Mila watches transfixed until that moment, and then she turns away, grimacing.
Are those actual pregnant women milling through the crowd? Surely not, after the scene at the checkpoint? No, Fortitude was telling her about this: the fake baby bumps that have become fashionable.
A brazen clatter of teenagers, pointedly normcore in jeans and strappy tops among the art crowd, all armed with phone cameras, stop in front of Mila.
“Are you part of the art?” the leader says, turning her phone on them. It’s ornamented with an oversize fuzzy pink case, a winking cat. “What are you supposed to be?”
“Have you heard the Word, my sister?” Cole tries. “We’re part of a church. Would you like to repent with us? I have more information here.” She proffers the flyer, their guaranteed curiosity-deterrent.
Unfortunately, the girl takes it and examines it carefully, her friends leaning in to look.
“Oh my God, All Sorrows! I’ve heard of you guys.”
“There’s that thing happening this week,” one of them snaps her fingers, trying to land on the word. “Um. You know. At that famous parking lot down Miami Beach.”
“The Jubilation,” Mila says. “The Temple of Joy.”
“That it! Hey, Josefa! Grab the tripod and the mic. Can we do an interview with you? It’s for my YouTube channel.”
“No. We uh, we can’t. It’s against Church doctrine.” She puts up her palm in the ancient gesture of the anti-paparazzi ward.
“No social media? But how are you going to get the word out? C’mon,” she wheedles. “I’ll link to your website.”
Cole stands firm. “It’s against our beliefs to be filmed or photographed. It’s a sin of vanity and pride.”
“What if we kept the camera on us, so you wouldn’t be in the shot, just your voices. And maybe you could do a prayer or whatever for us, and we could film that?”
“It’s out of the question. I’m sorry.”
Mila chimes in abruptly, flushing under her Speak: “Do you believe the men will come back?”
“Yeah, sure. In the end. There are all those government programs and shit. But not for a while, right?”
“Do we even want them back? Dudebros and douches for days! Mansplaining! I don’t even miss anything about that.”
“Preach it, Tammany.”
“You don’t even remember that,” Cole snaps. “How old are you? Fifteen?”
“You want to tell us about it? You wanna educate us? Speak into the mic, please. Or say a li’l prayer? Just one,” Pink Cat Girl wheedles.
“Please stop filming. It’s disrespectful.”
“Like pushing your religious agenda onto total strangers isn’t?”
“We said no!” Mila snaps without warning. She shoves the leader in the sternum so hard she drops her phone, then turns and bolts.
“Mila!”
The girl bends to retrieve her phone, facedown on the concrete. She examines the spiderwebbed screen. “Oh no! You broke my phone.”
“I’m sorry. She’s upset. I’m sorry. We have to go.”
“Best you run, bitch!” one of them calls after her as she flees. “We got that on video.”
“You better believe that’s going viral. ‘Nun attack in baby land’? You’re going to be famous!” shouts the leader.
51.
Miles: The Moral Responsibility of Endangered Species
“I was looking for you everywhere!” Mom says when she finds him back on the bus, sitting by the window, watching the hipsters going by and waiting for the rest of the Sisters to be done so they can go to Miami Beach already. He’s so ready for Jubilation. “You can’t run off like that,” she grabs his arm, shakes it.
“Going in for child abuse?” He yanks himself away.
“That’s not fair,” she says, stung, and then her temper sparks. “Coming from the person who assaulted a teenager on camera.”
“She wasn’t listening to you. She was being disrespectful. I’m sorry, all right? The Mother Inferior will forgive me.”
“Jesus, tiger. Your timing.” She rubs her forehead, pushing up the veil. “How about a walk, clear your head, shake it off?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“You’re going to sit here on this bus?”
“Pretty much.”
She sits next to him in silence until everyone comes back.
Miami Beach is more like it. They’ve still got an hour or two before the Jubilation, so they wander the wooden promenade that curves between the beach and the series of glamourous hotels with sparkling pools behind fences. It’s hot and sticky, half-hearted rain pattering down. Just commit, he thinks at the clouds. Mom has taken the hint, and is keeping her distance. Still hovering though, still wringing her hands because she’s soooo worried about him.
