“Of course I will!” Kimberly said. “Of course of course of course!”
She pulled him up from his kneeling position, but with significantly less grace than she had caused him to kneel in the first place, since she could no longer, like a judo master, use her opponent’s own weight and strength against him, and Jeremiah was still not up to contributing much.
In the process of his unsteady ascent, Jeremiah felt something drop out of his pocket. Given the other concerns of the moment, he did not pay it much mind, until he saw the look on Kimberly’s face when she looked down to see what had made the heavy thud.
“Jeremiah!” she said. “I don’t even know what to say!”
Her amazement seemed quite genuine, and appeared to grow more so as she bent down and picked up Mrs. Chapin’s ruby necklace from the floor. Jeremiah made a note for his future, clearer self that when things settled down a bit it was high time to invest in some pants with better pockets.
“It’s beautiful,” she said as she put it on. “I absolutely love it.” In his condition, Jeremiah could almost see the hearts dotting the i’s in these sentences, and even taking the place of the o in ‘love.’ “I don’t even know how to thank you.”
Having suddenly found a way to thank him, Kimberly leaned in for a kiss, but then seemed to think better of it. By this point Jeremiah’s mouth had not fully closed in some time. She embraced him instead.
A line of people had formed: people whom Jeremiah had never met and in some cases never even seen before, but who wished to express their deep personal pleasure at his and Kimberly’s change in romantic status. They shook his hand and hugged him and made sure he knew how lucky he was, and one little Filipina with at least 60 winters under her belt pinched his butt so hard that he found the power of speech again.
“Thank you,” said Jeremiah to her, “you’ll have to come visit once we’re settled.”
The Filipina laughed and yielded her spot to the next well-wisher. Kimberly smiled approvingly at Jeremiah’s newly animated manner. She kept reaching up to touch the necklace. Each time she did, the diamond on her finger flashed and Jeremiah’s head spun a bit faster.
Near the end of the line came Luis heading up the Mexican contingent, which congratulated Jeremiah by each punching him in the right arm as they walked up, hard. Once all of them had taken a turn they started over at the top of the lineup, working their way around a couple times until they were sure that Jeremiah felt sufficiently congratulated. The pain sobered him up a bit. After the punching was done, Luis leaned in to whisper in his ear.
“It looks like your prometida is wearing the necklace you supposed to give me for the stage,” said Luis.
“I’ll figure something out,” Jeremiah heard himself saying, as if from a great distance. “I’ll get it back.”
“Why even talk about that in a moment so happy?” said Luis more loudly. “You just get it back by tomorrow, when I deliver the stage, and we don’t have no problem.”
As a show of good faith, Luis punched Jeremiah in the left arm this time.
“But,” he said, dropping his voice again, “I still need very bad the liquor.”
Kimberly, who had overheard, smiled at Jeremiah, as if to say, “Any friend of yours, darling, functional alcoholic or no.”
“I’ll take care of that, too,” Jeremiah said to Luis.
Hidden behind the Mexicans—the very last in line—came Bradley. He had been crying. Jeremiah could tell, because he was still crying. He raised his finger to beg a moment’s pause, then took more like three to get the sobbing under sufficient control to say what he had to say.
“If you were already engaged, why did you just get engaged again?”
“We’re not engaged,” said Jeremiah. Agreement or not, in his condition he couldn’t bring himself to lie a man in such obvious pain as Bradley—not even a Canadian.
“We weren’t engaged,” said Kimberly. At the same time she drove the point of her heel into Jeremiah’s foot and ground it right and left. “We were fake engaged, but while we were fake engaged we fell in love, and now we’re real engaged.”
She looked at Jeremiah, who found that his attachment to his right foot, both physical and emotional, apparently did allow him to lie by omission to a man in such obvious pain as Bradley.
Bradley looked at Jeremiah, then back at Kimberly, considering his options. The entire cafeteria held its breath. The Mexicans, who had been on their way out, turned around and watched. The ladies playing mahjong shushed each other and put down their tiles to see what would happen. Even Grubel, whom Jeremiah spotted frowning in the doorway, seemed to sense the drama of the moment.
