TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I have lived more than one life. Altogether, they proved to be too much.

You know me as a partner in Bull’s Head Shreds, son of Masami and Barrington Okada-Caines. Others know me as Aetna Simmons, forger of history. On behalf of the life insurance industry, I created suicide notes that by means unknown to me appeared at the scenes of recent deaths, ex post facto enabling my employers to invoke suicide clauses which obviate the payment of death benefits. A former tenant in a cottage belonging to Myrtle Trimm at Suffering Lane, St. George’s, I fled my home and employers when an attack of conscience forbade me to continue to my work. I apologize for the inconvenience subsequently incurred by the Bermuda Police Service.

And now I choose the samurai’s escape. No one but myself is to blame for the misfortunes suffered by those who know me and bereft victims whom I will never know. As proof of my misconduct, I enclose ten suicide notes of my own authorship.

Kenji Okada-Caines

Back in hospital before visiting hours. Considered faking chest pain so they’d take me “backstage” & I could escape & find Kenji. Too chicken to try. A waiting room, his Unnamed docx on my phone: Kenji’s “fleshless visions.” Noon finally. Nurse said I couldn’t go in till I’d traded my bloody shirt for a clean gown. She said Kenji was breathing but “feeling a bit ill.” “Precipitated withdrawal”: if Zo knocked out his nerves, Naloxone shocked them all awake. The “discomfort” could last a few hours or days. “Like an overloaded fuse, only it will right itself.”

Well, if that was supposed to prepare me, it failed. Regardless of what Kenji’s done, he doesn’t deserve eruption after eruption, jackknifing over & over, vomiting brutally even when the diarrhea started, I couldn’t watch & I had to, it’s the most awful thing I’ve ever seen. & when he finally got to lie down, pain in his whole body made him cry out & thrash around. Big bandage on his head, bunch of stitches just above his temple. I stayed all afternoon, wiping his face & trying to hold his hand. He never noticed me. It’s the same now that he’s home. Pain & sickness are his world.

Let me back up, I’m all over the place. KEMH kept him 2 days. Then they wanted to get rid of him cuz withdrawal isn’t “life-threatening” so his insurance won’t pay for any more hospital time. The ambulance took him to MAWI, the mental hospital (!). “Policy,” they said: he hurt himself so he’s crazy, he could do it again or try to hurt other people. Kenji wouldn’t hurt a fly, but they wouldn’t listen so I followed him to MAWI. Soon those lot were complaining cuz Kenji is so sick, they can’t evaluate him like this, they’re not trained to deal with “life-threatening illness,” KEMH should have kept him. Sigh! Squabbling between the hospitals & insurance co. Kenji ended up discharged from both. I wanted to give everyone a slap upside the head.

Martin was good enough to pick us up. Kenji was severely carsick, M & I practically carried him inside. He was in the bathroom for hours, his body trying to rip itself to shreds, he almost didn’t make it to the bedroom before he passed out. We sat with him, watching his breathing.

Me & my husband in the room where K & I made love.

We didn’t have a clue what to say to each other.

“You’re welcome,” said Martin. Stiff as a martyr in a bad religious painting.

“Thank you for taking 5 mins to make a phone call, Martin. Thank you for not turning a blind eye to a fellow human being in trouble.”

I don’t know why I chose that moment to pick a fight. We did it in whispers, K didn’t know a thing, poor sight.

“He really is unbalanced, you know,” said Martin.

“& you & I are models of stability.”

“Just as an example, he thinks you’re Aetna Simmons.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I think he believed he was doing this for you. To shield you.”

I played with one of Kenji’s curls.

“You don’t have anything to say, Nabilah?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Where did he get that idea if he’s not seriously out of touch with reality?”

“He’s not crazy.”

“So?”

“I don’t know. You don’t have to stay.”

“But you will. & it would be inhumane for me not to be OK with that.”

“Honey, not now with the sarcasm.”

“He’ll have to go away. Rehab, you know, abroad.”

“Martin, please.”

He got fed up & left. But before he went, he whispered in my ear like a cold breeze from a haunted place.

“You lied just now, Nabilah. You know plenty more. He came clean as best he could. But you lied to him too, I bet. Makes me wonder if you know how to do anything but lie. Well, let me tell you something. I may have let you make a fool of me for years, but you & I both know I’ll find the truth, you understand? & I mean all of it.”

I’ve never been frightened of my husband before. Never been scared of Kenji either. I am now.

I made sure Martin’s car was gone, locked the front door, zoomed to the library. I found that awful Collected Works of Thomas Hardy & dumped it in a trash bag. I found The Hand of Ethelberta, that’s Hardy too. I pulled it out, behind it was the switch, one of those flat switches.

4 shelves full of books swung backwards into a closet. I stood there doing nothing for the longest while, staring at this thing straight out of “Narnia,” thinking could this really be the place I’d been coming to for years? The closet was too low to stand up in but quite deep, it went pretty far back into the wall. Inside there was a little lamp & some wooden cabinets. I remembered the key. Right on the kitchen counter where K said it would be, an old-fashioned brass key I’d never seen before. The cabinets were full of small velvety boxes & in the boxes were ugly poisonous shadows of a bright & beautiful stranger.

I went a little crazy when I swept them all away. Each of those tablets was another layer of deception. I ripped a drawer out of a cabinet, turned it upside down over a trash bag, same with the next drawer, every drawer (except the ones full of cash, those made me have to sit down) like I could make a truth out of him with a spring cleaning. I took the trash bags to the dumpster up the road, sealed the closet, sat on the floor with my back to Kenji’s books, & cried.

Any minute, I thought, I’ll wake up in Kenji’s bed, he’ll say there’s no such thing as Zohytin or Empyreal, just a silly nightmare, Nikkou. He’ll hold me in his arms while my heart learns the steady pace of his.

But then the real night came. I got in bed with him. Kenji had a fever & goosebumps at the same time, he was shivering like crazy, spasms arched his back & bent his legs & threw them down again. The internet said I should rub his abdomen “in a circular motion.” I did that, he didn’t notice. Not asleep, just under fire from inside. My phone found an article called “Brain Injury From O2 Deprivation Following Opioid Overdose.”

Brain damage. My sweet genius. A genius regardless of what Harvard had to say. Well, I panicked. I shook him, kissed him, pleaded with him. Kenji came around so slowly! When he opened his eyes, it was like no one was inside them. He said my name but wasn’t sure. He looked around, saw the Miró, his breathing became thick & hard, he stiffened everywhere & shut his eyes like he was wishing everything away. I said, “It’s OK,” & his eyes flew open.

“What’re you doing here?”

“We didn’t die, Baby, we’re home.”

Kenji pulled away & turned, I thought he was going to vomit in the trash bin by the bed. But instead he started sobbing! I tried to touch him, he shrugged me off, I tried again & he said, “No Nabi, just go, go now, Nabi, please.” I whispered, “It’s OK,” & Kenji screamed, “I SAID GO! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

I ran out, hid in his study. Kenji cried so much it made him sick. The sounds from out of him hurt something awful inside me.

& that’s how both my boys learned to hate me in one day.

I’ve forgotten how to pray, forgotten how to sleep. Kenji didn’t sleep all night, he vomited & vomited, diarrhea & everything. He shooed me if I followed when he staggered to the bathroom. I threw out the bag of vomit in the trash bin by the bed. I put a new bag in, flitted around straining to hear & not hear into the bathroom.

Dawn made everything gray. That corner of the couch where I told Kenji loads of silly things I can’t remember. Kenji’s desk, his pens, his empty notepad. Kenji’s closed-down laptop, the “birthplace” of “Suicide & Suicide Notes,” “Document1,” & mysterious unfinished drafts—maybes & if-onlys that wouldn’t stand a chance without him, & there I was among them. The TV is dark, but it remembers us laughing. The books dream his touch & his excitement. The whole place is hollow & haunted.

“I wonder what to call you.” I think maybe he meant me! I’m not like Aetna Simmons, I’m not like Seabird or Martin. Maybe I thought about it in a time of frustration, but I can’t run off & abandon people. Kenji should know that already. My phone showed me the Unnamed like it’s just another file. Just another couple kilobytes & not Kenji wondering how long he could stand it. I looked for warning signs to beat myself up with. I looked for stuff to make myself feel better. “AccuWeather,” stuff like that. I saw how much I didn’t see. I saw that this is all her fault.

She knew that book about the girl who reorganized the Bible. I knew it was Hardy’s book. I said I have a friend. In one look, she knew all about my friend.

I pretended I hadn’t seen the look. I acted like it wasn’t a look that saw too much. Not like Martin’s “polygraph” look, weirder than that. Or less subtle or something. It wasn’t till much later that she admitted that she knew, she’d seen into my heart with that one look. Guess it was her job (!) to pick up on people’s secrets without needing to hear much else about them. It wasn’t her job to make my Baby “fall in love” with her & lure him into wanting to be nothing but wind over water!

