Flight (34 page)

All was quiet. After a five second eternity
of nothing, Prissi clicked on her flight lights. Caught in its
beam, the world’s scraggliest cat—back arched like Robin Hood’s
bow, fur electrified, broomstick tail twitching—stared back at her
with eyes as big as the crown jewels.

“Freeieekin feline. Are you nuts?
Omagoodgollygod, my neurons will never be the same. I ought to take
three or four of your lives. Hesus Jay Seuss.”

The world’s scraggliest cat cocked its head
in a way that made Prissi guess it might have grown alongside a
litter of black Labrador puppies. When she walked her fingers
toward it, the cat held its ground for a couple of seconds to show
that it wasn’t afraid before bounding from the floor to a chair
arm, to the chair back, then, onto Prissi’s back and, finally, out
the way it had entered.

As soon as the cat was out of sight, Prissi,
in between huge choking pants and maniacal laughs, pushed herself
to her knees, flicked on a table light and looked around.

The living room was definitely lived in. The
leather chair she had touched as she had entered the room was as
brown and creased as a desert dweller’s face. The arms of two
upholstered chairs, maybe once in the distant past, forest green
and tufted, were gray and smooth. The floors were scarred; the
table tops dusty. At the far end of the room was a glass-paned door
covered with a yellowing sheer curtain. The crystal doorknob
turned, but when Prissi pushed it, the door refused to open. There
was a deadbolt keyhole, but with no key in it. Prissi pulled the
curtain aside and saw that what had begun life as a screened-in
porch had been converted to a bedroom/office. Prissi guessed that
as Allen Burgey’s disease had progressed, he had adapted his house
to fit his limitations. Despite the murky light, she could see that
the bed had a handrail and the funnel and tube of a facsi-lav so he
didn’t have to get up during the night. Past the un-made bed was a
huge desk covered with a mountain range of papers. Even through the
locked door, those papers tugged at Prissi like filings to a
magnet. With the memory of her successes earlier in the day guiding
her, the manic girl wrenched the doorknob back and forth before
slamming her hip into it.

Nothing happened.

The more she thought about it, the weirder it
seemed to Prissi for the door to be locked. Regardless of what
scenarios she conjured, it just didn’t make sense for the bedroom
door to be locked—especially since Burgey seemed to be so
nonchalant with the security for the rest of the house—unless the
geri had left. If, indeed, he had gone, then, maybe, he was alive.
That thought felt like the first good thing to happen to her all
day…except for the lox and cream cheese omelet. She stood still for
a moment the better to savor an image of the old man, stubbly chin
resting on crippled hands, looking across a table at an old friend
who had offered him shelter.

That moment soon passed. Prissi looked around
the living room to see what she was going to use to smash a pane in
the door before it hit her that some deadbolts needed a key on
either side. Breaking a window wasn’t going to help. She
about-faced and hurried from the living room. In the kitchen, the
world’s scraggliest cat was slunk down over the sink sniffing
plates. When Prissi took a step closer, the cat ejected through the
open window. Prissi flipped on the overhead light and began opening
drawers. Dull water-stained knives, bent spoons, a spatula with a
partially melted handle, greasy glasses, a baking dish with a black
crust of something in the corners. The remnants of a set of
flatware…but no key.

Prissi scanned the room, which looked so
forlorn in the miserly yellow light. The basement door. Before she
even took a step, Prissi knew that the key would be hanging on a
hook just inside the door. Somehow, Prissi was not surprised when
she found a key that had a tag and on the tag were the initials
PL.

Although her nerves were firing off like
popcorn because of her excitement and fear, Prissi tried to be
methodical as she sifted and sorted through the stacks of papers on
the desk. A set of worn old-fashioned spiral notebooks seemed to be
details of the symptoms, progress and treatment of the old
scientist’s disease. There was a Pisan tower of print-outs dealing
with Allen Burgey’s financial affairs. She was surprised to see how
Burgey’s first name was spelled. She thought the usual spellings
were Alan or Allan. The balances on these financial statements
seemed large to Prissi, but she guessed they might not be unusual
for a person who hadn’t spent his life in a decrepit city in
equatorial Africa. Prissi entered Burgey’s account numbers in her
mypod, even though without PIN numbers, the information was
useless. Suddenly feeling more exposed than she had since the cat’s
attack, the jittery teen gathered up the papers, jumped up from the
desk, switched off the old-fashioned puter and made her way in the
dark back to the hallway. Using her mypod’s glow to guide her,
Prissi climbed the stairs.

