The City Series (Book 3): Instauration

by Lyons Fleming, Sarah

  Eric grunts in agreement. I pat his head, which rests on my shoulder, and wink at Casper. “You’re looking hale and hearty.”

  “I threw up when I got home,” he admits, cheeks pink. “But I felt better this morning.” Casper eats with us regularly, which took convincing, but now he seems mostly at ease.

  Julie tucks into her breakfast. After a few bites, she says, “Sylvie, the water thing. You were right about that.”

  “What water thing?” Chris asks.

  “Sylvie told me to drink a lot of water before sleep, so we did water shots in Landon’s kitchen.”

  “Thanks for inviting me,” Indy says.

  “We were in the kitchen drinking water,” I say. “That’s not an event for which one needs an invitation. Besides, you were busy talking about Landon’s Tony Award.”

  “It is handsome, isn’t it?” Landon asks. “I noticed you kept admiring it.”

  Paul tosses back the remainder of his coffee. “Admiration isn’t the word, buddy.”

  “More like wonderment,” I say, which is true. We stared in utter wonderment at Landon’s battery-lit monument to himself. “We’re very particular about words here. We even have a word game we play—Indy can tell you.”

  I feel Indy’s glare through her sunglasses, though her tight lips spread to a smile when Landon turns her way. “They do,” she says. “It’s a stupid game.”

  “You get today’s point,” Eric says. He rallies enough to sit up and finish his coffee, though he examines his toast with mistrust.

  “It may seem pompous,” Landon says, “but I believe we must never forget who we were, even as we forge ever onward.”

  Paul opens his mouth to add what can only be an insult, but Chris cuts him off with, “Those are the new people.”

  We turn to view the table with four men and two women. They were released from Quarantine this morning. Though we’re to be notified immediately if anyone named Grace or Eli arrives, one woman’s blond hair and petite figure are so like Grace that I breathe in sharply. Eric squeezes my knee as the woman rises with her plate. It’s not Grace—this woman is older by a few years and pretty in a chic, sophisticated way.

  She nods at us, then smiles over my shoulder before she moves with the others to the dish disposal station. Landon is behind me, and, sure enough, he watches her with none-too-subtle interest. Julie explains how the new group spent the past year in downtown Manhattan and traveled here on the FDR once the mobs grew worse. Though Indy appears absorbed in Julie’s tale, she sits stiffly, softening only when Landon drapes an arm over her shoulders and kisses her neck. She saw it this time for sure.

  “I must leave, love,” he says, and stands from the table. “But I’ll see you later at my place? You know I can’t sleep without you.”

  “Of course,” she says. He glances in the direction of the new woman, nodding distractedly. Indy rises to her feet. “I’ll go with you. See you at work, Sylvia.”

  She’s pissed at me, or at him, or at both of us. The last time she called me Sylvia was during an argument on the elevated train tracks in Brooklyn. “See you there, India.”

  “A pleasure, as always.” Landon bows and leads Indy by her arm. At first, she leans away. When met with this transparent body language, Landon runs his hands along her torso and whispers in her ear until she laughs.

  “What the hell does she see in him?” Paul asks.

  “He’s pretty?” I offer.

  “Or good in b—” Julie begins, stopping herself when she notices Leo’s inquisitive expression. “Good in Broadway plays.”

  “And we must never forget his handsome Tony Award,” Eric says in a pretentious accent, and our two tables crack up.

  23

  I read a book by the fountain on my lunch break from the store, since Indy took off for her lunch without a word. Ever since we hung out with Landon two weeks ago, she’s distanced herself more. Even Lucky is feeling the effects. When he asked me why she barely spoke to him, I told him it was the infatuation of new love. He might’ve bought it.

  If early June is any indication, we’re in for a scorching summer. We still can’t leave, and Grace still hasn’t arrived, and, presumably, Walt and his gang are living it up at Sunset Park. I watch people walk the paths and wonder if they feel as helpless as I do.

