Anja was in the kitchen when the officers showed up. The dishwasher had broken down yet again, and she had been landed with sink duty. Sweat dripped down her forehead into her eyes as she scrubbed oily plates, her fingers swollen and wrinkled with soapy water. The pile of dirty plates only seemed to get higher, no matter how quickly she scrubbed, so she didn’t hear the commotion until Rosalie called her over to the entryway with a low hiss.
She knew immediately that something was wrong. Rosalie never left the fryers during lunchtime, not even to go to the bathroom. Even more ominous was the quiet outside that she only noticed now, several times lower in volume than the usual peak-hour chaos.
Anja turned the tap off and wiped her hands on her jeans. She heard voices coming from outside, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Walking over to where Rosalie was peeking out of the kitchen, she stuck her head into the entryway as well.
There were three of them, two male and one female, all neatly turned out in a mass of shiny buckles and navy blue. Police badges were emblazoned across their hats and sleeves.
They stood around Halimah, the daughter of the diner’s owner. She twirled a tight curl of black hair around her index finger, nodding as she spoke.
“No, nothing like that at all,” she was saying. “He never behaved like anything you’re describing.”
“How about the people he knew?” one of the male officers asked. He had a mean, squarish face, with the small shallow-set eyes of a hammerhead shark. None of the officers held tablets. They stood with their hands in their pockets or on their hips, as if having a casual chat while picking up some coffee. Still, the diner was quiet, and all eyes were on them.
Halimah tipped her head to the side. “I didn’t know who he knew. Do you see the state of this place? We’re so overworked, I can hardly keep track of my own acquaintances, let alone all of my staff’s.”
“Any suspicious characters ever show up to work?” the shark-faced policeman went on.
“Suspicious characters? Depends on what you mean. This is an Outer Boroughs diner, officer, not some fancy Borough Two veggie bar.” A note of impatience crept into Halimah’s voice. She raised the toes of her left foot, balancing on her heel, a sign that Anja knew all too well meant her temper was rising.
The policeman blinked. “Do you realize how serious this is? We could have you shut down, just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“if you don’t feel the need to cooperate. Just the association with someone like him.”
Halimah eyed him carefully.
“I am cooperating. Of course I am,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “It’s just—well, this isn’t very good for business, you know.” She gestured around at the half-empty diner. The remaining customers barely touched their food and were all watching wide-eyed.
“I understand,” the officer said, not sounding as if he understood at all. He pulled out what appeared to be a postcard. “Have you ever seen this man?”
Halimah studied the photo, her eyebrows and lips pinching together. Finally she shook her head.
“No, never seen him. Who is he?”
The officers looked at each other. They seemed to be able to communicate without speaking. The other male officer, who had an altogether kinder face and voice, said: “Drug dealer. The worst kind.”
“Oh?” Halimah was interested now. She peered again at the photo and seemed disappointed that she’d never seen him before. “And you’re saying Branko’s mixed up with this guy?”
Anja’s heart dropped. I have a guy, Branko had said.
Again the officers looked at each other. “Branko was caught buying from him,” the one holding the picture said. “We took him into custody. He says the pills were for himself, but, well. It doesn’t add up. Can you think of anyone he knew who might want something like that? Anyone who showed signs of antisocial behavior, mental instability, morbidness?”
Halimah shook her head again. “I can’t say, sorry. Didn’t know him that well. You can talk to the rest of the staff, though.” She gestured at Raj, who was stacking glasses behind the bar. “They’re a tight bunch. Might be able to tell you more.”
The officer nodded. “Thanks for your time. We’ll hang around for a bit, then, if that’s okay.”
Halimah crossed her arms and nodded. “More of them in the back,” she said, jerking a thumb toward the kitchen.
Anja leaned out of the doorway, heart pounding and hands sweaty. She pressed the side of her head against the sticky, oil-splattered wall and tried to think.
“Cute, isn’t he?” Rosalie whispered, still looking out of the kitchen. “I think he’s giving me the eye.”
When Anja didn’t answer, she turned toward her. “Did you see him? The tall one, with the beady eyes? Hey, you okay?”
Anja’s head was spinning. The air in the kitchen seemed to thicken, the heat an animal squeezing her till she couldn’t breathe.
Rosalie took a step toward her. “Anja?” she said, reaching out to touch her forearm.
At the touch of Rosalie’s cool fingers, Anja snapped back into herself.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just so hot in here.” She made a show of pulling at her shirt collar.
“Now you see what I have to deal with every day. Standing at the stove ten hours at a go, breathing in this rank air, sweating like a pig. And for no thanks at all,” Rosalie grumbled. But then her eyes softened. “You’re not used to it. Poor thing. Why don’t you go out and get some fresh air?”
