The After-Room

by Maile Meloy; Illustrated by Ian Schoenherr

  Jin Lo spoke in English. “Ned Maddox,” she said, “catch the girl. Make a distraction.”

  Ming looked interested in the strange language Jin Lo was speaking, and unafraid. But the man had his hands free, and he lunged forward and tucked the little girl under his arm like a football. She screamed. He ran for the other side of the barge.

  Jin Lo sprang to her feet and gathered the spilled bottles and packets. “Janie,” she said, “find the commander. He went north.”

  “I don’t know what he looks like!” Janie said.

  Jin Lo’s voice had some of its old impatience. “White man in small boat with ghost,” she said. She scooped the scattered supplies back into the bag. “I will follow.”

  Chapter 51

  Teatime

  Jin Lo heard shouting, as Ned Maddox, on the other side of the barge, held the little girl in his arms and fended off the barge captain and his sons. She heard the captain say that Ming couldn’t swim. What an absurd fact, on a boat, and what good luck. She hoped this would not be the moment when Ming’s childhood ended, her life forever divided into before and after. But the little girl was clearly brave, and Ned Maddox would manage it all right.

  She crept with her bag down to the barge’s deserted galley and put a kettle to boil on the swinging stove. She had once argued with Marcus Burrows about mind control, about the idea that you could administer some concoction that would render people malleable and suggestible, so they would do what you wanted them to do. The apothecary said it would not be ethical. You could not rob human beings of their free will.

  But Jin Lo had experienced too many frustrating situations in which she knew she was right, and the people thwarting her were wrong. Right and wrong were not always subjective terms. Xiao, the barge captain, would not go after the commander, even knowing that the commander planned to kill many innocent people. She only wanted to help this stubborn man make the ethical choice. The ends justified the means.

  She sorted through the packages she had bought from the herbalist and took out a bundle of fresh green leaves and a packet of dried brown ones. She added both to a teapot, guessing at the right proportion. The kettle boiled, and she poured it into the pot.

  She heard footsteps on the ladder, and turned to face the captain’s wife, whose face was red with fury.

  “That man has my daughter!” she cried.

  “I’m sorry,” Jin Lo said. “He won’t hurt her.”

  “What are you doing in my galley?”

  “Making a calming tea. We’ve had a misunderstanding.”

  “He will drop her overboard!” Mrs. Xiao said.

  “I promise we only want to help you. Here, please.” Jin Lo held out a cup.

  The woman frowned. “Where did you get it? Tea is scarce.”

  “In Xiangshan,” Jin Lo said. “At an herbalist’s shop.”

  “It smells like mold.”

  “It’s a special blend.”

  She sipped. “It’s not bad. But Ming cannot swim!”

  “Your daughter will be fine,” Jin Lo said. “It’s very important that we go after the foreigner.”

  The woman took another sip of tea. “My husband doesn’t want to be involved.”

  “But you have great power over your husband,” Jin Lo said. “You can help me. We could save many people.”

  Mrs. Xiao frowned into her teacup, and Jin Lo could feel her willpower softening. She looked up from the cup, astonished. “You’re right. We have to find him!”

  “Let’s take some tea to your husband.”

  They carried a tray up to the wheelhouse. Xiao was at the wheel, trying to keep the barge from a collision in the crowded canal. He looked at his wife standing with Jin Lo in surprise.

  “Captain,” Jin Lo said. “I brought you some tea, to apologize for my friend’s rudeness.”

  “Tell that madman to set my daughter free!” Xiao said.

  “I will,” she said. “But first I bring a peace offering.”

  The captain swore vividly about her peace offering.

  “Please,” Jin Lo said.

  “Have some tea,” his wife said. “It’s very calming.”

  He scowled, then took a cup from the tray, drained it, grimaced, and returned his eyes to the canal. “I don’t feel calm. Set my daughter free.”

  “We need to go after your passenger,” Jin Lo said.

