by English, Ben
Jack considered. “Raines and Miklos are probably still alive, thanks to me. The Sikorsky was built to protect all the occupants, and I ejected us all before it hit,” he said, before Alonzo could ask the obvious question. “Best to contact Miguel Espinosa and let him know we’re on our way to Cuba.”
His friend agreed. “He’s next on the list of targets, according to William. I started a case file on all this yesterday, but it’s sloppy. Think we should rewrite it?”
“When we all get back to Paris. Steve mentioned he’s got some contacts back in the States that can help us figure out Raines’ maser. One of his old professors at MIT, and maybe a guy over on the West Coast.”
No reply. Jack looked over as Alonzo’s eyes closed and his head tilted back against the dark plush headrest. He was snoring before they reached the gates of Buckingham Palace.
Night Run
Studio City, California
8PM
By rights she should have been bone-ache tired after the helicopter ride out of the San Jacintos, but Mercedes felt incredible when the birdwatchers from UC Davis dropped her off at home. She bent and waved to them as the garage door descended. Weird. Could’ve been the photos—the pictures of the baby eagles had really turned out well, definitely worth the chill they’d felt last night on the climb. Another instance of her being a mere spectator, but still. Eagles were her new favorite bird.
The way the chicks had fought for the outside air, pecked, hammered, and thrashed their way out into the world, drew a reverence, a kind of internal hush out of Mercedes. The little birds didn’t know, did they? The world they broke out into had already decided to roll the dice against them, that the jig was up and the fix was in for their entire species. And yet they fought.
Briefly she hugged herself in the garage. She felt so good. She felt like redecorating the entire dining room tonight before bedtime, instead of watching the highlights of a rugby game on the DVR.
Mercedes stowed her equipment in her studio, the first spare bedroom down the hall that intersected with the dining room, the living room, and the sunken room she thought of as a library. “I’m home,” she said to no one, and flipped on the lights. The motion sensors in the corner of the ceiling clicked from red to green, and from her bedroom in the far end of the house a stereo chimed to life.
She smiled. No pets, no noisy family, but at least the house was glad she was home. And no redecorating tonight, either. Mercedes looked to her plants, first the big jade plants in the pots near the front door, then the ivy she’d hung in homemade latticework underneath the skylights in the living room. Months ago Mercedes decided that the wide rafters that ran the width of the house, though painted white to match the walls, looked naked. She felt like she was living in somebody’s barn, despite the sturdy, comfortable furniture she’d filled it with. Mercedes avoided the temptation to sit down or brush up against anything as she checked her plants. Most of the dust and bits of bark from the shoot still stuck to her, clotted her hair, and grimed her nose.
Mercedes walked from plant to plant, watering each with a little teakettle she kept for that purpose. The lattice was her favorite, and she saved it for last. She’d designed it herself, suspending thin strips of teak from anchor points in the rafters, then arranging a series of simultaneously fired flower pots all networked together so she could water one—the highest—and each would get water in turn. She’d gotten the idea while shooting native clothing in the terraced, northern mountains of the Philippines. She’d done a real job on the house.
She stood on a wooden chair to reach the uppermost plant, but her reach was short. With barely a thought, Mercedes took the teapot handle in her teeth and swung herself up onto a rafter. If the ivy was grateful for the water, she couldn’t tell. It struck her as she let herself down that any normal person would have fetched a stepladder, but she’d seen a quicker way.
“You’re an odd one, Merce,” she said.
The stereo had found its place and was starting a Buddy Holly song she’d forgotten she’d put on the hard drive.
From the mantle, the picture of her parents gleamed in the low light. She wondered what they’d think of their daughter now, dangling from the architecture and climbing around the hills. They hadn’t lived long enough to see just how strong she would become, or see the first few years of the illness that, perversely, made her so strong. She knew the battlefield of her body.
Since the onset of health problems at the close of her teenage years, Mercedes had taken any measure she thought sane—and a few she had her doubts about—to regain control of her body. To stop the bizarre spread of tumors, cysts, and rogue cells within her.
