CHAPTER SEVENTY
This was not the first time Ana had ever detoxed and it wouldn't be the last. A certain level of suck was only to be expected, but the main effects—the headache, sour stomach, hypersensitivity and brain fog—weren't any worse than a really bad hangover, with maybe a dash of paranoia and insomnia thrown in for flavor. If this one felt worse than any other time, well, the mirror could have shown her hundreds of reasons manifested as stitches, but she couldn't do anything about that except get through it and experience had taught her that the best way to get through it was to sleep through it as much as possible.
She tried, falling into bed only to toss and sweat and startle up in a heart-pounding panic at every gust of wind or scratch of rats behind the walls. She did sleep a little that first night after she left Foxy, sleep without any sense of peace or quiet, maybe two hours if all the loose minutes were gathered up and squeezed together. She would have appreciated them more if she'd only known they were the last two hours of sleep she'd have for the next three days. No matter how exhausted she was, she could not lie quiet. Fidgeting hurt; the pain made her nauseous; throwing up made the headache explode in her skull and her heart race faster; her racing heart made her restless and so the wheel turned, faster and faster. The pills could have put her out if she took enough of them, but with Freddy, she could only get enough to file down the most jagged edges, leaving the rest of her to lie there, dizzy and aching and numb and awake until the Percocet wore off and she was counting the minutes again until her next dose.
So sleep was impossible and being in bed was like being trapped in a waking nightmare, and then it was morning and time to head off for her second rabies shot. Her hands were useless to her, weak and twitchy, turning every stupid little thing she tried to do into a Herculean task. She needed coffee because she hadn't slept, but to make coffee—separating a single filter from the others, spooning out the grounds, filling the carafe with water and pouring it into the reservoir, and especially pushing the brew button and not the timer or the goddamn power button—nearly left her in tears. Working one button and the zipper of her jeans took so much effort that the first time she had to pee, she took them all the fucking way off and put on her only pair of sweatpants instead. It had holes and stains all over (including one in the crotch where she'd spilled a can of Spaghetti-Os once when she was stoned) and only ever wore it to do messy work. Wearing them out in public, just because jeans were too hard, made her feel shabby on top of everything else.
She had to drive to the clinic on no sleep, spilling coffee on her shirt and her trashy sweatpants because her hands were shaking, her hair unbraided and looking like she'd never brushed it in her life, with the grey sun like needles in her eyes and the hum of the truck's well-maintained engine like needles in her ears and the vibrations of the road transmitted through the steering wheel like needles in her fingers, and be a functional fucking human being. If someone had offered to delete her from existence—not kill her, she didn't want to die, but just undo the Great Mistake of her birth—she'd have happily pushed the button herself.
It showed. The doctor who was supposed to give her the second course of the rabies vaccine almost didn't do it, alarmed by her rapid heartbeat, clammy pallor and trembling. He was convinced that she was having some kind of reaction to the first one and really, really should not have checked herself out of the hospital. He was so persistent in wanting to run more tests and maybe admit her again that Ana finally had to fall back on the truth and tell him she'd just quit drinking. And how much did she normally drink, he wanted to know. Not much, normally, but it had been a bad year and she let it get a little out of hand. He said he could help her, but what that turned into was another needle in her arm for the nausea and a brochure for local support programs, so fuck him and fuck everything.
It was in that mood that she then had to walk down the hall and meet with the billing people, who, perhaps not surprisingly, did not take her word for it that the local billionaire would be covering her tab. Once Ana realized that was what she was being told (it took a while; her head was killing her and it required all her concentration not to lean on this desk and take the strain off her shaky legs), she pulled out her phone and gave him a call, right there at the billing desk. Within seconds, it seemed, she found herself seated in a leather-backed chair on the upper floors with someone from the administration level, sipping cafeteria apple juice and signing papers which she really should have read first, because at the end of it, she had a video conference with a cosmetic surgeon and an appointment to have 'the first' work done on Monday morning at the Tranquility Care Center in St. George.
She could have refused. A part of her wanted to. She had plenty of scars, what was one more? But the windows in the administration office were tinted and sitting in that expensive chair, it was impossible to escape her reflection. She hadn't concerned herself with her looks since her teen years, when she'd given up on trying to look like beauty queens in magazines and pledged to accept herself, whatever that was. Hell, she knew she was pretty enough and even she could throw on a little lipstick and mascara for those nights when her confidence needed a little kick. She'd split her lip, blacked her eyes, broken her nose, collected her share of cuts and scrapes and laughed it all off, but this? No, she'd never concerned herself with her looks, but that was before she looked like a goddamn goblin. She wasn't ready to be stared at, whispered about. Wasn't ready to overhear tactless toddlers asking Mommy or Daddy what happened to that lady. Wasn't ready for the boisterous laughter of men in bars as they made 'butterface' jokes. And she supposed she could deal with it if she had to, but if she didn't…well, call her shallow, she'd take the cosmetic surgeon.
So it was a good thing, she guessed, but it took a bad mood and made it that much worse.
She left Mercy General and drove to the liquor store, where she sat in the parking lot, methodically running scenarios of what she could get and where she could hide it…and how Freddy could find it…then went to the grocery store instead. She bought protein drinks and coconut water, about a hundred bucks' worth of bandages and wound care supplies, and more sweatpants. She seethed the whole way home.
Freddy must have been watching for her, because he opened the loading dock door almost as soon as she was parked. He helped her carry in her supplies and put them away and tried to get her to stand still so he could 'help' her change her bandages, but she told him she was too tired and stormed off to bed instead.
She was tired. She did go to bed. But she didn't sleep.
Her head spun. So did her stomach. Her skin itched, stretched too tight over her aching bones. She couldn't lie still; no matter how she arranged herself, within seconds, that odd sensation that was not pain but wanted to be settled in and the only thing that would even halfway relieve it was to shift, stretch, roll over, curl up, splay out, kick off the blankets, pull them back up, and sweat sweat sweat until she imagined she could feel herself withering away to a mummy right there in the bed, wrapped in cold wet sheets but dry as sand, and as minutes full of hours passed her by, she could actually see the fucking sweat pop out of her pores, all crazy neon colors and wriggling on her skin like tiny scarabs.
