Authors: Giles Blunt
“Lemur knows what he’s doing.”
“You trust him with Nikki? Girl’s got a hot body for a thirteen-year-old. Terrible face. But I’d have swore she was sixteen.”
“Lemur will behave like a gentleman. I’ve trained a lot of kids over the years, and he seems to get it more than most.”
“Including me?”
“Including you.”
“That’s the thanks I get.”
“I’m referring to the gentleman part, Jack. Each kid responds to one part of the code more than another. In your case, it’s loyalty. For Lemur, it’s manners.”
“I’ve never understood why you’re so all-fired missionary on the subject.”
“Because no situation is made worse by good manners, and many are made better.”
“I still don’t see why it’s taking them so long.”
“Jack, that’s just lust talking. You know it’s a problem for you and it only brings you misery and pain. But I don’t define you by it, and I hope you don’t either. You’re such a strong guy, I can’t imagine you’re going to let it get the better of you.”
Jack turned from the window. He opened the fridge and took out a can of the old man’s ginger ale, opened it and took a drink. He wiped his mouth and said, “I didn’t say nothing about lust. That girl don’t even turn me on, tell you the truth. That face of hers.”
“Let’s not be shallow about people’s looks. Nikki’s face is perfectly fine.”
“It’s not to my taste is what I’m saying. So it’s not lust talking, Papa. It’s concern. We’re supposed to look after each other, and I’m concerned about Nikki.”
“Nikki’s in no danger with Lemur at her side.”
“It’s Lemur I’m concerned about.”
“Then you don’t know human nature. And you don’t know Lemur.”
Jack drank down the rest of the ginger ale and crushed the can in his fist. “Lemur this, Lemur that. What’s he ever done? What’re you always going on about that little faggot for?”
“Jack, please. We do not call each other names. You’ve spent years in institutions—have I ever called you psycho?”
“No.”
“Crazy? Disturbed? Wacko? I have not. And no one else in this family ever has or ever will. Because we respect you, Jack. And we respect your ability to give as you receive.”
Jack felt he should have a reply to this, that there was something unfair about it. But there was a lot right about it too, and now he felt bad for letting Papa down, letting the family down. After a time he said, “You always told me loyalty was the most important thing. Now all you go on about is manners.”
“Loyalty is second nature in Lemur. His manners, on the other hand, needed a lot of work. When we first took him in—don’t you remember?— it was ‘fuck this’ and ‘motherfucker’ that, and now he’s a model of polite speech. With you, loyalty has always been an issue. Lemur is like a hunting dog, but you—you’re a wild stallion. Magnificent, yes, but liable to gallop away at the first chance.”
“You question my loyalty? After what I just done for you? Everything you said, down to the letter—when you said and how you said. Do you have any concept what that took?”
Papa stood up and opened his arms wide. Jack hesitated then stepped closer, and Papa closed his arms around him in a bear hug. “Jack, your courage is never in doubt. Not for one minute. You’re our samurai. Our warrior. Our knight. Some poet said, ‘Lonely are the brave.’ Well, not in my house. You are crucial to this family and I trust you with my life, Jack. With my life.” Papa stood back, hands still gripping Jack’s shoulders. “When it comes down to it, Jack—when it comes to sheer guts?—I think
you’ve got me outclassed. Maybe one day I’ll prove myself wrong, but I don’t think so.”
Jack did not feel brave. If he had any guts, he’d tell Papa that a girl, some kid, had seen him out at that house and it had panicked him so bad he couldn’t see straight. He should have killed her—run her down, shot her, whatever it took—but it hadn’t been part of the operation and he’d just panicked. But he couldn’t say it. He pulled away and folded his arms. “So when’s Lemur going to face his big test? He’s been part of this family a long time now. Is he gonna do the old man?”
“If I ask him to, he will.”
“You think so? I wouldn’t have said the odds favour it.”
Papa smiled. “That’s because you’re a man of action, Jack. Understanding people is not your strong point.”
T
HE CRIMINAL WHO CALLED HIMSELF
Papa had locked Lloyd Kreeger back in his master bedroom, having removed anything that might be construed as a sharp object. That, at least, was a positive development. Lloyd’s hands were still cuffed together in front of him, but this didn’t restrict him too much. He had a comfortable bed and lots to read, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Henry. Even Charles Dickens couldn’t stop him from picturing the worst.