The hotels have mostly been converted into luxury housing, Gen explains. “Won’t last long, with the storms of climate change and rising sea levels, but in the meantime, these rich and sinful playgirls are living their dream life on the beach.”
“How about that?” He points out the life-size gold-plated skeleton of a wooly mammoth encased in glass or plastic or something, looming in the garden of one of the hotels. “Is that guy living his dream death?”
“I’m sure he’d rather be alive,” Generosity says.
“Not if he was the last one. That would be a lot of pressure. Like the whole survival of the species rests on his wooly shoulders.”
“That would be a lot of responsibility. Or it could be liberating.”
“I think he’d want to just give up. It would be too much pressure. No wonder he died.”
“You’re a smart kid,” Generosity smacks him between the shoulders, affectionate, but she forgets her strength. “But you think too much.”
“I get it from Mom. Curse you, genetics!” He shakes his fist at the sky. “Hey, monkey’s wedding.” A sliver of blue through the gray, sunlight on the water.
He walks down to the beach with Generosity, and she plops down on the damp sand next to Chastity and Fortitude, who have already made themselves comfortable. Fortitude’s face is tilted to the intermittent sun, eyes closed. Chastity has pulled up her Apologia, and Generosity tugs it back down to cover her bare flesh and that sacrilegious tattoo.
“Sit with us?”
“Nah. I’ll walk a bit.”
He plods across the sand that sucks at his church-issue white sneakers, but he doesn’t want to show his bare feet. The Apologia is an armor against the confusingness of the world—and his Mom being a cow. Definitely a sin, cussing her out. “Love and obey your parents.” Can’t he do just one parent? Love and obey Dad, up in heaven with the big guy Father? At least he isn’t giving him shit.
No swearing. Yeah. Fine.
A group of young women emerge through a private gate from one of the beachfront hotels along this stretch and head down onto the beach, kicking off their sandals, spreading out their towels, laughing and chatting.
Optimistic in this weather, he thinks. The ocean is as gray as the sky, whisper-crashing against the sand.
Without their flimsy coverings (what are those beach kimono things called?—more girl arcana he’s not familiar with), they’re practically naked, bare skin bronze and ebony against the clinging fabric of their tiny bikinis.
He walks over to them, because he was walking that way anyway.
“Hi.”
“Hey, what are you supposed to be, kid?” The white girl among them, yellow hair caught up like a giant pineapple, props herself up on her elbows, peering over the rim of her oversize sunglasses.
“Can I sit with you for a little bit?”
“Uh. Sure, I guess. Unless you’re going to be a weirdo.”
“Are you a weirdo?” This from the very black girl, who is lying as unmoving as a corpse, sweat beading her nose and her forehead. She doesn’t open her eyes.
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s with you people?”
“We’re trying
to help.”
“Can you help me with my sunscreen?” Blondie asks.
“Okay.” He thinks about the baby’s head pushing through the woman’s vagina in the exhibition, like a chicken laying an egg. The disgusting blister on Mom’s lip. His dick doesn’t care, is indefatigable, with his hands on her bare shoulders, her smooth skin, the oil-slickness of the sunscreen. Please, Lord, help me control my urges.
“Where are you from, burka girl? What’s your name?”
“It’s Mila,” he says, “And it’s an Apologia, these robes.”
“It’s quite the outfit.” The black girl opens her eyes, tilting her head back to take him in. “Aren’t you hot under all that?”
More than you know, he thinks, leaning forward to hide the stirring in his loins. What an awful word. He presses on, reluctantly. Once she’s all oiled up, he removes his hands, wipes the dregs of the sunscreen off on his Apologia. There’s sand sticking to his knees where he’s been kneeling. “You get used to it. It helps us remember who we are.”
“Can I see your face?”
He checks up the beach to see if anyone is watching, apart from Mom, still trailing after him, like the world’s worst spy, and then unclips his Speak.