They weren't real. She knew it, but knowing better didn't make them go away. They were there, even if she blinked or rubbed her eyes, and if she stared at them too long, they'd start to sprout legs and crawl around on her. In desperation, she pulled the curtain back to let the camera's light in, because even if the light didn't kill the hallucinations, it made their colors less vivid than they were in the dark, and she could almost ignore them.
It wouldn't last. It was all only temporary. Part of the process. But it took hours, and time had become a tarry thing, like the quarry, black and stinking and filled with bones. It took hours, with Ana trapped inside an invisible clock, splayed out beneath the razor-edged pendulum that cut her deeper and deeper open with every swing of its arm. It took hours, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the stage with her shaking arms braced on her knees, her entire body like a knot to tie her in place around her tablet, watching cartoons because their wild colors hid the crawling things she knew weren't really there. It took hours…but the visions eventually began to fade.
And the shakes began.
And that was her fault. Keeping hydrated was the most important thing and she hadn't had anything to eat or drink since her sloppy cup of coffee this morning. She knew better. She felt weak and shaky and sick and she deserved it all because she would not fucking take care of herself like the stupid, stubborn bitch that she was.
Ana unlocked her screaming body and made it get up. She staggered to the kitchen for a bottle of coconut water, took one sip, threw up seven times and blacked out.
She woke up in a puddle on the kitchen floor with four of the only five friends she had left in the world (although she supposed she shouldn't count Faust since she'd broken into his house and robbed him) huddled around her, arguing over how to help. Was the puddle spilled coconut water? Puke? Piss? She didn't know. She shouldn't care either, but she did. Embarrassment and self-loathing swelled up and spewed out as fury and the next thing she knew, she was yelling at them. At them. For trying to help. Stupid, stubborn, ungrateful bitch.
Somehow she managed to pick herself up. She got another bottle of water, dropped it, got another bottle and bulled out, shaking off helping hands and ignoring whatever it was they were trying to say to her. When the camera got in her face, she threw the bottle at it, missed, and had to settle for flipping off an inanimate object before shoving her way into the bathroom with nothing to drink and nothing to do. She collapsed against the wall next to the toilet and slid down to sprawl on the floor, lacing both hands over her cramping stomach, and waited.
Knock knock knock.
"Go away!" she shouted.
The door opened.
"Oh my fucking God," Ana groaned as Chica let herself in with the stupid bottle of water. "Am I supposed to be happy just because I know it's coming from a good place? I know and I don't fucking care right now. I don't want anyone to see me like this!"
"I know," said Chica, putting the water next to her.
"Then leave me alone."
"No." Chica went to the sink.
Ana watched her wet a towel, wring it out and wet it again. "Why not?" she asked dully. "You got what you wanted from me. You don't need to pretend to be my friend anymore."
"I know you don't mean that," Chica said, coming back to offer the cool towel. When Ana didn't take it, she knelt down and washed her face.
"I mean it," said Ana, washed like a kitten, like a helpless crying kitten. "I said it, didn't I? I'm mean. Why do you even try to like me? I'm so fucking mean."
She would have said more, but just then, the towel brushed her cracked lips and apparently that was all it took to set her off again. She grabbed the bowl and held on, her body wracked with cramps, choking on air and spitting up nothing in the end but a few mouthfuls of acid.
"I don't get it," she gasped, falling back against the wall to let Chica clean her up again. "I've quit before, lots of times. It's not this hard. Why is it so hard this time?"
Chica shifted around to sit beside her, taking Ana's limp hand in both of hers and giving it a little squeeze, like a secret hug.
They sat together for years.
"It's got to be the shots," said Ana. "They said there'd be side effects. And I guess some of it could be contraindications from the Percocet. I don't know. I've only ever taken that shit to relax. And for pain," she added defensively. "Just because I don't always have a prescription doesn't mean I'm not taking it as it would have been prescribed. I know what I'm doing."
Chica squeezed her hand again.
They sat for a few years more.
"Do you think I'm an alcoholic?" Ana asked dully.
Chica caught the question and lobbed it gently back at her. "I think the real question is, do you?"
Ana made a rude sound, but since she couldn't exactly get up and leave, she sat there and thought about it.
"My mom used to drug me," she said at last. "Roofies. And good ones, too, got to give her that. Full blackout, no recall. I've heard people say…you know, not that there's a 'good' end on that particular spectrum, but if there was, that would be it, because you can't remember, so you can pretend…you know…that maybe nothing happened. I used to tell myself that a lot. Yeah. But even if I don't remember anything, I made sure I learned something from it. I never let it happen again after my mom died. Rider used to tell me, whatever I wanted to try, come to him and he'd hook me up with whatever it was and look out for me while I tripped, but never ever ever do anything around people I don't know. I don't drink from cups." She looked at the bottle in her loose grip and coughed up a little laughter. "And I don't take open cans or bottles. I open them myself and I keep my thumb over the mouth-hole when I'm talking. Same goes for food. I got eyes on it from the grill to the plate or I just don't eat. You hear of social drinkers, social tokers. I am the ass-opposite. I am straight-edge unless Rider is right there with me."
"You sound very careful."
"I am. Always. But," she said, driving that word home like a coffin nail. "But I got wrecked with Yoshi."
Chica vented her cooling system and nodded.
"Yoshi's a nice guy," said Ana, waving one hand to brush off the question of Yoshi's character, "but I didn't know that. I didn't really know that. I didn't trust him with you guys, so…why did I trust him with me? I mean, you were there most of the time, and I'm sure you'd have stepped in if things got sketchy, but I went out with the man, too. I got black-out drunk with him and yeah, he took me home and put me to bed and gave me a puke towel and some aspirin and a bottle of water for the morning, but he could have just as easily done something else. So…I'm not an alcoholic," she insisted. "I can quit any time. I'm quitting right now, aren't I? It sucks, but I'm doing it."