  A figure in black strolls up. It takes me a second to comprehend it’s Roger, since his blond hair has returned to its natural color. He lifts his eyebrows and points at the dark brown strands.

  “Better,” I say. “I was wondering when you were going to use that hair dye.”

  “Took me a while to pick up the phone.” He sits near enough to talk but far enough to not be in my space. “What’s up?”

  Rather than get into what he means by that, I say, “Nothing much. Watching people. How about you?”

  “Just got back from going out and wanted some company.”

  We’ve spoken since the apology, but I don’t think I count as company. Roger doesn’t seem to have many friends—he talks to everyone yet hangs with no one. Except Eric, whom he seeks out.

  “I’ve got another twenty-five minutes,” I say. “You’re welcome to sit and people-watch with me. How’d you get to go out? I thought no one was allowed right now.”

  He stares straight ahead with a sly smile. “They’re not.”

  “You snuck out?” I ask. “How?”

  “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Funny,” I say. “Maybe I’ll alert the council to your wicked ways.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell. And this.” He unzips his coat, digs in an inner pocket, and slides three packs of cigarettes across the bench slats. “I have a stash.”

  I’d never tell, but I won’t refuse. When he’s not an asshole, Roger is overly generous to the point where Eric declined accepting anything more from him, which means I’ve been nicotine-deprived.

  “Thanks, but you could get in a lot of trouble for taking more than your ten.”

  The people who go on runs are allowed ten percent of their take as reward for risking their lives. They can also turn it in for credits or time off. If those zombies around us move, we can go on a run and then store our portion of the take for next year.

  “It’s part of my ten,” Roger says. “I don’t bring it all inside, in case of emergency.”

  I open a pack and light one. Miriam, an older woman who sits thirty feet away, coughs in protest, then rises from her bench and stalks off. I roll my eyes. “We’re outside, for the love of all that’s holy. Couldn’t you guys have voted out the annoying people before we got here? I know for a fact she’s a jerk.”

  I know this because she’s friends with a group of older women who all like a specific tea. We found a few boxes in the storeroom, and, rather than share with them, she bought every single box and didn’t say a word about it.

  “Like him?” Roger lifts his chin to where Indy and Landon have appeared on a bench outside the Oval. Though their backs are to us, the way they sit rigid and speak rapidly suggests a semi-heated discussion.

  “You know, there was a time when I thought you were the biggest jerk here,” I say. “But he’s definitely number one.”

  “What number am I now?”

  “Two. I didn’t say you weren’t a jerk, just that you weren’t the biggest.”

  “You hold nothing back.”

  “I hold plenty back.” I tap my cigarette ash to the ground. “Just not people’s jerkiness.”

  “Good to know.”

  Indy leaves Landon on the bench and moves toward the store. I finish my cigarette and check my watch. Fifteen minutes. “You’re not too bad. Eric likes you, although he does give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I start off thinking everyone’s a jerk.”

  “Like with those people who took your Safe Zone? That guy Walt?”

  Here’s something I’d love to hold back. “Eric didn’t like him, necessarily, but he
didn’t see how horrible he was. Neither did anyone else who met him, though, so…” I flip the top of the cigarette box open and shut. If I have another, I’ll feel sick, but this topic makes me want one.

  “Some people are good at hiding,” Roger says.

  “I guess.”

  “Are you going to fight them?”

  I throw caution to the wind and light another cigarette. “Brother David thinks we should try to make peace before more people die. A deal of some sort.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I don’t want to make peace. And I want none of my people to die. Which is impossible.” Three of the new arrivals go past. The blond woman, Lydia, waves to Landon, and his head swivels as he tracks her passage. Roger watches, too, and I say, “I bet you’d like to Roger that.”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard more than a sardonic laugh from Roger. “Has anyone ever told you you’re crazy?”

  “You’re not the first,” I say, and stand. “I’ve got to get back. Thanks for the cigarettes.”

