Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (23 page)

It took under an hour for me to complete the paperwork, which really wasn't as big of a deal as V made it seem. The hardest part was reconciling the money with the amount written on our deposit forms because they didn't always match. Still, I had only just finished my first chai by the time I was writing the deposit amount in the large book where all the income and payments from the restaurant were recorded. It was lovely to see, all those pages of numbers in columns of red and black. It was like opening a watch and looking at the gears inside, or seeing the metal wheel that turns a music box. The numbers had a mechanical beauty.

V came back when I was finished.

“You brilliant little light,” she said, hugging me. “Certainly a star.”

“Why isn't Ephraim doing this?” It had been bothering me the whole time I worked.

“Still sick,” she said, slipping out of her apron and grabbing her coat from its hook.

“So who will do the Farm run tomorrow?” I felt the red splotches start on my neck.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, tying on a scarf. “I meant to talk to you about that.”

“Are you lying to keep me here?” I said, pushing my chair away from the desk, suddenly furious. “Am I a prisoner?”

V slumped onto the edge of the desk. “Starbird, no. I swear. We are canceling the Farm run this weekend, but I swear it has nothing to do with you.”

“I don't want to be here anymore, V. I want to go home.”

V reached over and stroked my hair. It was something Fern Moon would have done. The thought made me tense up. My lip began to tremble.

“Is the Outside too much?” she asked gently.

I nodded. “Too much” was a good way to say it.

“We canceled the run because Cham and I both have to work the weekend shift and Ephraim's too sick. Plus, the week was so slow that we already have enough food. I could really use you on the floor for the brunch shifts if you can do it. I honestly don't know if we can make it without you,” she said, dropping her hands against her lap. “One more weekend?”

I wiped my eye with the back of my hand.

“I've got to run to the bank. You're a lifesaver, Starbird,” she said, and she left.

 
 

Starbird, table three needs syrup. Excuse me, you gave me milk when I asked for orange juice. Hey, can I get some butter?
By ten a.m. Saturday, I wished I had said no to Venus and hitchhiked back to the Farm. At least chickens don't talk back. I broke three dishes and two mugs before V said, “Why don't you run the register and let me and Europa serve?”

I spent the rest of the shift picking up checks, making change, and running credit cards, leaving V and Europa to handle food. When I counted out the drawer, we had our first perfect brunch Z report since I had started.

“If EARTH was here, he would rename you Moneybird,” said V.

Everyone laughed but Europa, who said that humor about EARTH was inappropriate.

 
 

I walked home from the café alone since V and Europa had the evening shift, and ran into Io a few blocks from Beacon House. She was walking from the bus stop, wearing a pink-and-white striped dress, which peeked out from under her raincoat, and rain boots with blue polka dots.

She threaded her arm through mine and walked in step with me along the sidewalk. “I remember when I first moved to Beacon House,” she said, as we passed under a madrona tree. It was drizzly out again and the sky was as gray as Spanish moss.

“Where did you move from?”

“B.C. The farm up there.”

“You're from Canada?” Planet Elder Saturn Salt had started the Family farm in British Columbia. I knew it was at least as large as our Farm, but I didn't realize Io was from there.

“Yeah. I'm sure you heard a lot about us,” she said.

“EARTH told me you smoke marijuana there.”

Io laughed. “Tons of it. We call it ‘tea.' But I don't anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I was in a fog all the time. I quit and I'm so much . . . clearer now.”

EARTH told me he smoked marijuana to get “clear,” but I couldn't ask Io about that. “So you knew Europa growing up?”

“Yeah. I've known Eris and Kale since they were born. I knew their dad, too. Before he was excommunicated.”

“Before he was what?”

“He met an Outside woman and started seeing her in secret. Europa was a ball of fire when she found out. That's why she came here. She's a U.S. citizen, so she could come back with her kids. He's Canadian, and off the grid, so he can't follow her.”

“But doesn't that mean she's trying to own him? Isn't he allowed to be with whoever he wants?”

“Europa would say she left because the other woman was an Outsider, and that he wasn't a true Believer. I think it's garden variety jealousy.”

