Revolution (35 page)

63

J
ules takes a bottle of wine from his backpack and opens it with shaky hands. We all slug from it.

“I think I pissed my pants,” Virgil says, feeling the back of his jeans.

“It’s tunnel water,” Jules says. “You were lying in it.”

“That’s even worse.”

The wine bottle makes its way around again. Virgil slugs from it and passes it to me. “Hey, you owe me,” he says. “I saved your life.”

“That’s twice,” I say. Without thinking.

“What?”

“Hmm?” I say back.

“You said, ‘That’s twice.’ ”

I force out a laugh. “I said, ‘That’s
nice
.’ ”

He doesn’t laugh. He gives me a look, picks up his guitar, and starts walking. I pick up mine and start walking, too. As we get farther away from the train tunnel, the light fades. He pulls out two flashlights from his backpack. He leads the way with one. Jules brings up the rear with the other. I have one, too. A mini one with a really strong beam. Vijay gave it to me last Christmas. I get it out and shine it ahead of me on the ground. After about ten minutes of walking through a narrow tunnel, we arrive at a rusty, dusty iron grille. A padlock is lying on the ground in front of it; its shackle’s been cut.

“The cataflics—the tunnel police—are always trying to keep us out,” Virgil says, kicking the padlock aside and yanking the door open. “And we’re always trying to get in.”

Jules makes ghost noises and walks through the door. We follow him. Virgil’s bringing up the rear now. A few yards in, something shatters under my foot. I yelp. The others laugh. Virgil shines his light on the ground. It’s a bone.

“Don’t touch it,” he warns.

“Oh, thanks. I was so going to,” I say.

“Some of the bones have quicklime on them. It burns.”

He shines his light on the wall of the tunnel. Except it’s not a wall. It’s a mass of skulls and bones. And these aren’t as lovingly tended as the ones on the tour. These are green and slimy. Some are stuck together with a wet, mineralish-looking cement that’s dripped down them and hardened.

“Stalagtites,” Constantine says.

“Stalagmites,” Jules says.

“Stalagfrights,” I mutter.

A few yards down, the walls change to limestone again. Only they’re not gray like the ones I saw in the catacombs; they’re full of color. There’s graffiti everywhere. Cartoons. Copies of the old masters. Original paintings. There’s one really intricate painting of a man dancing with a skeleton in a bridal gown.

“Wow, that’s good,” I say, moving closer to it.

The others continue on. Virgil passes me, glances at the painting. “It was done by a necrophile,” he says. “Watch out for those guys. They’re always skulking around down here. Watch out for the drug couriers, too—usually a pair of men, moving fast. They like their privacy.”

I hurry to catch up, trip over something—somebody, probably—and stumble into Virgil. He feels for my hand and steadies me. I can’t see his face. Can’t tell what he’s thinking. I want him to kiss me again. I want the feeling of his arms around me so badly. I’m glad it’s dark. Glad he can’t see it written all over me. Glad Khadija can’t, either.

“You okay?” he says tersely.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says, and lets go.

The tunnel veers left, then right, then it narrows. I can hear water trickling. The ground gets muddy, then soupy. We’ve come to a stream.

Virgil stops, shines his light on the wall.
Rue d’Acheron
, someone’s written on it. “Almost there,” he says.

Charon jumps across the stream. He reaches back to help me over. We walk on. The tunnel’s ceiling gets lower, the walls closer. It’s creepy and claustrophobic and kind of cool. I move the beam of my flashlight over the walls as I walk. There are more pictures. One of a lion. A wolf. A leopard. There’s a chalk drawing of a tall, eerie white man, too. His left arm is outstretched. He’s pointing.

“I saw that one before,” I say. “Back by the dancing skeleton.”

“Yeah, he’s been there the whole way. He’s chalked on,” Virgil tells me. “He’s pointing the way to the party.”

“How do you know that? How do you know your way around down here?” I ask him.

“I learned it by studying the maps. The Giraud map, which was made in the forties. And Titan’s map. But I know my way by heart now. I’ve been coming down here for years.”

A few minutes later, we come to a T. Somebody’s scrawled something on the limestone.

