Then music starts to blast throughout the room and Gil grins. “Even better than last time,” he says.
“They’ll always be better than last time,” Enki says, running his fingers lightly up Gil’s arm. “So long as we’re throwing them.”
I think, That won’t be much longer, but Gil just leans in and kisses Enki hard on the lips.
I remember that first night, when Gil and I first saw Enki. When Enki and Gil first fell in love. I felt so alone and bereft and confused. I watch them now and wish for something even that simple.
They come to our party in twos and threes and then by the dozens. Gil dances like the old days, like he wants to tempt his own death. No matter how many people crowd in, he always has a space around him. Enki keeps pace for a while until I come up behind him, hook my fingers into his belt loop. He turns in a smooth pirouette and laughs at my frown.
“Come, bem-querer,” he says, “don’t you want to dance?”
“What if there are too many people?” I ask.
“Then they’ll dance somewhere else.” An eel slides past his face. He pokes his fingers through its insubstantial flesh and I start to laugh, though I don’t know why.
“There,” he says. He puts his hands, firm, on my hips.
“What —”
But he shakes his head. I’m silent when his muscles bunch and his hands tighten and I’m flying over his head, flying with my hands out and my head back. It burns my throat like strong wine. We’re in the glass bubble over the city, surrounded by a thousand Palmarinas of all ages. I feel connected to the world, with Enki beneath me and the city glittering beneath us all.
Enki catches me under my armpits and sets me down lightly on the glass floor.
I mean to thank him, but instead, “When you called me in front of the committee …”
He cocks his head. “You wanted to kill me?”
“Never.”
My stomach clenches at just the thought. Maybe he knows; he squeezes my hand in apology. “What, June?”
I take a deep breath. “I don’t know if I would have said the name. I’m just not sure.”
I’m still trying to gauge his silent, careful reaction when someone grabs me from behind, engulfs me in a messy embrace.
“June! I found you!” Bebel, apparently, has indulged in the wine. “Dance with me?” She plants her hands on my hips. I shrug and let her lead. I feel the hole of Enki’s lost presence for a lot longer than I should, but at least Bebel’s a happy drunk.
“Amazing party,” she says, resting her head on the hollow between my neck and shoulder blade. In a fit of tenderness, I wrap my arm around her. She doesn’t deserve what I’ve done to her. I’ve had a dozen chances to put it right, but instead I hide with Enki and Gil, hoping that this horrible thing I’ve done will just go away. But how can it, if the person responsible doesn’t make herself change?
“Is this what it’s like to swim?” she asks.
“You’ve never been?”
She shrugs. “My mamãe says it’s dangerous.”
“Mine made me learn as soon as I could walk.”
I smile to remember this and Bebel smiles back. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, June. We’re friends, I know we are, and I don’t want you to worry about any of that bullshit with the class rankings and which of us will come out on top. You earned your place and I’m proud of you. And if you win the Queen’s Award, I’ll be even prouder. You deserve it.”
I cough so hard I can hardly breathe. “But … Bebel, no, I don’t …”
The knife in my gut: I don’t deserve anything I haven’t worked for.
But Bebel is Bebel, and she interprets my stuttering denial in the best possible light. “Doing so well even with all this extra pressure? I’m sure I wouldn’t have managed half as well as you. I admire you, that’s all.”
She smiles at me without a trace of condescension. I can’t bear to be near her any longer. I can’t stand what that says about me.
“You’ll win,” I say very carefully.
She blinks. “June, I don’t think —”
“I cheated. I let the Aunties help me cheat. They fixed my score on the exam.”
I might as well have told her that Queen Odete never existed. She covers her mouth with her hands and gasps like she can’t catch her breath.
“I’m so sorry,” I say because I am, though I know it doesn’t mean anything.
“I always … I thought the art mattered to you more than the prize. Didn’t you want it to mean something?”
My heart feels like a shriveled fruit. “I forgot.”
She stares at me for a long moment, as though she can discern in my face the tortured justifications and towering ambitions that brought us to this place, rivals separated by morality.
“You’ll win,” I say.
“With the Aunties on your side!”
“I’m going to disqualify myself and you’ll win. Just remember I told you so.”
I leave before she can respond. I leave before Enki can find me or Gil can pull me into his dance or any of the other hundred people who want my attention can get it. I push my way through the crowd, not bothering to dance, not bothering to smile. I don’t even wipe the tears that have formed in the corners of my eyes. Nothing I do is right anymore. I’m not worth anything at all, and I can’t believe that I once thought I was worth the love of a king and a city.
I hide myself in the control room, lit only by the ambient light from a few activated arrays. I make sure not to touch anything: I wouldn’t want to ruin our undersea holo show outside.
I just sit on the floor, bury my head between my knees, and cry.
Enki finds me. He says, “I told them to leave.”
“Everyone?”
He kneels beside me, but doesn’t touch. My face feels stiff with dried salt, as if it will crack when I move. “Sure,” he says. “We had a few hours.”
The party should have gone until dawn, until the Aunties and their secretaries glared at us while we stumbled home. When I could have slipped away, unnoticed.