"However," Chica prompted softly.
"However…I am clearly doing things that the me I think I am would never ever ever do, so yeah. Things are fucked. I," she corrected herself with a grimace, "I let things get fucked."
Chica held her hand and waited.
"I am fucking things up," said Ana. "But it's not just because I'm drinking too much."
"Well, okay. Recognizing triggers is a big, strong step toward changing negative behavior, so…what do you think the real reasons are?"
"Are you serious? I killed someone right before we left," Ana reminded her. "I killed someone when I got back. I'm not a good person, I've never pretended to be, but two people in two weeks is a little much, even for me."
"You were defending yourself. If you hadn't—"
"I know, I know. I'm not saying I shouldn't have done it. But it was bad. I don't mean this," she said, indicating her face. "I mean her. The things she said, there at the end. It's just like…"
The memory of Blue in the parts room at Mulholland rose up and hit her. She could see him when she shut her eyes, like the technicolor sweat of last night's hallucinations, so much more vivid in the dark. She could see the hole in his chest bleeding colors and cogs, only she couldn't be sure…Was he purple or blue? It's not fair, he shouted in two voices, the same voice. Not one damn thing they did to us was fair!
"Like the other guy," Ana said and opened her eyes, leaving him to die alone in the dark in her mind. "If I had it to do all over, I'd do it quicker, but I'd still do it. And that's why it bothers me, don't you get it? Because even in hindsight, I know I wouldn't be a better person, I'd just be a better killer."
"Oh Ana." Chica squeezed her carefully under one wing. "I don't usually like to say things like, 'I know how you feel,' because that always seems so dismissive and no one can ever really understand how someone else feels, but…"
"You know how I feel?"
"Well, I'm not a good person either, am I? And I know that life is precious. I know that. I have always believed it and never more than when…" She trailed off, shivering at the joints, and finally concluded, "…when it seemed like I didn't."
Ana glanced at her, then rested her head against Chica's soft side. "I think you're a good person."
Chica tucked her wing around her, soft as a blanket. "Thank you. I try to be."
"So do I, believe it or not, but I can never make it work. I don't know why I bother. I know it's a fucking lie."
"Ana—"
"I know who I am," she said stubbornly.
"Maybe so," Chica said after a short pause. "But Confucius wrote—I'm sorry?"
"Nothing," said Ana, who had heaved a groaning sigh. "Stomach cramps. Go on."
Chica searched her face, but must have believed the lie, because she said, "Confucius said that finding yourself really only finds who you are at one moment in time. Change is part of the human experience. Confucius thought it was more important to search for the person you wanted to be than to be the person you think you are. And on that note, Aristotle taught that goodness is not a philosophy, but a habit, and as with all habits, you only become better through practice. So the idea is not to be good or even to seek good, but to do good and give it time to grow in you."
"Fake it till you make it, huh? And what does Freud say?"
Chica shrugged. "Something about nasal sex, probably. Freud was a bit of a whacko."
Ana laughed, threw up, cried a little as she wiped her face and fell back under Chica's wing, breathing hard and holding her aching stomach. "I hate this."
"It won't last forever."
"It's forever right now," Ana insisted. "It's forever every goddamn minute. You have no idea what this is like."
Chica stroked her arm and did not correct her.
Ana sat, floating in her own sweat and pain and nausea, and suddenly said, "I deserve this."
"No, you don't."
"I deserve something. I killed someone."
"I know."
"She didn't deserve it. Yeah, yeah, she was trying to kill me too, but she didn't know that. She didn't know what she was doing, I did! She didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve it," she said, now thinking of Blue back at Mulholland…Blue, still laying under a tarp in her garage, waiting to be buried. "They're not the only ones I ever killed. Did any of them deserve it?"
Chica held her.
"The ones who deserve it live forever," said Ana. "And I'm still here. Why am I still here if I don't deserve this?"
"I don't think that's how it works."
"It might, you don't know," said Ana, reduced to the I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I level of emotional maturity. So much for co-chairing Philosophy Night. Bonnie would be so disappointed.
"Well, all right," said Chica after a moment's reflection. "Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose we really are in some sort of merit-based plane of existence. But you still could be looking at it the wrong way. Instead of perceiving your situation as a punishment and asking why you've earned it, try perceiving it as a lesson and ask what you should be learning."
"Oh my God, that is such a you-thing to say. Were you Pluto in a past life or what?" Ana snapped and then blanched as she realized the full shitty scope of what she'd just said.
"I think you mean Plato and no," Chica said with a chuckle. "I don't think so. I'm sure my past life was perfectly suburban and boring."
"I'm so sorry. I'm a huge bitch. I'll shut up now."
"Oh relax." Chica patted her hand comfortably. "I know it was a joke. And it's actually kind of funny, because it is a kind of reincarnation, isn't it? I never thought about it like that before. I may have to stop calling myself an agnostic."
A few seconds unraveled.
"Do you ever wonder?" Ana asked, aware that she probably shouldn't. "About…who?"
"Sometimes," Chica admitted and laughed softly, sadly. "It feels strange to say that out loud. We've never really talked about it. But I sometimes wonder about the person—Well, people," she interrupted herself. "There had to have been several. I don't know the exact number. It varied. And I don't want to know, honestly. Keeping score is a terrible thing. I wish I could stop. But what I mean to say is, apart from the necessary volume of materials that had to be accumulated, I know my core personality data came from one person, modified to better fit—" She ran her hand down the front of her chest. "—this existence. How much of who I am was part of the program and how much was part of the person? And how much was edited out along with that person's memories? I don't feel like anything's missing, but then I wouldn't, would I?"
"And you have no memories at all?"
