Afterland

by Lauren Beukes

  11.

  Billie: Message failed to deliver

  A bedraggled tern watches Billie and Nervous Nelly, from a red fence that has been twisted by storm damage, canting drunkenly out over the water. All the gabled houses along the boardwalk are shuttered and blind and nothing looks familiar. Billie’s vision blurs and doubles—the distortion of the rain slashing against the dark sea, she tells herself, but the result is that every mast at the yacht club has a ghost twin.

  Not like Mr. Amato’s superyacht. These are dinghies in comparison. She was on board when he died, middle of the Caribbean with an all-female skeleton crew, including her, because Thierry had hoped in vain that the virus couldn’t cross the water. But he’d already been infected, or one of the crew was carrying it, and it turned out he didn’t have much use for a private chef in the last weeks because cancer takes your appetite. The rest of the crew ate well, though, and when he died, finally, Billie was the one who insisted on sealing up the master cabin and sailing him home to his wife instead of turfing the body into the ocean for shark bait.

  “How kind you are,” Mrs. A. had said when they turned up at the Amato compound in the Caymans. “How thoughtful.”

  That’s me. Thoughtful. Don’t look a gift corpse in the mouth.

  “I’ve never been out this way,” Nervous Nelly says, shoulders hunched against the drizzle. “These are some fancy places.” It’s Belvedere, not San Francisco. Close enough, although it took some coercion to get here. Why did the hedgehog cross the Golden Gate Bridge? Because Billie yelled at her, and even though the shouting made her head feel worse, it made the idiot scared enough to comply, which she should have done in the first fucking place.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  “Shut up,” Billie says. This was the plan, this is the place. One of the safe houses for operations. Easy access to the water. Bring Miles in, hop on a boat, head south via Mexico and Panama, back to the Caymans, where the laws don’t apply, especially not the reprohibition, Miles would make a few deposits, and they’d be set for life. Cole, too, if she’d get over herself. How hard was that? How could anyone fuck that up? Jesus Christ.

  One of these houses. Definitely. She’s pretty sure. But things are blurry right now, and moving her feet one in front of the other takes concentration.

  She and Cole spinning themselves sick in the garden and taking a few wobbly steps before they collapsed, laughing. Green stains on the butts of their white shorts, the itchy feeling of grass on bare legs. Billie wanted to go again, again, again. The giddy delirium of being out of her head. But her sister would wimp out too soon. Always.

  The tern spreads its wings and screams at them as it takes to the air and curves out over the water. The sound screwdrives into her head. But they’re close. The size of the properties expands as they go, with the absolute certainty of money, taking up more and more space, each with their own private dock. Most of them abandoned.

  “We should be on a boat,” Billie mutters. Incurious sea lions sprawl on the wood like fat, furry sunbathers, with their own sweet-sharp reek mixed in with the briny air. That’s how she came to the house in the first place—by boat. She’d know it from the water.

  But this suggestion alarms the hedgehog.

  “I think we should go back. No one is living out here anymore. It’s not your fault. I think you got muddled with your head and all. I’ll tell you what. I’ll still drive you to the hospital. You don’t even need to pay me.”

  “Let me think!” Billie looks out across the bay at the curve of the coastline dotted with olive trees. The tern yawls again. Or maybe a different bird. Who cares. She imagines being on the water in a sleek speedboat approaching the shore, five months ago. She’s always had an eye for detail.

  There were olive trees dotting the hillside. A blue boathouse. Dark blue. Navy. There it is! Between the California scrub that has grown out to conceal it since she was here last, is the whitewashed wooden house like every other American-Gothic-by-the-seaside out here.

  “Doesn’t look like a clinic.”

  “Please. Be quiet.” She focuses on walking up to the dockside door and leans hard on the buzzer. The rain hardens, stubbles the flat surface of the ocean. It gets in her eyes, runs down the back of her neck. Or she’s bleeding again. A sea lion slips itself off the dock with a loud plop.

  And then someone appears at the railing above them, black zip-up, sunglasses, sunny blond hair piled up in a loose bun on top of her head, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and rainbow-striped gloves. She recognizes those stupid gloves. What’s-her-name. One of the ex-cartel babes, among the “private contractors” Mrs. Amato rounded up at short notice.

