T
he doctor instructs Victor to take my vital signs, listens intently as he lists off the numbers, and then tells him to do it again. “And you say this is more or less baseline for the patient?” Her Creole accent seeps out even more now that she’s alive with the thrill of a well-placed blade.
Victor nods. “Slightly lower than usual, but yes, that’s what he tells me. That’s how I first found him, actually.” He starts in on the story of how we met, Dr. Tijou punctuating with little
hmm
s and
ooh
s. I can’t focus on any of his words though. They just seem like vague amoebas floating above our heads. It occurs to me I’ve been holding on tightly to my life force, keeping it close to my core the way I did my secrets when I was around Sasha. It’s wearing me out. “I think . . . I think I . . .” I hear myself saying. I’m probably trying to tell them I’m about to pass out, but then I just do it instead.
* * *
I wake up to the sound of an R & B joint bursting tinnily through someone else’s headphones. The bass is so loud that whoever’s listening to it will definitely be hearing
impaired in about ten seconds. It’s raining out. Those pitter-pattering footsteps slosh steadily against the window, and a mellow blue-gray light filters into the room.
Kia.
Kia’s the one blowing out her own eardrums. She’s tinkering around in the kitchen. “Coffee,” I mumble. Of course, she can’t hear me because some preteen is trying to seduce her point-blank at four million decibels. I grab something off the little table by the couch and launch it across the room. Turns out to be a small potted plant, which explodes against the far wall and sends Kia flying up into the air with surprise.
“What the
fuck,
Carlos!”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was . . .” I stop because saying so many words has worn me out. “Coffee . . .” I mumble.
“No, man. Both Baba Eddie and Dr. Tijou said no coffee for you. You have to recover. Your pressure’s low even by low-ass Carlos standards, and you lost a lot of blood. Coffee’ll fuck you up even more.”
I’m slightly alarmed by the brush of maternal tenderness that comes over Kia’s voice. I must be truly messed up if she’s actually deigned to be concerned.
“Okay. No coffee. Fuck.”
And I’m out.
* * *
First I hear humming and the gentle swish of water. A voice I don’t know; a large, older woman from the sound of it. It’s a melancholy call-and-response, each line repeated, but she’s doing both voices.
Then I hear Kia say: “Like this?”
The older woman grunts an approval and keeps humming.
“That’s the song for the herbs?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It makes them happy?”
“It makes them work,” the woman says. “Prayer puts the world to work. The action you take is your expression of intent. The world listens. And then works. Go get me some more iced tea, baby, okay?”
“All right, Iya.”
I keep my eyes closed.
* * *
Kia’s sitting in the easy chair next to the couch when I come back around. She smiles—not the fuck-you, I’m-winning smile I’m used to from Kia but a real one, full of warmth and . . . what’s that? Kindness. She’s still in her whites, a long skirt and button-down shirt. Her hair’s wrapped up in a white head tie, and a million multicolored bead necklaces peek out from behind her collar. She looks like a whole other person. It’s still raining, and I have no idea how much time has passed.
“How do you feel?”
“Better. A little. Don’t think I can move though.”
“Don’t. We haven’t done the cleansing yet. Baba had to run out to take care of some stuff. It’s better you get a chance to recover some first anyway.”
“Who was the woman?”
“Oh, from earlier? Iya Tiomi. One of Baba’s people. We were making some herb washes for you.”
“Figured something like that.”
“Apparently, you’re some kind of medical freak. Dr. Tijou was really amazed. She kept running around the place squawking about how she’d never seen anything like it in her career.” Kia affects a pretty on-point Haitian accent. “‘Even in Port-au-Prince! Sacrebleu!’”
I chuckle, which hurts but feels good at the same time. I haven’t laughed in far too long.
“She was actually pretty cool with all the spiritual stuff too, even though she still calls it voudou.”
“Well . . .”
“She even said she’d come back and help us do the cleansing.”
As if on cue, Baba Eddie, Dr. Tijou, and Iya Tiomi come through the front door, shaking rain off their jackets and chuckling about some inside joke.
“How’s the little dead guy?” Dr. Tijou asks amiably.
“He’s awake!” Kia says. I’m still not used to this nice person that replaced her.
