by Tara Conklin
“Someone is here for Luna.” Dima hesitated to say this, but he was not a good or a fast liar.
Rodrigo rolled his eyes. “Police again?”
“No, a woman. She says she’s a friend, but she doesn’t look like a friend of Luna’s.”
“A friend? And how is this part of your job, Dima? You’re a part-time messenger for Luna now? I hope she pays you well, because if you’re not out there in ten seconds, she will be your only employer.” Rodrigo smiled benignly and bit the celery with his big, yellowed front teeth, and Dima was reminded of the TV character Bugs Bunny, the show he’d watch for hours when he was a child, just arrived in Miami from the Ukraine, when the new English words had sounded to him like gunfire, like heavy rain: a harsh staccato that hid a meaning rather than unveiled it.
Dima turned and reentered the restaurant floor, poured two more glasses of expensive cabernet for the two men in gray suits, and then returned to this tired-looking woman.
“Is Luna here?” she asked. “I have something I need to give her.”
Dima shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see her.” He shrugged and began cutting limes into neat wedges with a short, very sharp knife.
The woman exhaled. “Sorry, but what time did you say Luna was coming in?” she asked.
Dima sighed. He considered honesty his single greatest flaw. “Seven o’clock,” he answered. “You want to leave it, the thing for Luna?”
The woman shook her head. “No. I’ll wait.” She settled on a barstool and took out her phone.
“Can I get you something?”
“Gin,” she said. “I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
* * *
As Renee waited at the bar, Luna arrived for work through the back service entrance. She squeezed past the boxes of ketchup and sriracha, sidestepped the tower of just-delivered fresh white napkins and tablecloths tied with string, and then she searched inside the dry-storage room for a clean black apron, which she found and wrapped around her waist as she exited to the kitchen. She called hello to Luis, the dishwasher Riley, the waitresses Estella and Sue, and was on her way out to the bar when Jorge said her name.
“Luna, stop.” He walked around the order-up line of heat lamps, their bulbs not yet turned to hot, and met her by the doors.
“What is it?” she asked. Jorge rarely crossed into the service area; his realm was the kitchen, where he was king.
“There’s someone looking for you, Dima said. I don’t know . . .” Jorge shrugged. “Maybe just take a peek before you go out.”
“The detectives?”
“No, not police. Dima said a woman.”
A tepid flare of hope: Mariana? But Jorge saw it and shook his head. “No, not your sister.”
“Thanks, Jorge,” Luna said, and he winked, this gray-haired man, small and wrinkled, his eyes heavy with concern and affection.
Jorge returned to his post behind the order-up line, his apron fresh and white, his fingers nimble, and began the delicate process of deboning a skate. Luna pushed open the swinging door and paused, shielding herself behind the black velvet curtain that separated the restaurant from the kitchen. The bar stretched to her left, just beyond the curtain and the swinging chrome doors, the doors that divided calm from chaos, leisure from work, rich from poor, and they would swing ceaselessly—enter to the right, exit from the left—until the kitchen closed at midnight.
Dima was polishing wineglasses with studious concentration. One customer sat at the far end of the bar. Luna saw the woman in profile, her face half obscured by a phone pressed to her ear. She seemed agitated, twisting and shifting on the stool, her free hand shredding a white cocktail napkin into little rough-edged scraps. But even in this disturbed posture, the woman gave an impression of confidence and low-key affluence: two thick rings on the hand that held the phone, the precise cut of her dress, shoulder-length dark brown hair that shone and rippled as she moved. Luna recognized the woman from the photographs: it was Renee, Joe’s oldest sister.
Dima looked up and saw Luna standing there. His eyes grew wide, and he angled his head toward Renee. “I’m not here,” Luna mouthed. But Dima didn’t understand. He squinted at her, shook his big leonine head. Oh, Dima. Luna waved him over.
“I don’t want to see her,” she whispered, feeling meek and small, but the idea of talking now to one of Joe’s sisters cut her down. She wasn’t ready. “If she asks, tell her I called in sick. Tell her I’m not coming in tonight.”
