Plus One (27 page)

In the minutes before we left, Gigi brought me to her mobile home for a rest stop and to fix my makeup, and Zen silently trailed after us.

“May I come in, Gigi?” he asked, with the same unassuming voice he had used when he’d taken my picture. I was starting to appreciate his quiet depth, and I wanted Gigi to let him in if only to see what was on his mind.

“Don’t get in my way,” she said, holding the door for him.

Inside, while Gigi touched up my face, Zen asked me to take out my phone.

“I installed a gift for you—with Fuzz’s permission,” he said. “I didn’t put it in D’Arcy’s device, because only three other people in the world have this technology.”

I took the phone out of my pocket, ready to hand it to him. He motioned for me to keep it.

“Enter your personal code—the one that disarms your self-destruct command—and then hit a one.”

I tapped my code and the number one.

“Now hit the text message icon.”

An ordinary text message box popped up. “Okay…” I said, with a little laugh. “At least it didn’t blow up.”

“It looks like a simple message box, but do you see how the rim is black, instead of blue?”

“So it is!”

“This is a thing of beauty, Sol.” His eyes were wide, his voice was breathy. I loved how passionate this kid was about his work.

“She’s Sunny until we get her to Chicago,” Gigi corrected.

“It’s one of Ciel’s finest creations—not the application itself, which is relatively simple, but the way he cloaks it from the censors.”

My mood sank like a stone in a pond.
Enough with the adoration of Ciel.

“When your phone is in this mode, you’re able to send a future text.” He paused, in that Zen way he had, so that I could think about what he had said.

“You got me,” I admitted. “What’s a future text?”

“It’s a preprogrammed text. It gets delivered at a set time, unless you call it off with your personal code, plus one. You enter the number of days, hours, and minutes until delivery, and type in the message. Want to try it?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling my own enthusiasm kindled by his energy. “But what … what will I use it for?”

He grinned. “You’ll think of something. Never say no to geek software.”

“Are you in my contacts?” I asked. He nodded.

I pulled up his name, entered the number in the correct field for one minute, and then held the device close to my chest, like a hand of cards, so neither he nor Gigi could see what I was typing. I hit “send” and we waited while Gigi added more spray to my spikes.

Find another hero to worship
was the message I had sent.

A minute later, his phone made a
ping
, he tapped the screen, and let out a bursting laugh.

“What?” Gigi said.

“It worked,” he said simply, and got up to leave. He reached for my left hand with his right and I clasped it willingly. “Stay safe, Sol Le Coeur. I would really hate it if anything happened to you.”

My phone pinged. “That’s from me,” he said, smiling. “Naturally I’m one of the other three who has the technology.” He squeezed my hand and dropped it.

After he left, I tapped the message open and it said,
Give Ciel a chance.

*   *   *

As I got in her jalopy, Gigi handed me a piece of gum. “Chew this. The whole way. And don’t say anything if we get stopped by cops or Hour Guards, do you understand?” I nodded, knowing I was not Noma enough for a confrontation with police.

“You, too, Cake. Let me do the talking, and just sit there acting pissed as hell.” She shot me a look filled with distaste. “That should be easy for you, Sunny, since that’s your default setting.”

An hour into Illinois we did get stopped, by a posse of Day Guards, which I had never seen before. They seemed to deliberately target the caravan. It took forever for a Guard to swagger to the window.

“Destination, Noma bitch?” the Guard said to Gigi. He bent to look past her at Cake, who gave him the finger—such a thin little child’s finger—and then examined me, sitting in the back. Following Cake’s lead, I gave him a wild look that said
Screw you
, but inside I felt like the skinny redhead who was wanted by police.

“We’re taking Cake here to the Licking Puke Zoo, pig,” Gigi said, as if she were ready to spit on the officer, “and then we’re going to the observatory at the John Handcuff-Your-Mother-to-the-Bedpost.”

“Your ID, freak?” He shoved his open palm in the window. She slapped her phone onto his glove. He tapped it on and said, “I need to see the devices of the freak in training and skeleton freak, too.”

Cake and I handed them up. I had an instinctive moment of panic: it was daytime and I was being assessed by an Hour Guard. I needed to trust that this would work—that Ciel’s programming was as flawless as Zen believed it was—but every Smudge instinct in me cried out that the game was up. My guts had turned to slush in my belly.

