by Harte, Roxy
I count heads. Olympia, Nikkos and Atso are awestruck. Hektor is hidden behind the door.
“Do you have the shoelaces?”
Hektor comes into view and hands me the shoelaces with a shaking hand.
“I’m okay, sweetheart, but I need your help.”
I never knew small children could look so relieved.
“Hektor? There is a pair of scissors in the kitchen. I want you to bring them to me. Remember how we carry scissors safely?” He nods and hurries into the kitchen. I call after him. “Don’t run.”
I cover myself up as much as I can with a towel while I wait for him to bring me the scissors. I’m forgetting something. I don’t want to cut the umbilical cord. I’m nervous. I don’t want to do it wrong. I try to remember everything I ever heard at the Primal Birth Center about an emergency birth and remember where to tie the laces, when to tie the laces and when to cut.
Hektor returns with the scissors.
Should I wash the shoelaces first?
Should I boil them?
I suddenly remember that the umbilical cord has to stop pulsing and I make sure that it has before tying it into segments. Nervously I take a deep breath and cut, not thinking, just doing it, fast, before I change my mind. Hektor watches, seeming to hold his breath. I cut the second cord.
Fuck, I should have boiled the laces. I close my eyes, say a prayer and hope for the best. I remember seeing some antibacterial gel and iodine in the pantry and hope that sanitizing after the fact is better than not sanitizing at all. What did women do before modern medicine? Garrett’s voice in my head provides the answer. They died of infection. Their babies died of infection.
I hold my second-born son to my breast, remembering that nursing slows bleeding in the mother and provides important antibodies to the infant. It is harder than I think it should be getting my nipple into his mouth. I never thought of my nipples being huge before, but his mouth is so small.
“What are we going to call him?” Cross-legged, Olympia sits as close to me as she can, her newborn brother held gently. Hektor, Nikkos and Atso line up against the side of the tub, watching the baby nurse.
I shrug. We haven’t discussed names. “I don’t know.”
“A baby needs a name,” Hektor says wisely.
I nod, they do need names; I’m just not up to naming them. With the rush of adrenaline and endorphins fading, I’m left shaking and wrung out. I need to get us all out of the water and dried off.
I wait for Baby Boy Number Two to stop sucking and wrap him in a towel.
“Hold him?” I ask Hektor.
Hektor comes closer and I hand him the baby. Smiling, a look of pure pride on his face, he holds him close.
I take Baby Boy Number One from Olympia and allow him to float in the warm water as he passes from her to me. I suppose it’s normal to be so exhausted, isn’t it? Leaning back against the tub, I close my eyes and, bringing my firstborn son to my breast, help him to start nursing. “Go ahead and climb out, darling. Dry off, change your clothes. I’m going to need you to hold the baby again.”
Olympia does as she’s told, hurrying from the room. She returns half-dried but in fresh, dry clothes.
I jerk awake, a baby still in my arms, four children sitting on the bathroom floor, watching and waiting. Waiting for what seems like the next question I need to answer. I appear to be all right, the babies are okay. We can’t stay in the bathroom all day. I smile at Olympia, trying to be reassuring. “Get a dry towel and you can take this one from me.”
She grabs a towel from the pile and holds out her arms. I hand her my son and she bundles him tightly.
With her holding Baby Boy Number One and Hektor holding Baby Boy Number Two, I clamor out of the tub. It saps the remaining strength I have. “Can you take the babies into the bedroom and wait for me?”
With the two older children busy, I take a minute to pee, check my bleeding and clean up a little more. I put a folded hand towel between my legs until I can figure out an appropriate substitution for a menstrual pad and pull the caftan back on. By the time I have scooped the placenta into a plastic trash bag and drained the tub, the thought of walking all the way into the bedroom is more than I want to consider, so I don’t think about it. I force myself into the bedroom, Nikkos and Atso following behind me like little ducklings—if little ducklings could suck their thumbs.
