After a few hours of playing cashier, Leo is bored enough that he might want to go to school. He’s bumped into me nine hundred times in our small space and asked me so many questions that my brain is in danger of exploding. Indy took him with her to restock, but he quickly tired of stairs and returned to my checkstand.
“You know what I would buy with a thousand credits?” he asks. Spending imaginary credits is one of the many amusements of today.
“I know what I would buy,” I say. “A muzzle for you so I could have a thought to myself.”
Leo cackles like a loon. The kid likes to be teased, and I like having him around despite the lack of thinking time. Besides, any thoughts I do have are about Eric and Paul outside the walls, and I’d rather not think those.
I wish I’d told Eric he couldn’t go without me. I’ve come to understand why he gave me veto power. I understand all too well as I imagine an empty bed and an empty heart to go with it.
I think of Maria. Of our goodbyes, of her calling me mija, and of that needle sliding home. Being there to say farewell, staying through the end, was both the best and most terrible thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t even get that chance with him if the worst happens.
“What would you buy with your thousand-million credits?” I ask Leo in an attempt to shove the intrusive thoughts from my mind.
“Sylvie! Only a thousand,” Leo says. “First, I’d get all the chocolate bars. And there are a hundred over there, so that would be two hundred dollars.”
“Good math.” A guy places a few items on the belt, and I ask, “Name?”
“Landon.” I tally up his purchases and have him sign his page in the I-P binder—I’m covering for Sharla while she’s in the bathroom. “New here?” he asks.
“Yup,” I say.
“Landon Mann,” he says. “And you are…?”
“Sylvie,” I say.
I finally give him more than a glance. Landon has smoldering eyes, olive skin, and his dark hair is the same length as mine, but shinier, with reddish highlights. He shakes it from his face while he smiles with impossibly white teeth. Someone forgot to tell this man it’s the zombie apocalypse.
“It’s nice to meet you, Sylvie. If you need anything here, any pointers, I can help you out.”
He gazes intently, possibly trying to hypnotize me. Indy rounds the corner from stocking shelves, stops in her tracks, and then inches backward so she’s out of his sight. She opens her mouth in a silent scream and fans herself with a hand. Yes, he’s movie-star handsome, but everything in his demeanor screams he’s waiting for me to fall at his feet.
“Thanks, but I’m all set.” I’m distracted by Indy, who points at herself, then at me, and spins her hand like c’mon. She wants an audience. “Hey, Indy, come here for a minute?”
She strolls up but doesn’t spare him a glance. “What’s up?”
“Um, how are the shelves?” I ask. I called her over like she wanted, but now I’m at a loss.
“They’re fine, weirdo,” she says, then turns to Landon and does a double take. “Hey, have we met before? Jake?”
“Landon Mann,” he says, and takes an inconspicuous inventory of Indy’s tight jeans, straight shoulders, and perfect cleavage. His smile widens a notch. “Maybe we have, but I think I’d remember meeting you.”
Indy giggles. “I know! You’re an actor, right?”
“I am.”
I’m not surprised by this. Landon’s real name is probably something like Herbert Fritzenwinkle.
Indy snaps her fingers. “Shakespeare in the Park. That’s where I know you.”
“Among other things. Did you see one of the plays?”
“I was in it, but you wouldn’t remember me. Just a walk-on.”
“Then I have to apologize,” he says. “Because I was a fool to have missed you in the crowd.”
Indy dips her head and then raises amused, coquettish eyes. “How many times have you used that line?”
Landon beams. “Not in a while. I’ll have to do better next time…what’s your name?”
“India. Indy.”
He leans toward her. Her chest actually heaves. I clear my throat and point at the customers behind them. “I don’t mean to break this up, but I’ve got to do this here job thing.”
“Of course,” he says. “Until next time, Indy.” He strolls out the back door, then turns and smiles before it closes behind him.
“That turn back was a good move,” I say, motioning the first customer forward. “Not playing it too cool because then you’d think he was a jerk. I bet that cuts his Time Until He Gets the Lady into Bed in half.”
