Stay

by Nicola Griffith

  “Heat would be better,” I said. “There’s a hot pack in one of the storage bays. Stick it in the microwave.” She pulled the blanket up to my chest. “Why is it so cold in here?”

  “Because there’s not a lot of propane left, and I didn’t know how long you were going to be sick.”

  “What about the solar panels?”

  She just gestured at the window: heavy overcast.

  I nodded. “When you get the hot pack, bring the first aid kit, too. Please.”

  She raised her eyebrows at the “Please,” but brought the kit back with the hot pack. “I turned the heat up.” We unbandaged the knee. “Looks painful.”

  “It is,” I said shortly, then swore as she nudged it positioning the hot pack.

  “You hold it, then.” I did. She brought me a glass of water and two pills.

  “No more Vicodin.”

  “They’ll help with the pain.”

  “I don’t want any more Vicodin.” Pain reduces everyone to childishness. It reduces, full stop.

  She put pills and glass on the table and gave me a look that said, You’re crazy.

  “I do want to take a look at my throat, though.”

  I told her what I needed, and when she had the warm water and Band-Aids and mirror assembled, I put the hot pack aside and unwrapped the thin towel around my neck.

  The cut was about three inches long, not deep, but wide. When I turned my head this way and that, it gaped and seeped at the center. I set about the grim business of cleaning it.

  “Are you going to leave it unwrapped like that?”

  “I’m letting the skin around it dry so I can put some Band-Aids on.” Steri-Strips would have been better, but I didn’t have any. I picked up the scissors and cut chunks out of two sides of a Band-Aid so that what was left looked a bit like a very short dumbbell. I peeled away the sterile backing and put it over the slash in my neck so that the edges of the cut were pulled together. Instant butterfly suture. I did it all twice more. It shouldn’t scar too badly. Then I smeared antibiotic ointment over the seam and dabbed some on my face, and the backs of my hands.

  “I don’t see why you don’t just go to the doctor.”

  “Hospitals are … they have bad associations for me.”

  She gave me a jaded look. “Like they don’t for everyone else?”

  After a moment I said, “I didn’t take that last antibiotic you were trying to give me, did I?”

  “No.” She brought the glass of water back and pulled the bottle out of her pocket again. “How did you get all this stuff, anyway?”

  “I asked my doctor.”

  “You said, ‘Hey, doc, I kill people for a living and sometimes they fight back, so can I have pills and stuff, in case?’ ”

  “I don’t, and he didn’t. Fight back.”

  “Then—”

  “It was later. I got careless.” Which wouldn’t happen when I went to Arkansas for the girl. That trip would be planned down to the last detail, no more mistakes. No one would ever know I’d been there, until the girl went missing. I wrapped my neck again.

  “So? How did you get her to give you the drugs?”

  “Him.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I travel all over, sometimes to remote areas. If you’re somewhere like Kamchatka and get a compound fracture, you can’t just phone a pharmacy. There might not be a doctor for several hundred miles. He gives me prescriptions so I’ll always have antibiotics, and morphine, and a few other things.”

  “You’ve got morphine in there?”

  “I used it up, in Norway.”

  “Norway again.”

  I blinked. Pain might chew away at your defenses until you said whatever came into your head, but obviously the narcotic-based Vicodin had been worse. “Pass the heating pad, please.” She did.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s helping much.”

  It wasn’t.

  “Changed your mind about the Vicodin?”

  I started to shake my head, hissed as my neck pulled and the throbbing in my scalp started up again.

  “Right, what was I thinking? Of course it’s better to grind your teeth and make the veins in your forehead stick out in pain than to take a couple of pills. Great. Fantastic. Especially the part where you start to get mean and shout at me again. Can’t wait.”

  I didn’t want to babble my head off again about Julia. Julia was mine. Had been mine. Julia?

  Tammy stood up. “I’ll make us something to eat.”

  Julia?

