The Refugee Sentinel (7 page)

Wet hands covered Colton’s face and closed his eyelids, forcing the high-noon sun to dip into darkness. A giggle tweeted from behind and made him jump in the chair. “Guess who?”

He turned his head, but the wet fingers stayed on. With purpose, he grabbed the foreign hands, their skin smooth and supple against his grip, pushed them away and saw her. The motley eyes, the tear-shaped bob like a blonde Afro, the dimpled smile stretching from side to side. He stitched the parts together and gasped at the full picture.

“Sylvya?”

The snickering exploded into laughter. “Hello, my love.” She stood before him, in the Seattle downtown library, with wet hands, which he had forgotten to let go. She leaned in and kissed his mouth, making a noise and prompting several library patrons to look their way. Colton shook his head, as if she had slapped his face instead of kissing it. He set her hands free and she hugged him hard.

“I’ve missed you,” she said in his ear. “Don’t run away anymore.” She held him for another second before letting go.

“Could we sit for a moment?” he said. “Better yet, let’s go to the lobby. This is the quiet floor.”

“A boy scout as always. But who’ll take care of you, Mister?”

He left the question unanswered, grabbed her hand and led her out, under an increasing hail of disapproving glances. In the library café, they sat at a corner table, him holding her hand all along, as if she were a child.

“You’re visiting Seattle, of all places?” His eyebrows formed an arch with a tip in the middle of his forehead.

“I’m not visiting, silly. I am relocating.” She yodeled the last word with Christmas-like cheer. “The kids and I arrived from Las Vegas, last week. The one-hour bus ride from the airport took almost a day because this city has one highway left that’s not under water. And don’t get me started on the curfew checkpoints. Why are you guys so anal up here? The bus made five checkpoint stops.” Her smile pushed through the annoyance. “But that’s not important. Seeing you makes it all worth it, in the end.”

Colton’s mouth twisted. “You decided to take the kids and just leave Vegas?”

“I didn’t just leave,” she said, slapping his shoulder with a hand. “I’m not such an airhead. After evaluating my life options, I chose to move to Seattle and start fresh. Plus, there’s so much crime in Las Vegas now and no jobs.” She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again in different order. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I’m… surprised. Did you know I lived in Seattle before you moved here?”

“I did.” She looked away with the quiet pride of a student expecting praise from her math teacher. “But in case you want to know, you’re looking at the new Chief of Nursing at Virginia Mason Oncology. Can you imagine?” She clapped hands in the air. “I started last week.”

“I’m… happy for you.”

“Well…” her lips puffed air. “It’s not all glory and unicorns. Their staff is so overworked they are sleepwalking with exhaustion. I’ve worked my share of night shifts in Las Vegas, but didn’t realize how much worse the coasts had it. It’s like a different way of life here… the highlands versus the coast.”

Colton stared at a passerby outside, then ventured a smile. “How did you find me in the library?”

“Pure fate, dear.”

He had to admire the benevolent energy of a woman who could love with a full heart. Why couldn’t he respond? Why was he so stuck on Sarah who, chances were, hated him still? Humans were born screwed up and, in that department, he was a model human.

“I was out, strolling along these burly suspension bridges you call downtown here. I’m drinking my frozen beverage…” She waved an empty Starbucks cup, as if presenting important evidence to a jury. “And who do I see as I walk by the library’s windows?”

“I… I have to run home,” he stammered.

“Wait,” she tapped a finger on his nose. “You can’t leave without giving me your number.”

“I live in… that direction.” His thumb jabbed at the air behind his back.

“That was clear… Not.” She gave a pout after the deliberate pause. “I live and work there.” She pointed a finger in a random direction. “But that didn’t give you my contact information, did it? So let’s get rid of the guesswork and have dinner at my place tonight? You’ll see how much the kiddos have grown.”

He stood up. “I have to leave,” his voice full of ice. “Virginia Mason is lucky to have you.”

Sylvya’s face turned red. “I can imagine how busy you are, but we must make plans to see each other.” She held to his green suede jacket as he was beginning to leave.

