The Peripheral

87

Clovis Raeburn had beautiful skin. When Flynne opened her eyes, Clovis was right there, up close, like she was looking at Flynne’s autonomic cutout, or its cable. Easiest transition yet, from sitting on a bench beside a path in that Hyde Park to propped on pillows in a brand-new hospital bed. Like somersaulting backward, but not in a bad way. “Hey,” Clovis said, straightening up as she saw Flynne’s eyes were open.

“What’s going on?”

Clovis was pulling the two halves of something apart, packaging of some kind. “Griff says the competition’s hired Luke to make us look bad. I say anybody they protest just looks better.”

“Macon said Burton’s on his way back from Pickett’s.”

“In a deputized car,” said Clovis. “Been an orgy of car deputizing, over there. Pickett’s employees, the ones still being shoveled out of the pile, had their cars on the lot there.” She extracted something small from the packaging: circular, flat, bright pink. She peeled its backing off, reached under the hem of Flynne’s t-shirt, and pressed the adhesive down, just left of Flynne’s navel.

“What’s that?” Flynne asked, raising her head off the pillow, against the weight of the crown, trying to see it. Clovis hiked up the bottom of her own combat shirt. On abs you could do laundry on, the pink dot, with two sharp red lines crossing in the center.

“The antidote for party time,” Clovis said, “but I’ll let Griff explain that. Just you keep yours on.” She lifted the crown from Flynne’s head and put it carefully down on what looked like an open disposable diaper, on the table to the left of the bed.

Flynne looked from the crown to Conner, in the next bed, under his own crown.

“Better he’s still up there,” said Clovis, “considering the situation. He does have a proven potential to make things crazier.”

Flynne sat up. A hospital bed made you feel like you needed someone’s permission to do that. Then Hong walked into her line of sight, a plastic sack of takeout dangling from either hand. He wore a Viz and a dark green t-shirt with COLDIRON USA on it in white, the logo she’d seen on the envelope in Burton’s trailer, that first night. She realized he’d come in through a narrow vertical gap, in the wall of shingles, to the left of her bed. “Hey,” he said.

“There’s a secret passage from Sushi Barn, now?” she asked.

“Part of the deal for the antennas. Weren’t those e-mails from you?”

“Guess I’ve got secretaries and shit.”

“Have to be able to get food over here,” Clovis said. “Always have a few of Burton’s boys sitting in there, watching out.”

“Getting fat,” said Hong, grinning, and went out, past a blue tarp.

“Food’s for Burton and whoever,” Clovis said. “You hungry?”

“Might be,” Flynne said, picking up her Wheelie Boy from the chair where she’d left it.

“I’m here with sleeping beauty, you need me,” Clovis said. “True that you’ve got your own whole other body, up there?”

“More or less. Somebody built it, but you couldn’t tell.”

“Look like you?”

“No,” Flynne said, “prettier and tittier.”

“Go on,” Clovis said, “pull the other one.”

Flynne followed the smell of Sushi Barn. The bags were on the card table, the one she’d signed the contracts on, which was now back behind the blue tarp of what Macon had said was their legal department, but Hong wasn’t there.

“You’re Flynne,” the man said. Brown hair, gray eyes, pale, cheeks pink. Another Englishman, by his accent, but here in what she was starting to try not to think of as the past. “I’m Griff,” putting out his hand over the foam containers and three bottles of Hefty water, “Holdsworth.” She shook it. Broad shouldered but light framed, maybe not quite as old as she was, he had on a beat-up, waxy-looking jacket, the color of fresh horse poop.

“Sounds American,” she said, but really it sounded more like a character in a kids’ anime.

“It’s Gryffyd, actually,” he said, then spelled it for her, watching like he wanted to see exactly when she’d laugh.

“You Homes, Griff?”

“Not even slightly.”

“Madison thought you came in a Homes copter, that first time.”

“I did. I’d access to one.”

“Hear you’ve got a lot. Access.”

“He does,” Burton said, moving the tarp aside with an index finger. He looked tired, and like he needed a shower. His cammies and black t-shirt were dusty. “Handy for fixing things.” He stepped in.

“Sheriff Tommy been wearing you out?” she asked him.

He put his tomahawk down on the card table, its edges clipped into orthopedic Kydex.

“Punishment detail, but he won’t admit it. Doesn’t like what we did over there. Way of rubbing my nose in it. Not that it wasn’t more than we intended, Jackman aside. Wouldn’t have minded finding a little bit of Pickett while I was at it, though. Then I heard Luke’s bringing us the Lord’s own sweet judgement, here.” He looked at her. “Thought you were in London.”

“Lowbeer got me back,” she said. “Whoever wants us dead has Luke down here to psych you out. Get you to fuck up, like you tend to do when they protest shit.”

“You seen the animations on those signs?”

“Looks delicious,” said Griff, who’d opened the foam boxes. “Where is Hong from?”

“Philadelphia,” Flynne said.

“I’ll wash up,” said Burton, picking up his tomahawk.

“Now you’ve got me feeling like following him,” she said to Griff, when Burton was out of earshot.

“Carlos is on the front entrance, to discourage him leaving,” he said, unscrewing the caps on the three bottles of water. “Clovis on the rear and the inside route to Hong’s.” He began to transfer the food to the three compostable plates Hong had brought with it, using two pairs of plastic chopsticks like a fork. Then he used a single pair to quickly reposition everything, so that it suddenly looked better than she would’ve guessed it was possible for Hong’s food to ever look. If she’d done it, she knew, she’d have wound up with three approximately same-sized messes of noodles and rolls. Watching him use the chopsticks to redistribute those little salty fake fish eggs, she remembered the robot girls prepping the snacks for the dead woman’s party. “Consider ignoring the placards our rent-a-zealots are displaying,” he said. “They were designed by an agency that specializes in political attack ads, and are specifically intended to upset you personally, while turning the community against you.”

“The other guys put them up to it?”

“Luke 4:5 are as much a business as a cult. As tends to be the case.”

“You’re from the Chef Channel or something?”

“Only with authentic Philadelphian cuisine,” he said. He tilted his head. “Give me the best northern Italian and I’ll have it looking like rubbish.”

“Let’s eat,” said Burton, coming back in and putting his tomahawk down on the table again, beside one of the plates. Seeing it, this time, Flynne remembered stumbling over the dog-leash man in Pickett’s basement.

She put the Wheelie Boy in the middle of the table, like it was flowers or something, then sat down on one of the folding chairs.

“What’s that?” Burton asked, looking at the Wheelie Boy.

“Wheelie Boy,” she said.

Griff put the empty boxes in one of the plastic bags, then put that in the other plastic bag, put it on the floor, seemed to consider the way the table was set, then sat. She almost wondered if he was about to say grace, but then he picked up his plastic chopsticks and gestured. “Please,” he said.

The going back and forth between her body and the peripheral was confusing. Was she hungry or not? She’d had a banana and coffee, but she felt like the walk through the greenway had been real. Which it had, but her body hadn’t done it. Smell of the food made her miss the week before, when none of this had happened, plus there was how Griff had made the plates look. “What’s party time?” she asked him.

“Where’d you hear that?” Burton asked.

“Clovis gave me the antidote,” she said.

“Party time around here?” Burton was looking at Griff, hard.

“Let’s discuss it after we eat,” Griff said.

“What is it, Burton?”

“On a war crimes dial stops at ten? About a twelve.” Burton put a slice of roll in his mouth, chewed, looking at Griff.