Mending the Moon (26 page)

She doesn't say anything, doesn't dare say anything: just pulls her knees to her chest and glares. The cop bends and puts the Pepsi down next to her. “Here you go. In case you get thirsty. I'm sorry I don't have anything for your bug, if he's with you.”

Arachnid,
Archipelago thinks. He's an arachnid. That's much more dignified than calling him a bug. Bug sounds cute. Erasmus isn't cute.

But the cop's trying to trick her again. She won't let him. She's too smart for him. She sets her chin and keeps glaring.

The cop tips his hat. “You take care, now, you and your bug. You want to get out of town before ten tomorrow. That's when one of my colleagues starts working, and he's not as nice as I am.”

Archipelago forces herself to nod. She hates this man, hates his blithe disregard for his job and his willingness to break rules and his clueless attempts at kindness, as if she needs Pepsi to rot her teeth. All of that, except the kindness, is supposed to be her bailiwick, not his. She didn't mean to kill the Misguided Mayor; it was manslaughter, not murder, but the cop can't know that. What's he doing, letting her walk? What's wrong with him?

He tips his hat again and turns to waddle away. Archipelago considers throwing the bottle of Pepsi at him, but knows that would be madness, sheer suicide.

This whole mess is her fault. She shouldn't have come to a town in the first place. She should have stayed in the fields. In haystacks, if those exist anymore. She should have hitched a ride on a freight train. Are there still hobos?

Archipelago has no idea how to stay alive out here.

She almost begins to weep, but starts to eat her pizza instead. Who knows when she'll see pizza again? It's amazing she actually found it. But she
did
find it; she had that much of an idea of how to stay alive, in the middle of this sodden mess her life has become, this heap of chaos.

As she thinks that, she hears a buzzing in the alley, a vast whooshing sound, and feels the hair on her neck lift. She turns to find herself facing a towering pillar of darkness filled with swirling stars, two ruby eyes the only recognizable features. “Daughter,” the voice booms. “Minion! You are of my camp!”

“Oh, sod off!” Archipelago spits. “Goddamnit, I'm just trying to eat a slice of pizza! What is this, Grand Central Station? Go away!”

“You are my follower! You are my child! You are—”

“I'm my own woman!” Archipelago's standing now, screaming at the whirlwind. “I'm not your follower! I'm not a Minion any more than I'm a Comrade! I'm
myself,
you thermodynamic asshole!”

Weak as she is, she wishes she could hit the Emperor, get into a fistfight with him. Weak as she is, she thinks she'd win, because she's so angry. And then she realizes that she's not really angry at the Emperor.

She's angry at Cosmos.

She's angry at that do-gooder, bleeding-heart, muddle-headed meddler, that clueless crusader, that fucking idiot.

She knows where he lives. Everybody knows where he lives.

Get out of town, the cop said, and she wondered where she could possibly go. Now she knows. Now she has a destination.

First, though, she's going to stuff herself so full of pizza that she can barely move.

 

14

“So you would have been happier if your friend hadn't been at the hospital that night?” Unctuously concerned, pen poised above paper, the therapist watches Veronique. The therapist's name is Brandy, which Veronique finds hilarious, although she'd never share this with the good psychologist. Brandy wears her blond hair pulled back in a bun so she'll look like a professional, not like a cheerleader, although Veronique knows there are professional cheerleaders, too. Brandy wears tailored suits and lots of tasteful gold jewelry. Brandy wears her pseudo-empathy like an expensive perfume.

Mortification. That's the only word for this.

“I would
not
have been happier,” Veronique says. She's determined to maintain her intellectual integrity, to remain precise and rigorous. “At that moment, nothing would have made me one iota less miserable. But seeing Rosemary there made it worse. Made me more miserable.”

Brandy smiles brightly, as if she's just scored a point in a tennis match. “Because you were ashamed.”

“Of course. Have you ever been in an ER as a psych patient? It isn't an empowering experience.”

Brandy looks sober now. “No. I know it isn't.” Veronique notices how neatly she's sidestepped the question. All therapists are crazy themselves, aren't they? But if this fashionable twit hasn't done ER time herself, she's seen her patients do it. She frowns down at her notes and says, “But Rosemary's the person you stayed with after you left the ER, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you still—”

“I still would have preferred to leave the ER, take a cab to her house, and ask to stay there for a few days, instead of having her see me in a paper gown under police guard. Correct.”

Brandy's frowning again. “And how have you been doing on the meds? Any new side effects? Last week you said, let's see—” She flips back a page in her notes. “—you had some dry mouth, a little dizziness?”

“Those, still. Nothing new, no.” In fact, Veronique has no side effects, because she hasn't been taking her antidepressants. Every day she ceremoniously flushes that day's dose down the toilet. She's done enough Internet research to know what the likely side effects of this drug are, so she pretends to have them.

“And how are you feeling? Mood-wise?”

Peachy keen, sister. My best friend was raped and murdered six months ago, and I'm on medical leave from my job with orders to seek psychological help, and the only reason I wasn't locked up in a loony bin for at least three days was because someone I know and don't even especially like was there to witness me raving in my paper gown and swore to various and sundry authorities that she'd keep me safe at her house, after I'd sworn to the same authorities that I wasn't planning to kill myself or anyone else. But I'm on happy pills now, so all's well with the world.

“I think I'm doing better,” Veronique says. “I think I'm on a more even keel.” But Brandy's frowning again, which can't mean anything good.

She shakes her head. “Veronique, I have to say, your affect seems a little flat to me. I wonder if you need a higher dosage, or a different medication altogether.”

Oh, hell. Veronique doesn't want to go through the hassle of switching meds she isn't even taking. She's only pretending to take them out of fear that noncompliance will endanger her medical leave.

Mollify the good shrinkette. Act like you're on board with the program. “Maybe you're right, but I think I'm just tired. I didn't sleep well last night, and after all, I am still grieving Melinda.”

“Insomnia?” Brandy's frown has deepened. “How many hours of sleep do you think you got? We can give you a sleeping aid—”

Veronique laughs, trying not to sound hysterical. “No, really, I think it's just that I had some iced tea late in the day. Black tea, with caffeine. I won't make that mistake again.” In fact, she's been sleeping like the dead every night, and would sleep much later in the morning if Rosemary weren't stopping by every day, often before noon, to check up on her. Rosemary's one of those people who showers and gets dressed almost before she's opened her eyes in the morning, and who believes that physical illness is the only legitimate reason to stay in your PJs past seven
A.M
. Given her druthers, Veronique would lounge in her bathrobe, drinking coffee and reading, until at least lunchtime, but raids from the Rosie Police have made that untenable. Veronique's unexpected vacation is, accordingly, much less pleasant than it would have been otherwise. “Can we see how I'm doing next week, and change the dosage then if we need to?”

“Of course. But you'll call me if you feel significantly worse? And you'll keep checking in with Rosemary?”

“Yes, I will. Thank you.” Actually, Rosie's the one doing the checking in, but Brandy doesn't need to know that. Veronique stands up and shakes Brandy's hand, remembering to smile and make eye contact. Mollify the shrink. Observe proper mammalian protocol.

She leaves the office with a sigh of relief. Outside, daffodils and irises and apple blossoms droop on stems and branches, blasted by the late-spring snowstorms that always seem to hit Reno in May. It's not snowing, but looks like it might start again any moment. As usual, everyone's complaining about the weather—this is a seasonal tradition in Reno—but Veronique rather likes it. It mirrors the state of the world: uncaring forces cutting down the vulnerable and the beautiful in full bloom. Sunshine would be a lie.

Her own lies don't bother her. They're civil disobedience. They're self-defense.

Psychiatry functions at least in part to enforce conformity, to keep outliers within the range of normal behavior. Brandy and Rosie and the UNR cabal are so anxious for Veronique to take her meds less because they care about
her
discomfort than because her behavior has made
them
uncomfortable. They want her to take psychotropic drugs so they'll feel better when they're around her.