“Why did you leave?”

“It got so toxic up there. When I was a kid, it was okay. Actually, it was amazing. But new people like Europa started joining ten years ago and things changed. People got fanatical and paranoid, didn't want anyone leaving, or any Outsiders visiting. I faked a Calling to come to the States, and my mum had to let me go. I managed to talk my way across the border with a birth certificate but no green card. Red Light pays me under the table.”

“What do you mean fanatical? Did they become non-Believers?”

“Non-Believers? More like über-Believers. They propped up a photo of EARTH in front of the fireplace and meditated in front of it every night. But I don't want to talk about that.” Io hugged my arm close to her side. “Let's talk about boys. What's going on with your artist?”

“He gave me his phone number, but I don't know if I want it.”

“Intrigue,” she said. “You
have
to use it! What about Farm boy?”

“I've been gone too long. V's keeping me prisoner here. He's going to forget me.” I didn't expect the tears that came suddenly rushing down my cheeks.

Io wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “I'm sorry. Truthfully, I was the one who wanted to convince you to stay. I just wanted you to experience the Outside, so you know what's out here, beyond the Farm. V's not keeping you prisoner, she's just overextended.”

Io stopped me on the sidewalk. I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “You should go back to the Farm. Take your new clothes. Let him know you were doing great without him.”

We started walking again and approached a building that appeared to be abandoned, with a boarded-up storefront on the first floor. There was something in the alcove that looked like a pile of dirty blankets. As we got closer, I realized it was a man. I dropped Io's arm and ran over.

“Sir, are you okay?”

He looked up at me, his face so dirty it looked like he had been cleaning a fireplace. The hand he held out to me had long black fingernails.

“He's coming back. His judgment is coming for you,” he said, his eyes jumping wildly around. He grabbed the sleeve of my sweater and started to pull.

“Starbird!” Io yelled, grabbing my other arm. “What are you doing?”

“He looks hungry. Child of God,” I said to the man, “are you hungry?”

“God. God!” the man yelled, grabbing my sweater with his other hand. “He's coming back. He's coming.”

Io yanked my sweater out of the man's grasp and started pulling me down the street toward Beacon House. “Starbird, you can't do that! You have to be careful in the Outside. You can't just talk to anyone.” I had never seen her so upset, stuck somewhere between yelling and crying.

“But he needs our help.” I tried to pull away from her, but she had a tight grip on my sleeve. She didn't stop dragging me until we were at the front steps of Beacon House.

“What money do you have to drop in his cup?” Io asked. “You're a girl in the city. You're not EARTH.”

Just as I was about to protest, the green door swung open and Cham was standing in the foyer inside the threshold. “Ephraim's in the hospital,” he said.

 21 

F
elicia was about to throw a tantrum when V told her that I would work the register on the Sunday shift. But as she began to unbuckle her fury, V held out a hand and said, “I don't have the capacity for it this morning, so just deal with it or quit.” Felicia glowered back but didn't say anything else.

Ephraim had been having chest pains on Saturday afternoon, so Cham called an ambulance and then called the café, and V went straight to Harborview while Cham stayed with Kale and Eris. The hospital concluded that it hadn't been a heart attack, but they decided to keep him overnight for tests. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Ephraim, like most Family members, didn't have any health insurance.

“They couldn't turn him away from the emergency room,” V said as we sat on the couch that night. “But we're still going to get bills for this. Plus, we have bills due at the café, and someone has to handle payroll.” Her voice was hoarse from crying, and she was twisting a water glass around in her palm.

“I'll help,” I said. “I'll stay after my shift.”

“I don't want you to feel like I'm trapping you here.”

“The Family's needs should come before mine,” I said, ashamed of all the fits I had been throwing for the past week. I took V's hand. “I'll stay in Seattle until he gets better.”

So after working the register all morning, helping bus tables as the Sunday brunch crowd cleared, and running the Z report, I ordered a tofu scramble and retreated to the tiny café office to start sorting through the mounting pile of paperwork. V gave me a slipshod tour of the desk.

