Lost in arcadia a novel, p.35
Lost in Arcadia: A Novel, page 35
Holly now laid the paints and canvases on the studio floor to sort out later. She looked at her watch. Robert would sleep for two more hours, so she went back to the house and cooked herself a quasi-last meal of eggs, bacon, and frozen waffles. Holly hummed as the bacon crackled in the pan, almost dancing as she worked. She took her time eating, savoring the bacon’s smoky flavor, soaking the waffles in syrup until they were half liquid like she used to when she was little. When she finished, she placed two plates, two bowls, and a smattering of silverware inside the microwave, unplugged it, and carried it to the studio.
The skylight let rays into the room, lighting the dust so it glowed like little pixies floating amongst the canvases. Holly remembered that tonight there would be an eclipse, wondered whether it would be visible from the studio. She retrieved the nail gun and wood from her car, carrying the long pieces back into the studio. When Robert had converted the garage, he filled in the gaping car door and attached a conventional wooden one to the building’s front. Holly began at the floor and placed each plank of wood above the last, rhythmically nailing to the beat of a rap album Gideon sent her a few weeks ago. She sprinkled each one with 3⅓-inch nails until she had no more left. The work went surprisingly fast. With the nail gun, she didn’t even work up a sweat until she had to lift pieces of lumber above her head. She used a paint-encrusted step ladder to attach the last few, and where there had once been an exit, now there was an ugly patchwork of wood fastened to the wall with several pounds of steel.
No escape, but really the ultimate escape. This was what she’d always seen in Robert, Holly realized. Freedom from the world. But it wasn’t what he’d given her, wasn’t what she’d been able to find in their life together.
So this was how she would break up with him. She’d paint, finally without distractions, without worrying about their relationship and where it stood and her father and all the other personal bullshit getting in her way, and when she ran out of materials, then she’d decide what to do next. Maybe Robert deserved an explanation, but she didn’t care right now. First she needed to decide whether art was really what she wanted, really something she could do. Everything else in the world could fucking give her a break.
Finished with her preparations, Holly felt invigorated. She’d stretched a new canvas a few days before, when she’d wanted to work but didn’t have any idea what to do next, and looking at it from across the room, she now saw its potential, envisioned figures, a family, a whole city dancing with joy in the foreground of a volcano that lit the night sky with its eruption. She began painting and didn’t stop until late that night. Exhausted and hungry, she heated up a frozen meal in the microwave.
At some point the next day, Holly heard voices outside the garage, someone banging on the door, screaming, and coughing. She assumed it was Robert, so she ignored the sounds.
She had everything she needed. Using the drain in the floor as a bathroom had freaked her out at first, though now she’d gotten used to it, running water from the sink’s hose to wash the stink down as soon as she finished. Her wireless Internet connection quit soon after she entered, but Holly was pleasantly surprised when the power stayed on well into her second week (or so she assumed—she’d long since lost sense of time), at which point she presumed Robert had cut the cord. It didn’t matter, by then she’d practically worked her way through the fridge and freezer. She would be eating beans and peas for the foreseeable future, but she’d long since stopped tasting food. Having become a conduit for the work, which piled up at the back of the room, she ate only for nourishment.
Some paintings were lush, some minimalist. Some were original, others a mishmash of influences. Holly was unaware, with no time to consider one before becoming obsessed with the next. Her clothes became so covered with paint that she crunched when she moved, so she stripped them off and wondered why she’d kept wearing them for so long. She began to paint with her fingers and then her hands, then her legs and her breasts and her feet and her hair and her head.
At night, she looked at the sky, the moon with its Comcast logo, the stars, more numerous than they had been since she was little, staying at Hummingbird Camp up in the Jemez, far from cars and streetlights. Back then she used to draw effortlessly, realistic birds and trees for the delight of friends she’d never see again, had given them away without a second thought to anyone who asked. Holly closed her eyes and fell asleep almost instantly, dreaming of the next canvas, breathing in the sickly sweet chemical smell of a thousand pigments with nowhere to go.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
When Teresa arrived home, Granny T was clearing dishes into the sink while Luis watched the news on their small kitchen TV. A calm broadcaster listed the damage caused by an earthquake in Indonesia in a practiced monotone, struggling to enunciate the names of cities he’d never heard of before.
“Sorry we didn’t make you anything,” said Teresa’s grandmother. “We thought you’d eat out.”
“No, I did. I just got back and … you know.”
Her grandfather slowly stood up and turned off the TV. “Is anything bothering you?” he asked.
“No. I don’t know, I’m just … Hey, you don’t have to stop watching because of me.”
“It’s fine, the news never stops coming. I’ll watch it later.”
“You’re not going to be up later.”
“You got me.” He smiled. “Okay, I’ll turn it back on.”
They watched in silence for several minutes. Granny T pulled off the yellow rubber gloves she used for dishes and joined them at the table as the weatherman reported a record high for mid-November, replacing last year’s record high, and the sportscaster detailed how UNM’s teams had fared against their rivals. She couldn’t concentrate on the stories, but pretended to for the feeling of normalcy it gave her, the sense that everything was still okay.
