Joe Pitt 5 - My Dead Body (23 page)

--Yeah, you are. He looks at Lydia.

She’s leaning against the wall, next to the assault rifle she took from the Cure house.

--You’re telling them they have the love that dare not speak its name. And a baby that’s going to have to learn to pass. And that’s not the way it has to be.

Chubby slips a thumb in the armhole of his vest.

--This is a family matter, Miss Miles.

--Mizz Miles.

She comes away from the door.

--Throw those diminutives around, but don’t slap them on me.

Chubby looks at me.

--Joe?

I shake my head.

--No way, I’m not in this.

Lydia goes to Delilah.

--We can use you.

She puts a hand on Delilah’s belly.

--This baby, whatever it is, this baby says we’re all the same. It says infected and uninfected, we’re all human. It forces them to look at us and see people, not monsters. This baby, it’s not a symbol, it’s a fact. And it, and you, both of you together, if you come with me, you can save lives. Just by being there and letting people see you and see what you made together.

Chubby wipes a hand down his face.

--Madness. Madness.

Lydia stays with Delilah’s eyes.

--It is not safe. It will not be safe. But it isn’t a safe world. All we can do is try and make it better.

Delilah’s eyes are wide and shiny.

She holds her hand open to Ben, he takes it, she pulls him close.

--This is a child of destiny in troubled times.

Chubby throws up his hands and walks away.

--Babbling, incoherent madness.

Delilah puts a hand on her belly.

--I will not hide this light.

She takes a step, pulling Ben along.

--Come, Benjamin, we are not welcome here.

Chubby takes a step after them.

--Delilah. Some small ounce of sense, please.

But she’s turned away, opening the office door.

--Lydia Miles, we will go with you. She will speak to the world, and our child will lead.

Ben glances back at us.

--I.

She pulls at his hand.

He lets himself be pulled.

--I’m a dad, man.

Both disappearing down the hall.

Delilah’s voice raised to declaim.

--We can shine a light. Our baby can be a light.

Chubby stands at the corner of his desk, moves toward the door, has another thought, turns back, stands lost in the middle of the room.

--Impetuous. That has always been her nature. Impetuous, passionate, romantic. Not a patient or a realistic bone in her body.

He looks at Lydia.

--And you encouraged her.

Lydia picks up the assault rifle.

--I just told her the right thing to do, she made up her own mind.

--Yes, a starring role as mother of the messiah baby, how could she resist?

Lydia waves him off.

--I’m guiding a revolution. You, Freeze, you’re trying to make yourself feel better about being a crappy dad.

He moves to a corner, stands there, looking at photos on the wall.

Lydia comes to where I’m slumped on the couch, she puts a hand under my chin and forces my head up and takes a good look into my eyes.

--For a girl. Joe Pitt blows up the world, for a girl.

She shakes her head.

--I wish I knew.

She lets go of my chin and straightens.

--I wish I knew.

She turns and walks away.

--I wish I knew where I could find a girl like that.

I watch her walk, favoring the side where the bullet’s stuck in her, carrying the assault rifle on her shoulder.

Tomorrow she’ll be on TV. Standing with her people around her. Delilah and Ben right up front. Trying to put a human face on what they’re pulling out of that hole in Queens.

And she’ll be lucky to live one more day past that.

I raise my good hand.

--Lydia.

She doesn’t look back at me.

--Save it.

--Just gonna say you can take the Impala.

--I already was.

And walks out the open door.

She does make it through the next couple days without dying or being thrown in a cage, she’ll go back underground. Fighting a new kind of fight. But I don’t need to tell her that.

After all, she kept the gun.

That lady, she wants to find a girl worth blowing up the world for, she should maybe look in the mirror.

--Do you think Delilah will come back?

I shrug.

--Beats me.

Chubby is still looking at those photos on the wall, a little girl.

--She’ll come back.

He looks at the floor.

--Of course she will. Once she sees. How hard it is. She’ll come back.

I push myself out of the corner of his couch.