The second floor had an old-fashioned granite
and glass bathroom, which looked like it hadn’t been used in ages.
There were equal-sized bedrooms on either side of the landing. As
soon as Prissi entered the bedroom on the left, she saw the same
beaded bag Burgey had handed to her the day before sitting on the
top shelf of a scarred wooden bookcase. Her hand was trembling as
she picked it up. Since it would have taken the crippled man
considerable effort to climb the stairs, Prissi was sure that
Burgey had left the bag for her as a clue, just like putting her
initials on the tag on the key. Burgey had anticipated that
something would draw her back here. Prissi’s eyes watered with the
idea that someone, even if it was an old crippled man, was trying
to help her; however that intuition seemed to be misplaced when she
opened the bag and didn’t anything inside. It wasn’t until she
turned the bag inside out that she saw there was a tiny opening on
the seam at the bottom of the lining. She worked her finger into
the gap and felt something stuck to the bag itself. A second later
she peeled away a tiny piece of sticky tape. When Prissi held it
close to her eyes, she saw written in spidery letters: COLDEST
GREEN.

Although she was positive that the message
was meant for her, the phrase sparked nothing in Prissi’s brain.
She rubbed the words with her thumb as if it were a magic lantern
which would reveal its secrets given the proper care. When that
failed, she used her fingers to rub her face as if she had made a
mistake and it was her wan worn visage that was the genie’s lamp.
When nothing came, the exhausted teener sat down on a corner of the
bed so that she could hang a wing on either side.

COLDEST GREEN

Prissi thought that if Nancy were around her
first thought would be that it was an anagram. After ten minutes
generating STEER GLEN COD and other variations, with none bringing
an ah-hah moment, Prissi decided to take a different tack.

She pretended that her memories were a slide
show. She scanned backward until she was seeing the house for the
first time. The canted sidewalk, the sagging porch, her surprise at
how unsecured the house was. Clik. Clik. The murky face through the
screen. Clik. The old man leaning precariously as he mounted the
porch perch. His conversation. Clik. Back inside. The wait. Then
his return with the bag. She had removed the crystal…but
distractedly…because of what he was saying about danger…but there
was something that had tweaked her attention at the time…and that
was…was….

Prissi squeezed her eyes tight better to
recapture the moment she had received the bag. He didn’t have it in
his fingers…because they were so twisted. Instead, the bag had been
nestled in his palm and he had tipped his hand over, like a water
dipper, to let it fall into her palm and it had been…it had
been…cold. When she removed the crystal it had been cold, too.

Cold.

Much colder than room temperature.

Prissi bounded off the bed and half-fell,
half-glided down the staircase.

With its bright light and ancient squeezers
of condiments, the refrigerator reminded Prissi of a reliquary.
There were no green vegetables, nor vegetables of any color in the
bins. There were a few small unlabeled, suspicious looking
containers. Since there was so little food, the teener wondered
what the condiments were for. The freezer, however, was much more
promising. Spinach, kale, broccoli, peas, green beans—a whole
assortment of health in dozens of geri pak portions. Prissi pulled
everything green from the freezer. Not knowing what, if anything,
the old man might have left for her, she was unsure how she should
proceed. Would mike or halo heat or running water or infra be more
apt to be harmful? The peas, broccoli and green beans would be
easy—open and sort. The spinach and kale would be frozen in blocks.
Anything hidden in them would be like nuts in their shell.

