Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  I shrug and sniffle and try to look humble. These egregious pinch-faced savages were still using paper files and floppy disks when I got here; ushering in 2001 really didn’t take much.

  “And you spent the last six months in . . . let me see . . . Dbradsk. Did I say that right?”

  Butchered it. “Yes, Dr. Shrug.”

  “Shrug-Brannigan.” He forces a smile to ward away the awkwardness. It fails. “That’s a city?”

  “District,” I say. “Eastern Siberia.”

  His mouth drops like he didn’t already know that. “I mean . . . Caitlin, that is just, that is amazing. I mean, Siberia. Wow. Fantastic.”

  Forever snow, forever ice; a slow, never-ending death; vodka that shreds your throat going down and burns coming back up; husky, bearded lovers with giant trembling hands; stacks and stacks of files; resentful, traumatized volunteers; and Monica Tannenbaum, an Australian aid worker who got too curious. I had to do it myself; those big burly men that climbed over themselves to prove their worth to me turned out to be tepid simps when it came to actually accomplishing things. Monica’s eyes kept pleading with me long after they’d dulled. The snow landed on her face and she stopped fighting; her mouth just hung open. Still I squeezed.

  You have to finish things you start.

  No one else will do it for you.

  “It was quite a trip!” I flash a smile through the sniffles.

  “And you brought the weather back with you.” He gestures to the window, where snow spirals through the night against the sparkling Manhattan skyline. “Mr. Byron says you’ve had the agency tighten security protocols and block access to all employee and adoptee files.”

  Mr. Byron is a tragic waste of humanity shoved into a useless sack of skin.

  “There were some . . . incidents,” I manage. “In Siberia, I mean.”

  Monica Tannenbaum’s bulging eyes went dull. Still I squeezed. For all the fuss and hubbub, taking a life really comes down to tenacity. It’s like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books Jeremy and I would read when we were kids. If you want to snuff out this meddlesome Aussie bitch: keep squeezing. If you want to let her live and then watch as everything you’ve worked so hard to build comes crashing around you in a blaze of self-righteous Australian fury: release.

  Simple, really.

  I take another tissue. Sully it. “You know how the Russian mafia is.”

  Dr. Shrug-Brannigan nods, brow furrowed, then shakes his head. “Terrible.”

  “The worst, Doctor. And of course, they have a long reach. Long fingers, they call the Russians. It’s a metaphor of course, but you know . . . well, you never know. All that cabbage, I think.”

  He nods again, writes something down. Of course, the real reason for my security precautions is right here in this city. For a sudden, startling moment, I have the urge to just tell Dr. Shrug-B everything—the whole twisted truth with all its monsters and phantoms. I would spit it all out in an unrelenting monologue and then just laugh while Eldwin here gapes. And then they’d lock me away forever, and that would never do.

  Still, the notion has a certain devilish appeal.

  “Let me ask you a question, Caitlin. How have you been sleeping?”

  “Oh, ha, you know . . . the truth is, not well.” The truth is, I’ve never slept so well. My little sideroom on the island is surprisingly cozy, and the silence? Divine. On a night like this, I could hear the snow fall. And the darkness back there is complete. I shut out the light and the heater’s single red eye glares out of the black, but otherwise: nothing.

  Bliss.

  Of course, women who lost their whole family less than a year ago aren’t supposed to sleep well. We’re supposed to be weepy, angst filled, skittish. So I sniffle again, wipe my nose, and shrug. “I sleep some nights. Others . . .” I shake my head and tent one hand over my eyes.

  The only nights I don’t sleep well are when I’m with Raj, but who ever finds peace beside another human? We’re such a foul and unpredictable breed, and in sleep there’s no chance to tuck all that away. In one night, Raj will snore, fart, make little smacking noises—a fucking symphony—and that’s not even to speak of the smells. But somehow, people do it—spend their lives doing it. I figure the appeal must grow somehow; at some point, it’ll become familiar, just what is. That’s how these things work, isn’t it? It’s a small price to pay.

  “It’s a small price to pay,” I say.

  “Not sleeping?” the doctor asks, cocking an eyebrow. “What is it exactly that you are paying for, Caitlin?”