  Collectors gonna collect, art or bad women, same difference. They came out with a handful of them. Zara, a “war photographer” from somewhere fucked-up in eastern Europe, who has the air of someone who’s been too close to (hip-deep in) several atrocities; and this one, a little Colombian, bottle-blond, beauty-queen pretty. Richie or something.

  “Help you?” Machinegun Barbie calls down, removing one of those gloves (every finger a different color) to relight her damp cigarette, hand cupped around her mouth.

  “It’s me. Billie.”

  “You’re late.” Rico—she finally remembers what they call her, fuck knows what her real name is—drops her lighter in the inside pocket of her jacket, flash of a gun holster, thanks for that. “Where’s the cargo?”

  “It’s a longer conversation than I want to have in the rain.” She hates how thick and stupid her tongue is in her mouth, and even more, the plaintive note in her voice. She suddenly, desperately, wants a cigarette.

  “Your friend’s hurt pretty bad,” the hedgehog chips in. “Is there a doctor here?”

  “Who is this? Your sister?”

  “Can you let us in?”

  “Hokay, hokay,” Rico says. She peels away from the balcony, and a long moment later, the boardwalk-level door buzzes angrily. Whatever, bitch. You weren’t there when Thierry died. Billie was. She was the one who got him home. Sure, she’s arriving empty-handed, but she knows her worth to Mrs. Amato. It was her plan, and so they’ve had a little upset? She’s here to make it right. Mrs. A. will understand. She pushes open the front door.

  “Shoes off,” Billie instructs Nelly as they step inside. She slips out of her own sneakers and sets them beside the fuck-me stilettos, incongruous between the pair of tan Timberlands and black military-style boots. One of her socks is inside out, she notices. That’s what comes from being forced to flee in the middle of the night. Cole forced her hand. It’s all that bitch’s fault.

  “I don’t have to come in.” Nelly hovers on the step, scuffing her big work boots on the mat. “You can sort me out and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Take them off,” Billie insists. She has to lean against the wall while Nelly unlaces her clunky boots and dithers about where to put them. The dizziness has snuck up on her. It’s because they’ve stopped moving. Concussion sharks just keep swimming. She might have said it out loud, because Nelly gives her a funny look.

  They walk sock-footed through the living room, with white leather couches and an enormous gold and lapis-lazuli bull’s head, supposed to pass for art, mounted above the fireplace to the doors to the patio, where Rico is waiting for them. The doors to the garden are flung wide onto a Moroccan courtyard, all stone and sunken seating, with a sliver of a lap pool at the far end turned into a narrow band of choppy blue by the rain. Rico ushers them out across the wet tiles, which is all right for her in her rubber-soled slippers, but Billie’s socks soak through instantly.

  Julita Amato is waiting for them on one of the couches beneath the shade cloth, wearing a voluminous kimono printed with tiger lilies, her hair plastered down against her head. Wet from doing laps, or singing in the rain, for all Billie knows. But she doesn’t like that they’re out here, in the cold and the wet.

  You can’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, oversize, gold-trimmed, which make
s Billie anxious. Mrs. A. has had too much work around her eyes, she knows, her chin tucked, but her hands betray her, the crepe paper texture, the liver spots. She’s in her late sixties, maybe early seventies, short and stocky. “Va-va-voluptuous” is how Thierry used to describe her.

  “Not like these boneskin things,” he’d say, waving his arm dismissively at all the young models and Insta girls who draped themselves over the other rich old men at the parties. Mrs. A. never came out on the boat when they sailed from one Mediterranean port to another. But sometimes she’d fly out to meet him and would be waiting on the dock in a black dress that hugged her abundance, and a black broad-brim hat that hid her face, smoking her Gauloises cigarettes. She would shepherd him into the waiting chauffeured car, to whichever absurd hotel they were staying at—the Mamara in Bodrum or the Chedi in Muscat. Billie always made a point of finding out, filing the names away like a magic formula in the handbook of how to be appallingly rich. She was just one of the help, then. Brilliant chef or not, she slept on the yacht with the rest of the crew. But not for long.

