by Jill Smith
“What do you mean?”
She looks at Imms and puts the back of her hand on his cheek. “He lied, Imms. He’s gonna be in trouble.”
“Brid!” Imms sits up.
“Easy,” Brid says.
“They can’t do anything to him. He didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“I know. I know. And there’s a chance this will all get settled in a small windowless room with a briefcase full of cash, and not in court. If Channel 5 doesn’t air your interview—”
“How do we stop them from airing it?”
“We can’t do much. Except wait.”
“Will he go to jail?”
“B’s done a lot for NRCSE. They might not be so quick to throw him to the wolves.”
“He didn’t want anyone to be blamed for the fire. He just wanted it to seem like an accident. But then Vir—”
“I know,” Brid says. “Damn him. Damn him really.”
“Why?”
“He shouldn’t have fucking lied, that’s why.”
Imms hadn’t thought he could get any stupider, but he has outdone himself. He knew B didn’t want anyone to find out that they lied about the fire, but he thought that if he just explained the whole story and took the blame himself, people would leave B alone. They’d understand why B lied.
Instead, he’s gotten B neck deep.
Imms moves closer to Brid. “I told Elise she could ask me about fucking. Since you always do.”
Brid turns her head toward him. “You did not tell Elise Fischer, Channel 5 News, that she could ask you about fucking.”
“I did.”
Brid yelps with laughter. “Why wasn’t I there?” She rolls over and tucks her face against Imms’s side. She rubs her nose against his ribs. “I don’t understand fucking. I thought I did. I always thought I knew how to do it without feeling anything. That must’ve been nice, on your planet. No feelings to get in the way.”
“We have feelings.”
“But it’s simpler, right?”
“Maybe,” Imms says.
Mary comes home, and she’s brought dinner. Chinese food. Nobody talks much, and that’s okay with Imms because it gives him time to think. About what he’s done, and what he needs to do. Mary tries to call B. No answer. Imms paces the house. He worries about Lady, who hasn’t been walked for a long time. Bridique says she’ll do it. Imms wants to come, but Mary asks him to stay and help with the dishes. He does a bad job on purpose. He doesn’t really dry them. He waits to see if Mary will get mad.
She touches his arm. He jumps. She shuts off the water and keeps her hand on him, guiding him into the living room. “The dishes aren’t done,” he says.
“They can wait.”
She opens a cupboard under the TV and takes out two large books with light blue leather covers, which she sets on the coffee table. She sits on the couch and waits until Imms sits beside her before she opens the first book. “I thought you might like to see these.”
The book is full of pictures in thin plastic. Words are written underneath the pictures in neat cursive hand. Imms focuses on the first photo. It shows a baby standing in white shorts and a red shirt with pale hair that stands straight up like grass.
“That’s my son,” Mary says. “Eighteen months old.”
Imms doesn’t recognize the word under the picture, and he asks Mary what it means.
“His name,” Mary says.
Imms folds the name and puts it away for safekeeping. He knows he’ll never use it. Imms had to stop being Roach, but B is always B.
Imms spends the next hour turning the pages of the blue books, looking at pictures of B, watching him grow up. B leaves his mother’s arms and crawls across a brown carpet. He cries with displeasure in a frilly red outfit with a matching hat. He walks with Mary holding his arms. He stands with both hands shoved down his diaper, eyes squeezed shut, an enormous smile on his face. He blows out six candles on a cake shaped like a space shuttle. He rides a stick horse through a mud puddle. He tries to feed lettuce to a cat named Alice. He pulls Bridique in a wagon and hugs her in front of a Ferris wheel; she has long hair and is missing a front tooth.
He graduates from high school and towers over Mary. He stops smiling in pictures, except in one where he’s kayaking with a boy who has dark, curly hair.
Soon he is always sitting, bent over desks, not looking at the camera. He rarely appears in pictures with Bridique, who is featured in her own set of photos, first with a group of three other girls, then with several different boys. B holds a certificate from NRCSE. He builds a snowman that wears suspenders, and Imms can see the smile underneath the scarf that covers most of B’s face, because it reaches up and catches his eyes.
B kisses the boy from the kayak in front of Mary’s house. He sleeps on the couch with a hand on his stomach. His name—his real name—is under many of the photos, the name of a man who existed for years without knowing Imms. Mary’s wrinkles deepen and Bridique’s hair gets shorter. B and the kayak boy grow tan and brawny and move into the house where Imms lives now with B. They stand in the cluttered kitchen, B wearing an apron with a naked man’s muscled torso painted on it, and the dark-haired man wearing an apron with a bikini-clad woman’s body on it.
Imms doesn’t feel sad, but he doesn’t feel happy either. He feels quiet, like he could sit for a long time with these books and they would start to breathe. Then Imms and the books could match their breathing and forget the rest of the world.
“I love him.” Imms doesn’t even mean to say it out loud.
Mary closes her eyes, as though this causes her the same slow flood of pain as her arthritis. “I know.”
“I can love him,” Imms says. “I’ve always been able to.”
“Of course you can.” Mary says. “And you do. I never doubted that.”
“I—” Imms has to stop because his throat is suddenly thick. He thinks he must look like a snake that’s swallowed an egg. He makes himself say the words in his head before he says them out loud, “I didn’t save him.”
He doesn’t know if Mary understands what he means. The news has said for so long that Imms saved B. That a Silver risked its life for a human. And it’s a lie. If Channel 5 airs the interview, everyone will know.
Mary stares at Imms until his eyes meet hers, until she has his full attention. “I think you did,” she says.
They’re quiet after that. Imms flips through the pictures until Bridique gets back with Lady. Lady jumps out of Brid’s arms and runs to Imms. She gets on Imms’s lap and Imms lies back on the couch, holding her close. “Is B home?” Imms asks. From the corner of his eye, he sees Bridique and Mary look at each other.
“No,” Brid says.
Imms lets Lady lick traces of dinner off his mouth. “‘He’s in six kinds of trouble,’” Imms says. It’s a quote from Tin Star and Thunder Sam, and Imms wishes B were here to hate it.
“I like seeing you two here,” Mary says quietly. Imms and Lady both look at her. “You belong here. This—” she pats one of the photo albums. “You have it, too. All right, Imms? A family.”
Brid sits on the edge of the couch next to him. “Whatever happens, we’ll help you.” She bumps him. “We’ll hide you if we have to.”
Imms shakes his head. “I’m not hiding anymore.”
Silvers go into the ground and into lakes. They avoid danger. They run from humans. They are fast, good at vanishing, at closing their eyes, at pretending there is no danger. Creatures on Earth fight for what they want. B told him that a long time ago.
Imms is not getting onboard the Breakthrough II, or going to live at NRCSE, or meeting different handlers. He is going to stay right here, like he promised B he would. And if anyone tries to hurt B, Imms will protect him—even if he has to take blood.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Only one house on Mary and Brid’s street has daffodils. Imms wonders if the neighbors are jealous. This isn’t something he would have wondered a few months ago. Jealousy wasn’t
something he thought about. But he is different now.
The new handler points out something on the other side of the street, but Imms has to watch Mary and Bridique’s house go by. The new handler has said Imms can still see Mary and Bridique on occasion. But not yet. She says first he should spend some time away from them, meeting new people.
He has lived with the new handler for a week and refuses to remember her name. She is nice enough—long brown ponytail, rimless glasses. She lives with her husband and two sons, who are sixteen and fourteen. The sixteen-year-old doesn’t like video games. The fourteen-year-old isn’t good at them. They both like science. They invited Imms to look at their basement lab, but Imms refused, and the new handler wrote down that he refused. She was nice about it, though.
He doesn’t want to know her name because he will be leaving soon. He hasn’t been able to leave yet because the new handler watches him all the time and has an even bigger entourage on her property than B had.
“Do you need anything from the store?” she asks.