  What indeed? That normal life, I suppose. The one my parents did such a stand-up job of pretending to have, with their lovely suburban Queens home and roachlord son. It’s filthy, a shimmering, impossible dullness that radiates outward, metastasizing in mediocre waves across everyone and everything. But still, I crave it. In some deep part of me, I crave it. All this phantom intrigue gets old after a while, especially now that Jeremy’s gone and Monica Tannenbaum’s eyes keep going dull in front of me while I squeeze. And squeeze. Her bowels emptied out as she died, like one final fuck-you to me for killing her.

  “Nothing,” I whisper in a choked sob. “Just you know . . . surviving. I guess.”

  Shrug-B tut-tuts, his brow furrowed. One wisp of his comb-over has come free and flails back and forth like one of those giant floppy phalluses they use to advertise car washes.

  “I’m writing you a prescription, Caitlin. You can pick it up at the pharma-desk across the hall. Sylflax is relatively new on the market, but the results have been excellent. It’s a combined antianxiety and ACE inhibitor, which of course simply means it will make you feel better and hopefully help you sleep without actually making you drowsy.” He opens a wide, grandfatherly smile at me like I’m ten.

  This is unexpected and potentially fun. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Just make sure you don’t drink any alcohol while you’re taking it, and don’t take more than one every four to six hours, with a meal. Okay, dear?” He tears the script off and hands it to me. “And hopefully I’ll see you next week.”

  “Yes,” I say airily. “Hopefully.”

  —

  The Mexican girl at the pharma-counter looks about fourteen. I smile at her when I hand over the script.

  She doesn’t smile back.

  “We’ve done a lot of work in Mexico at the adoption agency,” I say, smiling even harder. “What part are you from?”

  “South Central,” she says.

  “Oh, Oaxaca? We actually brought a grou—”

  “Los Angeles.” Her glare sharpens, then she heads to the back for my drugs.

  I make a mental note to be sure we don’t get any of her family members adopted if they should ever try. When she returns, I glance at her name tag: “Dr. Simone Hernandez, PhD.” Guess they’re handing out degrees to any teenager that comes sniffing at the gates these days.

  She smiles when she hands me the bag. “Don’t drink alcohol when—”

  “And one every four hours—I got it.” I snatch the meds.

  —

  In the elevator, I pop open the little orange canister and shove a handful of pills into my mouth. By the time I reach Luther’s to meet the gals, I’m feeling right. Like, real right. I see I’m going to have to make it to my appointment next week after all, if nothing else to cry up a storm and get some more interesting little pills prescribed. Around me the city moves in slow, luxurious swaths of color, each hazy traffic light and blinking street sign a dancing tidal wave in the ebb and flow of Midtown’s never-ending electrosymphonic bluster. Snow twirls and dances through the lights, speeds along in a clutch of wind through the great steel Manhattan corridors, and then swooshes upward like a billion particles of some formless superhero. And I’m one with it, entirely given over. For once, Monica Tannenbaum’s bulging eyes, Jeremy’s torn body sinking beneath the da
rk water, Carlos Delacruz’s snarl—they all fade, swept away in a snowy deluge and then scattered amidst the polyrhythmic flashes of this living, trembling city on this singular night.

  “You are late, bitch!” Samantha yells when I walk in. The other two cackle wildly and then rush to kiss my cheeks.

  “A bourbon and a shot of vodka,” I tell the waiter. Luther’s swirls around me: dim, burnt-umber wood stain and old Guinness ads and drunken assholes and a football game on the screens. At the back, a pool table. Men who will say anything to sleep with you, men who are terrified of sleeping with you, men who will drug you to sleep with you. And my girls, Samantha, Gillian, Brittany. All from the adoption agency, all hilarious bitches once you get them out of the office and into the bar. Otherwise, drab and useless as three-day-old oatmeal with too much milk.

  “I told Barry that he has three days to get his shit together,” one of them says. Brittany, I think. I’m long past being able to tell them apart. “And do you know what he said?”

  “Suck my uncircumcised dick!” another yells in a voice I can only imagine must approximate Barry’s.

