Hellbent

47 The Language of Comfort

Before bed Evan showered, dressed, and then finished tidying up the Vault as best he could. He found himself trying to align the monitors on the floor and finally gave up.

Chaos was a small price to pay when a thirteen-year-old boy’s life was at stake.

He stared at the various progress bars, all that software dredging the Web for signs of David Smith. “Work faster,” he said.

As he turned to leave, a rapid-fire series of beeps chimed from the alarm system, indicating an intruder at the windows or balconies. His eyes darted around the Vault, searching the rejiggered monitors to find the one holding the appropriate security feed. He was two steps to the gun locker when he found it and relaxed.

On the screen he watched a dark shape hover outside his bedroom window, bumping the glass.

He sighed and stepped through the shower and the bathroom. As he emerged into his bedroom, Joey entered from the hall. She was wearing pajama bottoms and a loose-fitting T-shirt.

She said, “What’s that noise?”

Evan pointed to the window. An old-fashioned diamond kite flapped in the breeze, smacking against the pane.

Peter’s bedroom was directly below Evan’s, nine floors down.

“A kid’s kite?” Joey said.

Evan opened the window and pulled in the yellow kite. Scotch-taped to the underside was a small freezer bag containing a folded piece of loose-leaf paper and a pencil. He removed the note.

Written in blue crayon: “Yor neece person is cool. Does she like me to? Check Yes or No. Your friend, Peter.”

There were two boxes.

He handed the note to Joey.

She took it, her eyebrows lifted with surprise. As she read, a microexpression flickered across her face, gone as soon as it appeared. But he’d noticed. She was charmed.

When she looked up at Evan, she’d fixed her usual look of annoyance on her face. “Nice spelling,” she said.

He handed her the pencil.

She sighed. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

She held the paper, tapped the pencil against her full bottom lip, as if contemplating. Then she checked a box, not letting Evan see. She stuffed the note back into the little bag and tossed the kite out the window.

It nose-dived from view.

He knew which box she’d checked.

She said, “You going to bed?”

“After I meditate.”

“Meditate?”

“Jack never taught you?”

“No. We didn’t have time for that.” She wet her lips, seemingly uncomfortable. “Why do you do it? Meditate?”

He contemplated. Jack had taught him this along with so much else. How to find peace. How to embody stillness. How to punch an eskrima dagger between the fourth and fifth ribs, angling up at the heart.

It struck Evan anew how Jack had embodied so many contradictions. Gruff but gentle, insistent but patient, firm but hands-off. He’d known how to raise Evan, how to push him further than he wanted to go.

Joey was watching him expectantly, slightly nervous, a flush rouging her smooth cheeks. Her question touched on the intimate, and that put her out over her skis.

He remembered telling her that Jack was the first person who ever really saw him. If no one sees you, how can you know you’re real?

Evan tried to imagine how Jack might see Joey.

“Your Rubik’s Cube,” he said. “From the motel — the shape-shifter with all the different planes?”

She nodded.

“You told me that to bring it into alignment you solve one dimension at a time. Shape first, then color. You said you look for the wayward pieces, find the right patterns to make them fall into place. Right?”

“Right.”

“That’s what meditating is. Finding the wayward pieces of yourself, bringing them into alignment.”

“But how?”

He went to the bed, sat crossed-legged, pointed to a spot opposite him. She climbed on the bed and mirrored his pose. Hands on thighs, straight spine, shoulders relaxed.

“What now?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“So I just breathe?”

“Yes.”

“Just sit here and breathe?”

“If you want to.”

Her eyes shone.

“Focus on your breath,” he said. “And nothing else. See where it leads you.”

He let his vision loosen until Joey blurred into the wall behind her. He tracked the cool air through his nose, down his windpipe, into his stomach. Beneath his skin he sensed a turmoil, blood rushing through his veins. His thoughts cascaded, cards in a shuffled deck. Jack in free fall, a cup of half-drunk milk, the frayed shoulder of David Smith’s shirt—

Joey’s words slashed in at him. “This is fucking stupid.”

He opened his eyes fully. She’d come out of the pose, slumping forward, at once lax and agitated. He watched her twist one hand in the other.

“Okay,” he said.

“We done?”

“Sure.”

She didn’t move. She was glaring at him. “It didn’t do anything.”

“Sure it did,” Evan said. “It led you to anger.”

“That’s real useful. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Ask yourself, what are you angry about?”

She got off the bed and stood facing the door. He watched her shoulders rise and fall with each breath.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

She wheeled on him. “Why would I tell you shit? You’ll just leave anyways. Once you’re done with me and we’re done with this.” She gestured to the bathroom and the Vault beyond. “Won’t you.”

“That doesn’t sound like a question,” Evan said. “It sounds like a dare.”

“Don’t turn it around on me,” she said. “It’s the only outcome.”

“There’s never only one outcome.”