"None. But I have likes and dislikes. I have a favorite color and a favorite cupcake, even though I can't taste. And little habits, like you say, so many little things that I probably don't even notice. Like an echo," she said thoughtfully. "Not the sound itself but just the echo of some other sound I wasn't close enough to hear. But sometimes I can almost hear it…especially when I'm…"
"Baking," Ana guessed when the silence began to feel permanent.
Chica's crest popped up, startled out of her reverie. She laughed. "Oh no. Actually, I never questioned that at all until you mentioned it back at Yoshi's. I suppose I just assumed I was programmed with all those recipes, although you're right, of course. I do too much experimenting for that to be true. So maybe it is, but no, I was going to say, when I'm reading."
"Reading?"
"Yes. I love to read," she said, ducking her head slightly like she was ashamed to admit it. "Not just the stories, although I do love those too. I love to do it. I love looking at the books and picking one out and discovering what's in it, and I especially love how it feels to just…pull the words off the pages and bury them deep inside me. I do love baking, but in a different way. Making something that tastes good is only part of it and to be honest, it's not a very interesting part. That's just math, really. This plus this plus that equals cake," she said with a shrug, then followed up with a shy smile. "Doing it for someone else, sharing it with someone else, that's what makes it fun."
"Like my birthday cake," said Ana, remembering. "That was pretty epic. It was good, too, but…come on, it was an Easy-Bake mix. Not a lot of ways to make that not taste good, but damn, nobody makes it look like you do. Best birthday ever."
"Thank you. And that's what I really love, I love how happy it makes people when they eat it, to know that I made that smile and that wow and that mmmm. But that really only works because you share it," Chica said with a small puzzled frown. "And the way that I love reading is almost like a secret. Like it's something forbidden. Isn't that silly? I have tried to share it, but the boys don't really get into books like I do. So I think…I really think that has to come from…whoever that was. Whoever I was…before I was me. Don't you think?"
Ana nodded, frowning. "And that's your clue. She was a reader."
"No, actually, I don't think she was, but I think she wanted to be, if that makes sense. Although I'm not sure it does, now that I think about it," Chica mused. "If she was old enough to be using the stove, as I have to assume she was if I picked up my baking habits from her, surely she was old enough that she could have bought her own books. Or maybe she couldn't afford them. I can't think of anything else that could have stopped her from reading if she wanted to."
"Maybe she was dyslexic," Ana suggested.
"Do you think so?"
"I don't know. Maybe. David had it, a little. That's why he was better with computers than books, because he could adjust the font, space things out. Sometimes that's all you need. I think Morehead has it too. He's about the only guy I know who prefers to call instead of text and he always leaves the paperwork to me if there is any. Left," she corrected herself with a sigh. "I forget he moved. I'm forgetting so much shit. Nothing is staying in one place in my head. All I'm saying is, it's hard to read for fun when your brain is flipping shapes around. But that could have been edited out of your code. I mean, if memories can, surely something like that could too."
"I suppose you could be right." Chica fell into a thoughtful silence while Ana floated in her own sweaty, twitchy, queasy hell, then tentatively said, "Is that…? Could you…find someone with information like that?"
"I doubt it. It's pretty common and it's not something that goes on the public record, like, 'Be on the lookout for Jane Doe, a known dyslexic.' And back when you…you know. Back when you were being assembled, I'm not even sure if someone would get an official diagnosis and not just be shrugged out of the school system as 'not a reader,' especially if you were from Mammon. This is not a town that prides itself on education. Sorry."
"Don't be," Chica said and after another short pause for reflection, added, "I honestly don't know how I'd feel if I found out who my core data donor was. It's fine for Freddy. He knows no one was hurt. I know someone was. For him, knowing his donor feels like having a parent. For me…it's like discovering a grave."
"There's more to a person than core data," Ana told her. "I'm not my mom…or my dad. I may have their core data, but I write my own code." She nudged her foot against Chica's leg. "Like you."
Chica nudged her back. "That's very true. But there's a part of me that thinks of her every time I open a new book, because I still feel that little tremble inside me that reminds me…this is precious. There is so much about life, even this odd version of it that we have, that is precious."
Ana took a hand off her cramping stomach to rub her throbbing head. "If you say so."
"I do. And I think you know it, too. It's just hard to remember that when you're hurting. So I'll remember it for you until you feel better."
"You're so cheesy," she mumbled.
"I live in a pizza parlor," Chica said, patting her. "It comes with the territory."
Ana risked another sip of water, puked it explosively back up, and settled in for a long, miserable day. "You should go now. I'll be fine."
Chica nodded and got up, but even before Ana could decide if that little pang she felt was hurt or relief, Chica went to the sink to rinse and wring out the towel, and then she was sitting down again beside her, daubing at Ana's sweaty brow with that blessedly damp, cool cloth.
"I'm serious," Ana said weakly. "It's going to get gross. Believe me, you don't want to stay."
"Do you want me to stay?"
"You don't have to."
"Do you want me to?"
"I'll be fine."
Chica gently yet firmly cupped Ana's face between her hands and more or less forced her to meet her patient pink eyes. "Do you," she said, giving each word its own exasperated emphasis, "want me to stay with you?"
Ana took the towel away from her and wiped roughly at her eyes. The left one still wouldn't open; the right one was leaking. "Yes," she whispered. "For a little while. Please."
"Okay, then." Chica tucked her wing around her and pulled her against the soft, round cushion of her chest. "You talked me into it."
She got through it, one hour at a time, and minute by minute when an hour was too much. She might have even slept on Sunday night, although she couldn't be sure. She had lost the ability to perceive time except as a strain on her already overwhelmed senses. But even as exhausted as she was, she thought she felt a little better. Her hands were steadier, anyway. She was able to dress herself on Monday morning without dropping anything or crying and she was determined to mark that as the turning point in this whole ordeal. Maybe that was premature, but she was feeling the need to have good omens today. Her surgery was in just a few hours.
