14
B lake and Marin returned to the library later that afternoon to find Celeste face down next to the microform machine and Noel scrambling to make up for the difference in manpower.
“No dice?” Blake asked.
“I think I would remember being an eighty-year-old woman,” Marin mused, bringing a thoughtful finger to his chin. “What about you, Noel? Any success?”
Noel shook his head. “Sorry, I wasn’t able to find anything relevant.” He turned away from the computer screen. “How did your day go?”
“Well, it turns out this one is a walking encyclopedia of art history.” Blake chuckled. Marin glowed with pride. “We were at the Crocker Art Museum for hours. I don’t know how you store that much information in your head.”
“But nothing about your personal life?” Celeste groused, propping their chin up on their palm.
“Unfortunately not.” Marin closed his eyes with a morose sigh.
“But I think we can safely assume he has some sort of college education?” Blake supplied, doing his best to be helpful.
“Unless you remember where you went, that isn’t too helpful, now is it?” Celeste snapped, turning back towards the massive pile of microfiche that they’d accumulated beside them.
“Hey, come on…” Noel scolded quietly.
“Sorry,” Celeste apologized, beginning to slot the tiny folders back into the box from whence they had come. “I’ve been at this for hours and I’m fucking exhausted. It’s super frustrating to have not made more progress.”
“Sorry,” Marin apologized, hanging his head in dejection. “Again, thank you so much for helping out.”
“Yes, thank you both so much,” Blake offered, although he knew that it did little to lessen the load of disappointment—he was doing his best to try to stay positive, despite the looming deadline lurking in the shallows of his hindbrain. “If you want I can buy us a round of Dutch Bros?”
“Ugh, no thanks.” Celeste shook their head, fastening the box of microfiche marked Mercury News 1998 with a lid. “If I consume any more caffeine I’m going to have a brain hemorrhage. I want to get out of here and take a nap.”
“I can keep going,” Noel offered, gesturing towards the computer screen. “Matt’s stream doesn’t start until later, so I don’t have anywhere to be for a while.”
“You’re so sweet.” Marin smiled at him. Noel flushed in response, flipping up his hoodie once again.
“I think Celeste is right.” Blake sighed. “We should all break from here and go get some rest before we meet back up tonight—were you interested in coffee, Noel?”
“No, that’s okay.” Noel held up a hand, shaking his head in polite refusal. “It makes me too anxious.”
“Then we’ll see you guys tonight?” Marin asked.
Noel nodded and signed off of the terminal, grabbing his empty Tupperware. “Yeah, I’ll text you when Matt and I get back into town.”
“I’ll see you two at my place around six, in that case,” Celeste told Blake and Marin, dragging their tote off of the table and slinging it over one shoulder. “Don’t worry about bringing anything, I’ve got pre-gaming covered.”
“Okay, we’ll be heading over with Ryan once he gets back from work,” Blake confirmed. He reached out for one of the boxes of microfiche next to Celeste. “Here, I’ll help you bring this back to the archives.”
As they carried the boxes down the stairs, Blake asked: “Have you heard from the right Paul Aberley yet?”
Celeste shook their head. “Unfortunately not. I’m gonna send out a few more e-mails before I go to sleep, so hopefully I’ll get a hit from one of those—are you okay?”
“What?” Blake asked, taken aback by Celeste’s sudden inquiry. They sighed, heaving their box up onto the counter as they arrived at the archives. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You’re a shitty liar,” Celeste accused, turning around and propping their elbows up next to their boxes. “You’ve been chewing your lip for five minutes straight. I can tell you’re stressed.”
“I’m not—” Blake began, but was silenced by an arch look from Celeste.
He glanced over his shoulder, checking to see if Marin had followed them down.
“We’re almost to the halfway point and we still aren’t any closer to finding out where he died or what his final wish was.
I was hoping that we’d have at least one of those by now. ”
Blake leaned on the counter next to Celeste, picking at the fraying edges of one of the microfiche boxes, where the honeycombed inside of the cardboard had been exposed.
“I’m at a loss at what to do next. I’m failing him.