“Where’s Gil?” I ask.
“Everyone,” Enki says again. “I told him it was my mods.”
His hair is still damp with sweat. He leans against the wall, so close that the cloth of his shirt brushes my bare arm. His breath hitches a little, but then, mine does too.
“Is it?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It’s always the mods, these days.”
His eyes roll back in his head; his breathing slows. “The Aunties are trying to get in.” His voice is gentle over the speakers.
“Do they know they can’t?”
His voice laughs, but his face remains slack. “I haven’t told them yet.”
“Enki,” I say, “Enki, come out, look at me.” I rub at my cheeks and move so I’m facing him, sitting on my ankles. His shoulders jerk and his irises roll back to their proper position — a process that would terrify me if I hadn’t seen it so many times before. He shivers and gasps. Without thinking, I reach out to stroke his arms.
“What did you want?” I ask.
“Let me show you something.”
He stands a little unsteadily and then reaches down to pull me up. I think we might look nice together, June and Enki in matching whites, if anyone could see us. The auditorium is deserted, though the holos still run. I like it this way: Even in fake water, Enki has an elemental beauty. I think, We’ll have to do that again next summer. And then I remember.
He takes me to the far edge of the bubble and presses his nose into the glass. If I don’t look behind me, it’s as if Enki and I are floating.
“I shouldn’t have called you to testify,” he says. “You have a right to your own life. Like you said, you’re the one who will get to live it.”
I squeeze my hands so tight my nails dig hard half-moons into my palms. How I wish I had never said that. “But what’s the price of a life?”
He takes my left fist and gently pries it open. “I’ve made compromise
s. I won’t tell anyone what I know either.”
“Only because they threatened Gil.”
His eyes widen, but he smiles. “You know about that?”
“I know you.”
He starts on my other hand, pulls the fingers up one by one. His touch is like eating a Scotch bonnet.
“Oreste picked Gil. She didn’t think to pick you.”
“What do I have to do with anything?”
“June, June,” he says, like I’m the lyrics to a song. He has a beautiful voice, I don’t know why I ever thought otherwise. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Tell me?”
That’s what I say, when I know he means to kiss me.
This time Enki’s lips are soft, his breath sweet like ginger. His eyes burn light and dark, constellations in a night sky.
“I love you,” he says through the speakers.
“You love the world,” I say, the words muffled in lips and tongues and hands.
“Not as much,” says the city/Enki.
I fall to my knees on the glass. It rattles my teeth, but I don’t feel it. I’m hungry; I grab his shirt and yank him down, so desperate for this thing that I hardly understand.
His lips trail down my neck; they find my tree. He unbuttons my shirt, kisses down the lights. They’re bright enough to light up the blood in his lips. I can hardly believe the noises coming from my throat, but he’s quiet. I’m cradled in city lights; I’m floating.
“I thought you wouldn’t.” I gasp as I climb over him. “I thought you didn’t want me.” I thought you didn’t love me.
“I’m being selfish,” he says in his own voice.
I don’t know what he means, but I can’t ask. I’m half naked against the glass. My words have broken down, my thoughts smear from my mouth like shapes, formless sounds expressing only emotion.
I remember how it was with Gil: tentative, awkward, fun. I hardly recognize this as the same act. The holo flickers and then gives out entirely. Enki’s hands start to shake. Is it the mods? But he knows exactly what he’s doing when he unbuttons my pants, slips them down my hips and to my ankles.
He’s followed my tree.
I lose track. My hands tangle in his hair. A voice that must be mine cries out. I am myself looking upon myself.
June has wanted this so much.
He will burn her up. She doesn’t care.
He smiles at me; the white of his teeth catches the white of the city lights. I squint, but I won’t close my eyes. I can’t. I want to see him, forever, until I never see him again.
Lights flicker, a firefly calling to mate. At first, I think it’s the lights in the room, but no, here in the bubble there’s only the city sliding to water beneath us.
Enki holds me very tight. Our sweat slicks the glass, smears the flickering white.
“What,” I try to say. “Why?”
But maybe Enki has lost his words too. Even the ones he can make with the city. He just cradles my head, kisses me as if we have a thousand years ahead of us, and moves inside….
How does that feel, June?
It feels —
The lights are out in Palmares Três.
In the dark, I seem to stretch. Without a body to witness, I grow and grow with my pleasure. I feel like a constellation, a concept hung on a scattering of stars.
But the moon is nearly full, and eventually my eyes adjust. We watch each other in the dark, dark night. We watch each other until we explode, until nerves force my eyes shut and his face crumples and our cries turn to gasps and long, shuddering sighs.
We lie, shaking in the dark for a long time. Then I slide off, curling into Enki’s side. I feel his ribs, tracing each bump until they end. I rest my hand by his collarbone, so my index finger jumps a little with each labored heartbeat.
“You would have,” he says, apropos of nothing. His voice is rough.
“Would have what?”
“Given Auntie Maria’s name. Maybe you aren’t sure, but I am.”
