“I can’t believe you know that word.”
“Don’t be a dick. I can read.”
“Whatever. You are right. It isn’t altruism. It’s guilt.”
“Oooh,” Jenny cooed, intrigued. “This sounds interesting. Guilt I understand. What did ya do to her, Preston? You fuck her? Because she seems pretty fuckable to me.”
“None of your business,” I said, wrapping my arms around her in an attempt to shut her up. Unfortunately, with Jenny that is flat-out impossible. “I owe her everything, that’s all you need to know.”
“You must have fucked her,” Jenny said, sounding satisfied. “Five years ago, right? She would have been a cute little teenager back then. A patient at wherever you used to work. Then you ran away, right? You ran off and you left her, but you couldn’t live with yourself…”
Like many things, it sounded plausible. I let her believe it. I pulled her down on top of me and she struggled playfully. I know it was playful because I was only bleeding a little.
“What did you do to her, Preston? What makes you so bad? Tell me,” Jenny insisted, digging her nails into my shoulders. “Tell-me-tell-me-tell-me…”
“Alright, don’t be annoying. April wasn’t born this way. She was normal. She just had the bad luck to grow up at a place called the Institute. They tried to make her into a savant. Do you know that word?”
Jenny stopped what she was doing to look up at me in annoyance.
“Right now seem like a good time to be an asshole?”
“Sorry.”
“Because I have very sharp teeth…”
“I already said I was sorry.”
I reached for her, but she brushed my hands away.
“What’s it mean?”
“What? Savant? Like a genius. An obsessive genius. A person totally focused on one thing, every waking thought devoted to it…”
I lost my train of thought. More accurately, Jenny unraveled it, her fingers following invisible lines across my body.
“And?”
“And what?”
“You didn’t finish your story.”
“You distracted me.”
“You want me to stop?”
The whole building must have heard my teeth grind. Jenny got real close and gloated.
“Say it, Preston.”
Play for time.
“What?”
“Tell me you don’t want me to stop.”
Time bought me nothing. My brain was not functioning.
“Don’t stop.”
She laughed, but she started moving again.
“Finish the story,” she commanded, going back to making that next to impossible.
“When I first met April, she was a relatively normal girl. By the time I left, she was in a bad way. I spent five years trying not to think about her. When I couldn’t live with it anymore, I came back. I took her away, but I waited too long. April was broken. And I let them do it.”
It sounded believable, right? I even started to dislike myself. Jenny didn’t seem the least bit concerned, though.
“What’s wrong with April, anyway? She’s a little weird.”
That was the first time I had ever heard someone describe April as only a little weird. I slid my hand up inside Jenny’s worn t-shirt, tracing the perimeter of one erect nipple on her small, firm breast.
“They took a child and locked her in a room for ten years with nothing but books, television, and a rigorous diet of psychoactive drugs. The only person she saw was a masked attendant who brought her meals. You have any idea what that would do to someone?”
“Nope,” Jenny said, her body grinding obscenely against mine. “That’s way too elaborate for me.”
“Yeah, me too. The guy who runs the place we came from, though, he is exactly that kind of sick bastard. April is an experiment. I think he just wanted to see what would happen.”
Jenny paused momentarily, and I could not even pretend that I wanted her to.
“Are you lying to me, Preston?” Jenny bit my lip teasingly, holding it briefly in between her razor-sharp teeth. “You telling stories again?”
“Who would lie to you? I’m just speculating. April is a savant with a neurological disorder and I am the guy who looks out for her. That’s all.”
“Okay,” Jenny said, straddling me. “Since you’re only the guy who takes care of her, then I’m sure April won’t mind what we are doing, right?”
Jenny hooked one thumb in her nylon underwear and then slipped neatly out of it, keeping an intimate hold on me that made everything else trivial.
“That little girl sleeping on the couch in the next room,” Jenny said softly, whispering in my ear while she mounted me, guided me inside her. “You aren’t betraying her, right?”
“No,” I said, not sure what I was denying. I traced the perimeter of her firm breasts with one hand, the other resting on the small of her back. “No.”
“Then it won’t matter if she hears us, right, Preston? You don’t care, do you?”
I pulled her down on me and bucked up underneath, and she threw her head back. Her fingernails dug into my shoulders and she made a sound as if she were laughing, as if she were in pain.
“I care,” I insisted, my voice more like a whine.
“That’s okay,” Jenny hissed, nipping my earlobe till she drew blood. “I like that, Preston. I don’t want you to be a nice guy.”
Jenny wrestled with me when I rolled on top and pinned her wrists to the mattress, but it was obvious that she let me win. I didn’t care anymore. I was well past the point of caring about anything other than the girl beneath me.
