Monarch Falls

by Lumen Reese

  Corso said, only, “We've been moving...”

  “Mm-hm.” He looked dead on his feet. “When was the last time you slept?”

  He had a corner-of-his-mouth smile for that. “I got a catnap this morning on the train down here. I'll get a wink tonight, when I find a place.”

  I hadn't really thought of him sleeping on cold floors in abandoned buildings, never feeling safe. “Have you eaten?”

  “I'm fine.”

  “How about a shower? Just come inside.”

  He was still smiling, but looked down at the table as he grumbled the words, “We shouldn't be together, Stella.” I blinked. He looked up. “Not for too long. Too dangerous.”

  “Bullshit. We have guns. You need to take care of yourself. Your sister needs you in shape. And it might be your last chance.”

  “I'll be okay.”

  “You're about to fall asleep in that chair. Could you even shoot straight?”

  “Always.”

  His confidence deflected me for a moment, but I breathed deep and dove back in. “Look, I didn't want to have to tell you this. You stink.”

  “Oh?” I could hear his voice tight with a laugh.

  “Bad.”

  He stood from the table, took two steps and I began to ask what he was doing when he leaned hard to one side and plummeted head-first into the pool.

  I walked over as he broke free of the surface again, whipping hair that had gotten a bit shaggy.

  “Oh God,” he gasped, and the sound was so riotous that I had to look away for a second with my cheeks hot. I glanced around, there was no one else on the street around us. The man who had been smoking by the convenience store had gone. He dipped under the water again, and reappeared. “Well… that woke me up.”

  “You'll be wet all night.”

  “I can handle it,” he huffed, treading water. Then he stroked forward and reached the edge where I had sat, with crossed legs. “We used to work wet all day on the plantation, to stay cool.”

  It was the first time I had ever heard him mention it. I felt a rush of warmth that I had to disrupt. “Where are we going, Corso?”

  He sobered, and wiped his face free of shiny drops. “Spades, first. Then south. It's a town called St. Ayrs. You meet me, alone, and we'll go together from there.”

  “You don't trust me.” I found my feet. The humor was long gone from us. “All this about me needing to trust you and you don't trust me?”

  “I still can't be sure how far you'll go.”

  “I'm the one who should be worried about how far you'll go! I let you torture a man earlier.”

  “-A rapist,” Corso corrected. He moved to one side of me and pushed up on his arms to climb, dripping, out of the pool.

  “Still, it has to make a person wonder what else you might be capable of, that you could just do that!”

  “I should go,” he said after a moment.

  “Yeah, you should.” I was simmering.

  But he stood for a moment, the dripping onto the ground slowing and quieting. He had his face turned down to the ground and only glanced up at me, something like ashamed. “Don't give up on me, Stella.”

  He wasn't used to asking people for their help, I could tell. He went through most of his life alone, the same as I did. At work he had Joey, and their bond was an unspoken, unbreakable thing. That was the great thing about Joey, he didn't push. When Corso came around the house, he effortlessly charmed Stacey and the kids -and women, too, in his nights- but I would guess he had never been in a position of genuinely needing another person in his adult life. I could imagine it all very clearly, and I felt everything he was feeling, because I was in the same boat. I was feeling the same anxiety, embarrassment, and apprehension as I nodded, eager for the moment to be gone.

  He started toward the street at the front of the motel and I followed a step behind, wondering if there was anything else to be said. A light clicked on when he stepped past the corner.

  “Excuse me,” said a man's deep voice.

  “Shit.”

  And then Corso was running, and a man in a dark uniform went streaking by after him, shouting, “Stop!”

  I leaned out and saw them disappearing around the side of the courtyard, then I turned and ran the way we had just come, past the pool and to the back of the courtyard where I turned down a narrow alley and spilled out onto a larger, more crowded street. There were more pedestrians and the buildings were brighter and more tightly packed together. Corso was headed my way, diving lithely through a throng of people at the crosswalk and then dodging a car pulling up to the light. I couldn't see the officer chasing him but he couldn't be more than a few seconds behind. In fact I heard a tangle of yells as he collided with civilians.