  “Sure thing,” he says. “Don’t smoke them all in one place.”

  I ignore Landon on my way to the store. It’s not my first choice of work, but it does mean I know who most people are, and I also know some of their secrets. I can rattle off their names along with the top three things they purchase, especially if they’re Q through Z. I know who’s insecure about their hair or lack thereof. I know who binges food. I know about people’s sex lives. I know who has a drinking problem. It’s interesting information, especially to a gossip hound like Indy.

  When I get inside, the gossip hound is on the floor arranging bottles of shampoo. I have five minutes, so I wander over. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Indy says without looking up.

  “I saw you and Landon talking. You looked upset.”

  “Don’t get excited, everything’s fine with us.”

  I lean on the shelves. There are so few people left in the world, and I don’t have the energy to fight with one of the only ones I truly like. “I’m not excited. I’m concerned. You never come home anymore, and we miss you. Lucky misses you.”

  “Lucky’s fine,” she says. “He has his friends. And maybe I don’t want to see you because you hate my boyfriend. Did you ever think of that?”

  “We don’t hate him.” I lower myself to crouching. “We just…I don’t know, see you with someone else. Think you could do better. That kind of thing.”

  “How could I do better than Landon?” Indy turns to me, damp eyes imploring me to understand. “I love him, Sylvie. He’s a guy—you know guys don’t talk—but he loves me, too.”

  In every relationship, I was the one who never talked. When I met Eric, he didn’t dangle a promise of some distant love. He planted his feet and waited for me to be ready, and he’s never made me feel like I don’t measure up. If anything, he thinks I’m better than I am, which makes me want to measure up.

  Indy painstakingly spins the bottles so that every label is perfectly in line. “I’d think you’d be happy for me.”

  I would be if I thought she was truly happy, not this fake happy she’s mastered. But I realize we’ve been going about this all wrong. Indy needs friends who don’t make her feel lonelier than she is. And when Landon breaks her heart, which is coming, we’ll be there.

  I sit cross-legged on the floor. I’m getting better at apologies. “I’m sorry, I really am. I’m happy if you’re happy. Are you happy?”

  “I’m happier than I was.” She fusses with a bottle that’s one-thousandth of a millimeter askew. “It’s…I need something to be happy about.”

  I nod; I understand that much. “I promise no more making fun, unless you want us to. Not to brag, but we’re really good at it.”

  She smacks my arm. “Don’t start.”

  24

  Eric

  The morning is hot and quiet. I like the garden this time of day, and so does Kate, who I find crouched in the dirt, humming a little ditty. She holds her straw hat to her head when she peers up at me. “You know what I’m going to do in a few minutes? I’m going to the store, and I’m going to get Sylvie to ring up a truckload of items.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Good for us, if you’re still here in the spring. I’m doing it either way. And I’ll leave on good terms in case I have to come crawling back.”

  I laugh. I’m not surprised at the news she’ll move to the High Line no matter what. “You could come with us if we leave Manhattan,” I say. “Or if we go to Brooklyn. It’s different there.”

  “You’re going back?”

  “I was thinking of crossing the bridge at the first freeze, just to see what’s happening. Unless the mobs move sooner.”

  She stands, squinting. “Two boats washed up yesterday. We pulled them in before they floated out again. They’re in pretty bad shape, but you can use them if you can patch them.”

  “Will the council—”

  “Fuck the council. I say if you volunteer to fix them, you get to be the first to try them out. Believe me, no one is going to fight you for the honor of sinking in the river.”

  I notice Jorge standing near, Jin in a carrier on his back. I’m pretty sure, judging by his downturned mouth, he heard. He keeps busy with fatherhood, often going to sleep early because Jin’s an early riser. We haven’t spoken—really spoken—in a while.

  “I’m coming,” he says.

  “I understand why you have to go,” Kate says. “But be careful.”

