Mending the Moon (38 page)

With a sigh, she gets up and moves to another seat, so that she'll be facing Seattle as they approach it, and pulls out her bus schedules. She'll go back to Greg's house. She'll take her nap. When the others get home, she'll be nice to them, and she'll ask how the funeral was, and she may even care about the answer.

Two hours later, damp but triumphant at having navigated the bus system again, Veronique walks up the hill to Greg's house and sees cars in his driveway: the rental van, his battered Toyota, another car—a Lexus, of all things—she doesn't recognize.

The front door's open. She walks in and calls out, “Hi, everybody. I'm home.” She hears voices from the living room, and follows them, and blinks. Jeremy and Amy and a frail blond woman are poring over a table of comic books while Rosie and Hen chat in the background. They look up when she enters the room; they must not have heard her before.

“Did you have a nice day?” Hen asks. Rosie looks worried, almost panicked.

“I did,” Veronique says, “thank you.”

“This is Anna,” Rosie says. “Percy's mother.” She gives Veronique a fierce look:
don't make any trouble.
“Anna, this is our friend Veronique.”

The blonde looks up from the table, turns to Veronique, extends her hand. She looks very tired. “Hello. I'm glad to meet you.”

“She's a CC fan,” Amy pipes in. “She has some cool ideas about stories. You should talk to her, Professor Bellamy.”

Shaking Anna Clark's hand, Veronique feels her eyes filling with tears. For herself, not for Percy: not even for Melinda.
I don't want to be in this story. I don't want to have to think about this story.
But the others expect her to behave. “Hello.” She knows it sounds cold, but it's the best she can do, because her old rage has come swirling back, a blizzard in July. She shouldn't even have to meet this woman.

“Professor Bellamy,” Amy says, her voice both gentle and urgent, “today would have been Percy's birthday.”

Amy's the only person here who witnessed the March meltdown. Veronique shudders, and to her horror feels herself blushing. Then she takes a deep breath—she's a grown-up, and she can do this—and holds out the paper bag from Pike Place Market. “Anna, I'm sorry. Would you like some chocolate?”

 

20

The water tumbles Archipelago, Cosmos, and Lucy through the hotel lobby. Archipelago's never been a strong swimmer. She swallows water, chokes, thinks furiously,
How could all this be coming from the hotel pipes?
—later she'll learn that the water tower next door burst apart, but she doesn't know that yet—and paddles frantically in her ridiculous outfit. The shoes have come off, which is no great loss, but the rest of the wet clothing clings to her, and the water's cold, and she's freezing and terrified, and she's scared that she'll hit something, or something will hit her. She sees a large, tacky painting of a tropical beach scene bobbing like a raft on the water—the lobby furniture doesn't float, since it's all metal and glass and leather—and grabs it. She even manages to haul herself onto it. The frame's thick, and the canvas seems to be pretty strong. Waterproof, even, since it's reasonably dry up here: sealed by the paint, no doubt.

She lies on her stomach on the painting, as if it's a surfboard, and paddles with her hands. “Hey!” she hears nearby. “Hey! Glug!” Somebody's sputtering, kicking and sinking. Archipelago reaches out, grabs a wrist, and pulls.

It's Cosmos, of all people. He hauls himself up on the picture next to her. His teeth are chattering. He looks even less prepossessing soaking wet than he does the rest of the time. Archipelago snorts. Some superhero.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Fuck,” she answers, and thinks about pushing him off the picture, but she's in enough trouble right now, ringed around by 911 types. There's no way she's getting out of this undetected. Well, all right. There's food, in jail, and the problem of Erasmus has been solved, although not in any way she could have wished. Her throat aches. She knows she'll never see him again.

“Where's Lucy?” Cosmos says, craning around to peer at the stuff bobbing on the water. “Do you see her?”

Who the fuck's Lucy? Archipelago wants to say that, but she can't. She knows who Lucy is. Lucy was much nicer than Archipelago had any right to expect.

Shit.

“Don't know. If we go that way, do you think we can get out?”

“I don't want to get out. I want to find Lucy. Archipelago, c'mon. Help me, would you?”

She wants to find Lucy, too. She helps Cosmos paddle, turning the makeshift raft in a circle so they can scan the water for any sign of Lucy. Fuck. She's helping Cosmos. Does that make her a Comrade?

