Benighted (31 page)

TWENTY-NINE

A
lly comes to see me. I’m resting my head on my desk, my eyes beating from another sleepless night. I turn at the sound of his knock, a rapid percussion against my door. It’s only when I see it’s him that I straighten up.

“Ally.” I rub one hand against my eye. “Come in.”

He twines his fingers, steps lightly, more tentative than before. “Jesus, Lola,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“I guess I look bad,” I say.

“Well, I’ve seen you look better.”

I don’t ask when. “What do you want?”

He lays his hand on the back of a chair, drums his fingers against it. “Can I sit down?”

“Yeah.” My hair clings to my face, static. It itches. The idea of shaving my head passes through my mind. I know I won’t do it, but I know, too, that the idea doesn’t bother me as it once might have.

“I—just…” Ally taps his feet, shifts in the chair. “I thought I’d let you know—you still have the Ellaway case, don’t you?”

“I suppose.” It’s a strain on him, on everyone, me being like this. I know that. I know it, but I can’t care enough to stop.

“Well, the man who—you remember I told you he made a call from the shelter, the first night we picked him up?” I remember. It seems a very long time ago. “And a dark-haired man came to collect him? Well, I went down to the cells and I ID’d him, it was, your, it…”

“You can say his name, Ally.” There’s a silence, broken only by his tapping hands. “I won’t die of it.”

Ally inhales. “Well, it was Paul Kelsey. That’s the guy who came to collect him. That’s all.”

My mouth floods and I swallow. “I figured,” I say.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it’s not a big surprise.” Ally looks at his hands, I look at mine.

“That’s it, then.” My hands shudder on the desk, a little vibration like an aftershock.

“Yeah.” Ally tugs at a lock of his hair. It’s still hanging down to his shoulders, tattered. He hasn’t cut it since he lost the bet and I handed him the scissors.

“Thanks for telling me.” He doesn’t want to go, Ally, he’s still sitting there. I don’t know how to help him.

“Yeah—well—listen, Lola, is it true you’re sleeping in the cells?”

I don’t think about why he asks. “I was. I didn’t get much sleep. Too many cellmates calling me names.” It’s a simple phrase, a playground phrase. It suffices. “I’m sleeping here in my office now.”

Ally frowns, rubs his hands on his thighs. “Well, listen, that’s no good. If you—you could stay at my place, if you needed somewhere to stay.”

One of my hands flicks open as a spasm passes through it. “Have you been talking to Hugo?” I say.

“Hugo? What? Why?” He looks up at me dark-eyed as I stand. He sounds sincere.

“Never mind.” I walk around the desk, sit on it, next to him. “I’m a target, Ally.”

He shrugs.

“Do you want to die?” I’m light-headed, dizzy.

“I’m not going to die. Do you want to stay? You can if you want.”

He looks at me, angular, restless.

“I’ve been thinking too much lately,” I say. “I can’t stop remembering things.”

He leans back a little, trying to get the measure of me. And it’s true what I’ve said. Memories have hailed down around me, and I can’t get away from any of them. I want to push Ally, slap him, I want to scream.

I reach out and pick up one of his dancing hands.

“What are you talking about, Lo?” he says. He’s smiling at me; his face is tense. His hand tries to get out of my grip, the other hand knocks against the chair.

I close my shaking fist around him hard enough to still his movements. “Oh, Ally, for once in your life, sit still.” And I lean forward and kiss him, grip his ragged hair to pull his head back. His whole body stiffens, his mouth is tense against mine, but he kisses back, there’s a moment when his mouth opens and his lips move, tasting of chewing gum, a moment of desire or reflex in which we’re kissing, his unshaven face rasping against mine and cutting into my skin before he pulls his head back with a jerk and tries to look at me.

I open my fist, strands of hair stick to it and I lift my hand away. His eyes are wide, staring up into my still face.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think I do want to stay with you.”

It’s a black and bitter ascendancy. As Ally stands, backs out of the office, I stand and watch him, wanting the taste of chewing gum out of my mouth, my lips scored with his. It’s impossible to believe that next time I see Ally, things won’t be as they always were, he won’t be casual and active and boyish, that he’ll remember this. It doesn’t feel real that this happened.