“No,” he replies. She makes him fix all his own meals. As a result, he gets away with not eating much. Just a lot of apples. And pears. He loves pears more than apples now.
They drive home. The boys are doing homework at the table. It is only four o’ clock. Imms knows from Dave and his friends that doing homework any time other than five minutes before it’s due is for nerds. Still, he asks if they need help with math, and the older boy asks him the square root of two hundred and fifty-six. Imms answers instantly.
“Stop,” the new handler says. “They need to do the work themselves.” It is always his fault, never the boys’, when they ask him something and he answers. The other day, the fourteen year-old asked him what a BJ was, and Imms told him. The new handler documented the incident angrily.
The new handler’s phone buzzes. She fishes it out of her pocket and checks who’s calling. She sighs and answers. “Hello?”
“Put Imms on,” Bridique’s voice says loudly on the other end.
“This isn’t a good time,” the handler says, glancing at Imms.
“It’s a plenty good time, it’s a goddamn emergency.”
“What is it?”
“Put him the hell on!”
The new handler hands the phone to Imms.
“Hello,” he says.
“Thank god. What a lousy bitch. Can she hear me?”
“I think so. I could hear you.” Imms glances at the new handler, who is pretending to sort mail.
“Go into another room. I don’t want her to hear this.”
Imms retreats into the den. “Okay.”
“Okay. I went to Grena’s.”
“And?”
“Let me make sure I’ve got this right. I wrote it all down, but backwards, in case anyone finds it. I’m kidding. You go to NRCSE as scheduled on Monday morning. Nine o’ clock?”
“Right.”
“At nine forty-five, there’s going to be a diversion.”
“A diversion?”
“You’ll see. Once you’re out of the natatorium, Grena will meet you and take you to the underground lair where they’re keeping my brother.”
B’s not in jail exactly. He is being held at NRCSE in one of the rooms that used to be barracks in the military base. In that hallway Imms passed through when the NRCSuckers took him to be interviewed. Brid said it’s more like a crappy hotel room than a prison. “Think house arrest in an Econolodge,” she’d told him.
For three hours each day, B has access to one of the fitness fields. “It’s the field closest to the river,” Brid said, “So he’s got a nice view through the chainlink.”
NRCSE is working with federal investigators and lawyers to try to settle things as quietly as possible. B has pled guilty to the cover up, and this means B might be able to strike a deal with the government.
“Okay,” Imms says.
“That’s as far as we got,” Brid says. “How you actually bust into his room without getting caught is a kink we’re still trying to work out. We’re assuming his room is monitored. Grena says she has an idea for how you might slip in, though.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Imms says.
“Okay. But the NRCSuckers will only be distracted by controlled chaos for so long. Once they realize you’re gone, B’s room’ll be one of the first places they’ll look.”
“I have to try.”
He tries not to feel guilty for lying to Brid. He told her he needs to see B, to talk to him. He asked her if she could get hold of Grena using the address from the book of cryptowords.
It’s true. He does need to see B. But he has no intention of letting B stay at NRCSE, and no intention of going back to the new handler.
“Grena didn’t lie,” Brid says. “She admitted her role in the cover up to the investigators. But they need her for this new mission, so she’ll get off easy. My oh-so-uncooperative brother won’t be so lucky.”
“Is it bad?”
“Well, they haven’t thrown him in prison or hooked electrodes to his balls, and they allow him more than one phone call. I think he’ll come out of this in one piece.” She doesn’t sound sure.
“Brid—”
“Monday at nine forty-five. Tell the bitch I had to ask you what shoes to wear with gaucho pants.”
She hangs up.
*
At nine forty-five on Monday, Imms is at the swimming pool ready to dive in when Dave Welbert enters the natatorium, wearing a white coat. He hurries over to Violet Cranbrim and the other NRCSuckers. Imms is surprised to see Dave there, and even more surprised to see him dressed like a doctor, but he’s fairly certain he should keep his mouth shut.
