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"All right, Mike. It's not very fu
"No, it's not. You were right before, Kay—it's terrifying. At least if I have you two near me I can protect you. We can keep moving, and Sellars seems to be pretty good with managing a low profile for us. You settle in one place, even somewhere not as obvious as your mom's, we'd just be hoping they don't find you."
"You sound like you believe in this . . . conspiracy. This whole big crazy thing."
"Don't you? Explain Sellars, then. Explain Yacoubian and his little hotel room and his matching Nazi weight-lifter bodyguards."
Christabel had been stiff in one place so long that she was afraid she would scream if she couldn't put the glass down. She inched her arm to the edge of the sink, looking for a flat spot.
"I can't explain it, Mike, and I don't want to try. I just want my child safe and away from all this . . . craziness."
"That's what I want, too, as soon as possible. But the only way I can see. . . ."
The glass teetered, then tipped. Christabel grabbed at it but it jumped out of her fingers and hit the floor with a sound like something blowing up on the net. An instant later the bathroom light flashed on bright, and her father was so big and angry in the door that Christabel took a bad step back and started to fall. Her father jumped forward and caught her arm so hard she squeaked, but she didn't fall down.
"Oh, my God, what are you doing? Ah! Jesus! There's glass everywhere!"
"Mike, what's going on?"
"Christabel just broke a glass. I got a piece in my foot the size of a steak knife. Jesus!"
"Honey, what happened?" Her mom lifted her up and carried her into the room where her parents had been arguing. "Did you have a bad dream?"
"I'll just clean up the glass, then," her father said from the bathroom. "And amputate my foot to save the leg. Don't mind me." He sounded angry, but Christabel relaxed a little—it wasn't the kind if divorce-angry she had been hearing.
"I . . . I was thirsty. Then I heard you. . . ." She didn't want to say it, but she still believed a little that if she told Mommy, something would happen to make things all right again. "I heard you arguing and it scared me."
"Oh, honey, of course." Her mother pulled her close and kissed her head. "Of course. But it's okay. Your daddy and I are just trying to decide what to do. Sometimes grownups argue."
"And then they get a divorce."
"Is that what's worrying you? Oh, sweetie, don't take it so seriously. It's just an argument." But her mother's voice still sounded fu
They were still talking in the other room, but much more quietly now. Christabel lay in her bed, just across a space like a little valley from the boy Cho-Cho, who was tangled up in his covers on his own bed like an Egyptian mummy. Christabel tried to breathe slowly like her mommy told her, but she kept feeling the crying about to come out and her breaths sounded all raggedy.
"Shut up, mu'chita." Cho-Cho's voice was muffled by his pillow, which lay over his face. "People tryin' to sleep."
She ignored him. What did he know? He didn't have a mommy and daddy who were arguing and were going to get a divorce. It wasn't his fault everyone was angry, like it was hers. Even though she was so sad it hurt, she also felt a little brave.
"This far crash," Cho-Cho said, rolling out of bed and taking most of his covers with him, so the sheeted mattress suddenly was bare and white, like an ice cream sandwich with the top peeled off. "Can't nobody sleep with this mierda." Ski
"Where are you going? You can't go in there."
He didn't bother to look at her and didn't even close the door. Christabel buried her head under her own blankets when he started to pee. After the noisy flush of the toilet, it was quiet for a long time. When she at last stuck her head out from under the covers he was sitting up in his bed, staring at her with his big dark eyes.
"You afraid some monsters go
Christabel had met a real monster, a smiling man in a hotel room with eyes like little nails. She didn't need to answer to this mean boy.
"Just go to sleep," he said after a while. "Got nothing to worry about."
It was so unfair she couldn't keep quiet any more. "You don't know about anything!"
"I know nothing happens to little ricas like you." He stared at her, smiling a mean little smile, but he didn't look happy. "What you think go
"What kind of camp?" It didn't sound that bad—Christabel's friend Ophelia had been to Bluebird camp, and they made art projects and ate marshmallow sandwiches.
Cho-Cho waved his hand at her. "Cross City, that was one they put my tio in. Digging and like that. Bread with, like, little bichos cooked right in it."
Christabel put a hand to her mouth. "You said a bad word."
"What?" He thought for a second, then laughed, showing his missing tooth. "Bichos? That just mean bugs." He laughed again. "You thought I said 'bitches,' huh?"
She gasped. "You did say it!"
The boy let himself slide back into his bed, staring up at the ceiling. All she could see was the tip of his nose above the pillow. "Tell you what, not go
"You're . . . you're going to run away? But . . . Mister Sellars, he needs you!" She couldn't understand—it seemed like the kind of wickedness they talked about in church sometimes, not Sunday school, but the big room with the benches and the glass window of Jesus. Run away from that poor old man?
And her mother would be sad, too, Christabel realized. Mommy complained about it a lot, but she really seemed to like making Cho-Cho bathe and wear clean clothes, giving him extra food to eat.
The boy made a noise she could just barely hear—it might have been another laugh. "I thought there was some efectivo around here, some money, but it's just a bunch of crazy people trying on some spyflick mierda. Little Cho-Cho, soon he going to be too . . . much . . . gone."
He didn't say any more. Christabel could only lie in the bed next to his; straining to hear her parents' low voices, and wonder how the world could have turned so strange.
She had drawn enough hieroglyphs on the countertop with powdered creamer for an entirely lactose-free edition of the Book of the Dead. She had listened to the quiet hiss and hum of her employer's expensive coma bed adjusting itself until she wanted to scream. A thousand cha
Dulcie knew she ought to go lie down, but knew equally firmly that she wouldn't sleep for hours. She pulled on her lightweight raincoat and keyed the security sequence for the front door lock. When it chimed she hesitated, then went back and got her newly-assembled gun from its hiding place in the coffee cabinet.
A little before midnight and the hilly streets of Redfern were shiny with rain just fallen, although at the moment the skies were clear. A loud group of people were streaming out of a dirge club down the block, mostly young white and Asian kids dressed in funereal clothes, baggy black 'chutes and wrapped fellaheen hoods. She fell in behind the largest group, drawn down the street behind them as their voices rang off the building facades like the excited piping of a flock of bats. They seemed to be shouting things at each other in some pidgin Aboriginal dialect. Dulcie remembered a time when she could have stood on the streets of Soho or the Village next to a bunch of young people like this and done in-depth social anthropology on every word, every item of clothing and its positioning. Now she couldn't even remember if this particular sub-sub-group were Dirt Farmers or No-Siders, or anything much else about them except that they liked organic hallucinogens, loud slow music, and artificial skin bleaching.