Chapter Thirteen #2
“You feel better, though, right? You’ve got color. Where are your clothes?” She spots the black suit suspended on a hanger from a wall hook near the door, walks over to inspect it. “Wow, okay. Where did you get this?”
“I can’t remember.” He still has an acerbic tang in his throat. “A thrift store.”
She’s shaking her head, side-eyeing him. “You’re unbelievable. This is Saint Laurent, you dork. How do you find this stuff? Okay, and here’s your shoes.”
She brings everything over and lays it on the bed where he was passed out in agony barely an hour ago. He has serious reservations about this plan. “Nomi, listen—”
“It’ll be all right.” She returns to where he’s sitting, puts a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, I believe in you.”
He removes his sunglasses, grasps her forearm.
There’s an electric prickle of static from the contact and a fascinating light show where their auras intermingle.
He tears his eyes away; he needs to concentrate to explain this in a way that will make sense.
“Listen, you should know. I get loopy when I have a migraine. I’m sensitive to noise and light, I’m bad tempered, I’m—” He drags his memory for Flores’s term—“dysregulated.”
“Noone,” she says firmly, “I don’t mean to be insensitive, or unsympathetic, or whatever—I’m sorry to haul you along on this escapade if you’re in pain. But dysregulated or not, I really need your help tonight.”
He wets his lips; his mouth tastes like he’s been chewing aspirin. Because he wants to keep touching Nomi, he releases her. “Okay, fine. I’ll get dressed and meet you downstairs.”
Nomi has already started backing for the door. “Twenty minutes.”
So that’s it. Christ, this is such a bad idea.
Simon strips off his robe, gets dressed.
In the full-length mirror behind the door, he looks acceptable.
But his skin is sensitive to everything: the black trousers cinched at his waist, the snakeskin fabric of the black shirt, the blue tie tight at his neck, the weight of the black jacket.
He shoves his feet into Chelsea boots, collects cigarettes, cash, sunglasses.
Dry swallows two more Vicodin. Scrapes back his damp hair, closes the apartment door, goes downstairs.
Sofia Rosa is standing with Nomi in the lobby area near the mailboxes—she has a pale gray aura that feels friendly.
Nomi is surrounded by an electric purple haze, her energy humming.
She’s wearing her oversize leather jacket and no pants—wait, she must have a dress underneath the jacket.
If there’s a dress, it must be astonishingly short.
Chunky black boots are buckled high on her white legs.
She’s twisted silver rings into one decorative braid around her side cut and covered the worst of her facial bruising with makeup.
Both she and Sofia Rosa are assessing his outfit as he descends the stairs.
“This is a nice suit. Very handsome.” His landlady is smiling approvingly and holding up a small brown bottle. “And you see? No-mee gives me a lovely gift!”
“Congratulations.” God, he’s really going to have to keep his bad humor in check.
“Yes, very good. You will have a good evening, I think.” Sofia Rosa wafts toward her own apartment. “Now I go watch Matlock and drink this.”
“See you tomorrow, Sofia.” Nomi turns back, grabs his lapel and pulls him closer to her level. Her eyes are smoky with kohl, and her mouth is glossy pale; she has a thin silver ring in one side of her bottom lip. “Okay, first of all, ditch the tie. And while we’re at it . . .”
She yanks his blue tie off, stuffs it into her pocket. Then she starts unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re going to a club, not a job interview. Here . . .” Digging in her other pocket, she comes out with a black leather cord, reaches up to sling it around his neck. She fastens it with a loop in front. “You’re too tall. And how are you so lean?”
Her fast, clever fingers in close proximity to his bare chest are doing strange things to his brain. “You’re aware that I’m not twelve. I can dress myself.”
“You’re aware that you have no birth certificate, so there’s no way of knowing how old you are.”
“You have a lip piercing.”
“It’s a fakey.” She pushes the ring sideways with her tongue to demonstrate.