He studied each phone one at a time, slowly scrolling through our data, checking our faces against the photos. It felt like he lingered longer on my phone. He opened several pages. I realized that I had taken only a cursory glance at what my made-up vital statistics said before we left. I could not reproduce any of it other than my name if he asked me questions. I glanced at Gigi. She looked like this was the biggest pain in the ass she’d ever encountered. She was so cool, and I was such a wreck. I tried to take strength from her. I focused on the Guard, I chewed the gum with my mouth open, and in my head I chanted at him,
I hate you, I hate you,
to distract myself and to make my face believably Noma.

“Wha’d’you know, you’re all
Rays
,” he finally sneered.

When he shoved the phones at Gigi and Cake, they each snatched them back and said, “Fuck you,” instead of thank you, so I did the same. Before he left, the Guard leaned in and hissed in Gigi’s face, “I can’t wait until we bust the lot of you and rid the streets of Noma filth.”

“I can’t wait until I track down your wife and fist-rape her.”

He punched the side of her face so hard that my whole body startled, and I almost let out a cry.

As the Guard walked back to his motorcycle, I said, “Oh god, Gigi, are you okay?”

“Shut your trap,” she said in a low voice, bracing her cheek with her wrist. “Never let down your guard until the last bastard takes off.”

Saturday
12:30 p.m.

The caravan got off the expressway at Lake Shore Drive and moved south. Lake Michigan was the turquoise color that I had seen from Dacruz’s car on the way back to the emergency room from lockup, with little wavelets giving the water the texture of fish scales, and glints of early-afternoon light winking at me. I thought back to that moment, to being in the back seat of the squad car, hot, nauseated, and utterly alone. If I had known D’Arcy was my desk partner then, having been freshly betrayed by him, would I have given him a chance?

As we passed the Fifty-seventh Street beach, I caught sight of Ciel’s white yacht cruising the shore, and I felt a ball of lead lodge in my chest. Somewhere on that boat was Poppu, whom I hadn’t seen for three nights, who could already be dead or moments away from death. And I would have to navigate Ciel in order to see him.

I tried to prepare myself for changes that might have occurred. I tried to remember what Poppu looked like in the photo, which had been deleted with my old identity, tubes snaking from his arm and his nose. I planned for the worst: that he was in pain, or doped into unconsciousness. If he was awake, he might not recognize me. If I couldn’t speak with him, I hoped against hope that he might know I was there, if only subconsciously. I needed him to believe that I hadn’t abandoned him, that I never would. In a flash of selfishness that I knew I would have to subdue, I wanted to tell him it was Ciel who had taken him from me.

We got off Lake Shore Drive at Science Drive, and the caravan snaked through park district lots to the Fifty-ninth Street Harbor. Ciel’s yacht was still visible offshore. We parked next to the harbor house, and Gigi and Cake got out of the car.

“Stay with the other guys in the Winnebago, Cake,” Gigi ordered. “There are snacks in there. And use the little boys’ room.” He nodded and ran off to the trailer, which had stayed in the larger lot with school buses full of Ray students on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry.

D’Arcy’s car pulled in next to ours, with his door already opening. He headed straight for me and said in a low voice, “You okay?” I nodded. He said, “I’ve been given strict orders to ‘shut the fuck up.’”

“Walk home now, D’Arcy,” I urged under my breath. “You’re so close.”

He smiled. “I knew you’d say that. Tell me, how far would I get in my old life as ‘Skin Russell’?”

I’d forgotten about his new ID. It had allowed us both to travel freely from Iowa, but now it was imprisoning D’Arcy. “We’ll make Ciel change you back,” I said.

Dope and Fuzz got out of the car and stretched, unfurling their impressive bulk.

“Ciel is waiting, Sunny,” Gigi called. “And lord knows Ciel can’t be kept waiting.” She came over to claim me, linking her arm with mine the way Poppu said Belgian sisters did and steering me toward the viaduct that led under Lake Shore Drive to the lakefront. I glanced back at D’Arcy; Fuzz and Dope were escorting him, too. Something about their body language was off—but maybe they were always ready for a fight.