The first batch of doctors diagnosed her with endo—classic endometriosis—and of course the only way to really discover the presence of the painful, internal lesions was through exploratory surgery, making diagnosis and hasty treatment somewhat simultaneous. She’d undergone five hard surgeries in three years, and three years after that, two more.
There were always doctors willing to pump her full of danazol, Demerol, or Depo-Provera. She shuddered. The latter had been prescribed by her parents’ doctor, a woman they had trusted for years, and Mercedes had been shocked to learn the injectable form of progesterone was definitely linked to breast tumors, though doctors were still encouraged to recommend it. Sometime it felt like Mercedes was waging a war on two fronts.
So they’d thrown medication after medication at her, thoughtless of the psychological typhoon accompanying each new chemical. The most horrible aspect of endo lay not in the extreme pain or the danger of infertility, but in not knowing the cause for the growths within her body. No one knew. Mercedes couldn’t bring herself to work through the idea that her health problems were related to whatever really killed her parents, but those records were spotless, simple, and suspiciously brief. The official ones, at least.
The raw, tender edge of the present was enough to worry about.
For nearly half her life, endo had taught her to regard her body as something never to be trusted fully; at best, a trapdoor that might open up at any moment over a chasm of pain.
For all the battles lost in this particular war, Mercedes regarded her body in a surprisingly—to her—positive light. She only weighed herself four times a year, during her visits to Jeff Hansen’s office. Doctor Hansen was the first professional who’d actually done Mercedes some good in addition to being properly sympathetic. His wife had collected a sizeable library on the subject of endo, and the Hansens practically gave Mercedes a key to their house.
There was simply no way endometriosis was going to beat her. She took vitamin B supplements. She alternated vitamin E and selenium with a number of herbal teas. As much as was possible and practical in a professional environment, Mercedes eliminated caffeine, refined sugar, and alcohol from her diet. At Hansen’s recommendation she began seeing Shawn Munk, a chiropractor-physical therapist who introduced her to yoga and helped design an exercise regimen that provided intense aerobic activity and much muscle stretching and motion. She’d caught on quickly. According to the cherubic Dr. Munk, the only thing Mercedes needed was a lover trained as a masseuse, one with hands big enough to work themselves around her thickening sheathes of muscle. “Cowboy muscles.” She’d laughed at that.
She’d read an article by someone on the board of the British Endometriosis Society extolling safflower and evening primrose oil, and she’d gradually worked that, too, into her diet. Mercedes made sure she always lived near a good farmer’s market, a whole grain bakery, and (she grinned) a real Italian deli. She snatched up the phone and keyed the speed dial for Arnaldo’s All Night.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Arnaldo!, This is Mercedes. Siete aperti?”
The man on the other end exhaled sharply through his nose. “We would not be working at Arnaldo’s All Night if we were not open for business, Scimmia.”
She’d taken the family photo that hung above his cash register. Big, Catholic family. Arnaldo’s Ita
lian smacked out in that odd accent from the northeast corner of Italy, but it was so nice to speak with someone. No matter how black her mood, Mercedes only needed to hear the ebb and flow of that sexy, liquid language and she was a chubby little girl again, sneaking scraps of her grandmother’s torta in the kitchen in North Beach. Italian would always be the language of her heart.
And the language of her stomach. One hand on the phone, she quickly took inventory of her kitchen. “I need a one-pound package of Penne, some oil-cured olives, some oregano, maybe three cloves of garlic, and some Graffeo coffee. And a pack of Slim Jims.”
“Ah, and it is ‘Mercedes’ Day Off’ already, neh?”
“Tomorrow, Arnaldo. Tomorrow is Mercedes’s Day Off.”