“But the one in your left ear is new.”
“Aw, you noticed.”
His shirt is wide open almost to his navel. “I look underdressed.”
“You look just right.” Her carnivorous teeth gleam as she grins and steps back. “Okay, that’s better. How do you feel?”
He decides to go with honesty. “Like an alien in an ill-fitting human skin.”
“You’ll be fine. Great, let’s go.”
She spins and heads outside. Simon follows, his head thumping.
Immediately, the sulfurous light of the streetlamps hits him square in the eyes, sets off tracers in his vision.
Nomi has turned left toward Greenwich, walking fast. Simon works to keep up.
The street is dark, but he can hear music at a distance, the swish of cars on the cobblestones, laughter from down the street, everything echoing.
People are moving in the black, like lantern fish swimming in the depths of the ocean. There’s the smell of frying meat.
Being outside is overstimulating. He should probably have stayed at the apartment.
But there’s something perversely enjoyable in the experience: A coldness in his nerve endings makes the air feel fresh on his body, makes colors and edges vibrant, distinct.
On his right, Nomi strides along, oblivious to the bioluminescence that floats around her and turns her loose dark hair into a swirling oil slick, turns her pale skin into creamy fire.
“Are we getting a cab?”
Nomi snorts at him. “It’s two blocks. The walk will sober you up. Now listen, I know you’re in a bad mood, but I’ve got some unfortunate news.”
Of course she has. “Just tell me.”
“Three of my contacts got back in touch. They’ve hit dead ends on your case. No missionary workers went missing—I’ve got confirmation on that—and obituaries for men in your age range during the time period are coming up blank.”
They’ve turned left onto Greenwich, where a Black girl in tight jeans is having a muffled conversation in a lit-up phone booth. Trash blows elegantly against the wire links of a side fence as they cross West Twelfth.
Simon watches a car corner up ahead. “Your missionary contact, that’s the Catholic priest from the church you visited on Sunday? Could there have been mission groups from other denominations?”
Nomi shakes her head. “No. Clergy talk to each other, you know, regardless of affiliation, and they keep centralized records. The missionary angle is done.” She glances at him, appraising. “I never really saw you as a religious zealot, anyway.”
“But . . . no obituary hits, either.”
“Nope.” Nomi strides past a store that advertises butcher supplies: boots, gloves, knives, scales. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I suggested they search East Coast records, but you could be from someplace else. We don’t know. Trying East Coast was just a shot in the dark.”
It’s hard to make his synapses work in concert, but he can extrapolate from what she’s saying. “We’re unlikely to hit the bull’s-eye on this, are we?”
Nomi slows for a car, then crosses West Thirteenth, clearly considering how to phrase her response.
“I don’t think we’re going to suddenly stumble onto your point of origin, no.
I think it’s going to be a slow process of elimination.
We’ll narrow down our search to an inevitable moment where we say, ‘You are most likely this guy.’”
“That could take years.”
“It could.”
He’s surprised at how desolate that idea makes him feel. “Maybe you should just run my fingerprints.”
She pauses their matched steps so she can look him in the face. Her eyes are faintly purple, lit by stars. “Hey, I told you it would be tough. It’s only been five days—have a little patience.”
Her faith is curiously touching. “You’re not put off by any of this, are you? I’m an illegal immigrant with sketchy papers and medical issues who’s sent you on this wild-goose chase, and I tell you that I might be a whole different person in my previous life, and you just take it in your stride.”
Nomi waves a hand. “Look around, Noone. You’re on the West Side.
Everyone here is from somewhere else, everyone is pretending to be something they’re not—someone cooler, someone better, more sexy, more confident, more cunning.
When the sun goes down and the clubs open, we all put on our masks and turn into different people.
You’re worried about what I think? I think you fit right in here, with the rest of us.
” She grins at him, silver lip ring flashing.
“Now come on—Big Mouth is just across the street.”