Chapter 17
Nick
ETA till sisterly shenanigans: one week. We can’t wait to meet Zoey!!
Cleo had been excitedly texting ever since Nick had informed his sisters that Zoey was happy to join them for dinner, and that they’d better be nice to her.
Of course!! Cleo had responded.
Reserving judgement, Larissa had added.
Larissa, be nice. Our Nick deserves to find love, Mom had chimed in, with a bunch of misspellings and awkward emojis. Mom was learning multiple languages on Duolingo, and had her keyboard set alternatively to Italian and Finnish, which meant that her spellcheck was all out of whack.
Wish we could be there, but Venice beckons. I’ll send bird pics. Dad had been in full birding mode since his early retirement, and, since downloading a bird-identification app, had become quite the bird-spotting menace. Especially when it came to birds with funny names.
Nick tapped voice-to-text – he was driving to deliver some mushrooms to a gastropub downtown and didn’t abide driving and texting. ‘You can meet her when you’re back from your trip. We’ll come up to Seattle if she can get the weekend off work.’
This resulted in an explosion of lovey-dovey emojis. Alice whined at all the dings and beeps Nick’s phone was emitting.
‘One second, girl.’ Nick parked in a loading zone and started unloading the crates of mushrooms from the tray of his vehicle.
A couple of rough-looking people shambled past, and his heart went out to them.
Portland had become so expensive these past few years, and he knew that keeping up was a struggle.
He fumbled in his wallet for some small bills, but then …
Hang on. The shambling people were green. Was this a new thing? Too much chlorophyll? One of those weird drugs out of Russia that Dad loved to tell Nick about?
Zombies, said a little voice in the back of his mind. It’s zombies.
Absolutely not. It was not zombies. There were a lot of weird coincidences, sure, but surely not all roads could lead to zombies.
Maybe the green was from the light, he thought, squinting. After all, they were passing beneath a stained-glass installation commissioned, according to the plaque, by TriMet.
Alice yipped from the truck window, catching his attention. As he swung around, the sous chef, Rakheem, emerged from the gastropub, ushering him inside.
‘You all right, man?’ asked Rakheem. ‘You look you’ve seen a … I dunno what.’
‘All good.’ Nick set down the mushrooms on one of the massive stainless-steel counters, talking Rakheem through the order and how to get the most out of it. Which Rakheem knew, of course. But Nick had his ways of doing things, and they worked for him.
‘Before you go,’ said Rakheem, after he’d squared up the account. He pushed his massive glasses up his generous nose. ‘I hear you’re the guy supplying The Smoothie Maven with their viral mushrooms. Can I place an order with you, get in on a good thing?’
Nick bit the inside of his cheek, thinking of the orange mushrooms sprouting in fiendish numbers around the lightning- strike zone.
He’d had no luck cultivating them in the greenhouse, so the wild ones were all he had to sell.
And Zoey’s orders were growing – no matter how much she purchased, she ran out by mid-morning.
‘What do you say?’ asked Rakheem.
‘Sure, man,’ said Nick, adding, ‘if the stock levels support it.’
Rakheem clapped him on the back. ‘Love it. I know we’ll whip something up that’ll blow their minds.’
Nick was cruising past the Portland Art Museum when Zoey’s voice crackled over the sound system Nick had retrofitted into the truck.
‘Hey, it’s me.’
‘Hey, me,’ said Nick, as he thoughtfully perused the list of exhibits on the sign outside. Hmm, Zoey might like that one. Chatter and giggles came from the multi-block park to his left: joggers were out and about, and a group of kids were taking photos with a giant robot sculpture.
‘We have a lead on Romero!’ She said it at such volume that Alice’s ears went back.
‘He’ll make mayor yet,’ said Nick. ‘Give me a few minutes and I’ll head over the Hawthorne Bridge and over to yours. Alice is dying to help chase a cat.’
‘She might get a claw in her nose if she’s not careful. Apparently he’s extra feisty.’
Zoey was waiting for Nick when he pulled up at the sharehouse, whose porch was finally free of the weird detritus that everyone claimed was an in-progress art project.
Damn, she was such a vision, even in her casual jeans and loose-fitting top.
Something about her pulled it all together, and it wasn’t the green leather boots she was wearing.
It was how … confident she was. How self-possessed.
‘Are we going on foot, or in the truck?’ he called, as she hurried down the walkway.
‘A bit of both,’ she said. ‘We’ll get closer and then do an on-foot sneak attack. He was spotted not far from Joaquin’s studio.’
‘Which is absolutely in walking distance from your house,’ pointed out Nick. ‘And you love to walk.’
She flushed: he’d caught her in a lie. ‘All right, so I thought it would be more fun with you.’
‘Even more fun than with Ainsley?’ Nick was pleased.
‘Yep. And besides, Ainsley is …’ Zoey waved in the general direction of downtown. ‘Studying music theory with Celeste.’
‘Go, Ainsley.’ He leaned over to crack open the passenger-side door. ‘Hop up.’
Zoey climbed in, giving Alice a hug as she buckled up.
‘I love her mushroom bandana,’ she said approvingly. ‘She’s a stylish girl.’
Nick pulled out into the street, cruising slowly to avoid groups of pedestrians and a worryingly large murder of crows who definitely looked like they were on their way to commit said murder. His phone dinged with about thirty family texts; he tried not to grimace.
‘Almost as stylish as my sisters,’ he said, adding, ‘who are extremely excited about meeting you after the Naked Bike Ride, as you can see.’
Zoey clapped her hands over her eyes. ‘Oh God, what have you told them about me?’
‘Mostly lies,’ said Nick. ‘It’s up to you to set them straight. It’s a family tradition of ours.’
‘Is it too late to say I’m washing my hair?’ asked Zoey, with a tug on her ponytail.
Nick nodded. ‘Short of a major medical emergency, your attendance is required.’
‘Okay, but you’ll need to give me some crib notes so I can study.’
‘They’re not going to grade you, you know. Well, Larissa might. But it’s a pass/fail situation, so I wouldn’t stress too much.’
Zoey’s hazel eyes scrunched in amusement. ‘Sure, except her fail usually means someone ends up in prison.’
‘That’s why we have an appeals system, babe. Okay, I think we’re here, right?’
‘He was somewhere along here.’ Zoey waved at a street of colourful craftsman houses decorated with wind chimes and giant planters filled with garden gnomes. ‘Near a mailbox shaped like a pitcher plant. Apparently they have a heck of an issue with returned mail.’
‘Returned, or digested?’ asked Nick, as he parked the truck next to a Radio Flyer wagon filled with peaches. FREE the fruit, read a handwritten sign next to it.
‘You’re welcome to put your hand in and test it,’ teased Zoey, as she climbed down. ‘Wait! There he is!’
Two emerald eyes flashed behind a hedge.
Nick and Zoey raced over, trying to spot the wayward Romero before he disappeared.
Mrow!! came a feline battle cry. A black cat thundered past, hiding beneath the truck and then making a break for a massive thicket of rhododendrons.
‘Should’ve brought my gardening gloves,’ muttered Nick, as he reached into the bushes for the furious cat. Green eyes scowled at him, their rage underscored by a series of hisses.
‘Is it him?’ Zoey crouched for a better look.
‘I mean … it’s a black cat,’ said Nick. ‘Does he have any other distinguishing features? A collar or something?’
Zoey sighed. ‘No, he’s … just a cat. There have definitely been a few times that everyone on the street was feeding some other cat thinking it was Romero. But surely this is him? The green eyes. The homicidal intent. He was really pissed off the last time I saw him.’
Nick shrank back as a sharp-clawed paw lashed at him.
‘Do you know what set him off? Is he up-to-date on his rabies vaccines?’
Zoey nodded. ‘He’s had all of his shots.
The neighbours all banded together to make sure it happened.
But the only thing I can think of is … he got into a mushroom smoothie.
The first batch. I was worried the mushrooms would make him sick – I got on the phone with poison control that evening and everything.
They said to monitor him, but, well, Romero is his own person. Own cat.’
Nick swallowed. A strange series of threads was starting to come together for him, but he couldn’t quite figure it out.
‘Zoey, what if he’s not sick? What if he’s a …’ He hesitated, because the word felt so silly on his tongue. But they’d danced around the topic before – maybe it was time to properly bring it up. ‘A zombie?’
Zoey took a step back, just in case. She squinted down at where Romero was rustling and hissing. ‘Can cats even be zombies? And also … how? Did he get bitten by some other cat zombie? Mean George? Is Mean George a zombie?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. ‘I don’t know who the Ur-zombie – the original zombie – would be.’
But as for how …
‘What if the mushrooms didn’t make him sick,’ blurted Nick. ‘What if they turned him into … whatever this is. I mean, you did call them The Last of Us mushrooms at the market, when we first met.’
‘I’m flattered you remember,’ said Zoey. ‘And do I think something is up with your weird orange lightning-struck cordyceps mushrooms? I mean, I could definitely be convinced.’
‘There’s Romero,’ pointed out Nick. ‘And Darina. And Nestor.’
