Akin

by Emma Donoghue

He turned to face the boy, already regretting it, as his frenzy ebbed.

  Nowhere to be seen in the thinning crowd.

  “Michael?”

  Fear had Noah in its mouth and was chewing him up. A blur, a running figure that could be the boy. As if in belated response to some half-heard starter’s pistol, Noah was off.

  Strangely enough he found he had time—as he ran, walked, lurched, stumbled through the sticky, nighttime streets of Nice—to regret everything he’d done this week, and everything he’d failed to do. “Michael,” he shouted every now and then, in a random direction. A petty quarrel, running away, this was probably how children ended up caught by traffickers, smuggled over borders, sold to pedophile rings.

  Two or three times Noah spotted a boy who could have been Michael, but never was. Checking his watch: almost half an hour now. It felt like a whole night. His lungs were burning and his armpits were dripping. He couldn’t think of anywhere else to try but the hotel. Why would Michael go back to their room, though, if all he wanted was to get away from the evil great-uncle who’d smashed his toy? It was time to go to the police; Noah should have done it half an hour ago.

  But Michael thinks of cops as Nazis, he argued with himself.

  Still. Any adult who found a foreign child distressed and alone would surely take him to the police. So Noah stopped the next person in uniform—a street cleaner—and asked, voice uneven, for the nearest gendarmerie.

  He’d have hailed a cab if he’d spotted one. He stumbled as fast as he could through sultry streets still crowded with revelers. He had a half-remembered statistic stuck in his head like a seed between his teeth, something about the percentage of missing children who got murdered within three hours.

  You’re distorting the statistics, Joan told him. It must be that of children who are subsequently found murdered, a certain percentage turn out to have been killed in the first three hours. Whereas most missing children probably find their way home.

  You’re no help, he raged. Michael has no home.

  257. In the police station, Noah sat and held the number between trembling fingers.

  Two police on wheeled chairs were shooting the breeze with a third who leaned on their counter, as if this was their night off—no prospect of any public disorder to quell during Carnival. Could Noah jump the line for a situation as grave as this, he wondered? Was his mislaying of Michael reason enough for a red alert, or amber, or whatever the color was?

  OPERATION TRANQUILLITÉ VACANCES, said a poster; Operation Holiday Tranquility. (Which had a sinister ring to it, but it was nothing more than advice about not leaving valuables in parked cars.) A sign over the row of conjoined seats prohibited anyone from moving them to improvise a bed. One cracked windowpane was mended with opaque tape. These did not seem like good signs.

  Noah leaned back in his hard plastic seat and closed his eyes.

  When one of the officers called out “Deux cent cinquante-sept,” Noah heard his number belatedly and leaped up.

  The handsome uniformed man placidly dug out a form.

  Noah could only give Michael’s name, not his date of birth; the nearest he could offer was 2006, and June, maybe? As for where the child’s parents were… These were circonstances spéciales, Noah explained. The father was dead and the mother was in the US; Noah was only a gardien temporaire.

  The officer tapped on his computer, but Noah got no sense of an Interpol alert being sent out.

  Height and weight?

  Too embarrassed to say he didn’t know, Noah guessed wildly.

  No medical conditions? Birthmarks, scars?

  None that he knew of. Oh, one tattoo, on the inside of the arm: F.O.E. (Family Over Everything, he thought, cringing. How had he found this child and lost him again, all in a week?)

  Any recent pictures?

  Not that Noah had on him, no. Michael’s passport was back at the hotel.

  On Monsieur’s phone, even?

  He had to admit that he never took any photos.

  What was Michael wearing?

  Noah drew a complete blank, at first. Then described the Roman helmet. He could tell the man thought this sounded like a weird setup, what with the headgear and the tattoo and the old man’s ignorance about this child he was claiming to have brought to France. Perhaps the officer thought Noah had dementia, and the boy was a figment of memory or imagination.

  How much money had Michael had on him?

  None, Noah admitted.

  Places to which the boy was attached, where he might be likely to go?