Except it kinda-sorta was her job, luring people into thinking about suicide. Making people think other people wanted to die. She did it to strangers, professionals. Her words were that strong.

But only if you couldn’t hear them. Kenji fell under her spell cuz he couldn’t hear how scared she really was. She was a “guilty remainder.” Scared of being alone, scared of her own emptiness. I know cuz I could hear it. But she turned that fear & emptiness into power with too-long “fleshless” arms like radiation. None of us knew her, & look what she did to us.

Poor K was SO SICK we didn’t get a moment’s rest this p.m. & I am terrified. Changing the trash bag for the umpteenth time I found myself looking for excuses (!) not to go back in the bedroom, scared of the smell & liquids & convulsions, I mean Kenji’s never sick, Martin’s never sick, I’m never sick! Panic tries to tell me what’s suffering in that bed isn’t really Kenji. His head hurts bad, he squeezes it like it’s a blister. I’m scared to touch it, scared to hit the stitches, so where I’m touching him isn’t really where it hurts. & I know he’s the real Kenji, Kenji who knelt at my feet in the Arboretum doesn’t notice I’m beside him. Whispering, “It’s OK, it’ll go away,” I’m the one who sounds false.

Was I ever not false & helpless even in my “prayers”? Were they just me pleading with my useless self? Is that the whole story of me & K: “false & helpless,” “always already gone”? Just cuz I “signed a contract with Martin in a church,” I can’t love both them byes with all my heart? Kenji must know better than that. Making himself suffer cuz I don’t “belong” to him doesn’t make sense. (Do I “belong” to M or God or anybody, aren’t I my own self?!) Loving Aetna Simmons cuz she don’t belong to him or anybody don’t make sense either. Some parts of the Unnamed are for me, but what if that part was for her: “already gone”?

No, K thought I was her. That’s my fault. If the real her knew a real man loved her, a good man, she’d get spooked & take off just like she did, I guess. Which one of us does Kenji wish I was? Do I wish she was never born? No plane crash, no suicide notes, no mysterious theft, no Art Of Vanishing, no Seabird? If there’d never been any of that, could K & I have just kept going nicely like we were?

Begging night to end. Like that gray light coming back will make everything OK. Kenji still can’t sleep, can’t stand the light either. I turned on the bedside lamp like always & he groaned.

“No, turn it off, turn that _____ off. You want to do something, turn off the _____ water heater, I can’t stand that _____ noise. (The water heater makes one click twice a day.) & get rid of these _____ sheets, I can’t stand it. & on the bookshelf there’s—”

Poor Baby couldn’t even finish talking, the pains in his stomach & his back are HORRIBLE. They ripped his thought away, even that thought. I held him like we were a snail, I was the shell, I pressed his belly with my hand.

“Quit that & go,” Kenji gasped.

“It’s gonna be OK. Everything feels bad right now, but it’s—”

“I shouldn’t feel anything. I shouldn’t feel anything. I shouldn’t have to think anything.”

He meant cuz he should be dead. My Kenji. Mercy, it’s too much. I can’t do this, I can’t see Kenji like this!

“I couldn’t even die.”

“Kenji, you mustn’t die.”

“I couldn’t even do that.”

“Don’t think about it anymore. I love you. Think about that.”

Baby turned to me, he was in agony but he tried to wipe my tears away. The emptiness in his eyes filled up with the pain of wishing, his hand shook, I leaned into it & saw him drain out of himself like a soul ditching its earthly shell. His voice sounded like somebody stuck it in the Panashred.

“I asked you to leave me, & I meant it.”

“No, Kenji.”

“Don’t you get it? I can’t anymore.”

“I need you.”

“No you don’t. No you don’t, Nabi.”

He turned away, didn’t want me to touch him. The words & tears & kisses I poured onto his shoulder with his back to me obviously seemed empty to him. So I mean he’s writhing in pain, I’m wracking my brain for a way to make him choose living, Kenji’s fighting to resist everything that has to do with living, “the crew of the Ethelberta” in the most horrible stalemate I can think of, & what makes it worse is that we love each other!

“Stuff in the book. Big Hardy book. Please, Nabi.”

“No, Baby, no more of that.”

“Please! I’ll get it myself.”

“Kenji, no, lie still. (Mercy, I haven’t told him about Hardy!) Let me do my thing. (Whatever that may be!) I’m scared too, Baby, but—”

“Then go to your saintly all-put-together husband.”

“It’s not about my husband, Kenji, you wrote, ‘What are we?’ Well, I don’t know, I just know even after I promised before God that Martin’s my whole life, I kept coming back to you. ‘Acegirl keeps showing up,’ you wrote, remember? Even across the ocean I had to hear your voice each day. Even with a good man for a husband, I can’t hardly last 3 days without seeing you up close & feeling that you, Kenji, you are here with me.”

Maybe the words got buried in my hiccups, I don’t know, Baby looked at me like I was babbling Icelandic.

“If you ever loved me, Nabi, bring the book.”

Sigh.

I ended up sort of pinning him. It wasn’t hard. My leg across his waist is too heavy for him now. I put kisses on his head, my arm across his chest. Kenji gripped my arm like I’m a prison fence. He turned his head away & suffered.

She came to BHS instead of those guys up de country cuz I’m a woman. Like that’s supposed to mean I can understand better how to wipe a whole person away & not let it hurt. She comes in my building saying delete this & that, so I say: Sweetie, I know you said no questions, but say we actually succeed at this, what you gonna do once you got no passport, no bank accounts, no birth record, no nothing, once you’re dead to the whole world? She didn’t answer me.

I don’t know what she was thinking, whether it was just about the airplane or she wanted to protect Char Richards that much that she wanted every trace of what they did to “un-happen” (?) or she hated Char Richards so much that she wanted to blow up everything they’d worked for. Did acegirl think her own suicide would somehow make up for the other ones she faked? I don’t know, I don’t care anymore.

I remember I said, like I’m her “spiritual adviser”: Let’s think this thru together. Must’ve hit her up with some Biblical foolishness. “Pray, Love, Shop, You Go Girl!” Whatever it was, it worked. & it wasn’t a big deal, telling somebody keep on breathing when they can’t help but keep breathing. “Pray, Love, Don’t Give Up,” that’s just the kind of thing church-loving Furberts do. & now I almost hate myself for it cuz I went off triumphant & made “Seabird” her new life, she’s trotting around with her new passport, but I can’t think for the life of me what I said to make Aetna Pauline Simmons change her mind about the meaning of “Vanishing,” I’m just too much in a panic, so I mean I can’t make the man who loves me want to live!

He’s lying beside me breathing hard & fast, refusing to look at me, while I scrawl my freakout in my book cuz that’s all I can do. Doesn’t he remember the drop-off boxes? 40-50lb apiece, I’m seen him lifting 2 at once cuz he likes to be the one to carry them to Max Sec from out the front just so he can walk past my office & give me a smile. That’s not a little thing, I swear I thought Kenji knew it’s an amazing thing. So why didn’t he write it in “Document1,” some example of how strong he is, how strong we are, how our love is always alive everywhere? I try reminding him, “Kenji, you know the drop-off boxes…?” He can’t hear me, I don’t think. Pain is deafening.

Morning turned the sky the color of a dirty burlap bag. I freaked out till 8:00, left K rolling around, slipped into the hallway, called my GP. “No, not my husband, a close friend.” Sigh! Whined about the hospitals & freaked some more till Doc agreed to a house call.

Kenji begged her for Zohytin. He pretended a hospital @USA Rxd it but he’d lost the Rx (!). Doc refused. K begged for Vicodin. She refused, he said Anything!, Doc said Tylenol. I SOSed Iesha, she went to the pharmacy. K was overwrought. Me too, thank you very much! I tried activating my Managing Partner setting. I told Baby (it was true) Doc said I’d have to call the ambulance if he kept refusing fluids or (blubbering again) he could get heart failure (!!!!!) from dehydration.

“Are you threatening me, woman?!”

“No, but Baby you gotta try, blah blah.”

“Who the _____ do you think you are, telling me what to etc.”

My best friend & lifelong love thinks I’m the Evil One. No one knows how much this hurts. No one.

Supermom Iesha offered to give him what for. She didn’t see it’d only make things worse, but thank goodness she backed down. She showed up with hugs & advice & home-fried chicken & Gatorade. She also brought the stuff I’d left at her house & forgotten when I ran to the hospital with nothing but my phone & trusty book:

My briefcase. My laptop. Aetna Simmons’ HD clone!!

It looks on the outside like any portable HD, but I almost shrieked when I grabbed it from Iesha. My poor patient sister, she has no idea! I shoved the thing in the cutlery drawer in Baby’s kitchen. I turned down Iesha’s offer to pray together, I said I hope my nieces never learn to love like me. Iesha must think I’m gone off my head.