“Yeah? How do you see it working? You’re gonna what? Drive me to school? Bake muffins for the PTA? Help me with my fucking calculus?”

“I think you’d probably help me with my calculus.”

She didn’t smile, barely even paused. “You’re just using me, like everyone else. You don’t get it. Why would you? You chose to leave the Program. You don’t know what it’s like to just be discarded. They threw me away ’cuz I was”—her lips pursed as she searched out the word—“deficient.”

“You’re not deficient.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m broken.”

“Then let’s unbreak you.”

“Oh, it’s that easy.”

“I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying it’s worth doing. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

“Easy for you to say.” She wiped her nose, pigging it up. She looked so young. “‘Suffering is optional.’”

“Yes. Let me know when you’re ready to start giving it up.”

“I’ll fucking do that.”

She walked out.

He listened to her feet tap up the brief hall and across the great room, the noise echoing off all those hard surfaces. Then her steps quickened up the spiral stairs to the loft.

Evan exhaled, rubbed his eyes. When he was younger, Jack had always known what to do. When to answer, when to leave a silence for Evan to fill.

Right now Evan felt adrift. He reached for the Commandments, but none were applicable. He’d gone down the path and arrived at a wall.

Another Jack-ism: When you’re at a wall, start climbing.

There he was, still pushing Evan from beyond the grave. Maybe that’s what this final mission was, placing Joey in his care, a living, breathing package. Maybe this was just another version of Evan walking behind Jack, filling his footsteps.

But this was a different trail. It required different rules. Evan thought of the Post-it note Mia had put up in her kitchen: Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.

He tried to meditate again. Couldn’t.

Then he was up on his feet. Moving silently along the hall. Keying off the alarm and slipping out the front door. Riding the elevator down, still pinching his eyes, shaking his head.

Walking up to 12B. Raising a fist to knock. Lowering it. Walking away. Coming back.

He tapped gently.

There. Now it was too late.

The door opened. Mia looked at him.

“I know you’re angry with me,” he said.

“You told me you didn’t have any family,” she said. “Either you lied before. Or you’re lying now.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Save it for Facebook.”

She started to close the door.

“Wait,” he said. “Joey is from… my job. I’m trying to help her. And I wanted to keep you and Peter clear of anything that’s related to that world. So I tried to cover it up. I was dumb enough to think I was being helpful.”

“That’s even more alarming.”

He held his arms at his sides, considered his blink ratio, resisted an urge to put his hands in his pockets. “I’m not sure what you would have preferred me to do. At Target.”

“God,” she said, more in wonderment than anger. “You really don’t get it.”

“No.”

“How about ‘Hey, Mia. I’m in an unusual situation and I’m not sure how to talk about it with you.’ How ’bout that? Actually just being honest and trusting that we’ll figure it out? Was that an option you considered?”

He said, “No.”

She almost laughed, her hand covering her mouth. When she took her hand away, the smile was gone. “Okay. I’m angry. But I’ve also learned not to trust my first reaction. To anything. So. Let me figure out my second reaction before we talk about this anymore.”

She started to close the door again.

“I need advice,” he said, the words rushed.

It had taken a lot to get them out.

“Advice?” she said. “You’re asking me. Advice.”

“Yes.”

She pulled her head back on her neck. Blew out a breath. Let the door swing open.

Evan entered, and they sat on her couch. She didn’t offer him wine. The door to Peter’s bedroom, bedecked with Batman stickers, a pirate-themed KEEP OUT! sign, and a Steph Curry poster, was open a crack. The heat was running, the condo toasty, a few candles casting gentle light. They were grapefruit-scented — no, blood orange. A burnt-red chenille throw draped one arm of the couch. So many things he would never have thought of, the things that turn a house into a home. They were words from a different language, the language of comfort, of knowing how to belong.

Evan kept his voice low. “How do you talk to a teenage girl?”

“Very carefully,” Mia said.

“That much I’ve figured out.”

“She seems like a great kid. But she’s had it tough.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m a DA.” Mia set her hands on her thighs, tilted her head to the ceiling, took a breath. “Don’t push. Just be there. Be steady.”

He thought of Jack’s even pace through the woods, not too fast, not too slow, his boots stamping the mud, showing Evan where to step.

Mia pointed at Evan. “When it comes to kids, honesty matters. And consistency. That’s why I thought, you know, you coming for dinner once a week. It’s important to Peter. Stuff like that’s a clock they set their hearts to.”

He nodded.

“At the end of the day, all they really want to hear?” Mia ticked the points off on her fingers. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine. You’re worth it.”

He nodded again.

She studied him. “What?”

“Are they worth it?”

“Yes.” She rose to see him out. “But if you’re ever gonna say it, you better believe it first.” She shot him a loaded look. “Because she’ll know if you’re lying.”

