Plus One (33 page)

Target is N 5 m!

At five meters she should have been right in front of me, but the large foyer was empty. I suddenly understood. I hit reply.

Need altitude

A sign indicated stairs, so I followed a long hallway to my right, past intimate classrooms, and pushed through a door to the east tower of the building. I ran up the stairs. The second floor was all office spaces, marked “Dean of Students” and “Academic Advisers.” I ran to the third floor, and at the top of the stairs I burst through double doors. There was a café in front of me, and a sign that said “Reading Room” to the right. Every student in the café turned to look at me. I had no college ID in my phone to wave in front of the reader, but I didn’t need it; I was Noma. I hoisted myself with my arms and swung my legs over the turnstile; it was surprisingly effortless for someone who weighed fifty-two kilograms. I ran west into the Reading Room and I stopped short when I got there.

It was the most beautiful room I had ever seen, like something out of an old British movie. There were two massive chandeliers at each end of the cavernous space. The walls were lined with hand-carved shelves loaded with books. The arched windows above the bookcases stretched to the ceiling and were not just leaded glass, as they seemed from the outside, but also had stained-glass pieces embedded in them: the crests of many universities, and Jesus flanked by a couple of robed men with halos, one of them holding a book and a quill. The window casings were carved limestone; the ceiling was vaulted with ribs that formed enormous stars, like a cathedral, with brick inlays in a herringbone pattern between the stars. Students were camped at long study tables dotted with lamps glowing a honey gold, surrounded by their books and sweaters. I walked to one of the bookcases on the north side of the room. I dragged my hands along the spines, just to touch books again, while also looking at every face in the room, searching for Gigi. Wherever I stepped, students packed their bags, preparing to give me the space a Noma might need. My phone vibrated.

Directly N 2 m. Are you with her??

I was still on the wrong floor. I replied:

Not unless she’s dangling out the window. Will try basement.

Ciel replied:

She’s heading W

I grabbed a terrified blonde before she skirted past me. I pointed to the west exit and said, “Are there stairs through those doors?” She nodded with her mouth open. “Do they go all the way to the basement?”

“I—I’ve never been to the basement!” she cried, horrified, as if she knew she was giving the wrong answer on an oral exam. I ran to the exit and down a staircase, taking the steps two and three at a time. The basement door was locked. I banged on it in frustration. Ciel texted:

She’s too far W and S now to be in Harper. On the Midway?

How could she have been two meters away from me at some elevation less than a minute ago but not be in the building? And the answer bloomed in my mind from my long-dead childhood: steam tunnels.

The university had a warren of underground tunnels connecting every building, bringing heat in the form of steam, and electricity in conduits from the power station across the Midway. Smudge delinquents avoiding curfew sometimes hid out there for the day, lifting metal grates all over campus to climb in. Lovers who could stand sweltering, forty-degree-Celsius heat entwined themselves down there; potheads made their deals and smoked weed. But the tunnels had been locked down by the university when I was still in middle school. A text from Ciel:

She’s on the move

I replied:

Steam tunnels. All grates locked?

Immediately, another text:

Brilliant. Entrance in loading dock of UC hospital, under dumpsters, no padlock.

Leave it to Ciel, high school hoodlum extraordinaire, to have this insider information. I hoped it was still current. I started running west on Fifty-ninth Street toward the hospital. An uncensored text arrived from D’Arcy:

Hey, I need to hear from you.

I couldn’t stop to answer. When I got to the hospital I texted Ciel:

Which loading dock?

Ciel:
Sorry East of ER on 58th

I had to run all the way around the building, which covered an entire city block, only to discover that the loading dock was behind two giant wrought-iron gates that were locked with a chain. I was losing my energy fast. I didn’t have the reserves for this kind of effort. I bent and put my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. From that angle I could see the grate under the dumpster.
I was so close.

D’Arcy texted again:

SOL. CHECK IN.

