Cole logs off. Sits there, holding it, the plan, the knowledge that someone else is out there, on her side. You’re going to need a bigger boat, she tells the screen, and then, because she can’t resist, she opens up her normal email to be confronted with an impossible sequence.
To: [email protected]
From: Billie Brady
Subject: Where are you?
I’m so worried about you. Where are you? Are you okay? You’re in danger. Turn yourself in. I’m begging you, sis.
xxx
Billie
To: [email protected]
From: Billie Brady
Subject: Please get in touch
Worried sick. The Ataraxia people say they can arrange an amnesty. But you need to come in asap. Please, sis.
Xxx
Billie
To: [email protected]
From: Billie Brady
Subject: I’m in trouble
Sis, they say I’m an accessory to kidnapping. Please, please turn yourself in. It’s best for all of us. You’ll be safe.
love
Billie
“Fuck you,” she slams the laptop shut. Reopens it, logs out of her email. Closes all the tabs, restarts the machine. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” Her sister doesn’t speak like that. Has never spoken like that. She never says “please,” for starters. “Love.” “Sis.” It’s a trap. It’s disgusting. The Department of Men impersonating her dead sister to bring her back. Jesus.
18.
Billie: Cold Calling
They are two days behind Cole, maybe less. Or more? It’s hard to tell. Time feels mushy with her head ringing all the time. They’ll find her here, she’s sure. Cole’s going to be scraping money together, hijacking another car, checking her email, doing her research, making plans. Hell, making origami ballet soccer ninjas for all she knows. That was something her sister did, for one of her big projects, a stop-motion ad for washing powder with paper-doll archetypes turning into other ones. For all your family’s active needs! Making arts and crafts, pretending that was a real occupation, so whimsical, so playful, while Billie has been out here busting her ass her whole life. What about her active needs? To get Miles back safe to Mrs. A., wrap this whole ugly mess up, get paid, and find somewhere with a beautiful beach and cocktails.
But first, a hotel for the night. A real one, not a refugee dorm. No unnecessary paperwork. Zara pays extra for this, peeling off the dollar bills. One room, two queens. There’s an unspoken agreement that Billie sleeps alone while they share the other. This isn’t out of respect. They hate her. They can’t wait to off her. She’s afraid they’ll smother her in her sleep.
She refuses the sleeping pill Rico gives her. Remembering the pills she dosed Miles and Cole with back at Ataraxia, ground up in their hot chocolate, stolen from the medical supply cabinet in the psych’s office. She did it to Cole to keep her out of the way, keep her safe. See how much she cares? And she didn’t want Miles upset, confused, struggling. Doing what’s best for him, surely. Sick of having to justify her actions. Why can’t they just trust her?
Zara the big bad bitch is painting her toenails, the acetone sting temporarily dominating the other fragrances in the room, other women’s sweat, the cling of stale cigarettes on Rico’s jacket flung over the back of the chair, the pervasive reek of rotting flowers. She wouldn’t have taken War Grimes for the type to be lacquering blood-red detail onto her fish-white feet, but she wishes she wouldn’t and maybe she can ask her to give it up because it makes her headache worse. The buzzing won’t shut up. Tinnitus of the skull.
Rico is locked in the bathroom, like Billie doesn’t know she’s talking to Mrs. A. The warble of her voice like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon. This useless headless goose chase.
The TV is playing round-the-clock news. Al Jazeera, but with the sound off. A story about floods in Bahrain segues into a celebrity wedding between a Canadian YouTuber she’s never heard of and a British rapper who is vaguely familiar, with multicolor braids and tattoos and a bad mouth, the Finnish elections and presidential hopeful Mari Rytkonen campaigning on lifting the sperm bank embargo, followed up by a bunch of very serious science wonks talking about how that could be disastrous in the fight against HCV (better hurry up and find Miles while the milk market is still lucrative), marches in Greece over water restrictions, and a special report on the rise of deadmen tourism following morbid thrill-seekers making a pilgrimage to mass death sites, like Pionen, a Cold War bunker turned data center under Stockholm where 600 rich techbros, CEOs, government officials, and military higher-ups barricaded themselves away from the virus. And died anyway.