“M-maybe there was something I wanted to talk about,” she said.
Her grandparents both turned away from the television.
“Honey, what is it?” asked Granny T. “It’s okay. You can say anything to us, you should know that.”
“I just … you know how I have to go back to work tomorrow? Well, I just don’t want to do it anymore. I know this is going to sound childish, but I thought it would be one thing, right? Helping people, protecting, all of that. But it’s not that at all, and I hate my boss, and I’m afraid to talk to most of my coworkers—and it’s all just so horrible I can’t stand it anymore. I mean I tried, I tried to go out there and do something, and it didn’t help.”
The television’s continued drone made this somehow easier. She looked back at it, afraid of seeing what her grandparents thought. After a brief pause, though, they both started chuckling.
Her grandmother stood up and put her arm around Teresa. “Honey, it’s okay, really. If you don’t want to be a cop, no one’s going to force you to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. There’s always something else. There’s something for everyone out there. You have a family who loves and supports you, and eventually you’ll find your thing.”
Teresa was surprised to find herself crying. She wiped her eyes, careful as always not to push too hard on her face.
“Thanks. I think … I think I just needed to hear that.”
“Give it more of a chance, though. See how you feel in the morning, and in a week, and if you’re still unhappy, then leave. Every job has its ups and downs, you’ve just gotta get past this. Why don’t you pray on it and see how you feel.”
“I will.”
The next morning, Teresa put on her uniform and began her commute to work, but midway through the drive, she pulled her car off to a side street and parked alongside Bataan Park. It was like every other park in the city, a rectangle of flat grass bordered by a walking path and covered by the shadows of immense trees. She walked around it, uncertain what she was doing but unable to head home or continue toward the station. A group of twenty- and thirtysomething men tossed a Frisbee as hard as they could at each other, laughing. Her phone rang, but she ignored it.
Eventually she walked across the street to a Walgreens to purchase bottled water. She wandered back to the park, lay down in its lush grass, and wondered what the hell she was doing. It was only 10:15 and she didn’t have any idea how she was going to fill the rest of the day. She walked around the park a few more times. It smelled both fresh and dead at the same time, alive with greenery yet choked with car exhaust from the busy street on its southern border.
She wandered onto nearby side streets populated only by empty houses, their inhabitants at school or work for the day. Birds darted among power lines. Bugs crawled from cracks in the sidewalk.
Her phone buzzed again, and Teresa pulled it out of her pocket, expecting a call from work. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but seeking any form of distraction, she answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Teresa Llantos?”
“Uhh, yes. May I ask who this is?”
“Hi, Teresa. I’m with Anonymous Propaganda, and we received information that you might be interested in working as a spokesperson.”
“Oh, yes, umm … that. Yes, I might be. Could you tell me more about it? I’m a little … I don’t know if I was ever told exactly what it was I was applying for, actually. Now that you mention it.”
“Of course, of course,” said the almost too-friendly voice on the other end of the line. “That’s because it’s all very secret and confidential and exciting. It’s a very exciting opportunity. I can’t say anything more right now, but if you’ll be willing to visit our offices, we can explain more about what this work may entail for you.”
“Your offices … you’re not in New Mexico, are you? Does this mean I got the job? It’s a job, right?”
“Actually, we’re based out of New York, but I can offer you transportation here for the audition. The only thing is, we’re going to need a response from you right away.”
“What do you mean right away, exactly?”
“I think Eri—my boss, the head of the project, he’d like to see you in less than forty-eight hours.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Here was the idea: Autumn would have all three of her children over for Thanksgiving, plus Brianna. That was it. None of Juan Diego’s random relations, no aunts and uncles and the assorted fights that came with them, no preparation of dozens of dishes. It would be a small, intimate dinner where her children met her new partner. It might be difficult, replete with awkwardness on all sides, but it was time that everything was out in the open.
Brianna teased her, saying that meeting all three Reyes children at once sounded a little theatrical, but if that was how Autumn wanted to do things, well, she had no other plans. Brianna maintained contact with her younger brother, but she hadn’t spoken to her parents in years. They were both proud churchgoers, flag-waving supporters of Haight who’d decided that the best way of dealing with their daughter’s “lifestyle choice” was to pretend she’d never existed. During her sophomore year of college, Brianna told Autumn, her parents stopped paying her tuition and threw out or donated every item in her childhood bedroom. When her brother snuck her in for a visit a few months later, she found they’d already converted it into an exercise room and removed her photos from all of the house’s walls. Since then, she celebrated Thanksgiving with friends or just marathoned movies.
Autumn found inviting her children to be far more problematic. At one of his occasional visits home to do laundry, Devon had agreed to show up (which had been more or less a given, but she still liked to make certain). “Sure, mom, of course,” he said. But he didn’t look her in the eyes, and he’d been avoiding her direct gaze for months. Either he was in the midst of a second, even brattier puberty, or his adjustment to college life was going worse than she’d thought. While he moved clothing from the washer to the dryer, she asked him what was going on with school.
