by Kara Storti
“Floor four, east wing,” she says. I don’t even bother waiting for the elevator, I lunge up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, pound the door open with the heel of my palm. I walk down the hall, it’s hushed, none of the noise of the ER. I reach the east wing, and there’s a waiting room where I immediately see the back of Stacey’s head. Dan sees me and in a second he’s up and moving my way. Stacey whips her head around, her hair is frizzy and spectacular, her frown I fully expect.
“How is she?” I say to him. I’m so on the edge I don’t care that I’m grabbing his shirt sleeves and repeating the question over and over. Sweat stains galore under my armpits, but this is me not giving a fuck, because I would sweat out my guts to change the course of events.
“Hey.” He coaxes me to sit down. “What the hell happened to you?” he asks, pointing at the blood and grime on me.
I shake my head. “Orah?” is all I can say.
“She’s alive. We won’t know the damage until she comes out of it,” he says.
I bow my head. “That’s good, that’s really good.” I knead my hands together, let the water drain from my eyes and splat on the linoleum. Stacey’s bottom lip is trembling, she looks away, swiping a knuckle over her cheekbone. It isn’t right, this thing called death, even though Early says it’s the reason we live, well sure dude, death’s great, go have your bro-mance with it. I’ll stay on this side of living, thank you very much.
Dan sits next to me on the sagging polyfoam couch and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“He paid me a visit this morning. Early,” I say.
“What?” The weight of his hand on my back abruptly vanishes. He tugs me away from the room, into the light-pink hallway. I give a quick last look at Stacey; once I tell Dan what I have to tell him, I might not ever be allowed near Stacey again.
I clear my throat, fist against my mouth, wondering how to begin.
“I sent him a message. At that party at Claire’s house. I wanted to talk to him, and I thought I could work something out.”
“You did what?”
“I know, I know,” I say, nodding, my fingers fanning out in front of me as if to hold off the anger that’s already building up in him. “I did it before you and I had our talk in the car. I didn’t know, okay? I thought that maybe the message wouldn’t be delivered and all this would blow over, I really did. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think he would actually—” Dan’s jaw is tensing, though it doesn’t dissuade me to continue. “He showed up at my place, took me for a drive asking about the origin of indigo, and of course I don’t know where it is, and he said you didn’t know, and that he’d just been to visit Orah—”
Dan grabs my wrist, it takes all my willpower not to yelp.
“He hurt her?” he growled.
“No, at least he said he didn’t.” I try to wrench my arm away from him, but he’s on it like a pit bull. “She said there was a place in the Adirondacks,” I say quickly. The strain from my ten-mile trek is catching up—I might vomit from exhaustion. “But then she had a stroke, and that’s everything she told him. I swear.” I didn’t think it was possible, but Dan squeezes me harder, finally eliciting the yelp I was holding back. “I made a deal with him. I said I would give him the rest of the indigo I had and that I would try to find the origin of it. I don’t know why I said that, I panicked, I can deliver the first thing but not—”
My wrist is liberated, but not without a slam against the wall. A nurse speed-walking down the corridor cranks her head back, but decides we’re not worth breaking her pace.
“There’s more indigo?” Dan asks.
“A crypt that only Orah knows about. Well, and me.” There’s no use in hiding the fact from Dan at this point. “In the D-Town Cemetery.”
He frowns. “Apparently Orah knows a lot of things. She never told me about her ancestor’s farm in the Adirondacks. I should have been more aware of how far the flower went back in her family. I should have known that this whole situation was running much deeper than I anticipated. My son is lost because of it and now Orah . . .” He rakes his fingers through his dark hair and turns his back to me.
The air changes, becomes denser, readjusts, and I don’t need to look to know that Stacey is there listening. Our gazes meet; we are aware that the knowledge of Billy’s whereabouts is dangerous. We are the only two people on the planet who know. She doesn’t want to betray him, but Early won’t stop until he finds the farm. Her mouth parts, there are jewels of sweat on her forehead. Is she scared that I’m going to expose her brother?