“The writing on the wall!” Jules crows. He stops to read it. Virgil walks on, reciting the lines from heart.

“
… at times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages’ way
,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act, a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death
,
That life was blotted out—not so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain
,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again.
”

“Wow. That’s deep,” Jules says.

“You know who sayed that?” Constantine asks excitedly. “Agent Mulder.
X-Files
, bruh! Season Four. Episode Five. ‘The Field Where I Died.’ My cousin has DVD.”

Virgil snorts.

“What, smart man? Who sayed it, then?”

“Robert Browning sayed it. He wrote it. It’s from a poem. ‘Paracelsus.’ ”

“You make me so hot when you recite poetry,” Jules says, planting a noisy kiss on Virgil’s cheek. Virgil swats him away.

“Yeah. Me too,” I say. To myself.

I read the poem again and a chill goes through me as I realize that I know some of the lines. The junkie at Clignancourt said them to me. He probably saw them on one of his trips down here to snatch bones and for some reason they were rattling around in his head yesterday when I bought the painting from him. But still, I get a creepy feeling reading them now. I feel like he somehow knew I’d be here, that I’d see them. What does it mean, anyway—’That life was blotted out—not so completely / But scattered wrecks enough of it remain’? I turn to ask Virgil if he knows, and see that I’m standing by myself. They’ve all moved on. I hurry to catch up.

As I rejoin them, we take a right off the main tunnel, walk for another five minutes or so, take a left, and then I see a glow at the end of the tunnel, soft and golden, and hear music. We make another right, and then we’re suddenly in a big room. It’s lit by dozens of candles and it’s full of people—all laughing, drinking, talking, and dancing. There are punks and geeks. Hippies in head scarves. Spelunkers with headlamps. Goths. A girl is juggling. Another’s walking around in a shroud. I hear French, English, German, Italian, Chinese. Tunes from an iPod. As I stand there, totally gobsmacked, a guy zips by in a Speedo.

“Welcome to the beach,” Virgil says.

He greets people he knows, slapping hands and fist bumping and kissing them. Then he leads us to a huge stone table in the middle of the room, where we put our stuff down.

“Why is this place called the beach?” I ask.

He points to a painting of a wave on a wall. And then to the ground, which is not limestone, but sand. “People brought it down here years ago. In buckets,” he says. “Don’t dig in it. It’s covering bones.”

I toe at the sand, wondering who’s underneath it and thinking that it’s weird the way things work out. I didn’t manage to kill myself tonight but somehow I still ended up in a grave.

64

E
veryone takes their instruments out, so I take my guitar out, too, figuring I’m here so I might as well play. If nothing else, it’ll take my mind off what I almost did tonight. Somebody kills the iPod. We do Beatles covers. Stones. Stuff everyone knows. Khadija sings and she’s really good. We do “Alison,” “Hallelujah,” and “Better Than.” I have to sit out a tune here and there that I don’t know.

People are digging us. They’re dancing and singing, cheering and applauding. The goths are doing what looks like a minuet—bowing, touching hands, twirling. One of them, a shockingly hot dude, stands apart, just listening. He’s got the strangest expression on his face—like he’s never heard music before. Something about him looks really familiar to me, but I can’t imagine I could have seen him and forgotten him. Not with that face. Or those clothes.

We play for nearly an hour then take a break. Someone hands me a paper cup filled with wine. I try to find water instead but there isn’t any so I put it down. It’s not a good idea to mix any amount of Qwellify and alcohol, never mind mixing way too much Qwell and alcohol. Virgil and Constantine sit next to me. Constantine asks what’s beyond the beach. Virgil shows us on a map he made of the catacombs. It’s incredibly detailed, with markings for entries, blockages, rooms, and hazards.

“Why do you like it here?” I ask him.

“It’s quiet. No tourists. And it’s the only way someone like me can get a room in the good part of town,” he says, smiling.

He’s not looking at me much. Even when he’s talking to me. He’s probably in big trouble with Khadija. What a horndog. I still can’t believe what happened at Sacré-Coeur. All the things he said. And did. I don’t know who’s the bigger jerk—him for perpetrating that nonsense or me for falling for it.