“You’re cute!” the blond says, mischievously. “And that smile!”
He flushes and hurriedly reattaches the veil, but he’s still grinning.
“I’ve never met a nun before.”
“I’m not a full Sister yet. But I’m trying.”
“So what’s your schtick?”
“We believe that God will bring back the men.”
“That’s a nice belief.”
“Yeah, we need to be the best people we can be.” His erection has given up the ghost, thank you God, but it’s more than that. He realizes he’s getting a rush from this. Is this what God feels like? Their attention on him. Listening is a beautiful thing, being listened to even better. But he knows the super intense stuff will scare them off, so he tones it down, gives it his own spin. “We need to take accountability for everything we’ve done wrong. We have to be good, and kind, and the best version of ourselves.”
“Neat. That sounds like a nice religion. You must be very happy.”
“Actually, it’s the Jubilation, this evening. You should come. It’s nearby.”
The young women exchange glances.
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t have to wear robes or anything.” He plunges ahead. “That’s only for the Sisters. We’re coming together in joy and celebration!”
“Okay, pretty girl, we’ll think about it, okay? Maybe we’ll see you there. It was nice talking to you.”
It’s a clear dismissal. “See you later!” he says. He gives them the thumbs-up sign, and then hates himself for the cheesiness of the gesture. He trudges back up to the wooden promenade that curves between the hotels and the beach, where Mom is sitting on a bench.
“Mila,” she says, teasing. “Were you flirting?”
“Mom!” He’s disgusted with her for asking.
“So, listen. We need to get out of here. It’s time.”
“But it’s the Jubilation! The Mother Inferior!”
“I know, which is why this is the perfect moment to slip away.”
“After.”
“Mila.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you unless we can go to the Jubilation. What does it matter, anyway? It’s another couple of hours.”
“Tiger…”
“Mom! It’s important to me. I want this. Can’t you do this one thing for me? Have I ever asked you for anything, this whole time? Please.”
Her refusal must show in her face, because Miles is suddenly furious. “This one thing. I’ll go, I’ll do what you say, whatever bull…crap plan you’ve got this time, but give me this.”
She struggles with this. “All right. But we’re leaving straight after. It’ll be good, actually, more people, more confusion. Easier. C’mere.”
He submits to a hug.
52.
Billie: Faking It
They take turns driving another stolen car, an Audi this time, swathes of America rushing past in the dark wash on either side of the highway. Zara wants her to understand this is a privilege, that Billie can get behind the wheel because she allows it, obstinately unable to admit that their positions have shifted. Power is a fickle slut and Zara needs to come to terms with that. She’s a warrior, elite, maybe, but still just a foot soldier, while Billie is Odysseus, wily and agile, a general all along, even when she was being held hostage and tortured, injured and out of her mind. Only biding her time. Until now.
It’s been almost ten hours through Tennessee, clipping the edge of Alabama, into Georgia, ranging east to avoid the border stop ahead of Atlanta they were warned about. The drive has been accompanied by morbid country music about whores shot through the heart and brokenhearted men who fought for their country only to be locked out on their return, hero to zero. But now the radio starts to fritz, and the murder ballads and dirges to patriotism crackle and fade out to Cuban house. Well hi there, Florida. They’re so close, Billie can taste it. Itching with frustration that there’s another detour. But there are mortal needs to attend to, such as sustenance, and rest, another change of car—and there are brand-new shiny passports to be collected.
Zara is a different kind of twitchy, her focus sliding to the rearview mirror again and again
“No one is following us,” Billie has told her. Repeatedly. But Zara’s gaze slips and locks back to the mirror a moment later. She doesn’t understand that if the feds or the police or, hell, state troopers were after them, if they had even an inkling of where they were, and they thought that they had Miles, there would be choppers and roadblocks and high-speed chases.
“Or they think we will take them to their door.”
“Don’t be ignorant.” Too many chances for them to slip their grasp, lose them in country backroads, miss them in the dark. They would have come for them by now, cuffed them up against the car, made a deal to help them entrap her sister and her nephew.
