Borderline

by Mishell Baker

  I wondered all the more, now, what she’d thought of The Stone Guest, of the young heroin addict trying desperately to connect with her estranged mother after her father’s death. I reached out to pat the air where Elliott appeared to be, absorbing all this before speaking again. “So what was it that you wanted to talk about?”

  Caryl rose from the floor and moved to the window, looking out into the night. “Gate LA4 is right above you,” she said. “The stairs leading to the tower are right outside your room.”

  “What the hell?” I looked up at the ceiling like an idiot.

  “Do you want to see it?”

  “Is it like the other one?”

  “Almost exactly.”

  “Then no.”

  Caryl turned to look at me, leaning back against the window. “There is a ward on the door to the tower stairs, hiding it from sight.”

  “Can it hurt me, being so close to a Gate while I sleep?”

  “Not in the way you mean. Its power is contained entirely within the archway. That is why the Gates are precisely semicircular. Magical energy cannot escape a circle.”

  “Even half of one?”

  “If it were a full circle, magic could travel perpendicular to the plane of the circle, within its boundaries, like a tunnel. An incomplete circle disrupts the tunnel effect, but if the missing portion is not bound to earth, magic can escape from the incomplete side as well.”

  I pointed above my head. “That’s not earth.”

  “It is a solid surface perpendicular to the force of gravity, moving with the earth’s rotation. For the purposes of magic, any floor is earth.”

  “So basically what you’re saying is, don’t punch a hole in the ceiling.”

  “The Gate is not dangerous in and of itself,” Caryl said. “If you damage it in any way, it simply stops working, unless the one on the Arcadian side happens to be damaged in exactly the same way. Gate LA3 had to be dismantled in 1938, because ­damage was done to it so small it could not be located for repair.”

  “And you didn’t build a new one? Like LA1?”

  “We lost our only builders in 1913. So when we lost our lease on the LA2 property in the twenties we couldn’t replace that one either. By the time everyday overseas travel made it practical to import builders from elsewhere, we’d become accustomed to operating with only three gates.”

  “If the Gate isn’t dangerous, why even tell me about it?”

  “You need to know,” said Caryl, “because there is a possibility that Arcadia will declare war. And if they do, you are sleeping directly under a possible invasion point.”

  I sat up straighter, skin prickling. “Can’t we close the Gate? I could go touch it with my Hands of Metal Death.”

  “Your touch would not disable it,” Caryl said, “as it is not strictly speaking a magical object.”

  “Okay, but if you break it, that closes it, right?”

  “To what end? There are others, and it would take only one to admit an Unseelie horde that could end human civilization in a fortnight. Furthermore, the closure of a Gate would provoke immediate inquiry and rob us of the time advantage we currently have.”

  “Probably not a fair trade for a good night’s sleep. All right, so if the Unseelie horde does come through Gate LA4, what exactly am I supposed to do?”

  “Die horribly. But swiftly, I’d think. They’ll be eager to get on with their world conquest.”

  “Okeydokey then. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “If you want to go back to the hospital, I understand. The safest place would be a church or temple, though; Unseelie fey can’t enter sacred ground.”

  “Why not?”

  “Fey’s perception of reality is based on consensus rather than fact. A symbol imbued with power by the sincere belief of millions can manifest that power in a very real sense to a fey.”

  “But I couldn’t stay in a church forever. So I’d still die hor­ribly, right? Just later.”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Then there’s no way I’m not staying and at least trying to stop things from coming to that.”

  Caryl moved back toward me, reaching a gloved hand into the inside pocket of her jacket for a business card. It had only a number, no name. “Call me if you need to,” she said. I felt a whisper of silk and card stock against my palm, and she left.

  • • •

  I showered, removed my prosthetics, and lay in bed with a ­racing heart, leaving the door open to ease my trapped feeling. I understood the magnitude of Caryl’s gesture of trust in giving me her number, but I didn’t call her. Nor did I take the Project-forbidden Vicodin that was so temptingly concealed in my suitcase, even though it would have helped.

  I woke up every fifteen minutes or so all night long, and what little sleep I snatched from the jaws of dread was sullied with dreams of gorgeous angry things with sharp teeth. Halfway through the night Monty wandered in and settled on the air mattress next to me, giving me something to focus on so I could use my mindfulness exercises.

  More than once I lulled myself to sleep by focusing on deep breathing and warm fur, only to have the same dreams wake me again on a half-strangled scream.

  When the darkness weakened enough that I could justifiably declare it morning, I donned my prosthetics, put on my least stained clothes, and went down to the kitchen. I still hadn’t bought any food of my own, so I was left picking through the unlabeled stuff. There was no way I was eating another bear claw after tasting one at the back of my throat for two hours on the way to Santa Barbara, so I settled on a slightly overripe banana, some saltines, and a cup of weak coffee.

  Halfway through the coffee I became so suddenly, crushingly sleepy that I couldn’t even make it back up the stairs. There is no sedative that works quite so well as the aftermath of adrenaline. I face-planted on a couch in the living room and blacked out, waking only when my phone rang at a quarter to seven.