  I realized I was standing beside a multiple-story building with a neon sign shaped like a woman's stiletto glowing over the top, another advertising rooms at hourly rates, and two women dancing in the front windows.

  “Here!” I shouted, waving my arm to catch Corso's attention.

  He made a beeline for me and I had the door open before he reached me. We slammed it closed together and he was breathing hard, then bowing over and clutching his head. I reached out to steady him when he swayed in place, even though he was grumbling, “I'm okay, I'm alright.”

  We were in a nice lounge populated mostly with women, a bordello, but they were hardly looking. They had to be used to the chases and the surprises, living in the Four Quarters. They might think we had stumbled out of our story-line; probably that I was the buyer and he was my love-interest, from the look of us.

  I leaned closer and hissed, “You're exhausted!”

  “We gotta go,” he said, starting to lurch forward. His steps grew more confident as we moved past rows of tables and chairs, and a long, gold couch. There were several doors at the back which were not labeled, and though Corso was headed for them, I was sure we would pick the wrong one and be trapped. I tugged him toward the exposed stairway winding up to the second floor.

  “This way.”

  He followed my lead and we were peaking up over the second floor landing when I heard the door bang open, and accompanying, theatrical gasps from the extras.

  We were in a hall with two rooms on each side. Three of the doors were closed, but the second door on the left was open. The stairs kept climbing, and so could we, but Corso seemed dizzy again and we were slowing down. So we went down the hall without discussing it, sliding into the room which smelled of perfume and was decorated expensively with a cushy bed in the center.

  There was a window, and I saw a fire escape. But when I had shut the door behind us, I saw that Corso could not keep running. I was panting, too, and for a second I just turned the lock and hoped we had lost the man.

  But another bang from down the hall and a woman's scream made us both groan.

  “God damn it,” he puffed, “let's go.”

  He turned toward the window but I stopped him.

  “Corso.”

  He turned halfway back. I reached out and caught his arm and jerked him back around. My stomach did a flip as the idea popped into my head… that the officer had probably not seen me, and only knew he had been chasing a man in a blue sweater.

  “Take off your sweater,” I said.

  He looked bewildered, so I reached out and yanked the zipper down with trembling hands. He was compliant but still confused as I shoved it down off of his shoulders, feeling the bare skin of his muscled arms there; the white undershirt he wore was sleeveless.

  I flung the sweater into the furthest corner and couldn't help but to jump when the door across the hall from us banged open like the other had, though the people or person inside did not scream. We looked at each other and I could see that he understood, and though I was frozen he moved forward and closed the gap.

  His hands came up and grabbed my face, wrapping around the back of my head and pulling me into him where the hardness of his skull stopped me. And for a moment it did just feel like our mouths had
bumped into each other. But still moving forward and with me stumbling back to keep from being bowled over, his lips became a gentle tumble, easing mine open and then pursing them closed, a brush of warm wetness and making my head light. Then another step changed him again and he was prying my mouth open with his, and his tongue hot and reaching for mine. I hit the wall and our legs became a tangle and his hips were pinning me flat, and pressing into me where I wanted to be arching against him made a whimper break out of my throat.

  The door crashed open. We were both startled.

  The man who had burst in held a gun and wheeled around to look at us, doubtful, fearful. He was young to be balding the way he was.

  Me and Corso spoke at the same time.

  “What the Hell-.”

  “-Get the Hell out!”

  The police officer turned and ducked out without a word.

  We were frozen, looking after him as we heard the last door in the hall bust inward, followed by only silence, then he went running back the way he had come, and we heard him pounding up the stairs. I had not been breathing, and all at once found myself gasping. Corso was still pressed against me. As soon as I had put my hand out and pressed on the flat of his stomach, though, he stepped away. His hands came up but they stopped before making contact with my face, then dropped to my shoulders. I felt the tension in my body fade to shivers, and then I was just heavy all over, dead on my feet.

