My eyes shut again. But now I whispered, “Rich?”
It was my brother.
“Can you hear me?” I felt his hot breath on my face. He was leaning down over me, very close. Speaking very softly but very urgently too. “Do you understand?”
I tried to nod. I wasn’t sure whether or not I succeeded. The effort exhausted me. I rested a moment, then tried to open my eyes again. When I did, there was no one there. Rich was gone. Had I dreamed him?
And where was I? I was too weak to lift my head and look around. But I turned an inch or so to one side, then the other.
I saw I was in a hospital room. I saw a TV hanging over me, the monitor dark. I saw a window with venetian blinds, morning daylight pouring through the slats.
My eyes sank shut.
“Austin!”
I opened my eyes and my brother was back again. Some time must have passed. Yes: the light in the room was different, softer, afternoon light coming through the windows indirectly.
How had I gotten here? I couldn’t remember. I tried to think. I saw Sir Aravist’s face, close, twisted in triumph. I felt the obscene intrusion of his sword …
I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. It must have been a dream. Everything I remembered must have been a dream. Galiana, Orosgo, Another Kingdom … Soon I would remember what had really happened. A car accident or something. I’d been in a coma, hallucinating … I tried to speak. I tried to say, “What happened to me?”
“What?” said Rich. I felt the mattress sink as he sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. I tried to speak again. “Never mind now,” he said. “Just listen to me, okay? I don’t want them to get to you first.”
I nodded weakly. I drew a deep breath. I felt a little stronger than before, a little clearer. I felt the way you feel when you first break out of a fever, like I had come through a crisis, like the worst had passed.
I lay still, gazing up at the white ceiling, trying to assess my condition. I could tell I was on drugs, pain meds probably. Everything seemed a little muffled, a little blurred. Even so, the pain was terrible. A sense of hollow weakness at the core of me. Nerve ends on fire as if my entire torso were one big rotten tooth.
Sir Aravist’s face. His sword …
I groaned and closed my eyes. When I opened them, Rich had vanished again. I turned my head to look around me. The hospital room was small. Just the one bed, one bedside table, one armchair. There was a clear plastic bag hanging on a pole. The bag was full of fluid. A tube ran from the bottom of it into my arm. There was an electronic device on the bedside table next to me. It had red numbers on a readout: my vital signs. The device beeped steadily.
It was night now. I could see the glare of streetlights through the slats of the Venetian blinds. It was weird, the way time kept passing.
I looked in the other direction. There was a door leading out into the hallway. A man was sitting in a chair just outside. A man in uniform. A cop. Was he there to protect me? Or to make sure I didn’t escape?
I was aware of falling asleep this time. I was aware I’d slept when I awoke. I felt Rich’s weight on the mattress, and when I opened my eyes, sure enough, there he was again. Morning light was coming in through the blinds in sharp rays. I licked my crusted lips.
“Water,” I croaked.
Rich glanced furtively toward the door, toward the cop in the hall. He took a plastic tumbler from the bedside table. It had a cap on with a built-in straw. He held the straw to my lips. I sipped the lukewarm water gratefully.
“How long …?” I managed to say then.
He made a gesture with his hand, pressing down on the air: Keep your voice down. “You’ve been here three days,” he whispered. He leaned closer, whispered more softly. “Do you remember what I told you?”
I shook my head no. I didn’t.
He sighed. “Damn it. All right. Listen. You have to remember this time. They’ll be coming back soon. They’re going to question you.”
“Who?”
“The police! But don’t worry. We have lots of friends, plenty of friends, high up. In the police department, the city, the state, everywhere. But they can’t protect you if you don’t say the right things.”
I looked up at him dully. It was all true, then. No dream. Orosgo. My family. The book. Another Kingdom. There was so much I wanted to ask him. Did he know? Who Orosgo was? Did he know the man was a mad monster? Did our parents know? Had they always known? Were they complicit in his madness? What had our family been up to all these years?
“We’re going to give them Sera,” Rich went on in low, secret tones. “Serge has agreed to it. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you, but I convinced him. Sera’s crazy. Serge can’t control the guy anymore. He has to get rid of him before he does something that drags us all down. All you have to say is that you went to visit Gunther about a book you were interested in. While you were there, Sera came in. You’d never seen him before. Sera and Gunther had a quarrel. Like a lover’s quarrel. Sera was in love with him, but Gunther was only into women. Sera shot him. Then Sera put the gun to your head and told you he’d kill you if you went to the police. You were afraid, so you kept your mouth shut. But Sera must’ve gotten worried you’d talk. He followed you to the Getty and stabbed you. Just tell it like that and you’ll be all right. The important thing is: you never mention Serge. Never. He has nothing to do with this. Understand?”
It took some effort, but I shook my head. I didn’t care what Orosgo did to me. I was done covering up for him.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. The words ground against my throat like gravel. “You. Dad. Mom. With Orosgo … the guy’s a fucking lunatic.”
“Shut up!” he hissed, leaning close, his lips red and glistening amidst the heavy beard. “Don’t say his name. Don’t ever say his name.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the open door, toward the cop in the hall, then he leaned down close to me again to whisper. “You don’t understand anything. He’s a great man. He’s given so much of himself. He’s going to transform the world in ways you can’t even imagine.”