Indy smacks my shoulder while I add up the woman’s items. I am not going to consider what use she has for roach spray. Nope. I push it past before I can view the roach on the label and resolve to soak our apartment in carcinogenic chemicals. I’ll scour the higher apartments until I find half-used cans.
After I’ve taken care of my customers, Indy says, “Landon Mann is kind of a big deal.”
“And he knows it.”
“I mean he was. In the theater community. The New Yorker named him an up-and-coming actor.”
“Fine. But don’t tell me you didn’t see through that veneer. He even has veneers. And his hair is so shiny.”
“Maybe he had bad teeth as a kid!” Indy says. “And so what if he takes care of his hair? I take care of my hair. Paul does his hair.”
“Paul wets his hands and pushes his hair out of his face.”
“Whatever. Not everyone has perfectly mussed hair when they roll out of bed, like your boyfriend.”
“Really? I thought you were talking about my hair.”
“If you want to have a talk about your hair, I’ll block out a half an hour.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Tell me the date of your last haircut.”
I think back before zombies. BZ. I still can’t remember. “None of your beeswax.”
“That’s what I thought. Take it out of your dumb pigtails and let me trim it at an angle so you look like a grownup.”
I could take offense, but she smiles with gorgeous white teeth sans the fakery of Landon. She could do so much better than that fool. Like Paul, for starters.
“Fine,” I say. “If you leave it long enough for piggies.”
“Piggies?” She rolls her eyes. “We’re cutting your hair at lunch. Leo’s, too. He looks like a ragamuffin.”
“How do I look like a muffin?” Leo asks once she’s left.
“It’s the blue eyes,” I say. “She mistook you for a blueberry muffin.”
Our building is on the early dinner shift this week. Though I find it hard to eat, I do for Leo’s sake. I got numerous compliments on my hair, mainly from Rissa and April, which I’m sure Indy will never let me forget.
I breathe a sigh of relief when Louis, Chris, and Julie walk into the café. I lean close to Leo, “Hey, guess who’s back—”
Louis moves toward us with a grim expression that steals my voice. Panic takes flight in my throat and chest, its wings thudding so loudly I can barely hear. If I weren’t frozen in dread, I’d throw back my chair and run. I don’t want to hear what he has to say; I want to scramble away, to shove my head in the sand and risk suffocation rather than know.
Indy sets her fork down, and the teenagers stop talking. Jorge, on my other side, rests his hand on my trembling shoulder. Halfway down the table, Brother David stands abruptly, as if on call to perform some priestly duty of consolation.
Louis closes the final distance and raises his hands in a calming gesture. “As far as we know, they’re okay. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He tells us they were ambushed, and how he told Eric, Paul, and the others to run before the radios cut out. But, with the number of Lexers crammed in the streets, they’re likely holed up anywhere in a ten-block radius. Louis explains how he, Julie, Chris, and a few other people escaped through a break in the first wave of zombies, hid for a while, and then
worked their way downtown on foot.
“There was a mob coming from three blocks over,” Chris adds. “They wouldn’t have tried it. I know they’re somewhere safe.” He looks so dismayed I want to comfort him.
Indy reaches across the table for Leo’s hand. His lower lip juts out and fat tears pool on his lower lids. His distress reins in mine, and I brush his hair from his forehead. “Like Chris said, I’m sure they’re hiding. Do you know how nice the houses are up there? They’re probably kicking back in a mansion right now.”
Leo’s tears spill with his nod. I hug him to me. If he didn’t already know how precarious our existence is, that lesson was brought home with rifles and zombies only weeks ago. The world feels off kilter under my own feet, and I’m two decades older.
Jorge tilts his head to the door and lifts Jin from his high chair. “Want to go home, squirt?” I ask.
Leo sniffles a yes into my chest. I rise with him in my arms and say to the rest of the table, “Finish your dinner.”