Taking a second to think about it, Prissi
decided that using the easiest and quickest method might have been
on Burgey’s mind. She decided to infra everything. Ten minutes
later the kitchen sink was filled with defrosted vegetables and the
air was filled with the smells of the world’s healthiest vegetable
soup. Prissi herself was filled with hope as she was in possession
of the PIN to a money market fund, a second set of numbers which
Prissi took to be co-ordinates and a postscript from Burgey letting
Prissi know that though he was sick, he was well and on his way to
a safer place…as he hoped she was, too.

Despite knowing that Burgey would be assessed
an outrageous bill, Prissi began shoving the soggy mass of
vegetables down the Insingerator. After everything was turned to
ash, Prissi locked the kitchen window. In the office, she shaped
cushions and blankets to look like someone sleeping before closing
and locking the door. Upstairs, she unlocked the window in the left
bedroom, lifted the screen, then closed and relocked the window.
After washing up in the bathroom, she came back into the bedroom.
She closed the door and pushed and heaved and pulled the bed until
it was tight against the door. She went back to studying Burgey’s
financial statements. She looked at the balances on his accounts
and wondered why he had decided to help a stranger. It wasn’t until
she leaned over to write the PIN number on a piece of paper in case
her mypod failed that Prissi had her epiphany.

She was writing out the number on the same
sheet that she had used to write out the combinations of COLDEST
GREEN.

STEER GLEN COD.

Allen Burgey. G L E N L A U R E B Y. Glen
Laureby.

Allen Burgey was Glen Laureby, her mother’s
partner, the man who had been holding her mother’s hand in the
pix.

Prissi exploded out of bed, deconstructed her
stronghold and began wandering through the house. Thirty minutes
later, not having found the pix she was sure must be there, the
desolate girl was back in the bedroom. With the last of her
strength, she wrestled the bed back against the door. Hiding in the
dark and under the covers, Prissi emitted a long deep sigh that
morphed into searing anguish which triggered the sobbing that she
had been holding off for hours.

Her father had never been warm and cuddly.
Kind and cool had been his style. He had become even more reserved
after Prissi’s mother had died. But, despite that emotional
distance, Prissi never had doubted that he always had her best
interests at heart. She knew with certainty that he did those
things for her even though raising a teener girl by himself was not
something that would have been at the top of his wish list. But, he
had done it and done it with dedication, consistency and without
complaint. And… Prissi started to think of their relationship from
the other side, her side. She had depended upon him while she
flouted her independence. She had felt secure in his attention
while giving him almost none. His age, ills, wounds, losses, hopes
and wishes had been of very little concern to her.

As Prissi fought between going forward with
her thinking or turning back toward a less distressful path,
something knotted behind her breast bone and began to ache.

…The way his head had felt. His neck so
useless. His look so helpless. The whisper for her to go. Thinking
of her escape, her well-being, rather than concentrating on the
last moments of his life.

Prissi bawled.

Like a baby. With sobs so deep, she feared
for her next breath. Loud wounded noises. Bubbles of snot blowing
out of her nose and dripping down her lips.

She had been so horrible to him. She was so
horrible. And she was so alone.

Finally, her body ran out of the energy to
express her grief and remorse. She rubbed her chest where the bone
felt as if it had been broken. Next, a half-dozen whimpers. A
tightly held handful of blanket. And, finally… finally, so many,
many hours after waking up in the hospital and eating a lox and
cream cheese omelet, sleep. Exhausted blessed sleep.

The Adventures of Bob Tom and Joe

Joe Fflowers is moving in fits and starts,
like a jig. What flummoxes him is how he is fighting his way across
the river’s current without moving his arms. Although he is only
half-conscious, he is sure that the things, things that seem to
weigh fifty kilos, hanging from his shoulders are his arms. It
takes the boy longer to realize that the coat which had meant to
kill him has saved him. Something has snagged the coat and he is
being drawn toward shore. Joe lifts his head to see how he is being
rescued, but he can see no one on the shadowy shore. He drops his
head back down on his shoulder and lets himself be pulled
along.

Five minutes later, Joe’s feet drag against
the Hudson’s grainy bottom. Seconds after that, a hand grabs his
shoulder and pulls him out of the river.