  Tammy banged and clattered resentfully in the kitchen. The pain in my knee slid like a superficial warm layer over the terrible ache deep in a part of me I couldn’t reach, couldn’t even name.

  “Listen,” I said.

  Bang, clatter.

  “Tammy—”

  She turned, snapped “I’m doing soup,” and went back to stirring.

  “Listen. I need you to listen. We met in Atlanta. They were trying to kill her but I said I’d keep her safe. She was paying me to help her find out who killed her friend. But that wasn’t why I was doing it, although I didn’t know that. Well, I did, but I’d never loved anyone before. We went to Norway—”

  Tammy looked up from her soup. “Norway?”

  “—I thought it would be safer there.” Home was supposed to be safe. “She had business in Oslo, but when we went to Lustrafjord, it wasn’t business anymore.”

  Tammy left her soup and sat on the foot of the bed.

  I tried to explain how I’d shown Julia who I was by taking her to the seter, the farm where I’d spent my childhood summers, but it came out sounding like a bad romance: boats on the fjord, sun on the water, flowers on the fjell. “She went back to Oslo for a meeting. One of the killers came for me by the glacier lake. He shot me.”

  I rolled up the left sleeve of my T-shirt. The bullet had hit my shoulder blade, bounced a bit, and traveled down the underside of my arm. The scar was pink and puckered, no longer an ugly purple red.

  She looked at it. “You could have that fixed.”

  “He shot me, so I broke his legs and left him to die. There was no choice because I couldn’t call the police to help him, or to help Julia, because if they found him they’d detain me, stop me from helping her.” I’ll protect you, I’d said. “So I did it, left him without a second thought.”

  But I didn’t help her. I went to the blue place, forgot that it wasn’t just me against them. Forgot that Julia was in the middle.

  “I killed the ones in Oslo, too. They weren’t real people. No one is. Was. So I killed them, but not before they—Anyway, she died. And I haven’t thought about them, the killers that I killed, not really.” I ran my fingers down the bullet track. Physical pain was easy to deal with. “The people I’ve killed were just objects, things to be removed. They only mattered as far as how they affected me. Everything, everyone used to be like that. Not anymore. Do you understand?”

  She shook her head.

  “She opened me, and now it’s all different. I feel different. I do things differently, like with Karp.”

  “You still haven’t told me about that.”

  “I don’t understand why I did it. I don’t understand it at all. Rage. I’ve never felt it before, not really.”

  She looked skeptical.

  “Mostly I would feel a kind of disgust, and irritation. I would look at them and think, You’re in my way, and I’d move them aside. Like moving a chair.” I thought about it. “Or like twisting the barrel of a rifle, breaking it so it can’t be used against you. I felt some annoyance, maybe. Not rage. People weren’t worth getting angry about.”

  Neither of us said anything for a minute. It should have been getting warmer by now.

  “You’re not wearing your watch,” I said.

  She glanced at the pale band around her wrist. “No.” Silence. “So I still don’t know what happened with Karp.”

  “It was Julia. A woman who looked like her. Except she didn’t, not really. It just—I
was thinking about her, then I came out of his loft, and there they were. She ran. I hit him so he couldn’t breathe, took all the fight from him, then dragged him into the elevator and hit him again. Beat him. Hands, elbows, knees, feet.” My bones began to fill with lead again. I felt heavy enough to sink through the bed, through the floor of the trailer, into the dirt.

  After a moment she said, “Did it hurt him?”

  “Yes.” My knee hurt so much I couldn’t think. “Something’s burning.”

  She jumped up, ran into the kitchen. “Shit.” She turned off the stove and came and sat down again. “That’s it for the soup.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Knee?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s always the Vicodin.”

  I was talking anyway. I nodded tiredly. The bed shifted as she leaned, handed me pills and glass.