Surgery. She didn't like that word. It wasn't like she was getting a heart transplant or anything serious. And it wasn't like letting someone carve on her face with scalpels was going to completely erase the damage that had been done. In fact, there were risks of complications with every surgery, even mild cosmetic ones like this. She might wake up with one eye higher than the other or maybe pick up a flesh-eating bacteria or something.
Well, too late to cancel now.
Ana went to the bathroom, bathing in the sink as best she could and saying a silent, morose goodbye to the face she saw in the mirror, then went out to find Freddy and ask for her keys. He grunted and nodded and then not only didn't give them to her, but turned around and walked away.
"Um," she said loudly. "I need to leave soon!"
"And you will, but not in the driver's seat."
"I can drive," she said crossly.
"So can Foxy," said Freddy, still walking.
"Foxy? Are you kidding?" No answer. Freddy was now just a dark splotch in a darker hallway, almost out of sight. Ana raised her voice to call, for as little good as she knew it would do, "Tell me that's a joke!"
"How do I stay so cool in the summertime?" he called back.
"What?"
"Bear conditioning. That's a joke," he informed her as she rolled her eyes. "I'll send Foxy straight out."
"He doesn't have a license!" she yelled. "If I let him drive me anywhere, I'd be breaking the law!"
"That's an even better joke. Text me when you reach the hospital so I know you arrived safely." And then he was gone.
All she wanted to do at that point was get out and on with the day, but of course Chica was in the kitchen making her a cake and coffee so she wouldn't have surgery on an empty stomach. Ana had to explain to her that she was supposed have surgery on an empty stomach, because if she didn't, she could aspirate under anesthetic and die (her recent interaction with Freddy may have put a sharper edge on her tone than she intended). And while Chica was pouring hot coffee down the sink and putting away decorating icing for a cake that wasn't even out of the Easy Bake Oven yet, in came Bonnie.
"Are you leaving already?" he wanted to know. "I thought you said the thing wasn't until nine?"
"It isn't, but I've got to do check-in and all that, so I've got to be there at seven, which means my ride's got to pick me up at six, which gives me—" She checked her watch pointedly. "—less than thirty minutes to go home."
"Do you want some company?"
Before Ana could answer, Foxy came through the door, still wearing most of last night's costume (all but the boots and the hat), carrying her keys on his hook and giving them a restless jingle. "Ye ready to weigh anchor, luv?"
Bonnie looked at him. His ears twitched.
"Freddy's making him drive me," Ana said, with a little grimace to show what she thought of that. "And even if he wasn't, no, it is not worth the risk of overriding your homing protocols just to sit around my house for half an hour while I have the pre-knife jitters. If it was, God knows, Freddy would probably be the one driving me and you still wouldn't get to go. Or want to go, seriously."
"Yeah," said Bonnie, not agreeing. He looked at Foxy again. "You got dressed up for the occasion, I see."
"Don't know what yer on about. And ye've some nerve calling me out o'er a set o' togs," he added breezily, already heading for the loading dock. "Why, yer lucky someone don't report ye to the authorities for lewd exhibition, running hare-back nekkid through the halls. For shame. This here be a family place."
"Hare-back," Bonnie muttered, glaring after him. "You better go then. I guess I'll see you later. You're coming back, right?"
"Yes," Freddy boomed from the dining room. "She's still grounded!"
"The bear has spoken," Ana intoned. "Yeah, Bon, I'll be back tonight, just as soon as I can get away."
"Wrong." Freddy came to the kitchen, lighting up his eyes to better illuminate the severity of his disapproval. "You're going to wait until they release you this time, even if it means they keep you overnight."
"No promises." Combining a wave goodbye with a wave let's-go, Ana headed out. She made it to the store room all right, but as she was raising the loading dock door, his paw swept in from behind and slammed it shut. She turned impatiently to face him, saying, "I don't have time for this, Freddy."
"Then don't argue," he retorted. "You'd better come back with release papers."
"Yeah, yeah." Again, she tried to lift the door.
Again, he banged it down, holding it now, making it immoveable. "Prove to me," he said in a soft, ominous growl, "that you care about your safety, Ana. Or be prepared for the lengths to which I will go to keep you safe."
She glanced at him.
He held her gaze long enough to make his point, then raised the door, rested his hand briefly on her head, and stepped back. "And you be very damn careful," she heard him tell Foxy behind her. "I'm trusting you. Do not give me a reason to regret it."
There went any lingering hope that she might talk Foxy out of the keys. Under Freddy's hard stare, Ana climbed in on the passenger side, and if she slammed her door, well, she had to slam it. The frame had gotten bent somewhere along the last year and wouldn't close without a little extra force. She stared out the window at the predawn nothing of the parking lot while Foxy installed himself on the driver's side, awkwardly adjusting and readjusting the chair, and finally pulling his tail out and letting it drape over the console between them with a sidelong, embarrassed glance.
"Do you even know what to do here?" she asked as he flipped through her keyring.
His answer was to fit the right key to the ignition and turn the engine over. His hand on the gearstick was confident when he put it in reverse and then into drive. There was a little choppiness in the initial stop-and-go, but no more than anyone would have when driving a different vehicle for the first time, and he sorted it out readily enough. Once off the bluff where the pizzeria perched, the ride was smooth and straight.
"Okay, I stand corrected," she said. "How the hell did you learn to drive? And why?" she added, since that suddenly struck her as a better question.
"Just took to it," he said after a moment.
"Sore subject?"
"Eh," he said, shrugging. "Ain't a cheery one."
"I'll drop it, then. And speaking of dropping, are you going to drop me off and come back when I call, like a normal adult interaction, or are you going to wait up for me because the bear thinks I can't be trusted to be on my own?"
"Don't take it so personally. Yer apt to be a bit groggy on return, ain't ye?"
"Yeah, but I've got a bed in the front room there. I'll just sleep it off and give Freddy a call when I wake up. If he wants to be a dick and send you to pick me up then, fine, but there's no reason you should have to sit around an empty house all day just waiting for me. I have no idea how long this is going to take."
