No Gods, No Monsters (eBook)

8

Three days after the funeral, Laina comes back from work to find Ridley sitting in front of his laptop at the dining room table wearing his big over-the-ear headphones. When she enters, he looks up, tucks the right ear pad behind his ear, and mouths a noiseless good night, my love.

Laina can hear the voices coming from his headphones: another SEN Collective meeting. She smiles, mouths shower, and goes down the hall to the bathroom. She undresses and hops in the bath and takes a quick one, then spends several minutes standing in the tub, letting the water drip from her fingertips. The door is slightly ajar to let the steam out, so she hears when Ridley gets up from the table and stomps down the hall. The door creaks open. She rolls the shower curtain back just enough to see him poke his head in.

“You’re home early,” he says. “Bad day?”

“No, just not a good one.”

He slips into the bathroom and stands by the light switch, giving her the silent nod to go on.

She sighs but relents. “Our coworkers stayed pretty much out of my way. They asked how the funeral went but didn’t pry about Lincoln. I did my shift at information—a few out-of-store book requests and the usual stuff. I tried to be friendly, smile at the regulars, but I was off and no one bought it, and so they let me leave early, told me if I wanted I could try again tomorrow. So not too bad, not too good.”

He leans his head back against the wall. “And will you be coming in tomorrow? I’m supposed to be on the afternoon shift.”

Laina shrugs. “Maybe.” She motions for him to give her the towel, and he pulls it down from the hook and hands it to her. As she dries off, she changes the subject. “How was the meeting?”

“Same old. They want the fall retreat to be three days, but I’m trying to get it down to two.” He looks meaningfully at her.

Laina wraps the towel around her and steps out of the shower. “Take the three days,” she says. “I’ll be okay.”

“You’re sure?” When she nods, his shoulders ease just a bit, and he takes a breath. “So, is there any news on the investigation?”

Laina grunts and leans on the sink.

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay.” Laina shakes her head. “Nothing. No mention of a video, either.” She doesn’t want to admit it, but she feels tired. She wants it to be over. All that anger she wants to feel has been sucked out of her by the whole ordeal. “Can we just go to bed?” she asks. “I want to be held. I don’t want to talk.”

Ridley gives her a sad smile. “Okay, my love.”

She gets dressed in her shorts and sleeping shirt and gets into bed. Ridley is there waiting for her. She snuggles up against his shoulder and whispers, “You ever feel like there’s a world beneath this one?”

“What do you mean?” Ridley’s breath rises and falls, his heart beating steady as a drum.

Laina struggles for the words. “Like we are a speck on some larger thing that we only catch glimpses of.”

He hesitates, then asks, “Is this about the investigation?”

“I guess. But more than that.” She sighs. “I don’t know. Never mind.”

Ridley makes a sound as if he’s going to talk again, but doesn’t. Laina snuggles deeper into him, and he kisses her on the temple. He keeps his face to hers, so she feels his breath on her. This is reassuring. She is feeling shaky and needs his steadiness.

She tries to settle the matter in herself, but her mind frets on. She can’t tell what she knows from what she doesn’t, what she wants from what she only thinks she should want. Lincoln’s toxicology report returned inconclusive, but that still doesn’t explain why he was running through the street naked. Does she want people digging into his past, unearthing all the ugly, unsavory moments of his life to discredit him, diminish his humanity? She says she will fight for him, but if she decides not to fight, will it be to spare him that disgrace, or to spare herself? Will it be a gift, or just another betrayal? And if it is a bit of both, how much of each is permissible? Where is the line that would damn or redeem her? And shouldn’t she know? Shouldn’t she have the ability to unearth the truth of her own heart?

