The After-Room

by Mailie Meloy

  “What is going on?” Mr. Scott demanded.

  “She’s better, that’s all,” Benjamin said. “I think Mrs. Scott might need a drink of water.”

  “No, you will explain first!” Mr. Scott said.

  “Davis,” Janie’s mother said from her chair. “Water.”

  “All right,” he said. “But then an explanation!” He left the room.

  “I must consult my colleagues,” Dr. Patel said.

  “Maybe you should go find them,” Benjamin said.

  The dermatologist ran out, and it was just the three of them in the room again: Benjamin, Janie, and her dazed mother in the chair.

  “Do you think you can walk?” Benjamin asked Janie.

  “I think so.”

  “We have to get you out of here, or they’re never going to let you go. You’re a medical miracle now.”

  “I am?”

  “A few minutes ago you were dead.”

  “Oh, right.”

  He found her crumpled yellow pants. Down the hall he heard her father shouting, “Cup! I need a cup! Taza! Agua!”

  “That’s Spanish,” Janie said weakly, to no one in particular.

  Benjamin struggled to pull on her pant legs, which seemed ridiculously narrow for her feet and ankles. “Do these really go on?” he asked.

  “They’re capris,” she said, in the same far-off voice. “Audrey Hepburn wears them.”

  She stood and tugged them on under her cotton gown. Benjamin didn’t think Audrey Hepburn would have worn the pants so streaked with dirt.

  “Do I have a shirt?” Janie asked. Her bare feet looked cold and vulnerable on the linoleum floor.

  Benjamin spotted the blood-soaked shirt in a corner. “Just tuck the gown in,” he said.

  “Should we wait for my husband?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Benjamin said. “We’ll go to the flat. He can follow.”

  A nurse came in and cried out in astonishment, seeing the dead girl up and dressed, in her dirty yellow pants and her tucked-in hospital gown. The nurse placed her substantial form in front of the door and let loose a flood of Italian, pointing toward the hospital bed. The meaning was clear: No dead patients were to be up and walking.

  But Benjamin was in charge now. “Signora, mi scusi,” he said, and he gently moved past the astonished nurse, helping Janie out the door. Her mother followed. The three of them walked down the corridor, toward the main entrance, and turned a corner. He hoped Vili had found a cab, but Vili always came through. He’d come up with a whole bottle of the Quintessence! They would apply it to all of Janie’s bruises and abrasions when they had more time.

  There was a cry behind them, from someone finding Janie’s room empty.

  “Can you walk a little faster?” he asked Janie.

  “What was in that bottle?” her mother asked.

  “Some medicine,” Benjamin said. Seeing Janie fly over the car must have erased everything he had memorized in the Pharmacopoeia. He’d forgotten, even, that the Quintessence had healing powers. He reached for the satchel at his side, to make sure the book was still there.

  But there was no satchel.

  No book.

  He remembered throwing the strap off over his head and kneeling beside Janie in the street. But had the satchel still been there when the ambulance came? Surely he would have seen it on the ground. Or Vili would have.

  They were heading out through the main hospital doors, and Vili and Osman were waiting beside a shiny black green-striped cab.

  Vili beamed at Janie. “You look excellent, my dear,” he said. “The picture of health.”

  “It’s so good to see you both,” Janie said.

  “I came as fast as I could!” Osman repeated, beaming.

  “Vili,” Benjamin said, and his voice sounded slow and distorted in his own ears. “The Pharmacopoeia.”

  The count looked to his hip for the satchel that wasn’t there.

  “It’s gone!” Benjamin said.

  Chapter 59

  Tung Shing

  The pirates, convinced now that Jin Lo was a witch who might turn them into flightless birds at any moment, were ready to obey her in all things, tea or no tea. It was an efficient arrangement, and she gave brisk commands. She wanted to get as far as she could before dawn.

  Her first order was to let the prisoners out of the hold. They filed out in lantern light, Xiao and his family first.

  When she saw Ned Maddox emerge, she had the strangest feeling. It was as if an ice dam had melted in her chest, letting a blocked river tumble downstream. It was difficult to breathe, in all the tumbling. She had never experienced such disorienting fullness around another person, or such a troubling need to be near him. She threw her arms around him. “I shouldn’t have given you the tea,” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, into her hair. “You shouldn’t have. You can argue with me, and you can fight with me—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But never do that again.”

  “Never.”

  He held her at arm’s length. “I thought they were going to kill you.”

  “Me too.”

  “What happened to your Englishman?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she said. “They put Huang P’ei-mei ashore. I’m in charge now.”

  “So you’re the pirate queen,” he said, with an odd expression on his face.

  “It is convenient,” she said. “For now.”

  “I saw the diving suit,” he said. “We can go pick up the bomb.”

  Jin Lo’s heart sank. This argument again. “Not yet. It is safe where it is.”

  “You said it couldn’t fall into Danby’s hands,” he said. “Now he’s gone.”

  “We can’t return it to your navy,” she said.

