JAYNEHELLER: Actually, no.
Twenty-three
It was just past midnight when the knock came at my bedroom door. I was pretty well asleep, deep in a dream that involved a huge mountain and a sunrise that projected purification instead of light, and only half woke at the sound. I’d almost convinced myself that I’d imagined it when the bedroom door eased open. I sat partway up. I wondered where my rifle was, more with annoyance than fear.
Kim was dressed in a bathrobe that had been Eric’s. Her hair was down and messy from where it had lain against her pillow. She walked toward me, hands deep in the robe’s pockets. Her expression was blank. I thought she was sleepwalking until she started to speak.
“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Just…just let me say this. All right?”
“Okay,” I said. Sleep-soaked, my voice sounded almost as bad as Midian’s.
“I didn’t leave only because the riders made me uncomfortable. They did, but I wouldn’t have left Aubrey in the middle of all this just because I didn’t like it. If anything, my fear of them was a reason to stay.”
Her chin rose a centimeter. Her eyebrows rose too. The expression made me think of old pictures of English queens. I half expected her to say We are not amused.
“I was having an affair with your uncle,” she said. “I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even particularly enjoy it. It was just something that happened between us. We were on one of his covert actions, and the two of us were trapped in a cabin together for a day and a half while the
She sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. She shook her head.
“Eric wasn’t a man I liked,” she said. “He wasn’t someone I trusted or admired. But there was something powerful about him, and I responded to it. I broke it off with him half a dozen times, but then a few weeks later, I’d be driving home and find myself turning right instead of left. Aubrey only saw that I was trying to pull away from Eric and the riders and the Pleroma. That whole secret world. We had the most ridiculous fights about the whole thing. And of course they never came to anything because I could never tell him what I really felt or the real reasons behind anything I did.”
“Did Aubrey ever find out?”
Kim shook her head.
“Eric never told him,” she said, “and I separated from my husband and left the state in order to stop. That’s what happened. I thought that someday, if Eric moved away or he and Aubrey grew apart, I could come back. And then Eric died. When you called, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was finally safe for me to come back to Aubrey, and it was too late. And then I met you.”
“I didn’t know about you,” I said. “I didn’t know Aubrey was married.”
“I know. But coming off that airplane…you’re young, and you’re beautiful, and you have Eric’s sense of power about you. Charisma, I suppose you’d call it. I’ve been watching you put this all together. I think you’ve done all the things that he would have, but somehow you’ve done them gently. Kindly. You have a good heart. If you had been a shrieking bitch, it would have been simple. Well, simpler than it is, anyway.”
I sat up and drew the sheets around me like a robe. The darkened house clicked to itself, cooling. The distant hum of traffic competed with the ticking of a clock. I could still smell the last fading scents of Midian’s great feast, tainted by the smoke of his cigarette.
“I’m not getting between you,” I said. “I didn’t know he was married, or I would never have gone after him. When I found out he was married, I gave him raw hell over it. And now that I know you, there’s no way, Kim. There’s just no way.”
“You see?” she said. “Kindly.”
She pronounced the last word as if it tasted bad, then turned to look at me. Her pale eyes were colorless in the dim light.
“You care for Aubrey,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“He stood by me when I needed someone to stand by me,” I said. “He’s a friend. Anything more than that, I’m not swearing to.”
“I suppose that will have to do,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you, only I thought…I thought you should know.”
“Thank you,” I said as Kim stood. She raised a single hand as she went, waving my thanks away. She closed the door behind her with a click, leaving me alone and sleepless and disturbed. My fist reaction was sorrow for Kim and her loss, then a proxy anger on Aubrey’s behalf, and then a deep loneliness that I couldn’t quite explain, except that it had to do with Eric.
It was easy to think of him as being just Uncle Eric. I had my memory of him, my experience. Apart from seriously biffing it by assuming he was gay, I’d never considered his love life. His sex life. The other people in the world who he’d mattered to besides me. Of course he’d had lovers. Of course he’d had friends. I imagined his life being somehow neater and cleaner than my own had ever been. That was my mistake.
I looked up into the darkness and tried to remember when this bedroom had stopped feeling like his and started feeling like mine, when the house had stopped being Eric’s house and started just being the house.
It was an illusion. The house was still Eric’s. The fight against Coin and the Invisible College was something he’d begun and I’d inherited along with his money and property. His shirts. His cell phone.
I tried to imagine him watching me from heaven or something like it. I tried to imagine his approval, but it didn’t really work. Instead, I managed to remind myself that he was gone. I wondered what it would be for Kim to be here, in the place where she and Eric had been lovers or cheaters or however they’d thought of themselves at the time.
I didn’t notice falling asleep again until the sound of wind woke me. The bedroom was dim as dawn, but the clock said it was ten thirty in the morning. I pulled on a robe and drew back the curtains. The sky was gray and low enough to touch. The window was dotted with raindrops.
“Well, that’s just great,” I said to nobody.
In the living room, Midian had more or less the same take. He was lounging on the couch when I came in, yellowed eyes fixed on the television.
“For a plan that really rests on motorcycles and small airplanes, there’s just no better ‘fuck you’ than a good low-pressure system,” he said.
“I was thinking that myself,” I said.
“Didn’t check the weather report when you put this whole thing together, did you?”
“I’m new at this,” I said.
“It will be fine,” Chogyi Jake said as he and Kim walked in from the kitchen, drawn by the sounds of our voices. Kim was dressed in some of Chogyi’s spare clothes, tan pants cinched up with a braided leather belt, a shirt the color of sand. She’d had to roll up all the cuffs, and she looked small. The only sign of our conversation the night before was a barely noticeable reluctance to meet my eyes.
“The motorcycles are going to be new,” Chogyi Jake continued. “They’ll have good tread on the tires.”
“Besides which, it’s not like we’ve got time for a plan B,” Midian sighed.
“That too,” Chogyi Jake said. Then, to me, “Really. It will be fine.”
“I hope so,” I said.
I had hardly finished with my shower and pulling on my clothes when the doorbell rang. The dealership was there to drop off my new toys. I signed all the paperwork and took the titles and proof of insurance forms for both bikes, along with copies of the service agreements and owner’s manuals. I hadn’t thought to arrange insurance for them. I made a mental note to send my lawyer flowers or a thank-you note or something, provided I was still alive tomorrow.
The cycles themselves were gorgeous. We couldn’t put them in the carport since the stolen Hummer was taking up all the air, so we had them pulled up onto the front walk. Black and red and set low to the ground, these weren’t machines meant for touring or taking in the countryside. They were built to be hunched over, body forward, head into the wind. They both had matching helmets and complimentary leather jackets and chaps. I wondered how much I’d paid for them that the dealership was giving me all these extras. The rain beaded on the
