Сигрид Нуньес - Salvation City

She opened the cookie jar again and took out another Oreo. But this time, instead of eating it herself, she offered it to Cole. He didn’t want it, he had no saliva in his mouth, the cookie tasted like grit, but he ate it anyway because he thought this was what she wanted. What a wonderful life that would be: day after day, doing nothing but what she wanted. “All I can tell you is, something awesome is going to happen.”

She was smiling, her head tilted to one side, watching him as if she was seeing something curious about him, or something she hadn’t noticed before. He thought she had never looked so soft. She had never looked so beautiful. Something awesome is going to happen. Something awesome was happening right now. She was standing just inches away from him. He thought he smelled peaches. He held the cookie mush in his mouth, unable to speak, unable to swallow.

She lifted her shoulders high and then dropped them again, an exaggerated gesture, followed by an exaggerated sigh. “I was just thinking how much love for you there is in this house.” She gazed upward, as if this love were something that could be seen, a pink cloud floating by . . . Cole pretended to see it, too. She said, “I feel so blessed that you’re part of my family.”

Touch me , his heart boomed. And to his astonishment she did. She put her arms around him, and because she was wearing her hair up today he was able to press his face right into the curve of her neck, where it fit like a puzzle piece. Not marble-cool like he’d always imagined, but very, very warm. She squirmed when she felt his lips move, and then, as if she’d heard a scream for help or smelled something burning, she broke free and fled the room.

Cole waited for gravity to pull him earthward again. He spat the half-chewed cookie into his palm and threw it into the trash. A tingling sensation low in his belly made him want to get behind a closed door as quickly as possible. But first he checked his e-mail.

Still no message from Addy.

THE MESSAGE WAS THERE the next morning. Addy was back in Berlin.

I could not stay in that horrible place even one more day. It was bad enough the power kept failing, but then so many fire hydrants were being opened all over town we didn’t have any water, and they were saying the heat might not break for another week. Lara left first. She went to stay with some friends outside the city, and I was too scared to stay alone. I’ve never seen such chaos, not even when I had the flu. I was amazingly lucky to get on a flight. I had to pay a huge fee—a bribe is what it really was—but I couldn’t lose this chance to get out while the airport was operating, as it hadn’t been for days. I felt like I was escaping from some banana republic.

But she did not want Cole to think she had abandoned him.

Of course, I still want you to come live with me. That’s not going to change. But in the end it’s going to be up to you. If it comes to court, the judge will say you’re old enough to decide for yourself who you want to live with.

If you want me to, I can always fly back to the States. But I’ve been thinking, how would you feel about making a little trip to Berlin, just to see what it’s like?

He didn’t answer right away. He was glad to know Addy was safe, but right now he couldn’t think about her or about going anywhere. Starlyn was leaving tomorrow. He didn’t know when he’d see her again. That was all Cole could think about.

THREE DAYS AFTER she’d driven to Salvation City to take her daughter home, Taffy called her sister Tracy. Her speech was so distorted she had to repeat herself twice before she could make herself understood.

That morning, she’d slept through the alarm (the lovebirds had been out two-stepping the night before) and was rushing to get ready to go to her job at the insurance office where she worked as a receptionist. She wondered about Starlyn, who was usually up before her. She hoped her daughter wasn’t coming down with some bug.

When she was ready to leave the house, Taffy went to Starlyn’s room and found her gone.

“Nothing else is missing. Not her backpack or iPod or even her wallet. No makeup or toiletries, far’s I can tell, and none of her clothes. The things she was wearing yesterday, everything, including her flip-flops and her teensies, the angel locket you got her for her birthday, her scrunchy, her watch, her tears-of-Christ pendant, her purity bracelet—it’s all there in a heap on the floor. And her cell’s sitting on her dresser.”

The shock had knocked Taffy flat. “When I come to, I was laying face down across her bed.”

Later that same day, Lucinda Boyle, who was feeling too unsteady to leave her bed, called her next-door neighbor, Rutha Mae. She didn’t mean to be any trouble, she said, but her son had left the house that morning to get a prescription for her muscle relaxant filled and he hadn’t come back. She’d tried calling him but he wasn’t answering. “Which, you know, ain’t half like Mase.” Who answered his phone even while leading Bible group.

Rutha Mae said she was sure there was a simple explanation, that if anything had happened to Mason they’d surely have heard by now, but she’d be right over anyhow so Lucinda didn’t have to wait all by her lonesome. She’d bring some pineapple loaf cake, Rutha Mae said.

Minutes later, as she approached the house, Rutha Mae was surprised to see Mason’s car parked in the garage. The garage door being open, Rutha Mae stepped inside, where she saw some clothes scattered on the floor.

“Everything he put on that morning,” Rutha Mae reported later. “Plus his wallet and his keys and phone, and that silver stud he always wore in his ear? Everything but his tattoos! He must’ve been just about to get in the car.”

COLE FOUND PW SITTING ALONE out on the back porch. The temperature had finally dropped, and the evening was humid but cool—too cool to be wearing nothing but a pair of baggy shorts. But that was how you’d usually find PW dressed these days.

The rash and the blisters that had itched him to such distraction were gone. But PW was not yet out from under the devil’s whip. He could not bear the weight of even the lightest cloth against certain parts of his torso. A draft of air touching one of those spots was sometimes enough to make him hop up and down in pain.

Postherpetic neuralgia. Something to do with the nerves being confused and sending false messages to the brain. Occurring in about twenty percent of shingles cases, according to the doctor, and PW’s case appeared to be unusually bad. The painkillers the doctor gave him weren’t doing much good. Nor could the doctor say how long the condition would last. Maybe months, maybe years. He did not say maybe forever, but that grim possibility was understood.

The doctor was worried about PW’s mental state. He wanted to put him on antidepressants. PW refused at first (“Rather put my faith in prayer”), and later, when he changed his mind, the antidepressants, like the prayer and the painkillers before them, would not do the trick.

One day worse than usual—the whip lashes raining down especially hard and thick—PW resorted to bourbon, whose medicinal effects he hadn’t forgotten, and discovered that here was something that did help, if only a little, and only if he drank a lot.

“What is it, son? What’s on your mind? Here, come sit closer to me.”

Was it a sin to find the smell of whiskey on a person’s breath so pleasant? (Cole’s parents had drunk only beer and wine, both of which, like coffee, left smells he found gross.)