After climbing into the bed and covering up, I hold out my arms for my newborns and cradle them into the V formed between my thighs. I know they aren’t capable of rolling yet but it seems like a safe zone as long as I can keep the toddlers on either side of me. How did I know they’d want in bed with me? I get Nikkos tucked in on my left and Atso tucked in on my right. They both huddle as close to me as they can. It is almost suffocating, but I don’t push them away. After all they’ve been through I understand their need to crowd as close to me as possible.
“Okay, we need a job list.”
Hektor and Olympia perk up excitedly.
“Hektor, I need you to go in the kitchen and carefully pour me a glass of juice. Olympia, I want you to go into the living room and bring in the bag of new baby clothes.”
God, I’m exhausted.
Olympia returns with the bag and helps me find the soft, knit newborn caps. I put one each baby’s head. A smart girl, she also brought me two disposable diapers—Atso’s. They’re huge but cutting them down to size, I make them work, swaddling the babies. I dress them in the long-sleeved sleep sacks that looked so tiny in the store but which swallow them up. They both sleep through the diapering and dressing. Their birth was hard work for all of us.
Olympia climbs onto the foot of the bed and sits between my ankles, watching the newborns intently. Hektor returns with a glass of juice and I happily take it, drinking it down in two swallows. When I hand him the glass back I ask him to bring me another. I also ask him to bring me my purse, which I know has some acetaminophen inside. He returns with both and I happily swallow four pills and drink the second glass of juice.
As an afterthought, I dig a marker out of my bag and write a one and a two on the heel of the appropriate baby’s foot. Even though I have the presence of mind right this second to know which was born first, I can’t guarantee myself I’ll remember when I wake up.
“Can you close the front door and lock it?”
“I already did, Auntie Ce.”
“Good boy, Hektor.”
I watch him climb up onto the foot of the bed to sit with Olympia and know that fighting sleep is going to be impossible. I tell them, “No one gets out of this bed until I wake up, understood?”
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
John Lennon
Chapter Twenty-Three
Thomas
No guard stands outside Garrett’s door, which makes me nervous. Why hasn’t Garrett just walked away? I could be walking into a trap. No one retires from this business. No one. Weapon ready, I slide the electronic key and step inside fast.
“It’s about bloody time.”
As my eyes adjust to the lack of light, I find Garrett sitting in the corner.
“Where the fuck have you been? Where’s Celia and the children? And why am I being held prisoner?”
I put my fingers to my lips, a gesture for him to be quiet. His room has been bugged by the Guardians, I have no doubt about that. My concern is who else might be listening. I motion for him to come to me as I say loudly into the room, “All of your questions are justified, and I promise I’ll answer all of them in time.”
He crosses his arms stubbornly and doesn’t move from his seat, and I don’t turn on the lights.
Taking a butterfly knife from my pocket, I cut the tracking chip out of the back of my neck and toss it onto the bed. Going into the bathroom, I grab a washcloth and hold it to the wound while I clean my knife. I want a shower, desperately. From desert to DC on no sleep, and only caffeine and adrenaline keeping me going, the days without slee
p are catching up with me fast.
It has been two full days since I recovered Lattie’s remains, and it is still hard to believe that she is dead. I have to tell my children their mother isn’t coming back. I scrub my face with soap and water, wishing I could go back in time.
Returning to the bedroom, I motion again for Garrett and when he doesn’t come to me, I leave him sitting in the dark room alone. He catches up soon enough, finding me two-thirds of the way down the hallway. I duck into the stairs. I really hope Glorianna was on the level, letting me walk away free and clear. I doubt it, but I hope it just the same.
“I’m pissed at you,” Garrett informs me.
I hurry down the two flights to the ground level and he follows close but is left winded.
“Me too,” I tell him, pausing on a landing.
“You’re pissed at me? I didn’t do anything!”
I turn on him, shoving him against a concrete wall. “You left Celia and my children alone. Unprotected.”
