Slow River

“For example, I know that Mr. Rachmindi is moving out next month. His place is nicer than yours, and not much more a month.”

“I’m happy where I am.”

“Maybe you are, but think about the weather as the winter gets on. You’ll be mewling with cold come January. And his window looks out onto the trees at the back, if that’s what you’ll miss.”

“It’s not that.” He just waited. “It’s…” I stood up, found my sack of bulbs, brought them back. I rolled one onto my palm. “Jonquil. In April that’ll be a flower the color of hot sun on white sand.” I put it on the table and took out another. “Bluebell. Like soft babies’ eyes. Freesias, violets, crocuses, verbena…” They rolled out of the sack like toy trucks. “I took my flat because I can get onto the roof. I’m going to grow these.” Where the squirrels could not get at them. “It will be a place of wild things, natural things. I need them.” A tear dripped onto the lacy brown and beige wrinkles of the bulb in my palm.

Tom Wilson’s papery hands reached out and folded my fingers over the bulb. “Best keep it dry,” he said, and produced a large white handkerchief from somewhere. He watched silently as I wiped my face, then my nose, and put the bulbs back into the bag.

“This garden of yours… Will you invite me up to see it, when it starts to bloom?”

I opened my mouth to say, I’d love to, but you will you get your old bones out onto the roof? and said, instead, “Yes.” If he wanted to see the flowers, we’d find a way.

I spent two hours with Tom Wilson and afterward climbed the stairs to my flat thoughtfully.

When I got in I called Spa

“Last night.”

“All of it?” I needed to feel safe from Magyar.

“Everything. You are now a fully three-dimensional paragon of virtue.” She was still in that expansive, good mood. “I was tempted to add a police record, something along the lines of swimming naked in the docks as a protest for, oh, animal rights or something.” She gri

I couldn’t help it—I gri

“About that equipment,” she said. “You available late tonight for a meeting? Good. I’ll see you here after work.”

The screen went blank.

The morning of Spa

Spa

“Yes.” And she was, sort of.

“Good. We’re the same, you and I. We understand each other.”

All Lore understood about Spa

“You know what it’s like. To have someone kill herself. You know how it feels. Because of your sister, your sister…”

“Stella.” It was hard to say her name aloud. Her sister’s suicide was public property. She supposed it had been all over the net. “Who do you know that killed themselves?”

Spa

“I didn’t know Stella was going to kill herself.”

Spa

Lore nodded because she couldn’t speak. She tried not to think about Stella and why she killed herself, because then she would have to think about Tok, about her father about herself. “Leave some of that wine for me.”

But Spa

“What are you doing?”

“Box.” She heaved, and an ancient cardboard box slid out onto the carpet. She got out of bed and sat cross-legged by it. “There’s a picture of my mother in here, somewhere.” Her mother… Spa

“Here.” Spa

Lore followed her into the living room.

“I made the drive when I was fifteen,” Spa

The first picture that came up on the screen was a dog, an impossibly elegant whippet with a patch of black fur over one eye. “That’s A

“What happened to her?”

Spa

“My mother.” She had blond hair, lighter than Spa

Lore wanted to know more about her. She was desperate to learn about Spa

“It was. She got it for her birthday. We all clubbed together for it.” Not rich, then. But who did she mean by we? “She said she loved that dress. I looked for it, after she died. I thought I’d keep it, keep something that had meant a lot to her, you know, something that we had had between us. But it wasn’t hanging in her wardrobe. I had to search the whole house. It was in a bag full of rubbish, old tat that was going to go to charity that Christmas. It was all wrinkled. Smelled like it had been in the bag for months. I threw it away.” Spa

Lore took Spa