“I’m meeting Early tonight,” I say, so she doesn’t have to speak. Stacey steps back, bites down on her bottom lip. “Two a.m. on Old County Road, going west, that stretch of road with those abandoned hunting cabins? There’s a moose-crossing sign right there. I’ll give him the indigo, we can talk it out. I don’t doubt my skills of persuasion, okay? I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
Stacey mumbles under her breath, I’m sure it’s a derisive comment, it’s got the tone to go along with stupid or imbecile or downright prick.
“You won’t be after tonight. It’s a guarantee. Once he knows he’s not getting anything out of you, you’re of no use to him, you’re only a hindrance. I’m coming with you tonight—”
“Daddy, no,” Stacey says, the first words she’s spoken since I arrived.
Dan continues, “You harvest what’s left and pick me up. The only way to come to an agreement is if we’re all there. He might not welcome my presence, but . . .”
“Daddy,” Stacey says again.
“I’ll be fine,” he says to her, but he’s still looking at me.
“Or he might send someone in his place,” I say.
“Then I guess that’s the risk we’re going to have to take.” He’s as tired and strung out as I am and not hiding it very well, as I am. “God, Finn, why didn’t you just tell—”
“Hey,” I say, not wanting to interrupt Dan, but I have to because I see Jason scoot by us. He’s not looking so hot. I grab him by the back of the shirt.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” My tone comes out way too harsh. He faces me head-on, and instantly I feel bad because of the expression on his face. Poor bastard’s been crying.
“Seriously, bro. You better step off,” he says, a ferocity in his energy that has never been there before, out of hibernation here he comes. For the first time, he intimidates me. I throw my hands up in the air between us, stepping backward.
“Okay, okay, man. I’m not looking for a fight.” I don’t think I’d be physically capable of one anyway. Jason’s head is down, he’s about to leave. “What happened?”
“I told Mike to leave the indigo alone, not to sell that shit, we all warned him about Early, but he didn’t listen, said he could work it out with Early, and now Victoria is in surgery.” He swallows. “They fucked her up pretty good. If only he had been home . . .”
Jason chokes up, puts his hands over his face. Dan stays quiet and takes a position at Stacey’s side. I don’t think Jason realizes who Dan is, and what he is—the grief just keeps him talking, talking, and talking.
“She’s like family to me, Finn, and you know how much Mike loves her. Borderline obsession. He’s going to be on a rampage, but I tell him, I say, these guys aren’t people you want to mess around with. But I know he’s not listening. He’s not going to let it go, not when Victoria was . . .” He chokes up again.
Ever noticed the flavor of anger in your mouth? The bitterness starts in the back of your throat and migrates to the tip of your tongue until metal is the only thing you taste. It’s where I’m at right now. I’m pretty sure Mike’s ten steps ahead of that.
“Stay out of it, you two. It’s being taken care of,” Dan says, off to the side.
Jason flicks his eyes toward Dan and then back to me. He’s just registering that Stacey’s dad is the cop who arrested me after the pig’s head fiasco, but instead of freaking out about it, he shuts his eyes in resignation.
/> “Whatever, man. If you want to use what I said about my brother against me, go right ahead.”
“We’ve got bigger problems,” Dan says.
“Yeah. Right. I got to get going,” Jason says, trudging away. Dan murmurs to Stacey about how he’s going to smooth things out, make it right again, but I’m finding it hard to believe that any of us are coming out of this unscathed. Or even alive.
