“Here,” Moonlark said, lifting the pitcher and holding it for Faller. The first five or six gulps seemed to dissolve right into his mouth and throat, then the water started flowing, a cool stream he felt right down to his fingertips.
“Take a break,” Moonlark said, drawing the pitcher away. “You’ll puke if you chug like that.”
Faller nodded, gasping, as Moonlark set the pitcher on a granite coffee table.
“So where are you really from?” Moonlark pointed at himself, then at Faller. “Just between you and me.”
Faller struggled to sit up, feeling like he’d seem more credible if he was vertical. How to put this? “I fell off the edge of my world.” He pointed at the ceiling. “There’s another world above yours. Way, way up.”
Moonlark crossed his legs. He was smiling. The smile seemed to say, I’m amused by your bullshit, but I may kill you if it persists. “That’s an interesting story. An imaginative story.” He rolled back toward his desk, reached into a wood chest next to it and pulled out a can of nuts. An honest-to-goodness sealed can of nuts. He pulled the vacuum seal like it was no big deal, helped himself to a few, then held the can out to Faller. “Nuts?”
Faller leaned forward and scooped as large a handful as he thought he could get away with without Moonlark cutting his throat.
When Moonlark didn’t even look to see how many he took, Faller cursed himself for not taking more.
“So tell me…” Moonlark paused. “What’s your name?”
“Faller.”
Moonlark snorted. “Faller?” He canted his head to one side and nodded, as if allowing Faller to have his name. “Okay. So tell me, Faller: If you fell from the sky, how the fuck did you manage to land without breaking every bone in your body?”
“I had a parachute.” He inhaled, intending to elaborate, then shut his mouth. Even to him it sounded absurd. He pointed at the door. “The men who brought me in took it.”
“Ah, a parachute. I see. And what exactly does a parachute do?”
Moonlark probably had a vague image just from the word, but Faller thought it best to assume he didn’t. “It’s a half-circle of fabric with lines attached.” He paused, took a moment to catch his breath before continuing. “A pocket of air forms under the fabric, letting you float slowly instead of falling.”
Moonlark pressed his hands together, letting only his fingertips touch, and considered this. “Like I said, it’s an imaginative story.” He raised his eyebrows, smirked in a wholly unsettling manner. “Is there anyone who can corroborate it?”
“Two kids. Bo’s kids—the taller man. I don’t know if anyone else saw.”
Moonlark grinned. “No one else saw you fall from the sky?”
“Not that I saw.”
Moonlark watched him, still sporting that amused-yet-threatening smile. Faller wondered who this guy was. Someone with power, certainly. Someone who could have him killed if Faller couldn’t convince him he was worth keeping around.
Faller pointed at a painting hung on the wall over Moonlark’s desk, a landscape of cows grazing in a green field, a solitary farmhouse in the distance. “Is there any place on your world like that?”
Moonlark made no effort to look at the painting.
“No. It’s some other place.”
“Is that where you came from?” Moonlark gestured over his shoulder at the painting. “Have you seen those cows in that field?”
“What I’m saying is, why is it so hard to believe there’s another place besides this one?”
Moonlark pushed out his lower lip and shrugged. “It isn’t. I think there’s a decent chance there are other places out there.” His voice took on an icy tone. “What’s difficult for me to believe is you fell from one of them.” Moonlark stood. He held the can of nuts out to Faller. “Why don’t you stay here for the time being, until we sort this out?”
Faller accepted the can. “Thank you.” Clearly Moonlark thought he was lying, that he was a spy from Uptown, whatever Uptown was, and had decided to be patient with him for now. Chances were his patience wouldn’t last. At least he had a place to stay and a can of peanuts. The rest he could figure out when he was stronger.
“Hammer?” Moonlark called. The acne-scarred man poked his head in. “Faller here is going to be our guest for the time being. Set him up in the Green Room, get him some clothes, get Powder to heat a bath down the hall.”
A bath? Heat a bath? Faller couldn’t imagine anyone hauling enough water to fill one of the tubs that sat useless in every house just so someone could sit in it, let alone heating the water first.