“I give you my blessing,” said Bradley finally, his voice breaking. “I can’t wish you anything but happiness, Kimberly.”
Kimberly’s appreciation of this sentiment translated quite incidentally into a new spate of mashing and grinding Jeremiah’s foot with her heel, which had become so painful that Jeremiah gasped and blinked to clear his eyes of tears—a touch that both Bradley and Kimberly seemed to appreciate for their own reasons.
“As for you,” Bradley said, putting his arms akimbo and addressing Jeremiah, “you don’t deserve her. But then again, neither do I. Neither does anyone. So take care of her. Treat her right. And don’t worry, I’m not going to get violent with you. Not unless you hurt her, disappoint her, or make her sad in the slightest.”
Perhaps inspired by the Mexican custom he had just witnessed repeatedly—or by some Canadian custom of which Jeremiah was ignorant, and would like to have remained so—Bradley tried to smack Jeremiah gently on the arm and instead succeeded in punching him quite hard in the stomach. Kimberly beamed and Jeremiah doubled over in pain, from which vantage point he had an excellent view of Katherine standing up from her table and walking out of the cafeteria as quickly as possible, passing right by Grubel, whose frown was now so deep it seemed that not even light could escape it.
Jeremiah’s vision went black.
23
Old Jeremiah, New Jeremiah
Still Friday (2 days until arrival)
It could not have been too many minutes later when the light returned to Jeremiah’s eyes and mind. He was not dead—or at least, if he was dead, he hadn’t made the cut at the pearly gates. Jeremiah based this deduction on the strong belief that heaven would involve much less CPR from Bradley Bonaventure than he was receiving right now—ideally at least 100 percent less. On the other hand, Jeremiah supposed that such an activity could make a fine warm-up exercise for new arrivals to the Other Place.
But then, as he struggled to detach himself from Bradley’s medical attentions from one end, he saw Grubel straining to haul Bradley off Jeremiah from the other, and Jeremiah knew he could not be in hell. It was impossible to believe that in hell he and Grubel could be rowing in the same direction for the very first time.
As Jeremiah worked his way through these mental gymnastics, he was pleased to note a distinct uptick in his general mental faculties. The pain in his foot, stomach, and both arms seemed to cut through some of Aunt Mildred’s organic hallucinatory fog, and the few minutes of involuntary rest he’d just gotten had done him some good. He felt strong enough to help Grubel detach Bradley from his face, and with their combined efforts they finally managed to free Jeremiah, who stood up unsteadily.
“I gave you CPR,” Bradley said to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah plumbed his upbringing for the proper response to tender at this moment. Perhaps if he had not been abandoned as a child and de facto raised by his uncle’s lawyer he might have had the opportunity to learn the accepted social graces for this situation, but without such advantages he was unable to come up with anything other than, “You did.”
“I could have let you die. I could have let him die,” said Bradley, now to Kimberly. “But I saved his life. For you.”
At first Kimberly could find no words—perhaps she was still too occupied working through the complicated emotions of having witnessed her new
ly minted fiancé lock lips with the man she loved.
“You did,” she said finally, which led Jeremiah to wonder if perhaps her own uncle’s lawyer had de facto raised her as well. “You saved the life of a man you had every reason to let die. For me.”
Despite his relative medical inexperience, Jeremiah doubted he’d been in any danger of dying, and he had only passed out in the first place because of the emotional and physical pain these same two had put him through. But he resisted mentioning any such thing—first and foremost because he was a romantic at heart and didn’t want to step on the happiness, however non-traditional, of this beautiful young couple. But running a close second, Jeremiah had never wanted anything in his life so sharply as he wanted to get away from this batshit craziness as fast as was humanly possible, and any conversation that might delay that departure was about as welcome as sandpaper on a sunburn. It appeared that Grubel was once again on Jeremiah’s wavelength.
“I need to borrow him,” Grubel said to Kimberly and Bradley, neither of whom could have cared less.