No. She's not helping Cosmos. She's helping Lucy, who helped her, even though Lucy was helping her try to hurt Cosmos. Cosmos has nothing to do with her helping Lucy. Cosmos just happens to be here, and this mess is his fault, anyway. If he weren't here, EE wouldn't be pulling out the big guns. Of course, if Cosmos weren't here, Archipelago wouldn't be, either.

But this is too much alternate history to ponder while paddling a raft in a flood, and anyway, they have company. There, sure enough, is the Emperor of Entropy, visible now that Archipelago's thought has summoned him, towering above the lobby's massive, tacky central staircase. Lucy's stretcher has lodged on a step just above the water. She sees them and waves, weakly.

“Oh, thank God,” says Cosmos, and paddles toward the stairs. Archipelago helps him, because she doesn't know what else to do.

“Didn't know you were religious,” she tells him.

“It's a figure of speech.”

They reach the stairs—not a moment too soon, since the tacky painting's starting to buckle and disintegrate—and climb to higher, drier ground, pulling Lucy with them. Lucy's not light: it takes all of Archipelago and Cosmos's combined strength to haul the stretcher to safety. When they're done, Archipelago realizes in a dizzying rush that she's glad she's here. She's glad she helped Lucy. She enjoyed working with someone else, although she still wishes the someone weren't Cosmos. Even so, she's relieved that he isn't allergic to scorpion venom.

They sit on the steps, shivering, waiting for rescue personnel. Lucy, improbably, is asleep, smiling while she snores. “I didn't mean to kill the Mayor,” Archipelago tells Cosmos. “You won't turn me in, will you? The cop in Bumfuck didn't.”

He gives her a blank look. “In where?”

“Some little town in Wyoming. He knew who I was. He didn't turn me in. He let me go.”

Cosmos sighs and rubs his nose. “He shouldn't have done that.”

“Well, I
know
. I thought so, too. But he did. Will you?”

“Can't,” Cosmos says glumly. “You don't want me to, not really, do you? Look: the Mayor's family needs closure. The cops need to know what really happened. You need to get someplace where you can eat more. You're scary skinny, you know.”

“Fuck,” Archipelago says, and her voice breaks. “I came here to hurt you, too, and now Erasmus is dead and I'll never even be able to find his body in all this muck, and you're going to lecture me about how it's my fault, right? I've been stung by my own sins? Because if I hadn't taken Erasmus out of his jar to sting you, he'd still be alive—”

“We don't know that,” Cosmos says. He sounds very tired. “He might have been safer out of the jar than in it. Can scorpions swim? Do they float? I have no idea, but if he were trapped in a bottle it might have smashed and, I don't know, cut him or something. I mean, I don't know that it would make that much difference. Why did you want to hurt me?”

“Because if you hadn't meddled, the Mayor never would have turned into such a goon!”

“That's another thing you don't know.”

“Of course I do! You showed up, and then he—”

“No. Logical fallacy, Archipelago. You're confusing chronology with causation. It's a pretty safe bet that without the Emperor—hey there, old buddy—the Mayor never would have turned into such a goon, but I don't know how much I had to do with it, except that without me, there would have been even more chaos, and maybe he would have been
more
of a goon. You know?”

“It's all your fault,” Archipelago says, but to her great humiliation it comes out as a wail, and she's crying—it's the cold, it has to be, she never cries—and Cosmos puts both of his arms around her and rocks, trying to soothe her. It's how he'd soothe Vanessa.

“There, there. There, there now. You've been through a lot. I know you have.”

She wants to tell him to let go. She wants to tell him not to touch her, but it feels good. Because she's cold, she tells herself fiercely, because she's on the verge of fucking hypothermia, and she damn well doesn't need a fucking man to make her happy,
especially
not this one. She'd rather—she'd rather—

“Archipelago,” Cosmos says, sounding startled. “Can scorpions swim? Look. What's that?”

She peers in the dimness, sees a flicker of darkness in a familiar shape. “Erasmus!”

Her tweezers are in her pocket. She pulls them out, executes a deft grab, and pins Erasmus neatly around his middle. He wiggles and writhes. He's having a bad day. “Erasmus,” she says, and she's weeping with joy this time. “Erasmus, are you okay?”

