The City Series (Book 3): Instauration

by Lyons Fleming, Sarah

  “Yup,” Dennis says, “think you made enough.”

  Guillermo cracks his door, peers at the sky, and then ventures onto the road. I join him. The water is white with foam, and things big and small bob in the wake the bombs left behind. The slope of grass and path below are covered with water and soaked debris.

  “Look at that.” Guillermo slaps my arm and points to the bay. “Look at that!”

  Just past the first tower base, the roadway might be shifting. I think I’m imagining it, until it gains pace with low tide and opens a space wide enough for half a sailboat to inch out to sea. Smaller items rush past: bodies, rope, pieces of fiberglass and plastic, and, I hope, much of the raw sewage.

  Small slabs of asphalt crest the water and disappear. The sailboat drifts farther as the roadway continues to spin out toward Staten Island, opening the hole close to a thousand feet wide. It won’t clear out everything—there’s still too much bridge on and in the water—but it’s a start.

  Guillermo shouts and bounces on his feet. “We’ve gotta do that again. Once we get a boat, we’ll go out there and get the rest of it. Double the bombs next time.”

  I laugh at how quickly his position on the subject of explosives has reversed. Another chunk of boat drifts into open water. I could watch this all day. Unfortunately, the Lexers could eat us all day, and the ones down the Belt Parkway are marching this way to do just that. We get in the dented truck, Dennis squinting through the cracked windshield, and victoriously drive home.

  84

  Sylvie

  We’re in the same Quarantine apartment, only this time it feels barren without everyone else. Roger walked us here from the guardhouse, and I did my best to act like our trip to Brooklyn never happened. He’s brought us every meal, and he always adds something delicious like candy. I’m flush with cigarettes and smoking one now.

  “Gross,” Indy says from the couch, where she lies with her feet on the armrest and a magazine in her hands. “I hate smelling like cigarettes.”

  I pull my head in the window. “You’re twenty feet away and I’m practically falling to my death over here. What are you reading?”

  She holds up a beauty magazine. “I’m taking a quiz. Which Disney Prince is Your Man?”

  “No, you are not.”

  “I am. Do you think Paul would rather go to an artisanal whiskey tasting or skydive on a free afternoon?”

  “I have no idea. There’s nothing in between?”

  “He could also want to take a cooking class or work out.”

  “What the hell kind of quiz is that?” I ask. “Who are those people? Doesn’t anyone want to hang out and watch a movie anymore? Choose the whiskey one.”

  “Okay, then he’s…” she checks the next page, “The Beast, aka Prince Adam.”

  I laugh. Maybe that quiz is right after all. “I could see that. But you’re rotting your brain with that crap.”

  Indy tosses the magazine onto the coffee table. “I know. I can’t concentrate on anything.”

  “You miss him,” I say.

  “It was a week. That’s nothing.”

  “So? You can still miss him.”

  They flirted for a while, they play-fought for longer. Survival makes things more urgent, more authentic. There’s no time for games or pretending to be someone you’re not when food is short and death is imminent. The past weeks allowed Paul and Indy to see each other for who they were. And, as I suspected, they liked what they saw.

  I put out my cigarette on the windowsill and toss the butt into the jar I keep for that purpose. “If anyone listened to me, you guys would’ve been together a year ago. But no one listens to me.”

  “All we do is listen to you. Because you don’t shut up.”

  “But I’m usually right, aren’t I? You miss him.”

  “Shut up,” she says. Her fingers creep toward her mouth.

  “Stop eating yourself!” I yell.

  She tucks her hand beneath her leg. “When is Roger coming?”

  “Any minute.”

  The door locks click, and in Roger comes as if waiting for his cue. “Hiya,” he says. “Ready to see your place?” We grab our bags and follow him out. On the way downstairs, he says, “My brother wants to meet you, so he’ll probably say hi on the way there.”

