Charlie Huston - Sleepless

He removed his hand from the game hub and took out his comb and raked his hair.

“You look very angry. I think.”

He put the comb away.

“That’s odd.”

I was not cruel. I had questions and I asked them. When he was slow to answer, unused to doing promptly what was required of him, I demonstrated the advantages of brevity. But I was not cruel. Not as I received the information I needed. Nor when I killed him. Three bullets. Like father, like son.

Confusion had begun to reign when I left several minutes after I had arrived. Something had been seen on a security screen somewhere deep within the house. Several blue windbreakers were gathered at the guest cottage. Their energy was focused on the grounds.

Still, as I came out of the garage, I was seen by one of the windbreakers. He called to me. I kept walking, cutting across the parking area through the cars that were already taking on the patina of relics from another age. Behind me I heard two sets of rapid footsteps. I measured the distance to the trees. Still moving, I glanced through the windows of the cars to see if they had been left with keys in the ignition. They had not. The HK was seated in its shoulder holster under the black sport coat I’d worn. I had two rounds still left in the gun and a twelve-round backup clip. But that was all I carried. My legs would not allow me to run. When my pursuers reached me, I would turn and use one bullet on each, swap to a full clip, and perhaps have time to strip them of their weapons. After that I would need to take cover before a full assault began. I was looking for the heaviest vehicle in the lot when two Thousand Storks fast attack vehicles pulled into the drive. I changed course and walked toward them. The four Storks in each vehicle jumped out and split into twos, ignoring me entirely as they ran past. And my pursuers, taking their cue from the specialists who clearly knew who I was and why I was there, pulled up and turned back, allowing me to walk unmolested down the length of Madrono, circling back to where I’d parked the STS. The car, myself, and all activity in my locale helpfully ignored by Thousand Storks for the one hour between 11 p.m. and midnight. As I’d requested, and as Lady Chizu had ordered, in exchange for the wonder that was Cipher Blue.

Park’s journal and the other items in my possession, I now drove south to find the end of the story.

I did not linger in the nursery when I returned to the Culver City house. What I found there was not meant for me, or for anyone else. It was shameful to gawk at such a thing, since there were only two people who could understand its meaning. Perhaps a third person, some day. I left the room and searched for what I’d come for.

Park had left the safe open. From inside I took the certificates of marriage and birth, Omaha’s medical records, the detective’s badge Park had been given for his Dreamer assignment, and the broach that had been his mother’s. In a nightstand cabinet I found a stack of black journals with red spines, Rose’s diaries from high school to just a few days before. I took a case from a pillow on the bed and filled it with the black and red books. There was a photo album. A shoe box of letters. Park’s academy diploma. A framed square of white cardboard with a smeared green imprint of a baby’s foot. These all seemed relevant, and I took them.

The last item I took was the gun Park had used to kill. Everything else I had taken was alien to me. The gun was comforting in its familiarity.

There was nothing else of Park that I understood half as well as I did the lethal mechanics of such a weapon. I could follow the rationale in his choices and actions, but it was very much like a novice speaker of a foreign language translating everything he heard into his native tongue. The sense was there, but it was arrived at only after great labor, and with little nuance.

Fluency would take time. But I’d made a start, and learned this much.

PARK DID NOT WATCH JASPER LEAVE WITH OMAHA. he couldn’t. If he had stood at the door and watched them drive away up the street he would have broken in two. Instead he kissed her forehead and tapped the tip of her nose with his pinkie while standing at Rose’s bedside, to remind himself that he could take care of only one of them.

It did not hollow him out to watch her sleeping in Jasper’s arms, carried from the bedroom. He felt full, pressure at every seam, in danger of exploding.

He attended to business first.

He came back to Rose. Still reciting, she shivered from time to time or clenched her teeth as if a sudden pain gripped her.

From the bedside table he picked up the plastic-wrapped bottle. Rose’s eyes were scanning back and forth across the far wall, as if monitoring the dangers of the game. He ripped open the plastic bag, and the bottle of pills dropped to the floor with a rattle. He picked it up, studied the instructions for opening the patented childproof cap, pressed down while pinching, twisted one way and then the other, and the cap popped off. He broke the foil seal, picked out the wadded cotton, and shook a light blue tablet into his palm.

“Rose.”

She didn’t answer.

“Rose.”

She didn’t answer.

“Rose. I love you more than life.”

He put the tablet at her lips, pushed it past her teeth, placed a water glass against her mouth, and tilted it up. She coughed and then swallowed.

She wiped water from her chin and looked around.

“Park?”

He shook another pill into his palm.

“Yes.”

Her eyes cleared.

“What the fuck, Park? Now I’m gonna have to start all over.”

He shook his head.

“No, you don’t, hon. You don’t have to start over. You finished it. I wish I’d been here to see.”

She smiled.

“It was so cool. So quiet. It was.”

He put another tablet at her lips.

“Here, take this.”

She took it between her fingers and looked at it.

“What is it?”

“It’ll make you feel better.”

She blew out her lips.

“Anything that can make me feel better. I mean, I feel like shit. What is this, cancer-flu or something? I’ve never been this sick. I mean, I never get sick at all.”

She put the tablet in her mouth, and he gave her the water glass, and she swallowed.

“Hey. Have I been asleep for a long time?”

Park nodded.

“Yeah.”

She rubbed her eyes.

“Because everything seems really weird. Like when you’re a kid and you dream you missed Christmas and you wake up and it’s August fifteenth, but you still feel like you missed it. I feel like that. And sick. Rub my neck, baby.”

She rolled onto her side, and Park rubbed her neck.

The muscles in her back had stopped twitching.

She opened her mouth wide and yawned.

“Okay, whatever those are, they’re great. Please tell me they’re not illegal.”

“Not illegal.”

“Can I have another?”

“Sure.”

He gave her another.

She smiled at him.

“I know it’s not your thing, babe, but you should take one of those.”

He shook his head.

She nodded.

“I know. Never lose control, Parker Haas, you never know who might be watching.”

She touched his face.

“I love you. I love you more than life.”

She closed her eyes.

He didn’t say anything.

She sighed and opened her eyes and saw him.

“How am I going to be able to look after you?”

He shook his head and told her he didn’t know, and she kind of sighed like she always did when she thought he wasn’t getting something.

“No, I mean, really, how am I gonna look the fuck after you?”

He told her that she didn’t have to look after him, that he was okay.