CC
readers will send up howls of protest over this happy ending. Erasmus should be dead. It's too corny for Erasmus not to be dead; it's too neat. Even if—as both fans and Archipelago will discover via Internet research—scorpions are tough critters who can live underwater for startling amounts of time, it's simply too convenient for Erasmus to have washed up precisely where Cosmos, Archipelago, and Lucy have also found refuge. Corny.
CC
usually relies on a particular brand of gritty realism: this issue completely violates that aesthetic. It's bad writing. This issue is badly written.

And even Archipelago, sobbing for joy at having recovered her pet, will suddenly stop blubbering and say, in something more like her normal voice, “Oh,
fuck.
”

“What?” asks Cosmos, who's inched away from her and Erasmus on the stairs.

“If he's alive, I have to keep taking care of him. And how can I do that if I'm in jail?”

“It'll work out,” he tells her.

And so, in future issues, it will. Emergency workers will rescue Cosmos, Lucy, and Archipelago. One of the medics, who has snakes and lizards at home and sympathizes with the plight of unpopular pets, even finds a specimen cup to keep Erasmus in, and obligingly pokes holes in it with an IV needle. The three humans are treated for exposure at the local hospital. Archipelago finds herself under armed guard, and then under arrest. To her intense misery, Cosmos becomes her biggest champion. He tells everyone that she didn't mean to kill the Mayor, that it was just an immature hijink, that she's sorry. He tells everyone how she saved him in the flood, how she nobly helped him save Lucy. Lucy tells everyone that she sure is disappointed that Archipelago lied to her like that, but the child's good deeds have made up for it, and everyone deserves a second chance.

Good deeds. Archipelago's been saved from the water only to die of shame.

Rallied by Cosmos, hundreds of people she's never met chip in small change to make her bail. The judge gives her five years' probation with a hefty list of community-service commitments, including painting parks buildings and teaching schoolchildren about arachnids. To her astonishment, she's hired as a docent at a local nature reserve. She gets another apartment, two blocks from Cosmos's house, and he's over sharing pizza and a Guinness with her—Roger being out of town at the ALA—the evening she discovers that Erasmus is really dead, has died peacefully of old age after a long life of many crickets. And Archipelago breaks down and bawls like a child, and Cosmos comforts her, and one thing leads to another, and assorted critics excoriate the CC Four for reinscribing heteronormativity where it was neither needed nor wanted. Why the hell couldn't Archipelago just start her own outlaw lesbian biker gang and ride off into the sunset, huh? Are the CC Four being pressured by corporate interests? Why have they gone soft?

At this point, many fans abandon CC, moving on in disgust to edgier pop-culture phenomena. A significant percentage of the fans who remain, meanwhile, will have begun to critique Cosmos's American isolationism. When Charlie dies, Archipelago remains in Keyhole to care tenderly for Vanessa—who reminds her of herself, a less lucky version of her, messy hair and all—while Cosmos goes to Haiti. After Vanessa dies of pneumonia one miserable winter, Archipelago accompanies Cosmos to Africa. And, as always, the Emperor is everywhere, howling and cackling, smiling down at Cosmos and Archipelago when he thinks no one's looking.

But all of that's in the future. We will leave Cosmos and Archipelago here, on the sodden stairs, awaiting rescue as they stare in wonder at Erasmus. We will leave the critics to argue about whether Erasmus's return is a blatant allusion to resurrection, or just
really
bad writing, or whether resurrection itself is just really bad writing. We will leave our heroes cold and shivering but newly hopeful, facing a future they cannot know and can only dimly imagine.

For now, for them, it is enough to know that there
is
a future. Their story is not over. Even in the midst of decay and dissolution, of entropy and endings, they will keep breathing and working. They will light candles and love without logic. They will make the best of what they have for as long as they have it.

 

21

Jeremy points through a high doorway. “There he is.” Behind them, huge cardboard figures of Cosmos, Roger, and Archipelago tower over the museum patrons. They're together; EE's isolated in his own room, the walls painted black with spinning stars, a booming cackle cleverly audible in this space, although you couldn't hear it back among the Good Guys.