  My body begins to produce copious amounts of sweat that turns frosty in the outside air. I’ve finally grown used to carrying a gun, and I feel exposed without it more so now than at any time before. Roger stops and searches my face before he gives a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, he knows stuff about you, but he knows you’re my friends. I didn’t want to lie because someone might have told him, but it’s all good.”

  I want to ask Roger exactly what Walt knows, in order to be prepared, but people are on the loop and then the gate is before us, manned by Yin and Yang. The metal swings open for Roger, and he stops at the two men. “This is Tai and Freddy.”

  Tai pats his tapered curls. If I hadn’t watched him take part in Harold’s murder, his wide smile and gorgeous eyes might convince me he isn’t evil. Freddy is a mishmash of hipster-lumberjack-biker, with a thick brown beard, a slick pompadour, and a plaid shirt under a leather vest. He flourishes a hand as he bows, and I remember how he fired the rifle that took Harold down.

  I raise an eyebrow while Indy smiles like they’re the best things she’s seen all week. We’ve been assigned the correct roles.

  “See you later, fellas.” Roger herds us past and points to building Eleven, which sits over the Study. “You’re on the fifth floor.”

  A few StuyTown residents wave as they pass. I imagine they wonder why the hell we’re here. Or maybe they don’t, since they barely slow on their way to the café. A few of them glance at our building, where a man leans on the short wall by the path, legs crossed at the ankles. He wears a slim black pea coat and jeans, and his brown hair is pushed up and to the side.

  He comes forward, smiling with small, even teeth. His light brown eyes—the same unusual color as Roger’s—sparkle with good cheer. “Sylvie and Indy, I finally get to meet you. Roger wouldn’t let me come to Quarantine. Whenever possible, I defer to my brother’s wishes.”

  Whatever Eric saw of Walt, this was not it. There’s no trace of passivity in this man, and he’s not someone you’d easily forget. Not a single one of his features is remarkable except for those eyes, but he has a Presence with a capital P. He’s disarming in a frightening way. The way a rabid squirrel appears cute and fuzzy before it eats your face off.

  Sweat drips down my back. Maria. Grace. I repeat those two names and say, “Hello.”

  “You must be Walt.” Indy extends a hand. “Indy.”

  He shakes it with two hands. “I am. Roger tells me you were here but left.” His head pivots from me to Indy, and we nod, unsure. “And here you are again. Roger can explain the rules, but, if you don’t like them, you’re always welcome to leave.”

  I consider asking by which gate we’re welcome to leave, which probably wouldn’t go over well. But I’m surprised to find he’s relaxed me. Not enough to trust a word he says, or make a comment that could get me killed, but enough to follow Indy’s acting advice.

  “We’ll let you know,” I say.

  He fixes on me with interest. “Sylvie. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He gives Roger a brotherly smile filled with what appears to be genuine fondness. “I won’t embarrass him by saying more, but I do need to ask you something.”

  Roger kicks the ground. I get an image of a quiet dark-haired kid at the mercy of his charming yet volatile older brother’s whims. “Ask away,” I say.

  “I know you and Eric were together. You know what happened to him. Is that going to be a problem?”

  My heart hammers my ribs. There’s a lie detector behind those eyes, and the twinkle has become the glint of a man who murders without a care. If Eric were truly dead, I don’t think I’d be able to restrain myself from attacking him. But Eric’s out there, obviously fine without me, and I’ll
be more than fine without him.

  I shake my head. “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”

  Walt holds my gaze for a moment that seems to last forever. But I’m a bullshitter extraordinaire, and I’ve never met anyone who can out blank-face me. I’ve convinced school counselors my mother was fine, lied to cops and judges, and stared down more than my fair share of bullshitters.

  “Most people do seem to disappoint, don’t they?” Walt sighs in commiseration before he flashes that charming smile once more. “Welcome back to StuyTown.”

  Rissa waits in our new apartment. She screams and hugs us when we enter, then talks a mile a minute while she drags us into our living room. “Micah and I are right next door. April and Lucky live with us. But Lucky sleeps on the couch because he said that’s fine and April likes her own room, and I’m, like, so happy you’re here!”