Anja nodded and pulled off her apron. She shot a quick glance in the direction of the door, her heart still pounding in her chest.
“Don’t worry about those guys. They’ll probably just ask you the same questions all over again. The whole thing is sad, really; you’d never guess Branko was the sort.”
Anja opened her mouth to protest. But then she pressed her lips together and nodded slowly, as if to say, No, you’d never guess. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
She tore her apron off, dropping it onto the floor. She left through the back door, stepping out into the empty alleyway where they often stood around during breaks, hiding from Halimah.
Branko in custody—what did that mean? Was he locked up? Being interrogated? In prison?
She stood in the alleyway holding her elbows, thinking of Branko alone and locked up. Stupid, stupid stupid stupid. Why had he done it? She remembered the look on his face when he had told her about his “guy,” the hurt in his eyes when she’d turned him down. Stupid, kind, brave Branko. He hadn’t told them about her, she was sure, otherwise they would already have come looking.
He hadn’t told them about her. Carrying T-pills was a serious crime, federal, she imagined. Suddenly her bones felt too heavy for her body. She had done nothing to deserve Branko’s loyalty. Something swelled in her chest, spilling out of her eyes.
But then she wiped her cheeks. There was no point—she could do nothing for him. Besides, even if Branko didn’t give her up, they would figure it out soon. A non-lifer buying T-pills made no sense. They would check the records, find out she was the only lifer he knew, probably find out about her mother, WeCovery, the Club, everything else too. Then she’d be thrown in jail, and her mother sent to a farm to decompose with thousands of other subhuman bodies.
Anja began to walk toward the harbor. As she walked, she felt a hot energy humming in her ears, coursing through her veins, and soon she broke into a run. The tops of buildings were jagged against the spotless blue sky. Nearby, a woman leaned out of a window in a low, skeletal house, holding a bundle of laundry in her arms. A loud cry, the laundry squirmed, and Anja saw that it was a baby. The woman seemed to be watching her run.
When she arrived at the dock, the ferry was poised to leave, the last of the languid crowds slipping off the gangway. Slowing to a walk, Anja boarded the ferry. A lady with raisin skin and a bright fuchsia hat turned to look at her.
“In a hurry, honey?” She smiled, revealing pointed yellow incisors.
Anja smiled back, but didn’t answer. Would they question the lady later, when they traced Anja’s footsteps, along with everyone else on the two thirty-five ferry? Would they ask if she had said anything, seemed unusual, exhibited signs of dangerous psychosis? She pushed the thoughts out of her mind and headed to the deck outside. It was almost empty, for the day was sharp and cold, and most knew how strong the winds were. The only people outside were tourists, taking videos of themselves with their tablets on sticks, recording their faces against the dull gray steel of the water.
The ferry began moving, and the wind sped up against her cheeks. As the wind gathered strength, it seemed to be flaying off a layer of skin from her face, revealing something soft and new beneath. Anja fixed her eyes on the dock, watching it get smaller and smaller as they pulled away from the shore. The boat rumbled beneath her feet, sending vibrations through her knees and hips, a comforting engine drone.
She wondered if it would be the last time she saw Staten Island. Her plan seemed more unlikely now, out on the water, as the old ferry groaned and grumbled its way toward the other gleaming shore.
Where would they go, even if she did somehow manage to transport her mother in her current state? Anja felt a sudden chill as she thought of moving her mother.
Anja hadn’t touched her in months. The last time had been shortly after her mother stopped speaking, when she realized that she hadn’t bathed her in several weeks. So Anja filled the plastic basin with water from the communal bathroom, waiting five minutes for the hot water to run, and brought it back to their room. She placed the basin on the bedside table and lifted the comforter off her mother’s chest. This was before her skin started to turn, back when her cheeks were beginning to hollow out but she still looked like herself.
When Anja touched her mother’s arm, her fingers seemed to come away damp. She paused and touched the bony arm again, this time running her fingers lightly across the crinkled skin. Sure enough, she hadn’t imagined it. Her mother’s skin was faintly sticky, like old rubber that had started to melt. Anja pulled her fingers away as if she’d been burnt. She examined her fingertips, but they appeared to be clean. She examined the place where she had just touched her mother’s forearm. There was nothing that distinguished it from the surrounding skin.
Anja sat motionless for some time, listening to the sounds of the city dimly filtering through the thin walls. Then she stood, picked up the basin of water, and poured it down the sink. She didn’t touch her mother again.
* * *
That had been months ago. Now, she had visions of her fingers sinking into her mother’s flesh, of the bones snapping under her weight. She saw her mother’s face sliding off when she sat her upright.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
Anja jumped. She seemed to feel her brain bounce against the top of her skull.