“Oh, just class and all. I’m doing fine.”
It was like speaking to a robot. She felt his evasions like a physical barrier. And lately, trying to get past them was just too tiring, too much effort for no results. Not knowing what else to do, she’d given him a look that made it clear she didn’t believe him for a second, and left.
Gideon, on the other hand, wasn’t even making a passive-aggressive effort—he was actively avoiding her. Not responding to voice mails was normal for him and had been for years, but she could tell from her read receipts that he’d opened her emails and Arcadia messages. He’d done this in the past, right before his first wife left him, so although it hurt, at least she understood it. After Juan Diego left her, Autumn had more or less lost contact with most of the people in her life, too. Maybe, at long last, his marriage to Claire was almost over, and maybe some good would come out of this after all. Eventually she decided that there was likely no point in trying to get in touch with him: he’d return to her and the rest of the world when he was good and ready, just like last time. Brianna could meet him later.
The real problem was Holly. She was missing, too, but unlike her brother, Holly usually responded to Autumn—perhaps snippily, especially during the past year, but usually with some degree of promptness. So it was only more disconcerting that Holly had not answered her phone or opened any messages from Autumn, hadn’t posted or logged any activity on Arcadia whatsoever. It was possible that she’d simply gone offline, but her boyfriend’s Arcadia presence was just as active as ever. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what. Then, less than a week before Thanksgiving, Autumn saw a post on Arcadia about rumors of a virus in the southwestern part of the state, and she couldn’t help but worry.
What began as one isolated rumor became a small news story became a series of rumors and editorials. One evening, after a quiet dinner together, Brianna asked her what was wrong.
“It’s the tensest I’ve seen you since we first met,” said Brianna. “This isn’t about Thanksgiving, is it?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Paul was waiting at the door when the paramedics arrived for Sonja.
“She’s in our bedroom closet upstairs. She had some sort of episode and then passed out. I don’t know, I think it’s the fever. She tried to attack me and then tried to lock herself in the closet, but it doesn’t lock. She’s been having breathing trouble for a few days now, and stomach problems, and she passed out yesterday for a little bit. But then she was fine. Or better. We thought it was just the flu. Could it just be the flu? She did go to the grocery store a few days ago, maybe she caught something there? She’s unconscious, please hurry.” His babbling, interrupted by the occasional coughing jag, continued as the paramedics rushed up the stairs with a gurney and checked Sonja’s vitals.
They sent him back downstairs to wait, and he staggered into his old recliner, feeling his bleeding face in disbelief. His first intuition that something had gone seriously wrong was when she’d woken him in the middle of the night, shrieking about bugs as she clawed her neck. He’d managed to calm her down and get her back to sleep, noting how hot she was. He’d been planning on taking her to the clinic in the morning, but obviously he should’ve acted much sooner.
When they carried her down on the gurney, there was a breathing mask over Sonja’s face and ointment on her cuts. One of the men, whose expressionless pock-scarred face looked nearly as old as Paul’s, said that she didn’t seem to have had a stroke.
“What could it have been?”
“It’s difficult to say. What were her other symptoms, again?”
“Nausea, difficulty breathing. And it sounded like she had some pretty bad pesadillas in the middle of the night. That’s when she…” He gestured to her face.
“Quesadillas?” asked the younger man.
“Nightmares,” said the older one. “We’re taking her straight to Gila.”
On the drive to the hospital, Paul’s cough grew worse. Maybe it was stress, but he thought this was unlikely. The paramedics exchanged glances before placing another breathing mask over his face.
When Paul came to, he was in a hospital bed, listening as the nurse on the other side of the room talking about his upcoming weekend trip to Truth or Consequences. Paul could barely concentrate. He was burning up.
“Yeah, my prima lives there and she’s been telling me about this friend of hers and, you know, I just need something to help me get over the breakup.”
“You know,” the other interjected, “Truth or Consequences was named after a game show. A lot of people think it’s just a phrase, but it really was named after the show. And the government now uses it as ground zero to test all their new terrible experiments. How much pollution people can take, stealth advertising, alien genetic hybrids, mind control rays, stuff like that. You should really avoid T or C, unless you want the Truth and the Consequences. Ha-ha.”
Paul launched into a coughing fit that built until he passed out.
The doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City were absolutely baffled as to what they were dealing with and had even less idea how to fight it. By the time they thought to call in the CDC, they had twenty more patients with identical symptoms. Once the CDC arrived, they attempted to quarantine the hospital, but it wasn’t nearly soon enough.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The_Creator: Hello, are you there?
Devon’s first thought when The_Creator contacted him was that this was another one of Steve’s jokes. It wouldn’t have been the first time his friend had hacked the system, made an alias, and started screwing around with people.
Steve was gone, though, asleep or dead or somewhere between the two. Every couple days, Devon still visited his friend, who now walked with little assistance and even seemed to remember him. Or at least, he had some sort of positive association with Devon’s appearance, although what that meant was anyone’s guess, since Steve didn’t seem capable of speaking anymore.