  Indy drops her pack to the wood floor of our two-bedroom space, which has decent IKEA furniture and a view of another StuyTown building. She places her hands on Rissa’s shoulders. “You’re okay?”

  “So far.”

  “We saw you and Micah on the roof once,” I say. “How’s that going?”

  “Good.” She smiles at the floor. “Really…good.”

  “But is it good?”

  Rissa lifts her head, laughing, and then grows somber. “You know about Harold?”

  “We saw it.”

  “You did? That’s when Lucky moved in with us. He and Harold were staying together. I think he’s guarding April because he’s worried about her. She kind of went crazy.”

  I give Roger a severe glance, to which he shrugs. He didn’t tell us that.

  “I mean,” Rissa continues, “she and Harold weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, but they were friends. I’m going to wake her up and tell her you’re here. She’s sleeping.” She trots out the door.

  “I didn’t want you to worry about April,” Roger says. “Everyone knows she’s reckless but harmless. Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

  He touches my shoulder, then backs away before I can flinch. I’m trying to pretend I don’t know that Roger stabbed Eric and sent him to his death. I wonder if he has any regrets about that part, if in fact he truly does have regrets.

  I sit on the couch. “What else don’t we know?”

  “That’s it. I got you your old jobs, starting tomorrow. You have middle dinner slot.”

  “Where do you live?” Indy asks.

  “Over the café. That’s where most of us—they—live.” Roger takes a step backward. “My brother likes you two, I can tell. I’ll let you settle in.”

  He leaves for the foyer. When I hear his hand on the doorknob, I say, “Thanks, Roger.” It’s partly to keep his help coming and partly because he’s kept up his end of the bargain thus far.

  “Sure,” he says. The door clicks shut behind him.

  I’m not much better than Rissa when Brother David, Lucky, and Micah come through our door. I finally release Micah—I’ve out-hugged him for once—and move on to Brother David. “You shouldn’t have left that way. We would’ve let you go.”

  “You wouldn’t have tried to talk me out of it?”

  “Maybe a little. But you would’ve prattled on and on about the greater good until we begged you to leave.”

  Brother David laughs while he shakes his head. “I’ve missed you, Sylvia.”

  “And look at you, tough guy,” I say to Micah. “We’ve been watching you up on those roofs.”

  He tries to hide behind his shorter hair. “I know. It just kind of happened.”

  Indy has finally let go of Lucky, and I get my chance for a hug. “You’re all brave yourself, stopping April before she did something dumb.”

  Lucky squares his shoulders. “That wasn’t brave. Now that I’m eighteen, I can go up with Micah. If they’ll let me.”

  “Ahem,” Indy says. “No.”

  “You’re already bossing me around?” he asks.

  “We’ll discuss it at some point, but for now…” She shakes her head incredulously, her joy at his presence palpable, and clutches him to her again. Lucky rolls his eyes at me above her shoulder, but his smile says he’s relieved to have his bossy aunt back.

  The others already wait in the living room. We gave Emily her mother’s hugs, as promised, when May and Elena arrived with the kids. May is as levelheaded and collected as always. Elena is fidgety, with semi-vacant eyes. Roger procured her a job at the preschool with Aurelia and Felix, and Brother David and Lincoln live with her in a three-bedroom apartment down the hall. Through his stories in the past hour, Lincoln has unwittingly drawn us a picture of life in that apartment, where Brother David does the majority of parenting.

  When Brother David enters, Elena’s kids swarm around his legs. Lincoln, normally solemn to the point where you want to reassure him he has permission to smile, lights up. Brother David works with Miss Anabelle now, and Roger says everyone loves him, the kids most of all.

  Jin sits in the middle of our plush area rug, chewing happily. This would be fine except for the fact that no one’s given him food. I pick him up and pull spit-soaked lint, the same color gray as our rug, from his mouth. “Yucky,” I say.

  He screws up his nose and sticks out his tongue. “Uchy.”

  “He knows yucky,” May says. “It doesn’t stop him from eating everything, but he knows it.”