“Sorry honey, didn’t mean to frighten you.” It was the lady from before, the one with the canine teeth and the crumpled face. She wore a faded blue scarf wrapped around her hair.
“That’s okay,” Anja said shortly, turning back toward the water.
“Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?” The lady unfurled a claw in the direction of Anja’s bare arms.
“No, I’m fine,” Anja said, adding: “Thank you.”
“You foreign? You look foreign,” the lady went on, undeterred.
Anja turned toward the woman. Her eyes, she saw now, were bright and unfocused, darting about even as she spoke, and her hands seemed to have a life of their own. Her fingers shook at her hips, as if playing an invisible piano.
“Not really,” Anja said, kindly now. “I’ve been here a long time.”
“Oh. You have family here, then?” The lady blinked rapidly. Her eyelashes were long but very pale.
Anja looked down at the gray water again. A plastic bottle bobbed past on the lightly foaming waves.
“I do,” she said. “My whole family is here.” Her fingers gripped the cold railing, knuckles whitening against her goose bumps.
“How lovely. My family used to be here too, once. Not anymore, though. Now it’s just me.” She spat words out in quick succession. “You have a child? Son? Daughter?”
“No,” Anja said. “But we’re trying, my husband and I. Anyway, we have our parents to keep us busy. They all live in the city too. Sometimes I cook dinner, a nice roast veg pot, and they all come over to visit. My husband, he likes that, you know. His brother comes, too, with his little niece.”
“Lovely, lovely,” the lady said, her eyes wide and dreamy. “And what do you drink with these dinners? Do you have a drop then? A nice drop of red? Or white, you look more like a white kind of girl.”
“Yes,” Anja said. Why not go all out, now that she’d started? “We have a bit of red. No more than the recommended monthly intake, of course, but that’s the only time we do it, so we can each have a full glass. My husband’s father—he has connections in Europe, so he gets bottles sent from Italy.”
“Italy,” the lady said. “Nice place. Warm. I always thought I’d go, once.”
When Anja didn’t respond, she turned to look at the water as well. After watching the waves roll past for some time, the lady said: “What’s your husband’s name?”
“Branko,” Anja answered.
The wind whipped her hair about her face, tickling her cheeks. She looked back toward Staten Island, which was only a faint darkness in the fog now.
* * *
When the ferry docked, Anja bade the lady goodbye. She had been mostly silent for the rest of the trip, leaning her torso over the railing and pushing her face into the wind.
“Goodbye,” she said in return, smiling to show those jagged teeth again. “Give my regards to Branko.”
Anja nodded and turned away. Soon she was lost in the stream of people coming off the ferry.
The noise of Manhattan hit her like a brick wall, a solid slap in the face. A thick cloud of sound, woven tightly of individual threads—the roar of conversation, the thumping footfalls of the walking throngs, the dull gratings and booms of various construction sites, sirens, helicopter blades, music, the great soft whoosh of the Hudson.
There was something comforting about being slapped in the face, Anja thought as she plunged into the moving crowd on the sidewalk. Something satisfying about being hit hard, to emerge ears ringing and nose bleeding, tendons throbbing, alive. How strange it was that it was a city like this that first produced lifers, those smooth-skinned, long-limbed islands, whose entire beings were dedicated to only ever skimming the surface. How could they do it, she wondered, in a place like this?
She wondered what they would do if they got back to Sweden. Perhaps there, she’d find a doctor who would be willing to put an end to her mother’s suffering, have a proper funeral. She’d asked her mother once where she wanted her ashes to be scattered, for Anja had thought it would be nice to have them thrown in the Baltic Sea, next to their home. Her mother had said it didn’t matter. She didn’t believe in symbolism or rituals or afterlife, and she thought it was a silly, sentimental question. She didn’t see how it would affect her, for she would already be gone. She didn’t see that it wasn’t for her.
Nevertheless, Anja would scatter her mother’s ashes in the sea. As she pushed through the afternoon sidewalk traffic, Anja imagined carrying an urn to the beach. She would do it in the morning, just after sunrise. She’d stand on the surf, weak waves caressing her feet, sand shifting under her heels. The water would be so cold it burned, and the jellyfish, harmless and luminescent, would be plentiful. Some would already be stranded and dying on the sand as the tide went out, inert half-spheres of solid water, fat droplets of morning dew studding the shoreline.
She’d lift the top off the urn, dig her fingers in, marvel at how light the grains were, more like dust than sand. Then she’d fling one hand out toward the rising sun and the waking sea. Her mother would be taken by the wind.