“I need to go, Sylvya.” He ran outside, among the Seattle pedestrians whose purpose, together with everyone else on Earth, was to kill time until the day of their deaths. Sylvya ran after him, jostling bodies out of the way.

“Wait… wait for me,” she said.

He kept walking, the back of his head bobbing up and down among the sea of others. Then he dove into the Starbucks at the corner of Denny and Fourth.

She stormed behind and slammed the door shut. “I only saved your life,” she screamed.

He turned around. She was right. He would have died without her.

“And now you’re running away from me,” her face twisted; mascara, dark and splotchy, invading her cheeks. “How can you be so selfish?”

He took a step away from the entrance, pulling her with him. “I admire you for saving my life,” his head hung as he spoke, “and won’t forget that. But you see… I don’t feel about you the way you feel about me. And should never have led you on.”

She reached inside her purse and dabbed her eyes with a crumpled tissue.

He raised a hand. “Let me, at least, get you a latte,” he said and headed for the counter before getting an answer. He returned with two paper cups, a latte for her and some other brown liquid for him. They sat down and he took the lid off her cup. “It will cool down faster this way,” he said. Heart-shaped foam swam like a melting iceberg in the middle of the hot coffee.

“Am I not attractive to you?” she said. “Is there someone else?”

He gulped whatever his cup held, bottoms-up, and clenched it with both fists, careful not to shred the paper to bits. His love and allegiance would always belong to Sarah, even if Sarah hated his guts. “You are a looker. And no, I’m not dating anyone else. It’s just that… you should deal with your life first, before you get to me.”

“Deal with my life?” Her moist voice gave way to a harsh undertone and Colton shuddered, unsure if this other voice was a permanent part of her, lurking under the tears when she didn’t get what was hers.

“Let me be,” he said. “You can have any other man you wish.” A smile hung on his face like a coat on a tin hanger. “Your kids. Your husband, if you are still married. They are the most important. Your new career in Seattle. I don’t come before any of these.”

“Grow a pair and spare me the bullshit.” She stood up, walked away and came back to the table, swift and threatening. “I’m smart and I deserve respect, and you… you are pathetic.”

“Why don’t you –”

“I haven’t been myself these days but I am a good person, Colton. If you don’t want to be with me, have the decency to tell me why. Don’t tell me I’m attractive and you’re grateful while you’re acting the opposite. The truth is you despise me –”

“Look, I –”

“And you’re rude and selfish. And you want to keep me around for free hospital access.” Her body shook with sobs. “I thought you were different. I admired the way you spoke about life. Now, I know you’re a coward.” Her shoulder-length hair tossed, as if blown by invisible wind.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m a good person, Colton,” a fresh avalanche of sobs, “I’ve never done this. Doctors ask me out all the time and I always say no. With you… I don’t know. Maybe it was how we met, you in a hospital bed within an inch of your life.”

“I’d be dead without you, Sylvya, but we can only be friends.”

“But you do understand my feelings?”

Colton had heard enough. Expecting her to understand logic was like hoping the sun would rise at midnight. He wiped off a coffee stain on his chair and leaned back, prepared to wait her out in silence until she was done or until the place closed.

As if she had seen through his intentions, Sylvya buried her face in a napkin and soaked the recycled paper with fresh tears.

The day’s grime and politics were behind Natt, but family dinner wasn’t; a task laden with as many traps as he had navigated during his nine-to-five. He pulled his chair closer to the table. On his right, Eaton and Chloe sat next to each other, chewing in silence. Eating dinner wasn’t a time of many words in the Gurloskey household – it was sitting together for a meal, the old-fashioned way. Natt insisted on this forty-five-minute ritual every night because the streets of downtown Seattle weren’t the only casualties to the rising waters. Notions like family time and finding out about each other’s day were also falling prey to the floods.

