Out at Night (11 page)

“Why are you here?” Grace repeated.

“Rat testicles,” Sarah said. “Mice and rats. Fed GM soybeans, they had dark blue testicles.”

“Instead of what?”

“Scientists at the Russian National Academy.” Vonda leaned forward over her belly. “They fed female rats genetically modified soy two weeks before they mated, and over half the group died.”

“Yeah, and a bunch of GM offspring couldn’t even get pregnant,” Andrea said. “Not at all.”

“We’re not goofballs, Grace, dressing up, protesting to get attention.” Vonda’s eyes clouded. “We belong to a special, horrible club. All of us have lost babies the first three months in utero. And not just us, either. Everybody in our group.”

The blood rushed from Grace’s head. Her body felt heavy, stolid, as if the two parts of her were connected by the thinnest cord that could snap at any instant.

She let in the words one at a time. Everybody in our group. “How many people?”

The women looked at each other. Vonda shrugged. “Comes and goes. Two women moved away. After. There’s been—what, seven? Does that sound right?”

“Becky, too,” Sarah said. “She adopted.”

“Right. Okay, so eight.”

Grace thought of empty rooms in silent houses, bassinets waiting for babies that never came.

“I’m sorry.” She meant it.

Grace had gotten pregnant immediately with Katie, as if her body had only been waiting for Mac so they could get busy on a long-term science project that required teamwork.

“What do your doctors say?” That was a dangerous question, and the instant she asked it, she wished she could call it back. Something wild thrummed in her chest, as if it were trapped, trying to find a way out, explode into the sky, to freedom.

“The usual.” Sarah shrugged, her voice brittle. “Imperfect fertilization. Damage to the placenta or umbilical cord. Fibroids. Endometreosis. These guys don’t know.”

“We’ve had chromosome workups,” Andrea said. “They look inside our uteruses like they were peering up there with flashlights. You don’t want to hear this.”

They were right; Grace didn’t. Not as a doctor. She realized in that instant she was reacting as a crime lab investigator. She wasn’t interested in solving their medical problems as much as in how they’d used their grief to justify anarchy.

She understood something else in that moment. She wasn’t going back to medicine. The light in the cell looked refracted, altered and she felt a curious sense of lightness.

She would use her past, who she was. Shape her future. Whatever it turned out to be. She wasn’t faking it anymore, pretending to be a crime lab investigator but feeling like a fraud, always resisting the urge to explain her choice, make excuses. She belonged in this world. Or not. But that was enough for now.

Andrea was talking. “Chickens fed GM corn died twice as fast as the others.”

“And mice eating GM potatoes,” Vonda said. “Their pancreases were messed up. We have to warn them. These people from poor countries, coming here getting a load of crap about how GM crops are going to save their people from hunger. Nobody has a fucking idea what’s really going to happen, or when. They’re getting lied to and it has to stop.”

“And you’re the ones to do it.”

Andrea looked at her. “
You have to be willing to die for your beliefs
.”

Traveling from bar to bar with Lottie had taught Grace a few basics: always get a room on the ground floor, much easier to leave through a window in the middle of the night that way; stand by the door if given the choice; and never discount that shiver that started at the base of the spine, a shiver that when pronounced enough, raised hairs along the nape of the neck.

Grace rubbed her neck. “Is that what happened to Bartholomew? He died for his beliefs?”

The outside cell door opened and two jailers came in, the new one swinging a set of keys like nunchuks. They crossed the dining area and he unlocked the holding cell door.

“Okay, you three, out.”

“What if we don’t—”

“Enough, Vonda. Don’t want to keep your fans waiting.”

Chapter 13

Grace sat in her car in the parking lot. They were shooting the TV interview in front of the monument to the downed officers, using the twisted metal as a stage backdrop. It was dark now, and in the spot, Vonda’s skin looked gray and damp. What had Vonda gotten herself into?

You have to be willing to die for your beliefs. That’s what Andrea had said.

And killing. Was that part of it? Had someone in Bartholomew’s group killed him to get things started?

The spot went out and Grace sat up straighter. A cab glided through the parking lot and stopped at the curb, motor running. The cameraman eased Vonda into the backseat. Andrea and Sarah climbed in after her.