I contemplate this. I can’t say that he’s right, really, but how happy I am that he thinks so. His mention of Auntie Maria reminds me of the scheming and the politics and the frenzy surely brewing in the unnaturally dark city below.
“Shouldn’t you turn those back on?” I kiss him.
He kisses back. “Soon,” he says. “They threatened Gil’s mamãe too.”
“Oh. Oh, Enki …”
He hardly moves when I hug him. I lower my lips to his ear. I mean to kiss it or whisper something kind, but instead I hear: “Run away with me.” Maybe Mother couldn’t save Papai. But I can do that most dangerous thing. I can try.
Enki’s only reaction is an uncanny stillness. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Tokyo 10. Accra. Salvador.”
He says, “I’ve never seen Salvador.”
I know that. He’s never seen anywhere but here. Just like me. But somehow it seems important not to say so. His mother is from Salvador, I remember.
“Then Salvador,” I say. “We can walk there, at least. That’s what they say.”
“Okay, June.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll run away with you.”
From somewhere down below, a generator starts to buzz. The lights flicker and then burst back to life. Enki hugs me tight and plants a kiss on the crown of my head.
“We should leave,” he says. “The Aunties are on their way.”
He’s crying, a little. I wipe his eyes before we stand.
Have you ever gone rivet surfing?
I know, you haven’t. I like asking questions when I know the answer already. Have you ever gone rivet surfing? I ask, and then I imagine your voice, saying something like, “I was never dumb enough, Enki.”
And now I wish I could know what you’ll actually say, whether you’ll frown or laugh or —
Here’s how to go rivet surfing. You need a maglev board. Your nanogrip shoes would work great, but most surfers use mag shoes also. You find yourself a nice internal rivet. The kind with giant, gleaming metal that goes on forever. Pipelines are good, which is why you’re almost always surfing into the verde.
Get a good thirty feet above the metal. Make sure you have some space to run. Then step, step, step, shout, and fall, all the while scrambling to get the maglev turned on, the board beneath you, your shoes to grip. You have about five seconds, and if you screw up, well, you’re lucky to live.
But you might catch. You might get your legs beneath you and start to sail faster than a pod down and down that smooth expanse of metal.
You might win and you might lose.
It might be the best experience of your life, and you might never do it again. That’s the trouble with —
Connecting the city’s external weather sensors to her municipal energy production unit, that’s where I put my love for you. It’s probably still there, if you ever want to find it.
I spend the week before my birthday collecting presents, wishing that these could be for a celebration, and not for the most dangerous project I’ve ever attempted.
We might die out there. I’m willing to take that chance, and of course Enki is. When Gil asked me if there was a way to save him, I thought he was asking for a fairy tale.
But this isn’t a fairy tale. With every self-heating blanket and fire starter and water purifier that I carefully stash away, I’m one step closer to abandoning everything I have ever loved in my life.
Everything except one.
Enki spends the time with Gil. I think he wants to say good-bye, since we’ve agreed we can’t tell him of the plan. To protect Gil and his mamãe, we’ve arranged for the city to release sensitive information if anything happens to either of them. But Gil is famous; if something happened to him, the whole city would know. The Aunties might not take our threat seriously enough if his mother remained here, alone.
Two days before my birthday, Enki and I meet Ueda-sama in the ambassador’s apartments. It was Enki’s idea, but Ueda-sa
ma seems relieved to see us, and surprisingly willing when we make our proposal.
“A distraction?” he says. “Of what nature?”
“Something that would make the Aunties pay attention for, oh, at least five hours,” I say. “If you can manage it.”
Ueda-sama nods thoughtfully, as though our request for him to further destabilize his relationship with the government is perfectly reasonable, only a question of logistics.
“Are you planning another art project?” he asks us.
Enki smiles. I shrug uncomfortably. “Something like that.”
Ueda-sama doesn’t press the issue. He just leans back in his chair and looks out the tall window of his apartment, where mist obscures all but the barest hint of the bay. I think again of how tired he looks, how old, despite the formal agelessness of his face. When he was born, there were people alive who had seen New York City and Rio before the blasts. When he was born, men still died of the Y Plague.
I wonder how it feels to bear that much history. I wonder what a man fifteen times our age sees when he looks at us.
“Yours is a strange city, Enki,” he says, still staring at the mist.
Has he forgotten our request? I glance at Enki, but he doesn’t seem concerned. “She’s the most beautiful in the world.”
“My Tokyo was beautiful once,” Ueda-sama says quietly. “She lost it long ago, but oh, some mornings, to wake to the sight of our mountain skirted in mist and snow, the smell of my wife’s jasmine incense for the butsudan, the call of a crane from the garden … they tell me there are ancient worlds in the data cloud, full re-creations of past Japan.”
But Ueda-sama can’t upload himself. “Do you wish you could go there?” I ask.
“They think they’ve gone to heaven,” he says. “They don’t realize that means they’re dead.”
Enki leans across the table and rests his hand on Ueda-sama’s shoulder. “Will you help us, Toshio?”
The ambassador sighs, rubs his temples. “It would be an honor, Summer King,” he says.
The Summer Prince Page 23