  I suspend Jin at eye level. “I thought you were smart. Yucky means don’t eat.” He attempts to shove in additional carpet fuzz he’s hidden in his chubby palm. I move him to one arm and take it with my other hand. “Don’t be a dummy.”

  Brother David raises a brow. “I’m guessing they’ve put you in childcare.”

  “Aren’t priests supposed to be all bless you, my child and peace be with you?” I ask. “Not make snarky comments?”

  “That was Vatican One.”

  I laugh. “I missed you, Bucky. Is there somewhere we can talk without little ears?”

  May offers to stay with Elena and the kids, since it seems no one trusts Elena with something so scheming as a fuzz-eating baby, and we move to Rissa’s apartment. We told Rissa about Guillermo, though not in front of the kids or Elena—whom no one trusts with that information, either—and she bursts out with it once inside.

  Micah, Lucky, and Brother David take a minute to digest that fact, and then Micah holds Rissa in his arms while she happy cries again. We fill them in on Mo and their plans to take Central Park, which will give us a safe place to go when we escape. The High Line is too difficult to defend. Shoot up The Standard, lob a bomb, drive a Mack truck into a support column—any one of those could leave us homeless.

  April has cleaned herself up from the sleepy, depressed girl she was a few hours ago. Black eyeliner cakes her narrowed eyes. “What if I could get information?”

  “How?” Indy asks.

  “I’ll figure out a way.” She tosses her bleached hair. “Would that help?”

  “Of course.” Indy glances dubiously at me. “As long as it’s not dangerous.”

  April doesn’t expound on her plan, if she has one. I’m not worried about her blabbing—April is a tough kid—but she doesn’t appear to have self-care high on her list.

  After we’ve run out of news on both sides, I stand by their window and watch the Oval. The garden is dead for the winter, though greenery is visible through the glass of the greenhouse. The first dinner slot is on their way to eat, and we’ll be next.

  Brother David comes to my side. “I thought you’d be happier. Eric’s survival is a miracle.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Brother David nods, yet I continue, “He didn’t want us to come, which is understandable. But then he accused me of being unfaithful, which was neither true nor fair, so I said the shittiest thing I could think of. I apologized numerous times, but he didn’t once. Then he left instead of breaking up with me like a regular human being.”

  Whether or not Eric’s intention was to break up with me, he broke my trus
t, maybe my heart, and the outcome is the same. I ignore the ache in my chest and focus on the people in the Oval. One group laughs in the garden, and a few couples wander aimlessly, out for a pleasant stroll. It could be pre-Walt days for all the distress they show.

  Brother David is silent. It’s too late to take my word vomit back, so I add, “And that is why I’m not feeling jubilant about Eric’s miraculous recovery.”

  He sets a hand on the windowsill and faces me, brow creased. “I would imagine not.”

  “You’re on my side? No ten Hail Marys or Our Fathers?”

  “Your fidelity is formidable, Sylvia. To have it questioned and then cast away must have felt as though he didn’t know who you are, or he didn’t care.”

  I nod and press my forehead against the window. Eric knows the real me. He knows how long it took me to trust him, and he tossed it—and me—away like it meant nothing. I push it from my mind. Push him from my mind. I’ve spent enough of my life feeling rejected, and I’m skilled at the art of rejecting them back.

  “Everything seems the same,” I say, motioning to the Oval. “They’re walking around like it doesn’t matter.”

  “What matters to them is that they live and that the people they love live,” Brother David says. “Walt knows that. I think he learned it from last time.”

  Holding the kids hostage is how Walt managed to take over peaceably, and letting the parents know their safety could be rescinded at any time is a fantastic way to keep them in check. Until it’s one of them he sends over the gate.

  “Rock the boat but don’t tip it over,” I say. “And you get free workers to boot.”

  “Yes. But it’s under the surface. They’re angry, but their fear is stronger.”

  I want to fault them, but I can’t. You have to have something better within reach in order to garner the courage to fight for it. Maybe we can give it to them.