Feral Recruit (Calm Act Book 5)

by Ginger Booth

  Ava stopped dead. In here, he hadn’t left the picture of her face-down. It wasn’t ancient history, either. Last July, on a sweltering day, they declared a holiday. They dressed up, Ava in a sweet little summer sun-dress, Frosty in shorts and unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt over a tank top. The Staten Island Ferry sailed a circle route, Chelsea Pier, Battery Park, Brooklyn, and back out to Staten Island, round and round. It cost nothing, and you could spend the whole day cool in the fresh sea breeze. They lucked out and caught a wedding in process at the front of the ferry, one of the hero engineers from Project Reunion. The wedding party set out a buffet, and shared it with the ordinary apple passengers.

  On the selfie, Frosty caught them both biting into juicy ripe strawberries from the buffet, suburban wedding guests in the background. Not gang leaders, but just happy kids having a romantic date for the day.

  They stayed on that ferry for hours. When the Coast Guard stewards broke down the wedding, they offered Ava and Frosty a bag of leftover strawberries and snap peas to bring back to the gang. They almost lost it to an Hispanic gang on the way back from the pier. But their backup arrived just in time to escort them home.

  That was the best day they had that year.

  No, it was the best day she had all year.

  There was a post-it note under the photo. Take one. Drawer. She opened the nightstand drawer to find he’d printed another copy, wallet-sized. On the back, he’d written, Love, Frosty. Ava tucked it carefully into her waist pack. She scrawled, Thank you, on the post-it note.

  On second thought, she teased the larger photo out of the frame, and wrote, Love, Ava. Then put it back as it belonged.

  I should go. But instead she drifted to their wardrobe, and peeked in. She smelled one of his shirts, and felt like an idiot. No, it didn’t smell like him. It was a freshly laundered shirt. Apparently they had washing machines now in Chelsea, too. She still leafed through all his clothes, remembering what he looked like in them. And putting them on. And taking them off.

  She opened the other side of the wardrobe, expecting more of the same. But he’d left her clothes there, her shoes, and a large empty shopping bag. She pulled out the pretty pin-tucked periwinkle dress she wore on the ferry that day. It still had strawberry stains. She held it to her bust and realized it wouldn’t fit her anymore. She might not be up to Army weight yet, but she’d gained ten pounds since July. The only things here that still fit her were shoes and socks.

  She opened the drawer. Another copy of the photo, five by seven, lay in there, on top of periwinkle panties and bra, new lacy satin lingerie. She feared the bra cup size was optimistic, even if she reached a hundred pounds. On the back of that photo, he’d written, Don’t forget me. Love, Cade.

  Mixed messages much, Frosty? Take your stuff, and oh here, sexy lingerie. What was she supposed to reply back with? She had half a mind to strip out of her Army exercise bra and leave it in the lingerie’s place.

  No. This was her stuff, still in his place, and it didn’t belong here. She packed it all into the shopping bag. The spare high-top orange sneakers and strappy summer sandals might come in handy sometime. The rest she’d probably hand into a used clothing store. But it was her job to sort it out, not his.

  Wiping a tear from her eye, she picked up a solar lamp and made her way into the bathroom. She couldn’t resist flushing the toilet, and running the shower. Of course, they worked in her place now, too, but still. What a lovely little love-nest this could have been with running water.

  She’d forgotten to pack her jewelry when she left. Sure enough, the three-drawer Japanese cloisonné jewelry box, inlaid with peacocks, still sat in the corner of the vanity counter, without a speck of dust on it. In slow motion, she opened each drawer to look at past treasures.

  She left Washington Square Apartments two years ago with little more than the clothes on her back. Every bit of this jewelry was either a gift from Frosty, or chosen with an eye to pleasing him. Her eye caught on simple gold stud earrings with tiny chips of some pale aqua gemstone.

  I could almost wear those, he said. One of them, anyway.

  She took the jewelry box, and left the one ear stud in its place.

  She opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, and wished she hadn’t. That’s a lot of drugs, Frosty. When she lived here, the tiny shelves housed toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving creams and razors, band-aids and antibiotic ointment, aspirin. Pink bismuth to control the perennial diarrhea of the Starve, from eating dubious things, undercooked. They kept the full gang pharmacopeia down in the dojo. The stuff in the apartment was to handle minor upsets at night, things too minor to bother with a trip downstairs. Now he’d supplemented with antacids, sleeping pills, oxycontin and other opiates, even laxatives. Now there was something they never needed during the Starve.

  She closed the cabinet softly, leaving it undisturbed.

  She should go. She was taking too much time from Puño and Fakhir and Maz. She put the lamp back where it belonged, closed the drapes, and found the post-it pad. Be well, Cade. Hope to hear from you. Love, Ava.

  Nothing else in this room was hers anymore. Including him.

  Back in the dojo, Ava and Maz surprised themselves by giving each other a sincere good-bye hug.

  “You going to tell me I’m welcome back anytime?” she joked.

  “No,” he assured her. “Keep in touch, though.”

  “Do you think he’s coming back?”

  “Not really. If it didn’t work out, he’d be back already.”

  “Right. You keep in touch, too. I care, Maz. About you, too.”

  “Yeah. Knock ’em dead in the Army, squirt.”

  Puño and Fakhir walked her down to 14th Street, out of Chelsea, and parted with hugs as well.

  21

  Interesting fact: Before the Epidemic, New York City was 33% Catholic, 26% other Christian, 24% no religion, 14% Jewish, and 3% other faiths, including Muslim.

  “Way too cold for this, Panic,” Guzman greeted her, perched on the steps of St. Anthony’s. He remained standing, hands deep in a wool overcoat. “Did you see? We opened a coffee shop.”

  The establishment was hard to miss, right there across the street. They even had the awning raised, and tables and chairs set out on the sidewalk. “They serve coffee?”

  “Of course not. Hard cider and warm beer, though. I’m buying.”

  Ava considered the dark and deserted Houston Calm Park, and the softly falling snow. “Deal.” She got up and brushed some slush off her uniform pants with her gloves.

  “Must be strange coming home,” Guzman said companionably, as they crossed the street.

  “Thanks for keeping my apartment for me,” Ava replied. That was a surprise. She expected to be stuck on a bunk in emergency housing, but instead walked straight back into her own place, musty but undisturbed from when she left.

  “Nobody else needed it,” Guzman assured her. He opened the door for her like a gentleman, and picked a private table. That wasn’t hard. Few had spare change for extra calories, and curfew was in a half hour. They ordered hot hard cider from the waitress, and nachos to share.

  “How’s Dima?” Ava asked.

  Guzman shook his head minutely. “Not expected to recover. How are you? You look good!”

  “Can we visit Dima? A couple of my platoon want to come with me.”

  Guzman fidgeted with the table’s little solar lamp. “They don’t allow visitors.”

  “Guzman? Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth. The asylum is at Mount Sinai.”

  Ava winced. Mount Sinai was the enormous hospital her parents worked in, died in, with God knew how many others. “They should have burned it down as a bio-hazard.”

  Guzman made a throw-away gesture. “Minimum rations.”

  “Nobody’s trying to cure them,” Ava concluded. “She’ll just sit there and starve to death.”

  “Ava. We send people there who can’t be cured. They have the option to leave. Dima was non-responsive. Staring i
nto space. I tried, Ava. Other people tried, too. Professionals.”

  The waiter delivered nachos and steaming cider. Ava was grateful for them. She had money to pay. The Army made sure of that, so the fitness camp recruits didn’t suffer too much of a setback in their weight gain. But this was the first establishment she’d run across that would actually sell extra food. What she’d eaten all day was less than breakfast at Washington Hall.

  “Where else can I buy more food?” she complained.

  “This is the only place in Soho Ville. Try LES. Or the south end of Central Park, by the big inventory markets. They’re set up for tourists. Maybe Canal Street.”

  She nodded thanks.

  “You weren’t around much today,” Guzman fished.

  “Visited Chelsea Free with friends.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Visited my old gang.” She picked up a nacho, laid it back down. “Tried to visit my ex. But he’s gone. Took a job Upstate. So that’s that.”

  “Hell of a day,” Guzman said cautiously. “The other recruits from Soho Ville. Did you make friends with them?”

