Swarm (9 page)

“Power's off,” she said.

The city was divided into zones and our power-down night was usually Wednesday. That way people could be prepared—fill their bathtubs, cook food ahead of time.

“It's not our night.” I slid the pan into the slight chill of the dark fridge.

“Yeah. I don't know.”

I found an old package of wasabi peas in a drawer and followed her down to the front porch where we sat on rickety wooden chairs. She studied me, looked at my hands, black under the fingernails from helping with the fire at Marvin's. I wiped them on my pants and thought of the guards at the gardens, watching us.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Marvin,” I said, smiling but trying not to.

Her eyes slid away. “That dirty squat.” She tossed the blackened twist of a match over the porch railing.

The peas were too hot for me so I put them aside and pulled a lock of hair across my face. It smelled of wood smoke.

“Have you met them?”

“Them?”

“The soup kitchen people?”

“The good Samaritans? That smelly old man and his concubine.”

“She's his daughter,” I blurted, but Margo gave a rough little bark that sputtered smoke.

“Is that what they're calling it these days?”

I fell silent. I couldn't share much with Margo. She was jealous of anyone else's successes. When I first got my job she would show up, entice me out for smoke breaks, as if attempting to get me fired. So what I felt then was off-limits to her. It was big. It was like I'd discovered a secret tunnel inside myself and shone a light on the slick, dark walls to find a mineral glitter.

“Well, I had a great night,” she said, as if we were competing. I didn't ask the obvious: what it was like, those steel pincers against her bare skin, even though I knew she was waiting for the question. Instead Margo told me how Walter had lost his hand—a bomb in Afghanistan, a checkpoint, insurgents arrested.

“Walter told you that?”

“Who else?”

He was lying, at least according to what Marvin had said, but I didn't say anything. “Are you guys a thing?” I asked.

“There's a story unfolding,” she said in her overdramatic way. Margo tended to choose boyfriends like an actress decided on parts—looking for the best drama. She fell silent, staring out at the soggy front yard, the chain-link fence between us and the street.

I tried again, attempting to sound casual: “Marvin's a good kisser.”

“I'm surprised he went for you.”

I shut up, stung by her nastiness, but also because I didn't want to know what she meant. Now I realize he needed help, recruits as Phoenix had said, workers for his agenda, but right then Marvin had drawn me in like a game, like one of those Russian dolls that split open at the belly and inside each is a smaller one. You keep pulling them apart until you find the smallest, the baby, the size of a beetle. I couldn't imagine seeing that far inside Marvin. One doll deep, maybe. That's how far I'd be able to delve.

I
can't remember what else I did that day, except for one thing. A trip out for groceries that Margo made me take, handing me her debit card. I was in line at the Portuguese butcher, ready to ask for a half-pound of gizzards, when the woman in front of me started fishing out money to pay for a pound of bologna and a jug of milk. Her change clattered on the counter, lay there like tiny silver ponds, and the bills made a rustling sound like leaves. Her hair was pulled back off her face and a bruise, yellow and blue on her dark skin, circled her eye. She didn't have enough. I was the only other customer in the store, but I kept my eyes on the half-empty tub of ground beef in the glass case, its bloodiness turned brown, as she lifted her head and looked around and said her mother was sick, that they needed food. I doubt either of us believed her—the butcher behind the counter or me—and so as he drew out his sharp knife and chopped a quarter-pound off the meat, I just stood there, feeling Margo's card, flint-hard, in my back pocket. It wasn't until after she left that I saw Phoenix's face in my head, her black eyes on me, and I felt shame that not even the butcher could alleviate when he said, “Tough times all over,” and gave me a couple extra gizzards after he'd weighed them on the scale.

Days
passed. Nearly a week. I didn't hear from Marvin. I thought that whatever had happened between us could be chalked up to a strange, single adventure. Lying in bed at night, I recounted the details of that night, but part of me was relieved that it had ended. I knew I'd wind up going home, living with my parents, listening to my mother's travel stories and all her old regrets. Trying to dodge my father's depression. That's what should have happened. Over the years, I've thought many times about how things would have been different if I'd simply made that decision instead of waiting for an escape hatch, an alternative path. My parents could have helped me. Ultimately, although they were far from perfect, I think what they wanted for me was what I want for you, Melissa: a better life. And what did I want for them? That thought didn't even occur to me.

