Her eyes took on a look of hope.
“He told me that… that…” I found myself unable to voice my feelings, which were shifting far too fast for me to even identify. “I know that you…” I pinched my lips shut, frustrated by my inability to express myself. Rather than launching into another false start, I decided to just cut to the chase. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Her eyes melted with relief and gratitude. “Yes.”
I pulled up the mosquito netting and kissed her cheek. She looked so different. Her body had withered down to her bones. Her skin had yellowed from the cinnamon color I remembered so well. Strands of what had always been raven-colored hair were growing in gray at the roots.
She smiled at me. Her smile still looked the same. She asked, “What do you s-say we take that tour… first?”
I pulled Niki out of her chair and set her into a hammock, and then I scrunched in next to her, cradling her head. The respirator was pumping its regular beat, but it was only a matter of time before it petered out. I'd already turned off the generator, leaving us about two hours of battery life.
We'd seen the entire place. Maggie pulled a pair of laborers off the bottling assembly line and told them to help me with Niki's wheelchair and not-so-portable respirator. We started with the distillery and moved on to the cask cellar and then the tasting room. When the rain slowed to a drizzle, we carried more than wheeled Niki through the brandy tree orchards, where wet leaves sparkled whenever the morning sun peeked out from the clouds.
Lastly, we carried Niki up a series of scaffoldlike staircases that led up into the jungle canopy where there were a set of platforms interconnected by suspension bridges. We navigated from platform to platform until we settled on the largest. The platform looked like it was used for hosting parties. There was a bar, tables, a stage with a dance floor. When I'd asked her if she was ready to go back to her room, she said we should do it here.
We didn't talk. There was nothing to say. Now that the generator had been turned off, the sounds of the jungle were allowed to come through in peeping, buzzing, croaking, and warbling harmony.
What the hell was I doing? Just yesterday, I was dead set against this. Yet, here I was. I had no idea if this was the right thing, but it felt right, and that would have to be good enough. I held onto my wife. I held on tight, knowing our time was short, knowing how much of it I'd wasted with my working and my boozing. We were supposed to grow old together. There was always going to be plenty of time to make it up to her.
I lost all sense of time, lying there with Niki. Only the metronomic pumping of the respirator marked the passage of time, until even it finally stopped. Niki didn't stir when it happened. I couldn't say exactly when she passed, but I held on to her the whole time, wanting to stay with her forever. I took solace in the jungle, feeling a part of it and a little less alone. I still didn't want to leave, even as her skin began to cool.
“Juno. We're almost there.”
I opened my eyes. Maggie and I were still on the boat. I sat up and could see that we were back in Koba, riding alongside Floodbank. It was almost dark already. I'd slept the whole way. The first really good sleep I'd had in a long, long time. Then just when I was beginning to feel pretty good, the memories came crashing in. Was that even real? The jungle? The orchards? The sprawling tree house? It was real, I told myself. She's gone. But it all happened so fast. It couldn't be…
The young girl was already standing on the bow as we nudged closer and closer to Floodbank, the floating city within a city. The boat captain throttled the engine down to the point of almost idling, and then he swung the rudder ninety degrees, aiming the boat straight into Floodbank. We entered between a pair of floating restaurants and suddenly found ourselves in a knotted tangle of fishing boats and skiffs. The young girl used a splinter-ended pole to push off the other hulls while the motor plowed forward with a steady crawl until we eventually broke through the jam.
We angled into a narrow channel, barely wide enough for our boat, which was of the bulky fishing variety. We followed the meandering waterway around so many bends that I lost all sense of direction. We passed under arched bridges and weaved around dozens of fruit stands. The channel gradually tapered the deeper we penetrated into Floodbank. The young girl was now using her pole to keep us from bumping the channel walls, which were actually homes that we could see into. Hawkers came out from inside and leaned out over the water, tipping wood poles in close enough for us to reach, one with bags of nuts tied to the end, another with fruit, and yet another with cigarettes. Another hawker jumped onboard carrying a tray loaded down with “soda in a bag.” The baggies were filled with cherry soda and then sealed up with rubber bands anchored around straws that poked out the tops. The boat captain bought one for himself and another for his daughter before the hawker jumped back off.
None of it felt real. It all felt dead to me, like the whole planet was dead, and I was the only person left. Or maybe it was me who was dead, and I was some kind of ghost that could move around and see the world but couldn't interact with it. Try to pick something up and my hand would just pass through. Try to talk and nobody would hear me. My theory proved false when I succeeded in buying up a bottle of supercheap hooch from a kid with a lazy eye.
When the channel became too narrow to proceed any farther, the pilot slapped the motor into reverse. Maggie and I would have to walk from here. I slipped a few bills to the captain, and remembering I didn't have a partially developed spine hanging over my head anymore, I passed another bill to the daughter.
Maggie stopped me once we'd stepped up onto the walkway. “Are you sure you're ready for this, Juno?”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded muffled, like my head was stuffed with cotton balls and my ears were filled with water.
Maggie and I hoofed along the floating walkway, which creaked with the river's gentle rocking. Floating buildings rubbed against one another with the sound of scraping wood. Ropes-all kinds of them-were all that held this place together. Thin and thick, twines and tug ropes, they were all that kept Floodbank from pulling apart and floating downriver. There were ropes all around us, running every which way like the threads of a drunken spider's web.
We crossed a plank bridge that bowed under our weight and stepped in through the beaded curtain that substituted for a door. The one-room home was triangle shaped, custom-built for this particular gap in Floodbank. The man we'd come to see was eating a sandwich, looking at me with a surprised expression. “Juno?” he said.
“That's right, Ian. Long time no see.”
Ian Davies, Sr., put his sandwich down. “What brings you here?”
Maggie and I took seats at his table. “This is Maggie,” I said. “She's your kid's partner.”
“So?”
“Have you talked to him recently?”
“No. I ain't seen him in a long time. He's an ungrateful punk.” He pulled the top slice of bread off his half-eaten sandwich and tossed it through the back door where it skidded off the plank deck and down into the water. “I heard you retired, Juno.”
“Something like that.”
He picked the meat off what was left of his sandwich and tossed the other slice of bread. “You gonna tell me why you're here?”
“What? Can't a couple ol' retirees get together and have a chat about the old days?” I held up the bottle I'd bought.
He rolled up the lunch meat and took a bite. “Not today. I'm kind of busy.”
I didn't let his sourpuss act dissuade me. I knew this guy-you get a couple drinks in him, and you can't shut him up. “Now you're being rude, Ian. You got any glasses?”
He took another bite of his lunch-meat cigar. “No.”
Maggie reached behind her and pulled the cupboard open. She pulled out three dusty glasses and set them on the table. He had his arms crossed.