All the People We Used to Know
Part 11/12
"So we finally get back home and not five minutes after we walk in the door, Nathan calls," Peter was explaining to Suresh. Two weeks after their triumphant escape from Washington--New Year's Eve--and it was only now that Suresh thought to ask what had inspired Peter's panic that first night away. He'd already gotten through the part about the labels on the drawers and the infamous puzzle book (which now sat hidden in a drawer in their flat, half-finished in Claude's handwriting). This was the epilogue. "He's all mad, saying--" and here Peter affected a voice that would have sounded like Nathan if Nathan had sounded like the big bad wolf threatening to blow the little pig's house down "-- 'You think it's funny, but what if the kids had seen it?'"
"Seen what?" Suresh asked, brows knitting in amused confusion, a hesitant smile finding its way onto his lips.
"The cards he'd taped to the drawers," Peter said. "They had room on them for us to add stuff when we unpacked. So, like, if I'd put a tube of toothpaste in the medicine cabinet to go with the bottle of aspirin and the band-aids, I could have written it down so I'd know it was in there."
"Right," Suresh said.
"I think I know where this is going," Parkman said, setting his beer down on the table between them all. He eyed Claude. "What did you write on there?"
Claude affected an innocent expression. "Just the essentials," he said. "Condoms, lubricant, a few sex toys."
"Oh my God," Suresh said, covering his face. "How awful."
"Just doing my bit to promote safe sex," Claude said.
"Among eight year olds?" Parkman asked.
"They start early these days," Claude said. "Anyway, it serves him right. Dangling temptation in front of me like that. He should know better."
Suresh shook his head before turning to Peter. "But did labeling the drawers help at all?" he asked, taking a sip from his own beer bottle. "I know you felt insulted by them when you first saw them, but did they make it any easier for you to find things?" Claude imagined that the pen was poised on Suresh's writing tablet of a mind, ready to assimilate this new information.
"It didn't hurt," Peter admitted. "Having them there just made me feel kind of stupid."
"But having Spongebob Squarepants hanging on your bedroom door inspires no shame whatsoever," Claude said.
Parkman pulled a face. "Is it wrong that Spongebob gives me nightmares?"
Claude wordlessly held out his bottle. Parkman picked his up again and they clinked the two together in a gesture of solidarity.
"I remember when Molly made that picture for you," Suresh said, nodding toward the closed bedroom door behind which Molly supposedly slept. "She wanted to find a picture that, as she said, a boy would like. All the ones in the book she had were of flowers or ponies." He began pulling at the label on his bottle. "It will please her to know you still have that."
"It definitely helps," Peter said.
Parkman glanced at his watch. "Speaking of Molly," he said. "I should probably go wake her up. It's almost time." The girl had gone to bed under protest two hours earlier with the promise that they'd wake her in time to ring in the new year.
"I'll come with you," Peter said as Parkman rose.
Left alone, Claude and Suresh sat in awkward silence before Suresh moved to turn on the television. Flipping through the channels, he settled on one that already had its camera aimed at the famous ball in Times Square, though it would be minutes yet before it moved so much as an inch.
"Been living in this city for years now and I've never seen it in person," Claude commented, gesturing toward the sparkling orb on the screen.
"I'm not certain I would want to with all those people standing in that crowd," Suresh said, eyes on the countdown clock.
Claude nodded in agreement. "So," he said after a minute. "I hear Haiti is lovely this time of year."
Surprise flickered in Suresh's eyes but he didn't look away from the television. "Oh?" he said. When Claude only raised an eyebrow, he relented. "Well, I must say it comforts me to know how open Bennet is with the information I had assumed he was keeping in confidence."
"Yeah, well, Bennet and I are old pals. Used to braid each other's hair and everything," Claude said. "Anyway, if it makes you feel better, he only told me because he was trying to recruit me at the time. Wanted me to help the two of you take down the Company and all that."
"I see," Suresh said.
Claude waited a few beats before giving in to his own impatience. "So?" he said. "How was Haiti?"
The lights on the screen reflected in Suresh's dark eyes as he considered his answer. "To be quite honest, I don't remember," he said wryly. "I suppose that means it must have gone well."
"The Haitian's back in working order, then?" Claude asked.
"It would seem so," Suresh said.
"Grand," Claude said.
A moment passed.
"Did Bennet mention to you anything about Isaac Mendez and his paintings?" Suresh asked.