Chapter Forty-three
The fact that Dan and Stacey even allow me to see Orah is beyond all comprehension. Maybe the image of me and Orah in the morning room is an imprint on Stacey’s heart. Or maybe they are both too exhausted to argue. The nurse allows us only a few minutes with her. If my heart was wrecked before, it’s good and destroyed the moment I see her hooked up to machines, with an oxygen mask covering her face, and surrounded by tubes and beeps and other equipment I don’t understand. Stacey collapses in a chair and gently takes Orah’s limp hand. I take the liberty to follow suit on the other side because Dan doesn’t approach her, and he doesn’t stop me. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses the back of his hand underneath his nose. After a silent few seconds, he excuses himself, mumbling something about making phone calls.
Looking at Orah as still as stone is unnerving, because I guess I never really looked at her before. I know she has hazel eyes. I know she has a weird mole on her jawline. Her hair, of course, I know. But I never noticed that her hands are surprisingly smooth and not too wrinkly. No liver spots, no creepy veins that fork all over the place. In them I see youth, I see her teenaged self. I start talking to her like she can hear me: “Orah, seriously, you’ve got to be doing this now? We have so many teatimes to hit up, we got the morning room, which is pretty much no good without you. I’ll make sure that I get the Earl Grey you like, the tea in the blue box and not the gray box—you can see why I got that confused, right? The Birds of America book is getting pretty worn down, but that doesn’t mean I’m not treating it with respect. I read that goddamn thing every night like scripture, pray to a different bird every night, pray for my sister, pray for your granddaughter, pray for you, you know? To let go of your guilt and the anger toward yourself? I’m not going to lie, I pray for myself sometimes, that’s probably selfish, but I pray that each of the birds I see will take away a little bit of the stuff in me that makes me . . . off, a little off, I know I am . . . and eventually I’ll be free. The birds will take away my fear, my sadness, my weakness midflight, and drop them like seeds for a different species of wildflowers.”
I hear Stacey crying, but I keep going. I have to talk, to get Orah to listen.
“I want that for you,” I continue. “Your wildflowers will grow too, just as mine will, and I’m seeing purple for you—maybe lavender . . . yeah, that seems right—and I’m imagining some yellow ones for me. Maybe like buttercups; you can put those up to your chin, and they reflect their yellow, it like, becomes a part of your skin. I wouldn’t mind that, making a kind of thumbprint on some people, here and there, because, because . . . you know . . . Orah . . . you know, you’ve made your thumbprint on me—and I don’t need a stupid flower to go reminding me of it.”
A sharp intake of breath, so serious it changes the pressure in the room. Stacey.
“Fuck you, Finn,” she says, sniffling, hiccupping her breaths, clogged nose. “Fuck you.”
I slowly pull the chair away from the bed, because I know that Orah is her family, really her family, and she needs her privacy, and I have no business being here, and I’m the one who—
“Don’t you dare leave,” she says, getting up and coming around to my chair, her shoulders scrunched and tense. I brace myself for the slap. I’m going to take it like a man; I sit up straight and give her my whole face to do as she pleases. Her shadow umbrellas me, moving closer. There is anger, but there is also fear, and I think that’s what makes her crumple against me and onto my lap, makes her mold her body against mine so I’m cradling her as she sobs into my chest. I hold her tight. I try to be strong. Footsteps scuff behind me; I feel Dan’s presence in the door frame. My chin grazes the top of Stacey’s head, and I stroke her hair until she gets quiet, until the crying and shaking has subsided, and her chest expands with breath and mine constricts, and then we switch, and Orah is somewhere between our heartbeats, fighting.
-----
Dan and I talk out in the hospital parking lot about the meet-up tonight. He wants me to pick him up with the remaining indigo from the crypt, we’ll go to the place on Old County Road, and then he’ll tell them it was all my fault. I’m an impulsive, shoot-before-he-aims cretin, and I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t realize the territory I was encroaching upon, blah, blah, blah. We’ll guarantee that Early can have all the indigo, as long as we can walk away unharmed. It seems so simple. It seems too simple.
The parking lot is spookily quiet. Stacey is still in the waiting room, per Dan’s orders; I can’t help but peer up at the hospital windows to catch an impossible glimpse of her.