  Ned Maddox was silent a long time, his breathing unsteady. She could feel the pirates watching them in the dark. It was unsettling, the way she felt about Ned Maddox. And it made no sense. Was she so foolish and lonely that she would fall in love with anyone whose island she washed up on? Like the fairy queen in that English play, falling in love with a donkey, because he was there?

  “All right,” Ned Maddox said. “But you have to marry me. I want to be your husband. Not just as a cover story.”

  Jin Lo frowned. “This is not a customary proposal,” she said. But of course a customary proposal would involve their families discussing the match, and they had not a single parent between them, not even a brother or sister.

  “Take it or leave it,” Ned Maddox said.

  It had been easier when her heart was frozen. Then she could have dismissed the demand and moved on. They needed to get off this slow barge and out of the canal while it was still dark. But she found she wanted, more than anything, to step back into his arms. “All right,” she said. “We will make arrangements.”

  “No, now,” he said.

  “There is no time.”

  “That’s the deal.” He stood like a statue in the lantern light. “Otherwise I don’t leave the bomb.”

  So she turned to Xiao, the barge captain, and asked him if he would perform a wedding, very fast. He nodded and grinned, and the pirates cheered. It seemed that everyone had understood the conversation, and had only been waiting for her answer. The two little girls grabbed Jin Lo’s hands and asked if they could be in the wedding, too, please.

  “It must be fast!” she said, over the clamor. “Very fast!”

  The captain’s wife touched her shoulder and said, “But where is your mother?”

  Jin Lo shook her head.

  “Then I will stand for you,” the captain’s wife said.

  The pirates’ clerk produced the Tung Shing to see if Jin Lo’s and Ned Maddox’s stars aligned.
He paged through the book beneath a lantern, checking their birthdates, but neither of them knew what time they had been born. While the clerk studied the almanac, the captain’s wife unbraided Jin Lo’s hair and took a brush to it. Jin Lo tried to protest, but Mrs. Xiao was unstoppable. She tugged Jin Lo’s hair swiftly into tight new braids and coiled them high on her head. Finally the clerk announced that today was an auspicious day for marriage, and the outcome would surely be favorable.

  A red silk scarf from the Xiaos’ juggling props was draped over Jin Lo’s face, that she might not see anything unlucky, and the little girls, giggling, tied two more scarves together as a sash around Ned’s waist. The pirates produced a package of first-quality oolong for the tea ceremony, and the kettle was set to boil again.

  Commander Hayes stood on the groom’s side, since he was a naval officer. Jin Lo bowed and served him a cup of tea, then bowed and served some to Xiao and his wife. She felt vaguely ridiculous, but the pirates all beamed at her with approval, and Commander Hayes seemed very moved.

  Xiao asked her to bow to her ancestors and her elders, and Jin Lo did, thinking of her father and mother and baby brother. She thought how happy they would have been to attend her wedding, even if she was surrounded by strangers and wearing a red juggling scarf on her head. Her eyes filled, and she was glad no one could see her behind the veil.

  Then Xiao asked the bride and groom to bow to each other.

  “Can I take that thing off your head now?” Ned whispered. “If you’re giving me a cup of tea, I want to look you in the eye.”

  She nodded, blinking the tears away, and he lifted the silk from her face, and let it drape over her coiled braids. She offered him the ceremonial tea.

  “It’s not your special blend?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “But it’s probably stolen.”

  “And I have to drink it?”

  “It’s our tradition.”

  His eyes never left her face as he drained the cup.

  Next it was Ned Maddox’s turn to offer the tea to Jin Lo. She took it and hesitated. Was she really going to do this? To put her heart in this man’s hands? She looked into the cup for a sign, but saw only the brown liquid and the rising steam. She drank it down. It was smoky and strong.

  Xiao, looking very pleased, pronounced them married. Ned Maddox kissed Jin Lo, and held her tightly. He said, into her hair, “That’s from my tradition, Mrs. Maddox.”

  The pirates cheered.

  The scarf slipped to the deck and Ming picked it up, delighted. “Can I be the next pirate queen?” she asked. “If you’re leaving?”

  “You’ll have to ask your parents,” Jin Lo said.

  Commander Hayes stepped forward and asked if he could stay with the Xiaos. He could help with the circus, and with the running of the barge. Xiao had arthritis in his hands and could use help hauling on ropes.

  “You tried to kill all of these people,” Jin Lo said.

  “I was not myself,” Hayes said. “I was deranged by grief.”

  Jin Lo looked at him closely. He seemed humbled, sorrowful but calm. She no longer felt the apothecary’s presence in her mind, pushing her in one direction or another. But she had a strong sense of her own that Hayes would cause no more trouble.

  “Mao’s army will arrest you as a spy if they find you,” Ned Maddox told Hayes.

  “They won’t find me,” the commander said. “I give you my word.”

  Ned sighed. “If I’m not returning the shell, I guess it doesn’t matter if I return the thief.”

  Jin Lo gathered her supplies, which had been ransacked and diminished by Danby, who must be one sick penguin right now—if he was still alive, and still a penguin. Ned Maddox gave the pirates his faster boat in exchange for theirs, with the uranium in its hold. And Jin Lo and Ned Maddox climbed aboard.

