Swarm (23 page)

I turned away. “What next?” Thomson caught my fingers and squeezed, but I didn't respond. I couldn't look at him.

“Work,” Marvin said. “And for you, rest.” He meant Thomson. There was no rest for either Marvin or me, even though we'd been up most of the night. Marvin's voice was light, like a hospital nurse's. When I turned back, I saw his hand clamped on Thomson's shoulder. He kept it there as the three of us walked, a weight Thomson had to carry. I held his elbow, the thin branch of his arm.

Halfway up the drive, we heard a loud buzzing and stopped. Marvin moved through the long grass beside the car. When he pointed, we followed his finger to a cone of bees hanging from a branch on the oak tree. I turned to Thomson, saw an old light ignite in his face. “Look at that,” he said. “They're staying close to home.”

I
waited until Thomson fell asleep before I went to find Marvin. He was at the boat, spreading pitch on the keel using a hardened paintbrush.

“Did you get all the tomatoes?” he asked as I approached.

“That wasn't your decision,” I said.

“What wasn't?”

“The pills.”

“No. It was Thomson's.”

“He couldn't even speak!”

Marvin's voice was cool: “I knew what he wanted.”

“He told you?”

“He thinks differently about death than you—”

“You have no idea how I think. And when I tell you, you deny me over and over. All you do is tell me how I must be wrong.”

Like honey, the sap drooled from the brush in Marvin's hand, making shiny worms in the dirt. “It's always been like that,” I said. “Your superiority. Didn't you learn anything—”

“What was I supposed to learn?” he shouted, surprising me. We stood, the whole deep past dug out between us, a cold and dangerous crevice. Marvin stared at me and I felt like he was daring me: to climb down, find whatever lesson it was that was waiting, pull out the rusty artifacts.

“You can't keep killing people,” I said. “Thomson. The girl.” Marvin shook his head, smiling the all-knowing smirk I hated.

“This isn't about them,” he said and waited—calmly spinning the brush, gathering the sap, building a golden spiral.

“They need us,” I said.

“Or you need them?”

“What's the difference?” I asked, but he had already turned back to the boat.

I
let the tomatoes rot. Left the too-big zucchinis sitting on the earth, hollowed out by worms. On the couch, I held Thomson's feet in my lap while he slept, his breath buzzing against the corduroy upholstery. The darned holes in his socks were rough under the pad of my thumb. The second bottle of pills—useless without the ones Shannon had stolen—sat on the coffee table and I stared at them, thinking about what Thomson had said on the bench, at the funerals, about giving you his food. It was a hard choice, an impossible one, to decide between you and that infant and Thomson, who I'd known for nearly half my life, who I loved like a father. Did I even have the choice? Was it mine? When tears came, I didn't fight them. They slid down my face as I curled myself around Thomson's smelly feet and closed my eyes, just for a minute. All went dark again.

“Sandy,”
Marvin hissed. My eyes opened. He took my hand and pulled.

“Just a minute.” I shimmied around Thomson's feet and Marvin led me into the kitchen, to the pantry. The light was dim, but I could still see that half our food was gone. Most of the mystery cans without labels that we'd found in other houses, a few of the newly filled jars of tomatoes, green beans, pickled beets.

“Oh shit,” I said as Marvin slumped against the door frame, his arms crossed, accusing. I knew what he was thinking.

“It wasn't her.”

“Who else?”

“Why would she? I feed her every night.”

“You think she'd stop at that?” He turned away and I caught his smell, the musky odour that I used to like. I moved toward the door, following him.

“It's not a lot,” I said. “If I work harder, we can get by—”

“It's ours.”

I stopped. “The pills were ours too.”

He didn't answer me. By then he was in the yard, crossing into the night.

“Where are you going?” I shouted.

“To find our food,” he called back.

When he was gone, the house grew still. Outside, I sat on the porch steps and watched the pale bark of the birch trees grow lighter, illuminated by the rising moon.