“You’re in luck,” I whispered, working my hand between her legs. “Because I’m not.”
The way her body moved underneath me perfectly defined urgency.
“Then act like it,” Jenny ordered, her eyes glinting malevolently. “Tell me – are you going to pretend that I’m April when we fuck?”
***
It would be nice to say Jenny left before I woke. I could hear her and April talking in the next room before I managed to sit up, though, and the room was bright was afternoon sunlight. I was suffering from a splitting headache, and the wound in my side was very sore, but April had lost none of her touch for putting me back together, and the bandages from last night remained firmly in place. I wondered what I had been dosed with, and how long the terrible hangover would last.
I walked out to the living room the way someone with a cavity approaches a dentist’s chair.
“Preston!” April cried out, almost dropping the spatula she was holding into a hissing frying pan. “Are you okay?”
“Sure,” I croaked. “Thanks to you.”
“Oh, how cute,” Jenny said, laughing while she put bread in the toaster. “He’s gonna live after all.”
I looked around. It was easier than meeting either of their eyes. April’s stuff was lined up neatly next to the television, which displayed a completely unheeded baseball game. The kitchen was consumed with disarray in the midst of the production of an extensive breakfast.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, rubbing my aching head. “Shouldn’t we be packing? Didn’t Jenny tell you, April? They found me yesterday.”
“She told me what you told her, which was nothing,” April snapped, returning her attention to the eggs. “And we aren’t going anywhere. We are staying right here. I have class tomorrow.”
“April, you don’t understand,” I pleaded. “They found me. They could show up at our door any minute.”
“Haven’t I always kept us safe?” April asked pityingly. “If they were coming here, then they would have done it already. Why don’t you sit down and have breakfast. Then you can tell me all about what happened yesterday.”
“This is hopeless,” I muttered, sitting down on the couch. “Breakfast, right?”
“Yeah,” April said, looking from Jenny’s smirking face to mine in obvious confusion. “Eggs and stuff. I made the bacon.”
The moment stretched out into absurdity. I was afraid to move for fear of breaking the silence, bringing all the questions bubbling up to the surface. When the determined pounding on the door started it was almost a relief.
I didn’t bother to check the peephole. Kim’s knock couldn’t be confused with anything other than a police raid. Therefore, it came as something of a surprise to find a crowd at my door.
Kim was indeed there, her arms folded and her body tense with barely restrained anger. Sumire hovered behind her, expression shifting back and forth from amusement to alarm. However, the real problem was all the way in the back – Holly stood stiffly at the base of the stairs, disappointed and stern in a flattering grey dress.
“Um. Ah,” I said cleverly. “Good morning.”
“Is she here?”
Holly’s voice was chilly. Kim’s stare was full of contempt. Sumire looked as if she was enjoying the whole scene immensely.
“Is who…”
My deception, clever though it may have been, failed utterly.
“You know who,” Kim cut in impatiently. “That girl, the homeless one. Jenny whatever. Did you bring her inside my building?”
“Well, you see…”
Given the opportunity, I had a story that would have set matters right. I had been saving it for just such an occasion. It’s really a shame that Jenny never gave me the opportunity, sauntering out wearing nothing more than one of my t-shirts and a smirk.
“Man’s allowed to have guests, right?” Jenny asked, tugging the shirt down to cover the white of her upper thighs with the mock innocence of someone who fully intends to both have and eat their cake. “There some sort of rule against Preston having a social life?”
“Jenny Frost,” Holly said grimly.
“Bitch-whose-name-I-can’t-remember,” Jenny offered cheerfully in return. “What can I do for you?”
“You can get the hell out of my building, for starters,” Kim demanded, looking as if she planned to commit suicide by attacking Jenny. “You’ve already been warned. And you, Preston...”
“Wait. Are you sure this isn’t just a giant misunderstanding?” My ploy was a little desperate, I will admit, but so was the situation. “What exactly did I do to upset all of you?”
“I told you, didn’t I, Preston? To stay away from her?” Holly’s tone was civil, but that was all you could call it, and that bothered me. Sumire was too young and perky, and Kim had hated me from the start, but Holly meant something to me. “Or did you forget?”
“He’s all grown-up, bitch,” Jenny said coolly. “He can make his own decisions. Or are you jealous?”
“Is that what this is about?” Sumire asked, wide-eyed. “I knew that’s what this was about. Preston, you total slut.”
I was holding on by my fingernails; no, scratch that, I was already falling to my doom. I found myself looking from one face to the other, from Jenny’s sharp teeth to Sumire’s amused superiority, as if they would offer some sort of escape.
