Lost Cargo (30 page)

“Sweetheart, we’ll get through this,” she was saying in a low voice. “You’re my favorite. You always will be, forever.”

“You’re my favorite, too,” Ian whispered.

The sun went down. Trees and buildings outside the hospital windows turned into black silhouettes. Travis quietly left, found a vending machine, bought some orange peanut butter crackers, and ate them in the hospital’s glaring white hall.

Eventually, he found his way back to the ER. He’d been there earlier, watching Lexie drift in and out of a drugged sleep, but this time her eyes were open. To his surprise she’d changed out of her hospital gown into a touristy red sweatshirt and jeans.

“You’re awake,” he said, sitting on the side of her bed.

“You, too,” she said with a beautiful smile.

“Can I get you some coffee? A newspaper? A stuffed animal?”

She shook her head. “They’re releasing me.”

“I thought they’d keep you tonight.”

“No, they’re sending me home.” She touched the cast on her arm. “This is just temporary. They’ve referred me to a surgeon. What about you?”

“Broken ribs. They can’t do much about it. You have a stunning new sweatshirt.”

“Awful, isn’t it?” She touched the design of the city’s landmarks. “One of the nurses got it for me in the gift shop. It was the only thing big enough to fit over my cast. You know, last night we were flying over these monuments.”

A middle-aged nurse with a beard and a wry smile came in with the release papers. After he left, Lexie slowly swung out of bed. Travis slipped her boots on her feet and draped her coat around her shoulders.

“They found Ian in the woods,” he told her. “He made it. He’s here in the hospital.”

She nodded. They began to cross the long halls to the other side of the hospital. He touched her coat, adjusting it on her shoulder, lingering there. She took his arm. They finally found the cab stand outside and rode to her house. Lights were beginning to shine in the city’s windows.

When the cab dropped them off, Travis followed her inside and stood in the foyer. No threat of predatory eyes lurked outside the windows. Lamplight chased away the shadows. The house felt safe, serene, and filled with hushed anticipation.

He moved to the staircase and looked at her lovely face, her coat slipping off one shoulder, her hand on the banister, knowing she was looking at him, too.

“At least we have the pictures,” she said.

He’d expected her to say something else. “The black triangle’s gone,” he said, pretending his heart wasn’t on the line. “It’s not coming back.”

“Yes, it is,” she said fiercely. “It’s coming back with Burke and your friend Monroe.” She dug the tiny picture card out of her jeans. “And this is proof it exists.”

He slung her coat over the stair railing and followed her upstairs, watching as she turned on a lamp in her bedroom with her one good hand. Everything was the same, the baby blue couch covered with clothes, pillows scattered across her unmade bed.

She turned on her laptop. The images wouldn’t come up.

“The card’s ruined,” he said.

“It can’t be ruined, not after everything we’ve gone through.” She looked crushed.

He had to touch her, just once. “The sleet got in the camera,” he said, brushing her hair back. “It ruined everything, but we know what happened, and we’ll never forget it.”

“They’re coming back,” she said. “It doesn’t end like this.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She stared out the window at the night and finally turned off the laptop. Quiet filled the corners of the room.

“You’re really wonderful, Travis,” she said.

He moved closer. “You’re really wonderful, too.”

“The black triangle appeared at the last second. That was some coincidence.”

“I left the tracker on. I was hoping somebody else was tracking us.”

“I’m sorry I called you a coward. I was wrong on that one.”

“That’s okay,” he said with a straight face. “You didn’t know what I was up to because I’m smarter than you.”

She gave him a wry smile as if she wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. “You must be. Where do you think they came from?”

“From the stars,” he said simply. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

“Why were they here?”

He searched for words. “They had an accident.”

“I know they had an accident, but there had to be something more to it. The pilot looked like he was trying to say something to you. Do you think they came here because it’s Washington, D.C.?”

“No,” he said. “It was an accident, and after he crashed, he lost his cargo. He lost a terrible animal, and he found it, and fixed his ship, and he left. I think crashing here was just an accident. We were just a blip on his way.”

“He lost his cargo,” she said. “You think that was it.”