Dima nodded. He didn’t ask why, and Luna squeezed his arm. Once they had slept together, in the first months after he’d started working here last year, and it had not been horrible, it had not been great, but they shared that knowledge of each other, and now Luna was glad for it.
Renee called loudly, “Excuse me? Bartender?”
Luna met Dima’s eyes. “Go, go,” she said, and he turned back to the bar. Luna retreated farther within the curtain. She didn’t want to go into the kitchen, where Rodrigo would undoubtedly tell her to get to work. Until Renee left, Luna was trapped here, and she sank to the floor, pulled up her knees, and closed her eyes.
* * *
The bartender appeared again. “Yes, ma’am? What can I get you?” He balled up the bits of napkin Renee had shredded. The sight of them embarrassed her, a sign of her unstable mind. She had called Detective Henry again to ask questions she was sure he had not yet considered. But the detective had answered with a maddening calm.
No reason to suspect . . .
No evidence of . . .
No motive for . . .
All valuables still . . .
Let me assure you . . .
And then: “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. You’re looking for someone to blame. I get it. I understand what you’re going through. It’s a hard truth. Sometimes bad things happen to those we love, and it’s no one’s fault.”
No one’s fault. It seemed impossible to Renee that an event as momentous as this one, a happening so profound, could occur without a push. And a push needs a pusher. Someone, something, somehow. A finger on the trigger. A bad heart. A mutating virus. Years of neglect. But an ice cube? An ice cube melted, evaporated, disappeared. An ice cube was not enough.
Throughout the conversation with the detective, Renee had felt dulled and misunderstood, her every utterance cut short by one of his breezy responses. Now she wished she could do the whole thing over again. Her interior belief in the suspicious intent of Luna Hernandez wobbled only the slightest bit with the detective’s certainty. An orchestra of scenarios played out in Renee’s head: Luna quietly opening Joe’s front door to allow another man (men?) inside; Luna tiptoeing behind and bashing Joe with a . . . what? a brick? Luna and her accomplices ransacking Joe’s apartment, carting away as-yet-unidentified items of immense value. Or maybe: Luna whispering into Joe’s ear about life insurance and designated beneficiary (where was the policy? Renee knew they would find it eventually). She entertained these scenes obsessively, painfully, like picking at a scab. Her fingers were bloody, but she could not stop.
As Renee picked up her phone to call Detective Henry again, the bartender placed another clean white napkin on the bar. “Another G&T?” He looked directly at Renee and then quickly flicked his gaze away; his cheeks flared pink as he shifted from one leg to the other.
“Luna’s here,” Renee said, and it was not a question. “And she doesn’t want to see me.” Her conversation with Detective Henry had left her primed, ready for rage, and here it was, unmitigated by her sisters, unfiltered by the sadness that inhabited Joe’s apartment. She didn’t intend to give Luna the ring; no, she intended to hurl it into her face, slap her across the cheek, yell and kick. She wanted to punish Luna, to hurt her.
“Don’t lie to me,” Renee said to the bartender. “She’s here, isn’t she?”
The bartender wouldn’t meet her eyes. He only shrugged in a vague, dismissive way and began again to cut the limes.
Renee inhaled and then yelled, “I know you’re here
!” She pushed her stool away from the bar and stood, enjoying the power in her voice and the way the bartender cringed as he set down the knife and stared at her. “Luna Hernandez, I know you can hear me!” Inhale, exhale, inhale. “I know you’re back there, so let me tell you this.” Inhale. “Even if the police say you’re innocent, I know that you’re guilty.” Inhale. “Guilty of leaving Joe to die.” Inhale, exhale, cough, swallow. Her hands were shaking. Inhale. “You are the one to blame here.” Inhale, exhale, lump rising, swallow it down, swallow. “And I hope you think about that every day for the rest of your life. I hope—”
Renee stopped. A group of people had appeared beside the bar, standing in front of a long, plush curtain that Renee hadn’t noticed before, so seamlessly did it blend into the shadowed spaces at the edge of the room. A dark old man wearing a long white apron and loose, black-and-white-checked trousers approached her, his rubber shoes squeaking over the polished floor.
