THIRTY-NINE
THE PHONE CALL
“Ramirez lay in a pool of his own corrupted blood, his thick mustache forever still. Rica gazed down at his mutilated groin. ‘You and your evil shaft can sell cocaine in hell! I defeated you, Ramirez!’ Rica screamed, shimmering tears streaming down her beautiful eyes and soaking the perfect globes of her breasts.”
—Kerry-Lee Storm, The Cost of Rica #4: Vengeful Passion
I remember that the hallway was very white, that March held my hand all along, until I closed my eyes and dreamed. I came out of the operating room with a bald spot and twenty-nine grams lighter.
The dream lasted another five days, my mind wandering in a place that wasn’t death but wasn’t yet life. March watched me dream and waited for me to find my way back to him, surviving on hospital meals and crosswords. I was reportedly carted out of my room at the clinic on the sixth day. I remember nothing of that, but that’s okay. Eight months of retrograde amnesia has the merit of putting that kind of minor disagreement in perspective. I’m a survivor: now all three parts of The Hangover sound like a joyride to me.
I have vague memories of March making a phone call after the ambulance ride, of his voice speaking over the phone in French to someone and telling them that I was getting dehydrated, and I wasn’t fully comatose because my eyes would occasionally flutter open, but I still wouldn’t move or speak, and he was worried.
What I do know for sure is that on the dawn of the seventh day, I blinked awake, for good this time. The first thing I saw was March’s back, clad in his usual white shirt—wrinkles in the cotton suggested an end-of-the world situation, but the room was actually quiet. I lay on my side, in a large bed, buried under a gray comforter. The whole thing felt as fluffy as my brain as I blearily took in my surroundings. I stared up at the intricate floral moldings decorating the ceiling, then down at the chevron parquet and marble fireplace at the other end of what looked like a nearly empty bedroom. I wanted to scratch my skull under the gauze taped to my nape, but I feared that my brain might leak out in some horrific and never-before-recorded medical accident. I decided against it.
I touched his back tentatively, and he jerked awake, rolling to his side in a heartbeat to check on me. Sweet Jesus, end of the world indeed: I took in the circles of exhaustion under his eyes, and not one, not two, but probably three days’ worth of whiskers. He was looking at me, haggard; I brought my fingers to his jaw, feeling the rough bristles there. I smiled. Dimples pocked his cheeks in return, and he shifted closer to kiss my forehead. “Welcome back on Earth, astronaut.”
“Island has landed,” I confirmed with a croaky chuckle.
“Are you thirsty, biscuit?”
I ran my tongue over my dry lips. “Yeah, parched, actually.”
“Wait for me here,” he commanded before getting up from the bed.
Not that I was going anywhere. Not without a beanie, obviously. He brought back a glass and a bottle of water; I sipped some with cautious gulps, dehydration and hunger making my stomach knot in protest. After I was done, I handed him the glass back and glanced through the window. “We’re still in Paris, right?”
“Yes, Ilan found the apartment for me.”
Ilan . . . It was like my neurons had just gotten whipped—hard—but they too were still waking up. They stalled, and I felt March’s anxious gaze on me, until a face flashed in my mind, a black-haired man in his late forties with piercing green eyes, a graying beard, and leathery olive skin. With him came another memory: that of a beautiful black woman, her long hair, her warm smile. I was in their apartment; we talked together about March. Kalahari. March’s nice ex, Ilan’s wife, and the one who had first told me about . . . Charlotte. New emotions welled in my chest; joy and pain laced together as the memories surfaced, one after another, like bubbles in a mile-deep pool.
“Ilan . . . he worked for the French secret service, but now he kind of . . . freelances, and he has a weird friend who sells burgers and depleted uranium rockets,” I droned, in a mild daze.
Relief lifted ten years off March’s features. He nodded. “Yes . . . exactly. We can see him later if you’d like. I thought it might jog your memory to convalesce in Paris.”
Convalesce . . . My face bunched. “No convalescing. It’s all I’ve been doing for the past eight months,” I mumbled, pushing the covers aside to get out of bed.
His arms automatically snaked around my waist as I sat up. “Island, you need to take it slow.”
“But I don’t want slow,” I whined. “I need to move, to do stuff . . .”
What kind of stuff remained to be determined, but already I could feel the cogs spinning in my brain, names, faces, ideas hovering close to the surface. For the first time in almost a year, I felt like my old life was at hand’s reach.