“Wait, this isn’t that kind of thing…”
I could see it slip away. My word edgewise.
“Whatever the circumstances,” Kim said sternly, pausing for a withering glance in my direction. “You’ve been told repeatedly that you are not welcome at the Kadath Estates, Miss Frost.”
“Yeah, I get told that a lot,” Jenny said, shrugging. “This whole fucking city feels that way. If it makes you go away, then you’ll be happy to hear I’m not staying longer than breakfast.”
“You had better leave,” Sumire snapped, suddenly deadly serious, like a very small dog fearlessly barking down a mastiff. “I don’t want to have to remove you.”
Jenny was positively delighted, slinking over on bare feet to prod Sumire’s chest with her index finger, the tattered t-shirt lifting to reveal a glimpse of her polka-dot underwear. Somehow, there was nothing ridiculous about the scene. I could only watch in horror and wonder if there was any chance this would end without violence.
“Maybe I should stay, then. Maybe I want you to make me leave.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Sumire warned, standing her ground. “You don’t know what I can do.”
“But I want to fuck with you,” Jenny countered cheerfully. “It’s my thing. I fuck with everybody.”
There was going to be a fight on my doorstep. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop Jenny and Sumire. Getting between them would have been futile.
Of course, I didn’t really want to do anything like that.
“Jenny Frost, you will do nothing to harm anyone while you are within these walls.” Holly spoke with an air of tremendous authority. “Do I make myself understood?”
Jenny froze where she was, facing down Sumire, only slightly absurd in a stretched blue t-shirt and bare legs. Then she laughed, but it was forced – I should know. I’m an expert when it comes to forced laughter.
“This is the only place where I have to listen to you,” Jenny said slowly, turning to face Holly. “We bump into each other somewhere else, all your little tricks won’t mean shit. Keep that in mind.”
It was a testament to the sparks that flew between these two women that no one, to the best of my knowledge, noticed April until she was standing outside, grabbing the back of my sweatshirt with one hand.
“Jenny, Preston, breakfast is getting cold,” April said sharply, glaring at each of the assembly in turn. “The rest of you are bothering us. Please go away.”
It could have been shock. It could have been the way she spoke. Nevertheless, we all did exactly what April told us.
9. Bad Houses
Drones and automated subroutines spun webs to catch us before we ever thought to run. The delay, words beginning to form on her lips, a warning. She twitched in her sleep, struggling with formless things in dreams that she could never remember.
“We need to run.”
April shook her head with the composure of a Buddha, sitting facing me cross-legged on the other side of the bed. Jenny had coaxed April into the shower with her that morning and washed her hair before leaving, an unusually fastidious and affectionate gesture that puzzled me.
“I’m not running,” she said solemnly. “I like it here.”
“I do, too,” I said, not sure if I was telling the truth or not. “But they’ve found us again. If they are in the city, then it won’t be long until they find Kadath. And then us…”
“Nobody can hurt us here, in the Estates,” April said, with an eerie assurance. “This place is safe, Preston.”
“I don’t get it. Where is all this confidence coming from? Why are you so certain?”
“You said it yourself. We both have jobs. This is one of mine. I know when we are safe, and we are safe here.”
“I’m not questioning your judgment, I’m trying to understanding your reasoning. Why Kadath? Why this city? There is a whole world to hide us. We could find another place.”
April had never looked at me that way before. Disdain, pity, irritation… lies died on my lips and we sat in corrosive silence.
“Don’t be silly, Preston,” April said softly, her eyes unreadable. “This city is the end of everything. There is no further to run, no world left for us. Maybe there never was. Have you been to the ocean, Preston? Have you seen what sleeps beneath the water?”
I was reminded of the statue – the girl crying seawater in Holly’s curio cabinet. April’s eyes were wet, same as when she watched television. I reached for her hand, but she pushed me away.
That seemed to happen to me a lot lately.
“April? What are you talking about? Have you been listening to Dawes again? Because he was saying something like that, the other day, about some city in the sea…”
That look again. I realized that April felt bad for me.
“We aren’t ready for that yet. First we have to stop them. We cannot run any further, Preston. This is where I need to be.”
“I can’t stay inside forever…”
“Seems like I told you that recently,”
April pointed out smugly.
“And you said you wanted to go to class tomorrow. What is it that you want me to do about all this?”
“You do what you’ve always done,” April said, radiant with pity, as beatific as if she was forgiving me. “Do you think I don’t know, Preston? Did you think I would judge you? I understand. I understand perfectly. Is it what happened five years ago? I am not angry, and I am not sorry. That was a long time ago and things have changed. We both changed.”
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 16