Indy nods, though she makes no effort to take up her fork. Outside, the air is cool. I hope they found somewhere comfortable to sleep. I can picture it now—Paul and Eric busting on each other the way they do, each pretending the other isn’t frustrated by this delay. Because that’s all it is. A delay.
Jorge puts an arm around me as we walk. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. “Love you, Jorge,” I say.
“Love you, too.”
Our apartment is chilly—it’s cool enough for heat at night, but that’s a perk of the old world. In the new world, you bundle up unless you’ll freeze otherwise. I set Leo on the couch, cover him with a throw blanket, and walk to the kitchen. I open the cabinets and decide that kitchens depress me. They used to be rooms of abundance; now they’re reminders of scarcity. Not that my kitchen was ever full of food, but the potential was only a store trip away.
What I want is on a top shelf, which I reach by standing on the counter. I’m not proud I’ve hidden food, though it won’t stop me from concealing more when I get the chance. The last bits of MRE are up here, along with two cans of fruit I found in an upstairs apartment.
I pull out a packet labeled Cherry Cobbler, grab a fork and bowl, and bring it to Leo. “If you want it.” I have no words that will help, so I’ve resorted to my old standby: sugar.
I situate myself under the blanket with him. Jorge returns from changing Jin’s cloth diaper as Indy enters, the entire gang of Sunset Park behind her. “You didn’t think we were going to sit there and eat dinner, did you?”
“I don’t know, maybe you were really hungry?”
“Dumbass.” She hangs her jacket on a foyer hook, sets herself beside me, and motions in Julie, Chris, and Louis. “They wanted to come.”
Rissa and April drag dining chairs to the area rug. Brother David appears carrying more chairs from the boys’ apartment, as if we’re setting up for a party. Or to sit shiva, my brain whispers in its ceaseless attempt to fuck with me.
Elena sits straight-backed in one of the chairs, her kids on either side. She reminds me of a bird with her bright, dark eyes and the way she moves in nervous little jerks. She smooths Aurelia’s silky curls and wipes a smudge of something off Felix’s chin. Her hands come to rest in her lap for a second and then head up to fuss with her dark hair.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone more on edge than this poor woman. She’s younger than me, with two small kids, a dead husband, and a dead boyfriend. I don’t know how serious things were between her and Guillermo, but losing him can’t have helped her mental state any.
There’s a knock on the door before Artie walks in, two full shopping bags hanging from each hand. “Refreshments have arrived.”
Julie and Chris unload the bags onto the table. Potato chips, boxes of cookies, alcohol, and a can of onion dip. Artie moves for me, mouth curved down in concern. He sits on the coffee table and pushes his glasses up his nose. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m a little confused,” I say. “What’s happening?”
“You must think we’re meshuganah.”
My smile comes before I realize it’s on its way. No one’s said meshuganah—crazy—to me in years. “I was getting shpilkes.”
“A fellow Jew!” Artie says. “I knew I liked you.”
“Sort of. My mother was Jewish, but we—”
“You use the word shpilkes, you’re a Jew. You don’t even need a Jewish mother for that.” He puts a hand over mine. “This is what we do when we wait for someone to return. Eat, drink, and make merry to take the mind off what could be happening out there. Kate calls it an Irish wait instead of an Irish wake. Right now, your brain is a bad neighborhood, and we’re not letting you wander around in there alone.”
I laugh, and Artie claps his hands together. “Wonderful! So, we stay here until you fall asleep, pass out, or scream at us to leave.”
“Passing out sounds good,” I say.
Artie lifts a finger. “My thoughts exactly. Let me make you ladies something—I’m the king of cocktails. Sweet or not sweet?”
“Sweet,” Indy and I say.
He heads for the table after a small bow, and Julie and Chris take his place. “Artie’s worried about Kate,” Chris says, though both their faces are pinched with worry, too. “They’ve been friends since they were teenagers, then lost touch, and then found each other this year. Crazy, right?”
Julie tucks a knee to her chest and smiles at Leo. “I think they’re fine. I really do. As long as they got off the FDR, they had a million places to hide.”