  She excuses herself for the store. Jorge gently removes Jin’s fist from his ponytail and stands the baby backpack in the dirt between rows. There won’t be much space in a month with the way the plants are growing.

  “I keep thinking of how I want to kill them,” Jorge says. “I thought about taking off on my own a couple times.” Jin screeches at a waving tomato leaf that’s out of his reach, and Jorge smiles. “Then I tell myself just one more day with him. After that, I’ll find him a home and take care of what needs to be done.”

  “You’d never get through the mobs—”

  “I know.” He rubs his chin and looks out over the plants. “I won’t come back, probably. So I don’t go. I hear Maria telling me to wait, and I say, Mimi, I’ve waited enough. How long do I let them live there, thinking they can get away with killing people? You know what she says?”

  I shake my head.

  “She says, Bullshit, that’s your cojones talking, not your brain. Sit your ass down and wait until you’ll actually do some good.”

  My laugh is lost in the sharp pain in my chest. “That sounds like her.”

  “Right? I want to talk to you about this every day, and every day I don’t. It’s not easy to admit you made a mistake, to make amends. I’ve done it enough to know it’s good for me, but it’s never easy.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Eric, I went to their place. Guillermo and I were the ones who okayed them coming. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough. Maybe we saw what we expected to see. Or maybe it was set up so that we couldn’t see. I don’t know.”

  He takes a shaky breath. “All those people, all those kids. Grace and Eli. Maria. On my head. It’s been hard not to take a drink, a pill, or something. I’m past that now, but I need to say sorry to you. You carried it alone, but I’m with you whatever you decide to do. We decide to do.”

  Some of my heaviness dissolves, leaving me a little lighter. Not light, but not weighed down. It’s not that misery loves company, more the sense that Jorge’s taken part of my load. I don’t know what to say. Before I can come up with something, Jorge grabs me in one of his bear hugs.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say, and I mean it. “It’s theirs.”

  “I know.” He releases me with a final pound on the back and gives me a rueful smile. “And I don’t know.”

  “Same here.”

  Jorge takes Jin to daycare while our shift trickles in. I water and weed and pick peas. In Brooklyn, I would’ve stuck a few in my pocke
t for Sylvie, and no one would have minded. Here, I’m not sure. That alone is reason enough to recover what belongs to us.

  After a while, Kate returns to work beside me and Jorge. “Will you guys give me some help later? I bought stuff in the storeroom, and I want to get it all to one of the storage lockers.”

  “Of course,” Jorge says.

  “Thanks.” Kate drops a few peas in her bucket. “I was hoping Jin would be here, but then we’d spend our shift trying to keep the destruction to a minimum.”

  Jorge chuckles. “Now that he’s crawling, I swear he’s everywhere at once.”

  “When my daughter was eighteen months old, I hopped in the shower. I thought Declan was watching her, he thought I was. In those few minutes, she managed to pull cat poop out of the litter box, dump milk into a cup—a half-gallon of milk into a small cup, mind you—and then she toddled down the hall, where she found a permanent marker.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh is right. Rubbing alcohol works wonders on Sharpies, though it doesn’t get it completely off porous wood. File that information away in case you need it.”

  “Done,” Jorge says. “Where’s she now? Your daughter.” Somehow, Jorge manages to ask the question gently, with a few simple words.

  “Wherever anybody is. She lived in Portland, Oregon—we teased her about being a hipster, joking that New York wasn’t enough for her. But she loved it out there. We visited a few times and thought we’d probably move to Oregon or Washington in a couple of years, if it seemed she wasn’t coming back east.” Kate throws another handful of peas down. “But we wanted to be sure before we gave up our rent-controlled apartment.”

  “Can’t blame you for that. Those things were like gold.”

  “New York: the only place you stayed when you wanted to leave because your rent was low,” Kate says. “God, that was stupid.”

  “It’s what it was,” Jorge says. “We ran out of time, but we didn’t know the clock was ticking down.”

  “True enough.”