“You think they’ve got the people to launch a cross-state womanhunt for you and me? Without knowing if we even have the boy or can lead them to him? They’re understaffed, under-resourced. They’re dealing with their own problems on a local level. Let me tell you, sister—”
“I’m not your sister.”
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m trying to enlighten you. I grew up in South Africa and I got to see firsthand that cops are ninety-nine percent incompetent assholes who don’t know what they’re doing, or cruising along just enough to collect their paycheck. I guarantee it’s the same here.”
“Just like you.” Sour.
“Jesus, Zara! Get over it. Soon we’ll be rich and we’ll never have to see each other again. Won’t that be peachy?” She cracks a grin at the thought.
The counterfeiter Mrs. A. has dispatched them to lives in an eco-estate bordering a swampland reserve designed for the rich and climate-optimistic. Billie signs them as “Edina” and “Patsy” to see Dina Galeotalanza. The security guard, who looks barely fourteen with her acne-spattered forehead and cheeks, dutifully writes down their license plate number and waves them through.
The houses are all akin, individual-ish, but clearly designed to strict criteria, wood and glass, with an emphasis on elevated buildings, perched high on stilts and tiered decks, and solar-powered lights shaped like dandelions lining the streets. As if Frank Lloyd Wright was an Ewok, Billie wants to say, but the observation would be wasted on Zara.
The estate goes on for miles, the road branching off to new clusters of housing angled across the marsh grasses known as wet prairie, and trying so very hard to avoid looking like any other expensive townhouse complex. The wilderness encroaches just enough to seem wild, with raised wooden walkways above the tangle of swamp plants and saw grass, and the streets have names like Eltroplectis and Tillandsia, which makes it more difficult to find the one they’re loo
king for, because they’re all long and complicated and unfamiliar. They have to stop to ask for directions from a woman pushing a pram that contains a little dog.
They finally turn in to Cryptothecia to find Number 12, right on the water’s edge with a boathouse and a pier running out into the dark water.
“Mrs. A. likes her boat-friendly places, huh,” Billie says. “Special Airbnbs for people who need easy access to unpatrolled waterways. A social network for very bad people to find each other?” She could do with being in on that. But then after this she won’t need any of this anymore. Once in a lifetime chance.
Zara gets out of the car without acknowledging her words and raises her hand in greeting to the morbidly obese woman standing on the curved deck above, wearing oversize wireframe serial killer sunglasses and an enormous floppy sunhat.
“You’re late,” Dina Galeotalanza says. “I thought you weren’t coming. After all the trouble I been to.”
Billie dislikes her on the spot.
The wooden Falling Waters exterior belies the inside of the house, which is a hoarder’s firetrap of teetering piles of books and papers strewn across every conceivable surface, stuffed into the bookcases, carpeting the floor, crumpled up and laid out flat, illustrations of cartoon characters and pinups and maps of, as far as Billie can make out, imaginary places and fantasy kingdoms, meticulously rendered.
“Careful where you step.” Dina picks delicately across the carpet of illustrations and maps. What was that game her nephew irritated her with so thoroughly when she saw him at her dad’s birthday, leaping from the couch to clamber across the dining room chairs? The floor is lava.
“Cleaning lady’s week off?” Billie smirks.
“You want these documents or not?” Dina turns on her. She pushes her glasses back up her nose. They’re the light-adjusting kind that darken in daylight, but in the gloomy interior they’ve become transparent, revealing brown eyes couched in wrinkles and puffiness, but raptor-sharp. “You want to be rude to me, in my own damn house, you can get your own damn passports. I know what you’re thinking. ‘How can I possibly trust her work if this is the state of her house?’ You ever think maybe it’s really hard keeping it all in your head, the precision and the time it takes and you can’t make the tiniest mistake? It means it has to be balanced. Yin and yang. You hold things so tight and precise here—” she taps her head—“and it spills out all over the place.” She turns back to her desk, shoving papers out the way, an assortment of pens, brushes against a half-buried drawing tablet which activates the enormous screen rising above the chaos. “Frick’s sake, where did I put it?”
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