  “I told you, that’s not my business.”

  “It became your business when you took him aboard,” Jin Lo said.

  “We aren’t safe, with him out there,” his wife said. “And we could be punished for helping him.”

  The captain looked uncertain.

  “Have some more tea,” Jin Lo said.

  “It smells like mold,” he said, but he drank down another cup.

  “You should increase your speed now,” Jin Lo said.

  The captain nodded, docile now, and pushed the throttle forward. The old engine whined in protest, then settled in at a higher revolution. They moved faster through the water.

  “Thank you,” Jin Lo said. “I’ll go get Ming.”

  Ned Maddox had the little girl on his shoulders, near the stern rail. He kept her brothers at bay by threatening to throw her into the churning wake if they advanced, but Ming thought the whole thing was a tremendous game, and taunted her brothers from her perch.

  “You can give her back now,” Jin Lo said.

  Ned Maddox started to lift the girl down, but Ming shrieked, “No!” and clung to his head, arms wrapped tight around his face so he couldn’t see.

  Jin Lo got her first good look at the fierce and nimble creatures who had overpowered her. They were two teenage brothers in silt-brown clothes, one a little taller than the other, with pimples on their foreheads. They looked confused and disgusted when their mother told them they were going after the foreigner after all.

  “Father just changed his mind?” the younger one asked. “Out of nowhere?”

  “Have some tea,” their mother said dreamily. “Our new friend will explain.”

  Chapter 52

  Grief

  The doctors sent Benjamin and Janie’s parents out of her hospital room, and a nurse arrived with long silver scissors. Benjamin’s first thought was that they couldn’t cut off her hair! It was too much a part of who Janie was—always getting in her face, looking a little wild. But of course her hair didn’t matter, not really, not if they could save her.

  Still, the whispering sound of the scissors made him shiver. He watched through the door as a tangled lock fell to the floor. Janie’s mother sobbed.

  “What does it mean?” Janie’s father asked. “Are they going to operate? Why don’t they have an interpreter in this place?”

  The scissors whispered and snipped.

  A doctor—a surgeon?—arrived and frowned at Benjamin and the Scotts. “Perché siete qui?” he asked.

  Benjamin pretended not to understand. They were here because they were not leaving Janie alone, that was why they were here. The surgeon went into the room and blocked Benjamin’s view, examining Janie’s head. Then he felt her pulse, studied her chart. He left, ignoring Benjamin, and returned with another doctor.

  And all the time the scissors went whisper, snip. The hair fell to the pillow, and to the floor.

  The two doctors stood over Janie in intense conversation that Benjamin could barely hear, let alone understand. He wished he’d eaten those mushrooms of his father’s. The first doctor said something sharp to a nurse approaching with a razor and a bowl of water to shave the last of Janie’s hair, and sent her out of the room. Then he sent away the nurse with the scissors. Neither of the women looked at Benjamin. After another moment of consultation, the two doctors left, too, avoiding Benjamin’s eye as if he were a beggar on the street. He understood: They considered the case hopeless. They were givin
g Janie up for dead.

  “Wait!” Benjamin said. He stared after them, the professionals who were supposed to save Janie’s life, as they walked away.

  Her parents understood too. “An American doctor wouldn’t give up so easily!” Mr. Scott shouted. “I’m going to go find one!”

  “Davis!” his wife said. “This might be our last time with her!”

  “It’s not! I won’t let it be!” He stormed away down the hall.

  Mrs. Scott looked to Benjamin. “I can’t lose her,” she said, and he had never seen anyone so desolate. They went into the room.

  Janie lay unmoving in the bed, with her strange shorn hair around the white bandage, and Benjamin picked up her hand. She seemed to be eighty percent of her usual size. He felt no pulse in her wrist.