"I has me orders, luv."
"Figures. Get ready to be bored, then, because I have literally nothing to do up there."
"I thinks ye forget who yer talking to," he said dryly, navigating the first of Coldslip's many icy curves. "I has a coin to flip. I'll be fine."
That was it for conversation for the rest of the trip. Ana had never been a passenger in her truck before and as much as she was trying not resent it now, she did. She didn't like the way the road looked from this side. She could see where the tires were in the sideview mirror, but they still felt too close to the shoulder, regardless of what the mirror showed her. Foxy slowed down for the hairpins (to be brutally honest, he took them more carefully than she would have), but she found her foot reaching for the phantom brake and caught her hand clenching on the bitch-bar no matter how cautious he was. And he didn't even need to be that cautious, since it was obvious that Shelly's snow-plow had been through and maybe a salter too, since the road was completely free of ice. Ana seriously doubted he'd done it out of the goodness of his heart, so either he'd just been that determined to talk to her after their last call, or Faust had paid for the service…and maybe paid someone else, just to put an extra sharp tip on the point he was making, in which case Shelly surely blamed her for the loss of that income on top of everything else. And while she was never going to work with the man again, it was a small town and she was going to see him. Hell, he'd be at the Tree-Lighting for sure, telling anyone who'd listen how she'd turned the old man against him, right before she walked in on Faust's arm.
Fuck her life.
Foxy let her simmer in silence, pretending not to notice her mood stinking up the truck, although the white tip of his tail twitched now and then, measuring out the pulse of his secret thoughts. But there was a point when ignoring a problem was only making it more obvious, and at last, he said, "Ye ever hear the tale o' the Cyclone Riders o' the Frozen Seas?"
Ana sighed and wiped the fog of her breath off the window. "Like a thousand times."
"Then ye know I can sail a brigantine through the Broken Shoals, so steering yer all-wheel rig five miles up a dry road ain't no trouble to me and I don't deserve the cold shoulder for doing it."
"This has nothing to do with you," Ana said through gritted teeth, but her fraying nerves needed an outlet, and she immediately followed up with, "But you don't need to be here. I can drive myself just fine. This thing where Freddy treats me like I'm made of spun sugar has gotten really fucking old. And the thing where everyone just nods and lets him has gotten even older."
"Now wait just a blasted minute—"
"No, no, I realize he's the boss and there's rules and you can't go against your programming and all that—"
He huffed out a laugh, ears stiffly upright but tail lashing at the tip. "Ye think the only reason I'm here be on account o' Fred's orders?"
"It better be, because of all people, I expect you to know I can take care of my damn self."
"Let me tell ye what I know, girl."
"Oh, here we go," said Ana and doggedly faced her window.
"Ye ain't made o' spun sugar, but ye ain't made o' tungsten carbide neither. Yer flesh and bone, and ye've been rough-tumbled, and even though ye could drive yerself—of course I know ye bloody could!" he snapped as she opened her mouth. "Ye could walk if ye had to, but ye don't have to, so why are ye so bound and determined to make it as hard on yerself as ye possibly can?"
"Oh my God, listen to you," she groaned. "You're as bad as Freddy."
His ears whumped flat to the top of his furry head. "Ye take that back!"
"Stop treating me like a child."
"Stop acting like one!"
"Says you," she said and since that didn't prove his point enough, she took it further. "I'm done with this. Pull over. I'm walking."
He laughed at her.
"I have jumped out of a moving vehicle before and you best believe I'll do it again. Pull over."
Foxy wordlessly rapped his hook against his door and all the locks dropped with a simultaneous thunking sound.
"I've kicked a window out before too," Ana warned.
He shrugged. "Yer truck. Do what ye please with it, but just so's we're clear, if'n ye runs, I calls that an invitation to chase after ye."
"Yeah, and we both know how that story ends," she said, and she would have been willing to swear that when she said it, she meant nothing but that he was faster than she was. That's it. But just as soon as the words dropped like bricks into the space between them, she remembered that the last time that particular story had been told, it ended with her on her back in the hall of the house right up ahead of them and him ripping her clothes off.
"Ye sorry?" he asked after an uncomfortable moment.
"Of course not!" she snapped and instantly wished she could grab the words back out of the air and crush them in her fist. She reached across the cab—so much wider than it had ever been when she was driving by herself—and lay her hand over his on the wheel. "Of course not," she said again, softer. "I'm just being a bitch because of this whole surgery thing and looking for reasons to be pissy. I'll apologize when this is all over, I promise."
"No sorries necessary, luv. Part o' the process, ain't it?"
"I guess," she said, then thought about it and said, "What process?"
"This'n." He took his hand off the wheel long enough to sketch a line between them in the air. "This thing that we are."
The truck climbed up the mountain. One of the overhanging branches dropped some wet snow on the windshield. The windshield wipers squeaked. She needed to replace them.
Foxy coughed a little static through his speaker and gruffly said, "We're a thing, ain't we?"
Squeak-shush, squeak-shush.
"Yeah."
Foxy drove in silence, ears low. Ana turned her attention back to the window and watched the darkness outside roll by. She could see the faint ghost of Foxy's reflection in the glass glancing at her now and then, but although he seemed about to speak several times, he stayed silent the rest of the way up the mountain. It was only as he was turning off onto the long gravel drive that she inadvertently opened up the gate again by telling him to stop so she could check her mailbox.
"Anything good?" he asked as she climbed back in.
Ana shuffled through the envelopes—bills, an invitation to the Tree-Lighting ceremony addressed to Resident, a couple anonymous postcards, and a statement from the hospital telling her that her account had been fully paid and inviting her to take a customer service survey online. She showed him that last one, remarking, "What the hell does a hospital survey even look like? '10/10, would get mauled again.'"
Foxy reached over and helped himself to one of the postcards.