He looks ashamed, offering sheepishly, “My parents needed me. What was your excuse? The wife who abandoned you? You sure took your sweet time coming home.”
I shove him again. “Lattie’s dead.”
His eyes go wide and he opens his mouth and closes it twice before managing to say, “God, I’m sorry.”
I nod. “Me too. She was a sweet girl and, for a while, a good wife.”
I run down the last flight of stairs and exit through a service door into a back alley. I walk to the end of the block, trying to get my bearings. I don’t trust anyone in the vicinity, not even the taxi drivers or transit workers. Anyone could be Glorianna’s people.
The wind howls, pushing against us, as I start walking toward a destination. Looking up at the sky, I see dark clouds gathering. I pray for a storm to disappear into.
Garrett follows behind me—quiet, too quiet. I wish he’d have kept yelling at me. I veer off the main road, preferring dark alleys. Garrett walks faster, bumping into me. “Does this seem safe to you?”
“Get used to the shadows, Garrett, and trust me when I say I’m the most dangerous man you’ll ever meet in the dark.”
He trails close and silent. At the end of one alley where another begins, a fire inside a trash can burns brightly, drawing me like a beacon. Three men stand near it, though the night is warm, not cold. They’re singing a cappella until we get close enough to appear threatening. I pull a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket and hold it out. Nodding toward two of them I say, “Your jacket, and his.”
The two men share a look and shirk out of their outerwear, one an Oriole’s hoodie, the other a ragged leather. I gesture for Garrett to take the garments.
“And your hats,” I say.
The closer man grabs the hundred as he hands me his knit cap. The second man hesitates. “I really like this cap, I’ve had it a long time.”
It’s a dingy-gray skipper’s yacht hat.
“I can appreciate that, man. It’s a great hat.” I take off my suit coat, flashing the tag that says Armani, and pull a second hundred from my pocket. “For your loss.”
Hesitating, greed makes him hold out for more, but as our gazes clash he sees something in mine that makes him take my offer.
I stay facing them as I back down the alley, not even reassured when they go back to singing. When we reach the main road I press my back against the brick wall of a building. I pull on the knit cap and the Orioles sweatshirt, keeping the hood over my head.
“Put on the hat and the leather coat.”
“You do realize how bad these clothes stink?”
I don’t sugarcoat it for him. “You can shower after I get you out of town alive.”
We finally reach the bus station, but we’re not here for a ticket. Keeping my back to the security cameras and my head down, I head straight for the public lockers. Mine is three rows deep, not observable by any camera. I open it and, praying no one comes near enough to see us, start stripping off the hoodie, knit cap and shirt I’ve been wearing since the press conference. I pull on a black tank top I had stashed in the locker.
Garrett reaches up to peel the blood-soaked washcloth off my neck. “That needs stitches.”
“I’ll live without stitches. I might not have survived being tracked.”
He doesn’t question the tracking device, or why I wasn’t concerned before, and why I am now. “You’ve hit a vein, you’re still bleeding.”
I pull a quick-clot packet out of the locker and push some of the powder into the wound before shedding my slacks and pulling on a pair of faded and torn blue jeans. “Were you injected with anything?”
“No!”
“Are you certain? Was there any moment you lost consciousness and someone could have injected you without you knowing it?”
“I haven’t slept a wink since I was picked up and brought here.”
“Are you wearing the same clothes?”
“Yes. What’s with the twenty questions?”
“I don’t want anyone to know where I’m headed when I leave here. Take off your clothes. Everything. I’m not taking any chances.” I step into black combat boots. While Garrett is stripping, I restock my weapons—shurikens, three knives and two revolvers, several clips. I hide most of my weaponry with a loose black-and-gray Hawaiian shirt, buttoning only the two center buttons.
I toss Garrett a t-shirt, some sweats and a pair of running shoes. The shoes will be too big, but he doesn’t complain.
