The City Series (Book 3): Instauration

by Lyons Fleming, Sarah

  “Where have you been?” I ask.

  “Restocking.” He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offers it to me.

  I hesitate, thinking of Eric’s question. “Why do you give me cigarettes?”

  I don’t say it unkindly, but his mouth tightens. “I told you why.” He jams the pack back into his pocket. “Suit yourself.”

  He strides for the door, flings it open, and disappears as it crashes shut. I should probably apologize, but it was a simple question that didn’t merit so dramatic a response. I lean against the ledge. “Now I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “Not to state the obvious,” Micah says, “but, if you wanted them, you shouldn’t have sent your cigarette supplier storming downstairs.”

  “So helpful. Careful I don’t shove you off the roof.”

  “Why did you send your cigarettes storming downstairs?” Casper asks.

  “Because he gives them to me all the time. I was trying to ascertain if there’s an ulterior motive.”

  “You know I don’t love Roger,” Casper replies, “but I don’t think he has an ulterior motive or anything. I think he’s afraid not to give you cigarettes because you might not be his friend if he doesn’t.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I say, even as I come to the realization that it’s likely the truth. Roger’s self-esteem isn’t exactly through the roof, though he’d have you think otherwise. “I don’t pretend to like people. Roger, of all people, should know that.”

  “I got free lunch at school when I was young,” Casper says, “but I’d buy this kid, Ivan, lunch every day. I’d do odd jobs around the neighborhood to make money so that I’d have him to sit with because I wasn’t sure he’d sit with me if I stopped. Then, one week, I didn’t have any money.”

  “Did he sit with you?” I ask.

  Casper drops his eyes to his feet. “No. He never sat with me again, and he beat me up a few weeks later to prove he wasn’t friends with me.”

  Micah groans while my heart cracks at the image. I whisper, “That wasn’t the ending I hoped for.”

  Casper’s shoulders shake. He throws his head back and howls up at the sky, laughing instead of crying as I assumed. “That wasn’t the ending I hoped for,” he breathes between howls. “Yeah, me neither.”

  I start to laugh. Micah joins in, snorting while he says, “In high school, I pretended…” he clutches the ledge, trying to get out the words, “that I was gay, so I could join the LGBTQ. They had their own place to eat lunch, and they were cool. Finally, they broke it to me that they knew, but I could attend as an ally.”

  “Is that worse?” Casper gasps. “I don’t even know.”

  Up until high school, until Grace, I had no steady friends. No table to sit at in every new school, and so I avoided tables altogether. “I used to scarf down my food and then read in the bathroom,” I say. “My fifth-grade teacher sent a note home because she was concerned I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome.”

  Micah pounds on the ledge, red-faced, while Casper tries to catch his breath. That lonely feeling is never far—the shame, the never-good-enough—but it’s sufficiently remote that I can laugh about it, especially with people who’ve been there.

  After a minute, Casper wipes his eyes. “We’re a bunch of freaks.”

  “But we’re alive freaks,” Micah says. “I bet most of the people who picked on you aren’t.”

  “There was a time when I wanted them all wiped off the face of the Earth, but this wasn’t the ending I hoped for.”

  “Me, neither,” Micah says.

  Ever-vigilant, he leans for a check of the street. Casper sheathes his sword to join him, and I admire these two who’ve discovered they’re far stronger than they once believed. I rest my elbows on the ledge, envisioning a world superior to the soiled sidewalks, ruined stores, and grotesque cadavers searching for their next meal.

  “It’s not over yet,” I say. “Maybe we can make the ending into exactly what we want.”

  I sound a little like Grace, and I’m okay with that.

  I find Roger at his apartment. After he swings open the door, I walk in to find it’s not the hovel I pictured. Yes, there are many empty bottles and the smell of cigarette smoke, but the windows let in fresh air and the furniture is nice. A drum set, two guitars, and two amps sit in the corner, but there’s nothing that shouts home or comfort. It feels lonely, and I understand why Eric took pity on him the day he came to beat him up.