Travis took her hand and she intertwined her fingers with his.

“I think that he was some kind of animal control,” he said.

“
Animal control
?” she repeated.

He nodded and touched the side of her face. “He was transporting this terrible animal, and he had an accident. Animal control… like some kind of galactic SPCA.”

She was silent for a moment. “But he was somebody important.”

Travis shook his head. “No, I think he was just a guy.”

She stared at him. “Just a guy.”

He nodded. “Just a guy,” he said, and kissed her.

Monroe shook his head to clear it, touched the lights on the black triangle’s instrument panel, and lifted his eyes to the long windows. Earth spun to the east, and beyond it he could see the cold craters of the moon.

The black triangle was flying rapidly out of Earth’s orbit.

He remembered standing barefoot in the dark green grass at his grandfather’s side on a long ago summer evening. The old man was leaning on a cane, telling him the legends of the constellations. He could almost smell his grandfather’s sweat again, and his billowy cotton shirt, and the whiff of sweet pipe tobacco hanging in the sultry Mississippi air. “There’s the Dog Star,” his grandfather was saying, pointing a gnarled finger at the brightest star in the sky. “The big dog is waiting under the table to get the crumbs the twins drop.” Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini the Twins, and countless faint stars between the constellations trailed like shining crumbs across the sky.

The black triangle thrummed.

Monroe felt someone staring at him and turned to the alien at his side.

“I can’t remember anything else,” he said, talking to himself as much as to the alien. “Just my grandfather talking about the stars.”

The alien met his gaze with its cluster of eyes and seemed to nod.

“I’ve forgotten something really important,” Monroe said. “I was going to do something, or see somebody, and I can’t remember anything about it.”

The alien’s eyes were full of images. Stars. Leaving the solar system. Heading into the black depths of space, returning the cargo, and then traveling through the spiral arms of the galaxy to a humid, volcanic planet with lush ferns and dense trees with overripe purple fruit. Something was hiding in the ferns. They were flying there to catch a killer. A ruler had asked them to come.

He met the alien’s eyes. It looked worried and seemed to be trying to reassure him of something. Then he noticed for the first time that it had a wounded arm.

“You’re telling me someday my memory might come back,” Monroe said. “That I picked up the wrong thing back there. Right now I can’t even remember my name.”

The alien placed an injured arm on the instrument panel.

“The Navigator,” Monroe said with slow surprise. “You want me to fly the ship for you.” He ran his hands over the lights on the instrument panel and with a quiet sense of purpose turned toward the stars.

“H
ey, look, Lisa and Ian’s car made the paper,” Travis said. He reached over Lexie’s shoulder to turn the page and winced at the pain in his ribs. The spectacular photos continued inside, wide-angle shots of broken windows and car hoods so dented they were almost folded in half. The familiar Honda sat in all its glory on page A2 with the windshield smashed into a thousand pieces.

He leaned back to kiss her. They were on the couch in Burke’s sunroom with coffee and a plate of buttered scones on the brass Indonesian table in front of them.

“You’re going to tell your boyfriend about us,” he said.

She lowered her gaze. “I thought I’d call him. Text and email seem so cold.”

“Send him a letter,” he said. “A personal letter would be the way to do it.”

“I never thought about a letter,” she murmured, picking up the paper with her good hand. “Listen to this. They think an exotic animal ransacked Buchanan House.”

“There’s Jane Fogg,” he said. “Freelance photographer. She was working for the Belize Audubon Society when she inherited the condo in Washington. Bad luck.”

“The thing I don’t understand is she joined a birding club and nobody looked for her. You saw the photo. Why didn’t they call her?”

“Maybe they thought she just dropped out. You know how people are. They probably thought it was none of their business.”

“And what about her mail? Her mail must have piled up.”

“Maybe the post office stopped delivering it,” he said.

“Burke,” Lexie screamed. “Burke! It’s Burke!” She jumped up, scattering the newspaper all over the floor.