  “Some quick thinking, honey,” Corso said. He had a little smile for a second with just the corners of his mouth, then he looked away.

  “Are you gonna listen to me, now? We are getting you some food, and you are coming back to the motel with me and you're getting some sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  We left by the front door, quickly but calmly, and got him food from a street vendor. Something full of vegetables. And as soon as he had opened the Styrofoam and peeled back the foil, a puff of steam hit him and he sighed.

  “Just like home.”

  He ate with chopsticks, which I found distantly interesting as we walked. It was reaching three in the morning, and maybe it was the exhaustion which had left me feeling like I was walking around particularly exposed.

  I didn't really decide to say it, but I mumbled, “It feels like New York. Like night in New York.”

  “I know what you mean. How come you call me Corso?” he asked suddenly.

  “Everyone calls you Corso.”

  “I tell people to call me Corso, I never told you to. Pretty sure I introduce myself as Miles, where children and ladies are concerned. We were children when we met but you're a lady now, so, either way…”

  We were careful on the approach to my room, made the safety of the darkness and stood, once I had shut the door, in the shadows and silence cut by the rattling of the ceiling fan. We were vague shapes, and I felt like I was losing my body, formless, floating. In trying to be someone stronger, I had done things which cut the cord to my old self, leaving me without even the baseline for being a real person.

  I told myself probably I was just tired.

  Corso showered quick, then came back out in a fresh shirt and jeans we had bought him off the street. I was sitting on one side of the bed.

  “Hey,” he said, and I looked over.

  My eyes must have adjusted. The edges of his face had focused.

  “We'll be fine for you to get some sleep, too.”

  I nodded, then laid on my side facing the door and curled up. I wasn't thinking of anything, but I was feeling everything I had felt or half-felt during the entire day, over again. Maybe from the entire week. And then my mind was flashing with thought. I was thinking about the missing girls. I was thinking about the man Corso and I had jointly tortured; jointly, because letting it happen and doing nothing to stop it was as bad as participating. I was thinking about what sixteen felt like. I was guilty and scared and lonely. I was shaking and felt so far away that it surprised me when Corso put his hand on my arm. I exhaled slowly. My chest ached. Tears filled my eyes and then there was no holding it back. The pain got worse, it felt like I was being torn open from the inside, and suddenly I was really crying. I covered my face and sobbed into my palms. Corso shifted on the bed, moving in. I curled tighter into myself, trying to force the waves of tears to stop, then his arm snaked over me and I went limp and shaky again and just let it come. He even lifted my head and settled it down into the crook of his other arm so that he could wrap himself around me more completely.

  “I'm sorry, honey... It's okay... It's gonna be okay… It's gonna be okay… It's gonna be okay…”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  My phone rang early the next morning, when what little light seeping through the blinds was still grey. I was groggy and remembered with humiliation how the night had ended. Fumbling for the phone, I sat up on the edge of the bed.

  Corso had retreated to the other side at some point. I heard him move as I answered but couldn't look back.

  “Hello?”

  “It's me,” Henry sighed. “Rise and shine. Get your asses to Spades, cause some stuff happened last night and Jericho and the rest are all here.”

  “Jericho and the rest?” My mind wasn't turning yet.

  “Isaac and Kayla. And Spicer is here, too. That's all they would tell me on the phone, I'm just getting to the train station. Do you think Spicer could have caught the fugitive?”

  “No,” I said, stealing a look back at Corso who was watching me. “I don't think Spicer caught the fugitive.” He smiled and looked away. “And Jericho might have reason to be mad at me...”

  “Oh geez. Well, tell me when you get here. And get here fast.”

