The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (13 page)

“And I’ve seen X-rated ones,” Kyle replied. He pointed to the box. “So who’s next?”

I stepped into the road.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Charlie said. I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely concerned for my safety or if he was only competing for my loyalty.

I kept moving. I knew if I thought about it too much, I would change my mind. So I simply crouched down in the center of the road and pulled the box over me like I was a tortoise and this was my shell.

I had no idea what might happen next. My only clear feeling was that I didn’t want to be alone. It wasn’t my parents, or my sister, or Charlie, or Kyle that I needed. It was Fiona. I imagined her there with me, holding on to me, telling me that we would see things through together. It was a fresh and strange and terrifying and glorious feeling, and it spread through my entire body until I realized that Fiona was more than someone I wanted to help. She was someone I wanted to be with … all of the time.

As I cradled these thoughts, I pressed my nose against the pavement. It was just north of freezing and smelled earthier than I expected. I clawed it, like an animal starting a burrow. It was pavement, all right. I brought my fingers to my ears. I didn’t want to hear any car until it was right upon me. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if I was hit.

Would I be crushed? Would I fly? Pain doesn’t always arrive immediately, so would it maybe even feel transcendent, if only for a second or two?

No. It would feel horrible.

My numbness was fluttering away, and I had only a vague idea about what it meant to be drunk, but I decided I wanted to be drunk like Kyle. Anything other than what I was.
How nice,
I thought,
how very nice to be obliterated. Or to be asleep. To turn the dial of my mind down to its lowest setting.

And that’s when—in the moment of my thickest loneliness and doubt—the box moved. It brushed against my knee and rose up around me like I was a roast pig being presented to a king. For Fiona to be holding the box would have been miraculous, but this wasn’t that type of moment.

It was the type where Charlie was holding it.

“Get out of there,” he pleaded. “I hate this game. I hate it so much.”

I looked up at his gauzy hands, sandwiching the cardboard. He couldn’t reach down to help me up, so I stood under my own power. I took the box from him and placed it back in the road. And then I hugged him. I can’t remember ever hugging Charlie before, but I did it then, and I peered over his shoulder to Kyle, who was still standing in the grass with his chin up and his hands engaged in the politest of applause.

“Precious. So in love.”

“Scumbag,” Charlie growled.

“It’s okay,” I whispered.

“Let’s go,” Charlie said.

And we did. The two of us walked up the road together, away from Kyle’s cackles and his muddy jeers. It comforted me to know I wasn’t alone, yet I wasn’t entirely sure this was how I wanted the night to end. Because when headlights appeared at the crest of the hill again, I began to regret my retreat. Surely this car was going to swerve. Minutes from now, in some alternate universe, Kyle and I would be the ones walking up that road together.

When the car screamed past us, I looked back over my shoulder. The car struck the empty box full-force, flattening it and sucking it under and kicking it out with a back tire. A gust of wind then opened the box and puffed it into a cylinder and spun it in place for a moment before depositing it next to a storm drain.

Kyle, arms to the heavens, voiced his approval. A rapturous howl marauded through our sleepy neighborhood.

S
UNDAY
, O
CTOBER
29

The rest of Saturday was a lost day, spent bed- and couch-bound. I tried not to spend it thinking about the fact that Charlie had saved my life. Reminders would come early and often.

By Sunday morning, I was back to normal, at least physically. My eyes were open as soon as the dawn came in through the window, but I stayed under the covers and watched the rising sunlight sweep across my posters, including that one of Prudence and her Lamborghini.

The doorbell rang. I answered.

“Hey,” I said. “I was worr … wondering what happened to you.”

There was a different version of Fiona at my front door. This was one with stockings and pulled-back hair, with makeup and a skirt and a small leather handbag. Not the Fiona I was accustomed to, but I was so relieved to see her.

“Do you have nice shoes?” she asked.

“Like wedding ones?”

Her mouth was smiling. Her eyes were not. “Like funeral ones.”

“Oh no, it’s not—”

“My grandma. It was time. The wake is today. I’d like you to come.”

