The Summer Prince (22 page)

Gil finally stops close to the edge. He stares at the waves crashing against the worn rock. He won’t look at me even when I touch his hip.

“Why Ueda?” he says. “He’s a king, there’s no guarantees of anything, I understand that, June, I swear I do, but why some grande he cares nothing for? Why whore himself like he doesn’t even matter?”

“But,” I say, “he whored himself for the most important thing in the world.”

Now Gil turns to me; I almost wish he hadn’t. He’s screaming and furious. “For mind-twisting biomods he can hardly control?”

“Art.”

Gil wipes his eyes and laughs. “You two are insane, you know that? The way you privilege art —”

“We kissed.”

I say it fast, so I don’t lose my nerve. Gil stares at me. This is it. This is how I’ll lose my best friend in the whole world. If he was upset about
Ueda
…

“When?”

A sob catches in my throat, but I answer him. “Right before our show. On the water. Gil, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

“So he
hasn’t
forgotten how.”

I’m braced for a storm of betrayed fury. Not his gentle, relieved smile or the softness in his eyes. “Gil?”

He takes my hands. “I told you before, you know, that I wouldn’t mind. I don’t. If he has to be with someone else … oh, June, as long as he isn’t destroying himself with people like Ueda-sama …”

He’s
relieved
. He hugs me, so fiercely that for a moment I can’t breathe.

“I love you both more than anyone but my mamãe,” he whispers. “I think you can reach that part of him … the one that scares me. You can keep him safe.”

I don’t think anyone can keep our summer king safe, but I don’t say so. Gil has offered me absolution, however undeserved. I am greedy enough to take it.

“He asked for her to come,” Auntie Yaha says.

She and Mother sit beside each other at the table, though they don’t touch. Across from them, I pick at an acarajé patty that has gone cold while they argue.

“I don’t see why June should meet with some disgraced foreign dignitary. What if he tries to get her to trade sex for city secrets?”

“I don’t have any city secrets, Mother. And I promise, I’m in no danger of sleeping with him.”

Mother rolls her eyes. “It’s all you wakas do these days, isn’t it? I watch the holos, since you won’t tell me anything anymore. I see how you are around that negro prince —”

“You mean the
summer king
—”

“I mean the one who has turned himself into an international incident! Gil is one thing, that waka mother of his couldn’t raise a cat, but
you
, June —”

“Valencia! June!” Auntie Yaha reaches across the table, touching my hand and quieting me before I start to scream something Mother really won’t forgive.

“Enki is the summer king, like him or not,” she says. “But, June, it would be nice if you could tell your mother and me more about what you do, so we don’t have to worry so much.”

I roll my eyes. “If by ‘worry’ you mean ‘scream at me,’ then no thanks.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t have to scream if you weren’t neglecting any hope of your future to participate in this waka orgy.”

“Who I have sex with is none of your business, Mother.”

“So you are sleeping with him!”

“What were you, a nun at seventeen?”

“I wasn’t an attention whore, throwing myself at celebrities every night.”

“You’re jealous that I’m famous.”

“I’m embarrassed that my daughter doesn’t know how to comport herself in public.”

I’m suddenly so tired of this. I don’t even know how to speak to her without yelling anymore. So I stand. “I’ll be happy to go to dinner with you, Auntie Yaha,” I say.

“June,” she says, a note in her voice closer to pleading than I’ve ever heard. “Sit down. You and your mother —”

“Are never going to work it out. You should really stop trying.”

I leave, and Auntie Yaha doesn’t call me back. Mother doesn’t even look at me.

She is my mother and I hate her. But I wish that I didn’t.

I want to go to the park, or my grotto in the walkway, or even school to talk to Bebel, but I just can’t bear the feeling of a city’s eyes on me right now, so I hide in my room.