He grabbed Jeremiah by the right arm, just where the Mexicans had been punching, and led him roughly through the ring of onlookers and out into the hall. The pain cleared Jeremiah’s head even further.
“Thank you,” said Jeremiah when they were safely away.
“I like to think of myself as a patient man, Jeremiah,” Grubel said, “but even I have lines you don’t cross. I can’t fully follow your sick game—playing with that poor girl’s heart just to get to her boyfriend, manipulating him into kissing you in the name of ‘saving your life’—it’s sick, all of it, and I’ve had enough. I’m going to see to it that you spend the rest of your natural life in the service of Golden Worldlines, in a position where you can no longer harm innocent people—or Canadians.”
Jeremiah’s first impulse was to explain: to point out to Grubel the two ends of the stick, and which one he’d gotten ahold of, and how that was the wrong one to be holding. But that was the old, meek Jeremiah. As surely as if he had actually ingested some mystical substance, died, and been resuscitated by a shamanistic Bradley, Jeremiah had been reborn. The new Jeremiah had seen how well the old Jeremiah’s tactics and techniques worked in these situations—and he had the bruises, psychic and physical, to show for it. The new Jeremiah—the one who was comfortable with naked displays of force—would handle this.
“All right,” said the New Jeremiah, “but it’s a shame that I’ll have to tell Mrs. Mayflower I couldn’t service her bandora.”
“Why would you do that?” said Grubel.
“If I’m going down, you’re going with me. I’ve got nothing to lose. What do you think the odds are that Mrs. Mayflower’s displeasure will stop at me? Or maybe you could service the bandora yourself—you have a wealth of experience with ancient musical instruments to draw on, don’t you?”
Grubel blinked several times through his lensless glasses. He frowned.
“There will come a day when you won’t be able to hide behind Mrs. Mayflower and her bandora,” the financial officer said. “On that day I will be waiting, Jeremiah. And on that day, I will nail you to the wall. Believe me.”
“I believe you,” said Jeremiah.
* * *
Arriving back at the office, Jeremiah saw that the odious law of averages had remained hard at work, leaving something to welcome him back from the worst lunch of his life—a little bolus of continued insanity in the form of Jack, Mrs. Abdurov, and both Chapins all milling around outside the door, at exquisite pains not to acknowledge each other. It was like watching four Baptists patronize the same liquor store.
“Hello everyone,” said Jeremiah as he unlocked the door. “Why don’t you come in one by one for—privacy. Who was first?”
Mrs. Chapin raised her hand, but Jack stepped in front of her.
“I’m going first,” he said. “And I’m not taking a ticket.”
Jeremiah looked at Mrs. Chapin, who looked unhappy. But she nodded, so he held the door as Jack walked through.
“What can I do for you, Jack?” asked Jeremiah as he settled behind the desk.
“It has been weeks since that fascist security officer burned my stash, Jeremiah. I can literally feel the System taking over my body at a cellular level. You’ve put me in an impossible situation. I tried appealing to our friendship, and you spit it in my face. I gave you antique money, and you’ve stolen it for nothing in return, even though I’ve seen you receive drugs since. So no more Mr. Nice Jack. I’m on to you. I’ve been watching you—that’s right, two can play at the illegal surveillance game—and I keep running into that other guy who’s been watching you. The doctor.”
“Bradley?”
“Soupy face?” said Jack. “Angry all the time?”
“Bradley.”
“I know he’s your supplier. He steals the medical Marya Jana, and then you sell it to the passengers. I put it together, Jeremiah, and if you don’t want me telling Grubel what you’re up to, you’re going to sell to me too. I would take no joy in ratting you out to the System, but you’ve left me no choice.”
“If Bradley is my supplier, why is he so angry with me?”
“Maybe he’s worried you’re an informant,” said Jack. “Maybe he thinks you’re double-crossing him.”
Old Jeremiah would have protested these accusations, but New Jeremiah sat instead in silence. If there was nothing to say, better to say nothing. Let the burden of continued conversation fall on Jack.
