A/N:
A Comet Appears
Since then it's been a book you read in reverse
So you understand less as the pages turn
Or a movie so crass and awkwardly cast
That even I could be the star
— The Shins, Pink Bullets
Chapter Three: Converse
The next morning: Wednesday
Lola stood on the beach in the early morning light.
She had been up all night. Brenner's plane had taken off from the airport and started the climb to cruising altitude. But at some point on the climb, the plane vanished; its blip on the radar was no more. There were isolated, doubtful reports of a fireball in the night sky, and a few reports of an unexpected comet in the California atmosphere, but Lola took them all to be reports about Brenner's plane and its explosive fate.
Brenner was gone. So was Abadi.
So too, according to the CIA, was Sarah Walker.
Walker had finally finished a mission the way Lola knew Walker expected to finish one mission — by dying. The CIA had put an immediate, decisive clamp on air traffic control. No one knew about the loss of Brenner's plane.
The CIA was brutally efficient at cover-ups; it had long experience. As far as the Agency was concerned, the end of Brenner and Abadi was worth the end of Walker. An acceptable loss, regrettable but noble. Langston Graham, the long-time Director, seemed willing, even seemed eager. to wash his hands of the woman who had for years been his best agent.
Lola had hung up the phone frustrated and demoralized after talking to him about Walker.
But a moment later, lips pressed together in determination, Lola had phoned a friend of hers, a chopper pilot who she had dated (and who still wanted to date her, though she had deliberately ignored his texts for weeks). He had the training and his helicopter had the instrumentation to fly at night, and he was willing to help her, off the books, as it were. He didn't mention the unanswered texts. She broke protocol and explained, in outline, who she was and what Walker had been doing.
They flew back and forth over the ocean below where Brenner's plane had vanished. Lola could not accept Sarah's death.
Not Sarah Walker, a woman so deadly Death himself dreaded her on his doorstep.
So, the helicopter flew criss-cross through the wee hours. As dawn arrived, Lola spotted a parachute on the beach. It had washed up, the bright colored silk visible though rolled and rumpled, the harness attached but empty. Lola told Craig, the pilot, to put the helicopter down in the parking lot on the south end of the beach, and she jogged by herself toward the parachute.
As she did, she stopped. She stopped for a pair of empty black Converse tennis shoes.
The shoes were tied and placed carefully side by side. The sand nearby looked like someone had been seated there. Lola turned and looked northward. A barefoot trail led to the spot, beyond the tide, and beside that trail was another barefoot trail, the footprints similar but the impressions deeper. It led back toward the deserted north parking lot.
Lola squatted down and looked at the sand more carefully.
A few feet from the shoes, she saw a dark spot. Her fingers moved the sand gently, then she sniffed them. Blood. At least, that's what she reckoned it to be. She looked at the shoes then picked them up and looked inside them. It registered on her that they didn't stink. No identifying marks were inside the shoe (she had hoped for a name, but would have settled for initials). She turned them over and found, partially worn away, a Buy More sticker stuck stubbornly on the bottom of one.
It wasn't much, maybe it was nothing (it was probably nothing), but she'd check.
The Buy More.
It seemed the last place on earth to find Walker.
Lola scanned the beach, orangy in the new-rising sun. She gathered up the parachute and shoes into a ferriable mess and lugged them toward the helicopter.
Craig ran to meet her, to help her with her burden.
Thursday Morning
Ellie poured herself a cup of coffee and glanced, surreptitiously, at her brother and the woman — they were now calling the woman 'V', and though they hadn't explained it, the woman did not seem to mind — sitting at the small kitchen table.
Chuck was laughing softly, and V was listening, smiling at him.
V had spent a lot of the time she had been in the apartment smiling at Chuck. The smile had been almost continuous since Wednesday morning when V's headache finally ended. Wonderment showed in her smile, chiefly directed at Chuck but also reflexively at herself, as if she wondered at her own wondering.
Whatever was true, Ellie was sure that V was a complex woman. The complexities were, so far, unknown, but they were there, blurry in her amnesia.
