Plus One (28 page)

It pissed me off to no end to hear Ciel talk about how important it was for him to be with Poppu, after disowning us. I wanted to strangle him.

“Ungrateful bullies,”
Fuzz said. “Is that how you’re gonna write this history? Well,
fuck you
and
fuck
our old alliance, you sniveling Ray minion.” He pointed at me without looking at me. “I’m making one last offer before I pick her up and carry her back to the Winnebago: bring us aboard for talks, and we’ll agree to stay completely out of your way until your grandfather dies.”

Until your grandfather dies.
It was so practical, and so coldhearted. Poppu’s death was an inconvenience to him. I could suddenly no longer bear to be this close to my grandfather without seeing him.

“Let me go aboard!” I shouted at Fuzz. “I don’t give a damn about this asshole who used to be my brother, or your precious ‘removed programming,’ or whatever the hell it is. I don’t care about any of you
filthy liars
. None of you is worth one-tenth of Poppu.”

Ciel looked at me like I was a stranger. And then I saw his mind quickly begin recoding, adjusting to unexpected field conditions.

“Okay, I get it,” he said to Fuzz, tearing his eyes away from me. “You’ll come aboard and we’ll talk later. I can take two of you, in addition to Sol.”

“Me and Dope,” Fuzz said.

Ciel shook his head. “You and Gigi.”

“Fuck you,” Gigi said to Ciel, with real venom.

I spoke up. “D’Arcy is one of the two, or I throw myself off the boat at the first opportunity. And I’ll do it.” There was silence.

Ciel was starting to look irritated by me. He switched his attention to D’Arcy and quickly studied him. He asked Fuzz, “This is the Benoît kid from your texts?” Fuzz nodded.

Ciel sighed, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Benoît and Gigi then,” he said.

“Benoît and Fuzz,” Gigi corrected.

Ciel shook his head, but he kept his eyes on Fuzz, not Gigi. “Benoît and Gigi.”

“Done,” Fuzz said.

“
Fuck you
, Fuzz,” Gigi said, spitting on the ground next to him.

Saturday
1:00 p.m.

As soon as the deal was struck, Dope released D’Arcy from his stranglehold, and Gigi let me go with a shove toward the yacht for good measure. With no parting words, Ciel and William jogged to the boat, Gigi only a step behind, while Dope and Fuzz strode briskly back to the parking lot. They all seemed to be conditioned from years in the underground to minimize unnecessary exposure to the Day/Night authorities. D’Arcy and I glanced at each other and hurried after Ciel.

On the boat, Ciel bounded up the stairs to see the captain. William unlashed the lines and leaped aboard. The engines rumbled, belching diesel fumes. William reached his hand out to help me aboard and then thought better of it. D’Arcy climbed in after me.

A young woman appeared in the doorway to the cabins. Something about her looked so familiar, I startled.

William said, “Miho will show you to your bunks. They have small bathrooms, where you can freshen up if you’d like. Everything is cramped, but nice.”

“You’re…” I started. She was the person in the photo on the hospital lanyard. “You’re Yukie Shiga,” I accused her.

She smiled. “I was Yukie for the job at the hospital. And Ciel needs to talk to you about that ID you took. But later.” She held her arm out, welcoming me inside. “I left a quick snack for you in your room. You look hungry.”

A snapshot of a memory blinded me. “You were the reporter at Ciel’s trial! And you”—I pointed at William—“you were that crazy homeless guy.”

I turned to D’Arcy. “I’m such an idiot. I should have recognized him in the nursery.”

D’Arcy shook his head. “In a surgical mask?”

I said to William, “Who was the other spectator in the court, the older one?”

“Ah, well, that … that’s actually our captain, Richard. If you’d like, I’ll bring you to the bridge to meet him. Dang, you don’t miss a trick, Le Coeur. Just like Ciel.”

“I’m nothing like Ciel,” I said, following Miho through the doorway.

She took us down a low-ceilinged corridor, lit with small amber bulbs at the top of the walls. The rooms were marked with numbers, odd on one side of the hall, even on the other. We stopped in front of number three, which Miho said was my room. D’Arcy would be in five.

“Gigi will stay in two, Ciel and Kizzie are in four,” Miho said.

Ciel and Kizzie.
Ciel was part of a unit now.