‘Not Nestor,’ corrected Zoey. ‘He’s doing fine now – he came in today, to Sascha’s chagrin. He was just going through something. Besides, plenty of people have drunk the smoothies and been fine. I’m fine! And so are you!’
She was right, Nick supposed. It must be something else.
‘Maybe there’s something viral going around,’ he suggested. ‘A weird Covid variant or something.’
Mrow!
Romero used their distractedness as an opportunity to flee. He bolted through Nick’s legs, racing past Zoey and disappearing into a shady corner of the street just as a UPS van pulled up.
‘Dammit,’ said Zoey, dusting herself off – she’d tried a lunging tackle that had proven unsuccessful. ‘How are cats so wily?’
A reminder on her phone dinged, and she swore.
‘Ugh, I hate it when that happens. The rent’s due, and Winslow hasn’t paid his share.
’ Zoey drummed her fingers against her phone, which sported a new Goodnight Moon case.
‘I slid a note under the door the way I usually do, but I guess he didn’t see it.
Maybe he was gaming more ardently than usual. ’
‘Ardently, huh? Have you been possessed by the spirit of a Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy?’ He waved to the UPS guy as the truck rumbled past. No sign of Romero: they’d have to try again another day.
‘I wish I were possessed of his wealth,’ retorted Zoey. ‘Then I wouldn’t be playing multi-roommate rent Tetris. Give me one second …’ She frantically texted Ainsley, then Joaquin, then Peta. ‘No one’s home.’
She huffed, adorably.
‘Do you mind if we quickly swing past the house to make sure he’s alive and also financially solvent? We can think of it as a combination welfare check and rent-cheque check.’
‘Sure. Just so long as we leave enough time for the art museum after.’
Zoey cocked her head. ‘Oh?’
He loved it when she got quizzical with him.
‘There’s a block-printing exhibit I thought you might like,’ he explained. ‘More than like, actually.’ He knew that the smoothie shop wasn’t her dream – and he hoped a visit to the art museum might inspire her to follow her true passions.
‘It’s not strictly focused on art from children’s literature,’ he added, ‘but I’m sure you’ll spot some familiar pieces. And there’s an interactive exhibit where we can make our own prints.’
Zoey practically squealed. And Zoey was in no way the squealing type.
‘I’m not sure whether that’s a yes or whether that’s the primal scream you use to scare me away,’ said Nick.
‘I’m not sure anything can scare you away, actually,’ said Zoey.
‘Too damn right. I’m the very embodiment of the stoic lumberjack guy. Ken Kesey wrote a whole novel about my people. Although I don’t identify with the strike-breaking bit.’
‘Well good, because crossing a picket line is a deal-breaker.’
‘A passion for labour rights is up there in my top-three attributes, you know. The other two are a passion for tiramisu and a passion for Frog and Toad.’
Zoey gave a proud waggle of her head. ‘Wow, I’m a walking trifecta.’
‘That you are. Now, c’mon, let’s get this rent money and go see some art.’
But the rent-money situation was not to be resolved so easily. Nick followed Zoey into the sharehouse, waiting patiently while she knocked on Winslow’s door in increasingly creative knock-knock patterns. After she’d belted out some Rachmaninov, she drew a deep breath.
‘Winslow, I hate to do this as much as you hate me doing it, because God, the smell. But I just want to check on you. And check in about the rent. Okay?’ She turned to Nick, crossing the fingers on both hands. ‘Okay, going in. Cover me.’
‘Roger that.’ Nick positioned himself in the hallway like a soccer goalie.
Rolling her eyes, Zoey turned the doorknob and let the door swing open.
Nick just about retched. The smell was intense, even for a gamer.
Dozens and dozens of empty soda bottles lined the walls, to the point that they had to be structural.
The desk was a filthy pile of crumpled tissues and dirty plates with some sort of pinkish goo on them, and the armchair in the corner had more varieties of fungus growing than Nick’s greenhouse.
Worse than that was the bed: it was foetid with sweat, the sheets just about black with who knew how many months of neglect.
A window was open: on it sat a confused-looking pigeon busted in the act of building a nest.
This was the room of someone deep in the throes of depression.
‘What’s that?’ Nick pointed at a scribbled note on the desk. He didn’t dare get too close just in case he ended up with the plague.
br … it read, or at least those were the first two letters. The rest was an unintelligible scrawl.
‘brB?’ said Zoey. ‘That must be it. Winslow does mostly talk in 2002 L33T speak.’
‘Well, it’s better than the alternative,’ said Nick. The zombie alternative.
Zoey grimaced as she glanced around the room. ‘Either way, I think it’s time to start looking for a new roommate.’