Eastern Standard Tribe

then he'd nail 'em. What the hell was it, though?

23.

My cousins visited me a week after I arrived at the nuthouse. I'd never been very close to them, and certainly our relationship had hardly blossomed during the week I spent in Toronto, trying to track down Linda and Fede's plot.

I have two cousins. They're my father's sister's kids, and I didn't even meet them until I was about twenty and tracking down my family history. They're Ottawa Valley kids, raised on government-town pork, aging hippie muesli, and country-style corn pone. It's a weird mix, and we've never had a conversation that I would consider a success. Ever met a violent, aggressive hippie with an intimate knowledge of whose genitals one must masticate in order to get a building permit or to make a pot bust vanish? It ain't pretty.

Cousin the first is Audie. She's a year older than me, and she's the smart one on that side of the family, the one who ended up at Queen's University for a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MA in Poli Sci, and even so finished up back in Ottawa, freelancing advice to clueless MPs dealing with Taiwanese and Sierra Leonese OEM importers. Audie's married to a nice fella whose name I can never remember and they're gonna have kids in five years; it's on a timetable that she actually showed me once when I went out there on biz and stopped in to see her at the office.

Cousin the second is Alphie-three years younger than me, raised in the shadow of his overachieving sister, he was the capo of Ottawa Valley script kiddies, a low-rent hacker who downloaded other people's code for defeating copyright use-control systems and made a little biz for himself bootlegging games, porn, music and video, until the WIPO bots found him through traffic analysis and busted his ass, bankrupting him and landing him in the clink for sixty days.

Audie and Alfie are blond and ruddy and a little heavyset, all characteristics they got from their father's side, so add that to the fact that I grew up without being aware of their existence and you'll understand the absence of any real fellow-feeling for them. I don't dislike them, but I have so little in common with them that it's like hanging out with time travelers from the least-interesting historical era imaginable.

But they came to Boston and looked me up in the nuthatch.

They found me sitting on the sofa in the ward, post-Group, arms and ankles crossed, dozing in a shaft of sunlight. It was my habitual napping spot, and I found that a nap between Group and dinner was a good way to sharpen my appetite and anasthetize my taste buds, which made the mealtime slop bearable.

Audie shook my shoulder gently. I assumed at first that she was one of the inmates trying to get me involved in a game of Martian narco-checkers, so I brushed her hand away.

'They've probably got him all doped up,' Audie said. The voice was familiar and unplaceable and so I cracked my eyelid, squinting up at her silhouette in the afternoon sun. 'There he is,' she said. 'Come on, up and at 'em, tiger.'

I sat up abruptly and scrubbed at my eyes. 'Audie?' I asked.

'Yup. And Alphie.' Alphie's pink face hove into view.

'Hi, Art,' he mumbled.

'Jesus,' I said, getting to my feet. Audie put out a superfluous steadying hand. 'Wow.'

'Surprised?' Audie said.

'Yeah!' I said. Audie thrust a bouquet of flowers into my arms. 'What are you doing here?'

'Oh, your grandmother told me you were here. I was coming down to Boston for work anyway, so I flew in a day early so I could drop in. Alphie came down with me-he's my assistant now.'

I almost said something about convicted felons working for government contractors, but I held onto my tongue. Consequently, an awkward silence blossomed.

'Well,' Audie said, at last. 'Well! Let's have a look at you, then.' She actually took a lap around me, looking me up and down, making little noises. 'You look all right, Art. Maybe a little skinny, even. Alphie's got a box of cookies for you.' Alphie stepped forward and produced the box, a family pack of President's Choice Ridiculous Chocoholic Extra Chewies, a Canadian store brand I'd been raised on. Within seconds of seeing them, my mouth was sloshing with saliva.

'It's good to see you, Audie, Alphie.' I managed to say it without spitting, an impressive feat, given the amount of saliva I was contending with. 'Thanks for the care package.'

We stared at each other blankly.

'So, Art,' Alphie said, 'So! How do you like it here?'

'Well, Alphie,' I said. 'I can't say as I do, really. As far as I can tell, I'm sane as I've ever been. It's just a bunch of unfortunate coincidences and bad judgment that got me here.' I refrain from mentioning Alphie's propensity for lapses in judgment.

'Wow,' Alphie said. 'That's a bummer. We should do something, you know, Audie?'

'Not really my area of expertise,' Audie said in clipped tones. 'I would if I could, you know that, right Art? We're family, after all.'

'Oh, sure,' I say magnanimously. But now that I'm looking at them, my cousins who got into a thousand times more trouble than I ever did, driving drunk, pirating software, growing naughty smokables in the backyard, and got away from it unscathed, I feel a stirring of desperate hope. 'Only...'

'Only what?' Alphie said.

'Only, maybe, Audie, do you think you could, that is, if you've got the time, do you think you could have a little look around and see if any of your contacts could maybe set me up with a decent lawyer who might be able to get my case reheard? Or a shrink, for that matter? Something? 'Cause frankly it doesn't really seem like they're going to let me go, ever. Ever.'

Audie squirmed and glared at her brother. 'I don't really know anyone that fits the bill,' she said at last.

'Well, not firsthand, sure, why would you? You wouldn't.' I thought that I was starting to babble, but I couldn't help myself. 'You wouldn't. But maybe there's someone that someone you know knows who can do something about it? I mean, it can't hurt to ask around, can it?'

'I suppose it can't,' she said.

'Wow,' I said, 'that would just be fantastic, you know. Thanks in advance, Audie, really, I mean it, just for trying, I can't thank you enough. This place, well, it really sucks.'

There it was, hanging out, my desperate and pathetic plea for help. Really, there was nowhere to go but down from there. Still, the silence stretched and snapped and I said, 'Hey, speaking of, can I offer you guys a tour of the ward? I mean, it's not much, but it's home.'

So I showed them: the droolers and the fondlers and the pukers and my horrible little room and the scarred ping-pong table and the sticky decks of cards and the meshed-in TV. Alphie actually seemed to dig it, in a kind of horrified way. He started comparing it to the new Kingston Pen, where he'd done his six-month bit. After seeing the first puker, Audie went quiet and thin-lipped, leaving nothing but Alphie's enthusiastic gurgling as counterpoint to my tour.

'Art,' Audie said finally, desperately, 'do you think they'd let us take you out for a cup of coffee or a walk around the grounds?'

I asked. The nurse looked at a comm for a while, then shook her head.

'Nope,' I reported. 'They need a day's notice of off-ward supervised excursions.'

'Well, too bad,' Audie said. I understood her strategy immediately. 'Too bad. Nothing for it, then. Guess we should get back to our hotel.' I planted a dry kiss on her cheek, shook Alphie's sweaty hand, and they were gone. I skipped supper that night and ate cookies until I couldn't eat another bite of rich chocolate.

#

'Got a comm?' I ask Doc Szandor, casually.

'What for?'

'Wanna get some of this down. The ideas for the hospital. Before I go back out on the ward.' And it is what I want to do, mostly. But the temptation to just log on and do my thing-oh!