“Thank you,” was all Faller could think to say as Hammer helped him stand. He was in a dangerous spot and would have to be careful, but compared to where he’d been a few hours ago, this was heaven.
V
MOST OF the restaurants along Richmond Road were closed, unable to get reliable deliveries. Peter watched out the window as he passed their dark interiors, Izabella’s birthday present in his lap.
What do you get someone who’s dying for her birthday? It certainly couldn’t be a keepsake, or clothes, unless you happened upon a particularly lovely hospital gown. They’d considered making a professionally edited DVD from years of home videos, but that would only make her cry. In the end they’d concluded the best gifts were things she could use immediately, like the gift Ugo had given her the week before.
“I can’t imagine what it cost Ugo to hire that string quartet.” Peter shook his head in wonder, still staring out the window. “Whatever else you can say about the man, he loves Izabella.”
“Mm-hm,” Melissa said, her tone less than enthusiastic.
Peter looked at her. “What?”
Melissa seemed to consider as she stopped at a light. “I’m supposed to keep what’s said on our girls’ nights out to myself, but she’s told me stories. Ugo’s not all that easy to live with.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise Peter. He’d wondered how Ugo was able to so fully suppress his dickishness when he was around Izabella.
“What did he do?”
Melissa pursed her lips and made a popping sound. “The story that stands out is the time they were arguing about whether this woman on the news should have gone to jail for poisoning her neighbor’s dogs. It was just a dumb argument, but Ugo wouldn’t let it go. He kept lecturing her, and when Bella left the room he followed her, told her not to walk away when he was talking to her. She’d had about enough, so she went into their bedroom and locked the door.”
All Peter could think was, Surely this story does not involve assault. Surely Ugo didn’t hit her. Peter felt sure Izabella would take a tire iron to Ugo’s skull if he hit her. She and Melissa weren’t women who took shit, and growing up in their wacko family, they’d learned how to fight.
“Ugo pounded on the door. He kept saying, ‘Don’t you dare disrespect me.’ When she didn’t answer, he kicked the door in.”
“Holy shit,” Peter said.
“I know. Once he got inside he just went on lecturing her about why it was absurd to put someone in jail for killing an animal, when so many people had been murdered and raped in Bosnia.”
Peter nodded. He’d heard some of Ugo’s stories. His mother had been raped in front of him and his father by Serbian soldiers, then both parents had been killed, and he’d been placed in that postapocalyptic detention camp/orphanage. After the war he’d been adopted by the Serbian general, Valentin Stojic, and his wife. The breakneck shift to a life of privilege provided by his parents’ killers must have been confusing as hell to a kid.
As they pulled into the hospital parking lot, Ugo was waiting, so they had to end the conversation there.
* * *
WHEN IZABELLA realized where they were going, she laughed with delight. Dunes blocked their view of the ocean as Melissa pulled into the sandy parking lot, which was completely empty, save for Kathleen’s red Mini Cooper. There had been almost no cars on the road to Virginia Beach. Gas was too precious.
Heads bowed a
gainst a chilly breeze, they followed Ugo as he carried Izabella down to the water, with Harry, who’d hitched a ride with Kathleen, right behind him clutching her portable IV stand. Melissa pulled off her shoes and socks, and Ugo set her in a lawn chair and wrapped her in a blanket. It was agonizing to see Izabella like this. She trembled as if she were having a seizure, her face twisted by muscle contractions.
Ugo opened her gifts for her. When he unwrapped Peter and Melissa’s gift, perhaps the last pound of macadamia nuts on the continent, Izabella acted as if they’d given her a new car.
What do you give to someone who’s dying? Things she can use right now: food, and a trip to the ocean, so she can smell the salt air one last time.
Kathleen gave her a beautiful silk robe, sunset-orange, clearly handmade. Harry’s gift was a huge book of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips.
Ugo saved his gift for last: an exquisite emerald bracelet. Izabella acted as if he’d given her the Taj Mahal. Peter couldn’t help picturing him kicking down their bedroom door.