“Ma’am, we need you to leave the restaurant,” the man said. “We’ll call the police if you don’t go right now.” He did not look at her with anger. Renee sensed a certain sympathy, but his voice was firm. “You’re causing a scene,” he told her.
Yes, Renee was. She was causing a scene. There was no one here to see it, except these few kitchen workers, but she was indeed making a spectacle of herself. Renee gazed at the group: a young woman, pretty and heavily made up, a man who looked barely out of his teens with a thin, wispy mustache, a muscular man with his head shaved clean. All gazed at her with apprehension and resistance and an unmistakable hostility. They were defending Luna, she realized. They were protecting her.
The old man’s eyes were mild, his voice restrained, and yet Renee almost hit him. She almost kicked him. She pondered for one long moment the relief that delivering these blows would bring her. Perhaps he would hit her in return with his small fists—he was shorter than she was and older, frailer. Or maybe the bartender—the strength of those arms, the unyielding force of his mammoth knuckles. Wasn’t that what she really wanted? To be obliterated?
“Please,” said the man again. “Please leave.”
Renee became aware of the dim sound of a woman weeping. Or was it her own? Had she started to cry again, as she had so many times these past six days, without realizing it? The sound reminded Renee of herself, the alternating restraint and release, the familiar low moans. Who was crying?
“I . . . I . . .” Renee said, and shame came down like a sack thrown over her head. Shame and guilt, loyal partners until the end. What had Luna done to Joe that Renee hadn’t done herself on that balcony two years before?
“Renee.” Renee turned and saw Fiona and Caroline standing in the doorway. She remained motionless, unsure which way to turn—toward the old man, the bartender, or back the way she had come, toward her sisters. Turning around felt like a retreat, like an acceptance of the worst possible outcome. We did all that we could. Her own voice droned in her head with the words she’d been taught to say after a patient’s death. I am sorry to inform you . . . So sorry . . .
Renee felt strong, capable hands on her shoulders. Here were her sisters.
“I’m sorry I took the—” Renee began, but they both shook their heads.
Renee always thought of her sisters as they’d been during the Pause: so little, so in need of care. Caroline with her nightmares, Fiona walling herself away in her own fantasy world with her books and notepads, her lists of funny words. All that time Renee had worried that she was failing them, that some irreparable damage was being wrought. But her sisters had become women, and their strength was all around her. Renee could lean against them, and now, at last, she did.
Part IV
After
Year 2079
Year 2079
The young Luna had moved up to the first section, a few rows back from the stage. Absently she played with a necklace, a simple silver chain that fell against her chest, heavy with some sort of charm. A circle, perhaps. Or a ring.
“So there was a real Luna,” the girl said. “My mother was right.”
“Yes, there was a real Luna.”
“What happened to her?”
The auditorium remained full. Hours it had been now, the power still gone, generator humming steadily along. We’d heard the sirens twice more, but without the evacuation signal. It seemed inevitable that it would come. This was why I stayed at my house in the mountains. Why I avoided crowds.
The flame-haired woman in the front row had shifted from her partner. She was leaning forward, her body pulled away from his, the two like magnetic opposites. Abruptly he stood and stretched his arms above his head. I heard the muffled crack of a joint, one vertebra colliding against its mate. Why had they fought? I wondered. They shouldn’t argue now. Now is when they should come together.
The sirens began again, that awful wail. It seemed louder, longer this time. I waited motionless for the noise to end. At last came a brief, delicious pause. Silence cool and smooth as silk. And then the evacuation signal sounded. At first no one moved. The series of short, sharp blasts was well known—there had been enough public education, the billboards, radio announcements—but we’d heard them only in the context of a test. This, apparently, was no test.
Henry took hold of my hand. “I’ll get the car,” he said into my ear. “Wait here.”