I ping Gil a few times, but he doesn’t respond. I flip on my holo and see why: at least four feeds of him and Enki sharing an afternoon picnic in Royal Park. Sebastião has a clip on repeat of Enki reaching into the white pulpy flesh of a durian fruit and Gil licking it off his fingers. My heart starts to race just looking, so I shut everything off and wonder if I might scream. I dreamed of fame, back when Gil and I were just two anonymous wakas. I imagined caster interviews and winning the Queen’s Award, choking up when I thanked my papai during the acceptance speech. And though this reality feels stickier than my daydreams, I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Enki says that Oreste hates me now, but she gave Auntie Yaha the chair of an important committee. I still might win the Queen’s Award if I play this properly. I’m certainly the most notorious of the finalists. The number of technophiles grows by the day, and they all appreciate what I did to save the city. It’s like with Enki: Love is its own kind of power.

That’s what sticks in my thoughts when I take out my long-buried sheets of drawing paper and start to sketch. I’ve spent so much time constructing high-concept art that I’d nearly forgotten the simpler sensation of a pencil scratch on wood-pulp paper. It’s all obscenely expensive, but Mother insisted I learn proper art, and she’s made sure I’ve had a steady supply all my life.

Even the last two years.

I sketch my tree and then I put Gil and Enki in its branches. The image makes me feel warm. My tension holds in my fingers, but it
leaves that space behind my eyes. Soon enough, that one is as finished as I can make it. Instead of taking a breath, stretching my cramping hand, admiring my work, I reach for another sheet of paper and start again. This time I’m surprised to find myself sketching Auntie Yaha at the wedding, in her simple turban of patterned linen and a wide blue skirt. She smiles off frame, a new bride. As I sketch, I realize that I found her beautiful. Was it possible that for a moment I hoped my mother could find some happiness with her new wife? That maybe this would ease the distance between us? I must have, because that hope permeates the sketch itself, a message across time.

“Oh.”

I drop the paper, whirl around. Auntie Yaha is standing in the open door. Her turban is red, her clothes far from plain, and she’s still beautiful, though I have hardly seen her genuine smile in a year.

“I … do you want it?” I ask.

She stares at me for a long time without answering. I wonder if something in the sketch offends her, but it isn’t that kind of stillness. Finally, she just shakes her head and looks away. Yaha is an Auntie, no matter how much she looks like a waka in my drawing, and so I stay quiet while she composes herself.

“We should leave soon,” she says, clipped and brusque. “The reservation is at seven.”

“We’re doing this in public?”

“Best for the city to see our good relations. You’re not bad at politics for a waka, June, but you should leave this to me.”

I want to snap that she has my political skills to thank for her new committee chair. But instead I say, “I’ll be ready in five minutes.” I’m tired of hurting people just because I can. I don’t know why I ever enjoyed it.

I wear pants and a simple high-neck tunic — the lines are nice and a bit of webbing at the neck lets my lights peek through, but it’s surprisingly conservative given my outfits of late. Auntie Yaha nods in
satisfaction when I step into the hall. Mother peers at me from her chair by the garden, but she doesn’t say anything and I pretend I don’t see her.

Auntie Yaha has a government pod take us directly to Xique, the node on Tier Six known for its chic restaurants and wild clubs. Gil and I don’t bother with it much, since the music’s better in Founders Park or the verde, and there are too many grandes around for our tastes. Still, it feels very sophisticated to alight from the sliding pod door with Auntie Yaha. Heads swivel as we step out, at first because anyone who can get permission for private transport into Xique in the evening has to be important, and then because they recognize me. Cameras swarm, but I barely notice them. You can get used to almost anything.

Ueda-sama steps from his own personal transport a moment later. “June,” he says, and bends slightly at the hips. After a moment, I return the greeting. Auntie Yaha touches us both on our shoulders, exuding the professional friendliness that I’m sure is the real reason for her new promotion.

“I’m so glad that we can finally talk,” the ambassador of Tokyo 10 says.

I smile, emulating Auntie Yaha for the sake of the cameras. “These are certainly better circumstances,” I say, and he shakes his head, a single rueful gesture that surprises me because it feels honest.