Kenji wanted to keep the Tylenol beside the bed, but I said no, no way. He said, “What do you care,” & well I’d been had it with the cold shoulder, I took my book & put myself on the couch. I thought: I hate this. I thought: If this was Martin (this would never be Martin), I’d talk everything over with K. Then I panicked cuz I’d left my Baby struggling alone, I rushed to the bedroom, he was curled up in a ball, he shook me off when I touched him: “What can I do? Just tell me what to do.”

He didn’t answer. All he could think of was Zohytin, I just knew it, & it wasn’t fair, but I kept thinking: If you were always already gone…

Martin came to check on me at noon. We sat in the living room & said nothing.

Well, I guess Martin said, “How’s he doing?”

Little question like that closed my throat. I shook my head. Tylenol wasn’t helping, Kenji couldn’t keep it down, I’d spent the morning squeezing his hands against the pain. Truth is I could only hang with Martin cuz everything got so bad Kenji had sort of fainted. Almost gave me a heart attack, but it was the closest thing to sleep he’d had in forever. I leaned close to hear his breathing (“every sound a terror & a treasure”), to hear Kenji breathing & remember him not breathing (“living on the edge of a precipice…”).

“How are you doing?” said Martin.

Well! Ya girl was barefoot, my kimono rumpled & soggy, my hair like I’d stuck it in a hurricane, my nerves like I’d stuck them in an electric socket. I was scared to fall asleep, I felt like everything I said & did was the wrong thing, I kept reading in K’s Unnamed file that my life wasn’t what I thought I’d been living, I was scared to think more than 5 mins into the future, & suddenly I felt it all at the same time. I keeled over on Martin’s shoulder like a falling-down tin shack (the kind of shack that don’t exist anywhere on this Island!), hugging this set of Kenji’s PJs I’ve started carrying around.

Martin didn’t hug me. He was stiff. That’s how he gets when he’s afraid. He cleared his throat & said, “Well, we’ve been busy at the office.”

The world carried on making money & buying stuff, enjoying sunlight on pink sand while K & I hung in this backbreaking “limbo.” I heard a sound, hopped up. Baby was covered in sweat & didn’t know a thing, but I dripped some water thru his lips, & as he coughed he moaned something.

Now, Nabi-girl, be fair. You can’t be sure what Kenji moaned, it was very weak, poor sight was definitely past thinking. & if he did say what you think he said, it’s partly your own fault cuz of the stupid idiotic confusion you started when like a stupid idiot you mixed up your priorities.

Still, did I get vexed. Man, did I get vexed. Cuz I thought Kenji said her name. I mean “Aetna.”

I stomped back to the living room with the image of her stupid face burning in my head. If my head had poisoned rocks in it, I’d hurl them at that face. Chances are there’s only one other human being alive who’s seen that face & knows to connect it with what Aetna Simmons did.

Martin (he’s not the one, he never laid eyes on her), staring into space all forlorn, he don’t know what Kenji wrote, not “Works Of Art” or the Unnamed. I said Kenji told me (lie, he wrote it) that his brother was involved in this thing with Clocktower, & Nikea had his emails. I said I want to see them.

I know from the HD clone that after the first couple “victims” someone emailed times & places where Aetna went for info on the dead people that she was going to “impersonate.” Places like Harbourfront (!), the Arboretum (!!), etc. I didn’t say none of this to Martin, I said I want proof that Kenji’s own brother conspired with the demon-fish who preyed on my Baby when my back was turned (I didn’t say it like that). Martin brought up Nikea’s latest update on his phone. (“When do you think you’re coming home?” said Martin.) Since Nikea started watching, Erik’s been deleting stuff like crazy, shouting out to Brooklyn floozy, but she (floozy) is ignoring him. (“I’ve told them I’ll have to postpone my next trip,” said Martin.) I thought: Erik saw her, Erik spoke to her, she was what she was partly cuz of Erik, & when she slipped thru his fingers Erik told Kenji NOT to stop hunting her. “You sure their bosses weren’t in on it?” I said.

Martin sighed. “They weren’t in on it. But Mrs Caines is dragging her feet on the investigation. We still don’t have a contract. It’s understandable, I suppose.”

Putting it in my book feels like watching myself in a movie starring strangers. I’m appalled at myself now, but at the time I totally wasn’t. I thought: Watch yourself, acegirl & said, “Even the police gave up. Maybe there’s sides to this that should be left alone.”

“Kenji didn’t think so.”

“He’s got no choice now, innit. Honey, if & when you speak to him—”

“I hardly think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, even later. Don’t bring up any of this. It hasn’t done him any good.”

My voice was too high & crackling like the sound of marbles spilling all over the place. But my husband didn’t say, Don’t worry, your dearest, dearest friend will pull thru, he’s got a good long life ahead of him. Martin said, “I told Mrs Caines what he did up on the hill.”

“What’d you have to do that for?”

“He’s her son.”

“That never made no difference! The last thing Kenji needs is that woman coming around—”

A cry from Kenji’s room. I ran, I know this cry, it’s what comes with the dream of that woman & the sword & the black books with red tongues, it caused another horrible attack of throwing up. I had the bright idea of a damp towel for Baby’s forehead, but the dampness killed the wrinkly attempt I’d made at bandage-changing. This was a last straw for me, I don’t know why, maybe all I could think about was throwing rocks at somebody, but when poor Kenji fell back, panting, I ran out to yell at Martin. “You hear that? That’s a lifetime of bad dreams & it’s her fault!”

“My guess is it’s your fault. You lied to both of us, & he’s too carried away to handle it.”

The room swam like Martin had kicked me in the face. He said sit down. I sat down gasping on the floor. My poor husband stood stiffly over me.

“I just want all of us to be OK!” I said.

“What about doing the right thing?”

“That’s all I ever wanted, Martin, you know that.”

“Then tell the truth. If Kenji hasn’t lost his mind, why in the world does he believe you’re Aetna Simmons? He believes it enough to stake his life on it, Nabilah. If that’s some gross delusion, if the man needs psychiatric help—”

“He’s hurt, not crazy.”

“Is he? Because he came to my office, did you know that? So what I heard with my own ears was either: (A) Kenji in the grip of some dire misapprehension of which you just didn’t bother disabusing him because, Jesus save you, all you care about is concealing your own transgressions, or (B) Kenji going seriously insane & spouting demented rubbish.”

“No.”

That’s all I could say. No, Martin, no, Kenji, my sweet genius. It was like something popped inside me. Maybe the imaginary hot air balloon I’d dreamed up to follow Seabird in sometimes. Like my part in what she’d done could float away over the sea & learn spelunking.

If Kenji thought he was insane, if my Baby thought his big bold brain had given out on him, well then he really wouldn’t want to live. & I’m sure he saw online in his research, people who try to do like he was trying to do often retry & succeed. The probability is more than 50%. I’ve checked.

So when Martin cornered me with that, I felt like I really had vomited that hurricane. (I thought: “destruction in creation’s name…potential that art shares with death”!) But the truth that spilled out of me in Kenji’s empty living room at poor frightened Martin’s feet wasn’t the whole truth. How could I tell Martin what Kenji wrote & felt, how could I talk about Inspector Bean & Brooklyn skank? Baby didn’t write any of that for Martin. I didn’t tell the whole truth about Seabird either. I left out one detail.

Besides that I told Martin everything I did. My husband looked at me like I was something on the bottom of his shoe.

“You promised. Nabilah, you swore to me you wouldn’t.”

“It was already too late. But it was just her, nothing else. Everything I did, it was all to try to help—”

“You abetted a CRIMINAL. You helped these people commit fraud. You participated in the very type of offense that I spend all my waking hours fighting to prevent!”

“And what would you do in my place? Turn her away?”

“This could finish me, Nabilah, you’re my wife for God’s sake.”

“Answer me, Martin.”

“It’s a compulsion with you, isn’t it, that’s what it is.”

“You call yourself a Christian, Martin Furbert—”

“Don’t you dare try that with me! Don’t you DARE! Did you even give a thought to the people you love? Then again, I guess that’s never been priority for you, has it.”

Martin walked out & slammed the door, Kenji screamed from the bedroom, “What the ____ is all that racket?! Can’t a _____ die in peace in his own _____ house?!! Take it outside, both of you! Get out of here & LEAVE ME THE _____ ALONE!!”

So here’s me in the hallway like “a ghost nobody wants.” Between the bedroom where my lover didn’t want me & the door that slammed when my husband walked out on me. Mid-afternoon & it was dark like end-of-day.