  Ava barely remembered their names offhand. They were alright. “Not really. Marquis from LES, a couple from Tribeca, three from Chelsea Free, Fox from Jersey. Dima.” She frowned in surprise. “I have friends there. Real friends. That’s kinda cool.”

  “No friends back in White Supreme?” Guzman winced. “Soho Ville?”

  “You. Samantha the librarian. Guess that’s it.”

  “You know, Ava, it may be you that’s changing. Not just the place, and the Army. You might find, even if you came back here, you make friends easier.”

  “Do I seem that different?”

  He considered her. “You certainly look different. Healthier. Calmer.”

  Ava boggled. “Calmer? Oy, Guzman. The whole time at West Point, everyone’s trying to get me to calm down. I’m too high-strung. Can’t sleep. Panic attacks. Work out too hard and hurt myself.”

  “It shows. What they’re doing, it’s working. You seem calmer. Even though it was a hell of a day. You’re not bouncing on the balls of your feet. No quicksilver mood changes. You look at me like a person, not all squinty, hostile and untrusting.”

  Ava laughed. “I trusted you.”

  “Did you?” He hammed up the skeptical expression. “Did you really? Trust me?”

  “Maybe trust is too strong a word,” she allowed, with a smile. “I trusted you more than most. Still do.” She raised her cider mug in salute. The waitress took it as a cue. Ava paid for the next round.

  Guzman checked the time. “We’ll have to guzzle them.”

  “It’ll help us sleep.”

  After a companionable lull, Guzman mused, “You know, Panic, I guess I never realized it before. But you were kind of going through a divorce. Divorce is hard.”

  Ava frowned. “We weren’t married.” What else was it, though? Dividing up the tiny spoils of a life built together. Winner took most. Frosty kept the gang they built. And then he gave it away.

  “Ah, you say that,” Guzman said. “But if you’re together long enough, it doesn’t matter whether you call it ‘married.’ Emotionally, you’re married. At my age, the years spin faster. It might take five years together to reach that point. But at your age, a year is forever.”

  “I guess.” Two years, with Frosty.

  “Divorce sucks. Married life is you, me, and us. Then you break up, and suddenly two thirds of you is missing. For you and this Frosty guy, you built a business together, too, your gang. You, me, us, and our life work. When you walked away, you left three quarters of you behind.”

  “Huh. That makes sense.” No wonder my life felt so empty.

  “I’m glad you’re doing the Army thing. Starting to fill your life up with people again.”

  “Maybe I’m not a people person.” She never had been Before. But then, her parents dragged her off to a new state every year or two, to start over.

  Guzman laughed. He clinked her mug with his own. “From one gang leader to another? You’re a people person.”

  Ava trotted up the apartment stairs with two minutes to spare til curfew. A couple mugs of hard cider and three solid hours of training today, plus a last-ditch run to the fourth floor, probably wouldn’t be enough to let her sleep solidly tonight. Too much on her mind. But it was worth a shot.

  At the final half-floor landing, Ava swung around the turn and came to a dead stop. “Butch.”

  White Supreme’s new queen bee lounged aggressively blocking the stairs, a few steps from the top. She slouched against the wall with her high-heeled boots propped up on the steel spindles below the railing. Like Maz, she’d put on a few pounds since Ava last saw her in August. She could only see it in Butch’s face, bundled as she was for the winter night. She had her two-inch shag haircut died in a truncated rainbow. As usual, her taste in jewelry ran to piercings and a studded leather collar suited to a pit bull, with a heart-shaped pink metal dog tag dangling from it. Ava rather envied the way Butch could carry off that bad-ass look. Ava’s elfin frame was too delicate to wear blocky stuff.

  Ava slowly held out both palms face forward. “I don’t want to fight you. No point to that. I just visited Maz. He told me you’re queen bee now. Great choice. Congratulations.” Butch was a complete thorn in her side when Ava was queen bee. But her words were sincere. Butch was a good choice.

  Butch listened to this, head cocked, a crooked smile twitching up. “Maz told me.”

  A door opened on the floor below. A woman bitched at them, the middle-aged one by the voice. “It’s past curfew! No talking in the halls!”

  Butch swung to her feet to yell down over the railing. “Fuck you, old bitch!”