And at this rate…” he drew his hand into a loose fist, loathe to admit to his fears out loud.
“At this rate, we’re going to lose him.”
To Blake’s surprise, a warm, gentle hand squeezed his shoulder, grounding him. Blake turned to Celeste, who was staring into the depths of the archive, their brow furrowed.
“You’re not failing him,” they said. “You’re doing everything you can and you’ve hit a roadblock. We’re dealing with magic and mermaids and memories—not everything is going to be completely straightforward.”
Celeste turned to Blake properly, taking his biceps in their hands. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”
“Okay.” Blake nodded, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “But Celeste, how are you doing—?”
Celeste cut him off, pressing the buzzer that called for the archive aide.
“Look, Noel said it best: the most important thing we can do right now is try to jog his memories. He seemed really interested in going out dancing the other night. If it’s an activity he did often in his past life, it’s bound to bring something up—hi!
We wanted to return this.” They greeted the aide as he materialized from around a corner.
Blake was only minimally soothed by Celeste’s words, but he supposed they had a point—their only option going forward was to rely on Marin’s memories. It wasn’t as if they were at a complete loss—he was remembering more and more day by day.
But if what was written on the vase was true, those days were severely limited.
Blake spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to track down the commenters on the old Pinterest post of the vase or the owners of the defunct Splashgrounds Manufacturing.
By the time Ryan arrived back at the apartment, the rest of the day had evaporated with no solid leads and it was time to depart.
?
Blake’s Ninja streaked past aging homes. Marin was riding pillion again, body pressed warm to his back amid the evening summer air. Ryan drove in front of them on his Bolt, leading the way.
Ryan signaled that he was about to turn and Blake slowed down. He took a moment to soak in the surrounding neighborhood, the streets lined with thick-trunk oaks and crooked brick sidewalks.
He followed Ryan down a steep driveway terminating in a well-loved brown two-story that had seen its best days sometime before 1992. Celeste stood on the porch, dressed in a strappy skirt and blouse that made them look like a Final Fantasy character.
Celeste and Ryan kicked up a casual conversation as Celeste led them into the house, gesturing for them to remove their shoes on the threshold. The front receiver was made of old, dark wood, featuring a kitschy sculpture of a fat Pulcinella.
On a plush little bed at the end of the hallway were two small dogs: a prim sable papillon and a crusty-eyed white blob that was shivering with a violence hitherto unknown by mankind.
“Hi pups!” Ryan greeted with an enthusiastic grin, racing over to the shaking dog and bestowing it with pets. It wheezed in satisfaction. “Didn’t you say Mémé was going to take Bonbon to Paris with her?”
“Nah, she decided against it. Mom convinced her that the takeoff would probably give him a heart attack,” Celeste said as Marin approached the dogs’ pillow as well.
“He looks… like a very wise old man.” Marin did his best to compliment, patting the ancient dog on the head.
“Yeah, he’s like a thousand years old and has more benign tumors than teeth, yet he continues to live against all odds.” Celeste shook their head in amazement.
The papillon beside Bonbon nudged up towards Marin’s hand as well, slow flicks of its tongue brushing the side of his fingers. He grinned and gave the smaller dog a scratch behind his ear, much to its delight.
“Who’s this little one?” Marin asked.
“Ah, that’s Kerby—he was a gift from my mom for making it through grad school,” Celeste explained.
“Kirby?” Blake asked. “Like the little pink Nintendo guy?”
Ryan leaned over, scratching Kerby under the chin. The papillon squinted his eyes, lips rolling up into a dopey smile.
“Nah, it’s short for Kerberos—Hades’ dog,” Celeste corrected. Blake snorted. It was an extremely apt name for one of the smallest, sweetest-looking little animals he’d ever seen.
“What kind of dog is Bonbon?” Blake inquired.
“I think he was a Maltese when Mémé got him five billion years ago, but I’m not sure if he legally qualifies anymore,” Celeste said.
“How’re your mom and Mémé doing?” Ryan asked. “Is their trip going well?”
