Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

" Thank you."

She hoped he might have a story to tell her, but he sat smoking in silence until she asked, "Why a goldfish?"

"My best friend drowned when we were kids," he said. "I got the tattoo of a fish to remind myself to fear water."

"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I thought, I'll put it on my neck, where I'll never be able to forget it's there. Other tattoos, you put on a long-sleeved shirt and forget about them."

She wanted to ask for the rest of the story— Did your friend fall into a river, swim too far out into the ocean, hit his head in the bathtub? — but it seemed rude to pry, so she just smoked her cigarette and wished Daniel were there.

"So you're from here, then?" she asked, just to break the silence.

"I'm from Spanish Fork. You know where that is?"

"No."

"Gary Gilmore lived there for a while."

"I don't know who that is," she said.

He didn't seem to want to tell her. He blew a series of smoke rings into the cool air. "And you," he said, "I hear you're from Florida."

"Sebastian," she said.

"Where's that?"

"Near Boca. North of Miami."

"The whole state's north of Miami," he said. "Your parents know where you are?"

"I doubt they've noticed I left," Anna said.

"I have parents like that."

"It's a big club." She stubbed out her cigarette on the silvery wood. "You have a nice house," she said, but as soon as she said this it seemed like a stupid thing to have said. She had no idea if the house was Paul's or if he was just renting it, and it wasn't really all that nice.

He laughed and glanced at the house— gray stucco, pale in the dead brown lawn. "It's not a nice house," he said. "What it is is inconspicuous. I've come to value that more than niceness." He blew another series of smoke rings. She watched them dissolve into the air and thought of Sasha. "Don't take offense," he said, "but I look at a girl like you, pregnant, fifteen or sixteen or whatever, and I just have to wonder, what's the plan? What brings you to the Kingdom of Deseret?"

"I'm not sure what you mean." She didn't know what the Kingdom of Deseret was.

"Sure you do. You finish high school?"

"I've only got a year to go. I was thinking I'd get my GED."

"Yeah, and then what? You'll work at a McDonald's?"

"I always thought I'd do something with music. Maybe be a music producer or something."

"Come on. With a GED?"

"I don't know," she said. She found herself on the verge of tears and had to look away quickly. "I don't know what I'll do. I'll think of something."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I see a girl like you, it's just something I wonder about. Who am I to talk, right? It's not like I ever went to college."

"What happened to your hands?" It was a bold question and for an instant she thought she'd made a horrible mistake, her stomach sank, he'd probably buried the man from last night behind the garden shed and now he'd kill her too and no one would ever know what had happened and Sasha would never see her again, Daniel would come home from work and she'd have disappeared into thin air, but he only smiled and looked at the bandages.

"I took care of a problem," he said. " Messy work."

"I should probably go," she said.

"You got somewhere to be?"

"I have to get to work soon."

" Where do you work?"

"The doughnut place down the street," she said.

"I'll give you a ride." He stood up from the table. She didn't want to

be in a car with him, but she didn't know how to politely refuse. He waited for her while she went into the house and changed into her uniform, the regulation t-shirt tight across her body. "How far along are you?" he asked, on the short drive down the hill.

"Four months."

"Boy or girl?"

"I don't know," she said. "I wanted it to be a surprise." In truth, she didn't care if it was a boy or a girl. All she cared about was the shade of the baby's skin. She caught herself looking at Daniel's skin at odd moments— his exposed back as he turned away from her to put on a clean t-shirt, his hand holding a spoon, the side of his face as he spoke on the phone to his parents— and whispering the same silent prayer over and over again: Please, please, please let the baby be black. She whispered the prayer to herself when she first felt the baby kick, when the first pain shuddered through her on a late afternoon in the doughnut shop four and a half months later, when she sat holding herself in the passenger seat of Paul's car as he sped toward the hospital with Daniel on his cell phone, while she lay on her back on the bed looking up at the lights with strangers shouting at her to push, please, please, please. But even before she had a good look at the baby she saw the way the nurse looked from the child to Daniel and then to Anna, the way Daniel's eyes filled with tears as he turned away from the bed. He left the room then and she was alone with the nurses, with the machines, with the baby who cried out and clung blindly to the soft blanket with hands that were very small and very pink.

You still with me, Gavin?" Daniel asked softly. The air singing with electric blue stars.

T h e r e w a s something wrong with the ceiling. It was mostly white, but the texture of the tiles made constellations of gray that swarmed and changed shape the longer Gavin looked at them. His arm was a frozen, inert thing, pain seeping through the drugs. He was aware of sound: a nurse pulling the curtain around the bed, metal rings jangling; a beeping machine; soft footsteps.

The room was flickering. He kept falling in and out of sleep, if sleep was what this was. It felt lighter than unconsciousness. Intervals of twilight. Vertigo, a terrible shifting movement, the bed's a boat on rough water, I am going to drown.

"W a s I really shot?" Gavin murmured. "Was that really what happened to my arm?"

"He panicked," Daniel said. Daniel was an unsteady silhouette beside the bed, a blurred figure wavering. How long had he been there? "He thought you were someone else."

Gavin's ears were ringing. He closed his eyes again.

"I' m n o t someone else," Gavin said. He was confused and his voice was a mumble. He wasn't sure how long he'd been talking to Daniel, how long he'd been awake. His throat was dry. The texture of the ceiling above the hospital bed. Dizzy.

"He thought you were after Anna."

"I am after Anna. I've been looking for her." The drugs were a weight in his bloodstream, a fog behind his eyes. Antibiotics, the remnants of general anesthesia, whatever they were giving him for his arm. Was this how Jack felt through all the days of his life? He remembered being wheeled into surgery, flashes of sound and light.

"If you care about her," Daniel said, "I'd suggest you stay away from Deval." Was Gavin dreaming? He had the impression of swimming. Daniel's face wasn't entirely in focus.

"Or he'll shoot me again?" Gavin murmured. Talking nauseated him. He closed his eyes.

"Li s t e n, " D a n i e l said, "I'm here in my official capacity."

Gavin was awake again. Had he been awake the whole time? Nothing was certain. He'd been dreaming of a trumpet.

"I don't understand," he said.

"I'm a detective on the Sebastian police force, and I'm here interviewing the victim of a crime." Daniel was speaking very quietly. "This is what my report will say: you were visiting a friend in the mo tel, but you got the wrong room and the drug fiend on the other side of the door shot you and fled. Do you understand why I'm going to write that?"

"Not really," Gavin said. "I don't really understand any of it." He hazarded opening his eyes again. The ceiling was still moving so he looked down at the blanket and sheet instead, but the texture of the blanket had a way of telescoping in on itself. He wanted to put his hand over his eyes, to block the light and the queasy motion of everything around him, but his left arm seemed unmovable and the IV was in his right. "To protect Liam Deval?"