Baba Eddie clasps his hands together. “Excellent. We can begin.” He lights up a fat-ass cigar, and everyone gathers around me. “Close your eyes, Carlos.”
I hear words—very old, beautiful words. They come out of Baba Eddie in an endless stream with occasional pauses in which he mutters, “Um . . . coño
. .
. ah sí sí
.
. .” and jumps back in. There’s a call-and-response part where Kia and Tiomi answer him with a mix of Spanish and some other language—Yoruban, I presume—and then I hear the
ftz-f
tz
ing of lighters and the tiny crackle of candles coming to life around me. Something wet gets sprinkled on my face and then all over my body and, as more chanting begins, I drift off into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.
S
ometime in there I got good at being patient again. Life became a blur of sleeping and waking, mumbling senseless shit, passing back out. At one point I think someone bathed me, but I have no idea who. I remember smiling a lot, enjoying all the banter without understanding a word of it. Dr. Tijou seemed to have taken a liking to me, or at least to the peculiarity of my wound; she started showing up regularly and sipping her tea while Victor told wild ambulance stories and smoked cigarettes with Baba Eddie.
Despite the wealth of healing arts in the room—a doctor, a medic, and a wily Santería priest—it was Kia who ended up making sure I stayed on point with my medicines and herbal remedies. The others kept an eye out, checked vital signs every now and then, but basically yukked it up. Of course, laughter has its own healing properties, and their ongoing debates and zings kept my mind from lingering on Sasha for too long.
Then one day I start planning. It’s not a conscious choice; it pretty much just happens. I wake up, lie there for a minute, and then my mind immediately drifts toward Sarco and his treachery. He’s not dead. There’s absolutely
no way I would believe that he didn’t somehow make it out of that swarm. His physical body being gone is proof enough of that. Anyway, the guy obviously has some severely advanced supernatural powers. If he could survive that barrage of stabs I dealt him with his own blade, well . . . I gonna need to see a body before I believe it’s over.
And if he’s still alive, that means he’s still plotting. No madman in his right mind would go through all that trouble, have a whole plan in place, ready to go, get inches, seconds literally, from completion, and then just cast it away because the first halfie he tries for sticks it to him and storms off.
No.
Sarco will try again. And again and again until he either gets what he wants or gets obliterated trying. I set my mind toward making the latter happen.
Kia pokes her head in from the kitchen. “You want some water, Carlos?”
“With rum, please.”
“Right.”
If the ngks could be spoken to somehow, reasoned with, perhaps his whole plan would unravel. I know they’re a crucial ingredient, but they don’t or won’t speak. We can barely get near them without spawning more or getting all kinds of casualties inflicted upon us. And Sarco will be looking for another halfie, once he recovers, and I have no doubt who he’ll turn to first.
“Here. Water.” Kia sets a glass on the table along with a little orange medicine vial. “And your pills.”
“Gracias.” I gulp down the pills. “You having fun?”
“I am, actually,” she says seriously. “It’s nice to get a break from the store for a while.” She pauses, looks away. “And home.”
It’s one of those moments. Do you ask about all the
heaviness she inflected the word “home” with or just let it sit, let her get to it on her own? Kia’s a pretty private person, so I opt to nod and let her continue if she wants to. She doesn’t, but it’s all over her: someone close is gone, has been gone for a while. A brother, cousin maybe. He’s tall and lanky, young. His face stares defiantly out from the haze around Kia. He’s probably dead, the way she carries him enshrined so.
Kia’s staring at me. I exit her private thoughts and make myself smile. “It means a lot to me, you helping me out like this.” I’m really not good with saying things like that, so it comes out all off rhythm.
“Ha—don’t worry about it. I said I’m having fun.” She smiles an awkward teenager smile and heads back into the kitchen.
If Sarco goes to Sasha . . . I don’t know what I would do. In part because I don’t know what she would do. She’s a total unknown entity at this point, a wild card. On the one hand, she showed a healthy distrust of him when she was telling her story; on the other, she shish-kebabed me to the couch and summoned that asshole to my house. Then again, I killed her brother. But she also didn’t look that happy to see Sarco when he showed up. And that face she made at me just before leaving: could that have been remorse in her eyes?
“Hey, whatever happened with your lady friend?” Kia yells over the clatter of dishwashing.