When the gifts had been opened, Peter motioned to Kathleen to take a walk with him. She’d been a wreck throughout the gift opening, repeating words under her breath, eyebrows twitching, her right index finger air-writing madly. In grad school her symptoms had always grown worse around final-exam time, but they’d never been this bad.
“What’s the latest?” On the ride down they’d studiously avoided talking about the war. Peter wasn’t sure if Izabella was even aware that North Korea had entered it, adding the fifth-largest army in the world to the enemy’s forces.
“Aspen and her advisors are scared shitless. We’re taking too many losses.” She whispered, “Losses, losses,” under her breath. “They’re instituting a draft. Immediately. Today.”
“Jesus.”
“With North Korea, it’s going to get worse. By the end of the year we might see a billion casualties worldwide.”
“It’s hard to believe anybody wants this, even the crazies in North Korea. It’s almost as if the war has taken on a life of its own, and even the warring countries can’t stop it.”
There were dark rings under Kathleen’s eyes. Peter put an arm on her shoulder. “How are you holding up?”
“You know me.” Kathleen laughed. “It takes me an hour to shower, with all the new rituals that have cropped up, but I’m okay.”
Peter nodded. There was nothing to say that hadn’t been said. Meds didn’t help Kathleen; it was as if her obsessive-compulsiveness were part of who she was. “We’re here for you. Any time you need a safe place, come stay with Melissa and me.”
“Thanks. You know I love you guys. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Back where their towels and chairs were spread, the conversation was lighter. Melissa and Izabella were reminiscing about a summer trip to the Jersey Shore. They laughed about a time their drunk father almost burned down the boardwalk with illegal fireworks.
A storm front was on the horizon, with a roll cloud in the lead—slate grey with a flat blue-black bottom. It was still a ways off.
“What about you, Peter?” Izabella asked. “You have a favorite summer vacation story?”
Peter tried to think of some memory from his boyhood summers. He didn’t like to think about his childhood. Besides his father’s accident, his most vivid memory was being beaten by three of his classmates on the railroad tracks that crossed East Miller Street. One of them had been David Davison, who’d been his best friend once upon a time, before Peter had been placed in the gifted classes with the rich kids from Clarkston, thus somehow betraying the kids in his neighborhood.
His last year of high school, living with his chemistry teacher, Mr. Caruso, had been a revelation. Just seeing how a normal family functioned had opened his eyes.
“I wonder if that’s what drew us all together,” Izabella said. “Bad childhoods.”
Ugo grunted. “I’d give a million dollars to trade childhoods with Peter.”
14
IT WAS still light when Faller woke. He had no idea how long he’d slept. When he got out of bed his legs felt rubbery and much too long; the room felt like it was listing to one side. His neck was stiff, and turning it in any direction sent waves of pain shooting down his upper back and shoulders.
After draining two glasses of water from a pitcher left on the nightstand, he looked around for something to piss in. He spotted a milk bottle set on the nightstand. It hurt to piss, but he filled the bottle a good three inches, which led him to believe he’d been asleep a long time.
Pulling back the curtain, Faller peered through the window past overgrown shrubs, at a field of tall grass shaded by thick-trunked trees. Beyond was a tall steel fence.
It was hard to gather his thoughts, standing there looking out on another world. Everything he thought he knew was wrong, leaving him almost as confused as on Day One. Something Moonlark had said nagged him: I think there’s a decent chance there are other worlds.
Worlds, not world. He’d been too exhausted to process it when Moonlark said it, but now it seemed like the most powerful thing he’d ever heard. If there were two worlds, why not ten, or a hundred? There were so many paintings depicting so many different places, and it was a very big sky.
Faller let the curtain drop. He was eager to look around, see if there were clues here to explain things, clues that an outsider who’d seen another world might put together. He’d spent so much time digging through drawers in empty apartments on his world, poring over detritus from before the beginning of time. Maybe that effort would pay off.