Stunned, Travis stared through the sunroom windows at the stiff figure struggling up the icy sidewalk. Burke reached the top of Macomb Street, glanced around as if he wasn’t sure where he was, and ran a hand over his shabby beard. His once well-groomed hair was creeping down his neck, and his wrinkled suit had dirt on the trousers as if he’d crawled up a wooded embankment.

When Lexie ran outside in her bare feet, Travis ran after her.

“Burke,” she cried, grabbing his jacket. “Burke, you’re back!”

Her brother stared at her with vacant eyes.

“How did you get out?” she asked, taking his hands. She cradled his arm as if she was his mother instead of his baby sister.

“Lexie?” Burke asked, as if he hardly recognized her.

“Yes, it’s me. It’s Lexie. Where did you walk from?”

He looked around in confusion. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

The first bitter week of November passed into the second. About the time the news of the ransacked building faded from the papers, the missing posters for Monroe Broussard appeared on telephone poles and cafe windows. Travis half-expected to see Monroe stroll up the sidewalk, but the third week of November came and went with no sign of him.

Most afternoons Travis would show up at Lexie’s house for a strange, wandering conversation with Burke about photography or flowers, nothing difficult and nothing about what had happened to them. Burke seemed frail, as if he’d snapped for all time. He wore pajamas until noon and one day Lexie found him without a coat in the garden, staring at the sky. He was seeing a doctor and hadn’t returned to his office. His business partner came to pick up files again and looked startled to see Travis in the house.

“Last night I finally asked Burke about the day we found the black triangle,” Lexie said one morning in the Hearth & Hook. “He doesn’t even remember when we went in the woods. I don’t think he’ll ever be the same again.”

“Give him time,” Travis said, thinking it was a matter of days before Burke returned to his old obnoxious self. “They say that people who’ve been abducted by
UFO
s always have memory loss.”

“How do you explain the two of us then?” she asked.

“I can’t. I can’t explain anything.” He stood up and took a jacket from the back of his chair. “I want to give this to Annie. It’s Monroe’s.”

They left the Hearth & Hook. Lexie stopped to read a poster about Monroe and looked at Travis as if she was struggling with a decision. At the end of the block they stopped outside Maxwell’s restaurant. A waiter placed menus in front of two tourists who only had eyes for each other. The woman’s glossy black hair fell over her face as she leaned in to whisper to her male companion. In the adjoining store Annie Broussard bent over paperwork.

“I want to tell Annie what happened,” Lexie said in the voice of somebody on a mission. “We can’t just give her the jacket and leave.”

Travis stared at her. “You want to tell her that Monroe was abducted by aliens.”

“Not exactly, no, I don’t, but look at her. She doesn’t have any idea what happened to her husband. It must be torturing her. We should say something.”

He followed her inside Maxwell’s dark, quiet aisles, hanging back, feeling so uncomfortable that he almost wanted to pretend they weren’t together. Cool winter sunlight fell over bottles of expensive organic wine, pottery, and designer cookware. Annie looked up with a drawn smile and then the light went out of her face when she saw who they were. She wore a shapeless, tea-colored sweater dress that made her seem even more washed out than her lifeless expression did.

Travis handed her the jacket. “This is Monroe’s. I’m really sorry about what happened, Annie. I really am.”

“We’re both really sorry about his disappearance,” Lexie added. She’d come up behind Travis and stood there looking ill at ease.

“He didn’t disappear,” Annie said.

Lexie looked at Travis. “We know that, and we want to tell you that—”

“He left me,” Annie said. “He didn’t want children.” Her eyes slid away from their faces. Snatches of conversation came from the tourist couple in the restaurant, people who had lives together and things to look forward to with each other. A soft bell on the door rang as more people crowded into the store.

“Excuse me,” a man beside them said to Annie. “I’ll take this.”

Travis knew Annie was waiting for them to leave.
Tell her
, a voice in his head urged, but the moment was gone. The whole thing was impossible.

They went outside and stared at each other.

“That was just awful,” Lexie finally said. “I mean really awful.”

“We blew it,” Travis said. He put his arm around her. “You know, maybe it was his fate. Sometimes things just happen. Life just sweeps people away in the middle of everything, no matter how unfair it seems. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes. Everything changes in a flash.”