"Don't worry about it," she said, pretending to be absorbed in the fine print of the hospital statement.
"What's this?" he wanted to know, tapping the writing. "Deut? Twenty-three? Two?"
"I don't know. The usual biblical badmouthing. Let's go."
"What's it mean?"
"I don't know," she said again, a touch sharper than before. "I don't care either. Let's just pretend they're wishing me a Merry Christmas and get on with the day. I got a lot on my mind and I don't feel like putting in the effort to find out whether they're calling me a bastard or a whore this time."
"Didn't come through the post," he remarked, scratching his thumb over the empty place where a stamp wasn't. "Seems like it ought to be an easy thing to set up a camera and catch 'em in the act."
"And then what? Kick his ass and get arrested?"
"Ain't harassment a crime?"
"Sure it is. And telling someone to knock this shit off would be harassment, I guaran-goddamn-tee it. But this?" She snatched the card away and shoved it and her other mail into her daypack. "This isn't. It's just some friendly neighbors sharing the good word. Leave it alone."
"So yer not going to do anything about it."
"I can't do anything about it. That's why I'm leaving it alone."
"Reckon I should have expected that would be yer answer. Seems to be yer answer to everything."
"The hell is that supposed to mean?"
He looked at her.
She refused to look away.
He put the truck back in drive and rolled on.
There were no other tire tracks, she noticed, but there was a wide line of broken snow down the center of the lane. The snow had melted and refrozen too many times to make out individual prints, making it impossible to how many people had been by, but she doubted they'd been there with Get Well balloons and a casserole. She tried to brace herself for the inevitable damage, hoping it was something easy to fix like broken windows or spray paint, and did not quite trust her eyes when the truck came out of the tunnel of trees and revealed the house seemingly exactly as she'd left it.
"Ye all right?"
She nodded, trying to get a better look at the side of the house, where most of the tracks seemed to be leading, but that was the side that got the most sun, and all the snow had melted away. Maybe they weren't even human tracks. The few clear impressions left in the unbroken snow were small and round and widely spaced. Deer, maybe? She wasn't an expert in wildlife tracks, but she had left the garbage cans kicked over after staging her 'dog attack' and she guessed she shouldn't be surprised if every hungry animal in town had been by to rummage through it.
"Ye going to open the garage or where do ye want me?"
"No," she said quickly. "Garage is full. Here is fine. In fact, just let me out and you can go. There's no reason for you to stay. I'm texting Freddy when the doctors are done with me, so you'll have plenty of time to get up to the house before they drop me off."
"Quit trying to get rid o' me," he said and even if he was laughing when he said it, it didn't sound like he was entirely kidding.
Ana scratched at her bandages and looked out the window.
Foxy parked in silence, shut off the engine, ignored her outstretched hand and tucked her keys into his wrist compartment.
"Thanks for the ride," she muttered and got out. She tried to do it quietly, but the stupid bent door frame required some muscle to get open and even more to get it shut again. She went inside, hoping he'd change his mind and head back to the pizzeria, but was not surprised to hear his door open too or his footsteps crunching on the icy gravel behind her.
Ana unlocked the front door, thought briefly about shutting it in his face, but felt an immediate gut-wrenching shame and instead held it stiffly open so he could go in ahead of her. "Stay in here," she told him, going into the parlor to pull the heavy curtains shut and pick up the loose drift of crumpled candy wrappers and gas station deli bags that magically multiplied at the house every time she left it. "In the unlikely event that anyone drops by while I'm gone, just stay out of sight and keep quiet. You can duck into the closet here if you have to, but I really don't think it's going to be an issue." She switched on the porch light, lost herself for a long second in the gentle glow of the big light at the end of the walkway (it looked so normal from here, just like a regular yard light and not like that magical moon it was, that beacon of safety and love little Ana had seen peeking through the trees a thousand times as Aunt Easter drove them up to the big stone castle at the top of the mountain), then made a point of checking her watch. "I'll wait outside. You good?"
Foxy ran a disinterested gaze around the parlor (and gave the marble tiles in front of the grandfather clock an uncomfortable glance), checked out the closet space, then followed her right back out onto the porch.
"What are you doing?"
"What's it look like? Keeping ye company."
"Come on, seriously? You can't—"
He pointed his hook out at the dark space between them and the distant silhouette of the pizzeria where it stood against the predawn sky. "We'll see them long afore they sees us."
"I'm not good company right now."
"Ye don't have to entertain me, for fuck's sake. Just be. And…" His voice lowered, roughened. "And let me be there with ye."
She didn't know what to do with that, so she sat on the porch steps and pulled her daypack onto her lap, checking to make sure she had her wallet and ID now that it was too late to go back to the pizzeria and get them. She did. Everything was fine, which was almost a disappointment. She didn't want to fight, she just wanted a reason to feel upset. She was tired of feeling like this for no good reason, and tired of making everyone around her feel the same way, whether they admitted it or not.
Foxy sat beside her, close enough that she could feel his fur brushing at her skin like hot needles, picking at splinters on the deck rails as a silent reminder of all the work she hadn't done yet on the house she was supposedly living in.
Time crawled.
At long, long last, a pair of headlights appeared in the distance.
"Looks like yer ride," Foxy said, watching them speed down Old Quarry towards them.
"Looks like. Guess you better get inside."
One of his ears leveled out with wry amusement. "Be that a note of relief I hears in yer voice?"
"No," she said defensively, guiltily. "I just don't want anyone to see you."
"Like I said—" He nodded at the driveway, still dark and thickly curtained with trees. "—we'll see them afore they sees us."
True, but: "It's a stupid risk just to sit on the porch for five more minutes."
"Eh, more like ten."
"It's not worth it, is my point."
"Worth it to me."
She had no answer for that, so she shook her head and picked at her bandages.
He let it be for a while—not long enough for the damned shuttle to arrive—then softly said, "Getting on yer nerves, am I?"
