Be Safe I Love You (15 page)

“Maybe it’s the little boy and girl’s house instead,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he said. “They got it from the Snow Queen
when she moved away. She left them this nice house even though everything in it is
frozen. She made it so they can’t feel cold and they can go anywhere.”

Lauren took the globe from his hand and put it on his nightstand, then she
pulled the covers up, kissed him on the forehead.

“They can,” she said, shutting off the light. “They can go anywhere they
want.”

Twenty-seven

H
OLLY WAS ASLEEP
when Lauren went in. She had tubes in her nose, her left arm was completely bandaged, and the hair on the left side of her head was short, singed, and brittle, but her face was miraculously fine. A wave of relief washed over Lauren. If there was any more damage it was hidden beneath the sheet.

She sat beside the bed and touched Holly’s hand lightly. The last time she’d visited her in the hospital was when Grace was born. Amazing Grace, seven pounds and ready to go, holding up her tiny fists, eyes an undetermined alien blue.

Lauren stayed with Holly all day. They spent it looking at the baby, holding the baby, smelling the baby, making phone calls and working on their social studies homework when the baby was asleep. They were captivated by her terrifying fragility, barely touched their fingers to the soft spot on her skull, which pulsed rhythmically with the beat of her heart.

If she’d never started working at The Bag of Nails she’d be fine now. There every day with the Patricks, actually thinking
Patrick
was anyone she should spend time with, anyone who could make a decent mate. Thinking of her friend’s desperation made her sadder than thinking of the fire. Holly hanging on there after everyone had left, looking for one smart person to talk to who hadn’t already judged her. Of course she was lured by the thin charm of the Murphys. Saw something of herself in bookish thugs, in failures. It hurt her to think of Holly seeing Patrick as someone who had drive and freedom, as some rogue intellectual who just needed a little caretaking so he could finally bloom. Someone with whom she could make a life.

She pulled her wallet and an envelope from her little daypack and wrote a check for eight thousand dollars, sealed it in the envelope, wrote Holly’s name across it, and propped it against a plastic pitcher of water on the bedside table. That ought to get the girl somewhere. Her own place at the very least.

Lauren stepped out into the hallway, saw Shane approaching, and fought the twin urges to walk past him without talking, to run and hold him. She made herself stand still in front of the room.

He looked hung over and slightly sick. Walked up close and put his arms around her. She felt the cool wall of the corridor against her back and rested her head against his shoulder.

“How is she?” he asked.

Lauren pulled away and held his hands. “She’s asleep. I couldn’t see much, she looks okay.” The fact was she looked completely fine to Lauren. She’d been in a fire. But she had not been inside something made of metal filled with flammable fuel and fortified with artillery while it had exploded. Holly had run from a burning building. It was bad that she didn’t have a job now, bad she’d have scars and be in pain for a while. Lauren did not want her to be in pain. But she was fine.

She watched him studying her the way he had outside The Bag of Nails and suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion. She didn’t have the heart for it, to stand and be scrutinized. She knew she’d failed to look sufficiently upset. But their friend was alive. The Bag of Nails was gone.

Things were going to be okay for Holly, but not for her and Shane. He was so used to a good life now he could see surviving a catastrophic fire as bad news. She squeezed his hand and headed through the building filled with people sick with slow diseases, nearly well after accidents. It barely seemed like a hospital at all.

Twenty-eight

L
AUREN TOLD DANNY
to wait in the car, which was fine. He wanted Holly to be all right but there was no way he wanted to see what she looked like after spending the night in a burning building. He also did not want to see other sick people and he was glad Lauren understood.

He texted Scott and told him he was going to his mom’s for the week, then opened the glove compartment and went through the junk that was in there. Pens, napkins, receipts, the car manual.

The footage of The Bag of Nails was beautiful but not if you knew Holly was inside. It was a tall fire and he wondered how it had started. Maybe Holly had started it with a cigarette. The place really was an oversized rickety shack. It should have been called the Bag of Bones, not The Bag of Nails, because it looked like some kind of sway-backed living thing. It had a narrow wooden staircase that went up the back from the restaurant to an apartment. Maybe the guy who lived in the apartment had set it on fire. Maybe he was an alcoholic and couldn’t pay his bills and his electricity got cut off and he fell asleep reading by candlelight and the candle got knocked over and so did his whiskey, then his book caught on fire and took the whole building with it. But the guy got out and was now a hobo because he lost everything. One drunken spark between him and the road for life.

