The Completionist

by Siobhan Adcock

  Conveniently, here he is.

  He’s put it off as long as he could, but now he’s here looking for me. I spent most of the day expecting that this would happen—that Pop would eventually get sick of staring at the ghost of me on his wearable and come try to drag me out of here—but it doesn’t make the sight of him any less of a jolt. He’s got a big bruiser of a black eye, my fault, and even though he’s still tall enough to fill the doorway, creating a spooky, backlit effect when he pauses on the threshold to let his working eye adjust from the bright glare out there to the comfortable dimness in here, what you notice about him is that he’s skinny. He’s a skinny old dude. At some point while I was away at the Wars my father lost a lot of his power. It makes me sad.

  He’s got something big, puffy, shiny draped over his arm that I can’t identify at first but then realize is his dress uniform and my one good suit, both wrapped in cleaner’s plastic. I wave my whole arm at him and in the process send scattering like bunnies a small pile of dried-up bloody antiseptic wipes.

  Pop sees me on my golden-lit chair near the wall but does not approach. Instead, he moves toward the bar. Hope rises. We will drink together. We will make peace over the bottomless mouths of a few bottles of engineered beer. It would be fitting, it would be right.

  “He paid up?” Pop asks the barman quietly. Hope falls. At the good gentleman’s nod of assent, Pop spears his gaze in my direction again. Without coming any closer, he gently lays our wedding duds in their plastic sheaths over the barstool nearest him so that he can use his left hand to swipe the virtual keyboard of his wearable on and key a quick message, fingers stabbing in the air over his right arm. Pop’s old-fashioned that way. Most people use the retinal control panel now for messaging, or the voice-to-text translator. But I appreciate Pop’s reliance on the virtual keypad—I like to use it sometimes myself, when I’m sending something long, or when I’m not sure what I’ll say.

  “Can I leave this here for a minute?” Pop indicates the dress blues, slung gently over the barstool. “I’m going to get him outside and into a car. Then I’ll be back for this.”

  “You need help?”

  “No.”

  “I’m happy to help, sir.” Another guy from the bar stands up. He looks unsteady on his feet, though perhaps less so than I am.

  “Thank you, I’ll get him to walk on his own.”

  “I can carry those,” the guy offers, swinging an arm toward the plastic shroud on the barstool. Pop’s hesitation clearly stings. “Or not. That’s fine. You got it? You sure?”

  “I’m sure. Thanks.”

  And now here he comes. I have to stand, or at least try to. No, I have to do it. All the way up. I might be hunched, I might be curled in like a parenthesis around my own gut, but my legs have moved, they’re almost straight. Something clatters behind me. It’s the chair.

  Pop nods at me briskly. “Carter. It’s time to go.”

  I square my shoulders to him and reply, nonsensically, “I’m sure you’re right, sir.” I am very, very drunk.

  “I brought your suit and tie. There’s a car outside for us. You’ve got about two hours to sober up before the ceremony.” I want to laugh. I don’t. Then he adds, low like it shames him, “And I have something for you. The major insisted I pick it up for you. He said it would help you.”

  It is hard, so hard, to say this, but somehow I get it out: “I don’t want it, sir. I don’t want to take any more of that stuff.”

  “It’s not going to hurt you any more than drinking yourself to death will,” Pop observes, with one glance taking in all my dead soldiers, the dark droplets on the tabletop, the pile of dirty saniwipes on the floor and at my elbow.

  “You don’t know that,” I insist. “And I don’t know that.”

  He exhales. “We can talk about it later. Right now it’s time to go. Your sister needs us.”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  At first I’m not sure what will happen if I try to move, but the Great Hump Instinct of the Marine Corps kicks in almost immediately. It’s not the first time I’ve started walking while being unsure I could physically do something as outrageous as put one foot in front of the other. The room is bending at the corners in a way I don’t like, and everyone in here has their bleary eyes on us. But all I have to do is make it to one door, and then the next, and then after that probably the next and the next until the final door, the last one I’ll see on earth, and wherever that door is, I want to see it, I want to stare it down, I want to guard and protect and serve it. If I’m dying anyway let me be of use: I’ll stand guard at the door between this world and the next. I’ll keep anyone else I love from falling through it. Pop’s narrow shoulders are now framed in the light pouring through the door that leads from the bar out to the street. I square my shoulders to his, like the two of us are marching drill.