V was wearing an old UCLA sweatshirt of Ellie's, and its matching sweatpants, both in Bruin blue. Her eyes seemed to take on Ellie's alma mater's colors, especially now that V's hair glowed gold.
As they talked, the two of them were eating chocolate chip pancakes that Chuck made.
Chuck had cooked. Chuck had. Breakfast. Pancakes.
But then again, Chuck had been different since he showed up in Ellie's room and told her he had carried an injured woman home.
It was obvious he had fallen for V. His Venus reference had made that obvious.
Botticelli, Jesus, Chuck. Ellie shook her head inwardly.
But it was not just that he had fallen for V. Chuck was standing, when he stood, taller. He had called his boss at work, Big Mike at the Buy More, and demanded a personal day yesterday and again today. Demanded. Never before had he even asked for a personal day though he had a huge number of them. Instead, he normally worked when anyone else took a personal day, even if the person took the day on Chuck's day off.
He was a pushover; too unassertive to claim what was his own.
His expulsion from Stanford had sucked the gumption from her brother. At least, until he showed up with an armful of black-garbed mystery girl.
Ellie was torn. She still had a bad feeling about V, about that holster, that body suit, the mention of Lebanon. There were also the many scars on her body, all expertly treated but still there, in spidery white traces. Ellie saw them when she took the body suit off V, after Chuck left the room. V seemed unaware of the scars and she did not notice Ellie's careful, subtle inventory of them. They strongly suggested a woman who had led a life of violent activity, if not out-and-out violence.
It was hard to imagine that as V smiled at Chuck, though.
Health-wise, V seemed almost fully recovered. The swelling of her head had gone down. The stitched wound was healing nicely, with no sign of infection.
The prudent course would be to take V to the police, turn her in, let them figure out who she was, let them cope with whatever strange life she had led, whatever scarlet thread trailed behind her. That was the prudent course — but Ellie worried that the change in Chuck would not survive the loss of V.
Chuck was rubbing his chin, reflecting.
"So, Nancy? Maybe Nancy Drew?" Chuck asked, grinning. He had been volunteering names for twenty minutes, hoping to spark a memory but V had rejected them all.
V was shaking her head again but still smiling. "No, I'm not Nancy Drew. I've never solved The Clue of the Velvet Mask."
Chuck jerked. "Wait, you remember that book? That's a Nancy Drew mystery?"
V shrugged. "Maybe. It just came to mind. I guess I must have read it, at least. But I don't remember reading it."
Chuck nodded thoughtfully and went on listing women's names. "Druscilla? Darla? No, you don't seem like a Darla."
"How do Darlas seem?" V asked, laughing.
"I don't know. I knew a Darla in high school. I mean, I knew of this girl whose name was Darla. She was a cheerleader. I never really was acquainted with her." Chuck looked away, embarrassed.
V kept laughing though and bumped his shoulder with hers. "I don't remember for sure, but my gut tells me there's been no cheerleading in my past. No Rah-rah-rah. No Sis-boom-bah."
Chuck looked back at her and laughed skeptically. "Huh. You cite the cheers to deny knowing them. Very suspicious.
V narrowed her eyes and mock-frowned. Her look was intense even if playful.
The look affected him. "So, um, yes to Nancy Drew books, no to cheerleading." Chuck said, pulling on his shirt collar "How about, I don't know." He looked up at the ceiling, pursing his lips, "maybe we should try other forms of entertainment, you know, other than YA novels or Buffy vampires. Maybe older, syndicated TV." He glanced at V, then looked apprehensive, as if he were about to confess something. "You kinda remind me of Bewitched. Samantha?"
V's face went blank, slack. She gasped and then repeated the name soundlessly to herself.
Chuck stared at her. Ellie put her coffee down but kept her eyes on the woman. She asked, carefully: "V, does that name mean something to you?"
V dropped her head into her hands.
For a long moment, none of the three moved.
And then V lifted her head. Her expression was shocked and relieved all at once.
"Samantha, Sam, that's my name..."
