I trust you to keep them on a reasonable schedule and feed them three square meals for a week, and the answer is no.” She grins. “I’m glad you like my offspring, but I need you to be here for me, now.”
“I didn’t even think anyone was allowed to have visitors right now.”
“Yeah, no. I don’t go to the hospital alone. Most of the time it’s fine, but I’m not willing to risk landing some on-call doctor who thinks a black woman’s pain is either drug use or all in her head. Fortunately, my surgeon went to bat for me.”
He’s not surprised she wants a chaperone, but he had accompanied her when Nora was born, so she already knows his bedside manner is less than superb. “You’d have better luck with Nurse Ratched.”
“Greta?” Robin laughs. “This may come as a shock, but you’re actually the better conversationalist. Seriously, though, she’s already logged way too many hours in the hospital with her husband. She’s in her fifties. She’d never admit it, but sleeping all night in a chair isn’t exactly a walk in the park for her.”
“Oh, but it’s fine for me?”
“Cyril, I’ve seen you fall asleep sitting at the dining table.” She turns, pointing. “This dining table, in fact.”
“What—” He thinks she means the night he stayed up trying to write her a letter. Then he realizes she’s thinking back to the weeks after Nora’s birth. “Uh, yeah, because I was up all night with your little demon spawn so you could sleep!”
“What I’m hearing here is that you have the right experience for the job. Greta’s got better things to do than sit by my bed twenty-four seven. You don’t, so.” She slaps a hand against a bare stud and she resumes her clomp upstairs. “Suck it up.”
Midnight. Alone, in the kitchen, save for the slabs of gouda and smoked ham he is slapping on sourdough. When he cooks for her, he tries. Alone, it’s simple volume.
Behind him, he hears the hall door open, and the soft shuffle of bare feet.
“What’s up, kid?” he asks, without turning around. Seth has already crept out twice tonight, first for water and then to pee. Those were his excuses, anyway. “Need a snack?”
“I’m supposed to be fasting,” Robin says.
“Oh. Hey.” He licks the mayonnaise off the butter knife and tosses it into the sink before turning. “Shouldn't you be—”
She’s nude.
His mind says what
the fuck, but the words never reach his mouth.
She just stands there, and he just stands there, silent, half-constructed sandwich balanced on the palm of one hand, because he can’t not stare.
The first, most shocking thing—other than the nudity itself—is, of course, the horizontal fault lines which bisect each side of her chest. Shiny, puckered tallies of that which has already been lost.
“Jesus,” he says, reflexively, “who’d they get to do your surgery, Dr. Frankenstein?”
She doesn’t react. Her eyes are dark, and so deep he loses himself. He can read nothing: neither desire nor despair. What does she want from him?
His eyes drop.
Her navel. The flesh of her belly two pregnancies loose, spiderwebbed with stretch marks like ice crystals edging a windowpane. And below, the small tangle of hair where her legs and torso meet. Too much. His eyes retreat to the sandwich in his hand, but he can’t eat with his heart lodged in his throat.
Back to her legs. Strong, like two bronze columns, unshaven calves nearly thick as her thighs. Her feet: angular and long.
He swallows.
“Tomorrow,” she says, drawing his eyes back to her face. “There will be less of me.”
This is a truth both horrifying and utterly inevitable, and which he has, therefore, been trying to avoid thinking of at all. He ought to say something reassuring, but it is impossible to think with her pubic hair in front of him.
“I know this is a lot for you right now. But it’s hard to remember what my body felt like, before—” Her hands come up, cupping air. “This. I didn’t even think to take a picture.”
He drops the sandwich on the counter and gropes for the phone in his pocket. His hands are shaking. “Do you want me to—”
Cyril in the Flesh Page 16