I hate it when she does that. “Which one?”
“Oh please. Don’t act like you got chicks climbing over each other to get on that dick.”
“Well, damn.”
“The one that had you all frowny a few weeks ago.”
“Oh yeah, that one. Seems she’s the one that put the blade in me.”
“Oh. So not so good, then.”
“Well, she may have had somewhat of a justifiable reason.”
She appears in the doorway, arms akimbo. “What the fuck did you do, Carlos?”
“No . . . nothing. To her. Nothing like
that.
I mean . . . it’s complicated.”
“No fucking shit it’s complicated.”
“You got a boyfriend, Kia?”
“Man . . .” she scoffs. “There’s this one dude Renny I kinda like.”
“Renny?”
“Renard.”
“Is he eighty?”
“No, Carlos, he’s sixteen. Just has an old-ass name. But I dunno. Mostly, I don’t have time for these children that’re tryna throw game my way. Seriously, these idiotic little boys come with some true stupidity, and quite frankly I got better shit to do.”
“I hear you.” Of course, I don’t a have an adolescence to hark back to, but from what I’ve witnessed in the street, her assessment sounds about right.
“All right,” Kia says, putting down the dish towel and sitting at the table. “Stop distracting me. I got homework and shit.”
* * *
A murderer.
Sarco’s voice wakes me from a delirious dream and I jolt up, throwing my glance around the dark room. Nothing stirs. Victor is knocked out in the easy chair, snoring loudly. The moon is strong tonight, sends bright beams in to illuminate the edges of my furniture. Outside, passing cars slosh through puddles and the rain still soft-steps through the night, against my windows.
No Sarco.
I lie back down.
Murderer.
That sickening whisper. He knows who I was. Or he said he did, anyway. My creator. He seemed to have the memories to prove it, but I suppose there are ways of faking such things. I roll over, scowling at my tender abdomen and impossible thought lines. I want to know. I couldn’t give a fuck for three years and suddenly it matters. Because now the answer is a reality, somewhere, in someone’s mind, even if it’s a near-impossible, almost-definite lie of a reality. There’s still a glimmer there, and a glimmer is all I need to get agitated.
Fuck.
I roll over again, squirming with pain.
Ass.
What happened immediately before that moment of me? What happened after? I took it to be some part of my death struggle, but who knows? If Sarco’s telling the truth and I was a murderer, I suppose I could’ve had many moments like that.
Fuck.
This means that when I finally do find Sarco, I can’t just ruthlessly end him for good the way I’d like to. I have to find out a few things first. And this complicates shit. The hunger for knowledge always complicates shit.
And I hate complicated shit.
Fuck.
M
y brother.”
I’ve never been so happy to see Riley in my whole entire life. Ever. And it’s not a dream. I grin up at him like an overjoyed idiot and he rolls his eyes.
“I’ll take that stupid-ass smile to mean you’re feeling better.”
“Yes.” And it’s true. I feel . . . cleansed. That fresh feeling, like when you’ve just taken the best nap ever. Yes. “How long have I been here?”
“Damn near two weeks, man.”
“What?”
“You had a lot going on, apparently. Meanwhile, the ghost world keeps turning. We gotta talk.”
“No shit we gotta talk. Are you okay? Cuz last time I saw you, the tables were turned.”
“Yes, I recall,” Riley says ruefully. “I’m good. Still a little shaken, I admit, but the COD dickheads actually have some pretty serious stuff they working with up there, and combined with the wonders Mama Esther worked on me in the immediate afterthefact, I gonna be fine.”
“I’m so glad to hear that. Mama Esther?”
Riley makes a noncommittal shrug. “She’s hanging in
there. Sarco put some nasty spell on her that had her all narc’d out for a while, but she’s conscious again. The COD guys actually sucked up their old rivalry and sent some cats over to work on her. She’s recovering.”
My mind lurches in frantic circles. Probably because Riley’s here—it’s impossible not to slide into strategy mode around that guy. “Sarco . . .”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“They haven’t found him?”
Riley shakes his head. I hadn’t really expected them to, but the information still sends an unpleasant ball of dread rising up my throat.
“I thought they’d . . .” I don’t have the words because I’m too busy imagining Sarco’s shadow reaching out at me through the gates of Hell.
