– Here.
She's holding out her hand, change pooled in her tiny palm. I pluck out two quarters.
– What's your mom's number?
– The apartment or her cell?
– Cell.
She rattles off the number and I dial. She stands on one side of the phone, trying to make it look like she's not with me. Pretty hard to do with the cuffs, even when they're covered by an extra T-shirt from her bag.
– Hello.
– Ms. Horde, it's me.
Amanda looks at me.
– Joseph. I.
– I have her.
– Oh, I. Thank you, Joseph.
Amanda raises her eyebrows.
– She's just so relieved, isn't she?
I ignore her.
– Do you want to come and get her?
– Yes I. No. No, you should. Can you bring her here?
Amanda is making little kissy faces.
– Is she just so grateful to you? Can she just not wait to see me?
– Sure. What's the address?
She gives me an address on 81st off Park Avenue. Amanda is just looking bored now, watching everything but me, and listening to every word I say.
– We'll grab a cab and be there in twenty minutes.
– Good. Good. Joseph?
– Yeah.
– Can I?
– What?
She doesn't say anything.
– You want to talk to her?
Amanda turns her head to look at me again.
– No. No. That's. Just. You better just bring her home.
– OK.
I hang up and grab Amanda's backpack from the ground.
– Let's go.
– Didn't want to talk to her darling daughter?
– Guess not.
– Don't be shocked.
– I'm not.
I wave the backpack at a passing cab. It stops. I open the door and wait while Amanda thinks about it. She looks inside the cab, looks at me. I gesture at the open door. She shrugs and climbs in. I get in after her and give the cabbie the address and we roll. She's looking out the window. I'm gritting my teeth and a little gasp squeezes out between them.
She turns from the window and looks at my face, looks at my swollen and scabbed lips stretched tight over my teeth.
– What's eating you?
– Nothing. Just shut up for awhile.
– And I was looking forward to another chat. As if.
And she goes back to the window. And I go back to feeling the pain that's building inside me. My veins have started to burn.
The hours spent in the school basement hiding from the sun have brought me closer to the next phase of Vyral starvation. The stage where my body will simply shut down as the Vyrus makes adjustments deep within my brain. I'm at the border now, this is as far as I've gone. I know I can take the pain right here in this moment, but I don't know if I can take what will come in the next minute or the minute after that or all the very few minutes remaining to me.
So I grind my teeth and clench my right fist, my fingernails digging into the scabbed palm of my hand. And I tell myself that she is not the answer. Tell myself that having the cabbie pull over and dragging her into a dark alley is not the answer. But the Vyrus is telling me a different story. That's OK, I can ignore it. I can ignore it just as easily as I ignore our hands sitting on the seat between us, the chain joining them beneath a retro Joan Jett T-shirt she picked up somewhere on St. Marks because she thought it was cool.
– Moooom, I'm hoooome.
The elevator from the lobby opens directly onto the foyer. It's no more or less than you'd expect: large, but not too large; expensively appointed, but not too expensively appointed; tasteful, but not too tasteful; boldly decorated, but not too boldly decorated. All in all, the kind of place I would expect to find a fabulously wealthy and dysfunctional family with ties to the Coalition. But not too much like that. I wait for the inevitable housekeeper to arrive, but none does. Nor does anyone answer Amanda's call. I look at her. She looks back and shrugs. What did you expect, a victory parade? I smear my forehead against my shoulder, wiping some of the cold sweat away.
The sweats got bad just as the cab pulled up to the Hordes' brownstone. I had to ask Amanda to pay the cab because Tom took the last of my cash. She looked at me like I was lame, but I've gotten used to that. She got a key out of her hip pocket and let us into an entryway that was similar in every way to this foyer. Then she led me into an elevator to take us the two flights to the floor her mother occupies. This accompanied by one of many sideways glances to see what I think of her folks keeping separate quarters. I notice the glances, but I'm not giving much back, focused as I am on the simmering fluid hissing through my organs, I'm starting to wish the cramps would return.
– Mom!
No reply.
– Come on, she's probably passed out.
She storms ahead of me, dragging me by the cuffs as I stumble clumsily behind her. She looks back at me.
– You want to try walking for a change?
I don't say anything.
– I knew it. You are a junkie, aren't you?
I don't say anything.
– Well come on, junkie. Get paid and then you can get rid of me and go fix.
She hauls me down the central hallway that runs the length of the brownstone. I catch peripheral glimpses of a bathroom, a kitchenette, a large bedroom. All done up in the not too style. At the end of the hall we come up against a closed door. Amanda slaps her knuckles against it once, then shoves it open.
– Hey, Mom, I'm hooome.
She gives my arm a jerk and I take a lurching step into the room and she holds her cuffed hand up in the air.
– And look what I found. Can I keep it?
Marilee Horde looks up from the glass in her hands. She's sitting on a couch that matches everything in her little sitting room perfectly. Her red-rimmed eyes flick dully from Amanda to me to Amanda.
– Oh. Oh, Amanda. I'm. I am sorry.
Amanda drops her arm.
– You got that right, Mom.
Marilee's head drops back down and she stares deep into her glass.
– Sorry.
Amanda takes a step into the room.
– Mom?
The guy who knocks me out doesn't hit me half as hard as Hurley did. Then again he doesn't have to, I'm already halfway there. I go down and out. Sorry thing is, the Vyrus doesn't seem to care whether I'm conscious or unconscious. It just keeps hurting me.
Metal is rasping on metal.
– How much longer?
– Little while. Quicker if we go through his wrist.
– Just the cuffs, please.
I can hear them talking, but I can't see anything. My eyes must be closed, but rather than darkness, they peer into a pale gray abyss. Then something bobs up out of the abyss, something dark that suddenly resolves into a man's face.
– He's awake.
The rasping stops and another face appears looking down at me. Something waves in front of my face. A hand.
– Uh-uh. His eyes are open, but he's not awake.
Yes, he's right, my eyes are open. The gray abyss is the ceiling of Marilee Horde's sitting room. I try to shift my eyes to get a look around. They don't move. I try to blink. Nothing. I am frozen. The hand that was waving in front of my eyes slaps lightly at my cheeks.
– He's out.
A third face appears. I know this one, Dr. Dale Edward Horde.
– Not to tell you how to do your jobs, but is he, perhaps, faking it? The hand flourishes and an instrument materializes between its fingers: a stiletto long and thin, a rainbow glittering along its well-honed edge. The blade dips close to my right eye and the point hovers there, eclipsing half of the world.