Brand-new clothes were set out on the dresser—black pants and a pullover sweatshirt. Faller put them on, then, bottle in hand, went into the hall and looked for a way to get outside to dispose of his urine. He passed door after door—all closed—turned a corner and heard raucous voices drifting from a big, brightly lit room down the hall.
Peeking into the high-ceilinged room, he saw a dozen or so people, mostly women and children, watching two others who were putting on some sort of performance. The audience was bright-eyed and well fed, sitting on chairs and couches that were old yet immaculate. The performers—a man and a woman—were pretending to be in a footrace. They jogged in place, sometimes the man in the lead, sometimes the woman. They were performing behind a big rectangle made from white plastic piping. Neither strayed outside the frame of the piping, giving the effect that this rectangle was a window into the actors’ own imaginary world. It should have seemed odd, but it felt right to Faller. On his world performances could range anywhere, as if the watchers and the performers shared the same world, when clearly they didn’t.
Before anyone in the room had time to notice him, Faller moved on. The place was immense. He passed an open door and paused to admire the longest dining table he’d ever seen.
“There you are.” Moonlark emerged from a doorway, natty in a navy blue suit, a bright white handkerchief in the jacket pocket. Glancing at the milk bottle Faller was holding, he pointed to a room across the hall. “Just leave that, someone will take care of it.”
As Faller returned, Moonlark put a hand on his shoulder and steered him down the hall, toward towering front doors, out into bright sunlight. “Let’s take a walk.” All signs of anger and impatience had vanished; Moonlark seemed friendly and relaxed as they strolled along a brick walk.
Two men in suits, pistols prominently tucked into their belts, fell into step a few paces behind them as Moonlark led Faller out the front gate, nodding at a guard leaning against a tree holding an assault rifle. Faller wondered if they still had bullets for the rifle, or if it was just for show.
They headed toward the wall he’d seen yesterday, walking the first few blocks in silence.
“You’ve never seen any of this before?” Moonlark asked, indicating the shop-lined street.
“I’ve seen streets that look like this, but never this one, no.”
They turned left and headed through an empty park, then into an area choked with apartment
buildings. Laundry hung from lines running above the street. Flies buzzed around layers of trash. Faller was growing tired, but he pushed on, trying not to let it show.
People noticed them as they walked. A few followed at a respectable distance, watching curiously, whispering among themselves. Moonlark ignored them, as if it happened all the time.
“I’d like you to do me a favor,” Moonlark said, his tone conversational. “When we get where we’re going, I’ll show you various pieces of machinery. What I’d like you to do is look each over like you’re familiar with it. Nod a lot. Touch the controls like you know just what they do. When I ask if you can work it, you say, ‘Sure, no problem.’ Loud, but not too loud. Can you do that for me?”
Faller nodded. “Sure, no problem.” He kept his expression flat, wondering what Moonlark was up to. How could pretending Faller knew how to work machines benefit Moonlark, if he couldn’t really work them?
“People from the Uptown side of the fence will be watching.” Moonlark looked at him, raised one eyebrow. “Is anyone going to recognize you? Tell me the truth. Are you from Uptown? From one of the other boroughs?”
“I told you, no one on this world is going to recognize me, except the people who found me.”
Moonlark chuckled. “Because you’re from another world. Keep it up, my friend.”
The walk reminded Faller of his march to the Tower. It was like a parade, with Moonlark and Faller leading a swelling crowd. Only the people following now were thinner, their steps less steady.
They passed through another business area, the empty shops long ago plundered.
“Here we go.” Moonlark motioned ahead, at the wall Faller had seen the day he arrived. The wall must separate this place from Uptown.
When they reached the wall Faller thought he understood Moonlark’s plan. The street that ran along it was lined with big, scary machines. The one closest to him looked like a giant dragonfly. The part of Faller’s mind that always knew the right word for things whispered Harrier. Farther down was a five-legged steel bug with two turrets set on a swiveling head—a drone tank. Like everyone else, Faller could come up with a word for just about anything, even if he had only the vaguest idea—or no idea—what it was.
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