And then Rico emerges from the bathroom, stashing her phone in her jacket pocket with an expression that tells Billie all is not lost. Not yet.
“Buyer is still keen.” She flashes a thumbs-up.
“Mmph,” Zara says, fanning her hand over her feet. She should use the hair dryer, Billie thinks.
“But we need to move on it, get results. The hackers haven’t been able to access your sister’s accounts yet.”
“I don’t think she’d be dumb enough to use them.” But shit. She knows someone who would. What are the chances? Hard to hold onto the thought, everything unspooling and Rico is still blabbing, making it harder to concentrate.
“We’ll start with the motels, move on to the commune houses. We’ll keep checking your email, see if your sister has replied. We can use the library for that. Early days. She can’t have gotten far.”
“Mmm,” Zara says. She puts the cigarette out against the wall, drops the butt on the carpet. She gets under the covers of the other queen, turns to face the wall and goes to sleep, just like that. You can tell by the breathing. Billie is sick with envy. She lies there in the vibrating dark for hours after Rico turns out the light.
But somewhere in the night she manages to fall asleep, because she is blinking her eyes against oblivion, and it is daylight again, and they are starting over.
“What time is it?” She sits up, bleary, catches a glimpse of herself in the giant mirror facing the beds. A sex mirror for getting all the angles on your dirty hotel hook-ups. Her hair is sticking up and matted down, clumping around the duct tape. She’s never going to get it right again. But her eyes have stopped jittering, and her thoughts feel like the reel they’re inscribed on has been wound back into her head.
“You slept for thirteen hours,” Rico says. “It’s twelve after two in the afternoon. We couldn’t wake you.”
“We thought you had fallen in a coma,” Zara says.
“I didn’t.” She swings her legs over the bed. “Anyone have a brush?”
Rico brings them cronuts and coffee—real coffee in a flask—and that helps. A lot. Food and coffee and real sleep. “Maybe you should have coffee first and see how you feel. Black gold.”
“How much did this cost?” Zara says.
“You don’t want to know,” Rico says. “They were asking a hundred bucks for the flask. I got them down to eighty-five.”
“We’ve come to a terrible place,” Billie says. The cronut bursts in her mouth, oozing custardy cream, a pastry head wound.
“Fucking Utah,” Rico agrees.
“World with a shortage of men is one thing, but a coffee shortage is some kind of hell. If coffee is black gold, is untainted semen white gold? What’s the exchange rate?”
“Someone’s feeling better,” Rico observes, and Billie feels warm inside, not only from the sweet caffeinated beverage, and she remembers the thought that skittered away from her yesterday. Cole’s smart enough to avoid social media. But is the kid? And what the fuck was his user name again? Something cute and irritating…millionmiles or metricmiles.
“Can I use your phone? I thought of something.”
It takes her a few tries to remember her own Snapchat log-in, but ah, there we go, his user name in her friends list waiting for her. She wasn’t far off. “Km_boy!” short for kilometer boy, gettit, a private account. She friended him three year
s ago like a dutiful aunt, when his dad set up the account for him, and never looked at it again. Until now.
“What do you have there?” Rico leans in to see the photograph of a statue of a sour, bald Captain Picard motherfucker wearing brick pants, tools hanging on the wall behind him.
“You know how to reverse this picture from a screengrab?”
“You mean flip it?”
“No, find matching pictures online, other people’s photos that would tell us where this is.”
“I can do that.” Rico takes the phone back, and moments later they have an answer. That bizarre statue is at the Garden of Gilgal. In Salt Lake City.
After the initial relief, ecstatic that she was right about where Cole is and that this would all be over soon, the drudgery sets in. Going door-to-door. Hello, Avon calling! The fourth, fifth, R&R, whatever they call them, Billie thinks bitterly. “Transitional Housing Authority—reuniting families across America!,” the sign outside says, like it’s not a rundown Hilton hotel playing refugee camp cum homeless shelter. They’re all so official, drowning in paperwork. Pen-pushers and pedal-pushers, quacking dunno-dunno-haven’t-seen-her. No help at all. Wild-goose chase.