He was trying to decide if there was any hope to his situation, or if he should risk escape and a bullet in the head, when this “Papa” came and got him and led him once more to the basement office. This strange man now knew some of Lloyd’s passwords, and had made notes of different account numbers. They sat beside each other now on two office chairs, as if one were teaching the other about software.
“Look what I found, Lloyd.”
Lloyd leaned forward to peer at the screen. His New York investment accounts. “A discount brokerage site,” he said.
“I know what it is, Lloyd. My point is, you didn’t tell me you had these accounts. Add up these different funds, we’re looking at a couple of hundred thousand U.S.”
“I forgot I had them. Those were set up must be thirty years ago, back when I was working in New York. I never touch them.”
“I know. I checked your transaction history. But you didn’t tell me about them. That’s my point.”
“I never think about them.”
“They send you statements once a month. Which you file away in those neat blue binders I found. You’re keeping things from me, Lloyd. You’re chiselling me. I try to help you out, I put you back in your room, I make you as comfortable as possible …”
“You steal everything I have …”
The man’s eyes on him expressed nothing but mild disappointment. He turned back to the computer screen. “Well, we’re just going to have to empty these out, aren’t we.”
“Those are for my grandchildren. My daughter has three kids, and all three of them are going to be in university at the same time. She is a copy editor, her husband is a freelance journalist. I doubt if they make fifty grand a year between them. Those funds are to see their kids through college.”
“It’s not letting me move anything.”
“Well, I can’t help you, I haven’t touched those funds since they were set up. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
The man unholstered his sidearm, took aim at a lamp, and fired. The base of the lamp shattered, and Lloyd’s ears rang as if they were made of brass.
“Apply yourself to the problem,” the man told him. “I have every faith that, together, we can get past this.”
—
Sometimes it seemed to Nikki that this “family” was a real thing, and not just some make-believe game they were playing. Tonight was one of those times. Papa had asked the three of them—not ordered them, asked them—to refrain from turning on the television. He wanted them to light a fire, a big one, while he was downstairs with the old man, and he would join them a little later.
“And then what?” Jack had wanted to know.
“You keep your eyes on that fire and tell each other everything you see.”
Which, in Nikki’s opinion, had worked out great. Jack had built up a big fire, fat logs criss-crossed over each other, and the flames flapped and swayed
and you could hear the hot air rushing up the chimney. The furniture was arranged at angles around the fireplace, as if it were a TV. Nikki had an armchair to herself on one side, Jack had the other, and Lemur was lying on the couch, propped up on one elbow. His face glowed orange in the firelight.
At first they just pointed out different shapes that shifted among the logs and flames. Lemur saw a hooded monk, Nikki saw a fat man on a bike, which made the other two guffaw, and Jack saw seven little dwarves, all carrying axes and saws over their shoulders. Nikki had seen that in a cartoon somewhere, but she didn’t mention it. They played this game for a time and even Jack, a world-class grouch, was smiling, teeth gleaming in the firelight. His shadow leapt and shuddered on the ceiling.
Then Lemur suggested they try to see their futures in the flames. “Try to imagine where you’ll be in ten years. What your situation will be. Who you’ll be with.”
“We’re gonna be in the north,” Jack said. “K-OS will be in effect. All the underclasses are gonna rise up and the rest of the world will try to crush them—they’re already trying to crush them. But this time the losers are gonna win—the blacks, the Aboriginals, the Muslims—because they’ve been down so long they don’t see no downside to fighting to the death and lopping heads off. That’s why we’re commandeering the Jeeps and the snowmobiles. Ten years from now, hundreds of members of this family from all across the continent will be hid out in the north—small communes, self-sustaining. Rest of the planet, K-OS reigns. North is going to be the best place to be, because blacks and Muslims obviously don’t care for cold and the rest of the planet’s gonna burn.”
“Is Papa from up north?” Nikki said. “Is that why he’s so crazy about it?”
“He was raised somewheres up north,” Jack said, “but that is not what this is about. Haven’t you heard about global warming? North’s gonna be the only place habitable.”
“That’s right,” Lemur said. “That’s how Papa sees it.”
“How Papa sees things got nothing to do with it. It’s the way things are.”