  I was careful this time and gave myself a few sound slaps across the face before picking up. “Hello?”

  “Millie.” It was Berenbaum. At the sound of his voice I remembered Rivenholt’s blood all over the platform. My throat closed, and my eyes filled up. “Millie?” he said again.

  If I said anything, he’d know I was crying. But the silence was getting awkward, so I squeezed out a “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s the ass-crack of dawn, but I wanted talk to you before I got to work. What happened at the train station?”

  “I tried to call you,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry; I was up to my ass in alligators. Sweetheart—are you crying?” The softness, the lack of fear in his voice, meant he hadn’t put things together yet.

  “I screwed up,” I said. “We didn’t get there in time. I think Johnny’s been hurt. I’m so sorry.” I quit pretending I wasn’t upset and just let go. He couldn’t yell at me if I was already sobbing, right?

  “Millie,” he said. Firmly, bravely. As though he were about to explain to me why it was okay. But there were no facts to support that, so he just said, “Fuck work. Where are you?”

  “I’m at Residence Four,” I said. If he didn’t know where that was, I was pretty sure I was not allowed to tell him.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “I am going to come get you, and we’re going to drive up the PCH, and you are going to stop crying, all right?”

  I love you, I almost said.

  I don’t think that the instant desperate attachment Border­lines feel really counts as love, but I had never felt any other kind of love, so I didn’t know. I knew that David Berenbaum was eventually going to break my heart, either by turning out to be a scumbag or deciding I was, but my crush on Brian Clay had been stillborn on the railroad tracks, and I was like Tarzan reaching for another vine. So I grabbed.

  29

  At five till
eight in the morning, David Berenbaum pulled up to Residence Four in one of the most recognizable automobiles in the United States and maybe the world. When I glanced out the window and saw a flash of red in the morning sun, some eight-year-old inside of me said oh my gosh, because you don’t say holy shit when you are eight years old.

  A cherry-red 1967 Plymouth Valiant convertible—the cherry-­red 1967 Plymouth Valiant convertible that David Berenbaum had been driving since, well, 1967—gleamed like imminent sin at the curb. It had been the hero car in six films, two of which Beren­baum didn’t even direct. He was really pulling out all the stops to cheer me up, and I couldn’t begin to wrap my brain around why.

  I opened the front door and walked carefully down the steps, leaning on my cane. By the time I stepped onto the front lawn he was out of the car, keys jingling, door slamming. He ate up the ground between us like he was the twenty something and I was the senior citizen. He swept me up in a big hug, and I laughed even through the sharp pain in my ribs.

  He looked at me as he set me down; his eyes were a little misty. “You okay?”

  “Weirdly great at the moment,” I said.

  He put an arm around me and helped me across the lawn into the passenger’s seat. The inside was red and white as a strawberry sundae, with black analog gauges. It was inefficient and sprawling; it screamed of hubris and excess and obsolescence; it was America on wheels.

  As he started up the car, the insane anachronistic engine he’d put in there rumbled like the wrath of God. And off we went.

  “There’s a scarf in the glove compartment if you need it for your hair,” he said.

  “You take out a lot of women in this thing?” I said playfully.

  “Well, my wife,” he said. We’d just stopped at an intersection, so he turned and gave me a pointed look.

  “I wouldn’t touch anything that belonged to such a classy lady,” I said, equally pointedly. “My hair will be fine.”

  “You are fantastic,” he said, and the light turned green.

  The traffic was not good at this hour, but who could possibly have cared? I had the whole blue California sky above me and one of the most famous men in the world sitting to my left. People were pulling out their phones to snap pictures. Twenty-four hours earlier I would have slumped down, used that scarf to hide my face, but now I just leaned my head back against the seat and enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame.

  Berenbaum respected my need to bask; he waited until we got onto the scenic portion of the Pacific Coast Highway to start talking business.

  “I don’t want you to worry about Johnny,” he said. “If ­anything serious had happened to him, I would know. I still believe everything is going to be okay, and I need you to believe that with me, all right?”

  “I do, I do, I do believe in fairies,” I said. If he’d asked me to set his car on fire by a police station, I’d have said yes.

  To our left, blue ocean shredded itself on golden rocks, and to our right the same rocks rose up to make a high wall, ­broken up with desert scrub and the occasional improbable patch of wildflowers. The highway writhed like a snake scaled with too many cars, hiding another gorgeous view around the next curve.

  “Mr. Berenbaum!” called a young male voice a couple of lanes over and behind us. I turned and saw another convertible with a young guy leaning over the passenger’s side.

  At the look on the guy’s face, I felt something dark and petty twist in my gut. I’d dreamed of being looked at that way, once. I’d imagined having fans, going to glitzy parties, winning Oscars. It hurt, remembering optimism that now looked like idiocy.

  My self-pity didn’t last long; David Berenbaum’s presence was like a fire hose of sunshine.

  “Read my script!” the guy shouted at him.