--Don’t count on it.

He scuffs his foot against the lay of his shag carpet.

--No. I won’t. I won’t.

I start to gut myself up for standing.

--Anyway, all I need is for you to tell Evie I did my bit. I got the kids here safe. They didn’t want to stay. Too late for me to do more.

He scuffs again, drawing a cross in the carpet.

--Yes.

I lean and grab the side of his desk and pull and my bowels don’t fall out of my ass so I’m not dead yet.

--And I could use a ride over to Enclave.

He rubs the cross out.

--About that.

I’m lurching to the door.

--Don’t give me grief at this stage, Chubs. You don’t have to linger, just drive me over, push me out, and drive away.

--Joe.

I look at him.

He’s holding one hand to his cheek.

--I’m sorry, Joe.

I put my back against the wall, trying not to slide down it.

--Chubby?

--Very sorry.

--What did you?

He pulls his hand down his face, dragging the cheek, giving himself a cant.

--I never spoke with Evie.

I start to slide.

He pulls his cheek lower.

--She doesn’t know anything about Delilah and the baby. She never.

I’m on the floor.

Chubby looks like the side of his face that he’s touching has melted under his hand.

--She never said you should go looking for them.

He lets go of his face and it pulls itself back up.

--As far as I know, she doesn’t know that you’re alive.

I stay on the floor.

I could pull the piece I took from the Cure house armory and shoot Chubby, but I don’t much see the point of it. Said from the beginning that I owed him one. Just because I thought I had extra reason to go looking for his daughter, that doesn’t mean the debt wasn’t reason enough. Figure I may have thrown in the towel a few times if I hadn’t had that extra motivation, but that just doubles his smart for making the play he made.

I lift a hand.

--Doesn’t matter, Chubby.

I feel for a smoke, can’t find any, remember I never got my tobacco back from Ben.

Oh well.

Chubby comes over, takes my hand, pulls me up.

--If there’s something I can do, Joe. Money. I. Anything is what I mean.

He puts a finger alongside his neck.

--Joe, anything to make it right.

I push him off, stand on my own two.

--Hell, Chubby, when the night started I was living underground. I was feeding on dregs. I was hiding from the world and acting like I had an idea of what to do next. But all I really was was in the dark. Look at me now.

I brush at some filth on my tattered jacket.

--A night on the town. Visits with old pals. Rousing adventure.

I fit the zip and pull it up until it snags and stops at my sternum.

--I’m a changed man.

I drag my fingers through my hair.

--You want to do something for me. You can make a couple phone calls, bring some people up to date on the new state of things. And in the meantime.

I sweep a hand at the door.

--You can take me over to see my girl.

Last hour. Dark before the dawn. Empty city. A quiet waiting for the next big thing in the new day.

We drive through it.

--I didn’t think you would help.

I put my head out the open window to feel the cold air.

--When you’re right, Chubby, you’re right.

He leans from the backseat of the Riviera and taps Dallas’s shoulder.

--Up here.

Dallas changes lanes, takes the car around the corner onto Greenwich.

Chubby settles back into the seat.

--I don’t want to shirk my responsibility for the deception, but it was in fact Percy’s idea.

--Percy.

He takes out his humidor, looks at it, removes the cap and pulls one of the cigars half from the humidor.

--As you must have gathered, I embellished a bit when I told Delilah those stories. From a very early age she’s had such macabre taste. Her mother had read to her the original Grimm’s tales. Heels chopped from feet, eyes pecked out, children sacrificed. I am myself no stranger to lurid material. Some of the most baroque scenarios my films have been based on were those I penned myself.

He pushes the cigar back into place.

--I even wrote one that was Vampyre-themed. But thought it better to leave it unproduced. There was no telling whose ire it might have raised.

He recaps the humidor.

--But I allowed my whimsy full freedom when I had occasion to tuck Delilah into bed. Thanks to the estrangement between her mother and myself, those were rare occurrences, and I hoped to leave an indelible impression. One that would outlast the charm of whichever of my ex’s current infatuations might be lurking about.