I applied for a couple dozen jobs but heard nothing. The white digits on the
ATM
screen ticked down as my panic rose. Finally, when I hit zero and plunged into overdraft—money I never paid back—I pulled my suitcase out of the closet with a deep sense of dread and started considering what I could keep and what I would give to Margo. That was the day she came home from work and stuck her head in my room.

“Going on a trip?” she asked, pulling off a red leather ballet flat to rub her heel. I didn't answer. She knew as well as I did how narrow my options were. The shoes dangled from two of her fingers. “By the way,” she said, as if in afterthought, “I saw Marvin today.”

My heart lurched but I was careful. I didn't look up from the clothes, sorted into piles on my bed. “Yeah?”

“At the store.”

“Was he picking up a designer outfit?” She turned away and half disappeared. I took two steps toward the door and spoke to her back as she retreated down the hall. I couldn't stop myself. “Did he ask about me?”

She spun around, unbuttoning the shiny purple blouse she had on.

I saw the edge of her black bra and looked away. “He asked if you had another job.”

“That's it?”

“Sorry,” she said. “Dinner?”

Since she paid for mostly everything, we'd agreed that I would cook. “It's on the stove. Gizzards, peas, and rice. Nothing exciting.”

“Well, I was expecting steak.”

I couldn't tell if she was joking.

I wanted to ask more about Marvin but was wary of being mocked. Sometimes she took the things that you were vulnerable about and turned them into weapons. We ate at the table, and when she had finished she pushed her plate into the centre, knocking over a salt shaker, which I righted.

“I don't want you to go home,” she said, opening the window. There was no screen and the small, potted jade plant on the sill rocked, nearly fell over. A cold breeze billowed into the kitchen and Margo slid the glass pane halfway shut. She lit her cigarette, a hand-rolled one, like Marvin smoked. “What am I supposed to do?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I have eight dollars, Margo. Rent's due on Friday. You can't keep paying for everything.”

“You can pay me back.”

Her face looked stern in the low light. Until then, I'd had no idea she thought that way, that she wasn't just being generous. If a bill was slowly being rung up, I already owed her hundreds in the extras she'd purchased: drinks out, everyday food, the huge hydro bill. Panic fluttered in my throat.

“Can't you borrow?” she asked.

“Who from?”

“Your parents?” When I didn't answer, she said, “A rich aunt?”

I mashed the peas with my fork, then scraped them up. “There are no jobs,” I said.

“You'll find one. Or there's always prostitution.” She laughed, but I thought of Thomson's cousin at the German border. Stabbing her smoke out in a tiny nest of undercooked rice, she said, “You didn't tell me you slept with Marvin.”

I swallowed the food in my mouth. “He told you?”

“He's good, isn't he?” A heavy swell entered my stomach, like a ship taking on water. She smiled into the shock on my face and tsked her tongue at me. “Don't be like that, Sandy. It was a long time ago.”

With the side of my fork, I sliced through a gizzard. “How long?”

She shrugged. “Six months.”

“Once?”

She smiled, sneakily, the secret hidden on her tongue.

I told myself it was not a big deal. Most girls my age—just turned twenty-one, barely out of my teens—slept around, had Internet sex, posed for porn without a second thought. It didn't matter at all. Except it did. The image of Margo and Marvin talking about me, probably laughing at me, wouldn't leave my head. I wondered how I could possibly be as good in bed as she must have been: an animal that immediately devoured him. No hesitation. No holding back. I put down my fork and reached for her matches, lit one after another, calmed by the tiny explosions, the dead black curls dropping onto my plate.

“Whoa, there,” Margo said and took them away. But then she lit another, pulled it up to the cigarette in her mouth, and said, “He can be pretty intense.”

