Chapter II. Curfew #2
“Guls don’t have curfew,” Quaint answered with a strange smile. He carried their luggage by himself, and had looked thoroughly offended when she said she could carry hers. “Speaking of which…”
“The news?”
“How did you know?”
“You’re easy to read.” Ariadne followed him to the entrance, where two porters rushed to help.
“Is that so! Maybe I am easy to read indeed.” Quaint thanked the porter and murmured something in his ear. “Or perhaps I have lost my touch. But we’ll speak more at dinner, yes?”
They crossed the antique revolving door, and Ariadne felt immediately uncomfortable.
The floor was polished marble and glittered under the chandelier, a carpet went from the entrance to the top of the stairway, and the front desk clerks whispered to each other, observing them.
Unlike her, Quaint looked like he had been made for this scenario, or that the scenario had been crafted for him: his brogues against the caramel lozenges of the flooring, the light reflected in his black hair, his tailored suit as carefully planned as the uniform of the clerks.
I know some people here, he explained when they were alone in the Edwardian elevator. Guls, she knew, by the way he avoided looking at her.
The suite was almost a house of its own: it had two bedrooms, each with their own bathroom, and a living room that included a desk, a sofa, and a table or two, along with a balcony facing the Atlantic Ocean.
Ariadne thought she would have to dine there, but Quaint insisted they try one of the three restaurants inside the hotel instead.
“I thought of taking you to the Italian one,” he said with amusement, taking only his wallet. “But the clerk told me that one is usually fuller, and I wanted privacy.”
The restaurant he had in mind was almost empty, maybe because other guests were trying to enjoy the little time they had before curfew, maybe because the new law discouraged those who wanted to go out at night.
The ma?tre d’h?tel led them to a more secluded table behind a pair of translucent curtains, and Quaint offered her the cushioned seat.
A waiter handed him the menu as soon as they sat, like Ariadne didn’t even exist.
“Oh, no, please give it to the lady, I already ate.” Quaint pulled the string that tied the curtains, hiding their table from view, and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “So. About the news.”
“Go on.”
“I’m sure you agree that this curfew nonsense is too convenient for guls,” said Quaint.
The guardian lion on his neck had already lost the vivid blackness of the first day, like a tattoo done in recent years.
“It keeps our best interests in mind: no one knows we’re involved, and we keep … well, we keep eating.”
“I think about it all the time.” Ariadne looked at the candles on the table, discreetly moving her hand away from them. “That and the mutilations.”
“Yes, that’s another pressing issue. It feels too … crass for guls.” Quaint paused, thoughtful. “I’ll investigate those so-called death squads tonight. They might have something to do with Erik’s work.”
“They’re not guls,” Ariadne hurried to say, remembering Boniface’s cafe. “They’re human.”
“Yes, but they probably have an agreement with guls on the side. It’s not unheard of.” Quaint glanced at the approaching waiter, and stretched his neck to read the items on the menu. “Don’t you want to try the tasting menu? I’m dying to see all the dishes.”
“You better not die on me tonight,” Ariadne whispered irritably. “I can’t afford to get back home.”
Quaint laughed like a child. “I’m not afraid of humans.”
“Maybe you should be,” she retorted, then stopped talking when the waiter came to write down her order. “If you’re so keen on wasting money, I’ll have the tasting menu with dessert.”
“You heard her,” said Quaint, the same mischievous smile playing on his lips.
“What about other guls?” Ariadne asked when the waiter had left. “Are you afraid of them?”
His grin grew with the question. Ariadne felt like ripping the sunglasses off his face, as if they were the key to understanding his intentions. Quaint scratched his chin, looking at the lightbulbs in the ceiling, and she stared at him, waiting.
“It would be unwise not to be, but I’m not only excessive, I’m also quite insolent…”
“I noticed.”
“You’re not supposed to agree!” Another audacious laugh, but there was no arrogance in it. “I have friends at Cabaré, Ariadne, and I know how to keep the ones that are not my friends far from me.”
Ariadne smiled back. “Maybe you’re the one who has a temper.”
“Touché.”
The sound of running water distracted her from the quietness of the outside world.
