Mending the Moon (35 page)

Archipelago scopes out a place to camp tonight, a grassy abandoned lot with a disintegrating shed that will at least partially shield her from prying eyes. Sitting cross-legged in this rickety shelter, she scans the schedule. The banquet's at seven tomorrow, with a cocktail hour at six. All right. She'll get there at six forty-five, when banquet seating has already started but when she should have enough time to get a sense of the room. Unless, of course, Cosmos attends the cocktail hour. In that case she'll be able to sting him right then.

She hopes the banquet tickets won't be sold out, but she can't risk showing up at the hotel too many times and being IDed by those pesky security guards.
Entropy, help me,
she thinks, and hears a rush of wind somewhere far off in response. Okay, then.

This is, she knows, a suicide mission. She won't be able to get out of the hotel the way she got away from the grandstand. She'll be arrested. As she thinks this, she realizes that it's a relief. She's tired of hiding, tired of stealing, tired of living out in the weather. After she buys her banquet ticket, she'll only have ten dollars left. Jail won't be fun, but it will be dry, and there will be food there.

But what about Erasmus? He hasn't consented to be used as a weapon, and they won't let her keep him in jail.

Is there a zoo in these parts? Or even a good pet store? She could milk Erasmus for his venom and then leave him with a note and some crickets on the threshold of someplace where he'll be cared for. Like a baby in a basket. She feels a tear rolling down her cheek. Does she even trust anyone else to take care of him? But she has to. And he deserves a better life than she's been giving him lately. Emperor scorpions live eight years; she's had him seven. He's an old man, not a baby at all. Let him retire in comfort.

A little wobbly in the knees—that's hunger, she tells herself fiercely, not sentiment—she stands up and hefts her backpack. She'll leave the Lucy-stuff here. She passed a library, and they'll have computers. She can Google places that might take in Erasmus. A Humane Society, even? But they're connected to Animal Control, which means law enforcement, and she doesn't want Erasmus punished for being an accessory to involuntary manslaughter.

On her way to the library, she hears sirens. Spooked—did Lucy recognize her and turn her in?—she ducks into an alleyway. But the sirens speed past. Cop cars, fire engines, ambulances. What in the world could be happening in this tiny town to warrant all that?

And then she sees a plume of smoke in the distance. From the direction of the Hyatt. She ventures out onto the street again—all right, the sirens evidently weren't for her—and dodges around a clump of concerned citizens who've gathered to share news.

“Hyatt,” says one.

“Chaos,” says another.

“Fire and flood,” says the third.

Oh, no. Not again. Oh no you don't, Entropy. You said you were
helping
me, you motherfucker!

If the Hyatt's become a disaster area, the banquet will be canceled.

On the other hand, if the Hyatt's a disaster area, Cosmos will be sure to be there directing relief efforts. He'll be wandering around without the shielding of a podium. Archipelago may be able to get in there, use Erasmus to sting him directly, and take advantage of the craziness to get out again, scorpion still safely in her possession. Her new plan doesn't fix the ten-remaining-dollars-and-nowhere-to-live-with-winter-coming-on issue, but she'll deal with that later. She's done it before.

She'll have to slip under a lot of police radar to do this, but the cops are going to be distracted, and they won't be expecting anyone to be trying to get
into
the scene of a disaster. The site will be cordoned off, but she's on foot and used to slinking. She's been evading cops for months now. She'll get in somehow.

Alrighty, then. Heart lighter, Archipelago takes one of her zigzagging, surreptitious routes back to the hotel, which is surrounded by flashing emergency vehicles. The fire's out, doused with water from the water tower next door. People on stretchers are being wheeled out of the hotel. Archipelago hopes to all that's unholy that Cosmos isn't one of them: not because she wouldn't like to see him hurt, but because she wants to do it herself, and if he's in an ambulance, she won't have access to him.

She watches the cops, waits for a convenient distraction while one takes what sounds like a personal phone call and the other four go into a huddle about something—thank you, Entropy—and ducks under a barricade. Assorted dodging maneuvers get her into the lobby. She overhears snatches of information.

“Sprinkler system jammed.”

“Fire.”

“Right during a really critical match.” Archipelago snorts.