  Roger pulls a cigarette from a pack on the table and lights it, very blatantly not offering me one. “What’s up?”

  “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings earlier.”

  He flicks into an ashtray and walks to a window in that deliberate manner drunk people use to feign sobriety. “You didn’t.”

  “Okay, good,” I say, though I don’t believe him. “I appreciated that you were my nicotine supplier, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only reason I talk to you. You don’t have to give me anything.”

  He shrugs, and I wait for more. When nothing comes, I head for the door. “That’s all I wanted to say. I’ll see you later.”

  “I give them to you because I can,” he says. “You know what it’s like to have nothing, I can tell. You know how to hustle and scrape shit together to survive.”

  I nod, though his back is turned.

  “For once in my life, I don’t have to scrape,” Roger says. “I’m rich in this place, but I won’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

  “I’m sorry for that.” It’s lame, but I say it anyway.

  “Yeah. Me, too.” He unscrews the cap of a bottle, sniffs the mouth, and then takes a few gulps. “You want?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Memories of Mom?” His laugh is harsh. “Sorry. You know I’m an asshole, though.”

  “Only fifty-percent of the time. The rest of the time you’re okay.”

  “Fifty-fifty isn’t bad.”

  “You could do better, but you’d have to apply yourself.”

  Roger stumbles from the window to the table, where he pulls two cigarettes from the pack and hands me one. He lights his new smoke with the unfinished cigarette he already holds, then smashes the old in the ashtray. “I never apply myself. My brother said that was my problem. Actually, he said everything was my problem. Too many to count.”

  Roger’s Chatty-Drunk. Occasionally, Mom would get this way, and I would eagerly wait for her to lose consciousness. I couldn’t decide if it was worse than Mean Drunk, or watching her nod out, because her ramblings always centered on How Ruth Rossi Was Wronged by Life, and “Life” included yours truly.

  “Why did your brother leave?” I ask. Leave is an understatement, since the group murdered people before they left, but a mention of that won’t get Roger out of this mood.

  “He didn’t want to apply himself,” Roger says with a drunken chuckle. “He didn’t always follow the rules, but he got shit done. He was good at that. He got his way. With me, with everyone. Every single time I think I’m done, and then he’s back again.”

  I feel sorry for him, for his life before, and for the fact that he won’t try to forge a new one. He has time to change his ending, and a year or two of something good has to be better than nothing. I want to grab his demoralized shoulders and shake him into it. I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but I do know encouragement can only go so far. The rest of it—the decision, the work—is up to you.

  I light my cigarette and sit at the table. “Brother David says some prisons are in our minds. Your brother isn’t here, so why let him in there?”

  Roger drops into a chair, forehead resting on a hand. “Too late for that,” he says, voice slurred. “Can I tell you something? I’m jealous of you and Eric. How do you get that happy?”

  I take a drag and exhale while I consider the question. If I thought he’d remember any of this, I might tell him how scared I once was. That it isn’t always easy, but it’s more than worth it. “I’m not sure. Luck? Timing? Maybe we were so fucked in anot
her life that this time we deserved each other.”

  “Next life’s my lucky one?” he mumbles.

  “Guaranteed. You are pretty fucked.”

  He rolls his head sideways and chuffs at my smile. His eyes close. The hand that holds his cigarette dips to the table. I slip it from his fingers and put it out in the ashtray, then watch him as I finish my own, deliriously grateful I didn’t end up this way. The feeling is akin to when you step back onto the curb for an unknown reason, and a second later a cab flashes by at murderous speed. It’s the sweet relief of dodging a bullet. I silently thank Bubbe and Grace and anyone who gave me the smallest iota of love and compassion in my formative years, who fostered the belief I deserved better than this. I don’t think Roger was as lucky.

  I’d try to move him, but I’d probably kill us both. I touch his shoulder. “Roger? Maybe you should get in bed.”

  “I’m fine,” he mumbles. “Take a pack of smokes. You deserve them…listening to this.”

  “That’s what friends do, right?”