“He’s still going to want to know where the origin is,” I say. “In the Adirondacks.”
“I don’t know where this place is. Orah didn’t talk to me a lot about her family—for a while she didn’t talk to me a lot about anything.” He pauses. I’m not sure now is the time to tell him that Billy is in the Adirondacks and that Stacey didn’t spill the truth to her father in order to protect her brother. I decide I’ll keep my mouth shut until I talk to Stacey—if I even have the chance.
“Why didn’t Orah ever tell you about it?”
Dan’s getting clearly aggravated. “I didn’t want to talk to her about certain aspects of her life—her addiction, her family history of sickness. I don’t dwell on the past. I like now. I like moving forward. And Early? We’ll have to find a way to tide him over so he’s not so focused on the origin site. You have an impressive amount of indigo, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. And it used to be all mine. There goes my promise to Faith; now it’s just a matter of staying alive. How did I get to this point? In the beginning it was all so harmless. “If he hasn’t figured it out by now, we’ll tell him that it’s the Klaski DNA that creates the best high off the drug. We can give him the list of Klaski gravesites.”
We both pause on this; all the Klaski graves are now bound to be desecrated by Early’s crew. There is a special place in hell for people who grave-rob. What about people who facilitate the grave robbing?
But Dan is thinking two steps ahead. “That should hold him off for a while. I’m in the process of building up a strong case against him on other charges, and the PD supports this every step of the way. I might be able to arrest him before he comes after us for more.”
“Ulterior motive,” I say.
“Always,” he answers.
“What about Stacey?” I’m fidgeting, biting the skin around my nails. I’m overly trying to hide my emotions and doing a terrible job.
He nods, he’s already thought of this, duh. “I’ve got a guy who knows a little bit about what’s going on. He’ll watch over her until I return.”
“What about my family?” I ask, a quivering in my voice. I’m weirdly freaking out, not just about Faith of course, but even about Mom and Pop. He’s sensing it.
“I can have another of my guys check on them too.”
I nod, but without much conviction.
“We have to have faith that this is going to work,” Dan says. “We have to go into this situation with all the confidence in the world.”
His eyes flit across the parking lot. He tells me to harvest quickly, go straight home, lay low until it’s time. How could I not feel a deep premonition when the painfully blue sky darkens with clouds? How could I not think planning this out at a hospital isn’t an omen? The best thing to do is get in my car and drive to the crypt. And with that thought, I almost laugh. Great, I think; the omens keep stacking up.
Chapter Forty-four
I can barely walk straight to the crypt and I’m not even that high, just toked up
enough to scare away some of the nerves. The trees and ferns and bumps all the same, the landscape on an everlasting loop. When I come across Orah’s garden that she played off to Mike as the grow site, I know I still have a ways to go. Eventually I find the tall grass that hides the opening of the crypt. I dig the key out of my pocket and unlock the door. I’m instantly dowsed in drug dust, crypt dust, other world dust and the darkness enfolds me even though I’m not fully in. I feel for the lamp in the corner of the space and power it on. What I see before me is one giant NO.
No. Just no.
There is no indigo. All the flowers are gone. Just the vines with their spiraling tendrils are left, completely stripped and ravaged. Someone didn’t come in here to harvest; someone came in here to destroy. And of course there are the bones, bigger now that they are exposed and abandoned. I’ve never seen a skull before, and the indigo had covered it up so well that it never dawned on me that oh yeah, that’s a human head that was once filled with a brain, firing off thoughts and impulses, electrical currents of reasoning or lack thereof.
As the shock sinks in, I want to tear out my hair, gouge out my eyes, pull out my tongue, and I would do it, I really would, if I thought it would bring indigo back, but no, silly Finn, you actually thought this plan would work? Silly nilly. Stupid. Fucking. Idiot. The room turns around me, but it’s me who’s swaying, I feel for the wall for support and slide down it to the hard-packed ground, queasy, all tremors, no breath.