“A little.”
Cager held up the photo.
“The first identified prion disease. Papua New Guinea, the Fore tribe. Supposedly they were cannibals. Kuru was thought to spread when they ate the infected brains of their enemies. It made them crazy. Of course, they didn’t think it was a sickness. The Fore didn’t need to be told what it was. It was a curse. They put the kuru on their enemies, and their enemies went mad and died.”
He traced the shape of the kuru prion with his index finger.
“And I think sometimes, what if the scientists were wrong and the Fore were right? What if kuru was a curse? Maybe SLP is also a curse. Which leaves a big question.”
He looked up from the photo.
“If mankind has been cursed with SLP, who did it? Who is the enemy that cursed us?”
He pointed a corner of the photo at the ceiling.
“It must be God. No other explanation.”
He lowered the photo.
“Cursed by God. How can there be any escape from a curse like that?”
Park wiped sweat from the back of his neck.
“I don’t believe in curses.”
Cager opened his messenger bag and slipped the photo inside.
“If you spent a little time in Chasm, you would.”
“That’s not real.”
Cager was parting his hair again. He stopped.
“It’s real. What’s happening in there, that’s what counts. God is done with us out here. Reality is what we make now.”
Park shook his wrist from side to side, winding his father’s watch. He wanted a new watch, one that would tell him there was time left, enough of it to make things right again. A watch that would still be poised before midnight, allowing him the time he needed to repair his world.
He took the toilet paper tube from his side pocket and showed it to Cager.
“Same as before.”
Cager had finished with his comb and was looking at his phone.
“No signal. Adrift.”
Park was cradling the tube in his palm.
“Yes or no?”
Cager flicked the screen, and a long string of names rolled across it.
“I have the numbers for over fifty dealers in here. None of them are interesting at all. You seemed interesting. Smart. Emotionally opaque. I thought if I showed you amazing and beautiful things it would elicit an emotional reaction. But mostly you just act anxious. I think that’s the emotion. Like you want to be somewhere else. That’s boring for me. And I’m tempted to call another dealer and let you go where you like.”
“I don’t care, Cager.”
He stopped scrolling, took out his comb, and raked the tines with a thumbnail.
Park displayed the tube.
“I don’t care about your pronouncements. I don’t care about your attitude. I don’t care about your bodyguards. I don’t care about your game. I care about if you can pay me. I’m a drug dealer. I’m not here to play straight man. I’m not here to give you all the cool lines. I’m here to sell you drugs and to sell your friends drugs and to go home. This is Shabu. Same stuff as last night. Same price. Do you want it, or should I sell it to one of these other lame people?”
Cager looked over his shoulder at nothing, smiled, and looked at Park.
“You are smart.”
He reached into his bag. He brought out his hand. He opened it. And he began to shuffle through a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills.
“If you’re really this focused in your business, you may be the first dealer to retire with a dime. Not that the money will be worth anything.”
He held out a sheaf of bills.
“But if it’s what you want, here’s your fifteen thousand.”
Park was looking at the money as if Cager had offered him a handful of kale.
“What?”
“I placed some bets on the War Hole tournament. Inside information, really. The gladiator Comicaze Y was facing in the Final lost his twin sister the day before the match. I know that’s the kind of thing that bothers people.”
He offered the money again.
Park took a half step back.
“I don’t want that. I want the other thing. Like last night.”
Cager brought the comb out.
“The other thing.”
Cager was waving to Magda at the end of the hall.
“I don’t have that. I have money. You want my money. Here it is.”
Magda approached.
“Boss?”
“Do you have signal?”
She touched her Bluetooth, took a slab phone from a pouch on her gun belt, and looked at it.
“No signal.”
“I’m becoming disconnected.”
Cager pocketed the comb and held his hand out to Park.
“Your phone, please.”
Park didn’t move.
Cager folded the thick wad of money and stuffed it in his bag.
“If you want to work something out, give me your phone, please. I need signal. It will take me hours to reenter the flow of my communications if I’m away for too long.”
Park took the phone from his pocket and handed it to him.
Cager looked at it, frowned, dialed, looked at it again.
“Where’s your signal?”
He moved a few steps to his right.
“Is this where you were standing when you took that call?”
Park shook his head.
“I.”
“No signal.”
His thumb flicked across the navigation buttons just below the phone’s screen.
“Your software is miserable.”
He looked up.
“There’s no call in your log.”
Park held out the tube again.
“Just let’s. Let’s do this. And.”
Cager drew his comb.
“Park.”
He placed the teeth in the part and raked to the left.
“Are you well?”
Magda put a hand on the butt of her weapon and placed the palm of her other hand in the middle of Cager’s chest.
“Step clear, boss.”
Cager didn’t step clear, he stepped closer, raking to the right.
“You seemed very animated when you were on the phone. Very engaged. I couldn’t define the emotional state, but you were intent. Who were you talking to? I understand there was no one on the line, but who did you believe you were talking to? I’m curious.”
Park was thinking about the conversations he’d been having with Rose more and more often. Talking about today, thinking she was as well, only to discover she was talking to him three years ago. He had that feeling now. He was having one conversation, Cager was having another. But he didn’t know which was the real one.
“I was talking to my wife.”
Cager held up the phone, displaying the call log that showed that the last incoming call was received hours before.
“No, you weren’t. But that’s who you thought you were talking to?”
Magda was sliding herself into the space between them.
“Back off, boss, he’s not right.”
Cager waved the comb at her.
“Be quiet, Magda. He’s just sleepless. That’s all.”
He held the phone out.
“Yes, Park? Sleepless? And you need what I gave you before.”
Park wanted his uniform. He wanted his badge plainly on his chest. His cap and his stick. He wanted his handcuffs. He wanted to make an arrest. To tell people it was all all right. Just step back and make some room, everything is fine. He wanted to show that he was here for a reason, to do a job. And he wanted to do the job. He wanted his surface to again match his interior. He wanted off.
He took the phone from Cager’s hand.
“The other. Now. I.”
Cager nodded.
“Yes. You don’t have to explain.”
He took his own phone from the bag again.
“But I wasn’t lying. I don’t have any with me. I know where it is, but you will have to get it yourself.”
He was working buttons, accessing an application, scrolling down a list that flicked across the screen.
“Good. There’s one nearby.”
He held out his empty hand.
“The dragon. I have people waiting at the club.”
Park handed him the tube. Cager handed it to Magda.