Bobbing above the television van like a flying saucer was a white satellite dish, and the cab followed it out of the parking lot and onto Tahquitz. Grace kept a car between her and the taxi. Protestors in costume marched on both sides of Tahquitz, holding signs. A woman dressed as a grim reaper darted into traffic and Grace slammed on the brakes, cursing as the light changed and the satellite dish sailed down the street, the cab right behind it.

Grace sat in her car, fuming. She pressed her window down and stuck her head out, straining to see up the street. It was getting more crowded. She spotted a yellow wink of the cab as it rounded the corner onto Palm Canyon Drive.

She pressed the bumper of the car in front of her and ran a yellow. Two yellows. She made Palm Canyon Drive just in time to see a blur of yellow banana spilling onto the sidewalk and darting up tiled steps to a Mexican restaurant. Andrea. The taxi slid into traffic and kept going.

Grace parked in a no-parking zone in a bank lot and jogged back to the restaurant.

A harried hostess in a layered skirt checked her chart. “Sorry. It’s going to be twenty minutes at least. Place is jammed.”

Grace was still panting. “Late. My group’s inside. No worries, I’ll find them.”

A three-piece band belted out “Let the Good Times Roll.” The area in front of the band pulsed with people in costume. Grace slid into a booth with a sightline of the sunken dance floor.

She scanned the dancers, looking for Andrea. She saw three other bananas, but not her. An elderly couple jounced through the crowd, dancing with elbows akimbo and pivoting knees swiveling like Elvis, the man’s shirt a bright turquoise in a sea of red and green and yellow. No Andrea. Grace shifted and stole a look at the diners behind her.

“Looking for me?”

Grace turned, startled. Her heart jumped.

Andrea slid into the booth across from her, followed by a man in his early thirties dressed in black, a pack of Marlboros protruding from his shirt pocket.

A waitress dropped three menus on the table along with a basket of chips and salsa, and without breaking stride, scooped up a check at the next table and kept walking.

“What do you want?” The man’s voice was drowsy, as if he wasn’t quite awake.

A drink. A nice margarita blended, with salt and a frosty lime wedged on the rim. “Information.”

He barked a laugh. “Don’t fuck with Andrea anymore. Got that?”

He played a riff on the table with his hands and Grace wondered what imaginary band he was part of. He reached for a chip, doused it in sauce. It left a red dribble across the wooden table. He crunched down hard on it and the dark stamp of hair on his chin moved. He had a fleshy nose and a gap between his two front teeth and he parted his brown hair on the wrong side so that a cowlick stood up, making him look like the What, me worry? icon on Mad magazine, if the image had been age-progressed by two decades.

“That’s Vonda’s cousin,” Andrea said, her eyes on Grace.

“Just in time for the blessed event,” Grace said. She smiled.

Andrea blinked. “It’s all arranged. I’m going to be there. So is Sarah.” Her voice rose.

“Good. We’ll have a girl party. I’ll bring the nail polish and the weepy movies.”

“She doesn’t need you. She doesn’t want you. She’s got us.”

Grace stared. She’d followed Andrea purely on instinct, trying to get a handle on how she fit into Vonda’s life. Into Bartholomew’s death. So far, Andrea’s biggest reaction was territorial, and it was over a defenseless, unborn child.

Grace reached for a chip and ate it. Fabulous chips. Salty, slightly greasy, cracking and melting, the sweet taste of corn in her mouth. She chewed.

“I don’t know how much you know about babies, and if you’ve lost a bunch, maybe not too much.”

It wasn’t nice, but it worked. The hardness fell away from Andrea’s face and left the wound exposed underneath. Her nostrils pinched and her mouth trembled.

“Vonda’s about to deliver any minute and if you’re any kind of friend—”

“She’s my best friend.”

“There you go. She can’t be doing this protest stuff, Andrea.” She caught a waitress’s eye and smiled. “Just have her lick envelopes or something. No, not that, Internet terrorist stuff; that’s nice and clean. She can’t be making bombs, got it?”

“What did you tell her, Andrea?” His voice was just short of a scream. He swiveled in his seat, his face darkening.

Grace grew still. Bombs. Were they building bombs? Was that what Radical Damage had planned for the Convention Center Monday night?

“Protesting is not against the law. Protesting is our right. Our duty.”

“Shut up, Andrea.”