He waves the humidor.

--I told stories that were appropriately grotesque, but tended toward full and happy resolutions. Percy was a kind wizard who drifted in and out of my narratives, guiding a pair of star-crossed naifs. One of them Vampyre, one not.

He shoves the humidor into his jacket.

--A common-enough trope. Am I entirely responsible for putting the idea in her head? Please. Popular vampire fiction is rife with such relationships. It is a rampant cliché of the genre. What is Dracula if not the story of an undead’s hopeless love for a mortal?

He cuts the air with the edge of his hand.

--Can I be solely to blame that she took it quite so to heart?

The storefronts along Greenwich flick past the window. I stick a finger under my eyepatch and scratch the scar.

--You’re her dad.

He looks at me.

--What has that to do with it?

I bare my teeth as a cramp ripples through my belly, exhale as it passes.

--I don’t really know, Chub, but it seems daddies have a bit of an impact on their daughters. Or so I’ve heard. Could just be a rumor.

He rubs his forehead.

--Yes, yes, of course, yes. These things start early and run deep. Of course.

He wipes his mouth.

--But the past is prologue. And I was saying?

I cough on something in my throat. Maybe a loose piece of my throat, I can’t say.

--Percy. Why the hell did you get me involved?

He looks at the roof of the car.

--Percy said I should.

I groan.

Chubby shakes his head.

--When I first called, the children were actually with him. I was prepared to go uptown and attempt to speak some form of reason to them. Ferry them to an underground location somewhere away from Manhattan while the troubles here sorted out. I am not without resources. I could have found means to keep Ben supplied. And the baby, whatever its needs may turn out to be. I was to go and fetch them myself.

He lifts his hands from his knees, drops them.

--At the last moment Percy called and told me it had become more complicated. The children had run off. Delilah had been disillusioned by what she found in both Percy and the Hood. She was talking about shelter in the dragon’s very den. Well, that was clear enough. Still, I said I could go myself. But Percy said he’d heard troublesome rumors about the Cure house. Unsafe.

He scrunches the material of his slacks.

--He told me to send you.

He looks over at me.

--Honestly, Joe, I had no idea where to find you. I doubt it would have occurred to me to look for you at all. But Percy said it needed a tough hand. Said you were the fit for the job. And I could hardly argue.

--How’d he know where to find me?

--I can’t say for certain. He said he knew someone keeping tabs on you down there. You mentioned someone watching us when we were in the tunnel. Perhaps?

I think about the old man of the underground. I think about Percy. Enclave and Enclave.

--Yeah, that fits.

He pats his ‘fro.

--Still, I told him I didn’t think you’d help.

He looks out the side window.

--And he mentioned a girl. Sketched a few details. Gave me a name. Mentioned Enclave.

He turns to me, tears, trembling chins.

--Joe, if it hadn’t been my daughter, Joe. If it hadn’t. I would never have. Not just because I have more sense than to cross you. But because. I wouldn’t want to lie to a man about something like that. Not a man I know. Not a friend. Joe.

He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

--Just. My daughter. That’s why.

He catches a sob, huffs it out.

--I didn’t want to cause you all this trouble.

He draws a loose shape in the air with his fingers.

--I’m sorry, Joe.

I look out the windshield. We’re coming up on Gansevroot. I move my feet around, making sure I can still do that. Legs seem to work. Arms. My brain keeps drifting in and out of fog banks. But that’s hardly new. I could keep myself clear, I’d never have fallen for this deal.

Too late now. I was reeled in, cut open, gutted, and there’s nothing left but the grill. No reason not to just put myself on it. It’s only fire. And you can only burn once.

I stick my head a little farther out the window.

I point.

He sees it, taps Dallas.

--Here.

Dallas wheels us around the corner of Little West Twelfth Street.

--You sure, Joe?

I lean against the door.

--Make those calls, Chubs.

--Of course.

I pull the door handle.

--I’m glad you got to see your daughter, Chubby.