The chain was loose on the gate. If I pulled hard, I might be able to create enough space to force my head through. For someone as undernourished as me, the skull is the widest part of the body—the only completely inflexible part. I had learned that from a Harry Houdini biography in Poppu’s fourth grade “curriculum.” I took two seconds to reply to D’Arcy, mimicking his urgency with all caps:

SOON.

I wedged my head under the chain, scraping my cheeks against the painted iron of the gate as I did, leaving white pancake makeup and red rouge behind, but my head was through. I wiggled my body sideways. The chain levered the gates back together, crushing my chest, preventing me from breathing. My instinct was to suck in precious air, but I knew it would only expand my rib cage. Instead I exhaled as hard as I could and pushed and wriggled until I was jackknifed by the gates at the hips. I saw stars, but I could breathe again. I yanked the rest of me through with only a couple of scraped knees to show for it and tumbled onto the ground. I was in.

Pushing a dumpster is not a job for a featherweight. My most forceful shoves resulted in precisely a centimeter of movement, and I felt an explosion of frustration that I would fail Fleur because I was a pathetic bag of skin and bones. Eventually I got the grate one-third exposed, which was enough. As Ciel had predicted, it was unlocked—why lock it when there was a chain around the gate to the dock and a half tonne of steel and garbage resting on top? I was able to lift the grate half a meter and slither in.

The heat and humidity wrapped around me and invaded my lungs as I climbed the ladder down to what felt like a tropical nightmare. Every pore of my skin released sweat instantly. The tunnel was louder than I expected, with the hum of machinery, hissing, and the occasional metallic bang like an old radiator. There were lights along the ceiling, which was convenient since I was supposedly a Ray and had no flashlight holster. I stopped to text Ciel.

I’m in, which way

His reply was immediate:

Like a boss. Directly E two blocks. Phone sounds off?

The low light was familiar, soothing, concealing after the bright daylight. I started running, but I had to slow it to a brisk walk. Deep breaths were like swallowing a hot lake. Two minutes later, a text:

She’s 10 m SE

But I already knew I was close. There was an intersection up ahead, and a baby’s strong cry echoing above the noise of the chamber. It was Fleur’s voice. Her tiny human voice, husky, like Ciel’s. Tears came to my eyes, and I wiped them away. I padded on silent Smudge feet and peeked around the corner. Gigi was slumped against the wall. Her makeup was running, and she was crying along with the baby. Fleur was dressed in a T-shirt and a diaper only, with her hair plastered wet to her scalp. Gigi looked up at me and her whole body startled. She almost dropped the baby. She tried but couldn’t scramble to her feet with the bundle in her arms.

My instinct was to show that I was alone by stepping around the corner. I didn’t want to threaten her by approaching. She caught my body language and stopped flailing to get up. I could have run to her, fought for the baby, tried to take advantage of her position. But something calm rooted me to the spot. It was the fact that Gigi was crying. Gigi, the powerhouse. Gigi, who credibly might feed you to her dogs. Gigi, the toughest girl I had ever known, hands down, was crying. And I understood.

I sat on the ground. It had a layer of powdery dust and dirt that must have been a century old. Fleur wailed. Gigi stared at me.

After a couple of minutes of intolerable screaming, I got up and moved next to them. I sat down again, leaning against the wall, as Gigi was. The heat was making me dizzy.

“She’s too hot,” I said.

“Duh.”

Seriously, Fleur’s tiny body would dehydrate in a matter of hours in this hellhole.

“Let’s get her out of here.”

A minute more, and Gigi reluctantly started to get up. I stood first, clapped the dust onto my skirt, leaving handprints, and helped hoist her by the elbow. I didn’t try to take Fleur. Gigi led the way through the labyrinth, back toward Harper Library, carefully avoiding hot, asbestos-lined pipes. Our feet crunched in the mineral deposits that seeped from the walls; I ducked almost in half through some passages.

Five minutes later, we were in a subbasement, in a room that itself looked like a library, or maybe a storage area for spillover books, with metal stacks and carts full of forgotten hardcover tomes. It was cool, with the musty, mildewed odor of ancient books. My damp body shivered.

“Now she’ll need her clothes,” I said. But Fleur was also starving, or something, because she was screaming so hard her whole body had tremors.