*   *   *

The funeral home did seem almost like a home, but the tiny details weren’t there. No framed photos on the bookshelves, no slippers poking out from under the chairs. The casket was set in a room with plaid couches and enormous windows. Our blacks and navy blues looked deep and rich in there. Vegetables and dip and pastries sat on a table as far from the casket as possible, and that’s where many lingered, whispering and nodding and hugging and shaking hands. Even cracking jokes. Not many, but a few, perhaps inspired by good memories of Fiona’s grandmother. I’d come to learn her name was Phyllis. Phyllis Loomis. Not the most unfortunate name, but certainly a mouthful.

Except for Fiona’s family, I didn’t recognize most of the people there. To be honest, I hardly even recognized Fiona’s brother and sister anymore. Derek and Maria were at least nine or ten years older than me. College students, maybe even out in the world working real jobs. Occasionally, during the holidays mostly, I’d see them driving down the street in their beat-up sedans. Otherwise, they weren’t part of the neighborhood anymore. Keri used to rave about how cool they were. She’d fawn over Derek’s frayed jeans and his weightless bangs or Maria’s frilly dresses and her steel-toed army boots. But that was when they were teenagers. Hair trimmed and thoroughly buttoned, Derek and Maria looked like regular people now. Regular adults mingling with other regular adults.

Standing next to Fiona’s dad at the snack table, I noticed that he had lost some of his hair in the last few years and had resorted to a comb-over. He was an angular man, with a large chin and sunken eyes, and when he spoke to people it was with a deep yet soft voice. It was because of that voice that I always thought of him as a sad person, but maybe that wasn’t fair because I was comparing him to my dad, who was so quick with boisterous jokes and tales.

When a ruddy-faced minister turned away from Mr. Loomis to carve a slice of cheese, I took the opportunity to offer my condolences. Since I was the only one Fiona invited to the wake, I had to speak for our family. “My parents and sister want you to know that you’re in their thoughts,” I told him. “All of you.”

“Very well, then,” Mr. Loomis said, offering no indication as to whether he recognized me or not, and he stepped away from the table to talk to an elderly woman who placed a hand on his cheek.

On the opposite end of the room, Fiona’s mom received a line of well-wishers. She was fair-skinned and dark-haired like Fiona, with sharp blue eyes and a mole on her forehead. I wasn’t sure if she was pretty or not. She could have been. Some of my early memories featured her walking through our yard barefoot, pointing out different birds and plants to Fiona and me. Out of everyone in Fiona’s family, she seemed the most at ease at the wake, clinking her wine glass with the glass of every passerby and saying, “To Phyllis, a hell of a gal.”

You could chart the similarities in their noses, their cheekbones, the curls in their ears. The Loomis family members were clearly related, but as they wandered around the room, I could also see how clearly divided they were. They didn’t talk to one another. They hardly looked at one another. I would have thought that this was a time for kids and parents to band together, but instead they were all on their own.

I remembered a comment that Fiona made when she first started telling me her story. She talked about a time when “we used to do stuff as a family.”
Used to.
I had thought nothing of that phrasing at first, but watching the Loomises now, it made me wonder if they even knew how to do stuff as a family anymore.

As for Dorian, he was sitting in a rocking chair. His hair was tied in a ponytail, and his beard was trimmed. He wore a blue blazer and khaki pants like someone who christens boats. I tried not to watch him, but the movement of the chair kept drawing my eyes back in his direction. When people came by to pay their respects, he didn’t stand. He would plant his feet for a moment and shake their hands and mumble a few words, then resume his rocking. His face was placid.

“Would you like to have a moment with Phyllis?” the funeral director asked when he saw my eyes turn to the casket.

“Yessir.”

It was the only answer that seemed appropriate. The director must have thought so too, because he guided me forward with an experienced hand. As soon as we were standing next to the casket, he backed away. Alone, I looked at Phyllis.

Ridged and pocked, her face wore all of its years. Her eyes were closed, and I wondered if they wore their years as well. They had seen depressions and world wars and silent movies and all these things I thought of as black-and-white things. What did that face and those eyes look like seventy years ago? In black-and-white, were they a version of Fiona?