On the other side of the viaduct we walked up a path to the breakwater. The yacht was hovering near the end of it, not moored, but poised for a quick stop, engines running. Ciel was on the top deck, with binoculars. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was looking at me, and only me, even though Gigi was gripping me so tightly my hip was nested in her waist. When we were halfway down the breakwater, he signaled to the captain to dock up alongside it. The captain did it effortlessly: pivoting, swinging slowly, gently into place, with the male nurse lowering fenders to protect the side of the boat. The nurse leaped onto the breakwater and hooked some lines to a metal post, and then he turned to watch us arrive. The engines never stopped idling. Ciel had disappeared from the upper deck.

When we were a few meters from the male nurse, Gigi stopped.

“Hi, Gigi,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

“William,” she said, emotionless.

He turned to me and laughed. “You look a little different, Le Coeur.”

D’Arcy, Fuzz, and Dope hung a few meters back, waiting.

Ciel emerged on the lower deck, hopped over the railing, and stretched to step onto the breakwater. He went straight for me with his arms spread, like he was greeting me after a trip, swooping in for a hug, and I felt myself cringe. The last time I saw him I had called him a horrible bastard. Had he forgotten?

Gigi said, “That’s far enough.” I was grateful for her intervention, even as I didn’t understand the tone of her voice.

Ciel froze, stunned. “Gigi,” he said, his voice oddly pleading.

Fuzz stepped up past me, moving fast. I looked back, and Dope had hooked his arm around D’Arcy’s neck in a choke hold. I turned instinctively to help him, but Gigi grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms and smashing her stomach and chest against my back. Faster than I thought possible, she had grabbed my left wrist in her right hand and my right wrist in her left hand and pulled, so that my arms were crossed and locked under my breasts. Holding me too tight, she turned her body to the side and shoved her hip against my butt, tipping me just a bit off balance. It was like a professional wrestling hold; I was completely incapacitated.

Ciel burst toward me and I saw him slam into Fuzz like a brick wall. He stumbled back, recovering his balance.

“You can’t have her yet,” Fuzz said in his rumbling voice, his feet planted and his fists up offensively.

Have me?

William was on his way to help, but Ciel put his hand up and commanded, “No.”

The two of them stepped back from Fuzz, who looked more like a mountain than any other time I’d seen him. Now Ciel had both palms up in front of his chest, like he was calming Fuzz down or proving he had no weapons, or both.

“I haven’t seen her in two years, Fuzz. I can’t stay docked here for more than a minute. Just let her go, please.”

Let me go?

“I don’t want a hostage, Ciel. And frankly, she’d be a handful.”

Ciel smiled at him and dropped his hands. The dynamic between these people was confusing the heck out of me. I looked back at D’Arcy, but the hold he was in forced his head down, and I couldn’t see his face. I struggled to pull away from Gigi, but I only succeeded in losing what little balance I had, which churned an instant, angry outrage in my core.

“Dope is choking him!” I blurted at Fuzz. “He’s a nerdy Medical Apprentice, not a freaking karate sensei.”

Dope loosened his hold and D’Arcy was able to lift his head some. He gave me a look through his eyebrows that was not appreciative.

Ciel said, “I gotta take off, Fuzz. I don’t have a permit to land; I can’t afford to be inspected. I’m grateful that you found her—more grateful than you’ll ever know. And now her grandfather needs her.”

I felt myself nearly collapse with relief; Poppu was alive. He was still alive.

“I don’t want your gratitude, I want remote programming.”

“I can’t give you that, Fuzz, you know it.”

“Then you can’t have Sol.” He was oddly firm, like he’d be happy to just turn around and drive three hours back to Iowa with me.

“Ciel,” William said, his jumpy eyes scanning everywhere—the lake, Lake Shore Drive, the bike path. “We can’t stand on this breakwater negotiating.”

“Let us aboard,” Fuzz said. “She can visit with your grandfather while we talk this over in open waters. That’s more than fair.”

Ciel shook his head. “I don’t have room.”

“Then no Sol,” Fuzz repeated.

Ciel’s temper flared. “You’re wasting precious time!” He jabbed his finger toward the yacht. “My grandfather is
dying
. I need to be with him, not standing here arguing with a pack of ungrateful bullies!”