  “No!” Brittany slaps her shoulder. “Oliver is the uncircumcised one! You’re such a cunt.”

  We all burst out laughing, and momentarily my face becomes a disparate mass of spittle and brain matter exploding outward into the bar around me, coating the walls and these women and the lonely souls and rapists and busboys with cerebellum and skull. Then I blink as solidity returns, and no one’s staring at me, so I guess my head didn’t explode after all, but I am drooling, I realize, touching my own mouth and quickly wiping away the dribble. I finish the bourbon and hold up the vodka.

  “To Oliver and Barry!” I yell. That gets ’em excited. It’s easy really. The names were just mentioned, so they’re right there on everyone’s mind. It’s not funny, but it is, because we all get it and laugh, and most of us probably had no idea someone named Barry or Oliver actually existed in Brittany’s—let’s be honest—pretty tepid and shallow life up till just now. If she had told us before, we forgot as soon as possible, because really, what use is that information to me—why allow it to share quarters in this mind with so many actually important thoughts?

  “To Olly and Baliver,” Samantha suggests. That was a good one, Samantha, and I kind of wish I’d said it but am content to have been part of the run-up, and anyway we’re all cackling now and our glasses clink with a satisfying splash when half our drinks ends up on the sticky tabletop, and then Gillian, I think it’s Gillian, puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Does Raj have a big dick? I’ve always wondered that about Indian men.”

  I have to fight not to splortch my drink across the table, and then all the elements of that moment—Gillian’s question and the unexpected upswing of hilarity it ignites inside of me—combine, and once I manage to swallow I realize with a gasp that I’m happy. Truly happy. Authentically present and alive and with my . . . my friends.

  “Well, I guess that’s a yes!” Sam cackles, mistaking my gasp for an answer. Then I cackle too and Brittany actually does splortch her drink, right on a passing waiter’s crotch.

  “Oh my God!” Brittany yells. “I can’t believe I just did that! You guys!”

  No one answers her, because we’re too busy cracking up.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” Brittany pleads with the empty space where the waiter was just standing.

  Sam, always ready with a clever joke, points out, “That was like a reverse facial, if you think about it.”

  “Oh my God, ew!” Brittany yells. “But yes! Oh-em-gee, yes!”

  “Because like, you spewed on his dick,” says Gillian, always ready with the overexplanation of Sam’s jokes.

  See? I know their little quirks and ticks, the oddities that make them who they are. They’re more than just a cover story now. Brittany is shaking her head, saying, “I wonder if I have to confess to Brolliver that I reverse facialed a waiter,” when Raj materializes in the crowd, and I wonder for a second if I didn’t accidentally conjure him up when I wasn’t paying attention.

  No, Caitlin Fern, you had told him to come meet you at the bar tonight, because you wanted to spend some time with your friends and then go home and hop on that beautiful brown penis for a while before lying awake listening to Raj snore, fart, and sigh his way through the night.

  No magic: I texted him earlier and then forgot.

  “Hey Ra-aj,” Samantha croons.

  “Rajmataj!” Gillian says in a robot voice.

  “Raj Mahal!” Brittany snickers.

  Raj smiles in that lopsided, charming way of his and waves. “Hey, ladies.”

  “You can’t just roll up in here all charming and hit us with the ‘Hey, ladies,’” Gillian says. Her Raj impression isn’t half-bad. “You gotta teach us some sexy yoga moves or something!”

  Raj forces a smile. “You say that every time I see you, Gillian.”

  “I do?” She looks legitimately stunned, which is weird because she does mention yoga every time Raj comes around and he’s told her he doesn’t know the first thing about yoga at least twelve thousand times. “Oh my God, is that racist? Shit!”

  The table is suddenly somber.

  “I don’t know,” Samantha says. “It doesn’t seem like you meant it in a racist way, and it wasn’t like mean? So I don’t think so.”

  Gillian and Brittany nod pensively. I down the vodka. “You want a drink, Raj?”

  “Actually, I was wondering if we could talk.” When everyone just stares at him, he adds, “Like, outside.”

  I stand, feeling strangely naked and furious at the same time. A furious naked woman, standing up in a crowded bar. My hands are so heavy, I have to concentrate on lifting them off the table and placing them into my pockets, then taking them out again because that’s just weird.

  “Outside?” Brittany says, not getting it. “But it’s snowing!”

  Sam, who always gets it, smacks her shoulder.

  And then we go—a two-person procession of shame, shoving through the sweating, guffawing, alcohol-soaked men and women for whom everything works and makes sense and is normal and right.

  A superhappy techno-pop ballad thunders out of the speakers, and I wonder why I hadn’t noticed the music before; it’s so loud, coats everything with its unceasing pulse and jabber. And then it’s just a tinny bass-laden blur because we’re outside and the snow is more like sleet, wet sheets of it, and Raj stands there in his long black overcoat and shiny shoes and moves his mouth around like he’s not sure how to dislodge the words from inside it.

  “I just . . . ,” he finally manages. Then he stops, like he wants to swallow even that back up.

  I shake my head, watch the city get wet.

  “It’s just not.”

  This is not what’s supposed to happen. I didn’t suffer through sleepless nights and snores, farts, and sighs for this. I’m Caitlin Fern, goddammit. I carry the last living fragments of the Blattodeon legacy in my blood. More importantly, I am Caitlin Elizabeth Fern—throng haints and ghostlings bend to my will. The mighty phantoms of Hell come crashing to their knees at my beck and call. I blanked all the pages and I wrote the book, and when the collective destinies of the Blattodeons shattered around me, I kept going anyway. I survived and fought off the demons of doubt and sorrow, and I took Monica Tannenbaum out into the snowdrifts when no one else would, and I kept squeezing when her eyes bulged and bowels emptied. I take life and I bring it at will. I rose from the tattered shitstain of my brother’s failure and constructed a new life. This Caitlin Elizabeth Fern, who sat alone in her room, age twelve, contemplating life and death and Jeremy’s destiny and my own and resolved to do what must be done, now, always, forever and ever, and then I, me, this Caitlin Elizabeth Fern, opened up to wild, impossible truth of spirits and the whole swirling phantom world, and I marked my resolve in blood, a single pinprick and then a sh
uddering globe at the tip of my finger—a smudge across the pink-lined paper of my diary and it was done.

  “I just don’t think.”

  I learned the ways and whims of spirits and how to slide along inside their cool, ethereal glow with my mind and bend them to my will. I did that.

  “I did that.” My voice a raspy growl. My throat already in shambles from the bourbon and vodka.

  “What?”

  “I did that. All of it. It’s mine.”

  Raj cocks his head to the side, face scrunched. “What is?”

  “All of this . . . These bitches. Mine.” I shake my head, because he doesn’t understand, could never understand, not even if I bothered being coherent. What’s the point? “I should’ve known.” I direct a withering scowl up and down his tall, adorable body, felt jacket now shimmering with precipitation.

  “Should’ve known what?” Exasperated now; he’d already planned for an uncomfortable convo, but definitely not this uncomfortable convo.

  If you go through the motions, the regular-people shit is supposed to work out. That’s what Mom taught me. Just pretend, Caitlin, she’d say, sitting on my bed while I sobbed my little middle school heart out. Watch what they do, and do it. You love to learn, deary. Her hands running through my hair, picking out a bit of lint, rubbing my back. Learn them. Know them, better than they know themselves. So you can be just like them. The rest will take care of itself. Be more them than they are, and then you can do what you need to with the family.

  “I did my part.” A whisper. The snow is a whisper, the passing cars a rude shushhhhh in the soaking streets, the cruel, brown sludge, the flashing lights, the pounding bass beat of the cruel techno-pop ballad that is droll, as this man standing before me is droll, with his investments and takeovers and endless explanations about his droll, unfortunate days and his somewhat less droll beautiful brown penis.

  “Bah!” I shove him aside, and then I’m marching through the street, the brown sludge, cars screeching and honking around me, rude, foul, incoherent, unappreciative, and in the way. “Get out of the way!” I hear myself yell at no one in particular and everyone ever.