“Wait here a second,” March said, letting go of me. “I have something for you. I thought it might cheer you when you woke up.”
I watched him get up and leave the bedroom through a set of French doors opening to a long hallway—typical of a Haussmannian apartment. Through the window, I noticed the spire of Notre-Dame, turned grayish by a bleak morning light. Since I had a direct view on the east end of the transept, I gathered the narrow bridge crossing the Seine had to be Pont Saint-Louis—which would place us somewhere on the west side of the eponymous Île Saint-Louis.
March returned with a bag he placed on my lap, a lovely pink thing tied with a white satin ribbon. He sat back on the bed while I inspected its contents. Upon discovering the book inside, I was reminded of Bentsen’s warning that removing the implant wouldn’t restore my memory exactly like it was before but rather allow me, with some effort, to access data that had been sealed away until now. I studied the cover silently. The muscular chest and ornate red font were familiar, and I could tell I was happy, that my heart was fluttering with excitement in fact, but the reason why hovered frustratingly out of reach.
My lips pursed as I flipped the book to examine the back cover. I grinned. Yes, this was . . . “Oh my God. Cost of Rica four came out?”
Relief lit up March’s face. “Yes, a few months ago.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I leafed through the brand-new pages in utter delight. “Have you read it?”
“I might have skimmed through it while you were asleep,” he admitted, ducking his chin to conceal a guilty smile.
“Is it good? Does it end well this time?”
“I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’m fairly certain you’ll enjoy it though.”
“I’d better . . . I mean, Rica’s been fighting Ramirez for ages, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get kidnapped and raped so many times. This guy seriously needs to die. Also that cliffhanger in the previous book? Give me a break. I hate authors who do that! What was the point? We all know she’s going to end up with Ricardo anyway. Seriously—”
My rant was silenced by March’s arms flying around me, squeezing me tight. Against me, he was shaking. I returned his embrace and tucked my head under his chin while he let out all the stress, the fear, and the pain in a long, hoarse chuckle. And he laughed and laughed, and at some point, I started laughing too, because Rica would probably end up chained in Ramirez’s basement again, and I loved March so much my heart might burst.
After we’d both calmed down, I looked up at his face and traced the dark circles under his eyes with my thumbs. “When was the last time you slept, Mr. November?”
His tired sigh breezed against my forehead. “Two days ago.”
I placed the book on the nightstand and nuzzled his neck, all the while pulling him toward the inviting heap of pillows. “Come here; you’re the one who needs to convalesce.”
•••
March slept at my side, a gun under his pillow, and his arm flung across my belly as if to make sure I wouldn’t vanish again. Once in a while, he’d shift or make a little snoring sound from the back of his throat, perhaps riding his ostrich through the wild immensity of Kawaii Farm’s plains . . . Propped against my pillows, I couldn’t stop thinking, tugging at strings everywhere in my brain, unraveling them one after another. My mother’s smile, Dries sharing ice cream with me in Tokyo after he’d tried to kill March, because that’s what supervillain dads do. And normal dads too.
It was 7:00 a.m. in New York, and Simon Halder was probably putting on his tie and watching CNN in the mirror. Then he’d have a cup of black and a bagel with organic soy spread instead of cream cheese and chive like he wanted, because Janice, his wife, was trying to turn him vegan. I crept out of bed carefully and padded down the hallway.
I found a phone in the living room, sitting on the birch sideboard by the window, bathed in the gray light of winter noon. I didn’t remember the number; when I tried to visualize it in my mind, I couldn’t. But my fingers still knew it; they hadn’t forgotten.
It rang. Once, twice, over and over.
Until a grunt at the other end of the line answered me. “Simon Halder speaking, and it’d better be important, because you’re calling from a goddamn hidden number before I’ve had my coffee.”
The tears started rolling before he was even done ranting, and my throat was too tight for any words to come out.
“Who is this?”
I got scared he would hang up before I could produce any sound. I sniffed hard and tried again. “Dad . . .”
The silence that followed shattered me a thousand times. I tried to breathe through the sobs shaking my frame.
But then . . . he spoke. “Island?”
I didn’t think I’d manage, but at last, the words I needed so desperately erupted. “Dad, I want to come home for Christmas!”
BY POPULAR DEMAND,
ISLAND AND MARCH WILL RETURN
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