“Well?” Ez says. “What happens? Justine?”
“What?” I say.
“Does he survive?”
“Oh. Cellini realizes it’s glass,” I say. “Which is digestible.”
She gapes at me, eyes so wide in her small, fine face that she looks downright doll-like.
“Glass is digestible?” Simon says. He comes up right next to me, so we’re both at her window. “Are you guys discussing a book? Is that what you’re doing?”
I show him the cover. “Do you know it?” I ask.
“No.”
I give him a hard look. “Well, then …”
Simon ignores my hint and smiles at Ez. Shit.
There’s a door to the side of the coat carousel. Nobody would’ve passed through it for years, but Simon could; he was given a descrambler for the Belmont Butcher, who has a high-security setup just like Ez. And now he’s wearing antihighcap glasses. He wouldn’t be wearing them if he wasn’t planning on touching her.
“We’re having a private conversation about it,” I say.
“But not overly private,” Ez says.
He’s clearly not leaving, so I take the opportunity to inform him how swallowing diamond powder is like having a stinging jellyfish living inside you for months. I go on to talk about the crazy strong squeezing muscles of the intestines. Simon wears an amused smirk, as if it’s all just a lark. He’s messing everything up—a hypochondria attack requires a serious attitude.
I look at the place on my wrist where my watch would be if I wore one. “Sort of getting late,” I say.
Simon gazes at me, all innocence. “You have to go? Too bad.” He pulls a deck of cards from his pocket.
She smiles. “Rematch?”
I raise my eyebrows at Simon. Rematch? I push away from the window. So much for interviewing the suspect. He’s been socializing with her.
“Oh, duh, your coat. Sorry, Justine.” Ez retrieves my coat from the carousel.
I could still take her pulse and zing her, but thanks to Simon, her mind’s not in the right place, and I don’t see myself getting her back on track. I’m a little bit relieved, but at the same time, disappointed, because I won’t get to feel that wonderful peace. I try not to think about that too much. I throw a couple bucks into the tip jar.
“Nice to see you again, Nurse Jones,” Simon says.
As I pull on my coat, I stare levelly at Simon. “If you don’t mind, since you missed your follow-up visit to the clinic, I’d like a word with you. A bit of a heads-up on your condition.”
“I hardly think a broken arm is a condition.” He lifts an arm. “It’s healed up fabulously.”
I bore into his eyes. “I really don’t want to tell you the results of the test in front of Ez.”
His smile is a challenging one. But just then, a large group, maybe a dozen, trundles in the door. We step back as the first approaches Ez’s window. “I’ll walk you to your car, Nurse Jones.”
We get out of there. The sky is starry, and the streetlights illuminate tiny crystalline snowflakes riding the chill breeze. “What is this?” I demand, heading toward where I parked. “You’re playing cards with her? This is beyond investigation. You’re just after her.”
“I can’t make a friend?”
“Not this one.” I turn a corner. The sidewalks are unusually empty, considering it’s only a bit after seven o’clock. The Dorks.
“Loosen up,” Simon says. “Why not go do somebody else and crash Ez later on? Give me more time with the investigation.”
“Are you even investigating? Because this is important to me.”
“Of course I am, but in the meantime, we’ve been having some fun, me and Ez. She’s been in there for three years. How about you let her have some fun with me while she’s still badass?”
“I can’t. Unless she’s innocent, and I’m not seeing proof that she is.”
He snorts angrily.
“Sorry, Simon. I can’t.”
“I can’t,” he mimics. “Don’t you ever hate yourself?”
I stop, spin around. His eyes gleam behind the antihighcap glasses. “Here’s the situation. Ez has her dream invader hooks into Packard and me. Know what I’m saying? She’s got us conferenced. So she’s fast-tracked.”
Simon cranes his neck up, incredulous. “What?”
“I messed up, okay? I let her touch me while Packard tried to pull me away, and she got us both. Our sleeping minds are totally conferenced right now. Don’t tell anybody.”