  At the business dinner in Doha, Billie ran into her in the tropical garden of the rented villa, sweet with jasmine and infested with art, like the hot pink stainless-steel balloon dog in whose shadow they huddled, both of them refugees, one from the party, one from the kitchen, bonding over cigarettes.

  “Oh, sorry, Mrs. Amato. I didn’t expect to find you out here.”

  “Those people are very boring. We have to put up with them, of course. But they are tedious.”

  “Can I have a cigarette, please? I didn’t bring mine.”

  “You’re the cook?” Mrs. A. tapped out one for her, passed it over.

  “The chef. Billie Brady.”

  “Ah. Tell me about the ingredients you order in. Are they very exotic?”

  “We try to source local where possible, so it’s fresh, sustainable.”

  “You should consider more imported specialty items. Mr. Amato likes his treats. You know what men are like. I have suppliers I can put you in touch with.”

  “That would be very helpful, thank you, Mrs. Amato.” She dipped her head, obsequious.

  She was expecting cocaine or abalone or rhino horn or, hell, assault rifles. It could have been some of those things—she never found out, never asked. Because Billie didn’t open the vacuum-sealed brown paper package she found stuffed in the body cavity of one of the consignment of frozen pheasants. She took it directly to Mrs. Amato herself, taking a shore pass to catch a taxi up to the Chedi hotel.

  “If you’re going to smuggle things in via my kitchen, you want someone you can trust to get them to you.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”

  “I believe discretion is a commodity.”

  “And can I trust you to deliver?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mrs. Amato,” Billie greets her now. Mrs. A. does not invite them to join her on the couch or even take a seat on one of the wooden loungers. So they stand in front of her, like peasants petitioning the empress. Nelly is increasingly skittish, playing with her hair as Mrs. A. lets the silence drag out. Pretty girl Rico is at casual attention, arms folded and leaning against one of the lacquered poles. The rain comes shushing down around them, hemming them in on all sides. It’s cold, it’s uncomfortable, and she doesn’t like what that says about what’s happening. Not at all.

  Sure, for once, she hasn’t delivered. She doesn’t have her nephew tied up in a bow, but shit happens. She’ll make it right. This whole grand scheme was Billie’s idea in the first place. A living boy, her direct relative, someone she could get to, no harm, no foul. Trade some black-market jerk-off juice for wealth beyond their wildest dreams, help a bunch of devastated women get pregnant because reprohibition is bullshit. Get rich, save the world. It’s practically altruism.

  “I’m glad to see you, Billie,” Mrs. A. says with the warm burr of incipient throat cancer. “I don’t know your friend?”

  “I’m Sandy. Sandy Nevis,” Nelly says, putting out her hand. Mrs. Amato doesn’t move to reciprocate. Rico gives a little shake of her head. Back off, baby. Nelly tucks her arm into her chest as if it’s injured. “I found her, by the road. She had a car accident. I told her to get to a hospital but—”

  “I told her there would be a reward for her services,” Billie interrupts, distracted by the bright storm light through the sheer curtain of the rain. It stutters like strobe.

  “Did you? I’m sure we can arrange something. But what happened to you, my dear?” Mrs. Amato says. She stirs the steel drinking straw in her glass. It clinks against the side. Lime and soda. She can smell the citrus tang from here. Billie has never seen her drink alcohol. “An accident? How very traumatic.” Her hand is on her breast like a spider. “Do you need a stiff drink?”

  “I’m all right.” Even though that is very much what she would like. A lot, please and thank you. And some nice painkillers and a set of professionally rendered stitches and a bed with clean sheets. But the faux concern is a jangling note, like that steel straw against the glass.

  “I would,” Sandy (neé Nelly) says. “Do you have iced tea?” Everyone disregards her.

  “We’re concerned that you’ve arrived here without your precious cargo, aren’t we, Rico?”

  “Very concerned,” Rico echoes. Good bitch, Billie thinks. Doggy gets a treat.

  “I said five thousand dollars. For the reward. Perhaps we should take care of that so Nel—so Sandy can be on her way. You can take it out of my percentage.”