We exit the building as we entered, backs to all the cameras, heads ducked low. I’m pleased to see Garrett is following my lead and shadowing my moves. Three blocks from the garage but eight alleys later, I lead him into a high-rent, high-security parking garage. We drive out in a BMW X5M.
Garrett peels off the knit cap and tosses it out the window.
“Feel better?” I ask.
“No, we both probably have lice now. Are you going to tell me what in the hell is going on?”
“Not yet.”
“At least tell me Celia is safe?”
I give him a look that shuts him up. I cannot bear to think about Celia and the children not being safe, and as much as I want to reach them as quickly as humanly possible, I can’t lose my head. I’m not sure but I’m guessing Ely, Nevada, is about a thirty-five-hour drive, maybe more. I won’t risk flying even though a week ago I would have trusted a dozen pilots. Tonight I trust no one.
General’s Highway is almost deserted as I head out of town, except for the city cops. I drive past four cruisers in two blocks. Beside me, Garrett is pulled into himself. Angry? Frustrated? Confused?
“What were you told by the people who brought you to Washington, DC?”
“Nothing. They showed me a picture of Enrique, demanding to know who he was, and then they showed me photos of you and Celia and said if I wanted to see either of you again, I should come with them.”
“Subtle. How did you know they weren’t the bad guys?”
“Black suit, sunglasses, earpieces. I thought they were FBI or CIA. Turns out they were Secret Service. God, what does my mother think? I just left her in the lobby of an office building.”
I sigh heavily.
“Just tell me. All of it. The worst of it. Not knowing what in the hell is going on is far worse than the truth.”
I merge onto I-97, still obeying all the speed laws. I don’t want to draw anyone’s attention tonight. “The truth is there are a lot of people looking for me, and anyone who is close to me is now a target. You. Celia. My children.”
“You’re on the run, meaning we’re all on the run.” He shakes his head, his jaw tightening. “Your brother brought this on us, didn’t he?”
I give him a long look, trying to figure out how he made that leap in logic, but then life hasn’t been the same since Nikos showed up on our doorstep, so it is no great leap from there to here. “No. He doesn’t have anything to do with this. I made a mistake. I let down my guard, I got lax, I let people into my life, and now the people I have al
lowed to get close to me will pay the price.”
“What does that mean—exactly?”
“It means you can’t go home. Until the dust settles, you wouldn’t be safe.”
“I can’t go home?” He snorts. “I’m not going to let some thugs keep me away from my life—that’s insane. This is your life, your problems, not mine.”
I pull off onto the shoulder, realizing this frustration has been building for a while, over a year. Probably since the first day we became a ménage, because my comings and goings became more evident. I turn in my seat so that I’m facing him. “Even if we go our separate ways right this minute you can’t go home. I drop you off on a corner, give you a phone number to call and you will be picked up and given a new identity.”
“A new identity?” He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, unbuckles his seat belt and opens the car door. “Fuck that.”
I grab his arm. “You won’t live twenty-four hours without protection. You have to choose now—a new life with me in it or a new life away from me—either way you can’t go back to San Francisco. You can’t go back to Ohio. You can’t go back to being Garrett Lawrence.”
The rain that has been threatening all night suddenly lets loose with big, plump drops hitting the windshield.
He jerks away from my grasp. “You said the dust will settle.”
“It will. One way or another. Either the threat will be annihilated or my enemies win the big battle and the organization I’ve worked for will be destroyed. This isn’t about me and you and Celia, Lattie and my children, or my brother. We’re just the pawns as two factions struggle for control. Their strategy is to destroy the Guardians from within by making every agent weak.”
“So you take me someplace safe and then you disappear to fight a war?”
I shake my head. “I’m no good for this fight. I quit. My only loyalty now is to my children and the ménage.”
Lightning streaks the sky and the rain pours down. He closes the door and buckles his belt, but doesn’t look at me. I wonder if his decision to stay is solely based on the weather. I whisper, “Garrett, I’m sorry.”