It can’t be true what Martin said, that this nightmare of death & pain is all my fault. It’s true I didn’t say I’m Aetna Simmons just to protect Aetna Simmons. I said it so what I’d done wouldn’t unravel: my gallant rescuing, my Artful Vanishing, my shadowy triumph. “Like my Aetna, I am lies stacked upon lies. But the foundations of her lies were death and poetry. The basis of my masquerade is shame.” Kenji wrote that. But was it masquerade if I was doing it to help, I mean cuz helping’s what I always do, that’s how I really am? Would I have let Martin go on thinking Kenji’s crazy, Martin who just blabbed to Kenji’s relatives? Would I really let my Baby start thinking he’s insane just to keep up the illusion that “I’m Aetna Simmons” if Martin hadn’t called me on it??!

All I wanted, I mean ALL I wanted, was for one of them to cuddle me & say we’re OK. I was ready to believe him, whichever of them did it. Whatever happened after that, I figured I could handle it. But the truth is I’m scared of missing one of Kenji’s breaths. I stayed in the hallway cuz I’m scared of messing with them too. If I tell Kenji the truth, it could kill him. If I don’t tell him, it could kill him. Hope he plum forgot it all? Really? Wish brain damage or amnesia on my Baby? Now I’m frightened of the one Kenji called “the only one he trusts.” I’m frightened cuz he thought that one was me.

“Aetna Simmons” who’s not Aetna Simmons anymore.

Was she worth it? We learned, we flew thru shadows, we took on the bank & TCD. Seabird was a fun thing. We had a connection. I mean I thought we did. It was me that talked her off the ledge! With the power of prayer & shopping! But maybe it wasn’t real, I mean our “connection,” me & her. Kenji said to me once with that soft laugh I miss so much, “You wanna know a thing that’s awesome about you? Everyone’s your friend right up until the moment they’ve proved they never were. Don’t ever change, Nikkou.”

Sometimes I think about hunting her down myself: Aetna Simmons, look what you’ve done, look what you made me do!

She’d say: I’m sorry but you knew the risks. (How was I supposed to know she’d sink her teeth in my Baby?) Or she’d get all up a tree & jump out of it in remorse. (The ledge, remember?) Or she’d take off without saying nothing. (Track record!) Wherever I found her, she’d jump ship & run, knowing I can’t tell nobody what we did. (Except apparently a BRMS “Team Leader.” Sigh!) Or she’d get sorrowful & say: Won’t you let me meet your K, let me tell him it’s better to stay alive, all that rah-rah-keep-on-movin stuff you sold me that you can’t remember now cuz you can’t hardly think of nothing except Kenji not breathing?

Stop ya noize, acegirl, you know “the great impersonator” wouldn’t risk that kind of commitment. “The real Aetna, the one who lived and died, she understood that identity’s all just words. And that’s what she sold you, her ability to not be anyone.” Char Richards, that floozy born of Satan, got to hear Kenji say it with his voice. But he wrote it down for me. He wanted me to be the one to think about it. & I think Kenji pegged Aetna Simmons to a tee.

Every time we met up, she tried her best to make sure I wouldn’t remember her.

I never noticed it while it was happening, at the time I was just happy to be going in the shadow world, just like a foolish worker bee dipping in a flower. But later when I read stuff like “Aetna in place of Seneca watching the cutie scribe,” it popped into my head that “Aetna Simmons” was perfectly, consistently, “Bermudafully” polite when she spoke. She always answered back exactly as you’d expect a decent person to answer back, I mean exactly. Like I think Baby would say she spoke only in cliches. Phrases everybody uses like…whatever, I can’t think of any, but stuff we hear all the time. Stuff that wouldn’t stand out. Words that you could never say “Aetna Simmons always says…”

Maybe she really was a polite & decent (?) person who just wasn’t creative with words? That’s what I would’ve said to K if he’d come out with this a week ago. But we know Aetna Simmons was creative with words! We know her job was to fade away behind the words. So she had to be unmemorable as herself, right?

That’s why I think she never wanted to laugh. Laughing is a thing that’s worth remembering. She didn’t even like it at 1st when I laughed. But I like laughing, I wanted to make Aetna Simmons laugh. I worked at it. & she did her best to make sure I did the chopsin. That means she must’ve asked me questions, just not memorable questions. “Nice weekend, then?” Maybe not those words, maybe not even that question, maybe I blabbed about my weekends cuz that’s what I do (I need a nap or something, mercy).

If I’d known what she was running from, would I have helped her? I thought I did know what she was running from. No, I knew I didn’t know. I knew it wasn’t the airplane. Poor thing wouldn’t have said “no questions” about the airplane. That was all over the news till I Vanished it from every digital archive. & if it was about the airplane, the theft (somebody robbing her for a change!) wouldn’t have mattered.

I didn’t know her at all, did I.

4-ish Martin called. Still vexed. I said, “Honey I’m sorry,” but he cut me off: “I’m at work, Nabilah.” He just wanted to “inform” me that he’d done some digging, & although my “little operation” clearly “had some measure of success” with Aetna’s police file, a paper copy still existed, which Martin took to mean that I’d “failed to cross (my) T’s as usual,” & in fact all my “efforts at concealment” were the kind of thing that he & his team eat for breakfast.

To think I’d been fool enough to hope that after Seabird flew away I could use my shadowy “talents” to help Team Leader with shadowy questions.

“Thank you, Martin,” I said in the yawning pause.

After one day working on this, he’d not only found the police file but also found out how it got to where it was & spoken to Commissioner Wallace himself.

“Good for you, Honey.”

That made him more vexed. So what he said next was hurtful.

Wallace told Martin that somebody told him that if he made his Inspectors stop investigating Aetna Simmons’ death, he could count on a favor from the future Minister of Finance. That would’ve been a bribe, the commissioner said no. He only canceled the Island-wide search, cutting the investigation short, but that was obviously just to save resources. There was nothing to investigate anyway, he said, cuz clearly Aetna Simmons killed herself. It just didn’t hurt that the future M of F (Mr C) so happened to have a firstborn (K) who, according to a “certain source,” had an affair with “the Simmons girl” years ago, an affair that “culminated in an illegally terminated pregnancy”!! Martin’s words, quoting Wallace, quoting this unnamed “source.” None of it is true, Kenji loves me & only me, & besides I know exactly how Aetna Simmons spent her nights, & it wasn’t with him! The “source,” guess who it was, wanted to save a certain family from any risk of embarrassment as future M of F prepared to hit the campaign trail, where Wallace thought this person deserved a fighting chance. Clearly there was nothing to investigate. So why risk the reputation of good people who wanted to do something worthwhile for Bermuda? Obviously, since Wallace was completely transparent about this with Martin, there was nothing wrong with his decision whatsoever. Some people just amaze me. E.g., who was it, this “source” who made up this horrible malicious evil totally untrue gossip?

Erik-Katsuo Okada-Caines, that’s who, the “needy little brother” I’d forced on Kenji weeks ago when “poor Kiki” came crying to my door.

I’m disgusted. So is Martin. He didn’t believe the malicious evil totally untrue gossip, he knows Erik was covering himself, but my husband pretended to believe it. He reminded me what Erik said about K & the fish-demon, & that kicked off the biggest argument we’ve ever had, & sometime Martin said, “Did you ever really love me, Nabilah?”

Really don’t need this right now.

“I do love you, Martin.”

“Well, he’s convinced that you’re in love with him.”

“Hard to say this to you, Martin, but I do love him.”

Confused pause. Poor Honey.

“Have you told him the truth?”

“Not yet. Honey, you’re both wonderful people.”

Martin laughed! A nasty laugh. “Do you ever mean anything you say?”

“I mean everything I say, thank you, that’s why I never promised Kenji anything.”

“I beg your pardon. I didn’t realize you were free to make promises to him, considering a significant promise you made to me!”

“What about what you promised? Respect & all that—”

“When have I not respected you? I tell everyone how proud I am of you, my wife, a self-made professional. I’ve always been supportive.”

“Supportive, huh?” I recalled the jibes (confetti, etc), my supportive & respectful spouse claimed he’d never jibed, those were “lighthearted aphorisms.” I said I beg to differ, things got a little berserk, & he came out with this:

“Maybe I envied you a little, how everything comes easily to you—”

My turn to say, “I beg your pardon.” But Martin didn’t listen.

“How at ease you are, especially with him, since you know you’ll get everything you want. The two of you treating life like it’s one big playground. (Not true.) But I never did anything to endanger any part of it, Nabilah.”

Oh, Martin.

Silence fell on us like a bunch of overripe coconuts.

“Look, call me if you hear anything. About CAM or, you know, related matters.”

“Why are you still looking, Martin? You said Mrs C wasn’t interested.”

More coconuts. Then he sighed.

“You & I both know I’m a man of integrity. (Me: Of course, I’ve always admired etc.) No, just listen, Nabilah. Whatever he might be, there’s no question that he’d sacrifice everything for you. Other people, his family, self-respect, whatever. Understand? You better make sure you deserve it.”