And what about in their last moments? Did Phyllis die peacefully in her sleep, as everyone at the wake was saying? Or did something more sinister happen? Did that face feel a pillow smothering out the world? Did those eyes see Dorian?

Surely a doctor had examined the body. Foul play was something doctors could detect. Or so I hoped. I didn’t really know for sure, and again, I wasn’t about to make accusations without more solid evidence.

“I’m so sorry … for whatever happened,” I whispered to Phyllis, and I gave the casket a little pat, like it was a good pet, and I turned away.

Fiona intercepted me on my way back to the snacks. “Will you go for a walk with me?” she asked.

“Always.”

*   *   *

She chose the cemetery. It was only a couple of blocks away, and she said she wanted to see the hole before they filled it. All four of my grandparents were alive. Aside from my goldfish Humbert’s funeral, I didn’t have any experience with this sort of situation. It seemed a reasonable thing to want to see.

An open grave is almost as you would imagine. Rectangular. Deep. But there are roots and stones and clay and remnants that make the walls seem marbled and pulsing with life. I thought about how strange it would be to put a shiny new coffin in there. It seemed more natural to bury a body as is and let it dissolve into the earth.

“You go into a movie and it’s a dark place,” Fiona said softly, looking at the hole. “The point is to be distracted. I have this fear, and I’ve had it since I can remember…”

She looked around, but it wasn’t like she was searching for witnesses. Maybe she was searching for a reason to stop talking, to shut the heck up and return to the wake, but I told her, “Go on.”

“I’m … I’m afraid that I’ll be sitting in the front of the theater, and I’ll get so wrapped up in the movie that I won’t notice until it’s too late that everyone around me is dead. The whole theater, murdered, still sitting in their seats. And me in front of them, oblivious, completely entranced by the movie.”

It was a puzzling thing to say, so my response leaned toward logic. “Then sit in the back row.”

“That’s the thing: the risk is too tempting. I can’t ever sit in the back row.” Fiona sighed and turned. She walked toward the mausoleum that was the centerpiece of the cemetery. As I kept pace, she told me, “It’s a metaphor. For my life, I guess.”

“I don’t know if I get it.”

“Death is all around me, Alistair. And I choose to be oblivious to it. I guess because I can’t do anything about it.”

“Your grandma?” I asked. “Was she…?”

“It was Nana’s time,” Fiona said. “I’m talking about the kids. In Aquavania. I think it’s so many more than I could know of. It probably goes back forever too. Kids have been disappearing since the beginning. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Native Americans—they all have stories about kids stolen by the gods or whatever. What if those kids had also gone to Aquavania? What if the Riverman got them all?”

“You’re saying he’s thousands of years old?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying.” Fiona sat on the top step of the mausoleum and rubbed an eye as she brushed her hair away from her face.

The mausoleum seemed more like the grandest of sheds than it did a tomb. Boxy, mud-stained stone, two pillars flanking its entrance, a name etched near the top:
Barnes
.

I sat next to Fiona. “Is there more you need to tell me?” I asked.

THE LEGEND OF FIONA LOOMIS, PART IV

Once you visited someone’s world in Aquavania, it was easy to go back. Fiona only needed to think about Chua and a signal would travel through the folds. The signal would arrive in Chua’s world as a giant bubble shaped like Fiona. Chua could pop the bubble, which meant she was inviting Fiona into her world. Or she could step inside the bubble, which meant she was coming to visit Fiona’s world. Once you were connected to someone—once you had their trust—you could call them up whenever you wanted. Unless that person was no longer there.

Chua was always game for a visit, so Fiona knew it from the moment one of her calls to Chua went unanswered. The Riverman had taken her.

Chua had introduced Fiona to other kids, to Jenny, Rodrigo, and Boaz. So Fiona called them all to her world. They gathered in the treetops, where Toby served nachos and they discussed the terrifying developments.

“First Werner and now Chua.” Rodrigo sighed. Rodrigo was a tall boy with bony shoulders and a willowy voice. His world could best be described as a Wild West town in a tropical rain forest.

“So their souls get sucked into the pen. Where do you reckon their bodies go?” Boaz asked. As for Boaz, he dressed like an old-fashioned newsboy and he lived in the clouds. Literally.