"The series of eight," Claude said. "He told me there was one of Kaito Nakamura, dead."
Suresh nodded solemnly. "Yes," he said. "I found another shortly after my return from Haiti. The Company was keeping it in storage in the facility where they have me working now, researching the virus."
Claude's mouth went dry as he remembered Bennet's hypothesis that Peter would be featured in one of the paintings. "Yeah?" he said.
"It was of Bennet," Suresh said and all at once Claude could breathe again. "He was dead. Shot through the eye. There were two figures hovering over him in the background. One was a blonde girl--she looked like his daughter. The other one…wasn't clear."
"Bloody hell," Claude muttered. It was one thing to be willing to die to protect your family. It was another to see such a scene rendered in full color right before your eyes.
"Naturally, Bennet was quite shaken when he saw it," Suresh said. "I think perhaps he may even have delayed the next step of his plan for a time because of it."
"He's giving up?" Claude asked.
"No, I don't think so," Suresh said. "It's just that he wanted to spend Christmas and the new year with his family without having to worry about…well." He gestured vaguely.
"I see," Claude said, leaning back in his own seat. If Bennet was delaying, that meant the trip he'd been planning to the Ukraine probably hadn't happened yet. Which in turn meant Claude's waffling had done nothing to passively close out his options, as he'd hoped it would. There was still a decision needed to be made.
Suresh shifted now, turning so that he faced Claude more fully. "You said that Bennet was trying to recruit you when you were over in Washington," he said.
"Aye," Claude said. "Have a bit of a grudge against the Company myself. Also, he seemed to think they might start threatening Peter, now he has his powers back."
Suresh's eyes widened. "Peter's in danger?"
"Nothing's for sure," Claude said. "But there's a chance. Anyway, I told Bennet to go to hell but…"
"But since then you've started thinking about it," Suresh surmised.
"I have," Claude acknowledged.
"And?"
"And I don't know," Claude said. "Even without them going after Peter, I have reason enough to want them gone, don't I? But 'dare I disturb the universe' and all that." He contemplated the last of the liquid in his bottle but didn't drink it. Thin American piss. "Besides that, I think Bennet had his own talk with Peter. Peter hasn't told me what about yet. Mostly we've been spending the past couple of weeks pretending like nothing ever happened but I imagine it will have to come out sooner or later."
Suresh nodded. "I understand your hesitation," he said. "Even with Molly and what they did to her, I sometimes wonder if I'm doing the right thing or if I'm simply putting us all in more danger."
"Yeah, well, just know that the Company has ways of getting to you," Claude said. "It's like Stockholm syndrome, only worse. More dangerous, what they can make you do when they know you're not looking."
Suresh bowed his head. "I'll remember that," he said.
Claude cleared his throat, focusing back on the countdown clock. Only two more minutes now. "So," he said. "You finally going to kiss Parkman at the stroke of midnight or what?"
Suresh gave him a dry look. "Who says I haven't already?" he shot back just as Parkman and Peter emerged from the bedroom, a sleepy Molly in Parkman's arms.
Peter settled in beside Claude with a minute left to go and together they watched the seconds tick past. Claude reflected that it had been a long time since he'd last been caught up in any kind of a New Year's celebration, even one as patently lame as this. Hard to notice the passing of time when you spent so much of your own out on the streets with nowhere in particular to be and no one in particular to be with, other than a flock of pigeons. But now with the clock running out and Peter's arm brushing against his, the announcer began to count backward from ten and it seemed to Claude that there was a kind of pressure to it all. He knew that once the clock hit zero, more would be ending than just another calendar year.
"Happy New Year," Peter murmured as the first strains of "Auld Lang Syne" began to play somewhere underneath the cheers of the crowd as the fireworks started. "Did I forget to ask you before if it was acceptable to give you a New Year's kiss?"
"You did," Claude said. "And it isn't, by the way. I'm not one of your sodding girlfriends." He paused. "However, new year's sex is an acceptable alternative. We could go back to the flat or, if you like, I think I remember a few of our favorite dark corners around here."
"Yeah, except I think Matt and Mohinder will be using those," Peter said, nodding toward where Parkman and Suresh were taking turns kissing Molly on the cheek in a version of a New Year's kiss that was only vaguely pedophiliac.
"You think?" Claude asked.
"Yeah," Peter said, a sly grin on his face. "I do."
"Well, then," Claude said, "we best be going, hadn't we?"