  He answers with the deep breaths of the slumbering drunk. I leave him to it.

  40

  Eric

  “S’up?” Roger asks.

  “Not much.” I finish banging my nail into a window frame of the greenhouse, then pluck a new one from my pocket and line it up. The cacophony of hammering people grates on you after a while, but my shift is just about done. Thankfully, we’re back to shorter shifts, and I get to leave the garden for more than an hour at a time.

  The late summer harvest is one more thing out of my way. But, with the approval of our weapons request, I have new things to worry about. We have thirteen people, including Casper, to take down Walt. Unless there’s a grenade launcher I don’t know about, I don’t see the tide turning in our favor. Brother David has offered to talk to them first, thinking his monk’s habit will act as protective armor. I think his faith is a touch overzealous, seeing as how I watched Walt’s zombies disembowel Sister Constance through her habit. I prefer not to think about how I stabbed her in the head less than half an hour later.

  The next nail finished, I go for another and notice Roger still behind me. “Are you almost off?” he asks.

  I hold up the nail, pound it in, and then drop my hammer in the communal tool chest. “I am now.”

  I would stay to finish the greenhouse, but my heart’s not in this one the way it was in Sunset Park. Besides, we have a meeting in our apartment after dinner, to discuss our plan for when it freezes. Even if the coming October won’t get cold enough, November might, and I’m hoping for an Arctic winter. I signal to Paul, who joins us after he puts his tools away.

  Roger matches our pace, running a hand through his hair. “I was wondering if you want some help when you go to Brooklyn.”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Are you sure? I thought you’d be a little more…”

  I stop under a tree. He watches me, chin lifted like he’s slighted by my underwhelmed reaction. Sometimes I feel like Roger’s older brother from whom he needs approval. I’m not at my most patient recently, though I’m pretending I am.

  “I do appreciate the offer, and we’ll take you up on it. I guess I’m speechless when anyone offers to help. I also start to wonder what’s wrong with them.”

  Roger laughs. “I want to help,” he says, good mood restored. “I heard Sylvie and Indy talking about a meeting later?”

  “Yeah, after dinner at our apartment.”

  “I already ate, but I’ll see you then.”

  Sylvie told me about her conversation with Roger, and this could be an instance of him applying himself. Even now that I’ve gotten my jealousy act out of the way, Roger’s mental health and substance abuse problems are at the bottom of my list of things to worry about. While I understand Sylvie’s reasons for wanting him to come to an epiphany where that’s concerned, there’s something fatalistic about Roger that makes him an unlikely candidate. And I suspect he enjoys Sylvie’s attention and encouragement, which sticks in my craw a little.

  It’s possible the jealousy act isn’t as far out of the way as I’d like.

  Paul and I continue along the path to the café. “Didn’t expect that,” Paul says.

  “Me, neither,” I say. “But we could use the help. As long as he’s not drunk.”

  “I think he’s been drinking less, for what it’s worth.”

  “Cool.”

  Paul walks a few more steps. “That was the ‘cool’ you say when shit’s not cool.”

  “I don’t have a ‘cool’ I say when it’s not cool.”

  “You do, bro. So, what’s not cool?” I don’t answer, and he says, “Let me guess—Sylvie and Roger. Because, I gotta say, I wouldn’t like it, either.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “Nope. But you’re a dickhead if you say anything because anyone with eyes can see Sylvie has zero interest in Roger. Her sun rises and sets on Golden Boy. And, if you so much as suggest she feels otherwise, you’re going to piss her off.”

  “You think?” I ask, ignoring his Golden Boy dig.

  “I know. Hannah had a good work friend, Julian. They’d text and all that. She was always telling me stories about Julian’s stupid life, and one day I said maybe she’d like that life better, since she was always talking about it.”

  “That must’ve gone over well,” I say. Hannah was as loyal as they come; accusing her of not being so would not have been in Paul’s best interest.