“Shall we?” Auntie Yaha says, indicating the crowded walkway that leads into the heart of the node. Lucky for us, the restaurant is close to the platform. Any longer of a walk, and we would have needed a few of Auntie Maria’s security bots just to push through the crowd. Auntie Yaha and Ueda-sama make small talk while I try to seem serene and unruffled. Mostly I agreed to this because I knew it would help Enki. He might not care what Oreste thinks of him, but she is Queen, and she’s spent the past month stymieing him at every opportunity.

But I’m curious too. Ueda-sama is a grande’s grande — a hundred if he’s a day. He and Enki don’t seem to even be from the same planet, but they had an affair for months. Ueda-sama is smooth and pleasant
like a still pool: so reflective it’s impossible to see beneath his surface. Did Enki see? Did he even bother to try? Maybe he kept their relations strictly transactional, like the whore Gil accused him of being.

I don’t wonder what Ueda-sama saw in Enki. He’s the summer king, and even outside Palmares Três, he can have almost anyone he wants.

The restaurant is expensive and trendy, one of the new kind that re-creates ancient culinary styles. This one emulates old-Japan, which I gather Auntie Yaha selected in deference to Ueda-sama. He wears a curious expression when we remove our shoes and step inside. It’s as if someone has jostled the reflecting pool. For a moment, I can discern the miles beneath the surface but none of the detail. I only know that he seems sad and happy and nostalgic and in physical pain all at once. There’s a word for that, as Enki would say.

“Do you have
saudade
in Japanese?” I ask.

Ueda-sama freezes like a figure in a holo, halfway to kneeling at the table. He blinks, and the ripples get wider. “
Natsukashii
comes closest,” he says. “But no, not really. There’s a good reason you use it in so many of your songs.”

I squat on my ankles and wonder how long it will take before my feet completely fall asleep. If they really used to eat like this in old-Japan, I don’t know how anyone ever walked.

Auntie Yaha, her expression bland enough to match Ueda-sama’s reflecting pool, just laughs and turns the conversation deftly to the differences between old and new Portuguese. I tune her out. Ueda-sama is interesting, I decide. And not unattractive, for all that he’s ancient. From a certain angle, he looks like someone with special knowledge. Someone you want to befriend because of the off chance of hearing his stories. He’s not the first person I’ve met from another city, but he’s the first from so far away. He’s the first who knows what happens to human societies when they don’t put limits on technology.

The first course arrives, carried in by a quiet woman in a silk robe. The tiny ceramic plates are arrayed with delicate strips of fish.
Ueda-sama tastes his first. He closes his eyes with the first bite. He groans, though so softly only Auntie Yaha and I can hear it.

He opens his eyes as if startled to find us still there. He clears his throat. “My apologies. I forgot myself. It’s been much too long since I’ve been able to enjoy such food.”

I put a piece in my mouth. The raw fish tastes good, though I’m not sure why it made Ueda-sama groan as if he’d asked Enki to whip him.

“You don’t have old-Japan food in Tokyo 10?” Auntie Yaha asks, and I think she must truly be surprised, because she almost never admits lacking any cultural knowledge.

Ueda-sama smiles, smooth and reflective once more. “We used to. Not very much need of it, these days, given all the changes. The ones like me — grandes, if you will, June — are not so many to warrant it.”

His
given all the changes
feels charged, at once glib and all-encompassing, the same way Principal Ieyascu talks about the nuclear cold or first-wave immigration. I glance at Auntie Yaha, but she just nods in sympathy. I put down my chopsticks and struggle to remember all I ever learned about Tokyo 10 and their notorious mods. I’m once again struck by how strange it is for the ambassador from such an infamous place to look so … normal. Completely human. Even Enki has more mods.

“Why are you here?” I ask, suddenly.

Auntie Yaha gives my thigh a warning squeeze. “June …”

“I wanted to meet you. To apologize, frankly, for my role in that spectacle last month.”