  But they were visiting for only a week, and Michael didn’t know Nice. “Nous sommes des touristes ici, Monsieur.” Or should it be Officer?

  Michael’s telephone number, email, social-media accounts?

  Noah shook his head, pathetic. He really should have bought a French SIM card for the wretched cracked phone, to be able to reach Michael if they got separated; he saw that now. What was he was going to say to Rosa, when he’d finally have to call her?

  “Demain.”

  Dazed, he realized the officer was telling him to come back tomorrow.

  At the desk of the Excelsior, wiping his forehead, Noah asked for their key. The clerk handed it down, and only then mentioned that Noah’s young relation was in the lounge.

  Michael was watching TV with his feet up on an antique-trunk coffee table, helmet still on.

  Noah let himself down heavily and put up his own feet beside the kid’s sullied sneaker. Michael didn’t turn his head.

  “What are we watching?” Noah asked after a minute.

  A long pause. “Victoria’s Secret fashion show. On a loop.”

  It struck Noah as a cross between soft porn and wildlife; all those masks and plumes.

  “You took your sweet time,” Michael muttered.

  “I was at the police station, reporting that you’d been kidnapped.”

  “For real?”

  Was the boy amused? Touched? Or just scornful of Noah’s misjudgments? “How did you find the hotel?”

  Michael shrugged. “I kept saying, ‘Train station’? People pointed.”

  “Excellent life skills.” A great yawn split Noah’s face. “Shall we?” Nodding toward the elevator.

  “We never had any dinner.”

  In all the hullabaloo, Noah hadn’t thought to feel hungry. The Excelsior’s kitchen was clearly shut. He summoned his last reserves. “OK, let’s see what’s still open…”

  On the street he lit a cigarette. But he was too tired to savor it, somehow. He spotted a Greek place. A Moroccan beside it.

  Michael kept shaking his head. “I want churros.”

  “They’re not dinner, they’re just fried dough. Look, there’s souvlaki, falafel… Kebabs, you said you like kebabs.”

  Michael shook his helmet, immovable. “I passed churros down on the Prom, and they smelled so good.”

  “All right, churros it is.” Because Noah couldn’t handle another argument tonight. It was the repetition that appalled him; the stop-and-start, petty, Whac-A-Mole wrangling that died down and flared up over and over. “But surely we can find some a bit closer?”

  No, it turned out that churros were sold only from vans on the seafront. So Noah and Michael trailed all the way back down to the Prom, through confettied streets with a wrecked and dissolute look to them. Better not to talk; to let the exhausting evening wind down like a clockwork train.

  Instead Noah found himself reflecting out loud about everybody having electrical charges in the brain, prompting chemical signals that had been useful to our hunter-gatherer ancestors but were obsolescent in a modern urban society.

  “You’re obsolescent.” Michael spoke through his teeth.

  “I’m only pointing out, as someone with a great deal of life experience, that following those fight-or-flight impulses can get you into trouble in various ways, medically, legally…”

  “Shut the fuck up, old man.”

  “I don’t think you should speak to me that way, espe
cially considering I’m one of the few relations you have left.”

  “No you aren’t,” the kid snarled. “It’d take more than a couple spirals of DNA to make us blood.”

  “Michael—”

  But the kid was gone again, racing off through the crowd, fleet with fury.

  Argh!

  Noah just didn’t have it in him to chase the boy this time; after a few steps he slowed, coughing. The most he could do was weave through the late-night promenaders, keeping the Roman helmet in view. “Michael!” he yelled hoarsely, just once. All it did was make strangers stare. Noah almost collided with three giggling girls on those blue rental bikes, and had to lunge out of the path of a pair of twins in a stroller.

  Michael was almost at the giant sundial now. Should Noah give up, walk back to the Excelsior and wait for him to show up again? No. The truth was, Noah had provoked this latest quarrel by preaching and pontificating, so—

  Jesus Christ, what was the kid doing?