That night everything changed. Putting it in my book will make it more real or less real, I’m not sure. I’m worried that my book, so full of songs & kisses, is getting used to being a burial ground for things that could be demons. But that’s why it’s gotta take them. Things like the Unfinished Church. Water in Kenji’s lungs. Martin running blindly into the night. So they can get out of my head. “Writing’s a different kind of thinking.” I can’t look at my hands when I’m writing.

So let’s see. 1st it was: “Are you sure Hardy’s empty? You sure you had the right book?” Then I had to tell Kenji I threw the thing away. Baby didn’t want nothing to do with me after that. I sat outside his door holding my head while the news destroyed him.

Then the doorbell. Sigh! My face was a mess, my kimono was sweaty & tear-soaked, I couldn’t make myself put down Kenji’s PJs. I also smelled. But I thought maybe it was Martin. It was evening, about 7:00.

It wasn’t Martin.

“Oh no, mochi, you look awful, look at your hair!” Erik tried to hug me, that horrible malicious gossip.

“Kenji can’t see nobody! Especially you! Martin told me what you said. Your own brother. The commissioner of all people!”

“Aw, mochi, it’s been so hard on you, I can’t imagine.”

No one else bothered to say that. Not my husband, not my sister, they sort of thought I’d brought it on myself. Not even Kenji. Tears starting already, mercy, my nerves are fried, I needed a hug so bad, & Kiki was Kiki & his hands were shaped like Kenji’s, his shoulders too. My head fell on Kiki’s shoulder, my face in Kenji’s clothes on Kenji’s doorstep, Kenji’s little brother patted me on the back.

“Mochi, listen. They’re on their way. Momma-sama, Motomura-san, my dad, & I’ve never seen her like this, mochi, I’m telling you. I came early, I drove like lightning to warn my brother, he’s gotta be prepared.”

Prepared. By Erik. I wriggled away.

“Prepared.” Yeah, right. This is the guy (& I’d just let him hug me!) who handed “the impersonator” faces of dead people & instead of owning up about it let his brother hurt himself. “You mean you wanna put your words in Kenji’s mouth so he’ll go on taking the blame in front of your momma. Well, that in’t happenin no more.”

“Nabilah-chan, I’m telling you this as your friend. Say what you gotta say to me, but don’t go trying to play it tough with them. You’re too little. You don’t know how. Kenji needs somebody here who knows how to handle them. Now, you gonna let me in or what?”

“No.”

Erik laughed. That’s when I noticed he was different. Starting with his laugh. He looked the same, slick & colorful in his snazzy suit, & the sun was heading west over our heads, making his gold Bermudiana tiepin sparkle. But his laugh was mostly snort, it rounded out with him sucking his teeth, no giggle in it. So I mean, it wasn’t a Kiki laugh. & the way he stood, hands in his pockets. Like they told us not to do at school cuz it messed with the crisp look of our uniforms. Shaking his head at the ocean like the ocean was the “little” one “trying to play it tough.” Like Kiki himself wasn’t the opposite of tough, jealous of his brother & whiny about it to boot.

Was that why I didn’t slam the door in his face, cuz aceboy was so different? Was it cuz I was too chicken to do such an un-Christian thing? Even his voice was different. Lower. Quieter. Not softer, Erik always had a hard voice, hard like a cymbal or a school bell. Now it was hard like ice.

“You know, mochi, soon as I heard Professor K was onto this, I figured he was out to get me. I wanted Char or, you know, somebody to throw him off the trail. But she thought he could lead us to wherever that stupid woman went & disappeared to.”

He meant Aetna Simmons. Using my Baby as bait for Aetna Simmons.

Course I had to bite my tongue. Ya boy went on shaking his head at the ocean. “I think she got distracted. Char, I mean. One day you’ll have to explain why women fall all over that so-&-so.”

“It wasn’t about Kenji, just her being a fat old demon who eats everything in sight.”

I never would’ve dreamed Kiki could growl. Kiki-chan who air-kissed the maitre d’ with his pinkies sticking out. “Mochi, you don’t know _____, OK? Tucked up in your little warehouse round backatahn, which my Momma-sama bankrolled from the outset (not true, but I had to let it go), you just don’t know what it’s like to have to fight thru a world where people don’t need reasons for stomping on other people. But a small-island half-breed who’s gotta play the global stage, or a black woman with—”

“I’m a black woman. You don’t see me going around leaving my shorts on the floor.”

“A black woman & a single mom & a lesbian.”

“What?! Go head, bye, don’t even worry with it.”

“Yes, girl, I’m telling you. Char’s a divorcee with a feisty little girl, & they hate each other’s guts. Besides, Char in’t got no Momma-sama to call her own. Her family owns a major, I mean major gospel record label, & they kicked her to the curb when they found out she loved a woman—”

“That in’t got nothin to do with nothin.”

“Disowned, disavowed, disinherited. Like she never existed. & so, saddest thing ever, mochi, Char started to hate the girl she loved. Later being pregnant made her hate being a girl herself. Now the only one who understands her is me.”

“Come on, bye. Boohoo for Brooklyn skank, so she’s got a right to steal people’s inheritances & poison Kenji with self-hatred? I don’t think so.”

This acegirl might be a softy but I was down to my last drop of nerve. Char Richards didn’t have no “demon’s preternatural energy,” she told Kenji “we’re the same” just to make him think he’s as worthless as she is, & whatever “wavelength” she made him think they “cohabited” was just the simple fact that she knew all about him before he even learned her name thanks to the biggest gossip who ever walked the earth! & I was gonna tell Erik about himself, I had my finger sticking out & everything. He was talking over me, sputtering about my use of the word “skank.” & those hybrids like the Prius, they don’t make a sound when they go slow. That’s why we didn’t notice the footsteps on the stairs.

Kenji’s father: “Nabilah?” (Like I was a surprise. Guess I was, but SIGH!)

Kenji’s mother: “At least there’s someone watching him.”

Me: “I’m sorry, it’s not a good time. Kenji can’t see anyone.”

Erik: “Que sera sera, mochi-chan.”

Mrs C: “I will see my son.”

Mr Motomura bowed at me. Didn’t say a word except what he said with his hands: Move aside or else.

I didn’t move. I am Kenji’s acegirl, Kenji’s line of defense, the 1st & last.

Me (pretending like my heart’s not stampeding from chest to head & back): “Kenji was in respiratory failure. Technically he’s stable now, but he’s not out of danger. Dealing with visitors will upset him.”

Mr C: “We’re not visitors, we’re his family.”

Me (last drop of nerve): “Well, I’m the one who loves him.”

Mr C: “Is that right? Where, may I ask, is your husband?”

Mrs C: “Quiet. There’s no need to broadcast our trouble to the world. Nabilah, will you at least let us come in and discuss with you what has happened to my son? Because he’s an adult, the hospital is prohibited from giving any information even to his mother.”

Me: frazzled hair, naked toes, Kenji’s PJs in my fist. I must’ve looked like a fresh-caught mutt that grew up feral. I started thinking: Mercy, what if E was right & I can’t handle them, Masami Okada-Caines & her army of angry boys & me, just me? When I looked at E, he shrugged. & Mrs C sounded freakishly reasonable, not angry (unlike me), not frightened (unlike me), & she’s always had this power in her voice, this weird energy even when she’s quiet (definitely not like me), I can’t explain it but I feel it, I feel everybody feeling it.

I only know one person who stood up to it. One skinny little boy never forgot to squeeze my hand to tell me I was safe from it. With the “Co, Ltd” ganging up on me, the empty cavity I was carrying inside felt a whole lot emptier.

I remembered KEMH wouldn’t let me stay with him at night cuz I’m not family. I remembered what he wrote & realized that his family has the power to hurt Martin & BHS, but would they? Is Mrs C that sort of person? I got confused, I felt weak with missing Kenji & Martin. Maybe that’s how they got in, I don’t know, so much else has happened, a whirlpool of things happening so I’m not sure who I am anymore.

Erik pulled out the kitchen stools for his momma & daddy. Kenji’s kitchen only has 2 stools. As Mr C sat down, E showed him something on his phone. Mr C shook his head at me & laughed, a snort-laugh just like Erik’s not-a-Kiki-laugh, & in a flash I knew what they were looking at.

I remembered my own voice tearing Kenji apart. Remembering it thinned me so I felt like I was just a see-thru surface disguising an empty cavity. I said weakly, “Erik. You sent Martin that picture?”

“Technically that was Char.”

“But you told her. Martin’s name, Martin’s—”

“What picture is this?” Mrs C.

She snapped her fingers twice, E put his phone in her hand. I kissed my Baby in the palm of her hand.

Guess I got a little loud. But how could anyone with feelings strategize like that? All E wanted was to “throw K off the trail,” he’d said so. But to scar our love with shame, maybe break it: “That’s your idea of a distraction?! Hoping Kenji & me & Martin gonna be too hurt to care about investment portfolios??!!”