“Your grandfather is in the first room,” Miho said somberly. “Ciel and I will be waiting for you there.”

I started toward the room marked “1,” but D’Arcy caught my arm, shaking his head. “Bathroom break. Food,” he said, like there would be no discussion. “And you might want to wash your face.”

He was right. Of course he was right. I was chilled with hunger, and my bladder felt like it might burst. I had waited this long to see Poppu, I could force myself to endure a brief pit stop. I remembered Jean saying, “Take the moment you need to be healthy,” and Gigi’s crasser warning that I’d be a “useless fuck” if I didn’t rest. Everyone I had ever met was less impulsive than I was.

“Meet back out here in five minutes?” I asked him.

“I’ll be here.”

I had to duck through the doorframe. The room fit only a double bed, a night table, and a chair. There was a long, narrow window looking out over the lake, tinted for privacy. It was like a classy RV in its decor, including the bathroom. A bottle of sparkling lemonade and a plate with wedges of cheese and apples and crackers was laid out for me. I gobbled a piece of cheese on a cracker, and as I did I tugged open the night table drawer to see scattered earplugs, a book on hospice care, dental floss, and a tube of lip balm. This was someone’s room—probably Miho’s—that had been given up for me. I shoved the drawer closed. The bathroom was filled with little travel sizes of everything I might need: a toothbrush, a comb, toothpaste, soap, and shampoo. I peed, and as I was washing my hands I saw my reflection in the mirror, and I understood why D’Arcy had told me to wash my face. There was no need to be Noma now, and I was already smeared. I soaped up a washcloth and scrubbed off the makeup until my skin was pink and angry, and then rinsed and patted my face dry. Back in the bedroom, I ate as much of the cheese plate as I could and gulped some of the lemonade before my impatience took over.

D’Arcy was waiting for me in the hall. He was unchanged, except that he smelled of soap and his earring was gone.

“They really pierced you,” I said, reaching up to his lobe. He flinched.

“A needle and a cork. It wasn’t the most antiseptic procedure you’ve ever seen.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck; his arms looped tightly around my waist. I pressed my cheek on his. He said very quietly in my ear, “My window was open, and I heard William mention that Fitz is still missing.”

I pulled my face back to look at him, surprised. I couldn’t understand why his parents would still have the baby.

He shrugged, equally mystified. “All I can figure is that Jean doesn’t know where I am and he’s not letting Fitz go until he does.”

“But Hélène.”

“I know. Why is she going along with it?”

“I’ll send Jean an uncensored text,” I said. “We’ll arrange the church drop-off, just as we planned: I take the fall.”

D’Arcy shook his head. “Ciel wants him and we don’t know why. Maybe we can do better.”

I hugged him again. I breathed a big lungful of him in.
We can’t do better.
I exhaled the words “Why are you here?” But I meant it rhetorically.

He kissed my cheek. “I’ll make you a list later.”

We let go of each other and walked to Poppu’s room.

“This is where I stop,” D’Arcy said when we got to the door. I opened my mouth to protest, but he added, “Check on him, spend time with him. I’ll be waiting.”

I knocked on the door and Ciel opened it. Miho stood behind him, taking the tips of a stethoscope out of her ears. This time Ciel was wary. This time he didn’t hold his arms out. He stepped to the side so that I could enter. As I looked back, I saw D’Arcy nod at him, but Ciel didn’t return the greeting. He closed the door.

It smelled like Poppu’s bedroom at home, stagnant and musky, because death was with him no matter where he went. This was obviously the master bedroom of the boat. In addition to the large oval bed built into the wall, there was a small walk-in closet, a TV hooked to the ceiling, and a desk with a chair. I recognized the wood paneling from the “kidnapper’s” photo—the kidnapper who was my own brother.

Poppu was lying on his back, a living skeleton in a flimsy hospital gown. His silver hair was in sparse strands across his scalp. His eyes were closed, but not fully, so that a crescent of white showed behind crusted lashes. His mouth was open and his breathing was audible, like he was partially underwater. An oxygen tank hissed, pumping the air he couldn’t catch on his own into his nostrils; an IV bag hung on a pole nearby, but the tube dangled, crimped at the end, not attached to him anymore; a catheter bag was hooked to the edge of the bed, holding a scant amount of dark amber urine. Someone had punched my gut, or may as well have, and I found myself wanting to double over from the blow.

