Ethan and Nash stayed in the back room for a little over an hour. Finally the deputy sheriff knocked on the door and gave her the all clear. Susan asked once more about Walter or her other neighbor, but the deputy didn’t have any information to provide. He did mention, however, that an arson investigator might be around later in the week to speak to her. She said she had nowhere to go.
During the time Ethan and Nash had waited in the back room, they’d had a chance to talk. Ethan shared his experiences, trying to get Nash in his court before he had to speak with Susan again. He knew there’d be a reckoning.
In exchange for Ethan’s openhearted honesty, Nash opened up about his friendship with Susan and how they’d met in physical therapy. Nash had survived bone cancer and had lost enough muscle mass in his left leg that he’d needed therapists to help him get it back. Susan had been the sole survivor of a car crash between her family and a driver for a nationally known freight-liner company. Her mother, father, and brother had died instantly. Susan had been hurled from the wreck, her spine, legs, and arms broken. They were able to fix her arms and her legs, as much good as they’d do for her, but they hadn’t been able to fix her severed spinal cord.
Nash was two years older than the then-sixteen-year-old Susan and had made it his goal to help her through it. Little did he know that she had a determination that far surpassed his own, and she’d helped him through what was the worst of his pain. So they’d bonded. She’d used the massive insurance settlement to buy the three homes through shell companies and to get them set up the way she wanted. She didn’t need to work, so she spent every waking hour learning the truth about giants and those who would keep the information hidden.
When Ethan had asked why giants, Nash had smiled and showed him the books lining the shelves of the room. Ethan hadn’t really paid attention, but once he saw them, he couldn’t help but note that they were the same book but in different versions. Some were old, the covers tattered and barely hanging on. Many weren’t even in English. Ethan had pulled down one with a gaudy French cover from the 1920s starring a stylized giant holding a young man in a clawed fist. A Japanese version showed a giant on the side of a mountain listening intently to a samurai playing a flute. Still another showed a fearsome giant gripping a child, chewing on its victim’s legs with cracked brown teeth. There had to be nearly a hundred different volumes of a children’s tale he’d last heard from his mother when he’d been five years old or so.
“ ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ was her favorite story when she was a kid. The way she tells it, at first she didn’t even care for it, but it was her dad who liked to read it to her when he came home late from work. It was his way of spending time with her. Of course, nothing could make up for missing birthdays and holidays, but she didn’t complain. Instead, she looked forward to it and eventually associated the tale with everything good about her father. So when he died in the accident, the one thing she missed the most was the nightly retelling of the story of the young man who’d climbed the beanstalk to see if giants were real.
“It’s funny. It stimulated her to see if they actually were real, and what she found was stunning. She recognized right away that the tip of the internet iceberg was a conspiracy theory waiting to be brought to light. She has a sort of tenacity that can’t be mollified by other people’s bullshit or beliefs about what’s true or not. She was determined to find out for herself, and I daresay there’s not another person on the planet now who knows more about giants unless it’s the Six-Fingered Man himself.”
Once the all clear was given, Susan called them back into the front room.
“Now where were we?” she asked them.
“I introduced myself as Ethan,” he said. “And you’re Susan, not Walter.”
She sneered. “Thanks for keeping me straight.” To Nash she said, “Didn’t I send you out for pizza before the shit hit the fan?”
“You did. I brought it, but I think it’s a little bit burned by now. Want me to order another? This one for delivery?”
She stared at him, then she sagged. “Yes, please. The usual.” She rubbed her face. “I’m just so tired.”
Ethan started to speak, but she interrupted him. “Listen, I know half your story already. I understand that you’re an eager little beaver, but let’s revisit your devastation tomorrow. For now, no questions. Let’s just eat and call it a night, okay?”
Ethan regarded her. Sometimes she seemed so much larger than life, but right now she seemed like the girl five years younger than him that she was. Her previously commanding look had made her seem so tough, but now she was nothing more than a tired young woman, uncertain of what to do next. He felt the change was both refreshing and scary, because prior to this, he hadn’t thought anything could rattle her.
Ethan nodded, then sat in the chair while Nash ordered the pizza. He continued to sit while they waited, no one doing anything, the internet forgotten, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. When the doorbell finally rang, they all jumped.
Susan checked the monitor, and it revealed an impatient teenager with a pizza bag in hand. Nash paid with cash, and soon each of them were inhaling slices of mushroom, onion, and green chili pizza. Ethan had never considered the flavor combination, but it was undeniably good. A tiny voice begged to differ, pointing out that anything would be good at this point in his starvation, but he ignored it. After all, the flavors were great, as was the moment.
A little later, as he and Nash swaddled into sleeping bags in the back room, he edged around his still fresh and painful memories.
Nash broke Ethan’s reverie with a simple but powerful sentence. “Sorry you lost your girl and your dad and your friend.”
Ethan lay there, staring into the darkness, trying to do what Nietzsche had commanded people to absolutely not do. He blinked away a tear, then said a simple thanks in return for the unasked for gesture.
Then they both lay swathed in their own memories, listening to the slim Chinese girl in the other room, the one who’d commanded them as well as the police and fire departments, pull herself out of her wheelchair and lever herself into bed. Although the door was closed, sound carried in the quiet dark. After a while, her sobs lulled Ethan to sleep.