  Michael was climbing around the fence at the point where they’d seen teenagers dive from the high rocks the other day. Was he meaning to sulk on a ledge, out of sight?

  Adrenaline-fueled now, Noah broke into a trot, almost crashing into a Rollerblader. But by the time he got to the fence and stepped up to peer around it, the boy had disappeared among the rocks, outside the lamp’s circle of light. “Michael!” Noah panted. “Come back, you might slip.”

  And if Michael did fall in… He couldn’t swim. The lunatic, didn’t he register the danger? Now Noah was scared to climb after him, not just because he mistrusted his own balance but because it might provoke the boy.

  If this was a standoff, was it best to wait it out? Or would Michael interpret Noah’s silence as indifference? “Michael,” he pleaded.

  No answer.

  If Noah descended to the stony beach below, it struck him, he’d be able to see the high rocks better.

  He hurried down the pavement, down the steps, gripping the flaking rail so he wouldn’t trip. His shoes wallowed among the slippery, grinding pebbles. He staggered, almost fell. Head tilted back, he searched the line of rocks. Yes, there was the small figure of Michael, alone on the divers’ ledge, hunched with chin on fist like Rodin’s Thinker. “Careful,” Noah wailed. No dignity, now; no authority; no idea what else he could do.

  Was the kid…yes, he was setting down his helmet. Slipping his sneakers off. Was he going to make some dramatic gesture by tossing them in the sea?

  No, it was the other way around. Michael meant to jump.

  “I apologize!” It came out of Noah as a shriek. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m an asshole. Come down!”

  Michael showed no sign of hearing, eyes fixed on the foaming waves.

  From day one, Noah had failed to grasp the reality of what this kid had been through. Behind the braggadocio, such grief. After all, what did Michael have left to keep him anchored to the world?

  “No!”

  Young people smoking dope on the stones nearby turned to stare.

  “Don’t!” Noah howled.

  Cleanly, no flailing, arms by his sides, Michael dropped like a knife, and the dark sea swallowed him.

  Noah didn’t make a sound, not even a call for help. He was on his knees, watching the water. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t take a breath. When, if, when he spotted Michael’s head, he told himself, he’d be able to fix his eyes on it—point both hands—roar to those potheads to help him get the kid out of the water.

  A shape, a figure in the sea halfway between the foam line and where Michael had fallen. Was it? Backstroking smoothly, face tilted up to catch the lamplight. No. Could it—

  “Michael!” Noah waited, in his painful crouch.

  There was the boy, walking out of the waves like some miracle. Clothes flattened into sodden armor, face bejeweled by salt drops.

  Noah pounded, then slithered his way toward the boy. Up to his knees in the icy wash, he flung his arms around Michael, almost knocking them both into the surf. Pressed the small frame to him, very hard. “I didn’t know you could swim.”

  Michael was panting a little, but his voice was oddly calm. “Why wouldn’t I be able to swim?”

  “You never said!”

  “You never asked. My mom’s been taking me to the Y since I was three.”

  Up on the wide sidewalk of the Prom, the two of them making pools of water like mermen, Noah noticed something: “Your foot’s bleeding.”

  “I bashed it on a rock,” Michael said with pride, “but it’s OK.”

  “It doesn’t look OK.”

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  “That’s because you’re numb from the water.”

  Going back to the base of the fence, Michael clambered around it to retrieve his helmet and Jordans. Then he jumped back down. “Can we get churros now?”

  Noah weighed the risk of Michael getting hypothermia against the certainty of his whining all night about being hungry, and went to line up for a white paper sack of churros.

  Michael spared him half a stick: stiff, warm, greasy under the powdered sugar.

  Noah checked his watch. Past midnight; it was technically Monday. “I just turned eighty.”

  “Cheers, dude.” Michael toasted him with the little sack.

  Back in their room at the Excelsior, Noah got out his hydrogen peroxide.

  “Hell no.”

  “It’s just to clean your foot and keep it from getting gangrenous.” Exaggerating a little, for effect. “Its formula is H2O2. Like water, H2O, but with an extra atom of oxygen per molecule that gives it amazing antiseptic powers.” Over the bathroom sink, he dabbed at the boy’s gashed toe.