He thought about how fire is like rust. Using oxygen to swallow up the world. Just one hundred thousand years ago people were learning how to use it, how to cook or scare off animals or something, and before that they didn’t even know how to make it, so for them it didn’t exist. He thought about Sebastian being converted from fur and flesh into gray ashes and chunks of bone. How he once had a personality and now he was fertilizing the roots of the pine trees. Sebastian never really got much farther than the yard. Even in death. Should have dumped his ashes in the river so he would be carried away. He loved to lie beneath the pine tree, but that’s only because he didn’t have much to compare it to. Danny thought about the remains of dinosaurs, their bodies in the ground turning into oil to be set on fire. The ancient past isn’t gone at all. Dinosaurs are more dangerous now as oil than they ever were when they were flesh and feathers.

A loud rap at the car window made Danny jerk and scream involuntarily.

Shane’s uncle Patrick was bent down staring at him—his face close and ugly behind the glass. He tapped again very lightly with one of his knuckles, and Danny rolled the window down.

Patrick smelled like cigarettes and paper and sweat and fried food. He hadn’t shaved in some time. He was wearing sooty or ink-stained jeans and a grubby red wool jacket. His skin was ruddy, seemed loose and leathery. He looked sad and mean at the same time.

“Where’s your fucking sister?”

The snarling anger with which he said it was another shock. But it was also ridiculous that he was asking when they were both there in the hospital parking lot.

“Visiting Holly,” Danny said, glancing down quickly to make sure his door was locked.

Patrick wiped a dirty hand over his forehead, rubbed his eyes. He looked dazed. Stood and turned his back to the car, squinting up toward the windows of the hospital as if he were trying to figure out what room she was in.

Danny didn’t know what else to say, so he began rolling up the window. It was halfway up when Patrick turned back around, stopped it with his hand, looked directly into Danny’s eyes without seeming to see him. As if he were calculating something and needed a place to fix his gaze.

“She’s dangerous,” he said.

“Who?”

“Your sister. People like that coming back with more than just stupid ideas in their heads. You send a person to hell you should keep them there, know what I mean? Would you keep a police dog? Would you keep a pit dog as a pet?”

“Pit bull?” Danny asked. “I—”

“Two worlds got to be kept separate,” Patrick interrupted. “You do your reading, you’ll see. The one shouldn’t even exist at all, am I right? You know what the Demiurge is?”

Danny wasn’t sure Patrick was using real words anymore. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He shook his head and felt for his phone in his pocket in case he needed to call 911. He understood Shane’s uncle was upset about Holly or about the fact that the place where he spent his entire life had burned down, but he sounded crazier than someone who was just upset.

Patrick rubbed his face again. He had tears in his eyes and he looked very old and tired.

He would not tell Lauren about this when she got back in the car, she’d be pissed the guy had even talked to him or that he’d rolled down the window. She’d had enough bullshit. He knew because she said just this morning when he was slow to wake up that she’d had enough bullshit. He didn’t want anything to upset her.

Patrick put his hand firmly on Danny’s shoulder.

He said, “Better be careful, little man.”

Twenty-nine

L
AUREN WALKED OUT
through the sliding doors and down the ramp past cars waiting near the emergency exit. She saw Shamus and Gerry sitting on the curb smoking and wondered if Shane had given them a ride over to visit. Just what Holly needed, barflies flocking to her aid. She raised a hand and nodded quickly at them as she got out her keys and sprinted across the parking lot.

Danny was hunched down in his seat texting, and she slammed the door and quickly got back out on the highway.

“Well?” he asked.

“She looks great,” Lauren said. “They have her on oxygen and she has some burns but otherwise seems fine. Shane’s with her now. I guess Bridget was with her all night.”

“What did she say about the fire?”

“Not much,” Lauren told him.

He put his phone away and messed with the radio a little.

“How did you learn how to drive?” he asked her. He had really wished he could drive when Patrick had shown up.

“PJ.”

“Really? When did he teach you?”

“Don’t you remember? When we were kids.”

“I guess I do. Really?”

“Really. Dad wouldn’t teach me so I asked PJ and he did. Over on Sullivan Street.

“Did you tell Dad?”

“Yeah. He was pissed. But what if something happened and
we
needed to go to the hospital or something happened to him and we were alone?”

“Nothing like that ever happened,” Danny said.

“But it could have, and then we’d’ve been screwed.”

They passed along the Black River and saw how swollen it had become from the rain, flowing fast along the muddy, weedy embankment.