  The water was cold, and ached all the way down my gullet. “She loved me. She wouldn’t now, not like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this.” I thumped the mattress. “If she were here she’d say he was a monster who would have just kept hurting people, and that he deserved what he got. She’d probably even try to believe it, but—” If I wanted, I could remember every creak and pop and spatter.

  “So now you’re saying he wasn’t a monster?”

  “No, he was. Is.”

  “Okay. Then you think he wouldn’t have kept hurting people?”

  “Of course he would have kept doing it!”

  “Don’t yell. I told you you’d get mean if you didn’t take those pills. I’m just trying to figure this out. Geordie Karp was a sick son of a bitch and I’m glad you hurt him. He probably deserved everything he got.”

  “Yes, but how do you stand it, every day, not being sure? Even you’re saying ‘probably.’ I never used to feel this way.”

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You used to kill people and not care about it much one way or another. But you’re upset about Geordie—even though he’s not dead, and even though you hurt him for a good reason. Yes? You’re upset that you feel when you practically kill someone?” She waited for my nod. “You don’t think that’s an improvement?”

  “She said that I was like Karp.” That I used to be. That I pretended to be.

  “She said—?” She cleared her throat. “So she died, when?”

  “Five months and four days ago.” And a few hours: it had been midafternoon.

  “And you saw Geordie for the first time in New York just this week.”

  I nodded, shivered.

  “But you said she told you—That she said you were like Geordie.” I shook my head. “Someone else said that?”

  “No. She just asked me who he reminded me of.”

  “And that was … when?”

  “Three days ago.” Or two, or four, or whenever I’d been under the trees.

  “That’s who was in the woods, wasn’t it? You see Julia.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence. Then she said, “What’s that like?” and my muscles locked up. Nothing worked, except my eyes. I wept soundlessly. I couldn’t even turn away.

  She got up, sat down again, stared some more, and after a while hitched herself closer and pulled me awkwardly to her chest. She didn’t say anything, just stroked my head. The touch of her hand was like someone taking an axe to a dam; I wrapped my arms around her waist and keened. I hated her for not being Julia, but I couldn’t let go, and I couldn’t stop. Her hand went on stroking my head, and I wanted to shout, Stop! No! This is mine!, but that touch just kept widening the breach.

  “She’ll never see this place,” I said. “You have, but she never will. I’ve never seen her grave. I should have stayed, in Atlanta. Should have helped her mother. Seen to her things.” Her clothes still lying on the floor in front of my washing machine.

  It was getting dark out, and quiet. Tammy shifted, the couch creaked; her shoulders looked tight and tired. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, smearing the ointment. I didn’t want to talk anymore.

  “I think I can make it to my own bed, if you help. The bathroom first.”

  I used the toilet again, brushed my teeth, paused in the middle of wiping my mouth with the towel. It wasn’t my face anymore. It wasn’t just the smudges under my eyes, the smears of antibiotic, the scab. The muscles moved differently, as though someone else’s bones were trying to emerge.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Morning. I hobbled out of bed, made coffee, took it and the blood-stained folder to the table. Tammy was still asleep. I leafed through the documents. The pictures. The medical evaluation. The passport, the birth certificate and certificate of adoption. Karp was the legal adoptive father. No mention of permanent residency application, and the visitor’s visa had expired. I had no idea what the INS would make of that. No mention of the Arkansas couple on any official paperwork, though I found check stubs I had missed the first time around, records of bimonthly payments to J. Carpenter. There was no photo of either Jud or Adeline Carpenter, no hint of their age or anything but the fact that they were “good Christians who believed in old-fashioned family values,” and some details about the congregation they belonged to. What would they do now that Karp was permanently out of the picture and the money supply dried up? What would happen to the child?