  Michael winced.

  “Oh, I thought of a chemistry joke—a classic. Two guys walk into a bar,” Noah began, to distract him. “One of them says, ‘I’d like a glass of H2O.’ The bartender asks the other guy what he’d like. He says, ‘Well, I guess I’ll have H2O too.’”

  It took only a second before Michael snickered. “What happened to him—the second guy?”

  “Burns, respiratory distress, stroke, death.” Noah dried the cut with a tissue, then applied an adhesive bandage. “There you go. Only a Band-Aid solution, as they say.”

  In the night he lay awake, still wired; horrified by what could have happened if the kid had hit his head rather than his foot on that rock. Noah never had put him on his travel insurance.

  A grunt from Michael. “You got any more chemistry jokes?”

  “Hm, let’s see.”

  He practiced a couple silently in his head: What do you do with sick chemists? Joan had tried this one on Noah a few days after her diagnosis. Helium and curium. Michael would know about helium from balloons, but what were the chances he’d heard of curium? The same went for What do you do with dead chemists? Barium.

  “Oh, I do have another joke,” he said aloud, “but it’s not about chemistry.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Will you remember me in a second?” Noah asked.

  “Huh?”

  “This is how the joke starts. Will you remember me in a second?”

  “Sure. I’m not a goldfish.”

  An honor to remember…shameful to forget. “Will you remember me in a minute?”

  “Of course,” Michael said.

  “In an hour?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “In a day?”

  “This joke’s taking forever.”

  “In a week?”

  “Just get it over with,” Michael pleaded.

  “In a month?”

  “Are you trying to bore me to sleep?”

  “Answer the question. Will you remember me in a year?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I swear.”

  “In a century?”

  “OK, whatever.”

  “Knock-knock.” Noah came to the punchline at last.

  “Who’s there?”

  He put on a hurt tone. “I thought you said you’d remember me?”

  A long pa
use. “That’s the unfunniest joke ever.”

  Noah smiled in the dark.

  IX

  Decisive Moments

  Noah woke late and sat up in bed slowly, like an invalid. “You awake yet, Michael?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m maxed out this morning.”

  “Me too,” the boy said into the mattress.

  “We’re not flying to New York till late this afternoon.”

  “Good.”

  Noah called down to the front desk and agreed to pay their extortionate fee for late checkout. Then he reached down for his tablet, in the slim hope that Rosa might have answered late last night.

  “I got a look at the report on Victor’s death,” her email began. “No mention of his wearing a wire, but I did notice there was no gear (drug paraphernalia) in the motel room, which suggests that whoever was with him took it away.”

  Bastards! They’d left without checking to see that Victor was all right. Or worse, they’d panicked when he’d lost consciousness and run off without even calling 911.

  “Also, the pathologist noted that there were no track marks, just the fresh injection site behind Victor’s left knee.”

  Noah rubbed between his eyebrows. What did that mean—that the very first time his nephew had tried injecting, it had gone wrong? “That shit was never his poison,” Amber had insisted. Did she mean the method as much as the substance? Had Victor been obliged to shoot up for the first time in his life to win the trust of the strangers he was aiming to entrap?

  He must have been so torn, as well as terrified. “Snitches get stitches. Snitches end up in ditches.” And he’d had good reason to be afraid, hadn’t he? Dead by morning.

  Noah stared at the liver-spotted backs of his fingers. Who would pick behind their knee for a first try if the veins in their arms and hands were unscarred?

  It hadn’t been an accidental overdose; he found he didn’t believe that story anymore.

  He tapped in “confidential criminal informant CI sting wire death,” and the cases filled his screen like some wave of filth:

  “Bullet-ridden body found in a ditch… Beaten with a bat, run over by a car… Pulled from the river with a gunshot wound in the head and a backpack full of rocks… Torso found ablaze beneath an old mattress… Behind her knee.”