Before Jack could pick said burden up, Mrs. Chapin slipped into the office. She looked both agitated and somehow defeated—the fires of romance and revolution that had so recently roared in her now burned low.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said to Jack, “but my question is so urgent, and so quick, and I think I was actually first in line, so would you mind?” She addressed Jeremiah without waiting for Jack to answer. “I was just wondering if you had found a chance to give that item to the—”
Here she paused, apparently reluctant to use the word “Mexicans” in front of Jack, searching for something more circumspect and less likely to arouse suspicion.
“—cartel,” she finished.
“Are you kidding me?” said Jack. “Her too?”
Not for a moment did Jeremiah consider telling Mrs. Chapin the truth—that his fiancée was currently in possession of the ruby necklace—but he did spend a few seconds weighing which lie to tell her. He could have said no, that he still had the necklace, but what good would that do? Better to soothe her anxiety by reporting circumstances not as they were but as they were about to be, once Jeremiah managed to get the necklace back and give it to Luis. Mrs. Chapin would never know the difference.
“Yes, Mrs. Chapin,” he said. “I delivered the item to the people in question, just as you asked. They were very grateful.”
“I need you to get it back for me right away,” said Mrs. Chapin.
“I don’t understand.”
“Henry suspects—no, he knows. He said he saw one of the ship’s doctors in the hall with the very same item that he gave me for our anniversary, and didn’t I think that was a coincidence? But how could he have seen a doctor with that item if you gave it to the cartel?”
“He couldn’t have,” Jeremiah admitted.
When you were caught, New Jeremiah reflected, you were caught. He took a deep, confessional breath, but before he could release it in speech, Mrs. Chapin spoke.
“So he was just toying with me because he’s upset that I gave away his anniversary gift. He knows I gave the item to you to give to the cartel.”
“But how could he possibly know that?”
“What does it matter how? He knows. I need you to get that item back immediately,” Mrs. Chapin said.
Jack had been doing his best to follow along, and looked like he might have been ready to pose a question or two about what some of these emphasized euphemisms signified, if Mrs. Abdurov had not barged into the office just at that moment.
“I guess we are not waiting turns now?” she said.
Jack leaned over and whispered into Mrs. Chapin’s ear.
“I’m leaving now,” he said. “I’m not sure how you’re involved with Jeremiah and the cartel, but I would suggest you do the same—the pens have ears.”
“Did you say the pens?” Mrs. Chapin asked.
“Shhhhh,” said Jack, pointing at Mrs. Abdurov. “Come with me. Jeremiah, you have until tomorrow to get me that item I’ve requested. Otherwise, I’m filing a complaint.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Chapin, taking inspiration from Jack’s firm tone, “the same goes for me and my item. And if Henry asks you what I wanted to talk to you about, you tell him—”
Mrs. Chapin paused, considering the options.
“Nothing,” she said.
Mrs. Abdurov sat down in Jack’s place as he escorted Mrs. Chapin from the office.
“So,” she said, “you have some item for me too? Lady Doctor is not here to save you now. What you have found in Vor Drinkwater’s safe deposit box?”
Old Jeremiah would have argued Mr. Drinkwater’s innocence—new Jeremiah didn’t have time for such futile exercises.
“I haven’t broken into it. It’s not so easy to break into a safe deposit box, Mrs. Abdurov. That’s why they call them safe.”
Mrs. Abdurov studied Jeremiah’s face, and he saw the slightest beginnings of respect in her eyes.
“Sometimes I think you have only beet for brain,” she said, “but sometimes I wonder if might be onion. Tomorrow is last full day on the ship, so tomorrow all business must be concluded. I give you one extra day to bring me Marya Jana’s murdered body, my little onion-brain, or I will be Highly Dissatisfied with you.”
She leaned across the desk and pinched his cheek before she left.
“You need to eat something, yes?” she said. “Since you start work for a living you are get too thin, and no wonder, with what you bring for lunch. Also you take one of your own mints. You are breathing like Marya Jana—God rest her little soul.”
World Enough (And Time) Page 25
