Chimpanzee (37 page)

In the bedroom, I find my favorite Renewal-day shirt. It doesn't stick to the jumpsuit when I sweat. Most of my others do. The phone rings—the number is masked. It almost makes me laugh. Like I'm some kind of spy.

“Hello?”

“Cade.”

“Rosie?”

“You got the summons?” he says. “You heard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wear comfortable shoes.”

“What? Why?”

He's quiet on the line. I hear a sound like wave motion, like digital noise. Something my new glasses do all the time. “Good shoes,” he says. “Like, for jogging.”

“Yes, sir.”

All the smoke has curtained the town. I can see banks of it rising from behind one of the forested ridges. I remember the last time we had a wildfire. It took Renewal weeks to contain it. Dozens of them died, and there was an inquiry. Somebody resigned somewhere.

There are many more workers at the lot than normal. Rosie checks them in several at a time, and he deploys them, like squads. Riot shields, fire suits, construction vests. It is efficient. Workers gather and order themselves upon the asphalt. They shift positions, onto and off of the Renewal busses. They move in orderly fashion, seemingly nowhere, around the Renewal lot. The wardens stare at them like cattle. Something to keep an eye on. Movement is fine, as long as nobody gets spooked.

I ring the buzzer on Rosie's trailer. He ignores me. When the light finally indicates that I may enter, there is no one left in the lot. The wardens left the gates open. The wind across the pavement, between those gates and me, is dark and uncomfortable.

Inside, Rosie is cleaning his shotgun behind his desk. “Come in, Cade.”

I let the door latch behind me, shutting out the smoke. In here, it smells faintly of vomit and body odor—the unpleasant accident of too many cleaning agents too often together. The place is spotless, in its surplus-furniture, refurbished-trailer kind of way. Things can be clean, but they will never be their original colors again. Their original brightnesses and edges.

Rosie watches me. The message lights on his telephone are blinking. Several of them. Things are happening, on that line, and he has quieted them for just this minute. There is a monitor's phone on his desk. He gestures at it with the muzzle of his shotgun. He has broken its back—hinged it across the spine, so that he may get his solvents into the barrel.

I take the phone.

He studies his gun. I know that he's paying full attention to me, but he would prefer that I think that he isn't. That he's thinking larger thoughts.

“Sir?” I say.

He snaps the barrel back into the stock. Making the point he was waiting for.

“You know I look out for you, Cade,” he says.

Here we go. Every time, it's something else. He needs me to know he has things to say. He knows I know this, which is what thrills him. That I will listen. That I have to.

Even so, I'm not sure what he means. “Sir?”

“It's not just me,” he says. “Lots of folks. You got people looking after you all over the place.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

He puts the gun down. “Why do you think that is?”

“I don't know.”

He gets up from behind the desk and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“You know, I don't even have to send you anyplace tonight,” he says. “You could send in your monitor reports from right here.”

He pulls a phone out of his pocket. It looks like a standard-issue monitor's phone, except this one has his name on it, not a serial number.

“I think—” he says. He pulls up the phone's messaging function “You've seen plenty. You just need a whole shift to type it all up.”

“Sir?”

He plants his thumbs on the phone's keypad. Composes. When he sends his message, it takes only a second for my phone to vibrate. He looks at me.

The message reads, How is Central University connected to the activity in the arts district?

He doesn't move. He's just text on the other end of my phone now. I'm not even supposed to be in here, for this part of this particular conversation. It was supposed to happen somewhere else. Before.

I don't know what you're talking about, sir.

He reads it. Punches another message into the keypad.

“I'll tell you why it is,” he says. “It's one of those things that happens. An accident. When other things come together.”

What's your relationship to Leah Johnson?

We're still standing. Standing still. I can smell Rosie's aftershave. The lineament he applies to his joints. The detergent in his jacket. The paste on his discolored teeth.

I can feel my heartbeat getting serious. “I guess I'm just lucky, sir.”

