29
Fevers melt time.
Stevie knew that however much had passed, she started on the sofa and at some point moved to the bedroom. She periodically
woke up, her head feeling like the entire percussion section of an orchestra. Sometimes Janelle would hand her a cold drink,
a pill, a snack bar, a Popsicle.
She was not idle, though. Her mind took her on wild and repeating trips and showed her visions.
Strange parades went through her head. Vans went off cliffs.
Dogs ran up and down staircases. One dream was on a near-constant loop, though.
She glided through Helen’s apartment, her feet hovering an inch or two off the ground, while Helen sat at the table flipping cards.
Helen’s mouth was moving, but no sound came from it.
Murph was speaking for her, saying things like, “They shouldn’t make them like they used to.
” Helen’s books kept falling off the shelves of their own accord and Stevie would pick them up to put them back, and Murph as Helen would say, “Don’t put it where it was, put it where it should go next.
” Dream Stevie tried to figure out what these things meant while guiltily hovering around and apologizing to Helen.
When she finally woke, drenched in sweat, and realized her brain didn’t feel like it was about to swell out of her eye sockets,
she pushed herself off the bed and went into the living room. The sound of tapping came from Nate’s fort. Vi was napping peacefully
on the sofa next to Janelle, who was eating a bagel and watching something on her laptop.
“You’re up!” Janelle said softly, rising to greet her.
She put her hand on Stevie’s forehead.
“No fever,” she said. “It finally broke. How do you feel?”
“Like I need a shower,” Stevie said. “I know where I am, but not when.”
“It’s the fourth,” Janelle said. “And it’s three in the afternoon.”
The fourth. That date meant something . . .
“I called my brother for advice, and the Ellingham nurse line. They said to watch you and make sure you had fluids, and that
if your temperature went to 103 or didn’t come down in another day then we had to take you to the doctor. I made a chart . . .”
Janelle clicked over to a temperature spreadsheet that was open behind whatever she was watching. Next to the column for Vi
was a column for Stevie.
“You were really out of it,” Janelle said. “And you were talking in your sleep a lot. You kept talking about a hermit scarf.
I think you meant Hermès.”
She pronounced it air-may.
“Sophie,” Stevie mumbled. “Imogen . . .”
“Yeah, they came by before they left for England,” Janelle said.
“They’re gone?”
“They were on their way out this morning. They brought you this.”
She passed Stevie a small envelope, which contained a stiff little notecard in dove gray.
Thank you for coming to us first. It was a relief when you appeared. I am taking the time to speak to my daughter in person,
then we will contact the necessary authorities to explain all we know about what has happened here.
Take good care of yourself and I hope you recover soon.
—S/I
Stevie slumped back and let the card fall to her lap. Janelle picked it up and read it.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
Stevie gave a brief explanation—how she had worked it out, how Benny had died.
“I failed,” Stevie said.
“You didn’t fail. You got them to confess. And it sounds like they’ll do the right thing. You did it.”
Stevie stared hollowly at the card.
“Everyone runs off to England,” she said.
If today was the fourth, then someone else was on his way to England. This time, no one was getting on a plane until business was finished.
A shower and clean clothes went a long way to helping Stevie feel like she could manage this trip, though her head was still
ringing with the echoes of two days of powerful headaches, and her body felt loose and light—but not in a good way. More in
a loose screw and empty tank kind of way.
She took a cab down to Eleventh Street and stood under his window. It took four tries to get him to pick up the phone.
“I’m outside,” she said. “Let me in.”
She looked up at his window and got a view of his chest and the underside of his chin as he checked out the story. She raised
her hand in greeting.
“I’ve been unconscious for two days with the flu,” she said. “And if you leave me in the cold, I’ll die.”
The apartment he buzzed her up to was on the third floor. It was a modern, boxy place with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave
views of the weed shop and Korean coffee place down below and exposed the business of its occupants to the world outside.
It had been furnished with little care—set up largely for ring lights and vaping.
“Where are your friends?” Stevie asked.
“One’s asleep in the back. One’s out for drinks.”
His open suitcase was on the living room floor.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asked. He was cool, keeping his gaze down, grabbing balled-up clothes and throwing them
into the bag. “I have to go soon.”
“When it gets hard, you run away.”
“Says the girl who just left her parents,” he said. Stevie could hear he was trying to keep any emotion out of his voice,
like it didn’t matter. But things were clearer now. She wasn’t fooled this time.
“You wanted to be instantly forgiven. For me to get over it and not feel anything. You don’t get to have that. I do feel it.”
“That much is clear.”
“But we need to talk,” she said.
“So talk.”
They both knew the problem—the problem was that something had happened that could not be undone, and either Stevie was okay
with it or she wasn’t.
“I want to be okay with it,” she finally said. “It’s hard.”
He pressed his lips together into a smirk and grabbed some shirts, tossing them into an open suitcase. She watched them land
on top of Helen’s fruitcake, still tightly wrapped.
“You kept it,” she said. “Why?”
“You never know when you’re going to need a fruitcake,” he replied. “In England, they actually eat those.”
“What did you say they were called in England?” she asked.
“Christmas pudding.”
Sometimes the truth came at Stevie softly, invitingly, like getting on the ride. Sometimes it hurled itself at her with great
force, a spiky ball of facts stuck together and lobbed in the direction of her third eye by an unseen and athletic hand.
Stevie saw Helen’s kitchen as she went in looking for pineapple for Murph, all those perfectly sealed and labeled containers, nothing loose, but there was a handful of fruitcake in the sink. Why? Why would there be loose fruitcake?
Helen had left that fruitcake right before she died, the fruitcake she said no one ever wanted to eat, the one she implored
Stevie to try. It would have been close at hand, there on her counter. The most innocuous thing in the world, a fruitcake
by a door over the holiday. Something that no one would look twice at.
“You have to be kidding me,” she said.
Stevie knelt on the floor and grabbed the fruitcake, peeling back the plastic.
“For sure,” David said. “Take that. Animal style. Go with God.”
The plastic off, Stevie gently flipped the cake over, revealing a soft spot on the bottom that had been cut out and shoved
back in place. She removed this and reached into the soft center of the loaf and pulled out a plastic bag. It contained a
piece of cloth, tidily folded into a square to match the bag’s size. The cloth, though worn, had a silken sheen. The edge
was a deep blue, but the center was a mustardy gold printed with fleur-de-lis and pictures of blue ships. The scarf had some
small tears and was dotted and streaked with various stains. The word HERMèS was clearly visible.
“Holy shit,” she said.
David was looking at the bizarre scene taking place on the floor. He came over and sat by Stevie.
“What’s that thing?” David asked, pointing to a second wrapped object in the cake. “Some kind of buzzer?”
He was holding a small plastic box with a few holes in it. It had a round button, pockmarked with tiny dents, like those that might come from a sharply pointed beak.
The next realization came softly. Back on the moving platform, about to get on the ride.
“I think,” Stevie said, holding it up, “it’s a Senso A874.”
“A what now?”
Stevie pressed the white button.
“Love you love you love you.” The recording was bad, but Helen’s voice was unmistakable. There was a clicking sound of the
device stopping and starting again, then a new voice.
“Hello, Blue,” Dean said. “It’s been a long time.”