Veronique has, of course, pretended to agree with the prevailing opinion. Yes, she's been suffering from depression for years, compounded by Sarabeth's desertion and her growing professional discontent. Yes, Melinda's death triggered a breakdown, but actually—hallelujah!—the breakdown was a
blessing,
because it alerted everyone to how much pain she was in, and now, yes, she needs to take the nice happy pills that will rewire her brain so she won't hurt anymore.

She's researched the happy pills. She knows they don't immediately alter mood—they aren't uppers in the conventional sense—knows they aren't addictive, knows they won't impair her intellect. She understands that depression is a medical, biochemical illness, and knows that these drugs have saved many lives. Many people need them.

She doesn't.

She's not crazy, and she's not depressed. She's grieving and she's angry, but in her situation, she'd be crazy if she
weren't
grieving and angry. Her breakdown in class was indeed unprofessional and inexcusable—even if it was also the most alive she's felt in years, even if she still believes everything she said during her tirade—and she's rather surprised that UNR hasn't just fired her. She supposes she has tenure to thank for that. But however unseemly, the crisis doesn't mean that she needs to take happy pills.

It means that she needs to get out of her job. She needs to retire, whether she can afford to or not. But until she can see her way clear, she needs to play along with the prevailing opinion. She's trying to be strategic about this, milking the medical leave while she explores options. She has an extra bedroom; she can take in a boarder, some nice studious grad student. She can't quite figure out how to make the budget work, but she'll get there. She has to. She can't possibly step back into a classroom. She couldn't do that even if she wanted to, even if she missed teaching. Just thinking about setting foot in the English Department again—although she knows she'll have to, if only to sign papers and clear out her office—makes her want to sink through the ground.

She's pretty sure the classroom fiasco only confirmed everyone's worst opinions of her. She tries not to think about the gossip, from both students and colleagues, that must be circulating around the department. If they care enough to talk about her at all, that is.

Her chair's called a few times to ask how she is. Since part of her tirade was directed at him, she can't decide if the calls are unusually generous of him or an attempt to rub salt in her wounds; either way, those conversations are damned uncomfortable. But otherwise, there's been resounding silence. No cards, no e-mails. Her world has narrowed to Brandy and Rosie, who treat her like she's two.

She feels a buzzing in her pocket: her phone. She pulls it out and looks at the caller ID. Rosie, of course.

She's exceedingly tired of this leash.

She doesn't answer.

For good measure, she turns off the phone.

Sighing, Veronique gets into her car. She knows she should go home, check mail, and go over the damn finances again, but she's bored. She wants to do something else, go somewhere else: a place where she can be normal, where no one expects her head to start swiveling three hundred and sixty degrees.

But where? Reno's a small town. Anywhere she goes—cafés, libraries, stores, the art museum—she's likely to see someone she knows, who'll either look at her with pity or avoid her altogether.

She sits in the car, pondering, and then smiles, suddenly cheered. Every year, Veronique bought Melinda a birthday gift from Planet X, the pottery studio in Gerlach, two hours northeast of Reno. The ritual of driving out there is one of the things she missed most about Melinda's birthday. But why not go just for herself? Why not buy herself a present? Something beautiful and extravagant: something she'd ordinarily never buy, and finances be damned, for once. A retirement gift. A you're-sane-even-if-no-one-else-knows-it gift.

Melinda urged Veronique to spend money on herself, the last time they drove to Gerlach together. This would be a fitting moment to honor Melinda's wish.

It's noon now. She can drive out there, have an hour or two to shop, and still make it back by dark. She has a full tank of gas, and the winter tires are still on the car—she doesn't have them switched out until June, in deference to Reno weather—so she'll be fine even if she hits snow, which she really thinks she might, since the clouds are even darker now than they were a few minutes ago.

She knows she should call Rosie to let her know. To report in. Screw that, as the students would say. Veronique starts the car and heads toward I-80. She's doing this to get away from her parole officer for a few hours, and she'll be back before Rosie knows she was ever gone.