With Henry gone I was alone on the stage. I stayed where I was, the watched now the watcher. I don’t think I could have stood in any event. My knees have a mind of their own.
A large man in the second row audibly groaned and began the process of extricating himself from the clench of the auditorium seat. The flame-haired woman and the man came together again, holding hands, their faces tense, and moved toward the exit. It was satisfying to see them reunite, but then I felt an abrupt sorrow at their departure. We had all been through something here, I thought, a joint experience that bound us. But the dispersal had begun. Moment by moment, as the signal went on and on, the audience rose up like a wave gathering force. The room’s sense of calm order transformed into a fractured potency. Each part buzzed with a new energy, the latent potential for chaos.
And then the stage creaked with an added weight, and Luna was standing beside me. The young Luna, the girl who would not be put off. The mole was on her right cheek. The charm around her neck was a diamond ring.
“Ms. Skinner, are you okay?” she said. “Let me help you up. We need to evacuate.”
She took my left arm across her shoulders and braced her foot against the chair in a posture of strength and an odd intimacy. Our heads came together, her dark hair falling on my temple, my gray across her shoulder, her left hand holding my left. Intertwined, interwoven, knitted, linked. And then—heave—Luna pulled me to standing.
“The knees. Just you wait,” I said. “You should be thanking those young pliable knees of yours every goddamn day.”
Luna smiled. “There’s a shelter not that far from the auditorium,” she said. “I can help you.” She was yelling to make herself heard over the blare of the signal. The auditorium was largely empty now, the last stragglers making their way outside.
“Thank you, dear, but there’s no need,” I said. “Henry is bringing the car around. I won’t last long in one of those bunkers, I’m afraid.” An impulse to protect this girl flared again in me, just as it had when the lights first went out. Only this time the idea made its way into voice. “But why don’t you come with us?” I offered. “Our complex is entirely self-sustaining. You’ll be totally safe. There’s a guest cottage on the east side of the main house. And Mizu, our cook, makes the most delicious blackberry scones.”
Just then the evacuation signal stopped. The silence took possession of the hall in a way the people had not. It touched every corner, every inch. It was then a soldier appeared. His face covered with a protective shield, a weapon at his side.
“Everyone out,” he called to us.
“We’re coming,” Luna called. “I’m just helping Ms. Skinner
.”
The soldier waited as we made our way off the stage, down the row toward the emergency exit. Luna pushed open the door, and the rush of cold, fresh air made me forget my knees, forget the soldier.
The exit opened onto a side alley in which stood a few large dumpsters, wooden crates piled high, and people, so many people, all of them moving incrementally out of the alley, toward the street. The sky was clear, a full moon, and the light illuminated the scene starkly but without color, as though we had all been washed clean.
How will Henry . . . ? I thought, but of course he would find me. He always did.
We reached the street. A few cars moved along with the push of the crowd, going no faster or slower than the bodies around them. I searched for Henry’s—an old Prius sedan, a dark blue—and saw it across the street, half a block south, Henry standing on the hood. He was searching for me. I reached up an arm to wave. “Henry!” I called, and his gaze was pulled by the sound. He came down off the hood and entered the crowd to reach me.
A third type of siren began, a sound I did not know. Fast, piercing. It roused people to hurry. The pace quickened, I felt Luna pulling me forward, and then, at the moment I thought I could not walk any farther, that I might fall, Henry was there to catch me.
“Thank you,” he said to Luna, “thank you for getting Fiona out of there. Let me pay you.”
“Henry, no,” I said. “I’ve invited her to come with us. Home.”
Henry looked at me quizzically. The noise of the new signal rang in my ears and in my head, a thudding that I felt on the inside.
“Ms. Skinner,” Luna said. “Thank you, but I can’t.”
Henry opened the car door and motioned us inside. In the backseat of the car, the signal was muffled, distant. Tinted windows shielded us from the view. People were moving faster now, some breaking off and running. Henry slid into the front seat.