“Bills here, receipts there, and the ledger book. Ephraim never made the transition to computer accounting, so everything you need is probably on a piece of paper somewhere on this desk. But use the computer if you want; it should be more than a paperweight.” While talking, she had been drawing up a handwritten sign:

Mandatory Meeting

All Café Staff

Tuesday night, closing time.

“I decided not to have it on Monday,” V said as she taped the sign on the wall above our apron hooks, “because I don't want to cancel Story Night. But Tuesday, we have to figure out how to cover Ephraim's shifts, and maybe make some shifts to care for Ephraim depending on what the hospital says. By the way”—she said over her shoulder—“if you have any questions for Gamma, let me call her. She wouldn't be happy if she knew you were helping with the books.”

 
 

For the next few hours, Devin brought me chai while I formed papers into various stacks. The office had a radio with a hand crank, a tiny disco ball that hung from the desk lamp and cascaded specks of light over the papers, and a framed photo of Ephraim, EARTH, and Mars, all years younger, with shorter beards and fewer wrinkles around their eyes.

This is what he would want me to do
, I thought, looking at the photo of EARTH. Gamma might think I was too young to work on the finances, but EARTH believed in me.
Maybe that's why I was brought to the café while Ephraim is sick. Maybe this is getting me ready to do an important job for the Family
.

I made piles of all the café's current unpaid bills, many of which had red bars across the top with the unsettling words
Final Notice
, or letters attached threatening something called
collections
. The amount due was straightforward at least. It was much harder deciphering the payroll, since some workers were paid as Family members and others weren't. I needed to know the number of hours each employee worked and their pay rate. Then somehow I had to figure out how much money we currently had and how much we needed to buy food and other supplies, so I would know how much money was left to pay our bills. The books were no help. Usually, when I looked at numbers, there was a pleasant simplicity. It was like looking at a flock of black birds flying across a white sky. But these birds were black and red and were flying in chaotic circles, fighting with one another.

Over dinner, I tried calling the bank to find our account balance, but it was Sunday evening and I didn't know any of our passwords. By six o'clock, the only real progress I had made was organizing Ephraim's paper clips and rubber bands into orderly piles. I was feeling in over my head and starting to panic. Who did I think I was, Doug Fir? Did I really think I was smart enough to do this?

I pushed back from the desk and let my head rest on the back of the chair. I couldn't call Gamma. I couldn't reach Iron without going through Gamma.
Maybe I should just tell V I can't do it
. But who else was there to do it?

That's when I noticed that someone had put glow-in-the-dark stars on the office ceiling, the kind that look dull yellow in the day but glow like bioluminescence when the room is dark. I closed the office door and turned off the light. All over the ceiling and walls, pale green stars emerged from the paint. They weren't in the shape of any constellations I was aware of, but they did have a harmonious way of leading the eye from one horizon to the other, the secret constellations of Ephraim's own invented sky. Somewhere in those stars, I got an idea.

 
 

“Yeah, I can be there at nine,” Ben said over the phone. “I live right down the street.”

It wasn't exactly math homework, but he did offer to help.

I had to reassure V three times that I wanted to be left alone, that I wouldn't open the door to anyone, that I would take a bus home and not walk, before she agreed to leave me there. By 8:59 I was practically pushing her and Devin out the front door, taking the aprons out of their hands, insisting I would remember all the locks. I opened the back door at a few minutes after nine and peered into the alley. Ben was leaning against the chain-link fence at the back of the vacant lot and doing a pathetic job of looking inconspicuous. V would split a lip if she knew I was asking an Outsider to look at our finances.

I waved Ben inside, reaching back to release my hair from its ponytail right before he walked through the door. He stood in the hall by the walk-in and stared first in one direction, then another. He was like a cat being teased with a feather; everything in the place caught his attention.

“I've walked by this place,” he said, touching the beaded curtain as we passed. “We just moved to the neighborhood from Roosevelt. I'm not switching schools, though. My house has the red door, two blocks up. This reminds me of my uncle's basement. He had a wet bar and a tanning bed. Have you ever been to Phoenix?” He pushed the mirror ball in the office so it sent a thousand little lights spirographing the walls and ceiling.