  “Pop,” I blurt out. “I gotta get my shoes.”

  “Your what?” He wheels around on me so that I’m fixed in his evil falcon’s eye, and goddamn if he doesn’t seem to like making me jump.

  “Fred’s shoes. She bought me a pair of shoes. From England. They must have cost a thousand dollars, I don’t even know where people get shoes like that. She wants me to wear them. For the wedding.” The room is getting swirly now, but if I focus on the stripe of sunlight over Pop’s head I can make it stay still long enough to explain this, to get this out. Each word feels like a dry rubber ball I’m trying to work toward the front of my mouth, let them drop and bounce. “That’s where we’re going now, right? I gotta go get my shoes. They’re at your place. In the closet. Fucking cut my feet up all to shit but I gotta wear them. For Fred.”

  It’s funny but. The air whistling around my ears. And then the sideways slip. But I’m good, I’m still up. I’ve got my arm on his shoulder, how did that happen? Doesn’t matter. I’m not on the floor, and I’m not headed that way.

  Pop nods. He looks down at his own feet. I follow his eyes and see: He’s got his own pair of beautiful bear traps on.

  “I hate these damn things,” he growls.

  • • •

  At some point after the autocab stopped at Pop’s place and he disappeared inside to go grab my shoe box, I passed out in the back seat. The afternoon sunshine was too golden, and the quiet and the vinyl stink of the car were too comforting. I didn’t see Pop return to the cab with my shoes, and I missed the ride to the Walkers’ place, drones flinging themselves around us and the other autocars through the uneven streets. I missed all the minutes up until we arrived at the threshold of Lake Rise 8 and Pop nudged me awake. The red sunset was all around us as we worked our way out of the car and to the door: a couple of banged-up-looking men, carrying a wad of plastic wrap enclosing something dark and indeterminate, and a suspiciously smooth and new and unadorned box, nothing to label it as a container for shoes, the idea among luxury brands after the world almost ended being, I suppose, to keep a low profile even in the packaging.

  Building Security hassles us, of course they do. But after a quick call upstairs, we’re identified and waved in, and then I’m following my father toward the elevators, through the stark, crazy, futuristic lobby that I wanted to crawl through on my hands and knees the last time I saw it. The downward pressure of the elevator’s upward slingshot into space buckles my knees but I’m still standing next to my father when the door opens into the Walkers’ penthouse. And that’s where things get really weird.

  It’s dim and quiet, like a cathedral. Just inside the doors, in a spacious gathering room off the entryway, a large but still tasteful number of white chairs, one for each guest, can be seen stacked in angles on wheeled traveling racks, looking like they’re somehow copulating. Chair sex. The chairs have been interrupted by what appears to be a large delivery of flowers. Fake, of course, but elegant, and scented to seem more like the real thing. We pass into an even larger room, which I recognize as the main stage of the rehearsal dinner party I attended just two nights ago—is that all? can that really be all?�
��and here the interrupted atmosphere is even stronger and more strained. The windows overlooking the lake are hidden by drawn curtains, heavy-looking velvet in a pale color that’s almost no color, but there’s just enough light coming from a few of the dimmed overhead fixtures to make it plain that something has gone wrong here. There are open crates of caterers’ glasses and plates sitting on the polished floor near another abandoned fake-flower delivery, something has been broken and left unswept, a bitter cluster of high cocktail tables stand nude and scarred and ugly in a corner without their customary shields, the silky white tablecloths that are lying in a useless heap at their feet. For a place that’s allegedly about to host a marriage and a reception in a little more than an hour, the place looks unsettled, a haunted house that’s had a bomb scare. At first there’s no one to be seen, no one seems to know we’re here, but then the efficient click of heels begins from somewhere nearby and grows louder and closer and more insistent, even breaking into what sounds like a little skip behind me in the second before I turn around.

  “Captain—and Carter, oh, am I glad to see you. I’m so sorry for the state of things. We’re in recalibration mode and it’s all a little— Well, as you can see. But there’s no one I’d rather bring in right now, even with things in this state. Oh. Oh my. Oh, look at— Can I bring you anything for that? A cold pack, a bandage? Oh wait, I know, I’ll have the makeup team in to see you, they can camouflage any— Although that looks a bit raw, my goodness, Captain Quinn, I’d certainly like to see the other guy!” Sophie the Party Planner gives a breathless, lovely laugh, and to my surprise Pop chuckles, too.

  “The other guy—that would be him.” He gestures at me. Sophie’s beautiful eyes widen, but the corners of her open mouth are turned down as if she might actually cry, and she stares at me in horror and dismay—that you would be capable of . . . ! “It’s all right, sweetheart,” Pop says tenderly, touching Sophie’s arm with one of those scaly mitts of his. The tone of his voice, low and intense and fatherly, has an immediately comforting effect on her, and she turns back to him so gratefully I would swear she’d like nothing more than to bury her face in his narrow crooked chest and weep. Maybe she really does want to. From what I can tell by looking around, our redoubtable party planner has had a rocky afternoon.

  She only has eyes for my father. “Captain, I just hope you can talk to her. We can pivot on a dime, honest—we can get this whole thing turned around. If that’s what she wants. Whatever she wants. The family is clear on that. Whatever Fredericka wants, they’ll do. And I’m here to make it happen.”

  “I know you are,” Pop says, in that voice that sounds like permission to sleep in comfort and safety, no matter how impossible safety may seem, and of course I know he honed that voice, the effect of it, in field hospitals with dying men, and in VA examination rooms with men who were afraid to die, or live, or know which, over the course of many, many long years, but I can’t help feeling such evil jealousy that he’d turn it on here, and now. And that I haven’t heard it myself in a long time.

  “I’ll take you back?” She’s already turned, extending her arm toward the far hall.

  “Please.” Pop glances at me—we’re going in. “We’ve never really been here. We would hardly know the way.”

  “Just follow me.”

  The hallway she brings us to, across the wide-open plains of the reception room, is broad and carpeted, hung with pictures of gleaming people I don’t recognize. It’s hard not to feel like we’re passing through an unsecured tunnel, open to attack from either end, and from the way Pop’s shoulders tense ahead of me I can tell he feels the same way. As we pass the first of many shiny, reflective surfaces: Ambush. An unwelcome glimpse of myself. Sophie didn’t spare much pity for me, not that I need her to, but I have never seen my face—unlikable as it already is—look like such shit. I’m unshaven, which goes without saying, and my red eyes are sunk into purple-yellow pits, my two shiners grown up to be overachievers. My nose, never a delicate sight even on my best day, is crusted with dried brown blood mixed with probably snot. Beneath it my busted lower lip is also crusty where the skin is coming back together. All across my forehead and cheekbones the skin looks like it’s been smeared with something, the dried blood the saniwipes left behind I guess. Worst of all, the bandage covering the stitches in my brow is filthy, streaked with seeped-through blood gone black, and curling up at the edges. The bandage is so offensive that I peel it off and pocket it, but then I catch sight of Pop’s neatly threaded angry-spider stitches in the next little mirror I pass. No wonder the beautiful, fragrant, lush Sophie can hardly bear to look at me: In the two days since she brought me a drink—two drinks—I have transformed from a squared-away private, if an odd-looking one, into some kind of patchwork monster. I know I reek, too. Plus I’m still drunk.

  Still, I’ve felt and looked worse. The realization catches me as I pass myself in the hallway’s last shining frame and I have to laugh. No matter how bad I’ve felt the last couple of days—and I have reached lows I never thought I’d get to back home in the relative safety of New Chicago—I have actually been in worse shape. The thought gives me some strength for the gauntlet ahead, I’ll say that. Bring it, dipshits. I laugh again, louder this time, and Sophie glances back over her shoulder.

  “Through here,” she says quietly, as if she’s showing us into a room to see a dead body. The disapproval in her tone is not subtle. Everything about this is, for her, a crisis, professionally and maybe even personally, and I see that, and I am not too drunk to realize that laughing right now, even about something unrelated to the problem of Fred’s wedding, isn’t going to endear me to anybody under this roof, but come on. Come on. I’m about to say as much, about to try to crack wise—I’m still drunk enough to say just about anything that comes into my head, apparently—when I see that Sophie has not brought us directly to Fred, as I’d thought, as maybe even Pop assumed she would. She has brought us to Ken. Ken Walker. In the flesh.