  “On my way.” And I hung up the phone. I packed up the charger, the phone, and shoved them into my bag while grabbing the clean shirt inside and heading for the door adjoining my room with Hatley's, which I pounded on. “Wake up! We have to get to Spades! Henry and all our bosses are waiting!” I lowered my voice as I moved around Corso, saying, “I'm sorry about last night.”

  “-'S okay,” he breezed, and rubbed his eyes. “I'd like to sleep for a few days but a few hours was nice. Thank you.”

  “They're probably going to cut me off, after what happened last night,” I said, lingering in the doorway. “I'll meet you in St. Ayrs when I can.”

  He nodded.

  When I had finished in the bathroom he was gone .

  *

  On orders from Jericho, the train took us back to Spades an hour before it would normally be running. It would disrupt the train schedule for the day, and every mile closer my anxiety grew. Hatley and Clark said mostly nothing on the way. I would not ask Hatley to lie for me, but I wondered whether she might. I tried to think of a way I could explain my position to Jericho without giving Corso away. I wondered whether it really mattered anymore if I did give him away. He made it into the Four Quarters on his own, but I didn't think he would make it out with his sister and maybe more, too. Not without help from me and the company. The only reason it was imperative Jericho and the company not know his identity was that it would connect the two of us and make me look unfit, which surely I already did after the night's antics. I would have to read the room when the time came.

  I had gotten eerily calm as the train pulled into the station and I saw Henry waiting on the platform as we rolled by a few more pillars. Whatever happened would happen and I would do what I had to do. The thought of failing to find the missing girls was much worse than whatever the morning would bring. And if I had been shapeless the night before, I was piecing myself back together bit by bit. Henry met me and I hugged him without thinking about it. I felt fortified by his presence.

  But I knew I couldn't bring him with me. I wouldn't let it happen. No matter how logical it seemed, to have the only other person I trusted go with Corso and I, no matter how much we needed another gun, another set of hands, I couldn't risk it.

  There was an office for the designers on the top floor of a building in the business district of Spades. It was
an open studio with three desks along the far walls, and in the center a long pillar lit from within that showed views of the street below and more populated areas of the city. There was a lounge area in the front corner, where Spicer, Jericho, Dr. Foster, and Isaac were waiting. Kayla met us at the door.

  “We're glad you're here, and we're glad you're safe. We have a lot to discuss.”

  Spicer alone sat opposite the other three. Hatley and Clark took up seats beside him while Kayla and Henry went to sit between Jericho and Isaac. I leaned on the arm of the sofa beside Clark, crossed my arms, and waited. Jericho spoke.

  “The name of the man currently handcuffed to a hospital bed in Hearts with a broken kneecap is Andrew Wade. You were supposed to be apprehending him last night when he ended up wounded. Afterward a man believed to be the fugitive was spotted in the area. So am I to believe, Stella, that you are incompetent, or that you colluded with the man you are hunting?”

  The silence hung heavy in the room. Jericho's tone was too measured. He knew the answer already. I stood up straight.

  “I let him go.”

  Henry's eyebrows went up. He rubbed a finger over his lips, and said nothing.

  Jericho was very quiet. “How long have you been letting him go?”

  “Since the Third Quarter. He left us a clue, to tell us to go to Hearts. We might not have found Andrew Wade without him. And he got us our next step, too, which we might not have gotten without him, either.”

  “Then why are we paying you-?” Isaac burst out, but Jericho's more level reply held onto the room.

  “-What is the next step?”

  I chose to address Isaac, though. “Henry and I checked every other Quarter. We found Danielle St. Peter's body and then we found Anna Goodspeed. And then Hatley, Clark and I found our way to Vincent Zucholi and Andrew Wade, when our only clue was to start looking in Hearts.” Saying it all made me feel stronger.

  “Someone still wants to get paid,” Spicer said.

  Jericho asked again, “What is the next step, Stella?”

  But I shook my head.

  “You don't know?” Kayla asked, “Or you won't tell us?”