The food he’d had from Fran’s weighed in his gut like a cannon-ball. He thought about the blood on his clothes and under his fingernails, mud on his shoes, crumbling to the upholstery. The car surged, his guts complained. They braked hard, and then merged with another lane of traffic, a whisper between them and the car behind, a tiny carshare whose passenger, an elegant Arabic-looking woman in office makeup, looked at them with alarm before they skipped to the next lane.
[IV]
THE HOUSE WAS one of three in a row overlooking the ravine’s edge, at the end of a winding, rutted road overhung with leafy trees. The garage door slid aside as they pulled into the rightmost house. It shut and locked into place with huge, shining, round rods sunk deep into the floor and ceiling and walls. The car doors gasped open and he was in a vast space beneath all three houses, brightly lit and dotted with vehicles. Jacob held his hand out to Natalie and she ignored him, then stumbled a little as she twisted to avoid him taking her elbow.
“Come on,” she said to Hubert, Etc and Seth and set off for the garage’s other end.
“Thanks for the ride,” Hubert, Etc called as he quick-stepped after her. Jacob leaned against the car, watching them go. Hubert, Etc couldn’t make out his expression.
She took them up a narrow staircase to a large, messy room with sofas and a panoramic window overlooking the ravine – a green, steep drop-off with the Don River below, white and frothing as it cascaded to Lake Ontario. It smelled funky, old laundry and unwashed dishes, an overlay of scented candles. One wall was finger-painted from floor to ceiling and scribbled on with Sharpies and glitter and ball-point.
“The kids’ wing,” she said. “My sister’s away at university in Rio, so it’s mine for now. I don’t think my parents have been in here five times since the house was built.”
“The whole thing is one house?” Hubert, Etc said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Doesn’t seem like the way you’d build a house if you didn’t care about how rich you seemed to other people,” he said.
She shook her head. “It was a zoning thing. The people on the other side of the ravine” – she gestured at the picture window – “didn’t want to have to look at a ‘monster house’ over breakfast. They’re rich people, we’re rich people, the zoning board didn’t know what to do. Dad settled for building a giant house that looked like three houses.” She swept a sofa free of clutter. “Food’s in the pantry. I’m gonna use the upstairs bathroom. The downstairs one is there, help yourself to toiletries.” She went up the stairs and disappeared around a corner.
Seth grinned at Hubert, Etc meaningfully, a silent comment on his romantic feelings for Natalie. He wasn’t in the mood. He’d held a dead man in his arms. He was bloody, tired, and nauseated.
“I’m going to stand under the shower for an hour,” he said. “So you’d better go first.”
“How do you know I won’t stand under the shower for an hour?” Seth’s maddening grin.
“Don’t.” He’d spotted towels on the ground by the stone fireplace. He passed one to Seth and shook the other one out and put it on the mantel.
There was kindling and newspaper and split logs. He built a fire. He found a large t-shirt that didn’t smell bad, with fake burn-holes all over it, a pair of track-bottoms he thought would fit. He stripped off his shirt, pants and jacket and threw them in the fire. He didn’t know what forensics could do about identifying blood on clothing after laundering but he was sure they could do less with ash. The woven interaction surfaces melted and released acrid smoke. He padded around in a stranger’s clothes, wondering whose they’d been. Maybe Billiam’s.
Natalie came around the corner and stood on the landing, contemplating him and the mess. “Steve in the bathroom?”
“Seth. Yeah.”
“You can use mine, come on.” Just like that, he was in a strange girl’s bedroom.
It was the bedroom of someone who’d been a student until recently: framed certificates, shelves full of books and trophies, thumbtacked posters for bands and causes, but overlaid with political posters, desk piled with broken interaction surfaces, elaborate homemade vapers that could turn titanium into inhalable smoke. A scattering of paper money, bespeaking illicit transactions, and clunky, semi-functional caging around the walls, floors and ceiling – a kid’s attempt to block parental spyware. It was better opsec than Hubert, Etc practiced, but he wasn’t sure it’d work.
Natalie wore loose pajamas, black-and-white striped, and no bra, and he did not stare or even peek. She ran her hand down the bathroom door’s edge, a spot smeared with years of hand prints beyond any ever-clean surface, and it sighed open. “All yours.”
He passed through the door and turned to close it. She stared at him. “Keep the clothes,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.
“I’m—” He faltered. “I’m very sorry about Billiam.”
“Me too.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “He was an asshole, but he was our asshole. He got fucked up too early at the parties. It was his fault. I miss him.” Another tear.
“Do you want a hug?”
“No thank you. Just go shower.”
The bathroom was the kind you saw in showrooms. Active noise-cancellation ate the sound of the water; smart jets’ algorithms increased and decreased the pressure, predicting what he wanted sprayed and how hard; interactive surfaces turned anything into a mirror at a double-tap, giving him an unnerving look at his ass and the back of his head; air-circulators bathed him in warm breezes after he turned down the water, simultaneously drying the bathroom’s surfaces of condensate.
“Sorry,” she said. Her eyes were dry. He held out his towel and made a questioning face. She took it from him and threw it on the floor.
“Let’s see what Steve’s up to.”
“Seth.”
“Who cares.”
Seth had found the pantry and cleared a coffee table, done a neat job of it, folding and organizing things, piling them in a clear patch of floor. He’d cleared three chairs. On the table: a platter of fruit, teapot and cups, croissants. They smelled good.
“Snack?”
“Good work, Steve.” Natalie sounded like she meant it.
“Any time.” Seth didn’t correct her.
They snacked in silence. Hubert, Etc wanted to ask about the house, about the food. About Billiam, the party, the third person with a beard, the other girl who’d been their partner-in-crime. But sleep was heavy in his limbs. His eyelids drooped. Natalie looked from him to Seth – who also looked like he could nod off in his chair – and said, “Okay, boys, hit the couches. I’m going to bed.”
She staggered upstairs and Hubert, Etc stretched out on the least cluttered sofa, eyes closing as he pressed his face into the cushions’ seam. In the brief moment before sleep, he saw the twisted body of Billiam, felt a phantom sensation of the pulp of Billiam’s skull in his fingers. He had a toe-to-scalp shiver, up and down twice before it subsided and he mercifully slept.
He woke to muttered voices. He looked blearily, trying to orient himself: Seth’s back on the sofa opposite him, the finger-painted wall. He lifted his head – a hungover throb – and located the voices. Natalie, standing in a doorway at the far end, arguing through a crack in the door in a hushed voice. The answer was male, older, maddeningly calm. Jacob. His head slumped. He was going to have to get up. His bladder was painfully full.