I get a memo, telling me that the prisoners have once again asked to see me. I look at it for several minutes together before I tear it up, halves, quarters, fragments, until the letters are too scattered to mean anything, throw them into the bin and lay a piece of paper on top of them, to hide them from sight.

I’ve never been an interrogator, not really. Seligmann was the closest I got. I’m not considered damaged enough, not marked in ways you can see. Interrogators are men, usually, men with missing feet, ruined faces, mauled genitals. The worst, the unusables, the ones who’ll never be the same again. They mop floors and work nights, and some of them, that’s all they do, but others work the prisoners, details get passed to them that the rest of us don’t know. We learn a little about interrogation skills in school, and it’s men like those who teach us. They can never face down a lune again, but a lyco, that’s different. The game levels. The interrogators may be missing a kilo of flesh, but it doesn’t slow them down. They don’t mark the prisoners, not too badly, nothing that won’t heal. They learned a long time ago that however much flesh you take from another man, it’ll never replace your own.

If you feel bad about lycos, why are you sleeping with one? That’s what he said. He knew I’d find out.

He was right. Why would I let some brief passion come between me and my life, between everything the world has been to me and my reason? I should have known. Yet even now, I’m thinking about it, going down to help out these people who killed two of my kind, and for what? Blue eyes, long-fingered hands, a voice?

None of those are as small and unpersuasive as they should be.

He knew all the time. He went out into the parks with me, he took me for a walk, he said he wasn’t afraid, that no bullets would get to me. I should have known then. No man takes risks like that.

Why did he have me in his apartment? To study, to watch, to betray? Or did he like me a little, enough to want to keep me out of harm’s way for a while?

And now we’re living together again. Him downstairs in his cell, me upstairs in mine. It wasn’t how I hoped it would turn out, but it’s a new intimacy, of a sort. I could try to save him. I could go down to the cells myself, take my love out of him with a steel cable. Pull him apart, see where the secret was that made me want him so badly. I could let him lie to me again, I could plead, I can hardly be lower than I am, I could cry and abase myself. The choices freeze me, I’m caught in their glare.

There are times when I think it would have been easier if he’d just shot me like the others.

Sometimes I ignore the phone, sometimes it’s less trouble to pick it up. When it rings this time, I look at it for a few moments. It rings again, then again, the sound loud and wearying in my small office.

“Hello.” I’ve given up saying my name when I answer it. Everyone knows about me now.

“May?”

I thought I was beyond surprise, but this doubtful voice makes me sit up in my chair. “Becca? Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.” She hesitates; the pause grows.

She won’t let me see her. We haven’t spoken since that day. This is the first thing I remember, but the thought doesn’t last long. I remember, all at once, a lot of scraped elbows and tangled hair that she fixed for me, a lot of fights that she was ready to apologize for before I was. I’d kick and throw things, she’d just shout. Becca’s never raised a hand against anyone in her life. Becca took a lot of name-calling in her day, a lot of comments on me, and she didn’t like any of them; and just now, she’s the only person in my world who doesn’t know all that’s happened to me.

“Becca, I’m sorry we parted so badly last time,” I say in a rush, forestalling her sounds of hesitation. “I shouldn’t have spoken the way I did, and I’m really sorry about it.” My throat hurts as I say this, a sharp pain like a bandage coming away from damaged skin.

“Oh.” She sounds floored. “Oh, that’s all right, that is—I should have made allowances. Of course you were—you do see why I said it, don’t you?”

A month ago I would have thought she was trying to prove she was right all along, make me the bad one. Her voice quavers a little at the end of the sentence; I can see her, standing up straight, good posture, her shoes clean, trying to do the sensible thing. It’s strange how easily I can see what I couldn’t see before, that she wants to be reassured. “Of course I do.” My voice is a little hoarse. She’s so alone, Becca, she doesn’t have anything but Leo left. “I wouldn’t want to endanger you, you know that. I love you. I was just upset.”

I actually told her I love her. I close my eyes to listen as she says, “I know. But you see why I said it, don’t you?”

She still thinks I’m mad at her. “Of course I do.”

“I—oh, I was just wondering how you were.” There’s a stammer to her voice, the strain of sounding casual makes it go high-pitched.