“Let’s take the scenic route. Let’s take the bridge and go up and across Canada, stop at my buddy Daryl Green’s and then go down to Mom’s.”

“For real?”

“Hell yeah, kid. We have plenty of time, we can do whatever we want.”

He smiled broadly. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, let’s do it!”

Waiting to cross the Thousand Islands Bridge into Canada she thought of leaving Holly there alone, thought of what she was about to do and lost her resolve for a moment. Then put it all out of her mind and focused on the road.

Just over the Canadian border the weather began to change rapidly. Thick wet clumps of snow hit the windshield. They got on to Highway 1 and drove along in steady snowfall. Something about it calmed her, made the road seem safer, the idea of IEDs more absurd. She hadn’t felt so calm driving in a year and she smiled, looking out at the dense wet blanket of white that clung to tree branches and hung from the eaves of buildings and tops of billboards. As they got farther on the snowflakes became smaller, swirled and swarmed like white bees toward them, and the bright sun pierced the pale gray clouds, revealing a wide swath of high blue sky. She put on her aviator glasses.

In his sleep Danny looked like his baby self: his head back and lolling to the side, his skin still soft and cheeks round. He’d put the radio on some shitty hip-hop station, and she turned it off. She reached over and put her hand on his chest. Felt him breathing. Then she reached into the pocket of his cargo pants, gently pulled out his phone, rolled down the top of the window, and tossed it out onto the highway. She had to do it. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to take them out of this world.

Part Two

Thirty

W
HEN HE WOKE
up a thick snow was falling and he watched it absently through the windshield for a moment before realizing the car was parked. There were tall pine trees visible all around in the distance, and the sky was bright and the afternoon sun was warm coming through the glass. There was a long low wooden building, a truck stop maybe or a diner. But his sister was not there. Then he heard the trunk slam and her boots crunching along in the snow next to the car. She opened the passenger-side door, handed him a large square box that said
DANNER CANADIAN
on it, and said, “Merry Christmas. Again.”

Inside was a pair of dark brown boots with thick wide black soles. They were solid and would last and he was sure they’d keep his feet warm. Even the laces seemed constructed of something indestructible. He’d never had anything like them. He didn’t know what to say.

“Those are one hundred percent waterproof,” Lauren said. “They have six hundred grams of Thinsulate in the lining. You could prolly wear them with bare feet and still be warm.”

He leaned over to lace them. Then he got out of the car and jumped up and down in the sturdy boots. They were so simple and so fancy at the same time. He ran across the parking lot and then back to the car.

“We found winter!” he shouted. She laughed, happy, relieved. She opened the trunk again and got out one of the silver emergency blankets and put it in the back seat in case they needed it on the road, but he leaned in and took it, tied it around his neck like a cape.

“Aw hell yeah, son! We’re on vacation!” He hugged her tight. “Thank you for the boots, Sistopher!”

She waved it away. “They’re gonna keep you warm.”

“Oh you bet, I’m going to be so fucking warm. I’m going to have to change my name to Toasty. I’m going to change my name to Adorable Little Bunny. Oh, you know what? I don’t remember why this was, but I was actually thinking about what would be a good name for a pet bunny. And I came up with Furious.”

Danny loved it when people laughed but especially Lauren, because her voice was pretty and she always jerked her head back a little like she was startled. One time he made her laugh so hard tea came out her nose.

He went on: “I’d be like, ‘Here’s my pet Furious. He looks real mellow but he’s going to tear your fucking face off.’ I’d be like, ‘I’m serious, why do you think I fucking named him that? You
should
be scared. He’s a fucking killer!’ And then the rabbit would just be hopping around, nibbling on grass or lying there sleeping. OH I know! I would get him a whole outfit of baby clothes! With a little hat that pushes his ears down on the sides of his head! And then I’d shave his body and get him covered in jailhouse tattoos, so under the baby suit he’d be a terrifying badass.” Danny started giggling and she looked at him, incredulous and weirdly proud.

“And then you feed him with a baby bottle,” she said.

“I’d feed him
grain
alcohol in the baby bottle.”

“Then get some woman to bring him to The New Bag of Nails and pretend he’s the love child of one of the Patricks,” she said, and then lost it again, shook her head picturing the stupid shithole burned to the ground and the Patricks, gathered around like an Irish wake, staring at the wreckage.

Danny said in a tearful falsetto: “Don’t you remember your own flesh and blood?”