Simon laughs. “You’re conferenced together? You and Packard and Ez?”
“And she’s already been screwing around in our sleeping minds.”
Simon flicks his bangs out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. “Start sharpening the ol’ chompers yet?”
“That’s not even funny.” I continue walking.
“It wasn’t a joke. Has she been trying to work you in any way that would seem like she wants you to eat people? Does she talk about meat when you see her? Steak tartare?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. If she has a cannibal mania, or whatever kind of sickness makes a person do that, she’d be working you in that direction. Has she?”
“She’s been making suggestions.”
“About?”
“She wants us to hand over our descramblers.”
“See? She goes right to getting free.”
“Maybe it’s step one. With your two days of investigation or whatever it is you’ve been doing, have you come to any different conclusions than Otto, the highcap master detective? No.”
“Yeah, I have.”
“Only in your own mind. If you’d found something you would’ve told me by now.” Everything is so complicated suddenly—too complicated. “Think about it, Simon. Ez has taken the power to command us as sleepwalking zombies. We have to crash her and make her break the link. It’s a matter of survival.” I say it as much for myself as for him.
“Even if she’s innocent?”
“How long am I supposed to wait for you to find evidence of that?”
“I think she’s innocent.”
“If she’s innocent, then why is she messing with our dreams? Why is she deepening her hold on us?”
“She wants to get out.”
“Easy to say when you’re not the one who’ll be dining on guts if you’re wrong.”
“I’m going back up there.”
“What? To ruin all my work?”
“Nobody’s ruining your work.”
“You already ruined my work. I didn’t get to zing her because you interrupted.”
“You still could’ve zinged her.” He gives me a quizzical look. “What’s wrong?”
“You took her mind out of it.” I shrug. “She’s rolling anyway. She’s not even all the way sane now.”
“She’s sane enough for me,” he says as we reach my car.
“To fuck?”
“That’s right.”
I give him my most damning gaze. “You would take advantage of her partial sanity and her loneliness like that?”
“What about my partial sanity? And my loneliness?”
“You are sick. And you’re not going in there.” I grab his wrists. They’re bare. “Where’s your descrambler?”
“You won’t find it.”
“You’re not going in there.”
“Or what? Otto will seal me up? Oops, he can’t. Because I’m wearing these glasses now. These fucking things are the best thing since sliced bread. Otto can’t touch me and Ez can’t compromise me, either.” With a smirk he leans on the passenger door of my Jetta, pretends to arrange his hair in the side mirror. “Until I want her to. I understand there are certain benefits to it.”
“Packard can still cut you off and let you turn into a Jarvis.”
“All the more reason to spend my last days having fun.”
“I’m sure he’d manage to send some thugs over to beat you up in the meantime.”
“
Packard’s sworn off that shit.”
I narrow my eyes. Why does everybody assume Packard’s out of the crime business?
“Anyway, I’ll take my chances,” he adds.
This, of course, is pure Simon. Always taking chances. Always on the losing end. Which is why I’ve slipped out my stun gun.
He realizes it seconds before I show it. He smiles, thinking about how to get to his, no doubt.
I say, “Don’t move. Just tell me where you have the descrambler.”
“I’ve taken precautions,” he says.
“You never take precautions.” We both know how this will end, but we have to go through it. “One. Two.” He lunges. I press the button.
“Uh!” He crumples. I grab a handful of ratty coat, trying to break his fall, but his chin still hits the side mirror on the way to the ground.
“Shit!” I whisper. “Sorry.” Quickly I straighten him so he somewhat looks like he’s sitting and leaning against the closed door, though his head is lolled to the side, and his butt has sunk awkwardly between the tire and the curb. His descrambler turns out to be in his coat pocket—a chunky silver chain bracelet just like mine. He’s starting to rouse. Quickly I pull off his glasses, too, unlock my car, stuff them both under the backseat, then lock it back up.