Soup didn’t precede tonight’s dinner and coffee wouldn’t follow it. It was a single-meal, main-course-plus-salad affair. Macaroni and chicken flanked a lonesome bowl filled with broccoli and lettuce. Natt never much cared for vegetables, so the salad was the same as last night’s and as from the night before.

He chewed several times before swallowing each mouthful. Chloe and Eaton, too, spent the forty-five minutes stuffing food in their mouths, one deliberate forkful after the other. Natt saw through their conspiracy but didn’t want to push his luck; boring wordless dinners plus on-time curfew sign-ins worked fine to keep his family safe, thank you very much. And family was Natt’s most prized achievement.

Eaton was eight and full of life. After dinner, he would dash to his room to resume charting flight patterns, designing apps, and obsessing over whatever other boys his age obsessed with. Natt loved his stepson with intensity reserved for loving your own. He couldn’t explain why. He hadn’t been present at Eaton’s birth to develop fatherly hormones. The ULE Population Fairness Act hadn’t forced him to report to a ULE Decision Room within seconds of Eaton’s cord being severed. He hadn’t pressed the button new dads pressed that delivered the message “Castration Aborted” twenty percent of the time or, for the other eighty percent, the message “Castration Authorized.”

Natt hadn’t lived through any of that, yet loved Eaton as if he had. Eaton was his ticket to heaven and the proof that no matter how screwed up the rest of life got, Natt would get this one thing right… without excuses. He loved the boy even if the boy’s abilities scared him and sometimes even made him jealous.

Chloe was a different story. He couldn’t recall when and how he’d fallen out of love with Eaton’s mother. Courting, surprise sex and dinner dates had ended as soon as they got married. The city flooded when they moved in together and she stood no chance competing with the rotting Seattle downtown. Once in a while, despite his better judgment, Natt would drop by Déjà Vu, to take the edge off, before going home to his wife. As the months passed, the strip-club trips grew longer, the drinks multiplied and the lap-dances finished with happy endings. He wasn’t proud of himself, far from it. He still believed he was a good person but knew he had become a cheater. Chloe knew it too… women had a sixth sense about these things.

One weekday, they stopped having sex. Fatigue and busy schedules were a logical excuse, at first. Then touching her became unpleasant, compared to how Déjà Vu made him feel. In time, she stopped pushing for it and he was happy to oblige. Chloe’s birthday, three years ago, was the last time they had been intimate. Natt had surprised her by coming home earlier, sneaking behind her in the kitchen, squeezing her breasts from behind, and whispering “Happy Birthday” in her ear.

Since then she had been his in their marriage certificate only and the Seattle Chief of Police was too weak to end it – either his marriage or his infidelity.

“Last call, Colton…” Sarah sounded like a bartender but, in a way, had described her daughter’s fate as well.

“When can I see you?” Colton asked.

“Maybe after Defiance Day,” she said. “Maybe never,” and he wondered how many hours she was sleeping these days, assuming she slept at all. He had time to sleep and that made him feel guilty.

“How is she?”

“Struggling with algebra. We’ll work on her homework when I get home tonight.”

“They get algebra homework in third grade?”

“There’s nothing like crunching numbers while waiting for someone to vote you dead.”

“You haven’t told her she was earmarked?” His voice was matter-of-fact.

“I haven’t. And if you choose well, I won’t have to.”

“I love you, Sarah… but sometimes –”

“Just hit me with it.”

He thought she already knew the answer but the scientist in her wanted the final proof point, for the sake of closure. “I’m not sure I can do it, Sarah. I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to her but I don’t think I’m ready to die yet.”

Silence. If Colton didn’t know her better he would have sworn she was crying. Crying silent tears in Washington, DC, with a cell phone pressed against her ear. Then her steely voice broke the illusion. “I’d pay a thousand dollars for each day I could subtract from your life span, Colton Parker.” She breathed in-between words, like she was climbing stairs. “I’ve never understood people’s obsession with religion. But now I wish God did exist, to judge you after you died. As far as I go, or your daughter, you’re dead already, or better yet, you never really happened.”

The line went dead. It was raining in Seattle.