“And, correct me if I’m wrong, but they had Roger with them,” Chris says. “That alone means they can’t lose.”
“Why?” I ask. “Is he some sort of expert?”
“No, but they can throw him to the Lexers while they escape,” he says, deadpan. Indy and I burst out laughing, and he turns to Julie. “Am I right? Isn’t that what you would do?”
“Without a doubt,” she says.
10
Eric
The sun won’t be fully down for a few hours. Paul’s fingers tap his thigh, tap tap tap, the way they have for the past hour. We’re fine, but we’re the only ones who know that, and morale in the apartment is not at an all-time high.
“If they don’t move by the morning, we’ll make them move,” I say.
“I thought this would be easy…” Paul shakes his head. “Now Leo’s going to lose his mind if I leave again.”
Kate, who has spent the past hour looking thoughtfully out the window, says, “They’ll probably be drunk soon.”
“What?”
“An Irish wait,” she says, and explains a tradition where they drink while they wait for people to return. “It’s not the most responsible of activities, but it works.”
“Great,” I say, “so we miss out on a party, too.”
Kate smiles. “Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“Nothing else is, why should that be?” It comes out glummer than I’d intended, and Paul’s fingers stop their beat.
“Bro,” Paul says, “you know I’d go to Brooklyn if we could, right?”
Trust Paul to know what I’m thinking. And, as I suspected, he’s willing to come along. “After today, you’re going to head into a situation where the chance you’ll be killed is close to guaranteed? Leo won’t lose his mind about that?”
Paul’s cheek twitches. At the same time as he wants to be out here, to be useful, he has Leo to consider. It’s a dilemma I don’t envy. Finally, I say what I’ve been thinking, “I had the idea that I should check it out. Just to see what he’s up to.”
“Does Sylvie know about this idea?” Paul asks. I shrug. “That’s what I thought.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have to know.” Even as I say it, guilt snakes through my gut. If I don’t die over there, she’ll kill me upon my return. “He deserves to die, Paul.”
“I’m not disagreeing. I’m saying you can’t go alone like some rabid Boy Scout who thinks he can take out Walter
Young singlehandedly.”
“Walter Young?” Roger asks. I thought he was asleep, but he watches us with the faintly dazed eyes of someone who’s woken from a nap in a strange place.
“The guy who attacked us,” Paul says. “You know him?”
Roger stretches his arms overhead. “No, but he sounds like a great guy.”
“Salt of the earth,” I say.
Roger chuckles. “So, what, this guy just came and took over your Safe Zone?”
“He was with a nearby Safe Zone, and he claimed they were in danger. When we said we’d help him, he brought the Safe Zone’s kids and parents in unarmed, and then he sent zombies in after them. Killed his people and most of ours.”
“Shit,” Roger says quietly. After a moment, he stands. “Going to the john.” He makes his way down the hall, cursing when he bumps something in the dark hall to the bathroom.
“I’m not planning to singlehandedly take him out,” I say to Paul. “Check him out. I’m not an idiot.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You need to let that guilty bullshit go, bro. It’s eating you up inside, and it’s going to poison everything you have left. And that will be your fault.”
I don’t answer. When Paul wants to, he can cut to the heart of the matter like a scalpel.
“After Declan, I spent a long time wanting to hunt those men down,” Kate says in the heavy silence. “Louis had to talk me out of it more than once.” She glances down the hall. “Roger’s brother, Jeff, was with them, and I know he feels bad about that, so I don’t talk about it much. But it was the other deaths, the ones besides Declan, that messed me up the most. We didn’t see it coming, but we should’ve. I failed them.”
“I guarantee no one thinks that,” I say. “You’re not responsible for trusting your own people.”
“Maybe you should take your own advice,” Kate says gently. “It gets easier. I promise.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking about grief or anger or humiliation. Maybe all of the above. I don’t know that I can ever make it right, but revenge is the only thing that could get me within spitting distance of a tie. I’m having a tough time respecting this defeated version of me, and I don’t see how anyone else can, either.
The City Series (Book 3): Instauration Page 7