“Hey,” Dave says to Violet. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m with Biomed. Dr. Hwong’s been monitoring Imms’s heart’s trajectory this morning, and noticed something—” Dave lowers his voice, but still stage whispers, “off. Probably nothing to worry about, but Dr. Hwong wants to check him out right away. I’m supposed to bring him to the medical center.”
One of the NRCSuckers glances at the badge clipped to Dave’s coat. Violet calls to Imms, who leaves the edge of the pool where the blue water laps his toes. Violet smiles at him. She is still kind to him, even after finding out he loves B. Some of the NRCSuckers, though they remain indifferent and professional within his hearing, don’t like him anymore. Devin, who drives the jeep, said once if NRCSE had any sense, they’d put Imms down. He didn’t know Imms was listening. Or maybe he did.
“Get dressed,” Violet says. “Dr. Hwong needs to see you.”
Imms glances at Dave, who offers him a very small nod. Imms goes to the changing area and puts on his clothes. He hopes he doesn’t really have to see Dr. Hwong. He searches for his heart, and finds it near his left hip, on but faint. He slips his shoes on and goes back to the pool. Dave motions for Imms to follow him and leads him out of the pool and down the corridor toward the medical center.
“What do you think?” Dave whispers as they walk. He pinches the white coat. “Not bad, huh?”
“How did you—?”
“Grena. Nicked the coat and the badge off an intern.”
“Are we really going to the doctor’s?”
“Nope. But Biomed’s on the way to the old military barracks. Grena’s gonna meet us in just a minute.”
They round a corner, following the arrow on a sign for the medical center. Suddenly Dave pulls Imms into a small alcove with a door marked NO ADMITTANCE. “We wait here.”
After a moment, they hear someone coming down the hall. Imms feels a flash of fear. What if it’s not Grena?
But it is. She wears a black suit and still looks thin. She thanks Dave and directs him toward a side door close to the visitor parking lot. She and Imms face each other.
“I can lead you to his room,” she says. “That’s all. I don’t know the code to get in.”
He nods. “Just show me where he is.”
They go through the NO ADMITTANCE door and cross a wide, clutte
red room with a cracked concrete floor. The room looks like it’s full of junk. He tells Grena so. “NRCSE’s storage closet,” she confirms. At the back of the room is another door, and it takes them into a hall that is white, just like NRCSE’s other corridors, but somehow softer, less headache-inducing. It has thin, coarse carpet in a blue diamond pattern, and the lights on the ceiling are smaller and gentler than the long fluorescent tubes in most of the building. The doors are lined with rivets and painted a deep red, with numbered pads below their knobs like the pads by the Byzantine’s doors.
Grena reaches out and tugs him to a stop. “He’s in 142. That’s just around the corner. There are surveillance cameras in the hall. I’d recommend…” She leads him to a door marked STAFF ONLY and pushes it open. Inside are bottles of cleaning supplies, jugs of bleach and laundry detergent, and a large yellow bin on wheels containing a pile of white sheets. “The laundry cart. Housekeeping staff makes their rounds at eleven. You could hide under the sheets. You might be able to slip into his room that way. That’s the best I could come up with.”
“Who lives down here?” Imms asks.
“Some of the interns. Visiting researchers. Employees who spend so much time here it’s pointless for them to go home. Criminals.” She tries to grin.
Imms stares at the cart. He has been sneaky before. He got back into B’s room on the Byzantine after B kicked him out. He went to Rose Sanctuary with Brid, and the entourage didn’t even know he was gone.
“There’ll be a camera in B’s room,” Grena says. “Motion sensitive. It might swing toward the door when housekeeping opens it. It’ll record the main room. There won’t be a camera in the bathroom, I’m fairly certain.”
“Okay.”
“B goes to one of the outdoor training fields three hours a day, for exercise and rec. I’m not sure what time.”
Imms nods.
“Be careful. You don’t have much time. Eventually someone’s going to realize you’re not at Biomed.”
He looks at her and wishes he knew how to tell her what she means to him. In a way, he owes her a greater debt than B. “Thank you,” he says.