I only had enough strength to bring up one word: “Murder …”
“Dah!” It was a noise of frustration. “Don’t be a small man, Austin.” I remembered. Those were Orosgo’s very words: Don’t be a small man. “This is the future of the world we’re talking about,” Rich went on. “A new age. Riley was bad enough, but at least she’s crazy. You … You think he’s going to let the likes of you get in the way of global transformation? Huh?”
I blinked. “Riley?” What did my little sister have to do with anything?
“If you don’t care about yourself, think of her. Serge’s my friend but his patience won’t last forever.”
I was gathering strength to ask him what the hell he was talking about, when Rich suddenly stood up off the bed.
The two detectives had come into the room.
THE DETECTIVES WERE named Graciano and Lord. Graciano was the short white guy all made up of rectangles. Lord was the big black woman with the bland face and the permanently suspicious expression. They stood at the foot of my bed. Graciano kept his hands in the pockets of his wrinkled khaki slacks. Lord scribbled in a notebook with a pen. Rich stood in the far corner of the room, impeccable in his three-piece suit. His blue eyes never left my face.
“Okay, just once more to make sure we’ve got it right,” Graciano said. “You went to see Gunther about a book.”
I nodded weakly.
“And this man came in. You never saw him before.”
“Gunther called him Sera,” I said.
“They argued.” This was Lord, gesturing with her pen. “And just like that, the guy shoots Gunther dead right in front of you.”
“Yes.”
“And then threatens you,” said Lord.
“He said he’d kill me if I called the police. I was afraid.”
“But then the next day he shows up at the museum and stabs you anyway,” said Graciano.
I nod
ded again.
“You’re lucky we were right there,” the detective went on. “The doctor said you’d have died if we hadn’t been on the scene to stop the bleeding. Even so, she said it was a miracle.”
“She said it looked like you’d been run through with a sword,” added Lord. “The chances a blade that size could go through you and miss anything vital. She said it was like it was guided through this narrow slot between your stomach and your liver.”
“And then somehow missed your spine,” said Graciano.
“A miracle,” Lord agreed.
But no, I thought. It was the armor. Queen Elinda’s magic armor. When it couldn’t stop the blade, it guided it through.
I licked my lips. “I don’t remember,” I said.
THE QUESTIONING WAS over very quickly, or at least it seemed quick to me, oddly quick. I’d expected to be grilled like a suspect on a TV cop show. You know: “Come on, Lively. Don’t insult our intelligence. We know you killed Gunther.” I thought they’d go over my story again and again, searching for inconsistencies, challenging me, trying to catch me out. But there was none of that. Graciano and Lord had me tell the story once, then once again. Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether I was telling it to them, or they were telling it to me and I was repeating it back to them. When we were done, they asked a few final questions. Then they turned and nodded to one another.
“I guess we have what we need,” Graciano said.
“Looks that way,” said Lord, though the wry, suspicious look remained on her face the whole time.
It was only now that it occurred to me—drugged up and bleary minded as I was: Maybe these two detectives were some of the “friends” Rich had spoken about. Friends high up, in the police department, the city, the state, everywhere. Maybe this whole interrogation was a setup, all arranged in advance.
Graciano and Lord thanked me for my help. They gave me a business card and told me to call if I thought of anything else I wanted to tell them. Then they nodded a goodbye to Rich and left. The moment they were gone, Rich moved quickly to the door and shut it. He came back to my bed and stood over me.
“Good job,” he said.
I looked away, sneering. I was angry. I didn’t like lying. I didn’t like covering up for Orosgo. I didn’t want to be part of any grand and murderous plans to change the world. I only said what Rich told me to say because I was afraid for my sister. And because I didn’t know who to trust.
“Well … get some rest,” said Rich—and for the first time, I thought I heard something in his tone that might have been remorse or at least embarrassment.
I turned back to him. “What happens now?” I said hoarsely.
He averted his eyes. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll take care of it.”
“Won’t Sera talk? If he knows he’s taking the fall?”
He shook his head. He still wouldn’t look at me.
“What’s in the book, Rich?” I asked him. “Another Kingdom. Why does Orosgo want it so badly?”
He made a vague gesture. That was his only answer.
My wound was beginning to throb again. I needed some more meds, but I didn’t want to get muzzy or lose consciousness, not yet. I pressed on. “What’s Riley got to do with any of this? Is she in danger? Look at me, you bastard. Is our kid sister in danger?”
Rich gave me a quick and angry look. “She’s my kid sister too,” he snapped. “You think I haven’t had to work to keep her alive this long?”
“Keep her a—? For Christ’s sake, Rich. What have you done? What have you all done?”
Rich hesitated. He looked like he was about to answer, like he wanted to answer. Finally though, he just repeated, “Get some rest, bro.”
And he walked out of the room.
THE NEXT DAY my mother and father came down from Berkeley to visit. My mother sat in the chair by my bed. She wouldn’t stop talking and couldn’t stop fiddling with her phone. An endless stream of meaningless musing and gossip came out of her, and the whole time she was thumb-scrolling through her emails and her social media.
