Burton got up, raising a finger. Timmy sat deep in his chair like a trained dog receiving a command. Sylviawhoeverwas singing in the bathroom. The splash of water against porcelain covered the sound of Burton opening the gun safe, pulling out the pistol and its magazine. When he stepped back into the main room, Timmy hadnt so much as crossed his legs. Burton held the gun out.
You know what this is? he asked.
Its a ten-millimeter semi-auto, Timmy said. He put his hand out halfway to it, and then looked up at Burton, his eyes asking permission. Burton nodded and smiled. Timmy took the gun.
You know guns?
Timmy shrugged. Theyre around. It feels sticky.
Its got a resin of digestive enzymes, Burton said. Wont hurt your skin much, but it wont hold prints and it breaks down any trace evidence. No DNA.
Thats cool, Timmy said, and started to hand it back. Burton tossed the magazine onto the boys lap.
Those are plastic-tipped. Organ shredders, but they dont work on armor, Burton said. Still, step up from that homemade shotgun youve used, right?
Right.
You know how those things all go together?
Timmy weighed the pistol in one hand, the magazine in the other. He slid them together, checked the chamber, flicked the safety on and off. It wasnt the practiced action of a professional, but talented amateur was good enough for his purposes. Timmy looked up, his smile blank and empty. New job? he asked.
New job, Burton said. I know you and Erich grew up together. Is this going to be a problem for you?
Nope, Timmy said, slipping the gun into his pocket. There hadnt even been a pause.
Youre sure?
Sure, Im sure. I get it. Theyve got him in the system now. If they get him too, theres all kinds of things he compromises. If they cant get him, nothing gets compromised, and Im the only guy who can get close to him without him seeing it coming.
Yes.
So I kill him for you, Timmy said. He could have been saying, So Ill pick up dinner on my way. There was no bravado in it. Burton sat, tilted his head. The friendly smile and the empty eyes met him.
All right, Im curious, Burton said. Did you game this? This was your plan?
Shit no, chief, Timmy said. This heres just happy coincidence.
Either it was truth or the best deadpan Burton had seen in a long time. The shower water turned off. On the newsfeeds, a woman in a Star Helix uniform was saying something, a dour expression on her face. Burton wanted to turn up the volume, see if the press statement was something useful to him like reading fortunes in coffee grounds. He restrained himself.
I will need proof, Burton said. Evidence, yeah?
So what, you want his heart?
Heart. Brain. Windpipe. Anything he cant live without.
Not a problem, Timmy said. Then a moment later, Is there anything else, or should I go?
You watched out for this kid your whole life, Burton said. He vouched for you. Got you in with me. And youre really going to put a slug in his brain just like that?
Sure. Youre the man with the plan.
When the boy left, Burton came to stand beside Oestra, watching him walk away down the sunlit street. The thinning reddish-brown hair and wide shoulders made him look like some kind of manual laborer twice his age. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. He could have been anybody.
Think hell do it? Burton asked.
Oestra didnt answer for a long moment. Might.
He does this for me, hell do anything, Burton said, clapping Oestras shoulder. Potential for a man like that.
If he doesnt?
There are a lot of ways to dispose of someone disposable, Burton said.
Burton walked back to the chair, shifted the newsfeed buffer back to the start of the Star Helix womans press announcement. The woman started talking, and Burton listened.
Timmys ruin had long since become a misery for Lydia, and misery had become a kind of pleasure. Their days had taken a kind of rhythm. Erich woke first in the morning, his uneven footsteps playing a tentative counterpoint to the rough sound of the waves. Lydia lay in the warmth of her cocoon, the slick fabric wrapped around her until only her mouth and nose were in the free air. When she could no longer pretend sleep, she emerged and made tea on the little stove, and when she was done, Erich transferred the solar charger to his deck and squatted over it, scanning the newsfeeds with a ferocity and single-mindedness that made her think of a poet chasing the perfect rhyme. If Timmy was there, she would walk with him to the boats or survey the newest supplies he had smuggled to their private island: fresh clothes, carryout tandoori, charged batteries for the deck and the lamp. More often, he was not there, and she haunted the shore like a sea widow. The city glowered out at her from across the water, like a great angry gray face, condemning her for her sins.
Is this the time? she would wonder. Has he left now, never to return? Or will there be one more? Another time to see his face, to hear his voice, to have the conversations that we can only ever have with each other?
She knew that the churn was playing itself out there, across the narrow waves. Security had likely come to her rooms on Lievs word and found them already abandoned. The men and women shed worked with these last years were part of the past now. Part of a life shed left behind, though nothing else had begun. Only this island exile and its waiting.
At night, Erich would eat with her. Their conversations were awkward. She knew that she was uncanny to him, that he thought of Timmy as his own friend, a character from his own past. Her appearance and the reticence she and Timmy had to making her explicable were as odd to Erich as if lobsters had crawled up out of the sea and started speaking Spanish. And yet if they did, what could anyone do but answer them, and so Erich and Lydia reached the odd peace of roommates, intimate in all things and nothing.
That night, Timmy crossed the waves unnoticed by her or Erich. Lydia was looking east over the ruined island to the greater sea beyond. Erich curled in the room that common habit designated as his, snoring slightly as the deck ran down its charge to nothing beside him. Timmy arrived quietly and alone, announced only by his footsteps and the smell of fresh ginger.
When he emerged from the darkness, two thin plastic sacks hung from his left fist. Lydia shifted, not rising, but coming up to rest on her knees and ankles in a posture she imagined to be like a geisha, though shed never met a real geisha. Timmy put the sacks down beside her, his eyes on the shadows past the doorway. Far away across the water, gulls complained.
Two? she said.
Hmm? Timmy followed her gaze to the sacks. A glimmer of something that might have been chagrin passed through his eyes fast as a blink. Oh. The dinners. Hey, is Erich back there?
He is, Lydia said. I think hes asleep.
Yeah, Timmy said, straightening. He put a hand into his pocket. Hang on a minute. He walked back toward the black doorway as if he were going to check on the other boy, perhaps wake him for his supper.
Wait, Lydia said as Timmy reached the doorway.
He looked back at her, twisting at the shoulders, his body and feet still committed.
Come sit with me.
Yeah, I just gotta
First, she said. Come sit with me first.
Timmy hesitated, fluttering like a feather caught between contradictory breezes. Then his shoulders sank a centimeter and his hips turned toward her. He pulled his hand from his pocket. Lydia opened the sacks, unpacked the food, laid the disposable forks beside the plates. Every movement had the precision and beauty of ritual. Timmy sat facing her, his legs crossed. The bulge of the gun stood out from his thigh like a fist. Lydia bowed her head, as if in prayer. Timmy took up his fork and stabbed at the ginger beef. Lydia did the same.
So youre going to kill him? Lydia asked, her voice light.
Yeah, Timmy said. I mean, I aint happy about it, but its what needs to get done.