  I pushed it all to one side, took my coffee to the door, and opened it. It was a bright, cold morning. The season had shifted. The vibrant color of a week ago had faded and everywhere I looked bare branches poked through the threadbare tapestry. Careful of my strapped and swollen knee, I propped myself more securely against the doorframe. My coffee and breath steamed. During the night, fog had frozen on the fallen leaves and spiky turf, riming the world in sparkling hoarfrost. Something small had left tracks across the gray carpet, and while I watched the tracks expanded as the sun warmed the ground. Where a bird had hopped about on the hood of the rented Neon, bright green showed through.

  “How’s your knee?”

  I turned awkwardly. Tammy looked tired and frowsy in her pile of blankets.

  “It’ll take my weight. But I’ll have to keep it strapped for a while. Coffee’s hot.”

  “What I really liked about you being away was being able to sleep past dawn.”

  We silently contemplated everything that had happened since I left: Tammy writhing on tape; my hands red and dripping; telling her what I’d told no one about Julia; asking for help—and getting it from a most unlikely and mostly unliked person.

  “Stay in bed,” I said. “I’ll bring you a cup.” I closed the door, stumped into the galley, poured and stirred, and stumped more slowly back.

  She nodded her thanks. I took my coffee back to the table and sat. Neither of us said anything for a while.

  “So,” she said. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know.” It would take some time to understand the shape of the change between us, so I ignored it for now. “I have to make some phone calls. You may as well stay in bed and enjoy your coffee.”

  The first person I called was my lawyer. Her personal assistant picked up.

  “Ms. Torvingen! Ms. Fleishman’s been trying to get in touch with you for a couple of weeks now. Hold just one moment and I’ll get her on the line.” A click, followed by Bette Fleishman’s velvety, young-sounding voice. A great voice, especially if you were really sixty-two and as brittle as a praying mantis. “Aud Torvingen, the original mysterious disappearing woman. How are you, girl? I’ve been calling your machine and leaving messages for a month it feels like. There’s some few year-end matters that need to be taken care of before—”

  “Are they urgent?”

  “If you mean urgent as in life-or-death, hell no, but they might save you a dime or two if you could get them tidied up before the end of the tax year.”

  “Just use your best judgment, Bette. I’ll be in before the end of the year to sign anything you think I should. But for now I need some information about adoption an
d immigration law.”

  “Outside my area of competence.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But if you let me finish my thought, I know just the person you should talk to. Great guy, crackerjack, a real immigration hotshot.” I imagined Bette flipping through her Rolodex, which she swore was faster and more reliable than a computer. “Name of Solomon C. Poorway. Believe he goes by Chuck.” She gave me the number. “Make sure he knows I sent you. And Aud, I know you’re in a hellfire rush, but don’t forget about coming in before year-end.”

  I dialed the number she’d given me and was soon speaking to a contained, careful-sounding man. I outlined Luz’s situation: her age, visa status, the fact that she was in private, unofficial foster care and her adoptive parent was dead—or as good as. Poorway asked me a few questions about nationality, date of entry, and so forth. “Not an ideal situation,” he said, with lawyerly understatement. “With the visitor’s visa expired, adoptive father dead, and no permanent residency applied for, she is technically an illegal alien. If her existence is called to the attention of the INS, they’ll deport her.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “She needs to be adopted by someone else. Then have the adoptive parents and child live together for two years, after which you can apply for permanent residency—the green card—and social security number.”

  “How do I do that if she’s an illegal alien?”

  “That will take some thinking about.”

  Tammy got up and headed for the shower.

  “What about citizenship?” I asked him.

  “Once the child has permanent residency, the adoptive adult can apply for naturalization.”

  “So what you’re saying is we really have to find a way to get her adopted.”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  I had the original adoption certificate. A template. I knew some creative people. “And how carefully is such documentation scrutinized?”

  A pause. A long pause. “It’s not so much the physical documentation as the electronic trail.” A diplomatic way of saying that forging the certificate won’t do you much good unless you can hack State Department computers.

  Perhaps the problem could be tackled from the other end. “Suppose the adoptive parent had applied for the green card for the child before he died. What would happen to the application then?”