Hugh lies in his bed, awakened, Ivy sleeping by his side. Not dead, only resting. Phrases from past lives rise in the mind, make you feel better in the middle of the night. When waiting for whatever will happen tomorrow.
Sometimes the breath staggers, thinking about what comes next. Thinking about what came before. Mimi, her eyes, her hand on his, and gone.
You’ll be fine. You have people to look after.
You won’t, Hugh won’t abandon anyone. Newell, Orion, damned Burton, wherever he may roam, in whatever permutation those three work out. Jason, Savaya, poor Nevaeh in the hospital—all to be shepherded somehow—Ruth, Jasper, in their varying degrees. L and Della have to be guarded, Gareth Pindar is a shark. Ken to be kept an eye on in the sharkswim of the law. Ann, Mighton; those two are too much alike. The poor kid who was living at Ivy’s, his jackass brother. Gerald.
All of them. All of us who will be dead, all of us, if the fabric of the world is not kept whole by constant never-ending vigilance. The weft, the web map of the world in L’s Republic, strings, a theory of tendrils, connections, onion-skin portraits receding rapidly to some unimaginable ceiling, to godhead.
A saw, or a pick? To make the first, the deepest headcut—maybe a drill?
He shifts, and there is Ivy warm and loving, her arm, breast, leg, her form between him and the formless void. It is better to think of all those people. Ivy will help him think. Turn again, head heavy. It is all up to us, it is all our fault, they are all our responsibility. Saying his prayers like this he might fall asleep, Ivy beside him.
It is not over, not yet, not yet. At least, that is the story you tell yourself.
In the darkness Mimi is sitting on the bed. Not lost. Loved.
“I am always holding your hand,” Hugh says.