Chapter 23
ROGUE
Armen splits us up outside the gate.
He and Sting head in one direction, Vi and I in the other, toward the law firm or whatever might be left of it. There’s no discussion. That's how Armen makes decisions, and I know better than to slow things down by asking why.
Not that I need him to spell it out. I've got my own shit to take care of today. Well, it’s Vi's shit, really. I'm just the muscle.
It's a Tuesday morning and the barbershop we pass is still open somehow, one man inside reading a paper with no customers in sight. A woman walks a dog that looks as worn out as the street it's on. We pass a bus stop with a bench and no bus, the timetable still posted but completely out of date.
Vi looks at all of it.
I look at Vi looking at all of it.
I’ve noticed her doing this as we pass through the streets of Rothwell.
She'll round a corner, and I can see her thoughts go somewhere private before she comes back. She never says where she went. I never ask. But I notice every time. I suppose I do the same. No matter how long I’m in the Rot, it’s still a shock to see what Rothwell has become.
What I wouldn’t give to see what Vi looked like walking down the street back before the city fell on hard times.
Hard times, what am I saying? This city is beyond hard times. It’s a total shithole.
"Where was your father's shop from here?" she asks.
"Delaney. Few blocks over."
"What was it like here then? You know, before."
"Loud. Delaney was loud. My dad had the radio going in the shop from open to close. Same three stations, rotating. You knew what time it was by what was playing. First, there was the traffic report, even though he wasn’t driving anywhere.
He just had to know where the traffic jams were.
Then the news, local and national. Then old 70s hits, which he’d sing along to. Badly."
You know how they say you don’t know what you have til it’s gone? Yeah, it’s like that.
“It all seemed so routine at the time. Borderline boring, at least to me. But shit, what I wouldn’t do to have that back. ’Course, I probably wouldn’t appreciate it even if I got a second chance. That’s just how people are.”
Vi smiles. "Oh my God, my father used to play the same Led Zeppelin album every Sunday morning while he made coffee. I used to know every word. I wonder if I still do."
I clear my throat and give it a try. “There’s a lady who’s sure all that flitters is old…”
She busts out laughing. Not the small, restrained chuckles she limits herself to in the Rot, but loud, obnoxious ha-ha-ha’s.
“You have that totally wrong,” she gasps, trying to catch her breath. “It goes like this: “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold…”
She wants to continue but can’t. She’s still laughing. And holy shit, does it feel good to hear that, like she forgot how to breathe and is figuring it out again.
I keep singing, purposely getting the words wrong but also out of tune. While I do, I remember the sound of dad’s busy shop with wrenches, engines, and gruff mechanics swearing or laughing, or both.
I also think back to what it was like to grow up in a place where something was always being fixed. Where broken things got better.
That’s not the Rothwell of today.
We turn onto Calloway Street, which has held together better than many of the blocks around it.
It has a couple functioning businesses where the windows are intact rather than boarded up with plywood.
In any other city, this street would appear to be down on its luck. But here, it’s actually a step up.
Not hard to shine when the bar is that low.
We find the law firm’s address, an old, stone building, which was probably once pretty impressive.
The lobby directory is by the door, with fancy brass letters on black felt.
Half the names are missing, and the ones that aren’t are missing random letters.
Someone has written NO MAIL in marker across the bottom.
I run my finger down the directory, hoping that the law firm is still listed.
Suite 412.
Yes. The address in the papers.
We take the stairs because there’s no way the elevator’s working, not that I’d take it anyway, and when we get to the fourth floor, it’s clear nobody has been here in a long time.
The carpet is worn and smelly, and it’s dark save for the light coming through an open door to an office with a large bay of windows.
Before we move any farther, I pull out my flashlight and we move along, following the suite numbers: 401, 403, 405.
We turn our attention to the other side of the hallway for the even numbers: 408. 410. Then 414.
What?
Vi stops beside me. "Where's 412?"
I look at the wall between 410 and 414. Solid. No door, no frame, no sign of where it might have been. Just wall.
What the hell? We look up and down the corridor in disbelief, like we either overlooked the suite number or like it might magically appear.
"Where is it?” I ask.
Vi stares at the wall. "Maybe it was never real?”
"Holy shit. I think you’re right. 412 was just a number on a document. Just enough to make the paperwork look legit. Fuckers used a fake address."
Vi slumps against the wall behind her, right where suite 412 should have been.
"My father probably found this too," she says. "He came here, stood in this corridor, and figured out this same exact thing.”
I can’t see her all that well in the glow of my flashlight, but I can picture the expression she’s wearing anyway. It kind of kills me. I hate to see her like this.
She sighs. "Whoever he was chasing found out he was getting close."
For a second, she runs her hand flat on the wall between suites 410 and 414. Her father probably stood right here in this spot. Followed the same thread to the same dead end.
"Rogue,” she says.
"Yeah?"
"He was here.” Her voice is steady. "I can feel it."
We stand in there for a moment longer, then Vi takes her hand off the wall and pulls her shoulders back.
"Okay," she says. "Whoever is at the head of all this, the ‘ceiling’ as Alice calls it, was careful enough to register a suite that doesn't exist.”
"Don’t forget arrogant. They never thought anyone would come looking."
"They were wrong."
“Let’s go,” I say.
Out on the street, I stay close to her, closer than I need to, and we maneuver through the quiet, worn city.
I've watched a lot of people come through hard things. Most of them bend. Some of them break. Very few of them do what Vi does, which is to keep moving forward no matter what obstacles fall in their path.
She catches me looking.
"What?"
"Nothing."
“You’re looking at me.”
“So?” I ask, taking her hand.
We’ve never held hands while walking. I could get used to this.
She rolls her eyes like she’s some kind of badass but grips my hand anyway. We head back through the streets of a city that did its damage and is somehow is still standing.
Like us.