  Ava scowled at her. “Sorry, Teresa. Good night!”

  “Ava, you shouldn’t bring people like that into the building at night! Rotten kids.”

  “Sleep sweet, Teresa!” You hag from hell.

  “I’ll mesh the militia if you –”

  Ava had enough. “Teri, shut it. You’re the one disturbing the peace.” Ava stomped up the steps, shooing Butch before her. “Tell me you’re not here to fight me.”

  “I am not here to fight you.” Butch’s enunciation and eyes laughed at Ava.

  “In.” Ava unlocked the door and scooted them inside. Butch remained by the door until Ava got a bright swirly screen-saver frolicking on her propped-up tablet for light. Just in time, too. The building super shut off the hall lights at five minutes past curfew, and the few lights were dying along Sullivan Street. The compact studio would have been pitch dark.

  “What do you want?” Ava waved Butch to sit in the apartment’s single arm chair. At the kitchenette, she opened an energy bar, cut it into six pieces, and collected two glasses of water. She lit a couple candles as well. Maybe generosity would help keep this interview courteous. Ava arrayed the hostess offerings on the window table, next to the lighting tablet, and perched on the end of the bed.

  Butch wolfed down a piece of energy bar, and washed it down with water.

  Ava started to say something, but stopped herself. Only a month ago, she herself wouldn’t have heard anything while eating. She recognized the expression on Butch’s face. Instead she applied herself to a chunk of energy bar. Calderon had issued them a half dozen apiece, to supplement whatever they found to eat at home during the forced furlough.

  “That’s chocolate,” Butch said in wonder.

  Like coffee, real cocoa couldn’t grow in Hudson. With their masses of near-starving people, Hudson traded for bulk grain, not luxuries. Ava didn’t know whether trade was even possible now so far away, to the distant tropics where coffee and cocoa once grew.

  “Package said carob. You’re welcome to three pieces.” Ava instantly regretted saying that. Now she was committed to object if Butch grabbed more than her share.

  “Nice apartment. Kinda small. Senile neighbors.”

  Ava sighed. “How are you getting along with Maz?”

  “Why? What did h
e say?”

  Ava recounted the brief exchange. “I said you were a good choice. But if Frosty is gone… You and Maz never liked each other much.”

  “No. You didn’t know Frosty left, did you.”

  “No.”

  Butch thoughtfully chewed her second chunk of carob-coated protein. “Shit. You loved him.”

  The past tense hurt. “What do you want, Butch?” Ava picked up her two remaining pieces and applied herself to them. There. Now Butch couldn’t steal more than her half. Though if she touched Ava’s stash of bars, serious violence would be done.

  “Frosty ordered us not to go after you, Panic. You were free to leave. Everyone was free to leave. Behind his back, Maz said he’d kill anyone who attacked you.”

  “Guess I jumped at shadows for three months for nothing.”

  “Wouldn’t say that,” Butch allowed. “If Frosty hadn’t made me queen bee, I would have liked a piece of you myself. Payback. Not anymore. You make enemies doing this job.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “You really think I was a good choice? I pushed myself on Frosty. He just said sure, let’s see how you do.”

  “Then he liked what you did,” Ava concluded. “Frosty wouldn’t have kept you otherwise.”

  Butch heard the unspoken But. “Why’d you say I was a good choice?”

  “The girls respect you. Meaning, they don’t want to fight you. The guys stay away from you. You’re fair enough. Have to be careful with your girlfriends.” Ava remembered her shock the first time Frosty knocked her across the room. “Can’t show favoritism.”

  “Yeah. A couple tried,” Butch admitted. “I broke up with them. Now I tell them before we get together. If they try that, I’ll beat them up in public and we’re over.”

  Ava fidgeted with her water glass. “Doesn’t have to be over. But they have to learn the lesson. Hey, Butch, were you gay before Ebola?”

  “Born gay. Some girls learned to hate men along the way. I never wanted them. Why did you leave Frosty?”

  “Disagreement over the direction of the gang. I wanted us to come into Soho Ville. En mass, you know? Give us leverage, set our own terms. I was working on that. Frosty was working on White Rule. Kind of a blowup when we told each other. Oops.”