“Well, however it goes, I’m with this family to the end,” Lemur said. “But right now that’s not what I’m seeing in those flames. Well, maybe a little bit.” He pointed to part of an ashy log that had fallen away from the flames. “See, there’s my igloo right there.”
“Kinda hot for an igloo,” Nikki said.
“But all that heat in there? All that beauty? That’s coming from the loving home I’m going to put together with my wife.”
“Oh, sure,” Jack said. “That’s crystal clear.”
“I’m telling you, I can see her. She’s got long brown hair. Down to her shoulders. A little bit of curl to it. And when she smiles, she’s got those little curvy things either side of her mouth.”
“Dimples,” Nikki said.
“Is that what dimples are? Then she’s got dimples. She’s tall—at least as tall as me—and she’s got a nice figure. Not too full. She’s real smart, too. Smarter than me.”
“That is likely true,” Jack said.
“And she wears turtleneck sweaters and corduroy jeans that fit real nice. Because it’s cold up there. And she has a white coat with a fur hood and a sky-blue scarf. I’m telling you, I can see this girl. I can see her so clear. When we meet? I’m going to know who she is right off. And I’m gonna fall in love with her, because I’m already in love with her.”
“Aww,” Jack said. “That is truly beautiful.”
“It is,” Nikki said. “It really is, Lemur.”
Nikki was wishing she’d seen something like that. She’d forgotten about that north business. Papa’s K-OS vision. It made sense to her, from what was on the news and all, but it didn’t stick in her head. Sometimes she thought Papa himself didn’t really believe it, that he believed something else entirely, which he kept to himself.
Lemur looked over at her, the whites of his eyes gleaming. “What do you see for yourself, Nikki?”
Nikki shrugged. “I guess I see music. I know I have a voice like a frog, but I hear songs in my head all the time. So I see, like, a studio of some kind. Do they have those up north where we’re going?”
Lemur sat up. “If they don’t, we’ll build one. We’ll look it up on the Web, get some books on it.”
“It’d be like a combination music studio, like for recording, and a TV studio. So you could make the videos while you record the songs.”
“Oh, sure,” Jack said. “Those Eskimos are some fine singers. Famous for it. Have you ever heard the Eskimo Boys’ Choir?”
“We’ll have all sorts of family up there,” Lemur said. “Some of them’ll be singers for sure. Anyways, chaos is only gonna reign so long. Sooner or
later the blacks and the Muslims and all the rest of the, like, downtrodden are gonna come to us to run things. They don’t have the experience with it—not with running a civilization like ours. They’re gonna need help, and they’re gonna come to us that know how it works.”
“Well, aren’t you Papa’s parrot.”
“It makes perfect sense, Jack. If you don’t believe it, why are you part of the family?”
“I just don’t see it word for word, note for note, one-hundred-percent-copycat-perfect in Papa’s exact words, is all. I still have a mind of my own, is what I’m saying.”
Lemur hunched himself up in a corner of the couch, eyes on the flames again. “Well, anyway. There’s no reason why Nikki can’t be producing records or videos ten years from now. Or managing some really cool band. Why not?”
Jack knelt in front of the fire and poked at it, clattering and bonging in the grate as he spoke. Sparks darted and swirled. “Getting back to your own personal vision quest there, Lemur. I’m interested in this girl you describe. This soulmate business. That sounds about as close to perfect as perfect gets.”
Sometimes when Jack spoke, it was as if some malign entity—cold, wet, shapeless—entered the room and sat watching. As if he had custody of some alien creature that fed on anger and tears. Jack’s tone was cheerful, but Nikki sensed that ugly little creature in the room with them. Watching. Drooling.
Lemur didn’t pick up on it. “I never put it into words before. Just sitting here watching the fire, it just seems so …”
“Real,” Jack said. Leather creaked as he got comfortable in his armchair again. “She have a name, this princess?”
“I don’t really care what her name might be. But if I was gonna guess, I’d say she looks like—I don’t know—maybe a Jennifer? Or a Melissa?”
“I’d have said you was far more likely to find yourself cuddling up with a girl named Jason, or Buck. Something like that.”
“Very funny.”
“Listen, Petunia, you ain’t the kind of ace ends up with any Melissa. Reason being, Melissas don’t come supplied with cocks. And you are a natural-born cocksucker if ever I saw one, and that’s the truth.”