“A baby?” Aubrey asked.
“Yeah. Little boy,” Karen said. “Looked Indian. Subcontinent Indian, I mean. I called him Raja, but I don’t know what his real name was. Eric dropped him off, then came and got him again. I didn’t ask what it was about.”
“March of 2003,” Ex said. “I remember that. He said he had to go take care of his mother for a few weeks. In Kentucky.”
“Well, he spent at least some of that time with an eight-month-old in Boston,” Karen said.
“And Grandma Heller died when I was twelve,” I said.
“That was the thing with Eric,” Karen said. “I knew a lot of things about him, but I was never sure any of them were true. Maybe he’d been in the military, maybe that was just a story. Maybe he’d gone to Juilliard. Maybe not. He had this way of suggesting things without ever exactly saying them. And then sometimes he was just joking. Or he was protecting me from something.”
The muted trumpet rose like a child wailing for her mother and went silent. Karen’s structural half-smile softened.
“I’m not helping, am I?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems like everyone knew a different version of him. I just wish…”
That he’d told me what he was, and what I was going to become. That he’d taught me. That he’d trusted me.
The Eric Heller I’d known had been the benign uncle, hated by my uber-Christian parents. When I’d gone on the queen mother of all teenage rebellious benders at sixteen and woken up with an honest-to-God lost weekend and a tattoo on the small of my back, Eric had been the guy to cover for me. When my father had informed the family that Eric was an abomination before God, I’d thought it meant he was gay.
And Eric had also been the architect of a secret war against riders. And having an affair with Aubrey’s wife, Kim, which was another thing I’d carefully not mentioned. And secreting anonymous babies with former FBI agents.
I ate an oyster, the stony shell feeling unnaturally solid and real.
“I’ll tell you what,” Karen said. “I’ll tell you anything I remember. Any question you want answered about him, I’ll do my best. And you can have those last two favors I owed him. And if I happen to win the lottery, I’ll pay you back for the house and car.”
“Deal,” I said, managing a smile.
As we ate, the conversation warmed. Karen was a good storyteller, and Ex, Chogyi Jake, and Aubrey all chimed in. It gave me room to step back and let the fatigue seep in. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, asking Karen to give me information about Eric. Some handle on him, some indication of whether he would have done what I was doing now. Something. The truth was, I didn’t need to charge prices for what I did, and at twenty thousand a throw, Eric didn’t either. With the money he’d left me, twenty thousand was pocket change.
But still, he’d taken it from Karen. He’d slept with her, taken her money, nursed her back to health, involved her in his work without explaining anything. I didn’t know what to make of any of it, and as the food hit my stomach, my few remaining neurotransmitters seemed to break down. The after-dinner coffee came at nine o’clock. Or five in the morning, Athens time. Fatigue was shaking in my veins.
I paid off the bill just as the band came back for a second set. Five black men in good suits and thin black ties. I wondered if it was a uniform designed to make me think of the Blues Brothers, or maybe it was the other way around. The sax player caught me staring at them and smiled.
“Why don’t you guys get the car,” Karen said. “Jayné and I can walk it.”
I was too tired to object, even though the idea of walking as far as the sidewalk seemed optimistic. Karen tucked my arm in hers and led me out into the thick night air. It was easy to forget how short she was, but as we reached Bourbon Street, she shifted, putting her arm around my waist and looping mine over her shoulder. I was easily four inches taller, and she fit beside me the way I had once fit beside my boyfriend.
The old Sting tune kept floating through my head as we turned north. “Moon Over Bourbon Street.” And here I was, walking through the narrow street. Cars moved past us slowly, careful of pedestrians like us. A wide brick courtyard on our left reverberated with a song that was thick and passionate and powerful the way only live music could be. The air was thick with humidity and the smells of gasoline and hot grease and, incongruously, fresh bread. Karen leaned her head against my shoulder, and the intimacy of her body next to mine was unfamiliar and inappropriate, and it was also as comforting as hugging my best friend. Part of me was freaked out by her, and part was grateful she was there. Her perfume was hyacinth and musk. I was surprised she wore anything so feminine.
A girl with café-au-lait skin no older than sixteen skipped up beside us, holding something out in her hand. A silver fleur-de-lis pin.
“Three dollars,” she said.
I looked at the pin, then at the girl. Without breaking stride, I pulled my wallet out of my backpack, plucked a five out, and gave it to the girl.
“Keep the change,” I said. She grinned and skipped away. I smiled and dropped the pin into my pack along with the wallet. Karen watched it all as if it were happening at a distance.
“How’re you doing, kiddo?” she said.
“Everyone keeps asking me that,” I said. “I’m fine. I mean, not great, but fine.”
“Hope it’s okay I sent the boys on ahead,” she said.
“Sure,” I said, then sighed. “It’s kind of nice, actually.”
“I wanted a minute with just the two of us. I put you on the spot back there.”
“I thought I was doing that to you,” I said.
“That too.”
A man with a new-looking goatee and a T-shirt that read I Got Bourbon Faced on Shit Street lurched in front of us smiling, looked at Karen looking back at him, and scuttled away.
“The things we did today?” she said. “The safe house, the van, the wards. All of it. It would have taken me weeks.”
“Nah,” I said. “You could have—”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “You could. I knew Eric maybe as well as anyone, and I barely knew him at all. I can’t imagine how hard it would be stepping into his shoes.”
I swallowed. If I hadn’t been so desperately tired, I probably wouldn’t have teared up.
“You’re doing great,” she said.
The sense of sloppy gratitude was only matched by the embarrassment that I was quite so easy to read. I wiped my cheek with the back of one hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thanks.”
It seemed like we’d hardly started walking when she angled me up and to the left, and the new hotel opened before us. I stopped at the counter and got my key card. The boys weren’t anywhere to be seen. Karen took my hand. At that moment, I felt like I’d known her my whole life. The smile at the corner of her mouth snuck up to her eyes.
“Call me when you wake up?” she said.
“I promise,” I said. “But it may be early evening. I’m destroyed.”
“Whenever,” she said, then swooped in and gave me a quick hug. I watched her walk back out onto the street, and I watched the men she passed watch her too. My body felt like overcooked chicken ready to slough off the bone. I made my way to the elevator, up to my floor, to the room number, and into the great, king-size bed, still thinking about Karen without thinking anything in particular.
If there were any justice in the world, I would have gone off like a light and awoken twenty hours later feeling rested and human again. Instead, I lay on the bed and vibrated. The clock at the bedside told me it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. My body said I’d been up all night, and I was officially too tired to sleep.
True to their word, Ex and Karen had brought my stuff to the new hotel. I popped open the laptop, checked mail, checked a couple of blogs I followed, and turned to Google.