Chuck was still staring. "Sam? Sam. You're Sam!"
V, Sam, nodded once, then several times with more confidence. "I'm Sam!"
She stood and pulled Chuck up into a hug, turning as she did, so that he was facing Ellie as Sam embraced him. Ellie smiled but lifted a wary eyebrow. Chuck saw it but closed both eyes and gave himself over to Sam's still-turning embrace.
After a moment, Sam stepped back and released Chuck. "Sorry, I just got excited, carried away." Her voice was expansive, her cheeks flushed, her color high; she glowed.
"So, Sam," Chuck said, "what else do you remember?"
Sam's glow dulled slowly. After a moment, she shook her head, speaking in a shrunken voice: "Nothing. I thought that — my name — would bring it all back. But…nothing."
"Don't try to remember events," Ellie advised, "try to remember something similar to 'Sam' like — "
"Your middle name!" Chuck suggested. "What's your middle name, Sam?"
Sam looked down in concentration. Chuck looked like he was holding his breath, willing her to succeed. But Sam shrugged. "I don't know that either…but it feels like it's on the tip of my tongue."
"Don't fight with it, Sam. It'll show up," Ellie instructed her, working to shift from 'V' to 'Sam',
They had talked yesterday afternoon, when Chuck made a grocery store run, talked about Ellie's neurological training, about amnesia. It was very likely Sam would recover her memory, all of it. But the timetable of the recovery was unpredictable.
Ellie was sure Sam's recovery would be too late to save Chuck's heart. and she was not sure his heart could take another beating like the one his former girlfriend, Jill Robertson, gave it at Stanford. V, Sam, had reanimated Chuck and brought him back to life after five years of cryogenic suspension in the Buy More, but Sam could freeze him again if she pulled away, as she undoubtedly would when she remembered. No woman in that body suit and wearing that holster was likely to remain interested in Chuck for long. He was smart, sweet — but he was a homebody, he dreamt of a wife and kids, a house with a white picket fence. Sam had arrived looking like Kim Possible — and it was impossible that the woman in the black body suit dreamt of a husband and kids, white picket fences.
Sam had been staring at the floor again. "I hope it shows up. It's strange, having a present but no past. But at least I have Sam — and Chuck.."
Chuck grinned widely and put out his hand. "C'mon, it's still early. The neighbors are asleep and Elie's got to go to the hospital. Let's take a walk? Get you focused on your feet and not your head."
Sam walked alongside Chuck.
Everything around her seemed to shimmer with newness, like it was not just the morning of a new day, but the morning of a new world. The sun seemed like the morning star.
The truth was that while her amnesia bewildered her, it also seemed somehow a relief. A huge relief.
Chuck — and his suspicious sister (Sam did not blame her for being suspicious; Sam was suspicious of herself) — had made Sam feel at home. At home. A stranger to myself and yet at home. Though she could not remember the weight or the reasons for it, it felt like she had been freed from beneath a crushing weight, a weight that had been slowly killing her. That fact by itself made her less eager to play Chuck's guessing game than he realized. She was glad to know her name — and, interestingly, 'Sam' did not bring the crushing weight back. Why? I have no idea.
She felt unburdened, free. She was Sam, unburdened and free. The woman in the black suit, whoever she was, had been converted, changed in the twinkling of an eye; she had been born again.
Obeying her impulse, Sam reached out and tentatively took Chuck's hand in hers as they walked side by side in the morning.
His smile made her buoyant, practically weightless.
Lola felt like a fool.
This was the fourth Buy More she had visited carrying that pair of Converse. The employees at the other three, particularly the one in Beverly Hills, made her feel ridiculous, brandishing the shoes and hoping to find their owner. The Beverly Hills manager had snidely denied that Cinderella worked there.
That stung. But Lola was not about to give up. Walker was out there, somewhere. There had to be a reason why she had not contacted Lola, contacted someone. Lola had no idea what the reason could be, and she was not going to speculate, but she would find Walker, and figure it out.
Maybe this Burbank store would be lucky.