Another group of kids arrives and the call goes up for more music. We look around for the rest of our band. Constantine’s taken off. Charon’s nowhere to be seen. Khadija comes over, refills her cup from a bottle on the ground near Virgil, and turns to leave.

“Where you going?” Virgil asks her.

She winks at him.

“Does Mom know you’re still seeing Jules?” he asks her.

“Does Mom know you still come down here?” she asks him. And then she’s gone.

“Mom?” I say, confused. That can’t be right.

“Yeah,” Virgil says.

“Wait a minute … Khadija’s your
sister?
”

He nods.

“But I thought—”

“What?”

“That you were … that she was …”

“You thought she was my girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you took off the other night? At Rémy’s?”

“You saw me?”

“Yeah, I saw you. You came in and then you left again. I had no idea why. I called you but you didn’t pick up.” He goes silent for a few seconds, then says, “Andi, what kind of person do you think I am?”

I never imagined there could be an explanation. I just assumed the worst. Because that’s what I do. About everything and everyone. Most of the time I’m right, but not this time. This time I was wrong. Really wrong.

“It’s not about what kind of person you are, Virgil. It’s about what kind of person I am,” I tell him.

Someone shouts at us to play. More people join in. A chant goes up. I can see from his expression that Virgil would rather not play right now, but as he said earlier, this is a paying gig.

“You ready to go again?” he asks me, looking around. “It’s just the two of us. Everyone else split.”

I nod and we start a second set. Some Nirvana. Another John Butler tune. “Fearless” by the Floyd. “Beautiful” by G. Love. Virgil does most of the singing. I join in here and there. I’m not as good as Khadija, my voice is too raw, but it works okay on these songs. We do a very unplugged version of “Breaking the Girl” and “Snow,” and then I need a break again because my voice is getting raggedy but Virgil says he wants to do one more by the Chili Peppers. All I have to do is play. He’ll sing.

He plays a few notes. I know the song. Really well. And I don’t want to play it. So I don’t. I stop. But Virgil doesn’t. He keeps playing. For the first time since he kissed me he’s really looking at me. And he keeps looking at me as he sings the lyrics.

“
My friend is so depressed
I feel the question of her loneliness
Confide… ’cause I’ll be on your side
You know I will, you know I will.
”

And it’s me who looks away, because he cares, even now, even after I sent him away and thought the worst about him. It’s more than I deserve and I don’t want him to see my eyes fill with tears as he sings: “
Imagine me, taught by tragedy. Release is peace.
”

He plays it gorgeously and cheers go up when he finishes. He nods and puts his guitar down. He’s looking at me again when the noise dies down.

“You didn’t say
nice,
” he says.

“Sorry. It was. You played it really well.”

“You know what I mean. When I said I saved your life and you owed me, you said
twice
, not
nice.
”

I don’t say anything now.

“What were you doing at the tower?”

I want to lie. But when I look in his eyes, I can’t.

“I
knew
it,” he says, his voice low and hard. “Damn it. Damn you.
Why?
”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say angrily. But I’m not angry. I’m scared. I’m terrified.

“Too bad. I said you owe me and I meant it. You owe me an explanation.”

I haven’t touched the wine someone poured for me. I pick it up now and knock it back.

“You should talk about it. You need to talk about it. Whatever it is, it’s killing you. For real.”

“I did talk about it. To the police. And my parents. That’s all the talking I need to do.”

“You haven’t told me.”

“Wait, tell me again … who the hell are you?”

He shakes his head and looks away. He’s going to leave now. Of course he is. Isn’t that what I want? But he doesn’t. He takes my hand in his and holds it and says nothing. We just sit there. Together. It feels stupid and awkward and I don’t know why he’s doing it until suddenly I do. He’s going to wait for me to tell him and he won’t let go until I do.

I wonder, again, how I could ever tell him. I can’t. I just can’t.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His hand feels strong and steady. It feels like a last chance.

“My brother died,” I say suddenly, in a broken voice. “He was killed. Two years ago. It was all my fault.”