Most days, for weeks at a stretch, she made herself eat like an austere, ascetic warrior monk with an almost gleeful penchant for self-denial, but not on Mercedes’ Day Off. “And a Ghirardelli’s chocolate bar, if you have any. Whatever flavor.” Part of the Hansen-Munk regime. Mercedes Day Off, she ate whatever she felt like.
The two doctors were geniuses. Mercedes skip-grooved through her bedroom to the bath, grinding and singing along with her stereo as Sting crowed about breaking down the clock of time. Her fleece top and thick canvas pants hit the lid of her clothes hamper as the sound of rushing water overlaid the jaunty music. Her climbing shoes, yellow Boreal Stingers, were the most comfortable shoes she’d ever worn. Like somebody had poured a shoe mold around her foot. She wasn’t tired at all. It was a perfect day.
She measured a handful of mango-scented salts and threw them in the tub. It was damn good to have a day off.
*
She knew she would dream that night, even in anticipation of the next day’s feast. Sometimes on Mercedes’ Day Off, she’d eat something way off her diet, like spicy pork rinds or gyros and champagne, and then pay for it through the night, dreaming away like an Alice down the rabbit hole. It helped when she had the time for a light workout before bed, of course, but she still couldn’t shake the presentiment of night visions. Hours before she locked up the house and retreated to her chilly bedroom, Mercedes knew she would dream.
She loved to run at night. Running at night meant trading the next day’s ugly morning jog for free weights and jump rope. Her personal marathons through the canyons and hills of Southern California were fun, and some nights she even went out without any pepper spray.
There were still some neighborhoods where you could be safe at night, running.
The park she angled through was bordered by ash, elm, and an occasional oak. Night runs were the best, and the cool air felt satiny-slick against her skin. Mist sprayed across her as she cruised past a stone fountain. She’d run for some time, long enough for her breathing to settle into its accustomed metronomic pulse; her entire body a familiar rhythm.
Night birds cooed weirdly from the dark spaces under the surrounding boughs. No one else in sight. The park felt empty. If this had been a dream she might actually be the only woman left in the world, and the whole world a series of finely-manicured lawns and groves.
But at last she drew near its edge. Though the same trees and grasses extended beyond its boundary, the hillside was untamed. Trees crowded further inward, brush clogged the spaces between the huge boles, and all sorts of weeds and grasses tangled the undergrowth.
Mercedes ran on.
A staircase led up out of the park, complete with a polished steel handrail and bordered by a low, clipped hedge. She never broke stride, taking the stairs two at a time, leaning up into the hill.
She probably could have managed three steps at a stride, but Mercedes didn’t want to wind herself before reaching the end of the trail, wherever that might be. She’d run through the park before, though never at night, and she’d never taken the stairs.
The stairway led on, upward. Lights in wrought iron globes lit the way every few dozen feet, and Mercedes could see the steps beneath her were ornately worked. Each vertical surface was scalloped, bordered by a relief of half-circles. The iron railing was vermiculated as well.
She ran on, upward through the green gloom.
Slowly the staircase took on a more weathered aspect. Each connecting step began to look increasingly worn. Aged. In places the concrete was pitted, chipped, cracked, or notched. Moss and lichen sprouted up through some of the fissures.
Mercedes stumbled once on a canted step, reaching for the handrail. She regained her balance and drove on, intent on the uneven, slanting surfaces before her. Wisps of fog coiled sinuously in the brush to either side. It occurred to Mercedes that the very existence of the stairs implied that something interesting and important must lie at its terminus, though why the owners of whatever it was didn’t take better care of the long concrete flight–
And two of the lights ahead in their opaque globes went out. She remembered where to place her feet, but Mercedes slowed anyway, trusting to instinct.
Sure enough, a splintered stair shifted under her weight, sliding right and back under her. Mercedes caught herself, then pushed beyond the unsteady level. The jagged paving growled stonily and tipped off the path altogether, then rolled several feet through the brush.
The hill had become steeper; the handrail ended.
She righted herself in the darkness, and ran on. Wouldn’t do to let her heart rate drop. Mercedes pumped her knees higher, driving herself up, up.
Only one in four frosted globes glowed brightly now. Ahead in the gloom, Mercedes heard a faint, atonal chime, and then another. She slowed, then stopped altogether as she realized she was nearing the summit. Another chime sounded through the trees, this time accompanied by a vague metallic ring. The chimes had no regularity; they rang unevenly and as unbalanced as the stairway behind her.
For she stood at a sort of landing, not at the crest of the hill but at the top of a ridge. A deer trail led further up the mountain, into the darkness filling up the spaces between the trees. To her left lay another section of the stairs, headed down the opposite side of the ridge. They descended gradually and were well lit. From the bright illumination she could see they were in perfect repair, unlike the long flight she’d just navigated.
Mercedes wiped a hand along her forehead. Leave it to her luck to pick the worse set of stairs to run. Her hand came back slick, soaked in perspiration. The run up the stairs had taken more out of her than she realized, and she knew the easy descent would give her climbing muscles a sort of rest. Thanks to her self-inflicted torture-by-exercise, she was resistant to shin splints, and–
Another chime, faint but insistent from somewhere up the unlit path.
Without another thought, Mercedes turned and jogged away from the stairs, off the bright landing and into the dark.
She had to slow almost immediately in order to pick her way along the animal track. What was she doing? She hated following these trails, anyway. Deer paths always disappeared after a few dozen yards. She paused, waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Couldn’t have been even a sliver of moon in the sky, could there?
It never occurred to her to fear the darkness, the lightless undefined order of the woods. The time she’d spent photographing wild animals in their own territory had given Mercedes a healthy respect for the habits of predators, and she’d even been stalked once by a cougar on a shoot in British Columbia. Then as now, she’d found safety in trusting her instinct. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” she whispered to herself. Most injuries and nearly all fatalities in the timberlands resulted from stupidity. There was nothing on this particular mountain that would hurt her, unless she inadvertently strolled off a cliff or into a tree.
After at least a minute of stumbling upwards in the gloom she paused near a yellow bed of evening primrose. The chime had grown louder, closer to the actual toll of a bell. Around a curve of the ridge her wide pupils picked out a soft gold-red glow against the trees. Emboldened, she continued towards it. The ringing had taken on a vicious tone, still bell-like but harsher; strike after
strike close together now, almost overlapping. An indistinct, constant roar accompanied the urgent knell.
Mercedes left the fading path and clawed up a mossy bank that came away in her hands. Raising herself up, she saw a natural clearing, framed by granite boulders and smaller, smooth stones left behind by the last ice age. At the center of the bowl-like space, a fire was raging in the mouth of a man-sized furnace, dwarfed by the shadows leaping off the blocky figure that stood before it, swinging a hammer.
She hesitated, then stood and began circling the clearing. An oversized bellows rested near the man, and from time to time he took it up and coaxed the embers before him until they were white-hot. He wore a thick, stiff apron and a faded work shirt, scorched and holed by many hours in front of his anvil. Mercedes noticed his rough appearance from behind was due partly to his thick clothing, though he was an enormous, broad man. His graying hair and beard came nearly to his collar, wild and singed, and his eyebrows were full, heavy, and black. The effort rolling through his wide shoulders reminded her of Grandpa Max splitting firewood.
Mercedes slipped cautiously from boulder to stone. The giant–he swung the hammer with hairy arms that bulged and swelled with each stroke against the steel–seemed completely intent on his work. She couldn’t think of him as old, for the portion of his face she could see was smooth, and he wielded the hammer and bellows with immense strength and an almost casual control, despite the quick pace he sustained.
A single piece of steel occupied the anvil before him, and again he brought the sledge down in a gloved hand, full force. The metal sang, and Mercedes heard–felt–the peal from the hot, red-gold iron.
She halted across the anvil from the young-old man, watching him work for several moments. He glanced up from time to time, noting her presence with the hint of a smile but staying focused on the long steel before him.