“We had our weekly family Zoom meeting earlier today. Mom was drunk before noon and, as always, Mémé’s still your biggest fan,” they told him with a smirk.
“She tried to book a ticket back to America when I told her you were coming over. She said to serve you the loose leaf tea, none of the bagged crap.”
Ryan laughed, scratching Bonbon behind the ear. “Sounds like her.”
Celeste made a dramatic sweeping gesture with their arm and performed a grandiose exit into the hallway.
As their small group migrated, the sound of clicking followed them down the hallway, Bonbon and Kerby trotting alongside them.
Taking pity on the elderly dog, Ryan leaned down to scoop up Bonbon, tucking him close to his chest.
Celeste led them into the den. They descended upon a minibar and extracted a few beers and Buzzballz as promised, passing them around. Ryan set Bonbon down on a doggy bed in the corner, Kerby snuggling up next to the Maltese a second later.
“What time’s the Uber coming?” Ryan asked, hopping over the back of the couch. Celeste checked their phone.
“Around nine thirty,” they informed him. “We’ve got a bit.”
“Bet,” Ryan said, cracking open his beer. “Man it’s been a minute since I’ve had this brand. It’s got me thinking of high school, you know?”
“Those were the days,” Celeste laughed, joining him on the couch.
“Where’d you go, Marin?” Ryan asked. “You from around here? Celeste said you went to college together.”
Shit , Blake thought. He’d already told Matt that Marin was a foreign exchange student. There was no telling if Ryan would find out about that as well.
“Uh,” Marin said.
Celeste looked panicked. “Cal Poly SLO, class of 2020! Man that was a crazy last semester what with the lockdown, huh?”
“Lockdown?” Marin echoed, perplexed.
Ryan didn’t hear him, and he continued. “Did you two know each other from the dorms? I helped Celeste move in back in like ’16, maybe we met briefly?”
“I… actually didn’t go to Cal Poly,” Marin admitted. Blake and Celeste looked at him in alarm. It was his business to tell people about the pygmalion/merman situation, but involving someone else this late in the game…
Ryan looked surprised. “No?”
“No, I dropped out after the first semester,” Marin lied. “I moved home and went to get an AA in art and art history at a local university. I’m actually from Ottowa. I recently came back here in an exchange program to get my BA.”
Blake stared at him, stunned. Good save, Marin!
Celeste deflated in relief on their side of the couch, taking a few gulps of White Claw.
“Oh nice,” Ryan said. “That’s a cool field to be in.”
“Did you study around here?” Marin asked, taking the focus off of himself.
“Ehh.” Ryan shrugged. “I went to trade school for mechanics right out of high school. I started working at a local shop right after that—that’s where we met.” He gestured towards Blake.
Blake explained: “It was a summer job between my bachelor’s and master’s. I was actually working both there and at Water Zone that first summer to try and make rent. Unfortunately I had to quit once I started school again because the hours weren’t working out.”
He took a pull off of his drink. “Got a great roommate out of it, though.”
“What do you do for a living, Celeste?” Marin asked. Celeste inflated with pride.
“Oh a bit of this and that,” they said. “I recently got my master’s in mythology. I’m working on a book about the afterlife and death mythologies, in fact. But meanwhile I work at my mom’s new age shop part time doing tarot readings—and dabble in cryptozoology on the side.”
“Ugh, you’re still on about that shit?” Ryan rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you’re still convinced Tahoe Tessie is real.”
“ Okay .” Celeste huffed. “I happen to have first-hand experience, Ryan .”
“You stepped on a rotten log in Emerald Bay!”
“I’m just saying , looking at it from a strictly folkloric lens —”
As Celeste launched into their defense of Tahoe Tessie, Marin inched closer to Blake, taking a sip from his own drink and laying his head down on Blake’s shoulder. Without thinking, Blake reached over and set a hand on Marin’s thigh.
“Shit,” he cursed into his drink, removing his hand. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize,” Marin told him, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together. He smiled up at Blake through his bangs. “You’re fine.”
Blake ducked his head, grinning into his White Claw.