Chapter Twenty-Nine
He’s lost in a red fugue, and it’s like music.
On the cutting-room floor at Gennaro’s, nobody wants to lose concentration because with the tools they’re using, that could be dangerous.
Piping in radio tunes to pass the time is no good—there’s always arguments over the station—but quite often, Mike Nell will play classical music through the speakers, so Simon finds himself cutting steaks or boning out a shoulder to the strains of Dvo?ák, or Vivaldi, or Nell’s favorite, Erskine.
This is how Simon discovered the music of Jean Sibelius.
He’s listening to Sibelius now as he does a similar job: peeling and carving, slicing the best cuts.
He’s unlikely to get through the brisket as this knife is simply not sufficient to the task, but he’s making good progress until he hears someone calling his name.
“Simon,” Nomi says. Her voice is hoarse; she sounds a little like she’s choking and a little like she’s crying. “Simon, stop.”
“What?” He turns on his knees.
Where before Nomi was roiling like a violet maelstrom, now her colors are fading to a dusky mauve.
She’s still trembling, pulsing like a heart, but now he can see how washed out she is, pale and exhausted in her combat pants and the black sweater that’s falling off her shoulder.
Somewhere above them, the white noise sound of rain.
“They’re dead, Simon. They’re all dead. And you need to stop . . . doing that.” She glances at the knife in his hand, glances away.
“I’m just finishing this last—” he starts. But when he turns back to his work, he sees what it really involves.
It’s shocking enough that he drops the blade.
He staggers up off his knees, turns to face her, and the thing he just saw is mercifully gone. Was it ever there? The line between reality and hallucination is wavering. Where is he? He puts a hand to his head—god, the ache there is unbearable. “I need to finish work.”
“No,” she says. “You need to stop.”
“But there won’t be a—”
“Simon, look at me.” Nomi steps close, almost close enough to touch. She has a dark mark—a kind of long streak, like she’s been hit with the edge of a ruler—across her left cheekbone, and she’s cradling her right hand. “It’s over. You’ve done enough.”
What did I do? What did I do? He’s not sure he wants to know. He wants someone to take his elbow, tell him everything is all right, that there’s simply been an accident. He wants someone to tell him what’s real.
Somewhere far away, the strains of Sibelius, like he’s still at Gennaro’s. “Should I . . . take a break?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Nomi says evenly.
But for some reason, he needs it spelled out. “You have to say it.”
She looks directly into his eyes. “Simon, stop now. Take a break. It’s done.”
“Okay.” When he blinks, the room shifts, returns, shifts. His thoughts are spinning, and there are images of beef carcasses on the backs of his eyelids. Or are they bloody corpses? “I think . . . I think I really need a cigarette.”
“Come on,” Nomi says, voice quiet. “Let’s get your cigarettes. They’re probably in your coat.”
She walks toward the roof pylon near the storage-room door.
Simon tries to follow. He manages to take four or five steps before his headache rocks him, and pain starts spreading like a slow fire throughout his entire body as he tips, collapses down, everything happening in slow motion, and then he’s lying flat.
“Simon?” Nomi says.
“Simon!” another voice shrieks, and it’s a voice he recognizes. He recognizes the girl, too, as she bolts from the storage room like a streak of burning coral, dives onto him and hugs him around the neck. “Simon, don’t die!”
“I’m not dying,” he says weakly, “I’m just resting on the floor.”
But she’s strangling him a little in her enthusiasm, and the high pitch of her squeals feels a bit like having iron spikes driven into his brain, so dying isn’t out of the question.
“Brittany?” Nomi drops to her knees beside him, her eyes wide with amazement.
“I played dead, just like we worked out!” Brittany crows.
She’s bloody, covered in gore; her yellow tee is half-dyed red.
But she looks jubilant, the gap of her missing teeth prominent as she turns to Nomi.
“I played dead. Simon put this blood on me, it’s ground beef.
It’s kinda nasty, and he had to use some of his own blood? But we tricked them pretty good.”
“Brittany? Oh my god.” Nomi seems to be in shock. “Oh my god, let me look at you—Brittany, holy shit . . .” She’s holding the girl at arm’s length, hugging her tight, holding her out again.
“Did you see Simon go crazy? He’s like a robot,” Brittany whispers. “Like the Terminator or something.”
“What the hell—when did you see The Terminator?” Nomi whispers back, but now she’s glancing between the kid and him. “No injuries. Nothing except the damage to her mouth.”
“You mean my teeth? Those fell out a couple days ago—Mom says that’s what they do, ’cause they’re for babies.
” Brittany’s grinning to high heaven. The migraine auras are leaving Simon’s vision, but for the moment he can still see that the girl is the color of bubblegum, or those pink-and-yellow candies that Sofia Rosa likes. “I’m not a baby anymore. I’m a kid.”
“She’s a good kid,” Simon murmurs, looking up at the high ceiling. “The best kid.”
“You have more injuries than she does,” Nomi points out.
He’s becoming aware of that.
“Let me look at you,” Nomi says, but this time, she’s talking to him. Her cold fingers touch the skin below his collarbones, fold up the wet fabric at his waist, and she hisses. “That’s . . . Oh Jesus. I mean, it’s shallow, but it’s not a cat scratch.”