  We’re in some kind of private home office: beige things everywhere, quiet so deep you can hear the ventilation system roaring away. There are a couple of stern-looking couches, a desk, a set of windows overlooking the bleak lakeless lakefront. There are no other Walkers anywhere to be seen. It’s just him. The Intended. Standing with his back to the windows, leaning against the desk. Looking like he’s been waiting for us.

  He holds one smooth hand out to my father. “Captain, I’m glad to see you.” His eyes flicker over Pop’s shoulder to me, but don’t seem to register me at all.

  “Hello, Kenneth,” Pop gravels out. “I hope you’re holding up, son.”

  “Oh, I am, I think.” The guy emits a chuckle. Everything about him sends off soundless nerves and shock waves, although right now he looks composed enough. Tall (he’d have to be, for Fred), sandy-haired, receding hairline but so well-kept you don’t notice it much, broad through the shoulders and across the forehead, generally looking high and tight in his groom’s tux and shiny shoes. There’s a fake flower in his lapel, white. It’s pretty, but not as pretty as him. He’s holding himself fairly stiff, I judge, like someone’s just punched him deep in the gut, which I suppose is just what’s happened. People act exactly how you expect them to when the shit hits the fan. Ken Walker’s mouth is compressed whenever he’s not speaking, or looking for words, as he seems to be now. “I would appreciate it if . . . I mean I . . .”

  Pop waits him out patiently. Whatever this good-looking tight-ass wants to say right now, he’s ready to hear. Myself, not so much.

  “We haven’t been introduced,” I put in, surging past Pop toward him and putting my hand out for a shake. I see his eyes widen with alarm and, oh, that’s gratifying; I won’t bother denying it. “I’m Fred’s little brother, Carter. She calls me CQ.”

  “CQ. Hi,” Ken says whitely, by which I mean with white lips and also with a prissy ultimate-white-guy’s overall thing, if you will, and he accepts my big blood-crusted paw in his clean handsome grip for a second an
d then releases it. “I’m sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances.”

  “Me too, chum. I hear I owe you fifteen thousand dollars!”

  Ken says, “What?”

  “Carter and I should probably go speak with Fredericka,” Pop says smoothly.

  “Oh, I’ll pay you back. I’m getting paid every other week by the military for going on three years now and I’ve got nothing to spend it on—I’m homeless, no job, nowhere to go but the bar. So don’t worry.” I smile big. “I got you.”

  Ken looks from me to Pop, then back again. “I’m sorry . . .” he begins.

  “Never mind me. I’m drunk,” I say conspiratorially. “And since I got back, I usually just say whatever I feel like, even though I don’t make any sense.”

  Pop turns to me and fixes me with a look of such incredulous disbelief I can only widen my eyes back at him. Then without a word to me he turns back to Fred’s jilted fiancé, her Slightly Balding Intended. There’s a crinkle as he shifts on his feet in the cruel shoes and I realize Pop’s still holding our suits from the cleaner’s, still holding my damn shoe box.

  “We’re sorry to intrude here, Kenneth. We’d like to see Fredericka.”

  Sophie clears her throat delicately, which seems to remind Ken Walker that she’s here, parked off to the side in a discreet but still available position. “Mr. Walker, I’d be glad to bring your guests back, help them freshen up a bit, show them where Fredericka’s sitting room is.”

  “Fred has a sitting room?” I ho-ho-ho but no one joins in. Apparently, yes, that is a real place and Fred is sitting there, on her tuffet.

  Ken is looking at me still. Something locks into place in his expression, and he nods once, and observes in a quiet voice I don’t like, “You need me to bring you to her.”

  “Please,” Pop confirms politely. He’s an old army captain, goddammit, but in front of this guy, standing in his tux in his fortified palace, Pop might as well be a porter. Holding all our shit. For this wedding that’s not even happening anymore. I make a move to grab something from him—I’m aiming for the shoe box—but Pop turns his shoulder, all deliberate, so I end up clutching ineffectively at the plastic wrap.