“Here’s a news flash, Nate. I’m going to say the fuck what I want.” Andrea shoved her finger at Grace. “If you think burning that field is the last of it—”

“That’s it. We’re out of here.” Nate grabbed Andrea’s arm and pulled her out of the booth.

“No, Nate, she needs to understand.” Her voice was shrill. “This isn’t some kiss-off thing that people dip into like they’re testing the water to go swimming. Everybody in this struggle now needs to get a gun. That’s where it’s going.”

An elderly woman wearing golf shorts in the next booth looked up, alarmed.

“Get a gun, people,” Andrea shouted.

Nate glanced toward the street and Grace followed his gaze. A solitary car idled at the red light and shot through the empty intersection, tires squealing. She caught a side-angle view of the driver, eyes wide. Scared.

Grace riffled through her wallet, found a ten, and left it under the chips. When she looked up, Nate and Andrea were gone. A tremor rippled through the shifting crowd, as if in the same instant, everyone became aware that something was happening outside.

Grace made her way through the tables and trailed outside after four people dressed as green zucchinis with spongy heads. They sang off-key, voices raised and chins high. New lyrics to “Old McDonald.” Something about chemicals and waste.

A police car glided down the street. A man stood immobile on a bench holding a sign: FEED THE NEEDY. NOT THE GREEDY.

Grace jogged around the corner and opened her car. A woman dressed as a bee darted out of an alley, smiling radiantly, yellow tennis balls wobbling like antennas.

Ghostly soldiers in a strange war trotted through the intersection, armed with garden hoes. Adrenaline surged up her body and she slammed her car into drive and pulled into traffic. The light turned red and the car ahead of her took a chance and shot through the intersection.

A second police car squealed past, going the opposite direction. The air seemed to shift, grow electric, and she caught the sound of chanting. Up ahead, a puff of smoke clouded a roiling mass of bodies. A tinny voice on a megaphone urged them to disband before it was too late. The light was still red.

Grace kept an eye on the store windows. Dark reflections spilled across the glass fronts. Three. Five. A group shifting in the glint of her headlights.

They stepped out of the alley.

More than five. Much more. Somehow, they’d gotten around the police line. They were here now, on her block, twenty at least, brandishing low-grade weapons. They trotted closer, a merry band of travelers, spilling up the street, eager and hungry.

She wasn’t going to wait anymore for the light. Maybe the light was broken. She swung wide, to the right. A man in a burlap sack scampered after her. He was fast. He held a bat in his hands. He smashed downward, aiming for the car, and she saw the swift blur of heavy wood winking past her windshield as she punched the gas and her car shot forward. The bat smashed the asphalt as if it were a wrecking ball.

For an instant, the shops she was passing seemed to shiver and melt into a primitive Guatemalan clinic boiling with fire and smoke. The humming sang in her ears, the signal that things could get bad. She slid down the window and took deep gulping breaths.

She wiped her mouth. They were shops again, shuttered and silent, and the man with the bat was running slower, stopping. He waved the bat over his head. In the burlap sack, in the glowing light of whatever protests lit the rest of the street, he looked atavistic, primeval. She was the kill that got away.

Chapter 14

A lizard sat immobile on the sidewalk in front of her room at the Comfort Inn. It scuttled out of sight down the walkway as she unlocked the door. Her room was on the first floor not far from the swimming pool, protected by a fence from the parking lot. She could hear the murmuring shuffle of protesters and the shrill of sirens a block away.

The desk clerk told her that the protesters had been going down Baristo Avenue since Wednesday, a trail of ants headed for Palm Canyon Drive, every night growing in number. Grace dead-bolted the door and threw the latch. She’d bought some sodas in a machine by the pool and she put them away in the small refrigerator next to the sink.

It was a fine room; it just didn’t have Katie in it. Mac, either. Two framed etchings of palm trees hung over the king-sized bed. There was a coffeemaker and she made a pot, channel-clicking until she found what she was looking for.

She caught a glimpse of a National Guardsman in a flak jacket wrestling to the pavement a man dressed in commando gear. A shivering wall of bodies crashed through police lines in a blur of jumbled footage.

Someone smashed a car windshield with a bat. In the brief instant before the camera changed focus, it looked exactly like the enraged man in the burlap bag who had raised the bat over the hood of her car before she’d gotten away.