All Tomorrow's Parties

72. FONTAINE

FONTAINE comes back from the blackened ribs toward Bryant with a jug of water and two Red Cross sandwiches. It's strange out there, very much the post-disaster scenario and not to his liking. Media vehicles outnumber emergency, though there are plenty of those. The body count is remarkably low, he gathers, and puts this down to the nature of bridge folk, their seriousness in survival and a certain belief in unorganized cooperation. Probably, he thinks, he'll never know what any of this was about, in terms of causality, though he's sure he's been witness to something.

He hopes Chevette and her boyfriend have made it through, but somehow he assumes they have, and the professor has gone, off about whatever business a man of his sort pursues, and that is business best not known about. Martial will have to be told that his chain gun is gone, but that's just as well. (Opposite his shop, someone has sprayed a great deal of that stuff called Kil'Z, lest the smear that the chain gun left there prove seropositive in any troublesome way.)

As he comes up to the shop he hears the sound of someone sweeping broken glass, and sees that it is the boy, flatfooted in his big white shoes, and sees that the kid's done quite a good job of it, really, down to rearranging things on the surviving shelves. That silver piece of hardware, like an oversized cocktail shaker, enjoys pride of place, up behind the glassless frame of Fontaine's counter, between lead soldiers and a pair of trench-art vases beaten from the Kaiser's cannon casings.

'Where'd she go? Fontaine asks, looking up at this.

The boy stops sweeping, sighs, leans on his broom, says nothing.

'Gone, huh?

The boy nods.

'Sandwiches, Fontaine says, handing one to the boy. 'We're going to be roughing it out here, for a while. He looks up at the silver canister again. Somehow he knows it no longer contains her, whoever, whatever she was. It has become as much history, no more, no less than the crude yet wistfully dainty vases pounded out of shell casings in some French trench. That is the mystery of things.

'Fonten.

He turns, sees Clarisse there with a shopping bag in her arms. 'Clarisse.

Something troubled there, in her sea-green eyes, some worry or concern. 'You okay, then?

'Yes, he says.

'I thought you dead, Fonten.

'No.

'I brought you food.

'The kids okay?

'Scared, she says. 'They with Tourmaline.

'I'd be scared too, then.

A smile twitches the corner of her mouth. She comes forward, shifting the bag aside. Her lips brush his.

'Thank you, he says, taking the heavy bag, from which fine smells arise. 'Thank you, Clarisse.

He sees tears in the corners of her eyes. 'Bastard, she says, 'where's my dolls?

'I'm sorry, he says, as gravely as he can manage, 'but they were victims of the terrible fire.

And then they both start to laugh.