One more name sprang to mind: Jerusha Carter. Gardener’s ace couldn’t be better suited to traveling through Africa. She was perfect for the trip in just about every way. He even knew her, a little bit.
It took some calling around to other Committee members before he got Jerusha’s cell number. Wally reclined on the bed in his hotel room. The mattress groaned; somewhere halfway across the country, a telephone rang.
“Hello?” A weary voice, thick with fatigue. Behind it, what sounded like voices raised in quiet song, like they were singing hymns or something. Not like in church, though. It sounded more like a vigil.
“Um, hi. Jerusha?”
“Yes.” Her voice got distant, and the background noise got louder, as if she was holding the phone away from her face to look at the caller ID. “Who is this?”
“It’s me, Wally. Gunderson. You know, Rustbelt? We worked together when the Committee sent us to Timor.”
“Oh, Wally. I thought I recognized your voice.” A pause. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering-um, are you okay? You sound real tired. No offense or anything.”
“Uh… it’s been a tough few days down here. Did you hear about Michelle? Her parents?”
“Yeah. It’s a bad deal.” The thought of Bubbles helpless like that-at the mercy of others-made him think of Lucien, and brought on another pang of anxiety.
“Really bad.” Jerusha sighed, loudly. “Anyway. What’s up?”
Wally didn’t know the best way to broach the subject. He plunged ahead: “Do you wanna go to Africa with me?”
“Why is Lohengrin sending you to Africa?”
“He’s not,” said Wally.
Another pause. “Huh?”
Wally explained the situation.
“So… you want me to go to the PPA to help you find your pen pal?”
“Yep. Well, no, I mean, I thought we’d go to the Congo, where Lucien’s from.”
Jerusha said, “That’s in the PPA.”
“Oh.”
“Ugh, Wally…” Wally recognized that tone. It was the sound of somebody cradling her head in her hands. “Say. Why did you ask me?”
Oops. “Well, you’re real smart. And you know about jungles and stuff. And you’re, um…”
“I’m what?”
“Black.”
“Uh-huh.” Jerusha’s tone here was a little harder to read. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “Look. What you’re trying to do is very sweet. But I think you’re biting off more than you can chew. Even with that giant jaw of yours. Besides, I have my hands full down here.”
“What if I came and helped out?”
“That’s nice of you, but it wouldn’t change my answer.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry, Wally. Don’t do anything rash, okay?”
“You bet.”
Wally stared at the ceiling. That’s in the PPA. He hadn’t put that together before. He knew a little about the PPA; that whole mess down in New Orleans, Bubbles and all, was tied up with the PPA. He knew that much. But until she’d said it, he hadn’t associated Tom Weathers and Dr. Nshombo and the PPA with Lucien’s Congo.
All the more reason to go to Africa, and the sooner the better. All the more reason to find a traveling companion. But the more he thought about it, the more Jerusha seemed the best choice.
2
Friday,
November 27
The Winslow Household
Boston, Massachusetts
A Legacy of Noel’s previous profession was an inability to sleep any deeper than a doze. He awakened when the mattress shifted as Niobe left the bed. Cold grey dawn seeped around the edges of the blue velvet drapes, and Noel could hear snow pecking at the windows. He snuggled deeper under the down comforter, and was headed back to sleep when a tiny whimper of fear from the bathroom sent him leaping out of bed. “Niobe!”
At the same moment she called out, “Noel!” The panic in her voice squeezed his heart.
He ran to the bathroom, the legs of his pajamas whipping at his ankles. She was sitting on the toilet with her arms wrapped around her stomach. He dropped to his knees in front of her.
“I’m cramping.”
“Bad?” he asked.
“Not as bad as last time,” she replied through white lips.
Oddly she was staring at a point where the tile met the porcelain side of the bathtub rather than at him. Noel had a sudden memory as they had stood on the rocky beach of a distant Scottish island, and she had told him how she had tried to cut off the damning mark of her jokerdom, and win back her parents’ love. He glanced at the thick white scars that twisted across her tail. She had nearly bled to death in the bathroom of her family home. Noel realized this was the room. And that bitch put us in here. He again felt that shaking desire to kill his mother-in-law. “I’m taking you to the clinic.”
“We can’t just run off,” Niobe called out as he ran back into the bedroom. “They’ll be so angry.”
“Watch me. And fuck them.”
Noel pulled her long, fur-lined suede coat and his overcoat out of the closet. He returned to Niobe, got slippers on her feet, and tucked her into her coat. The hood framed her face. She looked like a figure on a Russian icon box. He slipped on his own slippers and guided her back into the bedroom.
He pulled back the blinds so he could map the sun’s progress. Come on, come on! They couldn’t lose another. Niobe couldn’t take much more. He wasn’t sure he could, either.
It was another four minutes before he could make the transformation to Bahir. The pajamas cut into his crotch, and the overcoat strained across Bahir’s broad chest. It didn’t matter. He would transform back once they reached the Jokertown Clinic.
Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
Michelle opened her eyes.
Juliet, Joey, her mother and father, and a couple of people dressed in hospital scrubs were ringed around her. Her throat was raw, like when she had strep throat. She tried to speak, but she had no voice.
“She’s alive!” Juliet said.
“You don’t know that,” snapped Michelle’s mother.
“It could be a reaction to the feeding tube being pulled,” said the woman in baby-blue scrubs.
Michelle tried to look around, but she couldn’t move her head much. Behind her mother, there was a table crammed with flowers and candles. The floor under the table was thick with store-bought bouquets. She looked up. The ceiling was bare plywood and had water stains.
A TV hung from the far corner with the sound turned off. It was tuned to a news channel, and there were bulletins scrolling across the bottom of the screen. She caught the last bit of one story: “… and the latest contestant voted off Season Three of American Hero is
…”
She blinked. It couldn’t be Season Three. They hadn’t even finished Season Two. She was supposed to do a guest shot on Season Two.
She looked down at herself.
She was huge. Bigger than huge. Enormous. Bigger. Humongous. What was bigger than humongous? She didn’t even look like a girl anymore. They had draped something over her. A parachute maybe? She could feel the rolls of fat that rippled down her front. It was impossible for her to be this big.
It came back to her then. A spinning golden necklace. Drake grabbing his chest. His eyes. His eyes were white and glowed and burned. She had embraced him and-
No. No. No. No. NO!
Blythe van Rennsaeler
Memorial Clinic, Jokertown Manhattan,
New York
The darkness and the cold lasted the briefest second, and then they were standing just outside the emergency room of the Jokertown Clinic. Noel willed his body to shift back into his normal form. It felt like the muscles were crawling across his bones, and there was an ache in the bones themselves as he was returned to his normal height.