I take a shaky breath. “Well, not so good, as a matter of fact. Some things have gone wrong…”

“What’s happened?”

I don’t know how I can repeat it all, put it into words for her. I’d have to listen to myself. “Well, you remember I told you…”

“Oh, wait a moment.” There’s the sound of crying in the background, then her footsteps. She’s gone to pick up Leo. He must have grown since I last saw him.

There’s a long pause, sounds of mothering.

When she comes back, the sound is muffled, as if the phone is tucked under her chin, and I can hear little squeaks, almost clear. She’s holding him. That’s his voice. If I sit very still, I can hear him breathing.

“I’m sorry about that,” Becca says, “he just woke up, you’re still there, aren’t you? I hope you don’t mind, only…”

“It’s okay,” I hear myself say. “Of course you had to pick him up.”

“Is something the matter, May?”

It’s just the sound of my voice. The thought that she’d figure something had to be wrong for me to be tolerant of her would have made me angry with her before. Now it just makes me almost smile. “Yeah. I was staying with my boyfriend, the one I told you about. Now it turns out he knows the people we arrested, the ones who killed my colleagues. He’s—in with them.”

“What?” Leo chirrups down the line, and Becca’s voice is hushed.

I sigh. “Yeah. Turns out he was gunning for me all along.”

“Oh, May.” There’s no reproach in her tone. She doesn’t like that it turned out this way for me. There’s a silence. When she does speak, she cuts right to the chase. “Were you in love with him?”

I look down at my shaking hand. “Yeah. Yeah, I was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It can’t be helped,” I say. “That’s kind of the worst thing, though.”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

This has happened to Becca, hasn’t it? She knows how it is to lose a man, be left empty-handed and hulled out. “Are you okay?” I ask. Though it’s all right if she isn’t, I don’t need her to be the strong one. We’re neither of us going anywhere.

“I’m all right. A little tired. I don’t get out much. I’ve spoken to a lawyer. He says he can track Lionel down.”

“Would it change things?” Paul didn’t leave me pregnant, at least. I’m too careful for that. I wonder, a little, what difference it would have made.

It would have been a lively child.

Becca sighs. “No. I wouldn’t take him back. It’d be better for Leo, though; he’ll want to know him when he grows up.”

“You’ll tell him, then?” He could spend his whole life not knowing. It won’t make him feel good, hearing the whole story.

“He might understand.” She half laughs, but her tone is serious. “Anyway, you’ve seen moon nights yourself, you can help me explain.”

I blink, clear my throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.” Auntie May can explain it, darling. Ask her. He won’t grow up saying “What’s wrong with Auntie May?” after all.

“Where are you staying, then?” Becca says, and I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

“At work.”

“At work? You aren’t at his place anymore?”

“No. I haven’t been back since he was arrested.”

“Well, if it’s empty, you may as well make use of it, surely? It sounds like he owes you that much, and he’s hardly going to stop you if he’s in prison.”

This time I laugh. Decorous Becca. She’s tougher than I thought. “I’m worried it may be watched,” I explain. “There’s more of them out there.”

“Oh.”

“So I probably shouldn’t come and see you, either.”

“Oh.”

“Could you—I mean, I know journeys are a problem with a small baby, but could you—you don’t think you could come and see me here, do you?” It isn’t easy to ask, but I’m so tired. I have very few memories of wanting my mother when I was hurt, but I need to see Becca.

“Of course I could,” Becca says. “When shall I come in?”

I bite my lip, steady my voice. “Well, anytime, really. I’m pretty much here permanently.”

Becca was the pretty one, that official position one sister always holds. Taller than me though not tall, blessed with full, rounded lips and cherry-blossom skin. Even when we were children, her socks didn’t slide down, her calves shaped themselves like buds and held the fabric in place. Unlike me, fidgety and awkward, chewing my straight bobbed locks, Becca brushed her curls aside with a graceful hand. Becca would try to comb my hair and pull my sweaters straight, but nothing lasted. Her arrangements went crooked on me.

Lionel and she were both management consultants once. I shook his hand when she introduced him, I said nothing in Becca’s presence, ever, that let her know what I thought of the job. Twenty-somethings paid three times more than my superiors, hired to give advice to their elders because they had a degree in something.