“Melissa?” I said out loud. The quiet pressed on me. Every rustle drew my eyes into the woods. This was what it would be like once Thomson passed away. This silence. Marvin and me, travelling our interlocking orbits until we died. I wanted more. Like I had back then, in the city, motivated by fantasy, Phoenix had said, but wasn't that how we survived? By imagining better days, working toward those images in our minds. That was the real danger of Jump Ship. Without hope, you just drowned.

I glanced in at Thomson, asleep on the couch, slipped on my shoes, and left.

I had nowhere
to go. I hoped Marvin would bring me home, like a lost puppy, so when he said he knew a place I could stay I didn't really question him or make a decision. I just followed, like the other times, the times to come.

Outside the Pantomime, I took his hand. He stiffened at first, still annoyed, I think, at Walter's outburst, but his fingers pushed through the gaps between mine. Margo and Walter left, saying they'd see me later. They were heading to our old apartment to talk to the landlord about my things—a promise I'd managed to pull out of Margo.

The
oak trees were reddening with early buds on the street where Marvin took me. It was lined with three-storey brick houses with peaked roofs and bars on the lower windows. We turned up a narrow cement pathway leading to a wooden gate painted a scuffed, glossy black. The hinges shrieked and Marvin stopped, waited for the sound to fall away, and then pushed it open quickly like pulling a bandage off. We went through a door and then down a steep flight of concrete stairs. Marvin snapped a light on and led me into a narrow room. The walls were the rock of the building's foundation. The ceiling was so low he had to stoop. A long velvet couch stood across from wooden stairs that led to another level, and I heard feet moving across the floor over our heads. I sneezed three times, and Marvin watched me from an opening in the wall at the other end of the couch. His arm swung into its dark hole.

“Bedroom, unless you want to sleep on the couch.” He walked past me and I turned, realizing there was a kitchen. Marvin opened the fridge and I saw a can of apple juice and a couple potatoes.

“Food,” he said. “No reason to go out.” He pointed past the counter. “Bathroom's there. If you need anything, slide a note under the door at the top of the stairs.”

“Who's up there?”

Marvin smiled, a small motion of his closed lips. “Trust me,” he said.

“I can't go out?”

“It's better if you lay low.”

“I'm just supposed to stay here?”

“Start with a couple days. Who knows, maybe you'll love it.” He pushed off the counter. “I have to go.”

“Now? You can't stay?” I knew I sounded needy, but I couldn't help it. I wanted more of him, had already imagined the two of us there, forgetting time in the room without windows.

“Entertain yourself,” he said, walking toward the door. “Do some studying.” Above the couch, a shelf bowed from the weight of books. I saw titles:
Wretched of the Earth
,
Our Ancient Future
,
Life After Debt
, and a pile of Archie comics, their spines whitened, wording barely legible.

“Wait,” I said and scrambled up the rough-edged stairs to press my mouth against his. It was a hard kiss but I felt him soften, and we stumbled against the wall, my elbow grazing an edge of granite so it would bleed.

That
first night I slept in the tiny bedroom. It was hardly bigger than one of the booths at the diner and on the wall was a rusted iron hatch, bolted shut. The old coal chute, I knew, because we'd had one at the farm that I used to send my dolls down, entertaining myself, dirtying their long blond hair.

At some point that night, I woke, feeling restless, my lungs constricted. Overwhelmed with anxiety, I lay in the blackness. There was no clock. The only window in the place was in the shower stall, in the bathroom on the apartment's other end, and it looked into a hollow of dirt. Deep breathing calmed me. Marvin would be back, I told myself. I'd figure it out. Everything would be all right. Despite the dank mustiness of the place and the terrible feeling of being underground, it was a refuge, a break from constantly thinking about what came next, what to say, how to impress Thomson and Phoenix. I gave in, let myself be there, decided to trust him.

When I woke again, I heard the door to the upper floor closing. I located the switch to the room's single light. A teal plate sat on the top stair, three boiled eggs wobbling in place.

That happened every morning and in the afternoon, other food showed up: a bowl of watery chicken soup, half a bottle of homemade wine, hard cookies that were barely sweet.

The people upstairs were noisy. I heard the low rumble of their voices, feet confidently crossing floors, the strumming of a guitar. They came and went from the house without a rhythm.