She's inside, wading through inches of water from the fire hoses. Hiding behind a bedraggled potted plant to avoid a clump of paramedics, she scans the lobby. Yes! There's Cosmos! Thank you, Entropy!

She wiggles out of her backpack and uses her treasured pair of extra-long tweezers, tips padded with felt, to pull Erasmus out of his jar before donning the backpack again. She'll move in, sting Cosmos, get away somewhere safe, put Erasmus back in the jar, and make her getaway as quickly as she can. This is hardly a foolproof plan, especially since it will probably be more difficult to get out of the building than to get in—the first responders are alert to exiting survivors—but it's all she's got.

She waits for the latest clump of uniforms to leave and then sneaks up behind Cosmos, who's bending over a stretcher, blocking Archipelago's view of its occupant. “I'm so sorry this happened,” he's saying. He sounds forlorn. “I promise we'll get you help.”

“But I don't have insurance!”

The voice, a woman's, sounds familiar, but Archipelago doesn't have time to worry about this. She thrusts the squirming Erasmus at Cosmos's back, praying that the emperor's stinger will be able to penetrate the fabric of Cosmos's T-shirt.

It works. “Ow!” says Cosmos, and whirls to see what happened. In the process, he reveals the face of the woman on the stretcher.

Oh, fuck. It's Lucy, wearing a competitor's badge, her face bloody.
Lucy
plays Rock, Paper, Scissors?

“Ethel Rose?” says Lucy in astonishment.

“Archipelago Osprey?” says Comrade Cosmos. He sounds equally astonished.

“Oh, shit,” says Archipelago, and gets ready to run while Cosmos is still gaping, too much in shock to do anything. But then she hears a roaring noise, and from somewhere—where? how?—a wave of water thunders down on them, and all three cry out as Erasmus is swept out of Archipelago's grasp.

 

19

Jeremy doesn't consider himself religious anymore, if he ever really was. Sunday school was something he did because Mom said he had to. When he was fifteen, she gave him the choice of opting out, and out he opted.

Still, he grew up in St. Phil's, with its stained glass and organ and rich wooden pews. As Episcopal churches go, it's not a very fancy one, but he doesn't realize until he walks into the Unitarian church in Seattle how much it shaped his idea of what churches should look like. This place doesn't look or feel or smell like a church. It's too colorless, too sterile, all clean lines and clear glass. Danish modern. It feels like a fancy hotel conference center.

The Reno contingent—all except VB, who opted out—enters in a tight clump. Greg's already arrived; he and Hen hug as if they didn't have breakfast together two hours ago, and chat in subdued voices. There are a few other people here: a group of dark-clad folks in the front few rows who must be family, a few kids Jeremy's age who must have been Percy's friends, scattered adults. Not many. It's nothing like Mom's funeral. Jeremy knows it's mean for him to be happy about that. He doesn't care.

In the front of the church, on a pedestal surrounded by flowers, sits a simple wooden box, smooth and polished. Behind it, on easels, are three photographs of Percy. One is the one they've all already seen: Percy blond and grinning in a Stanford lacrosse uniform, stick swung casually over his shoulder as he lopes across a sunny field. In the second, he's helping some older woman—his mother?—along a wooded path. In the third he's younger, hugging a very large puppy. “Oh, great,” Jeremy hears himself saying, as if from a distance. “He loved dogs.”

The minute he says it, he wants to clap his hand over his mouth. He didn't come here to be snarky: not out loud, anyway. He can be snarky later. But Amy squeezes his hand, and Aunt Rosie touches his shoulder. “If this is too much, you can leave,” she whispers. “Don't worry about us, Jeremy, and don't worry about Percy's family. Take care of yourself.”

“Thank you so much for coming,” someone says, and they all turn to face the voice. It belongs to a haggard woman—blond hair trimmed in a perfect chin-length bob, elegant black suit, tasteful gold jewelry—who has appeared in front of them. Behind her stands a tall man, gray-haired, handsome once, you can tell, but eyes sunken and face lined now. “You must be—Melinda's friends. I'm Anna Clark.” She holds out her hand. “Thank you so much for coming,” she says again, more forcefully, and Jeremy flashes back again to Mom's funeral, to the misery of the receiving line at the end. Thank you for coming thank you for coming thank you for coming. He repeated the syllables so often they became nonsense, meaningless noise. But Anna Clark sounds like she means them.

