Those That Wake 02: What We Become

by Jesse Karp

  “So, who is it you’re looking for?” Annie asked, finding the scrutiny just the slightest bit unnerving, perhaps.

  “Mal,” Laura said, short, sharp, and direct.

  “Uh . . .” Annie was obviously hesitant to dash anyone’s hopes. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that name. Do you know a last name?”

  Laura hesitated, chewing on the word as though letting it go might cost too much.

  “Jericho,” Aaron said in a terse voice that matched his impatient look. “Mal Jericho.”

  “Well, that’s Tommy last name. Is that why you came here? I’m sorry, I don’t think he knows anyone named Mal. You don’t mean Max, do you? That was his father.”

  “Well, that’s about it for here,” Aaron said, setting his body to stand up. “Can we get going now, Laura?”

  “Doesn’t Tommy”—Laura pressed on, ignoring her companion—“have a brother?”

  “No,” Annie said, becoming more unnerved by the second. “No brother. Tommy works at the garage in town. You could certainly go down and ask him about this. But, honestly, there’s no way he’s kept a brother from me. He doesn’t even speak with his mother anymore, and his father’s gone. I’m basically what he’s got now.” She offered a quick, self-deprecating smile.

  Laura leaned back in her chair, suddenly exhausted. Despite her unease, Annie did not seem ready to let them go yet.

  “Did you guys come all the way from the city to speak to us?”

  “Poughkeepsie,” Aaron answered.

  “Do you live there?”

  “No.” Aaron’s face made it clear that he couldn’t have imagined anything more distasteful.

  “College,” Laura said. “I go to college there.”

  “Vassar, right?” Annie said. “What do you study?”

  “Psychology.”

  “Aren’t classes in session right now?”

  “They are. But finding this person is”—she cleared her throat gently—“really, really important. I took a leave of absence.”

  “You left college on purpose,” Annie said, unable to keep the quiet sorrow out of her voice.

  “Are you looking at colleges?” Laura asked, a soft interest coming into her face and dismissing the fatigue of a moment before.

  “No,” Annie said wistfully. “There’s a nursing school over in Oneonta. We’re saving up for it now.” An idea seemed to bloom in her brain. “Us and a mysterious benefactor,” she said to herself.

  “Sorry?” Laura said.

  “Listen,” Annie said, suddenly energized with excitement. “This is going to sound crazy, but there’s someone doing us favors now and then, and we sort of don’t really know who he is, not his name or anything.”

  “What do you mean?” Laura asked, her voice vibrating with anticipation.

  “Someone wires us money. It’s inconsistent, different amounts, no schedule, but it’s been happening for more than a year.”

  “But you don’t have a name,” Laura said, working the facts through.

  “I could . . .” Annie hesitated, her desire to help struggling with her common sense. “I could put you in touch with the bank. I mean, if I vouched for you, they might be able to—”

  “Can you give me your cell number?” Aaron broke in, his patience just about worn out.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your cell has a number that people use to call you, right? Give it to me.”

  “Social cues, Aaron,” Laura chided with a sidelong glare. “Social cues.”

  Aaron’s eyes swiveled from Laura, back to Annie.

  “Please give it to me,” he corrected himself melodramatically.

  Annie recited her number.

  “Is that going to . . .” She watched Aaron’s eyes glaze over, stare into nothing.

  “It’s coming in through a floating code,” Aaron reported, his gaze distant and ghostly. “But it’s underwritten by a fake LLC, but it’s got Silven Holdings code styles all over it.” Laura’s eyes were riveted to him, as were Annie’s. “The deposits are being made—whoa, in cash, do you believe that?—in New York City, at an ATM on Twenty- Third and—”

  “Stop,” Annie said, louder than she needed to. “Stop, please. I don’t want to— It’s just that . . . things are working okay for us. I don’t want to push it off balance or anything.”

  “Of course, Annie,” Laura said. “Of course.” She stood up. “Thank you so much for helping us.”

  “I barely did anything.” That same self-deprecating smile passed across her face.

  “You did, Annie. You trusted us.”

  Annie looked down, her face growing hot for some reason.

  Laura had to nudge Aaron, still working something in his head, to get him up and to the door. Annie opened it for them, and Laura propelled Aaron toward the car sitting in the driveway. Before she followed, Laura turned to Annie, seemed to be searching for something to say. Their eyes found each other, some understanding, some strength flowed between them, and Laura swept her into a hug that nearly stole the breath from Annie’s chest. Annie hugged back as hard as she could.

  “Good luck,” Annie said, strangely fighting back tears.

  “I’d wish you luck, too, Annie, but I know you don’t need it. I can see you’re strong enough to make it through.”

  She took in Annie’s face for a last moment, then turned and went to the car.

  “They made the transfer at an ATM on Twenty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan,” Aaron told her as she got into the driver’s seat.

  “Will you be able to find out what we need if we get to the ATM itself?” Laura asked, doing a poor job of remaining calm and collected.