Mr C: “You should be ashamed, young lady. Your husband, too. Instead you’re tyring to tell me how to run my family.”

Mrs C: “Did I not tell you to be quiet?”

Me: “Kiki, look at me.”

He looked like an immigration officer in a mean & dirty city. He looked like he didn’t care, didn’t know me from Adam, colorless & stiff & hating me for all of it. Mercy, there was no Kiki here! The way his eyes glinted, it was almost like there never was! He got his phone back from his momma & said: “Family first.”

“Kenji IS your family!!!”

Mrs C: “Nabilah, that’s enough.”

“But look at what he did!!!”

Kenji, my Kenji—he put his hand on my shoulder.

I spun around & squealed. My Baby came to rescue me! I threw my arms around him, pinning us to the wall that held him up. His eyes were like the windows on a ruined house, empty & packed with ghosts. He had a scary drained-to-the-point-of-going-crazy look intent on the terrible effort of being there. But he was there, right there with me. & the arm that wasn’t bracing him against the wall was holding me to protect me. I could feel against my cheek: Kenji’s breathing “scurrying thru the labyrinth of horrors,” Kenji facing down the woman who’d terrified him all his life, battling death & his own body & the people who’d hurt him so bad, & all for me! I didn’t care what those lot thought of us, I held him tight. I wanted to be the thing that held him up.

He said, “Whatever you’re doing here, it’s got nothing to do with Nabi.”

A flicker of fire! A match snatching at a spark in a windy night. It made Kenji squeeze me a little, I know it did! But even if the squeeze was my imagination, the flicker burst my heart like a piñata. I went up on my toes, kissed my Baby on the cheek. Kenji looked at me like I’d stabbed him in the back.

Mrs C: “Kenji, explain what happened, please.”

Kenji didn’t answer. He looked at me, looked so lost & torn apart the soft strength-giving thing I’d meant to say flew out of my head.

Kenji’s daddy: “We’ve got a special hospital lined up. Switzerland.”

Kenji’s acegirl: “No, you can’t take him away!”

Kenji’s brother (!): “Onii-san. Brah, you gotta sit down. Dad, the stool, you gotta let—”

Kenji: “No. No. You threaten Nabi again & I’ll—Martin’s gonna make you lot wish you were never born.”

Kenji’s momma: “Calm down & listen. We’re here to help you.”

“Martin knows everything! Enough to ruin every one of you!” Kenji was shivering like a leaf about to fall. I wedged my shoulder under his shoulder, threw my weight into it. I saw us as he saw us: beaten up & rumpled, panting like something was chasing us thru an uphill maze, us 2 in our soggy sleepwear, bus-stop pink & baby blue, while those lot in their power suits “pressed in on us like labyrinthine walls”!

Mr C: “Who’s threatening who, you idiot?”

Mrs C: “Quiet. You will come home with us, Kenji.”

Kenji: “Isn’t this payback enough?”

Mr C: “You think our wanting to help is payback?”

Kenji: “I in’t going nowhere. You gotta kill me first.” (!!!!!!)

Mrs C: “All right. Enough.” She stood.

Me: squeak of surprise as Kenji gripped my elbow. Like maybe he meant to stuff me between him & the wall or maybe he had no idea that he’d done anything. Then a lot happened at once.

Behind Mrs C, Erik stepped forward. I thought he was gonna touch his momma’s rigid shoulder, but he stepped back again, wide-eyed. Mr C: “Bye, you are one mistake after another.” Me: “No Baby I miss you!!” Kenji looking at me, Kenji didn’t say a word but he was begging me, begging for I don’t know what. Confusion like a knife in my belly, Kenji’s shoulders sagged & his momma said:

“I’ve only ever done what is best for you, Kenji. In return, you have disgraced this family, as your father says, one disgrace after another. You’ve attempted to disgrace my life’s work, Caines Asset Management, & you’ve done so without remorse, without a thought to the consequences for others. You’ve attempted to do this thing to yourself, fully aware that such an act would stigmatize our family. I’d rather have discussed this when your health is restored, but your refusal to help yourself by allowing anyone to help you, disdaining your family even when you need us most & doing so in the cruelest, basest fashion—”

Me: “Mrs C, this isn’t the way—”

Kenji: “It doesn’t matter. Get out, all of you.”

Mrs C: “When we leave you here, Kenji, it will be for the last time. If that is truly what you wish, you’ll no longer be a son to anyone.”

Kenji looked at his momma, Masami Okada-Caines looked at her firstborn baby. I tried to tell myself that what I saw flying between them wasn’t hate.

Me: “You don’t mean that, Mrs C.”

Mr C: “Stay out of this.”

Kenji: “It doesn’t matter.” He dropped my elbow, put his hand to his stomach.

Erik: “He messed up your family too. Admit it, Nabilah-chan.”

Me: “Not true, Kenji—”

Nobody else heard Kenji gasp. But they must’ve seen him start to double over slowly, they couldn’t have missed the look on Kenji’s face that meant he wished his heart would stop right then & there. It didn’t help that 3 of us spoke at once:

Me: “Baby, come back to bed.”

K: “Go home. Let Martin protect you.”

Mrs C: “I’d advise you to keep your remarks to yourself. You too, thru years of thoughtlessness, consistently cause our family to lose face in both our countries.”

Kenji looked at her one last time. Mrs C didn’t notice, she was talking to Erik (!):

“& this reckless scheme of yours. Dead people, for Heaven’s sake! 6 months’ suspension, relieved of all accounts, sans renumeration, effective immediately.”

Erik! He was sorta smirking, I think he assumed Mrs C was scolding K, but when she mentioned accounts, I bet that smirk fell kerplunk right off his face. Not like I actually saw it, cuz Kenji lurched out of the room. I lurched too, hanging onto him, but at the bathroom door he pushed me back into the hallway. He slammed the door & locked it & threw up.

& Kenji’s family? Their voices stalked us all the way. Those lot kept right on squabbling without missing a beat.

“Suspension?” Erik.

“While your brother is reduced to this.” Mrs C.

“But I did it for you. For you & Dad & CAM.”

Me: banging on the bathroom door (with blubbering).

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter!” Kenji choking & retching.

Mr C boomed like a magistrate: “You did it to get in that woman’s pants.”

?!?!!!

No. NOOOO. Do not need this, I thought. Didn’t know whose pants he was talking about & didn’t wanna know. With those yucky words in one ear & the sounds of Kenji’s PAINFUL self-rejection in the other, I dashed to the kitchen to get rid of those heartless people.

Mrs C: “Will you be quiet? You insist on making preemptive remarks, but I assure you their shock value is nullified by their vulgarity. One more outburst & you’ll be waiting in the car.”

She meant Mr C! He didn’t say nothing, Mrs C was dangerously vexed. She didn’t look vexed, mind you, & if I didn’t know English & just listened to her voice I wouldn’t have thought she sounded vexed. It’s just the words, like Baby wrote, a “torrent of words” from Mrs C means she is way past vexed & into rage. & she had more to say:

“If I have permitted you—without putting a stop to your ridiculous playacting, without even making comment—to abuse every homosexual stereotype (now she meant Erik!), I did so for one reason alone, though it was clearly a mistake. Do you know what that reason is? It is that your duty as my son is to continue the Okada line. I trusted your ability to win Char Richards as you obviously hoped to do—”

“My God, how’d you even—” Erik, so shocked he had to whisper.

“I’m not blind, Erik-Katsuo. In fact it seems I am the only person here who is capable of seeing past the end of their own nose. You have not only failed in your filial duty, you’ve permitted Char’s corruption to blacken your ambitions at terrible risk to CAM. Your comportment as a giggling buffoon damages our menboku every time you are seen in the conservative streets of Hamilton or Tokyo. You know this, Katsuo.”

“But okaa-san, I never wanted to deceive you! (Sigh! & if it wasn’t for that hug I wouldn’t have let E finish, but he needed to get this out & clearly Mrs C did too, & OK so the idea of interrupting when Mrs C was dangerously vexed plain petrified me.) I just wanted to show Char that even in Bermuda you can find the courage to love who you want to love. Seriously, that’s all I wanted. You know, with all the boys. But if Char found it in her to let me into her heart (like an everything-eating demon’s got one of those), I’d dump whatever boy & go on & love Char Richards like she deserves to be loved.”

E’s voice was full of feeling. Not intense enough to be like K’s but just enough to make me think of Kenji’s voice & how this HELL that he is going thru is just DESTROYING IT. It hurt so bad to think about it, what with Baby spewing his guts out & nobody in his family even noticing he was gone.