  “I will if you can get it into my car,” David called back over his shoulder.

  The guy seemed to be doing some calculations and seriously thinking about throwing the thing. I felt bad for him; he had clearly never passed a physics class. But this was a Hollywood Moment. This could change his life. I didn’t want to watch him make an ass of himself, but I also couldn’t look away.

  The screenwriter leaned over in an urgent conference with the driver, and I saw the turn signal go on.

  “He’s changing lanes,” I said, now alarmed. “He’s coming over here.”

  “Good for him!” Berenbaum said.

  So much for my idyllic little date with David. “What if he has a gun or something?” I said.

  “I hope you’re not saying that because the driver is black.”

  “He is?” He was. I hadn’t noticed. Or had I? Goddamn it. “It’s not the driver I’m worried about,” I said. “He has both hands on the wheel.”

  “Use your eyes, Millie,” said David. “Be a director. What story are the visuals telling?”

  I tried to relax, even as the other car tailgated the one next to us, trying to close the space. “It’s a BMW. The writer’s younger than the driver, maybe early twenties. Driver and passenger are both wearing designer stuff, but understated. I’m guessing old money.”

  “Rich kids are brought up with the idea that violence is beneath them,” Berenbaum observed.

  “Well, it is,” I said as the BMW flashed its lights, honked, and otherwise made itself a nuisance to the car ahead of it.

  “Grew up rich, eh?” He laughed. “It’s easier to dehumanize someone than to try to understand the context of a violent act.”

  “Johnny’s blood is splattered all over Union Station,” I said recklessly. “Does the context of that violence matter to you?”

  “Of course it does,” he said without hesitation, making me wonder if he’d heard the extent of the carnage already. “Johnny may look like a pampered pretty boy, but he’s also a savage motherfucker when he’s cornered. I’m guessing he threw the first punch.”

  I had no time to consider this, because the guys in the BMW had finally caught up to us. I could see more telling details now: the Urth Caffé travel tumbler, the smugness, the slightly bored expression on the driver’s face as he forced a panicked woman into the other lane. The dude in the passenger’s seat looked excited, but the way you do when your home team is about to score. This was a kid who had never been denied anything.

  He pulled up alongside and held the script out to Berenbaum, a stack of pages fluttering in the wind, sun glinting off the two brads holding it together. He knew proper industry format at least.

  “Hold the wheel a second, will you?” said Berenbaum. Before I could tell him he was out of his mind, he let go and took the script.

  “What is the matter with you?” I said, laughing from hysteria as I leaned against him to hold the wheel steady. Berenbaum barely slowed the car as he skimmed the first page, a page in the middle, and the last page.

  He turned, then, and held the script back out to the kid in the BMW. “Sorry!” he said over the road noise. “Not for me!”

  Either Berenbaum let go too soon or the kid’s grip was as bad as his writing; the script fluttered free and bumped against the side of the BMW on the way to the pavement. Three cars had already run over it by the time I turned back around to stare incredulously at Berenbaum.

  “Why did you do that?” I said when there was enough space between us and the now-crestfallen rich kid. “You knew the odds were strongly in favor of that script being a piece of shit.”

  “But what if it wasn’t?” he said, giving me a big grin, his white hair dancing madly. “What a story that would have made.”

  That silenced me, and I just sat staring at this icon of a man, realizing how very far I was from understanding him. “Are we going anywhere in particular?” I said.

  “Nope. I just like this drive. Been a long time since I’ve done it in this car, though. Not my smartest idea this time of day. But my gut told me that getting some blood pumping through your vei
ns was the most important thing I could do this morning.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to level with you, Roper. You’re a mess, but you’re my kind of mess. You’re wasted in the Arcadia Project; it’s nothing but a lot of hard-luck cases trying to scrape by.”

  “You’re serious? You want me to leave the Project for good, work for you full-time?”

  “I think we’d work well together. We could start you small, see how it goes. So much of this business is just who do you like spending time with? Who gets you? I’m sure you know what I mean.”

  “Not really. When I made films, I never worked with the same people twice. We always ended up hating each other.”

  “That’s the kind of thing I could teach you. Give me two or three years and I could have people willing to take a bullet for you.” He looked away from the road to pin me with those sharp eyes. “Do you think I’m a nice guy, Millie? Really?”

  “You’ve been nice to me. Is that an act?”

  “No. I’m crazy about you. But I’m saying that sometimes it is an act, when it needs to be. You have to protect your heart, or you have to kill it. And if you kill it, well, what happens if you come across someone who needs it?”

  “Nobody needs mine,” I said. “I think you have a hard time understanding the idea of complete insignificance.”

  “What about your family?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  “Everybody has family.”

  “I have redneck grandparents on my mom’s side; last talked to them on the phone when I was twelve. Never knew my dad’s parents. He and my mom were both only children, and they’re dead.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Nothing happened to them as a couple. My mom got some weird cancer that killed her in about two weeks when I was a baby. My father was a suicide, about three years ago now. A four-story building, I might add. I don’t know why I’m still here after seven.”