Gigi raised her voice over the baby’s cries. “There’s a bottle in that mini-fridge, and a microwave in the corner.”

I got the bottle ready while she changed Fleur’s diaper and gently maneuvered her tiny, quaking body into a black long-sleeve shirt and pants. She put a red knitted cap on the baby’s head, and Fleur was Noma, too. I shook the bottle and tested the temperature on my wrist as I had seen Hélène do with Fitzroy’s milk. It was tepid, not really body temperature like mother’s milk, but at least the cold edge was off. I handed it to Gigi. She sat in a battered office chair.

At first, Fleur was so hysterical she couldn’t focus on the nipple, ripping her mouth from side to side, her face an alarming shade of red. But eventually she figured out that this was what she had demanded, and she began sucking, began breathing through her nose, wet snot spraying in and out with a gurgling sound. And finally, I heard with each swallow the outraged grunt of a need barely met. Gigi’s shoulders dropped. I stood where I was.

“I didn’t want this job,” Gigi said.

I recalled her on the breakwater, spitting at Fuzz’s feet. The whole thing had been planned from the compound, and D’Arcy and I had unwittingly played into it. Someone had even pre-stocked this room for her with rudimentary baby supplies. I said nothing.

“I never wanted to see Ciel again.”

Me neither. But I had been lying to myself.

“I knew it would kill me to meet Kizzie.
Shit
, I can’t even say that name without wanting to puke.” Silver pools welled on her lower lids until the tears spilled over. “I can’t stand to hold her baby.”

Was that my cue? I wasn’t sure; it had a rhetorical edge. I stayed where I was. Again, I said nothing. The baby’s suckling became noisy and smacking. Her grunts segued from urgent to ecstatic. It was comically adorable. It was wrong of me, while Gigi was in such agony, but I laughed through my nose. Gigi looked up at me.

And then she smiled, too, a flimsy smile. “She’s pretty fucking cute.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When she’s not pitching murderous fits. Damn, I could never be a mother right now.”

“Uh-huh.”

We watched Fleur suckle, drift off, remember that she was hungry and suckle desperately again, and then drift off, only to repeat the whole cycle.

“You prolly shouldn’t hang around here, Red. Fuzz is on his way.”

“From?”

“The compound. But he left almost three hours ago.”

“So, any minute.”

She nodded. There was a long silence. My phone vibrated. She looked at it in my hand.

“Ciel?” she asked.

I put it in my pocket without reading the message. “Mm.” I didn’t have much to say, not because I was at a loss for words, but because I felt an unusual calm. Fleur was safe. For the moment that was enough.

“I would have liked you, you know, in another life,” Gigi said to me out of the blue. After a long pause she said, “If Ciel had made a different choice.”

I put my arms behind me and leaned against a desk, bracing my butt on the back of my hands.

“Hell,” she went on, “I might’ve even loved you. While simultaneously wanting to strangle you every minute I was with you.”

“I would have loved you back,” I said finally, and it was the truth. I already sort of did, in an always-off-balance, somewhat terrified way.

She stared at me. “I can’t give her to you, Sol.”

“I know.”

“No. No, you don’t. Fuzz would kill me. I mean that literally: he’d kill me.” She watched the baby, who had temporarily won her battle against sleep and was drinking steadily. “Unless I was willing to disappear, and give up everything.”

There was nothing I could do but listen. I would never win in a physical fight with Gigi. She would slash my throat, I would bleed out onto the floor, and that would be the end of me, in a forgotten subbasement of a library at a small midwestern university. Thousands of strangers would walk above my rotting, undiscovered corpse, living their lives of the mind.

“You wanna know what was unexpectedly shitty about this whole mission? Something that blindsided me?”

I waited.

“Knowing that your grandfather was dying in the room across the hall and I had never met him. Realizing I had no right to see him, and Kizzie did. That he was going to die without knowing I existed. And that it didn’t really matter anyway, because
I
didn’t matter to Ciel anymore. Who the fuck could have known that would slay me?”