“He asked to be taken off the morphine as soon as I located you,” Ciel said in a low voice. “It makes him light-headed and drowsy, and he wanted to be here for you. We also made another decision with him … he’s not … we’re not hydrating him anymore.”

He moved toward Poppu and touched his arm gently. “Poppu. Sol is here.” He bent down to kiss his cheek. My heart turned over at the sight—at Ciel’s open love for my grandfather—and I hated it for betraying me. “Sol is here,” he repeated.

Poppu’s eyelids fluttered, but didn’t open. A low sound came from his throat.

Miho reached for a sponge swab on the night table, dipped it into a small bowl of liquid, and lightly ran it on his tongue and inside his cheeks.

I went to Poppu’s bedside—the side away from Ciel—and immediately crawled beside him, trying not to jolt the mattress, wanting not to hurt him.

“We’ll leave you alone with him,” Miho said, putting her arm around Ciel, forcibly turning him, making him come away with her.

Saturday
1:30 p.m.

After Ciel left, I draped my arm over Poppu and I cried. I sobbed as if my life were draining out of me. Eventually I realized from the noises he was making that he was awake, and distressed, and that I was the thing that was distressing him.

I was a thoughtless idiot.

I sniffed hard and wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m fine now.”

His hand twitched feebly, and I knew he wanted to reach for me. I slid my arm under his fingers.

He tried to say something, but only a rasp came out.

“You don’t have to talk,” I said. I lifted my face to his cheek and kissed it.

His head moved almost imperceptibly.
No,
he was saying.

“Missed you,” he said, with no volume, no diaphragm, dry as a desert wind.

“I missed you, too. I’m sorry I never came home.” I wondered what Ciel had told him.

“Have you…” He stopped, panting too fast, blowing out harder than he breathed in. How weak is a person when saying four words is an effort? I waited, letting him pretend to hold my arm, cradling what was left of his body because hugging might crush him. “Have you seen,” he tried again, and failed.

Tears squeezed out of my eyes, but absolutely silently. There was no way I’d let him hear me cry again.

“Fleurs?” he finally said, it felt like minutes later.

Have you seen … fleurs?

I stayed still for a long time, suddenly sick with dismay that I was too late, that he was no longer lucid.
Fleurs
was the French word for “flowers.” Poppu had a particular passion for flowers. He said they were the bit of day that Smudges could bring into their homes. Before he got sick, he used to buy small bunches and keep them on the kitchen table: daffodils and tulips in the spring; nosegays of lily of the valley; irises in the summer; roses in the fall. After he went blind and couldn’t see them, he still enjoyed smelling them, especially the lilacs and the roses. He took meticulous care of them whenever they were in the house: trimming the stems, refreshing the water, arranging them by touch.

Have I seen which flowers?
I thought. I heard his chest rattle painfully.

“Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, I have.”

He smiled. His mouth still hung open, so the smile was a gruesome, pitiful thing. “Isn’t … she … beautiful?” he asked. I almost couldn’t hear him.

I didn’t answer.

Several minutes later he whispered, “She feels … beautiful.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Même elle sente … jolie—”
he struggled to say.
She even smells pretty.

He seemed to sleep then, and I listened to the frightening pattern of his breathing. There were long—too long—moments when he didn’t seem to breathe at all, and then he’d draw in a rattling wheeze and my own body wanted to cough—wanted to cough up whatever it was that was suffocating him.

I stayed where I was, and I closed my eyes, remembering what it was like when he was alive, even though he wasn’t yet dead.

Almost an hour later, he woke up again. I felt his finger move on my arm, which had fallen painfully asleep, but I refused to move it.

“Sol,” he said.

“I’m here, Poppu.”

“Sol.”

“I won’t leave you again.”

“Please … forgive,” he said.

I couldn’t forgive Ciel, but there was no way I was going to tell Poppu that. Not now.

“… me,” he finished. He was back in a panting cycle, and I wondered whether I should fetch Miho.

“Shhh,” I said, lifting my numb arm to touch his face with my fingers.

A tear dripped out of his eye. It wasn’t plump enough to roll off his face. He was so parched it just wicked into the creases of skin by his eyes and disappeared.

“I didn’t … didn’t…”