“Time to go to the hospital,” Brittany intones solemnly.
“No hospitals,” Simon says, almost at the exact same time Nomi does.
But now Nomi is leaning over him again. “Simon, can you hear that? I can hear sirens.”
He can hear them, too—the “brrp brrp” of police cars in the far distance, the tones clashing and mixing somehow.
The sounds don’t bring a welling sense of relief, the way they clearly do for Nomi.
It takes him a second to remember why, but then it comes back.
His fake papers . . . his old identity .
. . the things he did as Simon Gutmunsson . . . the things he’s done now . . .
“The best idea would be to not get arrested,” he whispers. Then he takes hold of Nomi’s arm. “Help me up.”
“What?” She looks taken aback that he would even suggest it.
“I can’t be here when the police arrive,” he reminds her. “Help me up.”
“You can’t just leave!” Her hands are raised and fluttering, even as he rolls onto his side, pushes himself toward upright. “Simon, you’ve been stabbed, you’re bleeding all over the place—”
“Nomi,” he says earnestly. “Think about it.” It takes her a minute, because she’s in shock, but he can see in her eyes when she gets it. “I can go out the way you and everyone else came in, right? I’ll just walk outside and keep walking.”
“Wait,” she says, then some sort of mechanism rights itself in her brain, and she gets up and runs over to some place he can’t see behind him.
By the time he’s struggled awkwardly into a sitting position—ow—she’s back with a set of keys, which she shoves into his hand.
“Gino Hart parked outside on the street. It’s a white Ford Escort with a busted side window.
We’re near West Nineteenth and Tenth Avenue—oh shit, can you even drive? ”
He starts to laugh at that, but it’s too painful, so he stops. “I guess we’ll find out.” Then, as Nomi’s helping him to stand up—fuck, that hurts—he thinks of something else. “The cops will ask what happened.”
Nomi puts a hand to her forehead; it seems as if she might have a headache too. Brittany looks up at Nomi and pats her knee; then Nomi gets another flash of common sense. “Lock me in the storage room with Brittany.”
“What?”
“I mean it—lock us both in the storage room.”
It’s smart, a level of smart he’s only just able to keep up with at the moment. “Good idea. And look, I won’t go to the tenement, in case the police go there with you to do follow-up. Meet me at the Riverview?”
Nomi is passing him his coat. “Will you be all right?”
Pulling on his coat involves moving too many parts of him that sting or ache, but he accomplishes it somehow. “I survived a headshot, I’m pretty sure I’ll survive this. Okay, let’s go.”
Nomi picks up Brittany in her arms, walks over to the storage-room door. She’s reassuring the girl that next time the door opens, Brittany’s mom will be there, but it’s still a hard sell—Simon understands why. But the sirens are closing, and there’s not much time.
Before he shuts the door on them both, he squeezes Brittany’s shoulder and says goodbye, gives Nomi her jacket. “Good luck with the police.”
“Good luck on the road.” Her dark eyes are a little vulnerable, for what he thinks might be the first time. “See you soon.”
Then the solid door has sealed them in, and he flips the hasp and clicks the padlock, walks away.
Simon has no memory of arriving at the warehouse, because of unconsciousness, and now he’s got to navigate his way out.
He staggers to a large metal sliding door, walks through and discovers a garage.
Straight ahead, a large warehouse door is open: Wind blows in, and it’s cold, and he can see the outside.
He has no idea where he is, but this is the direction he’s moving in, and hopefully, he’ll be gone before the police arrive.
He pulls his peacoat tighter, limps through this garage area past an old forklift; then he’s in a front yard which is open to the gray sky.
Rain is still coming down, a light drizzle now, and the cold breeze sneaks in behind his collar; the nape of his neck is damp, and he shivers.
There’s a plywood fence, and on the left, an entry door, which is swinging a little in the breeze; it bumps him gently as he totters out onto the street.
Sirens are getting louder. He looks around: On his right, parked on the curb, is a white car with a spiderweb of cracks in the rear passenger window. He walks over to it, uses the keys in his hand to unlock the driver’s side door.
Getting into the car is tricky and somewhat painful.
But once he’s in, and the door is shut, he’s warmer.
Now what? He exhales, lets his hands move: They function confidently of their own volition, putting the blood-slippery key in the car’s ignition, starting the engine, remembering headlights and wipers and seat belt.
He even knows how to put the seat back to accommodate his legs, which are longer than Gino Hart’s were.
I know how to drive. How about that.
Simon puts the car in gear, works the hand brake, and rolls off the curb.
He still hasn’t had a cigarette, and he has a strong desire for one, but determines that—on balance—destabilizing his newly discovered driving skills and jolting his body’s various wounds for the sake of a nicotine hit probably isn’t worth it.
He’s mostly numb right now, and he’d like to keep it that way for a while.
His brain is still whirring, though, and it’s currently showing him a map of New York City streets from West Nineteenth to Eleventh Avenue and onward—he even remembers which streets are one way only.
Turn left onto West Nineteenth, left again onto Eleventh, left onto West Fifteenth, right onto Ninth, right onto Jane . . .
He’ll be at the Riverview in no time.