  “If I don’t have an address for this Mal guy before we hit the highway,” Aaron said, “you can kick me out of the car without stopping.”

  “Are you—”

  “Drive.”

  She did, pulling away from the small house and onto the street. In her rearview mirror, she could see Annie standing in the doorway, watching them go.

  “MCT surveillance cams picked up the spot at the date and time the transfer was made,” Aaron told her as they moved through the town. Laura noted the garage and the thin young man in the stained overalls bent into an open hood. “I’ve got him crossing Twenty-Third and going down into a subway. The subway cam has him going downtown.”

  There was quiet as they passed out of the town and headed for the highway entrance in the distance. Laura’s fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel, her hands becoming damp. Her eyes kept flickering to Aaron, his face slack, all the effort happening within him.

  She steered them onto the highway, heading south to New York.

  “Well?” she said hotly.

  “I picked him up on five different MCT cameras all the way home,” Aaron said, his eyes refocused and a grin breaking on his face. He’d had it minutes ago but was making her wait just to amuse himself. “He’s at an apartment building on Orchard and Delancey.”

  “Which—”

  “Number 17C. Registered to someone named Rose Santoro.”

  Why did it drive a pit into Laura’s stomach to hear that?

  “I could send you a capture of him,” Aaron taunted, “if you still had your cell.”

  “You could do something else for me, instead.”

  “Oh, please tell me. I’m dying to do something else for you.”

  “Make a deposit into Annie’s account.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Didn’t you see how desperate she was? How hard she was trying? No.” Laura shook her head. “Of course, you didn’t. She’s giving this everything she’s got. Her entire future depends on her going to that nursing school. It will change their lives massively.”

  “Are you feeling okay to drive? Because you’re apparently in the middle of a psychotic break.”

  “No, Aaron, I’m serious. The money would mean nothing to you, and it would change her life.”

  “That’s your best argument?” He closed his ey
es. “Wake me up when we get to New York. Or don’t, actually.”

  “Aaron, if you do this, I will never mention how you were spying on me in the bathroom ever again.”

  The pondering silence was cut only by the buzz of cars moving on the highway around them.

  “You swear?” he said, looking at her again.

  “I do.”

  “How much money?”

  “One hundred thousand dollars,” she said easily.

  “One hun— I know you aren’t serious.”

  “Come on. One hundred thousand dollars would barely even show up as a decimal place in your accounts. And that’s enough to stake Annie for the rest of her life.”

  Aaron was gone again for a moment. When he came back, he had the tone of an accountant.

  “The state school she was referring to has a two-year program to become a registered nurse, the total tuition of which is less than half of what you suggested.”

  “Fifty thousand.” Laura made a show of turning it over in her head. What she was really doing was cataloging the fact that the old strategy of doubling your initial bid to ultimately get the amount you really want worked on sneering adolescents as well as budget-conscious parents. “Okay.”

  “It’s done.”

  Just like that, Laura thought. Aaron will forget about this in ten minutes, and Annie will never forget it as long as she lives.

  “Aaron,” she said levelly. “Thank you.”

  “Whatever.”

  She sighed.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and take that nap,” she suggested dryly.

  She brought them into Manhattan and around to the East Side Highway, headed for the Lower East Side as directed by Aaron, who was amply baffled that anyone might not know their way around New York.

  “This is weird,” Aaron said on their approach. “The data here is really quiet. Usually New York data can’t shut up. But it’s like everything is asleep. Even the newsblogs are intermittent.”

  It figured that Aaron would be studying the dataflow to learn something he could have looked out the window to see. There was almost no traffic around them. As they paralleled the city streets, Laura could see very little foot traffic where she expected the usual throngs. She might have pursued it, but then, glancing out the other window, she caught sight of the East River, shimmering in multifarious hues from its constituent chemicals.

  “I didn’t think it would actually look like a rainbow,” she said.

  “The campaigns are true,” Aaron confirmed. “You must be the only person in the free world who hasn’t come to see it.”

  “Is it true about how it got that way?”

  “Which truth?” Aaron replied with apparent seriousness. “The one about how chemicals leaked in there during construction and are eroding the island?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “True. In about twenty-five years, the edges of this island are going to start crumbling away.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? Too bad for an entire island?”

  “Someone will do something about it,” Aaron said with total assurance. “When they need to.”

  “You, Aaron. You do something about it. Your father—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Your father died because he chose the wrong side. You want to avenge him, honor his memory? Break the system that killed him. Become more than he was. Make your own choice, not the one he made for you.”

  In consideration or peevishness, almost certainly the latter, Aaron remained silent.

  As they moved South past the Fifteenth Street exit, Laura caught sight of the spear-like points attacking the sky above the glimmering mirrored dome. The Lazarus Towers. She had only ever seen them on HD. She never would have believed anything could pull an observer’s eyes away from that hideous dome, let alone turn it into a tourist attraction.

  But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Make mistakes look like successes. Cover the terrifying truth with shiny lies. She looked at Aaron, studying the towers himself. Where she might once have expected admiration, his face was captured in a look she couldn’t identify.

  The apartment building between Orchard and Delancey was a dull white, its opaque windows sending the reflection of the sun shearing back into the world.

  There was something wrong on the streets here, something beyond the fact that poverty was being hidden with shiny paint and corporate smiles. There was barely anyone out, and those who were glanced up with edgy glares and quickly pulled their eyes away, scurrying into doorways or around corners.

  “What’s going on?” Laura asked, praying that this was not just what the city was always like.

  “I’m . . .” Aaron’s voice was low and edgy. “ . . . not really sure. It feels like everyone sees something we don’t.”

  “Why would—”

  “Look,” he interrupted her. “This is the building. Let’s go.”

  He walked into the building as though he owned the place himself, which, in fact, he may very well have, for all she knew. The plain white façade was easy to overlook, to take for granted. This was probably the point, because anyone venturing inside would have entered a wash of grime and dirt that had turned the lobby into a gray smear. The elevator doors slid open with the hiss and grunt of equipment reaching its last legs.

  “Wait,” she said, her stomach queasy with doubt. “We can’t just go up.”

  “That’s what we’re going to do,” he said, not breaking stride.

  “Aaron, please, what if . . .”

  He stared at her from within the elevator.

  What if I’m not supposed to be here? What if this was all a—

  She stepped onto the elevator and stabbed the seventeenth-floor button before he could.

  After a rumbling ride, the door wheezed open on a hallway that had lost the battle to filth and lack of care long ago. The metal doors in front of every apartment were etched with obscene pictures, curses.

  Her hands were trembling as they came to 17C, and Aaron knocked at it with short, angry blows.

  When there was no answer after several moments, Aaron studied the lock with easy disgust.

  “It’s a standard lock,” he said with contempt. “I could get us through a cellock with no problem. Honestly, how do people live like this?” He pushed the door once, hard, out of annoyance, and it opened, revealing the torn internal lock mechanism. “Well, that’s convenient.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Someone broke in or something. Maybe they forgot their keys.” He pushed the door open the rest of the way.

  “What are you doing?” Laura asked urgently.

  “Do you want to have your reunion in this hallway, Laura?”

  Laura paused on the threshold, then, her throat clenched with some sort of indescribable dread, she stepped in and closed the door behind her.

  The place was tiny. There was a bed, a cinder block that served as a nightstand, a small refrigerator, an aluminum chair positioned before the window, the bars of which, Laura noted, you couldn’t see from the outside.

  Aaron plopped himself into the chair as Laura studied every inch of this grimy little place for a clue, just as she had been studying the details of her life for the last year and coming up short.

  There was nothing really personal here, and perhaps Laura was relieved. She couldn’t test herself to see if she recognized what might have belonged to Mal. But as she waited, she could feel the fear inside her grow, from the pit of her stomach up through her throat, making her want to vomit. Her fingers and toes were suddenly tingling with it, and her head began to pound with surges of panic; panic and something else besides.

  She spun around to face the door just an instant before it opened.

  A girl, her shaggy hair nearly hiding her nervous features, jolted in surprise. With her was a large boy, moving slowly, his face bloodied and scarred. Scars Laura recognized, a face Laura knew, had known forever and ever and ever. The boy’s face froze in shoc
k as Laura’s brain split apart, spilling out memories.

  PART III

  Love and Fear

  ARIELLE KLIEST’S FATHER HAD BEEN an older man, a Swiss banker who had emigrated from Germany earlier in life. Rumors followed Arielle throughout a childhood spent predominantly in a rigorous Swiss boarding school that her father had not emigrated from Germany but fled it when the Allies had come in at the close of World War II. This was a theory shared both by students and faculty alike, and Arielle could scarcely avoid hearing it. She never asked her father, and not out of fear, but merely for the fact that she didn’t particularly care.

  Her mother was a much younger Swiss woman, a vice president of the bank at which her father worked. Her mother was graceful and elegant and possessed of the sort of beauty that belittled rather than enchanted those around her. The union of the two was an efficient and profitable one, and Arielle herself was raised—when she was allowed home—in an environment where acts of ostensible affection and acts of horrific greed and amorality were undertaken with equal dispassion.

  On the verge of attaining the presidency of the bank, her mother was torn down by a scandal involving the siphoning of funds into the accounts of a young man she had, apparently, taken up with and planned to abandon Arielle’s father for. Her mother stepped down quietly and, in less than a week, had vanished, passing utterly from the grasp of her family and friends. Arielle never bothered making the effort to search her out. It was not out of hatred, but rather for the fact that she had never been able to summon any sincere feelings of love for her mother to begin with.

  The effort of dealing with the scandal and the financial difficulties it brought with it wore her old father away. By the time he died, Arielle had acquired degrees in economics, comparative languages, and semiotics. She was heralded as a genius and accepted the compliment with her family’s signature dispassion. This was the greatest way she could imagine to honor her father once he died, to the extent that she thought to honor him at all.