“Nope, and the Council’s none too happy ’bout everything.”
“The fuck else is new?”
“Pretty much. But they’re keeping you as lead on the case, if that makes you feel any better.”
I’m both relieved and embarrassed. Riley’s got seniority on me; he trained me. He’s something of a legend when it comes to tracking down spirits and putting them in their place. There’s no way I should be running a case he’s . . . Oh. “They took you off the case?”
“I’m on
light duty.
” Accentuated with two little bunny ears from his ghost fingers.
“Which means?”
“Technically, I’m a paper pusher for a few weeks, till I get clearance. But I could give a fuck what it means, Carlos, and you know that. It’s a bureau decision, which means it’s meaningless, which means I’ll be helping you out on this one, even if it’s somewhat on the hushity-ho-hush. But you’re in charge, my brother. This is your
baby now. I just gonna be your pain-in-the-ass henchman for a change.”
“Fair enough.” Then I look away as my mind goes into overdrive again. Sarco, the ngks, Sasha, Mama Esther’s . . . Lines stretch across a makeshift city map I have stashed in my subconscious. The park, the park, the park . . . “He’s trying to tear a chasm into the Underworld. Release the dead.”
“So I hear.”
“And there’s more. Not sure what, but . . . there was a lot he wasn’t telling me.”
“I would imagine.”
I shake my head. And then an odd memory resurfaces. “Riley?”
“Oui?”
“Who named me Carlos?”
He chuckles. “I did. I found you. I figured I should get dibs on naming you.”
“Why Carlos?”
“Oh. Cuz you looked Puerto Rican.”
I roll my eyes. “And?”
“And I knew this ghost Lalo that has a son named Carlos. He runs a bodega over by the Junklot in Bed-Stuy. I had to send Lalo back down under but he asked me to keep an eye on his boy, so I check in now and then. And he was Puerto Rican. I think. Maybe Dominican.”
“How charming. What about the Delacruz?”
“Oh, Baba Eddie came up with that actually.”
“From the cross.”
“Yeah, but you gotta ask him. I don’t think he was talkin’ ’bout Jesus.”
We sit there quietly for a few moments. Then I say, “I know I’ve never asked you this before . . .”
Riley rolls his eyes. “Hold on. Lemme put some coffee on.”
“You didn’t even let me—”
“Why bother? You wanna know about the night I found you.”
Stupid-ass mind-reading-ass friends.
* * *
Riley sets two steaming cups of coffee on the counter. “I was on a stakeout, keeping an eye on some dumbass ghost that wanted revenge for some shit that hadn’t even happened to him. I don’t remember. Some political imbroglio, I think. It was pouring rain. I was with Dro. Shit . . .”
We both just sit there dully for a second, letting the ghost of Dro’s ghost pass over us and depart. I bristle, trying to direct my thoughts away from his family. “Go on.”
“I remember!” Riley says it a little more excitedly than necessary; he’s trying to get away from that emptiness too. “We were waiting on this fuckin’ city councilman guy who had passed some bill that got some fuckin’ old ghost’s favorite house obliterated on one of those imminent domain heists. You know?”
“Kinda.”
“Fucked-up thing was, the ghost hadn’t even ever
lived
in the fuckin’ house when he was alive. Didn’t even haunt the motherfucker when he was dead. He just
liked
it.” We both shake our heads and drink our coffees for a few moments. Ghosts can really be out of line sometimes. It’s one thing to come back for true love and cause a little hubbub. Or some unresolved revenge bullshit, fine. You’re wrong, blah blah blah, but I get it. At least you have a good reason.
But every now and then you get these real entitled-acting blowhards wanna come back around and raise a roof just because—perfect example: because they like a
house. Ugh. Can’t even roll my eyes far enough back into my flesh-and-blood head to express how out of line that shit is. So you like a house. Fucking stay your dead ass downstairs and paint a picture of it. No one wants your house-loving ass wandering around pestering some city councilman, even if he does deserve it.
I’d say as much to Riley, but he already knows. One or the other of us usually goes on that exact rant every couple months or so.