Ariadne burst one of the bubbles, inhaling the strong herbal scent coming from the foam as more warm water filled the porcelain interior of the tub, clear except for the bath infusion she had gotten from the reception desk.
Quaint had left one hour ago, when they heard the high-pitched whistle of the police car patrolling the neighborhood that announced curfew was about to start.
Don’t do anything reckless, Ariadne had told him in the corridor before he disappeared down the emergency stairs. Quaint had simply waved his hand, back turned to her: You won’t even notice my absence.
After that, the hotel locked the front doors, the elevator stopped bringing guests to the ground floor, and most of the windows were closed tight. Nothing could be heard from outside, like Rio de Janeiro was a ghost town, except for the crashing waves and occasional scream.
Ariadne sat on the edge of the tub and started to peel off her skin.
First, she removed the layer that went from her lower left thigh to her foot, then she unrolled the soft synthetic skin of her right leg.
She did the same with her two arms, pulling the fingertips slowly from the fake nails, and washed them with water and soap before putting everything back in place.
The sensors in her prosthetic limbs were as connected to her brain as her biological nerves, allowing her to move and feel at will, and they were the result of the aggressive rehabilitation Erik had planned for her.
A new thought disturbed her: he couldn’t have done all of that alone. It was too dangerous. If she was right, and he hadn’t, who had helped Erik take her out of there?
Ariadne remembered a human couple who had been part of her recovery.
The husband, Jo?o, was a well-known gynecologist from Fortaleza, and the wife, Irene, was a psychiatrist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder.
They were both attentive and kind, but the idea that a gul might have been involved in secret made her stomach churn.
He wouldn’t have betrayed my trust like that, she thought, but inside she knew it wasn’t true.
Erik had invaded the apartment without telling her, just to leave his journals in the storage space.
Before she realized it, she was back in the living room, searching for Erik’s journals.
Quaint had left some on the desk, and she skimmed through the labels to find the ones from the late 2000s.
Ariadne took them back to the bathroom and got into the tub, leaning against the tiles and holding one of the journals with her dry hand.
The girl’s progress is excellent, at least concerning her physical health. She’s taking the appropriate medicine for phantom pain, and seems to have fun in our physiotherapy sessions! She also accepts food now, even if a little unwillingly.
Jo?o delivered me her results yesterday. Negative for STDs, but I already imagined that. Genital and anal trauma, hematomas, etc., are almost all healed (what a relief!), but the yeast infection has both of us worried. She might find the treatment too invasive …
Ariadne closed the notebook. That was not what she wanted to read.
The girl woke up!!! read an older entry.
She remembered vaguely the feeling of waking up in a house she had never seen before, her body unspeakably sore and what remained of her limbs refusing to move.
Good morning, Erik had said with a low and soothing voice.
No, no, please, don’t be afraid! No one will hurt you again.
At the time, her mind had been vacant. So empty, in fact, so shielded from any possible harm, that she could barely recall the year, and had to make a conscious effort to place Erik’s notes in her own timeline.
She refuses to say her name. Irene also tried to convince her to talk so we could at least find her parents, Erik had written. She claims she can’t remember, but I feel she might be lying …
Ariadne turned the page, touching the blue ink and leaving a damp fingerprint on the paper.
Amazing! Despite G. (for Girl! He-he) having forgotten so many things, she remembers what I said when she was still unconscious.
Follow the thread, Ariadne … Who would have thought that, of all the things I have ever done, a harmless reference would have been the one thing stored by her brain? I find it comforting that she doesn’t need to think of the horrible things that have been done to her.
The journal of the first year was mostly tidbits of her recovery and ideas for prosthetic limbs.
Despite the leg amputation not being very recent (I’d say it must have been done a few years before now, but I can’t know for sure), G.
is already used to her new movements, wrote Erik, but I want more for her.
I want her to have her freedom back. It also had drawings, like the one she saw of Quaint.
One depicted Ariadne, reading a book on the sofa, her hair in a short bob, her face small and round, the stumps of her thighs visible without the robotic legs.
He wrote Ariadne, 15 under the sketch, and a small annotation on the corner of the page: (A quadruple amputation; the arms are prototypes.
She found them “weird.” I’ll fix that later.)
On another page, months later, she found another interesting entry: