The Listeners (22 page)

The passenger-side windshield was a blasted star, glass torn by tiny veins. “We have to break the whole thing,” Mink told us.

I watched her expectantly, my shaken brain not bothering to grope for the reason.

“Because Quinn doesn't have any cuts on her face,” she said and pulled a shred off her lower lip. “It's easier to break the windshield than give her the right-looking cuts.”

Mink pulled the ride stand out of the back of the van. It was the sturdiest piece of hardware, and sharp-tipped, and she handed it to me. I stood on the passenger side, raised the stand behind my head—a bulky spear—and
ran the metal hard as I could into the eye of the star Cam's head had made.

I broke it on the first go, straight into the cracked eye while Mink pointed the flashlight. I didn't stop there: hut hut hut into the van's hood, ramming and denting, hoping to pierce through to the engine.

THE WHITE-VEIN PEOPLE
sucked brain juice into their pockets, rushing. The good-suit people checked their watches, rushing. The spruce girls clicked little heels and tightened little scarves, rushing. The space-helmet man, propped against the mossy wall by the bus stop, hands balled in pockets, nodded at me. I nodded back but it felt forced, a mark of some conspiracy we didn't actually share. He was one of the hundreds of patients discharged from the mental hospital without further ado, thrown out to roam. They were distinguishable from the vets, who muttered less and wore army-colored pants and held signs.

I pretended to look for the bus but was watching Space Helmet's face, wondering what the bells on the sky told him.

The new owners had let art students mural the walls of the diner. One panel showed a line of blindfolded men in turbans, with scrolls labeled U.S. CONSTITUTION aimed like rifles at their heads; another had a row of
mouths sewn shut with dental floss spooling from a box marked PATRIOT ACT.

In the velvety mists of high school, before mobile phones and the smoking ban, my parents had not been able to reach me and we'd sit at the diner for hours, finishing cups and packs, making fun of people's garb, while Mert paced her heels off on Observatory Place.
It isn't safe for you to be out until two in the morning
. But what could have been safer than boothfuls of children in a café where they didn't serve alcohol? “No guns allowed,” I'd muttered when Mert screamed, her voice worst first thing in the morning. I had almost told her that Cam, in fact, sometimes brought a
book
to the diner and read it at the table, which was in my opinion boring and rude; but Mert would have approved.

He was already sitting down—at a table, not our booth—so I couldn't see if he had the dad-denim pants on. He wore a thick green professorial blazer, despite the heat, and smiled up at me like a receptionist. “How are you?”

“I'm fine,” I said, sick at the thought of the next hour being like the pumpkin coffee, at which we had spoken of nothing important.

I waited until we had ordered to say: “Look, Cam.”

His mouth twitched. “Yeah?”

“I apologize,” I said.

“For what?”

“For the whole—the whole thing. The van. Your hand. The—the—the what we did after.”

He pursed his quivering lips. “The framing, you mean.”

“Well, no, just that we moved you—”

“So that the crash would be blamed,” he said, “on me instead of you.”

“It was Mink's idea,” I blurted, like a child.

His eyelids fluttered, nearly closing, in what I took to be disgust.

“But we went along with it. I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry.”

“Okay, one of these is super hot, so be super careful, okay?” cried the waitress as she set down our plates.

“Thank you,” Cam told her. He unrolled the paper napkin with his right hand, shook it onto his lap, and said: “Well, this looks good.”

“Yeah,” I said helplessly, peering down. I had ordered the menu item least likely to resemble flesh, fat, or blood: spinach salad. A rare foray into the vegetables.

It was strange to miss—so much—a person you were sitting right across the table from.

Lacustrina never let boys touch her downstairs, because she had no downstairs. At her belly button, a snake started.

Cam's oaky eyes squinted. He ran his thumb down the spine of his nose. “How's yours?”

“Mouthwatering,” I said.

I wanted him to reach for my shoulders, starred and unstarred, and thumb my breastbone hard and say, “You couldn't have seen that ice—no one could have!” But he
did not reach, did not forgive, and said only: “These eggs are a little hard.”

I finished my glass of water, the only thing that would fit down my throat.

I watched Cam eat small squares of cut egg, one by one, before starting on the buttered toast.

“Why did you come back here?” I finally said.

“I was offered a teaching position.”

“Yeah, but you didn't need to take it.”

He put down the toast, brought the napkin up to dab his mouth. The wounded hand stayed in his lap. “I can assure you, it wasn't so that I would run into
you
.”

“I can assure you, I didn't think it was.”

“My father has cancer,” he said.

“Fuck,” I said.

“It's a chance to spend time with him.”

“But you said—last time—you said your parents were doing well.”

Cam shrugged. “They're not.”

I was about to say
I'm sorry
but decided those were words Cam didn't need to hear again from me.

WIPE THE BLOOD
down his face. Yes, like that. Good soldier. Make a red handprint. Tell him it came from your downstairs. Tell him he can't wash it off.

WE WERE WARM
together at the table. The windows were black mirrors. Snack was milk tea and cinnamon toast. The radio played pink-quill music. My sister dipped her nose in the teacup and Riley folded a whole half of toast into his mouth and Mert said, “Pettles, don't greed.”

The news, interrupting, said a plane bound for Florida had crashed into the Fourteenth Street bridge immediately after takeoff.

“Jesus,” Mert said, leaning to turn it up.

The cause of the accident has not yet been determined. Freezing weather conditions may have been a factor
.
Investigations are under way
.

“But are the people okay?” asked Riley.

The radio went back to music. Mert got on the phone to the Walkers, who had a TV. “Mind if I bring the troops over?” We ran next door, without coats.

I WAS SHAKEN
awake into a tearing hangover. Riley's pea-green eyes blinked above. “You must get away,” I whispered.

“But the dungeoner,” he said.

“Get away.”

“He's in Mrs. Jones's. Just went in.”

“I thought she didn't open until noon.”

“It's two thirty, Quinn.”

“Why aren't you at work?”

“I took a personal day,” he said. “You were making sounds in the night.”

“I was?”

“And I thought you might be sick.” He nibbled at a finger. “I think we should follow the dungeoner. Because I have a theory who he is.”

“Who?”

“The robber. From the Walkers'. The boy who made Mr. Walker shoot? He's come back all these years later to apologize, even though it wasn't actually his fault she
got killed, but he can't muster the courage so he just pretends to get fortunes when in fact he's watching my apartment.”

“A convincing theory,” I said.

“It could be true!”

“Yes, well, it
could
. Do you have any aspirin?”

He scurried off and I wondered, for the millionth time, why my brother was so nice to me.

I ate four tablets, creaked into sweatpants, and decided it was best not to look in the mirror. “Do you have sunglasses?”

Riley produced red ones that might have been given away at a children's water park.

“Any
other
sunglasses?”

“God, Quinn!”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“We don't really have to follow him. But let's go for a walk anyway.”

“A walk?”

He blinked. “It's good for the blood.”

Quietly we went west, along the yawning mouth of the park, until we got to the Buffalo Bridge.

 

“If you could pick the bridge you jumped to your suicide from, which would it be?”

“Any in the world?”

“No,” said the middle, “around here. Because you wouldn't pay to go to another country to kill yourself.”

“I might,” said the oldest.

“Mine would be the Key Bridge,” said the youngest.

The middle rolled her eyes. “Okay, boring! I would pick the Buffalo. The best-looking and the longest fall.”

The youngest had once been scared of the Buffalo Bridge, when he did not understand that the giant green animals at either end were stone and could not charge.

“I'd pick the Fourteenth Street,” declared the oldest.

“Why?”

“So I could die in other people's watery graves.”

 

“Maybe we should turn back,” I said, longing for more aspirin. A roomful of aspirin. I nodded at the buffalo statue, huge above us. “Hideous fucker. Check out his beard. Wildlife shouldn't have beards.”

“Only sisters,” Riley said, smiling.

“I do
not
.”

“A little bit you do. Some rogue hairs.”

I reached up for my chin.

He stopped smiling. “Quinn, look.”

“Yeah?” I stepped closer to the stone rail, expecting him to point out a beauty or an oddness.

“You need—” He cleared his throat. “You need to leave soon.”

“I know, I
know
. I've been hunting. There just isn't anything cheap enough, unless it's way out beyond the reach of public transportation. And I'm not getting my license back anytime soon, so—”

“I mean you need to leave next week. By the end of next week.”

I thumbed my wrist. “Is that a deadline?”

“I'm sorry. I know you're having kind of—kind of a hard time. But you can't keep staying with me.”

“Wow.”

“I'm
sorry
.” His mouth crumpled; his furry eyebrows scrunched.

I admired my brother yet again. He was taller, but not by much; I could easily reach the top of his head. I put my hand there and pressed down, wanting to give him a heat of okayness, solidity, love.

DON'T UNDERESTIMATE YOUR
local library, Mert used to say. It was her favorite place to send us when our boredom was on her nerves. Squidlings in a row, she arranged her children from tallest to smallest. My sister held one hand in front and one behind, chaining us, and it was she who liked the library best. I hated her for liking the library and for singing in front of strangers the story of the girl who fell from a cliff and was a miner's daughter and drove ducklings. I used to wonder—when she broke into public song, or rocked back and forth on the floor—if my sister was going to end up an unbalanced person who had to be placed in supervised care. Riley and I would visit on the weekends, guiltily.

Black trees, black sky, arms of light on black road. I'd found a decent station, a wee-hours college show to keep me company while the others slept. I strained to see ahead. Lit cigarette after cigarette to stay alert. I had no company but the music, cutting in and out of static, and the occasional whimper of a girl reciting the playlist.
And here's one we really like. The runaway hit by
… and “Dear Done For” started and I didn't want to hear it and I leaned to turn the dial and it was fast and fucked and white and—

She made us crash, my sister did, lonely and jealous down there in purgastory; she wanted company. She knew the song was about her, and
she
made the ice slick—and the tires not catch—and the road edge a steep incline instead of a field.

But her powers weren't accurate. I didn't die.

It wasn't enough to send the freakeries, was it? To blow out speakers in the middle of important shows? To break strings, spill bottles, claw my throat in the night? She had to have me all to herself.
You are Cadmus and I am Europa. You spent years looking, never found
.

I rolled over on the damp sheet and kicked off the blanket it was way too hot for.

Like a washcloth
. My sister hadn't been mad by the time she fell asleep. Had she?

I shut my eyes tighter.

She hadn't been.
Had not
. She was pestered by the heat and happy there was no school the next day and smiling under her eyelids. She said how the heat was on us like a washcloth made out of bread, and I—dozy too—said, “That's gross.”

“You have to switch places,” Mink said. “Move Cam to the driver's seat.”

IT WAS MINK'S
third outing with the latest guy, and her hopes had not yet been dashed. “He's
nice
,” she kept telling me. “Just a nice, regular person.”

“In other words, dull?”

“No! He's cool. I mean, cool in that he's not cool. He's not
trying
.”

“Remind me what he does, again? Fireman?”

“Web designer,” she corrected. “He's a grown-up.”

“Have a marvelous grown-up time,” I told her. “I'm taking the terror to dinner. Meli,” I called over the roar of cartoon, “we're eating out.”