“And the family resemblance would be so great he couldn’t deny it,” she said.

“And he’d be so dumb he’d have to keep paying child support for a shaved rabbit. No, you know what I’d really do, though?” Danny said, suddenly serious. “If I had a bunny I would just hold him a lot because they’re really soft.”

She nodded in agreement. “Let’s get some chow, kid, what do you say?”

A car pulled into the parking lot. A middle-aged couple looked at them and then sat gazing out their windshield, saying things Lauren and Danny couldn’t hear, which also made them laugh.

“You look nuts in that cape,” Lauren said to him.

“I’m going to save their lives,” he said. “I’m going to go over and knock on the window and be like . . .”

Danny stopped talking as the couple got out of the car, still looking at them. They smiled. The woman said, “I was just telling my husband I haven’t seen two people having such a good time in years.”

“Look at my new boots!” Danny said to her, holding one foot up.

“Not bad,” the man said.

They were friendly and tender looking and short. The man was wearing a green Carhartt coat, and the woman was wearing a puffy down vest and a white knit hat.

“We’re on vacation,” Lauren said.

“With our dog,” Danny said, and he started cracking up again. The couple looked around for a dog, then he said, “That’s not true, he died last month, but he’d always wanted his ashes scattered in the Great Lakes.”

“Oh,” the woman said, looking confused.

The man started laughing. He said, “I think we got ourselves a couple of comedians here, Bobbi.”

•    •    •

The diner was big and the dark wooden tables were covered with red-and-white checked table cloths, the real kind made of linen. He loved it. Nearly every inch of wall space was hung with photographs of animals: moose, owls, wolves, bears, and otters, and with rectangular wooden signs sporting some of the stupidest stuff he’d ever read. Phrases like “Got beer?” And “Sometimes I wake up grumpy, other times I let him sleep.” “If it has tits or tires it’s gonna cost you money.” And also “Can I get a caller ID for the voices in my head?”

The dessert case was flanked by a counter that held a wide variety of souvenirs. You could buy flags and pennants and little snow globes and bells and spoons, unidentifiable cartoon figurines and T-shirts that all said
WAWEIG
on them. Waweig! What did that even mean? It was ridiculous but also cool and foreign and remote. Like a planet in an Ursula Le Guin novel. They’d been gone just a few hours and already they had docked in Waweig.

“I’ve got to take a picture of this,” he said to Lauren, reaching into his pocket for his phone. He experienced a moment of disorientation and anxiety when he couldn’t find it, looked on the floor beneath the table.

She sat across from him—leaning back in her chair and reading the menu, sipping her coffee. She didn’t look worried about it, in fact she looked more relaxed than she had since she’d gotten home.

“You must have left it in the car,” she said, glancing up absently. “Think maybe you should take the cape off now?”

He had the urge to go find his phone right away but knew he should stay there. The tension was finally gone from her face and he didn’t want to bring it back by taking pictures and texting, which he knew bothered her but he didn’t know why. He honestly didn’t feel that much like doing it anyway—which was weird, but still the boots and the diner and all the snow needed to be documented so he could post it online.

She said, “It’s okay, buddy, we’re going to get on the road soon, you can look in the car.” Then added, “They have milkshakes.”

He picked up the menu. Remembered another story he wanted to tell her. Knocked his boots together under the table. He felt happy.

“If you go to music school can I visit you there?” he asked. He could imagine driving around Philadelphia and seeing a big city and going to visit Shane with her. He’d have a place to be other than home. Shane said there were libraries at his school that had any book you’d ever want, and they showed good movies there all week long.

She looked up, shocked. “Why would you think I’m going to go to music school?”

He said, “Duh, what else are you going to do? Hey, have you ever heard of a Reeves’s muntjac? It’s a real animal. It’s like a deer but really small.”

The muntjac was really interesting, and the history of how it got to the west from China was too. He also wanted to remember to tell her about how birds’ eyes make it possible for them to see in colors that are invisible to humans and other animals. He’d watched a lecture about it online because his biology teacher was kind of a tool when it came to explaining things. He’d show Lauren the site where you can watch all those lectures and also the video of crows placing nuts at a crosswalk so cars would run them over and crack them. And when they got to their mom’s they could also watch
South Park
because she had cable.

He looked up and realized that from almost every window in the diner you could see snow-covered pine trees. This was the farthest from home he had ever been, and it felt amazing, like they could just keep going. They had broken free from some gravitational pull and could keep going forever. They could be weightless.