Images flickered through my mind: the gardens, the Jump Ship map, the diner. They were things I might have asked her about, but not now, not now that I had the image of them fucking on his cold, dirty mattress and Marvin comparing her to me. “Yeah,” I said. “Got that.” And then: “You mean compared to Walter? Walter the one-handed wonder.” I laughed. Margo rubbed her free hand against the edge of the table like she was wiping away something gross. She narrowed her eyes.

“Maybe you won't care then that he says he has a job you might want in on.”

“Marvin?”

“Walter.”

She handed me her cigarette and I hesitated before taking it and sucking some of the hot smoke into my lungs. I knew she was making nice, with the shared cigarette and a job offer, but I didn't want to accept, didn't want to let her off so easily for shoving my face in the fact that she'd already had what I found I wanted. But I had to. If there was money involved, I didn't have a choice. Cold air pressed through the window. “What kind of a job?”

“Salvage,” Margo said. “Up in the suburbs.”

“Illegal?”

“It pays well.”

When I didn't answer right away, Margo took the cigarette back. She inhaled the last of it before tossing the butt out the window into the jungly garden where we'd tried to grow tomatoes and broccoli the summer before but only managed a meagre yield. The moon had come up, a sharp, silver hook in the sky, and out of the blue she posed a question we often returned to because we were still young and still asked each other things like this: “What's your greatest fear?”

“Drowning,” I said, without thinking. It's what I always said.

Insignificance
was her usual answer and that's what I expected, but this time she said, “Death.”

I hadn't thought much about death. Not in a personal way. Not yet. Now it's always present. Thomson, so sick, headed down a road with a single destination.
But the same is true for all of us
, he would say. I know that now. Every winter I know that threat of being extinguished. I didn't know it then and that's why I did what I did.

That
night I called my mother. Margo was paying the wireless bill so we could still connect to the Internet, as long as the power was on. When she answered, her figure blurred in the screen, then settled. In the background, I saw my father in the lit rectangle of the kitchen door. He disappeared and reappeared and I realized he was pacing.

“I've been trying to get you,” my mother said, her voice tinny, the words slightly detached from the movement of her mouth. “You never answer your cell.”

“I gave it up. Remember?”

My father's voice rumbled in the background like the early warning of an avalanche. I knew that sound and I felt my body brace. “Everything okay?” I quietly asked her, although I didn't want to. I wished I hadn't called.

“Fine.” Her eyes widened with a brief bright flare. “Just checking up on you.”

“What's Dad up to?”

She shook her head, as if it wasn't anything, that telltale restlessness. Her hand waved dismissively, a streak across the screen. “He can't sleep.”

“Is he taking his meds?”

“Yep,” she said, but by the hard jab of her voice I knew she wasn't telling the truth. The pills cost two hundred and thirty-seven dollars a month. My mother rushed into the next question, securing the lie. “How are you? How's work?”

“Fine,” I said, and then, just to see, I said, “I've been thinking about coming home.”

“Oh,” she said, startled. She looked down at the keyboard like there was an answer in that jumble of letters and she just had to figure it out. It was probably the moment that secured my fate, that subtle rejection, something I'd never do to you.

“You know,” I lied, “a visit.”

“That would be great, Sass,” she said, using my old nickname. “But we'd have to—”

My father appeared, cutting her off, his face looming into the screen. A tear track stained his cheek like the trail of a slug. “Sass?”

My stomach clenched. I forced my voice to sound lighter than I felt. “Hi, Dad.”

“Come on home. As long as you like. Forever. You can help me with our legal battles. I haven't given up on the farm. Sorting paper, research, that sort of thing. Of course, I'll pay you.”

My father's eyes were wobbly and big and I smiled into them, not sure what to say. Of course, he couldn't pay me anything. My mother's arms reached out from behind my father, and for a moment it looked like they were growing out of his waist, and then she pushed him aside and they split and I realized I was the thing that had come out of the middle. I almost started to cry, but I pulled it all back, hardened myself. My father left the screen.