Heels click up the walk.
I crouch next to him and brush the black hair from his face, heart racing. “Hey, buddy.”
A voice behind me: “Everything okay? Do you need an ambulance?”
I look up at a tall woman in a long purple coat. “He’s a fainter and a bit of a drunk, but it’s okay. I’m a nurse.”
“Fuck you,” Simon mumbles. “She’s not a nurse. She never will be a nurse.”
I smile up at her. “Back to his old ornery self.”
“She’s an agony nurse,” Simon says.
“Thanks,” I say to her.
The woman laughs nervously and clicks away, slightly faster than the clicks of her coming.
“Where’re my glasses?”
“I’m sorry, but your glasses have been detained. I won’t be a sleepwalker under Ez’s control. I have more than enough problems without that.”
“Fuck it. I’ll go in without them.” I watch him come a little bit more to his senses. He jerks his hand to his pocket and realizes the descrambler’s gone.
I back away. I’ll stun him again if I have to.
His expression darkens. “I’ll get another pair. And I’ll get another descrambler.”
“Not tonight you won’t,” I say.
He stands uncertainly, one hand on the hood of the car. “Just like Packard. You’re just out for yourself.”
“Look who’s talking,” I say. “Don’t you dare reverse my work with Ez.”
“Good little Justine always wanted to be a nurse,” he says in a mocking voice. “Now she’s an eeevil nurse. Now she’s an agony nurse. Attacking her victims.”
I feel a little ill. “We’re helping people.”
“You’re contorting so wildly to pretend you’re on the good side, you’re like a fucking sideshow act. Reality check, sister. We’re the bad guys. We work for a power-hungry megalomaniac. Otto’s a megalomaniac.”
I smile hotly. “A megalomaniac would’ve killed people like Ez by now instead of going through what he’s going through.”
“People like Ez? You mean people who’ve been imprisoned indefinitely without trial? Who look very very innocent? To both of us?”
I’m taken aback by his seriousness. It’s new. He turns and storms back toward the club.
I shove the stun gun back into my bag, get into my car, and sit, feeling like hell. What if she is innocent? I reposition dashboard Gumby, making his little green arms go over his face. His happy hopeful face just seems fake. “What am I going to do?” I ask him.
I’ve never needed to see Otto so badly. He’s the person who makes it all make sense, my anchor when I’m adrift in doubt. He wouldn’t have sealed her in there if she was innocent. I click on my phone, and my heart skips a beat when I see that there’s a text from him.
I turn on the engine and the heat and settle in to read it.
at mayoral conference, recharging and revitalizing. need solitude w all that has happened. will talk when I return.
I read it again and again. w all that has happened, he wrote. Meaning all that’s happened with us? Or is he talking about the Dorks? Why a text and not a voice mail? That can’t be a positive sign. I write back: Otto, I am so sorry. I miss you. Can we talk? When will you return? xxoo
As soon as I hit send I think of different, better things to write, but it’s too late. And it would be too flaky to send another message now. I feel panicky, like things are growing distant: the sun, the moon, my dreams.
Have other people heard from him? I call Jimmy, his chauffeur. He’s in Atlanta; Otto’s given him a vacation. He knows nothing.
I’ll call the people at Otto’s office tomorrow, but they’ll probably only give me the information they provide the public. To them, I’m a consultant Otto uses now and then. This is one of the things I hate about being in a secret relationship with him. I try Sophia. Still voice mail. Did she go with him?
I call Covian. Voice mail. I leave a message for him to call me; he probably has his phone off. But surely Covian saw Otto this morning. Otto was determined to bring him home from the hospital and see him properly settled in.
Just for the heck of it, I swing by his place—a little Monopoly-type house in the Irish quarter just south of the tangle. I get out of my car and walk up to the door. All the shades are drawn, lights off. Covian’s probably sleeping. But maybe he isn’t. And he saw Otto more recently than I did. Maybe Otto said something. Maybe Covian could give me a read on his state of mind. I raise my hand to ring, then pause.