  The two people he loved best in the world were Janie and his father, and disaster had struck them both, through his mistakes. It was intolerable. He should have knocked her out of the car’s path. But it had come around the corner so fast! It had hit her before he knew what was happening. He should never have shown Doyle what he could do. That was where it had all started. If he had kept the secrecy his father had always insisted on, then they wouldn’t have come to Rome in the first place. “I could have kept this from happening,” he said.

  “You’re not superhuman,” Janie’s mother said, through tears. “None of us are.”

  “But I kind of am!” he said.

  She looked at him with incomprehension.

  “And I’ve done everything wrong!” He grabbed Janie’s cold hand. “Listen to me, Janie,” he said. “I need you here to argue with me, and tell me when I’m doing something stupid. You were right, it’s your job, too. We’re supposed to do it together!”

  “Be careful with her,” Mrs. Scott said.

  “I need her back!” he cried.

  “So do I!”

  He squeezed his eyes closed and thought of Janie turning to look at him in the street—but that just led back to the car racing around the corner. He reached back further in time, and thought of Janie at the dance in Ann Arbor, with her smooth bare shoulders and her hair piled up in stiff, sprayed curls, the unfamiliar smell of her borrowed perfume. She had seemed so far away from him then.

  Come back, he pleaded, with his mind.

  Her hand was cold. Her mother wept.

  “Janie!” he said aloud.

  Then the sound of Mrs. Scott’s sobbing faded into the background, and Benjamin knew what was happening. The white room was gone, and he was in the deep, familiar dark. He breathed deeply.

  If she wouldn’t come back, then he would have to go to her.

  Chapter 53

  Negotiations

  Janie floated over the surface of the canal looking for a white man in a small boat with a ghost. But most of the boats were small, and the men all wore wide-brimmed hats that hid their faces. How was she supposed to pick out one, and a solitary ghost, in the bright sunlight?

  Then she saw a transparent figure on a small boat. The light almost washed him out, but as she drew closer, she saw that it was the young officer from the After-room. He was waving his diaphanous hands in argument with an older, living, unshaven man who crouched at the stern. A white man, a small boat, a ghost.

  She glided nearer. She could hear the ghost’s thin, echoless voice, saying, “You can’t do this! It’s all you’ll be remembered for! You’ll be a murderer!”

  Then she saw the shell. It was matte silver, pointed at one end and flat at the other, with a shiny copper band at the base. Very simple and beautiful and sinister. The commander must have made some kind of detonator for it. He was fumbling with wires. She realized with a shock that he was not going to Beijing. He was just going to set the thing off here.

  She wondered what the blast radius might be. All the boats she could see would be gone, of course. And the towns on both sides of the canal. The radiation would poison people for miles, and the surviving fish would travel farther and people would eat them. The poison would spread. Cancers and sickness, hair falling out, burns.

  She hovered over the deck of the boat. “He’s right,” she said to the commander. “You have to listen to your son.”

  But he didn’t even look up. It was so disorienting to be a ghost. Janie Scott of Ann Arbor, Michigan, didn’t mean anything to the commander, so he couldn’t hear her voice.

  His son heard her, though, and looked up, his face drifting and agonized. “What do I do?” he said. “How do I stop him?”

  “You can’t,” his father muttered.

  “Dad, please!” the ghost said.

  Janie had said exactly that so many times to her own father. It was impossible to keep your dad from doing embarrassing things. This was just a million times worse. But the truth was, her father never meant to embarrass her. When he’d pulled up at the dance and started calling out stupid things about Lord Figment, he was just trying to protect her. When he made dumb jokes, he was trying to make her laugh. When he spoke his weird hybrid language, he was trying to impress her. He was infuriating, she realized for the first time, because he loved her.

  “Listen,” she said to the ghost, who hovered around his father. “He doesn’t care about his reputation. He only cares about you. Tell him you love him.”

  “We don’t—say that to each other.”

  “Now’s the time!” she said.

  The ghost looked unsure, but said, “Dad, I love you.”

  The commander looked up, startled.