  Commander Hayes stood with the little girls at the rail of the circus barge. Jin Lo thought that Ming would not make a terrible pirate queen. The little girls, who should have been in bed hours ago, waved good-bye.

  It had been a long night, and dawn would come soon. But Jin Lo had been searching for the uranium too long not to see it now. She went to the pirates’ hold and shone a flashlight on the barrels.

  “Is this your idea of a honeymoon?” Ned Maddox asked.

  She smiled at him over the spooky beam of light. “Help me open one,” she said.

  Ned Maddox found a crowbar and they pried off a lid. There was a white crust on top of the uranium: some kind of precipitate. She reached out to touch it, but Ned caught her wrist.

  “Let’s be a little careful here,” he said.

  With the end of the crowbar, she scraped a little of the white crust away. It was not very thick, and it fell to the side like coarse salt. The orange-yellow color of the uranium was rich beneath it. With a piece of paper she scooped up some of the coarse crystals, then folded the paper around them before sealing up the barrel. If she could analyze them, she could discover exactly what the apothecary had done.

  They went back up on deck, away from the poisonous barrels and into the clear air. It was still dark, and Jin Lo stood with Ned Maddox at the wheel, in the light wind of their forward movement. Was this more like a honeymoon? It was better than being down in the stuffy hold, at least.

  “The pirates said you turned Danby into a penguin,” Ned Maddox said. “Is that true?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But sort of?”

  “He stole the avian elixir,” she said. “He hoped to fly.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I cannot be a penguin.”

  “What can you be?”

  “A falcon,” she said.

  Ned Maddox began to laugh. His eyes crinkled with amusement. “Of course,” he said. “Because you’re fierce and ruthless.”

  “I am not ruthless.”

  “No, you just incited a mutiny against a pirate queen who’s been at sea since before you were born. And you drugged me when you thought I would disagree with you.”

  “When I knew you disagreed with me,” she said.

  He looked up at the dark sky, the scattered stars. “It must be spectacular, to fly.”

  “A man once became a cormorant,” she said. “He was caught by a fisherman, who sent him to catch fish with a metal ring around his neck to keep him from eating them. When the elixir wore off, and he became a man again, he strangled.” She could feel the ring tightening around her throat, just telling the story. “There are many dangers, for birds. It is no game.”

  “What do you think I would become?” he asked.

  “A peacock,” she said. “You are so proud, and your eyes are that color.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  “I have heard that jokes are useful,” she said.

  “Not if they aren’t funny.”

  She yawned and shivered. “Okay, I think you will be a hummingbird.”

  “Come on.”

  “Hummingbirds have the largest hearts,” she said.

  “They have tiny hearts.”

  “Not for their size.”

  Ned Maddox put his arms around her, and his arms were strong and warm. “I’m asking you a serious question, Mrs. Maddox.”

  “It is not for me to guess,” she said. “You will be what you are.”

  With her head against his chest, she could hear his large heart beating slowly in her ear. In the other ear she heard the canal water churning against the bow.

  Chapter 60

  Book Thieves

  Doyle watched everyone disappear, as if he’d invented a new magic trick. First Janie vanished in the ambulance. Then Benjamin and the count went off in a taxi, and the Italian brat, Primo, ran in the other direction with the book.

  Abracadabra. Now you see them, now you don’t.

  But it was Doyl
e who was invisible. Because no one on earth cared if he lived or died. He was so irrelevant to their hopes and plans that they simply forgot he was there. Even the wary street kid, taking the bag, failed to register Doyle as a witness to his theft.

  Doyle stood alone on the sidewalk, wondering if Janie would die. Then he wondered if another car would jump the curb and take him out. To be safe, he went back inside Vili’s empty flat.

  “Hello, ghosties?” he called, but he felt no angry dead thoughts in the room.

  He lay down on the couch. It was a good couch, long enough that he could stretch out his whole length. He folded his hands on his chest, but every time he closed his eyes he saw Janie sailing through the air, and his eyes flew open again.

  He hoped she wouldn’t die. He sat up on his elbows. Maybe he should go to the hospital, where he could tell Benjamin what the doctors were really thinking, and not saying. But what if it was something Benjamin didn’t want to know? He lay back down again.

  He took a quick inventory of people who might care what happened to him. Not his brother, who was sick of him, or his brother’s wife, who thought Doyle was a bad influence on her family. Possibly the twins, who were still young enough to be warmhearted and forgiving. What about his old assistant, April? She might once have cared. No one had ever matched April at being sawed in half. She was a genius at the comic, surprised look. But he hadn’t treated her well, and she had left. Sweet April, with her soft brown eyes.

  He must have drifted off, finally, because a loud knock at the door took him by surprise. He staggered up from the couch and opened the door to see yet another kid, about Janie and Benjamin’s age. Floppy hair, good cheekbones, not tall. Where did these kids keep coming from?

  “I’m Pip,” the boy said. "Benjamin’s father’s book is missing.”

  “I know.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Primo took it,” Doyle said. He started to close the door.

  Pip put a foot out to stop it. “You have to help me get it back.”