"No!" She expelled a sigh and hugged her daypack tighter. "I'm on my nerves. Just me. But yeah, okay, I'll say it. You being out here bold as a whore in church because you think it's fun to almost get caught is not helping."
"That hurts me feelings, that does. I'll have ye know, I takes me sneaking seriously and never treats it like a game. Tell the truth. T'ain't the five minutes I be sitting out with ye now that's needling ye, it be the five hours I'll be sitting here without ye." He glanced at her, trying to share his crooked smile, but she was too distracted to catch it. "Ye don't trust me."
"That's not true," she said uneasily and tried to leave it at that, but blurted, "Just promise me you'll stay in the parlor. I'm sure Freddy told you to look for bottles or whatever—"
Foxy barked out a laugh. "I am the last bloody person Fred would ever send to police someone else's vices. And so far as that goes, Fred's kick on yer bottle-tipping is his kick, not mine. Yer a woman-grown. When have I ever treated ye like I thought ye couldn't make yer own choices? Ain't I one of 'em?"
And there it was again, the stinking corpse of an unfinished conversation that Ana kept trying to bury and Foxy kept digging up.
"But we ain't talking about that now," he said when she only sat there, staring straight ahead and wishing the shuttle would just get there already.
"My doctor gave me three explicit pre-op instructions," said Ana. "Don't eat or drink anything for at least twelve hours before surgery, don't put on any kind of makeup or lotion the morning of, and don't talk about where your relationship is going with the anthropomorphic fox you're fucking until you're fully recovered."
He laughed through a scowl and dug another splinter out of the rail next to him. "Sure and what's another day or two? Or ten or twenty or two hundred…"
She felt herself flush and said, "You want to not carve up my deck?" knowing full well that she was going to pull up all the boards and throw them out anyway.
He looked at his hook, ears first snapping up and then laying low at an odd angle she wasn't sure how to read, then took it in his hand and held it in his lap, like it was a separate thing he had to physically restrain from wandering off and causing more destruction.
"It's fine," she said and sighed, rubbing at the side of her head, grounding herself with the feel of stubble and scabs and the dull ache of healing wounds. "You're fine. It's me. I've been stitched up plenty of times, but I've never actually been, like, knocked out and worked on like this. I've heard stuff about how the anesthetic can make you talk in your sleep and I'm scared to fucking death about what I might say. I'm stressed and taking it out on you, as usual. I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but this is why I wanted to be alone."
He nodded a few times, then let go his hook (not easily, like he didn't trust it) and gave her knee a stiff, clumsy pat. "And also why I wanted to be here."
"And it's not that I don't trust you," she insisted, moving her knee. "It's just that I've got stuff all over that I don't want anyone messing with." Like Blue, under a tarp in the garage. "Stuff could break or—"
"Ye think I go through yer kit when ye ain't around?" he asked mildly, inspecting the point on his hook.
"Please. Where are all my batteries, Captain?"
"Talk to Bon." He gave his groin a smug pat. "Mine don't take batteries."
"I'm just saying," she mumbled, blushing. "When I get bored, sometimes I poke around in shit I shouldn't."
"And break into empty buildings. Aye, I know. I'll mind meself." His new face-plates rippled under his skin, baring his teeth in something that was not entirely a smile. "I'll be a perfect bloody gentleman."
"God knows how that must hurt."
He gave her half a sidelong smile.
She gave him the other half.
They sat.
His ears twitched and came forward, swiveling slowly on their pins. Soon, she could hear it too: the sound of an approaching vehicle.
"Reckon it's time," he said.
"I guess so. Thanks for sitting with me. Sorry I was such a bitch about it." She knew she should leave it at that and then went ahead and said it anyway: "You can go home now, though. I appreciate the sentiment and all that, but you can't seriously want to sit around my empty house and flip a coin all day."
"I want," he said firmly, not looking at her, "to be there."
"You keep saying that. What does that even mean?"
He was quiet for a few seconds, then shook his head and shrugged, all his attention fixed on the point of his hook. "I don't know."
The shuttle's headlights popped into sight, flickering behind the trees, giving her something else to look at so she wouldn't have to see what she was doing to him. "Look, we're out of time, but…I don't want to leave it like this and I know it's my fault, because you're trying…" She could see the van now, like a ghost in the woods. In the running lights, the logo on the side as red as blood. "You're trying so fucking hard and I don't know what you want me to do! You know what I like about you?"
His ears came up slowly. He shook his head, searching her eyes.
"You," she said. "I like who you are. I like that after everything you've been through, you didn't let it change you. You've gone through the kind of hell most people can't even imagine and you never lost your grip on your sword. Or your sanity. Or your sense of humor! You said something the other night about how you want to be a better man, but you're Captain fucking Fox! What's better than that?"
He looked at his hook again, his ears folded off at an odd angle she didn't know how to read.
"And I love it when you talk like a pirate," she muttered and scratched at the side of her head, embarrassed.
"Funny ye should say that, because I don't. Oh, I don't care most o' the time," he said with a flick of his tail. "Immutable object and all that, pointless to resent sommat ye can't change. But then there's times when it matters, when I really care about what I be trying to say and I know it's got to come out stupid. And ye bring out the worst of it, ye ken, ye really do. So it's funny," he said again, picking at his hook. "Because sometimes…when I'm with ye…sometimes I don't even notice I'm doing it."
She didn't know what to say to that and didn't have time anyway.
Foxy glanced at the van as it turned off the mountain road onto the driveway, then leaned over and touched his muzzle to her cheek. "Take care, luv," he said, avoiding her eyes as he got up and went inside. The door closed, she heard it lock, and a few seconds later, the curtain shifted so he could look out at her. She raised a hand to him, unhappy and self-conscious, then stood up and went to meet the van.
"Man, you are way out here, aren't you?" the driver said, bounding out to take her daypack and open up the door for her. "We having a good morning?"
"Yeah," said Ana, ignoring his helping hand to climb up into the passenger seat. "Just great."