“Anyway,” Riley says once enough time has passed for us to both have run through the whole spiel in our heads, “the ghost would come out the park every night—surprise, surprise—and go fuck with the councilman while he was walking his German ridgeback terrier or whatever.”
“Did you just make that up? Cuz I really think it is in actuality a breed of dog.”
“I don’t fuckin’ know, Carlos. I think Dro called it that.” Another pause, shorter this time. “Shit was three years ago.”
I just grunt.
“Fucking . . .” Riley says by way of a space filler while he finds his spot in the story again. “Oh! So we waiting by the archway, right, and it’s raining and shit, ghostly-ass night, blah blah blah, and just, I mean
just
as Harley Q. Orenson or whoever the fuck he was comes a-strollin’ out the motherfucking park, I notice something odd ’bout this pile of garbage that was scattered ’round the legs of the archway. I mean, first of all, it’s weird that there’s trash there in the first place, because especially since the white folks started really staking out they territories; Parks and Recreation does not slack on the pickup around there. You do not see piles of refuse around no Grand Army Plaza. But lo and bemotherfuckinghold: basura!
“So I squint at the shit through the rain some, think I see something that don’t quite fit—that was your ankle—when suddenly Dro’s tugging on my sleeve, like ‘Agent Washington, Agent Washington!’”
“Oh, this was back when he still called you Agent Washington. Hilarious.”
“Well, that is my title.”
“Right. Go on.”
“And, of course, the ghost is emerging, the councilman ridgeback-walking, all kindsa culmination is culminating in front my very eyes. Now, Carlos, we’ve already been through the fact that I’m really not a motherfucker who goes checking for situations that don’t pertain to me. Not my style.” He frowns like he just ate something really foul and shakes his head. “I don’t.”
“I know.”
“Ever. Very rarely.”
“Riley, I know that.”
“So it was . . . odd, that I should insist on seeing what the fuck this situation was about. Especially because I didn’t fully trust young Dro to know how to really bring a case to its final resting place, so to speak.”
“Understood.”
“But nevertheless, I sent Dro to deal with Orenson, and I went over to your crumpled ass and took a pulse.”
“On my ass?”
“No! Your neck, dickhead. And you had none. Fine. If you’da just been dead, which I thought at first, I’da just walked the fuck away and someone woulda probably found you in the morning and hucked you over to the morgue right quick and called it a day.”
“Right.”
“But then you groaned.”
I get us two beers out the fridge. Moving feels good. “Did I?”
“Rolled slightly over and moaned, I believe. Something creepy and zombielike, whatever it was. And I realized, something extremely motherfuckin’ odd was going on.”
“Correct.”
“Then I left.”
“You left?”
Riley shrugs. “Carlos, you were just some dead dude. So you were moving. It’s weird, but what are you gonna do? I had a new guy about to fuck up a high-profile job, and I’m not gonna stop and play doctor with every damn near-dead guy that falls across my path.”
“So why’d you come back?”
“I helped Dro sort out the house-loving homeboy. He really just needed a firm talking to and made himself scarce by his own accord. Then we headed to Mama Esther’s, as a matter of fact, cuz I was a little spooked by the whole night and pissed about something—some Council bullshit, I’m sure—and I told her about what I’d found.”
“And?”
“And she threw a shit fit and made me go back and get you.”
“Did she say why?”
“Just went on about our brethren and not leaving ’em out for the wolves to chew on. It was all pretty cryptic, but you know how she can get when she’s moody.”
I nod, but I’m thinking about something else. An idea is gestating somewhere in me and I can’t quite articulate it yet. Apparently, Riley recognizes the face because he takes one good look at me and stays quiet.
“All right.” I look around. I’ve been cooped up in this house for who knows how many days. My midsection
still aches where the blade went in and where it came out too, but I’m mostly healed up. The cleansings, the herbs, Dr. Tijou’s wonder pills all musta done some pretty serious work on me. Baba Eddie had laid down his heavy-duty spiritual blocks on my place. I briefly entertain the image of Sarco’s shadow, hovering just outside my door, claw raised. Then I shake my head. “Let’s go,” I say.
“Where?”
“Grand Army Plaza.”
“What, now? It’s three thirty in the morning.”
“I know. I have a hunch about something.”
“Carlos . . .”
But I’m throwing on my coat and heading out the door.