7. Sébastien
I t’s been a little over forty-eight hours since we relocated to the safehouse Quentin lined up for us on short notice, and our piece brillante has decided that she’s on something of a hunger strike.
While our little pied-à-terre is hardly what I’d call luxurious; a low-income unit in the Independence City slums, built from three and a half former steel shipping containers, it serves our needs and happens to be a marked improvement over the absolute rattrap we were holding up in good ol’ New York City.
Caz and I got stuck sharing quarters with our prisoner.
Me with my hammock slung by the door and Caz on a blow up camping mattress.
Louise’s wrists are handcuffed and passed through a chain around her waist; the whole mess threaded through a steel fitting welded to the shipping container wall expressly for such a purpose (though, admittedly, with much kinkier original intent…)
Once it became clear that there was no one coming to save her, she stopped speaking entirely and began refusing anything other than water—no matter how much Quentin or Frank smacked her around in attempts to loosen her tongue.
While Caz and I remain pleasantly surprised that neither Quentin nor Frank have escalated the severity of their incentivizing Louise Penny to spill what she knows about her parent’s research and the role her bosses have played in both their research and the possible fruit it has bore—I can’t help but feel that something has to give; lest the current delicate status quo crumble under the building pressure.
Maybe it’s me being selfish, trying to shield myself from Quentin’s dark side and Frank’s unbridled rage spinning out and seeking other targets, such as myself—possibly it’s that unquenchable fire of survival instinct deep inside that’s somehow managed to keep me alive these thirty some-odd years.
Or maybe it’s some tiny scrap of human decency that my survival instinct hasn’t killed off; but I cannot accept simply letting her starve herself out while Quentin and Frank try to find an effective lever—lest we end up with a dead FBI agent on our hands, along with our best hope to get to the bottom of the mysterious emergence of the Zietnot virus—and its connections to the FBI, and possibly even to the cabal known only as “The Windmill.”
Frank and Quentin are both sleeping—having taken day shift dual guard dog and interrogation duty. Caz and I, the resident night owls in the Saints—took the torch from boss man and his number two—Monsieur Merde.
Caz had barely rolled off of his camping mattress and into his temporary battle station—a pressure board desk from Mykea; the blue light of his laptop casting over the growing graveyard of empty energy drink cans, candy wrappers, and spent roaches overflowing their shallow ashtray—when I told him I was taking a step out to pick up cigarettes for me and the boys, along with a few other essentials.
He didn’t question me—just grunted his acknowledgment along with a muffled request for additional energy drinks, miniature candy bars, and sour gummies.
When I return to the safehouse, Caz is seated next to Louise on her threadbare futon—attempting to coax her into eating a spoonful of canned pasta rings in ketchup-y, tomato ‘sauce’.
Like a petulant toddler, she turns her face away from him as Caz sits across from her—both of them cross-legged, Louise’s handcuffed wrists in her lap, and blanket drawn around her narrow shoulders.
“C-mon, dude!” Caz cajoles, nearly getting the spoonful of ‘mater-O’s to Louise lips before she shakes her head—forcing him to smear a line of sauce across her porcelain cheek.
“You’re trying to feed her shit I wouldn’t give a dog—maybe that’s why she won’t eat,” I tease, knowing full well the real reason she’s refusing meals.
“Seb, you aren’t helping,” Caz grumbles under his breath—reaching out with a ripped section of paper towel to wipe the smear of sauce from her face, not unlike a doting parent caring for their sullen toddler.
I feel a warm swell of affection for Caz in that moment.
Somehow, he’s managed to retain so much of his softness—his gentle nature since joining up with the rest of us Saints .
More and more I find this to be one of the things I admire most about him…
of course, his abs and tight little ass don’t hurt either—but I digress.
“She doesn’t have to eat if she doesn’t want to,” I call back to the pair as I make my way into the spare kitchen, arms laden with paper sacks full of groceries.
“She’s got another week and a half or so before she’s really circling the drain,” I sigh wistfully, Caz and Louise still visible out of the corner of my eye through the cutout buffet window that separates our makeshift bedroom and the galley.
“That is, of course, assuming that cher Tin-tin et Frank don’t just decide they’re going to tube feed her,” I shrug, beginning to unload the groceries onto the counter.
Caz goes rigid at my words while Louise only slumps further, obviously defeated.
“Of course—if it’s simply the fact that our piece brillante refuses to be fed on scraps like la pute and instead is holding out for le plat fit for a putain de palace such as herself,” I sniff haughtily, laying stew meat, prunes, onions, blanched almonds, bulbs of garlic, and an assortment of tiny spice jars onto the poured concrete countertop.
At this, Louise turns herself as much as she can toward the narrow opening in the wall—trying to catch a glimpse of what I might be up to—her entire body slightly inclined toward me and the sounds I’m making in the kitchen.
Caz pops up from his place beside her on the futon—tossing the spoon angrily into the open can of slop he’s been trying to feed her for only god knows how long before I showed up as he swoops into the kitchen, his voice low, so that only I can hear, “What the fuck are you playing at, Sebby?” he hisses—his platinum brow almost pressed against my own.
“You, mon coeur, if you don’t get those beautiful lips out of my face.” I flash him a naughty wink and Caz just rolls his eyes, pushing back from me with an exasperated sigh.
“Frank and Q are going to be pissed you went on walkabout for fancy groceries when we’re on double lockdown.
” He scrubs a hand over his silvery lavender-blond fuzz—his palm resting on the perfectly round crown of his head.
“If you fuck up things with the fed bitch, they’ll absolutely go through the goddamn roof.
” He glowers at me, pale blue eyes cold as ice.
“How do you think I am to ‘fuck up things’? She already refuses to eat or talk—next it will be refusing water and then she really will be dead quick,” I snap, my hot temper getting the best of me—even though it’s not even doux Cazimer I’m mad at.
Caz slumps against the refrigerator, the fight gone out of him.
“Fine, whatever. I’m gonna go roll-up. What can I snack on?” He cranes his neck to get a look at the spoils of my grocery run.
“I brought you a little something,” I smirk, shrugging out of my dry, cracking leather bomber jacket—pulling a pack of pull-apart cherry licorice and a sleeve of dark chocolate peanut-butter cups out of the breast pocket before tossing the old heap of leather onto a nearby folding chair.
“Seb, You spoil me!” he gasps gleefully, his blue eyes alight with joy—his whole face glowing with palpable delight.
“You go roll-up; I’m going to get some dinner on, eh?” I give him another wink—the two of us strangely bashful about exchanging even a stolen kiss in front of our hostage; lest she understand how much leverage she might have by playing us against one another.
Almost two hours into dinner preparation, and while I don’t have a proper tajine to prepare the dish—the beef and prunes smell incredible; my couscous—studded with golden raisins, chickpeas and a rainbow of savory vegetables wafts its spiced cardamom-cayenne-clove steam into the small kitchen.
I can actually hear the loud gurgling and burbling noises issuing from Louise’s stomach—even though there’s three quarters of a wall between myself and her in the next room.
“My Maman was a lovely woman,” I begin to reminisce—half to Louise, half to myself as I go about trimming small, seedless cucumbers for the salad. “The chocolatier's daughter, sweet and pretty and perfect.”
I can see her, the sallow crescent moon of her face as she begins to turn toward me ever so slightly.
“My baabaa had the face and body to outdo any fashion model when he was a young man, so it’s not hard to see why my maman fell for him—even though he was a hustler, and a bad one at that,” I laugh, pulling the ancient casserole dish I’ve had to make do with making my beef and prune ‘tagine’ from the oven with a pair of floral quilted oven mitts.
“He used to say he fell in love with her cooking first. The cakes, the tartes—the big crusty loaves of bread—the poulet roti with all the trimmings,” I sigh wistfully, remembering my early days in the kitchen with her; my first experiences as a chemist of chaos.
Louise Penny, still refusing to look at me straight on, sits in profile—her eyes cast down, moving slowly beneath her hooded eyelids as she listens.
I open the glass covered casserole dish. A fragrant, sweet, earthy scent of the beef, onions, prunes, wine, and rich spices fills the air as I watch the muscles along Louise’s jaw fire wildly, her lips pressing together as she swallows down her saliva.