  “Tell him you know he loves you, too,” she said. “And that’s why he’s doing this.”

  “I know you love me, too,” the ghost said. “I know that’s why you’re doing this.”

  The commander blinked. “Of course it is.”

  “Now tell him it won’t bring you back,” she said.

  “This won’t bring me back,” the ghost said.

  “But I’ll be where you are!” the commander said, with great, pathetic hope on his face.

  “No!” Janie said. “Tell him that’s not true. If he dies like this, you won’t be able to see him. You won’t be able to talk to him. You won’t have anything to do with him.” It was manipulative, but she thought it was the kind of threat that might work on her own father.

  The ghost repeated her words. “I won’t be able to talk to you, Dad,” he said sadly. “Ever again. If you do this, we’re done.”

  The commander sat back on his heels, still holding the wires. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do,” the ghost said. “I would have no choice. I would be too ashamed.”

  “That’s good,” Janie said. “Keep going.”

  “I know you want revenge for my death,” the ghost said, warming up. “But I’m asking you to give that up. If you love me, don’t kill all these innocent people in my name. Be magnanimous, and generous, and good—all the things that I know you are. Let that be my legacy.”

  The commander’s face was tormented. His deranged eyes filled with tears. “But you’re my only son,” he said. “And they took you from me.”

  “They didn’t,” the ghost said. “I’m here with you now, see? I’ve stayed with you. So push it overboard.”

  The commander, his mouth working strangely, put both hands on the smooth satiny surface of the shell. Janie could see his fingers trembling. She waited for him to shove the shell into the water, where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

  “Wait!” a voice called.

  Janie turned, and saw the barge drawing near, with Jin Lo’s handsome friend leaning over the rail as if he might jump in and swim.

  “That’s U.S. Navy property!” Ned Maddox called.

  Janie had a moment’s hesitation. Was sinking it the right thing to do? Jin Lo hadn’t given her clear instructions—

  But it was too late. The commander shoved, and the sleek shell disappeare
d with a splash into the murky canal.

  Chapter 54

  Orpheus

  Benjamin wandered in the darkness. He wasn’t sure where he was. He felt cold figures pass by and he shuddered, but he couldn’t make them out.

  “Janie!” he called, with his mind.

  She didn’t answer.

  He thought of Orpheus. Benjamin had carried a book of Greek myths in his knapsack, when he was on the run with his father, and he’d read it in train compartments and borrowed safe houses. In the myth, Orpheus was in love with Eurydice, but a snake bit her on their wedding day, and she died. So Orpheus went to the Underworld and played his lyre for Hades, the king of the dead. The music was so beautiful that Hades said Orpheus could take Eurydice. She could follow him out of the Underworld. But there was a catch—Orpheus couldn’t look back at her until they were in the land of the living, or his beloved would have to stay in the Underworld forever. Orpheus agreed, but it was a long way out. He tried as hard as he could not to look, he tried to follow the rule, but suddenly he was sure Eurydice wasn’t behind him anymore. He was afraid, and he looked back. She was there, and she gave him a heartbroken look and vanished, back to the land of the dead.

  Benjamin had first read the myth on a train on the opposite side of the world from Janie. His father had drugged Janie and her parents so they would forget about Benjamin, forget everything that had happened. He had understood that the myth was about being sure of someone. If you loved them, then you couldn’t distrust them and be afraid they would abandon you, or you would lose them. So he’d tried to believe that he would find Janie again, and she would remember who he was, before she fell in love with someone else.

  But back then it was just a metaphor. He hadn’t been thinking he might really go to the Underworld. He hadn’t thought of the myth as a guidebook.

  And now that he was here, he saw that it wasn’t a very good guidebook. There was no boatman, no river to cross, no three-headed watchdog. There was no Hades to charm with his lyre, if he’d had a lyre. The only instrument Benjamin had ever played was the recorder in school, shrill and off-key, so it was probably a good thing that no one was expecting music.