Her minders waiting outside (those thugcunts, sidechicks, henchbitches) have been so kind as to buy her an ice-blue Burton puffer vest hoodie, which is absurd in the heat, but at least she can pull it up to cover her injury and the wreck of her hair, rats nesting around the tape while she makes polite inquiries to oversubscribed social workers.
This one is African-American, with a bouncy mane of curls that say “fun girl” and deep lines grooved around her mouth and across her forehead that add “but only when I’m not working this job I hate.” You and me both, sister, Billie thinks. Big difference though: her life depends on it. In the reception area, an old woman is sitting hunched on one of the plush pink loungers left over from this place’s former hip hotel life, staring out the window into the parking lot, where people have strung laundry lines between the abandoned cars, and tapping her mouth. There are kids screeching down the corridors, feral and high-pitched. How do people live like this?
At least she’s got the patter down. Fourth (fifth?) time’s the charm.
“Hi there.” Bright smile, ignoring the cloying smell that’s following her around, too sweet, the miasma of despair that maybe Cole and Miles are long gone and laughing at her. “I hope you can help me. I’m looking for my sister and my niece. I’m so worried about them. Can I show you a picture?”
Cue: holding up Zara’s oversize tablet of a phone, displaying a three-year-old photograph of Cole and Miles that she pulled off her sister’s Facebook page. Miles looks just androgynous enough to pass for a girl in a blue tiger-print onesie. “Let me stop you right there, ma’am,” Curly says. “I’m happy to help you but I’m going to need you to fill in a reunification form, unless you’re already registered with us, in which case can I have your Social Security number and—” the rest of the sentence is wiped out by a screech of one of the wild children dashing through the reception area, ducking behind the plush chair where dementia-lady is staring into the parking lot.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Billie says, holding the phone up. “Have you seen them? Please. She’s got mental health issues and I have her medicine.” Another demonstration, reaching into her pocket to get the pill bottle, packed with the little greens and the sweet whites, giving it a rattle. “I really need to get it to her.”
“I can’t disclose that information,” the social worker says, “unless you’re willing to register with us. It’s a matter of privacy.”
“What’s more important? Privacy or a kid’s safety and well-being? Think of her daughter. She’s running around and she’s sick in the head and by not helping me, you’re putting her daughter at risk.”
“Why don’t you leave your information and I can pass it on.”
“You’re saying she is here.”
“Ma’am, I’m saying I can pass on your details if you leave them with me, if anyone of that description is here or comes through. But this whole process will be expedited if you were to fill this in.” She taps her pen on the green form on the reception counter. “The system is set up to help people like you and your sister. But you have to be in the system.”
“I don’t feel comfortable with that,” Billie says. They have discussed this, her and the lesser two evils. If there’s an APB out on Cole and Miles, the feds will be looking for her as well. The American jargon scraped from TV and movies amuses her. Like living in an episode of Law & Order: Special Male Unit. But it does mean that she will not be handing over her nonexistent Social Security number or showing her South African passport or giving any other details to this pretending-to-be-pleasant bureaucrat cow.
“I understand how you feel,” she says, so-very-sympathetic, “but it’s part of the regulatory process. You can certainly take it up with your representat—”
Billie snaps. Volcanic rage, out of nowhere. “You know what? Fuck you. And your high horse. I’m worried about my sister! And you’re playing goddamn Stasi over here. What happened to the right to privacy? What happened to freedom of information?”
“Easy there,” Rico materializes at her elbow from outside. “I apologize, my friend is upset, it’s been a lot. It would be very helpful if you could tell us if you’d seen them…”
“Reunifying? More like splintering. Crevasses! That’s what you lot do. Sinkhole bitches.”
“Settle down.” Rico grabs her shoulder, hard enough to bruise, hisses in her ear. “You are not making sense.”