  “Mmm,” Mrs. Amato says. “That’s a nice sum for not much to show.”

  “You know, never mind,” Sandy stutters, “My good deed for the day. Happy to help!”

  “Stay, darling. Let the grown-ups finish their talk.”

  “Oh. No. I really ought to be…”

  “Stay,” Rico says, baring her teeth in a pageant smile.

  The tension is scratchy inside her, and Billie can’t get hold of it. The vivid gray of the sky through the rain. Sun behind the clouds. Monkey’s wedding. That’s a sign of good luck, isn’t it?

  “Mrs. Amato, with respect, the situation is already complicated…” she tries, dredging the words through the sludge and the glitter.

  “It certainly seems that way. Where is the cargo, Billie?”

  “My sister. She freaked out. She took him.” She hears how feeble this sounds.

  “Your sister?” Sandy jolts. “You didn’t tell me—”

  “But it’s not unsalvageable,” Billie interrupts. Not yet. She shades her eyes, fingers fanned against the bright. “Cole panicked, took off. But she knew the plan. She would have stuck to the plan. And there’s a tracker in the SUV, right? So we can track her and I can bring her back. No problem.”

  “It’s been great to meet you all, but I really have to get back…sanitation,” the hedgehog trails off.

  “She’s been a big help. Can we sort her out? Focus on the matter at hand?”

  “And do you need help, Billie?” Mrs. Amato says, setting down her glass. Tiny bubbles fizz up to the surface, pulled on their own currents.

  Concentrate, dammit.

  “No. If we can track the car, I can find her. I can bring her back. Trust me.”

  “Perhaps you need a gun? Would that help you?” The tar of her voice getting more treacly. All the better to drown you in, my dear.

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  “But your sister attacked you. You need protection. This woman needs a gun, don’t you think, Rico?”

  “Yeah, Mrs. A. I believe everyone should have a firearm for their own peace of mind.”

  “I really—”

  “Give her a gun, Rico.”

  The bodyguard reaches into her jacket with rainbow knit fingers, unholsters the gun secured in her armpit, and reverses her grip on it to press it into Billie’s hands.

  “Oh,” Sandy says, goggling as if she’s never seen one before. “Oh. No.” She steps back, involuntarily, sli
pping on the wet tiles.

  Billie is confused by the weight of it, suddenly in her hands. She nearly drops it. “What? No, I don’t need a gun.” She shoves it back. “I don’t want it.”

  “She doesn’t want the gun.” Rico shrugs, fair enough. She moves to reholster it. Sandy is backing away, toward the door, hands up. Everybody be cool. And like it’s a whim, an afterthought, Rico raises the revolver, dark metal between her rainbow fingers holding it steady, both hands, and pulls the trigger. The startling crack of it, like a car crash in Billie’s skull. Another car crash.

  “Fuck! What the fuck!” She ducks, hands jerking to protect her head. Her fingers graze that flap of scalp. And in that second, she conflates the two. She’s been shot.

  She’s been shot.

  She’s been shot.

  But it’s not her.

  It’s Sandy Nevis, sanitation. She has keeled over backward onto one of the wooden poolside loungers, the cuff of the overalls flopped back to expose her bare skin, one foot pointed in her wet sock like a dancer. Her face is a red mush. It doesn’t make sense to Billie. Trick of perspective. Mashed potatoes with tomato sauce, like when they were kids. How can you eat that? Dad would say.

  “Whoops,” Rico says, wrapping the gun in a towel. “You got your fingerprints all over my gun.”

  “What a mess, Billie,” Mrs. Amato says, stirring her drink, metal clinking against glass. “What a terrible mess you have made.”

  “It’s not my fault,” she whispers. She can’t look at them. Can’t look at Sandy, her body. The pounding is back. Rushing blood in her ears, like being underwater.

  “You know what I hate, Rico?”

  “I’m sure there are many things, Mrs. A. A whole catalog of loathing.”

  “But especially, can I tell you? I hate when my people refuse to take accountability.”

  “I know that about you, Mrs. A. You do hate that. Lack of accountability.”