How thoughtless can I be? Only a desperate girl makes wounded guys get out of bed to answer questions about her relationship. I lower my hand. Covian will return my voice mail.
Back in the car, I read Otto’s message again, searching for further meaning. Another thing a desperate girl does. Need solitude. Is he deciding whether to keep me? Of course he is. I attacked him once before, and he let that go because I was trying to save people’s lives. Or so I thought.
He has such a noble nature, holds himself to such high standards—my deception could be more than he can tolerate.
Packard’s at my place when I get there, stretched long across my couch like a lazy pasha, owning it as only he can. It’s deeply irritating—not the least because he looks so magnificently male.
“You can’t break in here like this,” I say wearily as I set my keys in the dish by the door. “You’re not welcome.” I only half mean it. I look back to find him eyeing me with a serious glint. “What?”
“I spoke with Otto.”
My stomach flips. “When?”
“This morning.”
“What did he say?”
“That you dreamed about the Goyces.” Tenderly he asks, “How are you doing?”
My vision steams, blurs; I blink back the tears, praying he doesn’t notice. I haven’t cried all day, and he has to ask how I’m doing. I cross my arms. “Fine.”
“Oh.” He stands and comes to me, enfolds me, crossed arms and all. “Oh,” he says simply. It feels good. Like home.
I pull away. “He hates me.”
“No,” he says.
“Even you told me to tell him. But did I?”
“You did your best.”
“No, I didn’t.” I sniff and wipe my nose. “Don’t act like you’re not a little happy.”
“Happy? To see you sad?” He rests his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t be dumb. I hate seeing you sad.”
And of course I know that, and because I know that, the hot tears start drooling down my cheeks.
“Stop, Justine. Come on.” He shakes me loosely. “Come on.” It’s supposed to be funny, the way he’s shaking me. It is a little. “Come on now.” As soon as he gets a smile out of me, h
e goes serious, eyeing me with grim fire. “People will always disappoint Otto. Nobody can live up to his expectations, because he sees in black-and-white, when things are really very gray.”
“I should’ve told him.”
“You were doing the best you could.”
“Was I?”
He lets me go and shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “You always do.”
I close that line of talk with a taut wave. “He didn’t say anything else?”
“Not much. He was on his way to pick up Covian.”
“Did he say why he changed his mind about the conference?”
Packard looks confused. “The conference?”
“That mayoral conference? He’s in DC. He went to DC.”
“Otto went to that conference in the middle of the Dorks problem? And this Ez situation?”
“He wanted solitude. I got this text—”
“Otto sent a text message?”
“Obviously he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
Packard stares over my shoulder, seems to study my St. George and the dragon tapestry, a cool old thing I bought with my disillusionist money last fall. I wait, noticing faint lines across Packard’s forehead.
“What?” I ask.
Packard snaps out of it with a quick shrug. “He should’ve stayed, that’s all. Look, we need to discuss that dream. You dreamed about a Goyce. I need specifics.”
“Bodies entombed in the walls. You two fighting.”
He fingers a button on his shirt, rolling his thumb around and around. “Come on. I need to know what you understood of it. Please.” The way he says it—please—reveals a level of desperation that surprises me.
“Fine. It started out with you and Otto—or you and Henji, both as kids, in a fight at the top of those stairs. I got that it was Riverside Elementary. Riverside Elem—”
“Elem,” he whispers. “The rest of the tiles fell off.”
“And Henji was getting at the bodies. Kind of pawing through the wall, as if the wall disintegrated under his touch. I didn’t know he could do that.”
“It’s a part of his power that he rarely uses.”
“He yanks out one of the corpses and he rips the little name patch off the shirt pocket and he’s saying, It’s a Goyce!” I’m thinking about that patch. I’m trying to picture it. There’s something off about it, but it’s like, well, trying to remember a dream.
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