It was like that for days. Days he left me down there and I stayed, stupidly waiting. I had no clock so I figured out the time of day by climbing out into the backyard. Often it was night and I breathed in the cold, fresh air as I looked up at the stars. The third time that happened, after I'd read all of the Archies and skimmed through some of the heavier books just so I could tell Marvin I'd read them, I decided to go for a walk. I wanted to go to the Empire. I wanted to talk to Margo and find out what had happened with my stuff. I wanted to find Marvin and find out why he had abandoned me.

The neighbourhood had fallen into a deep hush so I knew it was likely only a few hours till dawn. But halfway down the street, I started thinking about Marvin, how he'd said that it was better if I hid, how he'd asked me to trust him. I stopped walking. I stood there, staring down the street to the nearest intersection, and then I turned around.

When I got back to my basement, I snapped on the room's single light and the bulb popped, glass shattering in a miniature explosion.

I know you understand darkness. That cave. Night in the forest when the moon isn't full. But I had never been in such complete, sudden blackness before. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw nothing no matter how hard I pushed my eyes. It was like I didn't exist.

It
gave me something to do. A mission. I slept for a few hours and when I woke I felt my way to the stairs. At the top, my toes hit the plate and it crashed down, boiled eggs and ceramic shattering. I knocked, but no one came. No sound. The door wasn't locked. Daylight poured through two large windows on the far side of the kitchen. I paused, blinking, and when my eyes adjusted, I saw dishes drying on a towel beside the sink. Bright yellow flowers on the old-fashioned wallpaper.

I didn't want them to find me. I didn't know who they were. I moved quickly, searching under the sink for a lightbulb but found nothing but chemical glass cleaner, a container of dishwasher detergent, a plastic compost bucket with coffee grounds on top. More coffee. I stood and looked around. An old-fashioned phone was fastened to one end of the cupboards. I stared at it for a minute and then went to it, lifted it, and quickly punched in my parents' number. As it rang and rang, my fingers clutched the spiralling cord, working it around my palm and loose again. When voicemail picked up, I left a quick message:
Everything's fine, I'll try you soon, I love you
. Almost all lies.

After I hung up, I swallowed the sting in my throat and kept looking for lightbulbs.

There was a pantry. The walk-in kind, like a closet. The shelves were full of canned food, giant brown bags full of rice and red lentils. Four huge jugs of water on the floor. And baking supplies: brown and white flour, jars of yeast, baking soda, and a plastic bag of powdered sugar, already opened and wrapped in red elastics. My hand closed around it. It was rock hard, but I lifted it anyway, knocked it softly on the edge of the shelf, and felt the contents shift and loosen. I didn't know how I would get it to Thomson, but I took it; it felt like it was mine. When I turned to leave, something glittered through a curtain of aprons on the back of the door. I parted the draped fabric and saw it: red, gold, and silver stars shining on a map of the city. My finger hovered over each.

I left the house that day. There was nothing I needed from the basement so I didn't even bother going back down although as I walked I regretted not grabbing the toothbrush that had been left for me when I moved in. I didn't think I'd be going back. At first I wasn't quite sure where I was, but it didn't take me long to get my bearings and I walked by the New Covenant Church where the sisters handed out warm lemon tea during power outages and turned west at a corner with an empty newspaper box covered in faded stickers advertising their website. I was headed for the Empire. I wanted to talk to Marvin if he was there, Margo and Walter if he wasn't, and try to get some answers. At the Pantomime they'd made it seem like it was only them, a small operation, not the storm of stars I'd seen on the map on the back of the pantry door. I held the hard bag of sugar against my chest like a child. Part of me wished I could simply return to the diner, but I cringed with shame at those last days. Naked in the room with Phoenix, back-handing the bowl of grasshoppers in her face. Not to mention her hard cruelty and what had happened afterwards at Marvin's. Who was I? Somehow I'd get the sugar delivered to Thomson for his hives, but that was all I could do. Instead, I needed to find Marvin and get answers: how big was Jump Ship and which part of the boat was I on?