So yeah I know this was a big moment for E & all. Ripping off the Kiki costume that fooled even me & K. Going public with his “love” for fish-demons. Getting suspended & learning from his momma even the “golden boy” can mess things up big-time. Not to mention finding out that she’d been watching superspy-style to the point that she knew the Kiki costume was a costume… And yeah all this prbly said a lot about K’s momma. (She said to E: “All your posturing & caricaturing demonstrates a disgustingly veiled disrespect for sexual difference. This despite the trouble I took to have you somewhat liberally educated.”) Real instructive & all that, sure.

But at that point all I heard was Erik not saying a word when his father lashed out over our picture. I said, “All that pretending just to tell that blankety-blank that she can love whoever, & she in’t even here to help you take the heat. But you want me to feel ashamed for loving Kenji, enough to let her so-so picture ruin our lifelong—”

“Quiet.” Mrs C. I went quiet.

But I have never been so angry. I felt like something huge that’s caught on fire. Like a building. Something you want to get out of the way of when it’s caught on fire & only defiance is keeping it upright. I prbly looked like a strangled chicken, I sounded like a strangled chicken, that’s why they all looked at me. Erik looked disoriented & sort of compressed. I think he would’ve said something or maybe thought of saying something, but his momma said, “Go sit in the car.”

E & Mr C went to sit in the car. They didn’t look at me, didn’t say nothing. E looked miserable & shocked. Mr C, I have to say he looked relieved. Mrs C said a word in Japanese, & I guess Mr Motomura went to sit in the car too.

To be honest, I didn’t see them leave the flat, I assumed they did cuz Mrs C is Mrs C & I stood aside to let them leave the kitchen. But as soon as they’d done that, ya girl was at the bathroom door, “Baby let me in,” burning cuz of all that he’d endured all for me, words that nobody’s baby should ever have to endure. I had my forehead & my shaky hands pressing the door. Kenji was still being frighteningly sick. I tried to melt the door with tears. Then I felt something beside me.

Mrs C slid up without making a sound. She didn’t touch the doorknob, I was squeezing the doorknob, but she lifted her hand. She put her hand on the door.

So it was me & Masami Okada-Caines, a closed door, & the sounds of suffering.

I forgave her a little. For a sec. There was pain in the way she held her mouth, fear in the shiver of her forehead. When Kenji retched, she blinked & it was like a wince.

I said, “You & Mr C gotta give Kenji a chance. Take some time, try to understand.”

“If he would allow us, I’m certain we’d understand.”

“But see, it’s complicated.”

“Yes. He’s fortunate to have you as a friend.”

Much good was it doing him, I thought. Mrs C dropped her hand & turned to me.

“Nabilah, how much do you know about this business with Char Richards, these so-called documents…”

“Aetna Simmons,” I said, feeling sapped.

“You must understand. It puts me in a difficult situation. It wouldn’t do for the scheme to continue. Especially in the event that he (she meant Kenji) went somewhere with his accusations. But I cannot simply go to my contact at Clocktower & claim that one of his VPs is defrauding their clients & embezzling on the company’s behalf. I cannot accuse his people of trying to use my firm as a so-called laundromat for ill-gotten gains. As my husband would point out, people are already too eager to believe that Bermudians are capable of nothing else.”

“That’s beside the point now, Mrs C.”

“Indeed. My concern is different. If I emulated his finger-pointing tactics, Clocktower would have no choice but to mount an internal investigation or hire a firm like BRMS to do so, in which case the inquiry would doubtlessly be successful. Char would never work again, CAM would lose Clocktower’s portfolio. If he went public with this, the same results would issue.”

(She never said, not once, but she meant Kenji.)

“In neither case could I appear to condone fraud because of nepotism. I’d have to fire Katsuo.”

“That’s kinda how it should be, isn’t it?”

“Is it? Well, you’re not a mother. If you tried to think as though you were, would you be able to punish your son for wooing Clocktower in order to please you & propel his father’s ambitions? Would you alienate your child for that? If it meant not just destroying his career but also turning him out of your house, publicly denouncing him, & distancing yourself from him, could you bring yourself to do it? My clientele would expect no less of me. Do you understand?”

“Not really.” (Couldn’t tell if Baby was coughing or sobbing.)

“Although Katsuo’s actions were deleterious to some, his intentions were noble. & I must think of CAM. It’s a private company, & it’s going to stay that way. Someone has to carry on. I’ve been preparing Katsuo for years. There’s no one else. Our colleagues need not learn the reason for his sudden absence. The other thing must simply be forgotten.”

“But that’s not fair.”

“Katsuo must endure his suspension. As I will have to endure it. At first I considered excising both sons from the family register in Tokyo. Both of them set out to ruin me. Perhaps it would be best if history believed I never produced children. I changed my mind however.”

“You’re still a mother.”

“Exactly. It would be too much. But he (still Kenji) obviously desires that his family should be excised from his life. Far be it from me to dishonor such impassioned arguments as those he made tonight.”

She had a little frown, that’s it.

“Do you understand, Nabilah?”

I was too shocked to say anything, I just shook my head. What with everything else, I can’t remember what she said next, maybe nothing. I keep seeing her walk away, her perfect haircut & gray suit getting smaller & smaller.

Courage, acegirl. Baby’s got a fat lotta nobody on his side.

All these “visitations” were HORRIBLE for K. He unlocked the door but couldn’t get up from the floor. He sat opposite the toilet, his head against the wall. The instant I barged in I threw myself down & hugged him, Kenji gasped cuz of how hard I hugged, & I know I’m the most pathetic female on this earth, but I hung onto whatever I could reach of him. He was burning up with fever, my head felt like I was ready for a straitjacket. “Baby, let’s call the hospital. I’ll go with you, it’ll be OK. You’re not alone, Kenji, OK?”

“Go home. It doesn’t matter.” His voice was almost gone. It made me think how easy it could be to lose him, how I almost did lose him to Aetna & Char, other people’s ambitions, & The Last Loss that means lost forever!

“What’re you talking about, ‘doesn’t matter’? Kenji, listen. Don’t leave me. You dragged yourself out to get me cuz you know I can’t make it without you.”

Never thought of Kenji all drastic like that before. He started pushing me away, he wouldn’t let me kiss him! Then his hand was a claw at the back of my head, pushing my head against his chest where his hectic breaths went in. & isn’t this how it’s been forever, us 2 clinging to each other despite ourselves?

“I can’t go on like this, Nabi. (Oh, Baby.) I keep telling you it won’t make a bit of difference.”

“Everyone’s just scared. Your family didn’t mean those hurtful things. But whatever. I’m gonna take care of you.”

“Yeah, you say that, but you…”

“You think I don’t mean it, Kenji??!!”

“You’re better off without me. A junkie weighing you down.”

This is what the man says while he’s passing his fingers nice & gentle thru my hair. Then doing it again & again so I’d feel like I matter. I couldn’t understand how he could just not believe me! I could only think about terror of being without him. I cried, “Forget the junk. You know what I learned out there, Baby? I am not no ‘courageous & decisive spirit turning terror into courage.’ Yes, Baby, I read it all. But you didn’t write it all. You remember once we couldn’t help it even though it was Thursday? I called you to come get me & we watched that scary movie but I was a fraidy cat & hid behind your hand, & you laughed real soft, remember? You asked should we turn it off & I said no cuz all the screaming & chainsawing & carrying on was raining down on us & it was totally OK for me to be the silly fraidy cat I really am instead of Managing Partner, lead soprano, steady wife, computer guru, whatever else. It was OK cuz you were with me, Kenji. You remember? Well, I am nothing but that fraidy cat. Those other things, they’re just ‘crumbling facades,’ all I’ve been doing for however long is running from one to the other to the next & back. Except when I’m with you. Kenji, I’m nothing except with you.”

I was too loud, Kenji wouldn’t let me look at him, I didn’t mean to compare the O-C family to a slasher movie, it just bumbled out.

“I’ve got to get out of your way, that’s all, Nabi.”

“Kenji, I’m telling you I can’t lose you.”

“It was just a movie, Nabi!”

“Kenji. Kenji, why won’t you hear me?”

“Let me go. You have to.”

But he buried his face in my hair, & I felt him fighting exhaustion & how hard it was, for the first time I understood how hard, how much I never understood even though it happened in my arms & kept on happening. I kept hearing the way Kenji said “Martin” in front of everyone, I felt Kenji’s hands clinging to my back & faltering, Kenji too afraid to hear my voice. I kept seeing him backed up against the wall, fighting to stand still & not collapse in his own kitchen. & all this time, that’s what it was like for him, holding us together by deferring & deferring, like his own feelings didn’t matter just cuz Martin’s family. The labor of being there for me.

We gave up trying to leave the bathroom. Something like 11 p.m., poor K was almost screaming with the stomach cramps, & the doorbell yet again! I wasn’t planning on answering, but the so-&-so kept ringing. I ran out to scream at whoever.