Billie winces. Lamies, they called them. She and Cole used to give them to each other. You play too rough, you girls. They would punch each other in the arm, with one knuckle out, on that sweet spot just below the bicep. So many lamies over one long winter holiday that when Cole went for her first gyno exam at fourteen, the black and blue welts on either arm visible in the short-sleeved medical gown, the doctor asked her if someone was hurting her.
“This is nowhere,” Rico says, glinting white smile like knives.
“I know, all right?” She throws off her arm. “I know.” Billie stalks away from them, between the laundry lines limp with other people’s clothes and digs around in the pill bottle. There’s that smell again. Rotting flowers and despair.
“Uh-uh,” Rico says, like she is a bad puppy, plucking the plastic tub from her fingers. “You OD’ing would be very inconvenient for us.”
A little girl in a canary-yellow helmet swipes past them on a BMX, jumps the curb, and for a moment, Billie thinks it’s Cole and wants to shout after her, wait up, wait for me. Her fingers explore the ridges on the tape around her skull. She’s hurt. She’s fallen off her bike, and Cole’s gone off ahead into the distance, like always. Someone needs to go get Mom. But Mom’s dead. Of a brain aneurysm, on the couch, at fifty-three. No, that’s wrong, that was years ago. She’s not eight years old again, pedaling frantically through the leafy tunnel of jacaranda trees dripping with bees and purple blossoms to try to keep up with her sister who won’t wait, won’t give her a chance. Not Johannesburg thirty years ago. Salt Lake City, now. And Dad’s dead too. Like all the rest of them. He recorded a goodbye video message, from his retirement cottage in Clarens. It was depressing as fuck, a bunch of old men from the town gathered with their loved ones to video a “sunset party” before the cancer set in so bad they couldn’t get out of bed. She didn’t even finish watching it.
Sitting in the library. Doing this from their public computer rather than Zara’s phone so no one can put a trace on them. She doesn’t understand how all that hacker shit works. But she knows it will be bad if they are second over the finish line, behind the U.S. government, to get to Miles.
Composing an email. It’s hard to focus. The type is too small, the screen too glaring. It’s noisy in here, aren’t libraries supposed to be quiet? She had to wait for a computer, sandwiched between a scrawny teenage girl surreptitiously browsing what seems to be erotic fanfi
c, and a well-worn hausfrau knitting and watching a YouTube compendium of stunt-videos-gone-wrong. In the children’s reading area, someone is giving a talk about eco-friendly waste management to eager adults, all perched uncomfortably on the pint-size furniture, with their knees up to their tits. Drifts of it interrupt her flow, while the cursor blinks-blinks-blinks.
Hey bzitch,
Guess who isn’t dead?
You want to rotate your crops, so you don’t suck all the nutrients out of the soil. It needs time to recover.
Delete. Delete. Delete. Try again.
Hey Fat King Cole,
Itsa-me, Mario.
Make her feel safe. Forgiven. Tone is everything.
“For really real,” she says out loud, and the pornaholic teen has the nerve to lean over and shush her.
Snorting something in the bathroom, from a silver case inside Rico’s jacket. She hands it over with her rainbow gloves, together with a stainless-steel straw designed for the purpose.
“Is it coke?”
The powder tastes like shit, burns in her nose, stains the phlegm in the back of her throat with that chemical reek. Better than homeless lady.
“Speed?”
“Ritalin. What you had before. But it’s better this way.”
Whatever it is, is bright and hectic. She’s filled with nerve and verve. A bear walks into a library bar.
She checks Cole’s Facebook again, tries out variations of passwords on her Gmail. Her cat’s name, Miles’s birthday, her wedding anniversary, her favorite dessert. Crème caramel. Her sister does not have a sophisticated palate. Nothing. She looks up her sister’s female BFFs, adds them as friends, sends off messages with fishhooks, just vague enough.
You heard from Cole? I’m worried about her. Please tell her I’m trying to get in touch. Urgent. Hope you well.:)
A message to her sister, from a new email address, in case someone has hacked into hers. (Is nothing sacred?)
Afterland Page 13