It makes him smile. “That's just it, Cade. Why are you lucky? Even after everything. After default. After repossession, you're still lucky. Things are still working out.”

I lie: I don't understand the question, sir.

He reads it. Looks up again. “That isn't how it goes for most people. The ones I see here. Things go
wrong
, Cade. That's how we know who's ready to help. Who's got the misfortune it takes to change things.” He's angry. “It's how
I
knew.”

He sends another message, but he grabs my shoulder before I can read it. He gestures with his phone, like he might slap me with it or shove it between my ribs.

“You give me a reason, Cade,” he says. “Send me anything that
compromises the effort
, I'll bring us all down. Her. Me. You.”

“Sir?”

“You don't even get what's going on, Cade. You just wander your way through, and everything falls into place. It would make more sense if I just ruined everything.”

He doesn't give me a chance to ask.

“Why?” he says. “Why, Rosie? What, Rosie? I don't understand, Rosie.”

“I don't understand.”

“If I ruined everything, at least that way you would understand what's happened to the rest of us. Caught up in your broken world.”

He sits back down at his computer. “But I said I'd keep you safe, so here you are. I have to send you someplace tonight, or they'll catch it in the service audit. Monitor's as safe as you're going to get.”

He looks up. “All alone. Late to the action.”

“Where do you want me to monitor, sir?”

He lets go of me and turns around. “You'll figure it out.”

I look at his last text message. It's a photo of me and Sireen at the party. She's talking to Zoe. Dimitri's back is turned. It looks like I'm staring directly at the camera lens, across the room.

“What the fuck is this?” I say.

He doesn't look at me. “That is collateral. If you compromise the effort, if she backs out, it all comes down. I'll keep these messages in my phone, and if I surrender it, they'll see how you didn't answer—what she's been up to.”

“Who?”

“She said you'd cooperate,” he says, “but I can't take that risk. You saw all those workers earlier . . .”

He gives me an eye. “All those soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

“Stop asking so many fucking questions, Cade.”

He looks at the lights blinking on his phone. At his computer. When he looks at me again, there's pain on his face. There's a fucked marriage and an absent home and a dead father. There's joint custody of his kids, of his own life. A cot in a closet and a bottle of contraband liquor. A shotgun. There's everything. There it all is.

“Today's a big day,” he says, “but it's just the beginning, and I've got to think about the long haul. People are counting on me. Here. Not least of all the federal government.”

I understand that what's happening here should be clear. I should already understand what's happening. It isn't complicated. Rosie is not pushing me through labyrinths. Everyone understands everything, until they don't. I probably did understand, when I got started here.

“You've been safe,” he says, “because that was her price. For this. People counted on you.
I
counted on you.”

“Just tell me who you're talking about,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Not this time. Just
know
who.”

“Zoe?”

He laughs. It's something he can't help. “You ever try to save an animal? When you were a kid? Like a baby bird or a little squirrel? Something that fell out of some innocent place?”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too. Got my smell all over it before my mama could teach me not to. God damn thing died anyway.”

I watch him.

“Thing is, Cade,” he says, “this all has to work. Now. Or it won't work anytime else.”

He gets back up and stands in front of me. The whites of his eyes have gone soft yellow. There isn't much edge left in them. Probably hasn't been for a long time.

“You need to figure it out, Cade.”

“Yes, sir.”

I can hear their noise, deeper downtown. It sounds like the noise from Sireen's phone earlier—something bubbling. People are moving in important directions on all the sidewalks. Eyes down. Up. Jogging. Bubbling into their phones.

Dimitri is out of breath when he runs up to me, outside the Renewal Lot's fencing. He plants his hands on his knees and folds himself in half. I pat him on the shoulder. I'm not sure why.

“I thought—I would miss you,” he says.

“What are you doing here?” I say.

When he looks up, his hair is tousled. Shirt's untucked, but the sleeves are rolled evenly. I can smell his cologne, even over the smoke.

“I heard about the summons,” he says. “All of you.”

I just look at him.

“I can't let you—alone,” he says.