My father, meanwhile, wandered around almost silently, examining the room as if there was something to find under the bed or behind the bureau. He’d answer my mother now and then with a grunt or a bit of muttered sarcasm. Studying the wardrobe. Looking out the window at the courtyard. Rambling out into the hall and rambling back in again. And my mother talking all through.
I lay on the bed and stared at them, like a dead man staring. All of this was typical of them, their typical behavior, and yet today, they seemed particularly awful to me. Sexless, lifeless, nearly inhuman. Had I always found them awful? Or was I just noticing it now for the first time?
As I looked at them, that same old moment came back to me. That same memory: myself as a little boy sitting in the back room of our house, creating tableaux with figures, space knights battling monsters amidst the stars. My mother and father in the living room, talking to my brother. I could hear their voices, their lockjaw tones of intellectual superiority.
What were they talking about? I wondered now. Had I ever known? Had I known back then and since forgotten? Is that why I had escaped into the still delight of my figure stories, to forget?
And what about Riley? My little sister, a mere toddler. Crawling around in the storage spaces behind the wall panels. Could she hear their voices in there? Did she understand what they were saying?
If we want a perfect country—good and nice and fair—we have to kill the queen … I closed my eyes. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t my memory. That was Tauratanio and Magdala in Shadow Wood describing the revolt in Galiana. Or was it all the same thing somehow? The pain meds made me feel confused.
“It’s not that I don’t feel for them, of course,” my mother was saying, “but it is an institution of learning, after all.” I had no idea what she was talking about. Her words pounded at me like a headache. Plus I had a headache. “Does it really take four janitors to sweep a hallway?” she went on. “If you can save one entire administrative position by having a single person push a broom instead of … Well, really, I mean it’s about the students, isn’t it?”
“Too bad there’s no tenure for janitors,” my father muttered, gazing out the window at who knew what.
“Well, that isn’t the point at all,” my mother said. “That isn’t what I’m talking about at all.” And she went on to talk about whatever it was she was talking about—on and on and on.
I opened my eyes and gave them my dead man’s stare again.
My mother kept rambling. “At some point, these jobs are all going to be automated anyhow and then we’re going to have to …”
“What is it you two do?” I asked.
My voice was hoarse and weak. Maybe they didn’t hear me at first. Or maybe they just pretended they didn’t hear me. My mother went on talking.
Louder, I asked, “What is it you do for Serge Orosgo?”
My mother stopped. She looked at me as if I’d said something grotesquely rude. My father glanced over his shoulder at me with an expression of bemused irony.
“What is it Orosgo does exactly?” I said. “And what part do you play in it?”
“Well, there’s no need to take that tone, sweetheart,” my mother said—and that “sweetheart” of hers clinked like ice in a glass. “You work for him too, after all.”
“Yes. What is it you do?” my father said with a chuckle, as if he had hit on just the right response, as if he had scored a point against me.
“The Orosgo Age. What the hell does that mean?” I asked them. My voice sounded like a corpse’s voice, even to me. “This perfect world you’re going to make. Who has the power in it? Who makes all the decisions? How many people have to die to make it happen?”
“Who said anything about dying?” my mother said, looking around as if she might find the culprit crouching in some corner of the room.
“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand,” murmured my father, singsong. He had wan
dered from the window to my IV bag now. He was studying it as if it were a work of modern art in a museum.
“Yes, please don’t go all Riley on us, Austin,” my mother said. Then, looking at her phone, she pointedly changed the subject, saying, “Oh, here’s another hysterical email from Bert. It takes almost nothing to set him off these days. He sees Nazis under the bed!”
“Who can blame him nowadays?” my father murmured back.
I stared from one to the other of them. My dead man’s stare.
“You haven’t even asked who stabbed me,” I said.
That seemed to stop them both for a moment. My mother stopped talking. My father stopped wandering around. But only for a moment.
“I’m sure the police will sort it all out,” my mother said then, thumbing her phone.
“Yes, the last thing the world needs,” my father murmured, “is more paranoia.”
MORE PARANOIA.
That night, after the aide cleared my dinner away, I called Riley. I got no answer, not even a voicemail recording. I sent her a text, then an email. No answer. Half an hour later, I called her again. I got no answer again.
I turned off the light and lay in the dark, my gut throbbing. They’d given me a morphine machine for the pain. I could press the button for more meds whenever I needed to. I didn’t press it. The meds made me groggy. I wanted my head clear. I wanted to think.
I thought about Riley. My little black-sheep sister. With her straw-colored pigtail braids framing her round baby face.
Don’t go all Riley on us, my mother said.
Riley, my brother said, was bad enough. You think I haven’t had to work to keep her alive this long?
I thought about lying next to her in her bed when she was little. Her big blue eyes inches from my cheek, gazing at me like I was an island of love in her sea of loneliness.
Put Riley to bed, would you, darling? my mother would say.
And I would put Riley to bed and Riley would say, Tell me one of your stories, Aus.
So I would lie down next to her and spin one out while she gazed at me like that, like I was an island of love.
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