  “Yeah, and I didn’t even mean it. I was in a bad mood. Shit had gone down at work with that five-alarm fire, you remember?” I nod, and he chuckles. “Two weeks later, I got to have a real conversation and sleep with my wife again. I met the guy eventually, even liked him. He never went out of line. Maybe he might’ve been interested if Hannah wasn’t married, but he was just a friend, like she said.”

  “Basically, shut the fuck up and deal is what you’re saying.”

  “Now you’re getting it. You have absolutely nothing to worry about, believe me.”

  He’s spot on. Sylvie would be insulted if I so much as implied I don’t trust her. More than insulted—she’d be wounded. Like most hotheaded emotions, envy takes on a life of its own and obscures the truth. And the truth is that we love each other, and I can’t imagine it being any other way. “Paul, you’ve turned into a philosophical son of a bitch.”

  He bumps my shoulder. “I do what I can.”

  Jorge enters the living room from the bedroom hall, his smile triumphant. “He’s asleep.”

  “That might be a record,” Sylvie says at a normal volume. We’ve been whispering for the past ten minutes. Once Jin’s asleep, he sleeps through anything. Prior to that, every sound is taken as an invitation to play.

  “Thanks for waiting,” Jorge says.

  “Like we’d start without you.” Sylvie pats the couch beside her and leans against Jorge’s shoulder when he lowers himself in the spot.

  Everyone from Sunset Park is crammed into our apartment, except Elena, who has the kids down at the school for movie night. Casper and Roger make two more.

  “All right,” I say, “I don’t know how we want to do this. Maybe consensus?”

  They laugh. We’ve already agreed unanimously to do something. It’s the something that needs to be ironed out.

  “As I told Eric,” Brother David begins, “I’m willing to talk to them before anything else.”

  This statement is greeted with as much enthusiasm as I felt upon first hearing. “What are you going to say?” Harold asks.

  “I assumed I’d read the situation and go from there, but I’d start with asking for a truce.” Brother David peaceably absorbs the outright refusals from the room’s occupants. “I understand no one wants this, but do you all want to die?”

  Rissa jumps to her feet, hands on her hips. “My mother and brother died because of him! They died for Sunset Park, and now you want us to give it to him?”

  Micah takes her arm. She sits down, trembling, then co
vers her mouth as though lightning might strike her for yelling at a priest. Brother David smiles kindly. “I understand, Rissa. I do. But is it worth dying for if there’s another way?”

  We’re interrupted by a knock at the door. “Yoo-hoo,” Kate says. She steps in with Louis, Julie, and Chris behind her. “Where do we sign up?”

  “For what?” Sylvie asks.

  “We’re not gonna let you have all the fun,” Chris says. He flexes an arm. “I may be more Luke Cage than I thought.”

  Sylvie laughs, so she must get the joke. “You guys don’t have to do this.”

  “But we are,” Julie says, “which makes us amazing people. Living on the High Line without you would be boring, and we hear Sunset Park is nicer, anyway.”

  “Thank you,” I say. Even if we don’t take them up on their help, the offer is proof we’ve made connections with people, and that means more to me than I can express.

  Kate winks. “Artie’s here in spirit. He couldn’t get away, but he’s in, too. Do you have a plan?”

  “A rather contentious one,” Brother David says. “A truce, at least for now. To check for any survivors of ours and allow any families there to leave. Maybe even an agreement that if the innocent are allowed to stay, they give us Walt and Emilio. Kearney, if he’s alive, and whoever else orchestrated the plan. Not all of them can be guilty. Certainly not the children. Can we justify killing innocent children?”

  No one argues that point. In fact, everyone gets a sudden urge to look somewhere other than at Brother David. Except Sylvie, who watches him work that same magic on the others that he worked on her. And Rissa, who crosses her arms, bottom lip sticking out.

  “Rissa, your brother and mother would want you safe. We spoke often, and I can tell you your mother wouldn’t want this for you.” Brother David’s arm sweeps the room. “Even with the assistance of four more people, we remain fewer by far. They have the advantage of walls and weapons unless we can take them by surprise.”

  “What if you walk in there and they kill you?” Harold asks.