Amy squeezes his hand again. Jeremy wonders if she'll ever hold his hand when they aren't at a funeral. “You're welcome,” Hen says.

“I'm so glad you're here.” Anna's a broken record; her husband's a mute mannequin who stares past them, his eyes somewhere else. “I invited everyone I could, but so few people—because—I just wanted to share good memories. There were. Good memories.”

“Oh,” says Rosemary, and moves in a rush to hug the woman. “I'm so sorry. We're so sorry.”

Anna lets herself be hugged, but her face over Aunt Rosie's shoulder stays tense, distracted, the eyes roaming until they fix on Jeremy. “You're Melinda's son, aren't you?”

“Yes.” Suddenly his good suit feels like a straitjacket.

“I—I can't imagine. I—” Rosie finishes hugging her and steps backward, murmuring. Anna takes a visible breath and forces out clearer sentences. “I meant to try to meet you before. I meant to invite all of you to dinner last night. Things have been getting away from me.”

“It's okay,” Jeremy says. He's afraid the woman will shatter in front of him. Her husband still hasn't made a sound. Amy's grip on his hand is cutting off his circulation. “I mean, that would have been nice, it was nice of you even to think of it, but—”

“We're all doing the best we can,” Aunt Rosie says, “and it's extraordinarily generous of you to allow us to be here.”

Anna blinks, makes a groping motion in the air in front of her. “Allow? I'm honored. I—you're the ones who are generous, and I should—”

“No shoulds,” Rosemary says gently. “There are no rule books for this. Anna, we're very sorry for your loss.”

Anna breaks, then, and turns to muffle her sobs against her husband's chest. Eyes distant and unseeing, he clumsily pats her shoulder. Rosemary whispers to Jeremy, “Let's step away for a moment, shall we?”

“Yeah. I need a drink of water, anyway.” Sandwiched between Aunt Rosie and Amy, he makes his way to the water fountain in the foyer.

“We don't have to stay,” Rosemary tells him when he's finished slurping. “If it's too much—”

“I wish people would stop saying that. I'm staying.” He turns, shaking off the two women, and returns to the sanctuary.

He sees the table now, along the right-hand wall, the display of more photos, trophies and awards, memorabilia. He remembers the table at Mom's funeral, the snapshots and favorite books and favorite rocks. Jeremy wills himself to walk over to this one, to look at the pictures. Percy as a chubby baby in his mother's arms; toddler Percy riding a tricycle; tan and buff Percy, laughing, in a Stanford sweatshirt. Here's an album with more: birthday parties, Christmas, family vacations. Percy grinning, arm-in-arm with his father, Mount Rushmore in the background. Percy on a beach somewhere. Mexico? Jeremy's stomach spasms, and he swallows bile. It can't be Mexico. They wouldn't have put that out here, would they?

Don't look at that picture. Look at the other things on the table. A lacrosse stick. A yearbook. A pair of bronzed baby shoes. And—Jeremy sees now, and how did he miss it before?—a stack of slipcased print issues of
CC
.

Just met guy your age, Percy, who likes CC too.
The postcard's still at home. He thought about bringing it, but it's stuck in his mirror frame and doesn't want to budge. He was afraid he'd tear it if he tugged. He feels his fists clenching. If he walked up to Anna Clark and said, “One of my mother's last conversations was with your son, about
Comrade Cosmos,
” would she remove the issues, out of common decency?

He watches a hand reach to touch the plastic covers. “Oh, man,” Amy says, her voice thick, her fingers resting lightly on the plastic. “He was really a collector, wasn't he? Mint condition. These must be worth money.”

Jeremy's chest tightens. It hurts to breathe. “I'm going to look at the urn now,” he says. “Don't follow me, please.” Amy turns to him with a frown, but he moves away from the table, up the side aisle, around the first pews—people there watching him, but he can't read their expressions—toward the pedestal. Golden wood, with the golden boy inside.

Jeremy expected to feel rage, thought he'd have to fight the urge to knock the urn to the floor, to scatter the sick fuck's ashes through the sanctuary. But he feels nothing. The fury he felt even a moment ago, looking at the
CC
issues, has evaporated. This isn't Percy, any more than Mom's ashes are Mom.