This is only part of what she wants to say to Ridley. The other part feels too strange, too terrible, too nihilistic to say out loud. She is feeling, deep inside herself, that none of it matters anyway. None of it matters, because none of it is real. An image comes to mind. She is a ship, and so is everyone else: a cluster of ships on a dark sea. They are all packed tightly together for protection, but it is futile because at any moment, some black hand will pull one or two or all of them under, and everyone will see it, but no one will know what they’re seeing or what to do about it. Not just dying, but something deeper than dying. The place that dying comes from—the vast and heavy nothing at the bottom of all things, returning to claim all things. Everything—her life, Lincoln’s life, the movements of every life—is the mere useless stirrings on the surface of that nothing. The nothing is real. They are not.

The thoughts persist. Ridley is asleep now, and the quiet drumbeat of his heart keeps time as Laina’s consciousness bobs along with no destination. Her restlessness dulls to the obsessive thoughts of someone on the verge of sleep, fighting against it with a relentless anxiety. But eventually, the thoughts turn to static, her anxiety softens, and without even realizing it, Laina inevitably slips beneath the tide.

Laina is on the subway platform for the Red Line to Alewife. The train is just arriving. She is standing just beyond the yellow line, where you’re not supposed to stand. The hot wind hits her face, pushed ahead of the train as it comes through the tunnel and into the more open space of the station. It screeches to a stop. The double doors open with a clamor. Laina steps through.

It is late; hardly anyone is in the subway car. She takes her seat across from a man asleep under a dirty child-size blanket. She doesn’t recognize him right away, but once she does, she spends the next few minutes staring at his sleeping face. A stop goes by, then another, before her brother opens his eyes. The action is slow, as if he were in his own bed, stirred awake by a lover. His eyes focus on hers but with no recognition. She may as well be a stranger.

Everything is hyperreal, vibrant: the textured face, the yellowed and bloodshot eyes. His skin gleams with days of grime. His forehead has a smudge of dirt; his cheeks are cratered with pockmarks. At the next stop, someone sits near Laina, but they are out of focus, the hyperreality of Lincoln sucking the reality from everything else.

“What, you going to take me home?” As always, he says this as if they’d been talking all along.

“If you’d let me,” she says. To her own ears, her voice sounds as if the volume had been turned all the way down.

“I got a place.”

Laina looks at the weather-worn duffel bag at his feet, the child’s blanket, caked with dirt, that he’s using for warmth. “Please come home with me.”

“Admit it,” he says.

This time, Laina doesn’t lie to herself. She knows what he is talking about—has always known. She thinks of saying, How could I know? Or, I’m sorry. Or, I didn’t see anything; you should have told me something was wrong. A dozen more answers present themselves, all of them terrible.

Finally, she chooses the truth. “I knew something, but it scared me.”

He laughs, that same laugh that has no joy in it. It turns to coughing. Then she notices that a darker patch on his covers is spreading. Was that there before? And with the logic of dreams, she remembers that he’s been shot. That he is dying.

The world around them suddenly dissolves, until it is just them, and then even Lincoln is fading. Almost simultaneously, another thing happens. Her brother is peeling. Slowly at first, quicker now, his whole body turning inside out from that dark wound. Inner flesh and fat expose themselves, the sound of it tearing at her eardrums, and then the space between them starts seeping into the black hole. She feels herself pulling apart too, strand by strand, the scream in her throat sucked out of her and into him. She is reaching her hands up to her neck and mouth, where she finds . . . nothing. A gaping hole where all her bits are spilling out into the open air.

Laina gasps awake. Her nightshirt is drenched in sweat. Around her, the room lies dark and silent. She puts a hand to her chest and takes enough slow breaths to settle her heart.

It is only after she relaxes that she has the feeling someone else is in the room. She doesn’t have a reason to think this; there is no evidence other than the feeling. But then a voice comes, hovering just above her head, a whisper: “Do you want me to get the video for you?”

It is a woman’s voice. Sweet. Not at all threatening. Laina is too stunned to speak.

I am just as shocked as she is. No one is there. No one has been there.

“I can get you the video,” the woman continues. “Show you what happened that night. Do you want to know what happened that night?”

The voice sounds Caribbean. Laina has family from St. Lucia, and the woman’s voice sounds something like that, but also...