Evan paused halfway up the spiral stairs to the loft. A clacking sound carried down to him, and it took a moment for him to place it: Joey working a Rubik’s Cube. Lifted halfway between floor and ceiling, he had a glorious view of downtown. The shimmering blocks, a confusion of lights shivering in the night air. Overhead, the cube clacked and clacked. He heard Joey cough.

It felt so odd to have another moving body in the penthouse.

He continued up to the reading loft. Joey sat in a nest of sheets on the plush couch. Her head stayed down, that rich chocolate hair framing her face, which was furrowed with concentration. The cube, smaller than the previous one he’d seen, was a neon blur in her hands.

She’d turned off the overheads and pulled the floor lamp close. It was on the lowest setting, casting her in a dim light. The cube alone was bright, glow-in-the-dark colors radiating in the semidark. Chewing-gum green and fluorescent yellow. Safety-cone orange and recycling-can blue.

At the second-to-top step, he halted.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“It’s your place.”

“But it’s not my room.”

Her deft fingers flicked at the cube, transforming it by the second. “Yeah it is.”

He noticed that she wasn’t trying to solve the cube; she was alternating patterns on it, the colors morphing from stripes into checkers and back to stripes.

He said, “Not right now.”

Her eyes ticked up. But her hands still flew, the cube obeying her will. It changed into four walls of solid color, and she let it dribble from her hands into her lap.

“Yeah,” she said. “You can come in.”

He stepped up into the loft and sat on the floor across from her, his back to one of the bookshelves. By her knee was the worn shoe box from her rucksack. The lid was off and one of the greeting cards pulled out. She’d been reading it. He remembered what Mia had told him and said nothing.

Joey picked up the cube. Put it down again.

“It’s such a big world,” she said. “And I don’t want it to just be this.”

“What?”

“My life. My whole life. Kept here, kept there, always hiding. There’s so much out there. So much I’m missing out on.”

Evan thought of the burnt-red chenille throw draping the arm of Mia’s couch.

“Yeah,” he said. “There is.”

Joey put the card into its envelope, slipped it into her shoe box, and set the lid back in place.

“Sorry I’m such an asshole sometimes,” she said. “My maunt used to say, ‘Tiene dos trabajos. Enojarse y contentarse.’ It doesn’t really translate right.”

Evan said, “‘You have two jobs. Getting angry. And getting not angry again.’”

“Something like that, yeah.”

He said, “You were close to her.”

Joey finally looked up and met his stare. “She was everything.”

It was, Evan realized, the longest they had ever held eye contact.

Joey finally slid off the couch. “I have to brush my teeth,” she said.

She lifted the shoe box from the sheets. As she passed, she let it drop to the floor beside him.

A show of trust.

She entered the bathroom, closed the door. He heard water running.

He waited a moment and then lifted the lid. A row of greeting cards filled the shoe box from end to end. He ran his thumb across the tops of the cards. The front two-thirds had been opened. The rear third had not.

And then he understood.

He felt his chest swell, slight pressure beneath his cheeks, emotion coming to roost in his body.

He used his knuckles to push back the stack so he could lift out the first card. Flocked gold lettering read:

He opened the card, ignoring the rest of the printed greeting. An iris was pressed inside, already gone to pieces. Familiar feminine handwriting filled the blank page.

Evan put the card back. He flicked through the ones behind it.

New Year’s. Valentine’s. Easter. Birthday. First day of school. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas.

He took a wet breath. Let the next set of cards tick past his thumb.

New Year’s. Valentine’s. Easter. Birthday. First day of school. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas.

The last opened card was Thanksgiving, the one that had fallen out of her rucksack in the foot well of the stolen car yesterday.

He pulled out the one behind it, sealed in an envelope that said “Christmas.”

He scrolled ahead, the labels jumping out at him. “Easter.”

“Halloween.”

“Your 18th Bday.”

And then they stopped.

In the bathroom the sink water turned off.

He closed the shoe box, set it back on the couch, and returned to where he’d been sitting.

Joey emerged, wiping her face on a towel. She slung it over the couch back and sat again on the cushions and sheets. She noted the shoe box’s return and then stared at her lap.

Finally she said, “That’s when I went into the system.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The cards, they’re gonna run out when I turn eighteen,” Joey said. “Then what’ll I have?”

He showed her the respect of not offering an answer.

“After I ran away from Van Sciver, that’s where Jack found me. Visiting her grave.” She looked down, gave a soft smile. Her thick mane was swept across, the shaved side exposed, two halves of a beautiful whole. “He was smart like that. He knew how my heart worked.”

Evan nodded, not trusting his voice. Yes, he was. Yes, he did.

After a time Joey slid down into the sheets and curled up, her head on the pillow. “I never fall asleep with anyone in the room,” she said.

“Should I leave?”

“If you want to stay, it’s fine.”

Evan said, “I do.”

He sat and watched the curve of her shoulder, the tousled hair on her cheek. Her blinks grew languorous. And then her eyes closed. Her breathing grew regular, took on a rasp.

He rose silently and eased from the room.