Didn’t think of Martin. Figured he was still vexed. I threw open the door & we looked at each other. The night, the outdoor sconce above his head, dark kitchen behind me, the horror of my hair, my terrified look…Martin’s terrified look, I must’ve given him a fright. I thought I whispered, Honey save us! Then I figured out I hadn’t, I was relieved that I hadn’t, I realized I was losing more marbles by the minute, & I sort of “fell into his arms.”

Martin said, “Lord forgive us.” & kissed me, a big kiss. A passionate kiss. I needed this. Yes. I kissed him back.

It shouldn’t be wrong to love any other living thing. But it is sometimes.

“Come in,” I said softly.

Martin wanted to kiss me again. There in Kenji’s kitchen. I don’t know what I thought I wanted. I made him sit on a stool, I mean Martin. He looked stunned.

Martin in the car, Martin in the church, Martin opening the oven, Martin at a harbor-side table in the sun, Martin on the beach under the stars, Martin in our bed asleep…

I checked the bathroom. Kenji sprawled in the empty jacuzzi with his eyes closed, breathing quick & shallow. I left the door open.

I offered to make my husband a cup of tea. It seemed like a sane-ish thing to do. Poor Honey still looked stunned, his tie was balled up in his pocket. “Any improvement?”

The naked hope in his face had nothing to do with K. I felt mixed up & messed up, I fiddled with the kettle & asked why he wasn’t home in bed (I mean Martin). Honey’d left his blazer someplace, he looked at his shoes, & I knew that rigid-shouldered pose. He was thinking of a prayer.

He took a breath. He looked at me. My Martin. He said he’d found Doreen Trimm-Eastbridge (PhD). He’d left her a message & she’d flown to Bermuda. Like, the same day. This evening, 8:30, she’s tapping on his door.

I imagine this small frumpy white lady with the puffy face in the buzzing offices of Martin’s team. It’s after hours, they’re going strong. Cheap suit, too tight on her. It’s wrinkled cause she’s just stepped off the plane. If Martin is a kiskadee, sleek & shrewd & courageous, then Dr Eastbridge is a sparrow. I bet she’s trying to sound English & forget that she’s Bermudian. She says something stiff & formal such as: I am here pursuant to your inquiry concerning Aetna Simmons, but she’s actually freaking out. Martin offers her a chair & a look that says: competence, reliability.

Here’s what she told Martin.

Even before Martin got in touch with her, Dr E heard from her cousin, Neil Ingham (Private Constable), that “somebody” was asking questions about Aetna Simmons. “Somebody” said he was writing a book, but cousin Neil had doubts about this “book” cuz this “certain somebody” was the son of a CEO & potential MP. Few weeks later, a certain corporate investigator emailed Dr E about the same thing, & she got even more suspicious. She decided to come home & find out what her momma had gotten herself into.

Martin said something like: Forgive me, Dr E, but you don’t seem too surprised. You really think your mother had it in her to be part of something “underhanded”?

I think Dr E was thinking that’s for true & take her that. But she didn’t say so. She got a frumpy white lady’s version of the look that Kenji gets when anybody points out something that’s been obvious to him for donkey’s. She said, “Why do you think I became a criminal psychologist? To try to understand her.”

At first this seemed extreme to Martin cuz poor old Mrs Trimm was never formally accused of any crime. But soon he understood where Dr E was coming from. Since she felt like she could trust him, Dr E told him things her momma said over the years.

From the beginning, Mrs T sensed something strange about the tenant in the cottage. A sort of oddness stank out of the place that the tenant rarely left & nobody visited. Mrs T told Dr E: Czarina didn’t like it. Dr E is sensible & ignored this. She told her momma to leave the tenant be. That might be why Mrs T became a thief: she resented Dr E trying to tell her what to do (Dr E’s opinion). Mrs T went fishing & bragged when she hooked something (talk about poky snobers): the woman poked underneath her tenant’s mattress! Martin said Dr E said her momma told her that she found enough paper under that mattress to stuff a couch. Prbly exaggerating, I mean Dr E never got to see it for herself, but the papers, the documents, were neatly laid out between the mattress & box spring, one beside the other & plenty of them too. If a couple walked away (thought Mrs T), nobody would notice. She stole 10. 10 papers. 10 suicide notes.

Now, in Dr E’s professional opinion, somebody who sleeps on a bed of suicide notes prbly needs help. In fact years before, when Mrs T described the guy who brought the tenant to the cottage for the first time (Erik), Dr E guessed he got stuck with a “balmy relative” & chose the cottage in St G as “discreet storage” for this person (Martin’s words). Mrs T thought there was more to it than that, but Dr E didn’t want to hear it. She thought it wasn’t a landlady’s place to do or say nothing one way or the other.

So when her momma invaded the tenant’s privacy & made off with her stuff, Dr E hit the ceiling. She reminded Mrs T of the time the cops came: Mrs T decked (!!) a garbage man who tried to take the dead stuffed cat off her doorstep. She got off with a warning cuz she’s old & Dr E called in. But this time, Dr E said, you get caught with stolen property, I’ma let de man deal wif you (man meaning cops). Actually she said (I mean Dr E told Martin) that she couldn’t lie & pretend her momma hadn’t told her what she’d done. She’d confessed to a crime, & Dr E had a professional reputation to consider.

So Aetna vanished, Mrs T got scared. She thought Aetna was hiding from something way worse than embarrassment. She called the police but feared that they or “other people” might find the documents she stole & start asking questions. So she took the suicide notes back to the cottage.

Why didn’t she put them right back where she found them? Cuz when she looked under the mattress (which was neatly made up), the rest of the papers were gone. Mrs T figured poor Aetna found her out & hid them someplace else. She searched the cottage but didn’t find nothing. She called the phone number Erik gave her but could only leave a vmail, tried going thru the CAM switchboard but could only leave a vmail for his secretary. & after that she didn’t know what to do, the cops were on their way, she was all up a tree. So she dropped the 10 on the edge of Aetna’s desk & went to meet the cruiser at the top of her driveway.

Except for the bits that made the news, Dr E has no idea what her momma said to the police. She heard K & M were on the case & flew home. That’s how she learned someone broke into her late momma’s house & “absconded” with several “prized possessions.” (She says “prized possessions” like it’s a set of antique china she’s talking about, not a houseful of dead cats. & the woman calls herself a shrink.) Dr E’s “instincts” as a criminologist made her wonder if these “happenstances” might be connected. The taxi driver who brought her from the airport was waiting to make sure she got inside OK, so Dr E got right back in his van & rode it into town. She went to Martin for advice.

Honey likes giving advice. He’s good at it. He also believes in justice. Not the better-build-an-ark kind of justice but the kind that goes with kindness & humility. He’s not a policeman, which means he can be free with the second kind.

So he didn’t let it show that he was mad enough to want to call Mrs T “a nosy dirty-fingered pond frog.” He didn’t tell Dr E that what her momma did wrecked a bunch of strangers’ mixed-up lives & destroyed my beloved genius. He didn’t wag his finger & inform Dr E that her 80-something-yr-old momma was part of a den of thieves & an extortionist who drove her poor tenant to “drastic & foolhardy criminal behavior.” He felt no matter how much evidence he uncovered, he’d find it impossible to expose the truth anyway. He kept that to himself too.

He said, “Your mother is with God. Pray for her. A lot.”

That’s all. Course Dr E’s not stupid, just confused & (said Martin) “full of undefined guilt.” She sensed that he knew more & wanted him to share it: “CAM sent two top executives to my mother’s funeral when I wouldn’t spare the time. They sent their son [K] to learn what she was about. Whereas when she was alive, she tried to tell me & I wouldn’t listen.”

Martin was sympathetic to Dr E but refused to give her any details of his investigation. It’s off-record anyway. He didn’t tell her that either.

“She really did die of a stroke. I checked,” I said.

Honey didn’t ask what I meant by “checked.” His mouth moved, his voice didn’t. Poor sight. I asked him (again) why he continued to investigate at all. He said a lot remained at stake.

He said (I kid you not), “How else am I going to get to know you?”

What’s a wife supposed to say to that? My husband was miserable. But well, I was miserabler.

“Do you realize what this means? (Martin’s panicky little chuckle gave me not-nice goosebumps.) All this nonsense stemmed from a bored old lady’s meddling. All of this, that’s all it boils down to, just a meaningless, misguided—”

“No Martin, that’s not true.”

Martin hasn’t read what Kenji wrote, what Aetna wrote, what I wrote, Martin hasn’t seen my book. But if he had, he’d know why I can’t believe all we’ve been thru is just “nonsense.” Guess Baby did mention the “meaninglessness of suffering” according to his favorite dead white Brit. But thinking about that “meaninglessness” & thinking about Kenji, Kenji’s family, what Kenji did & what it cost him, I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t let those words in. Honey tried to argue about “purpose” & “waste” (not like him, too philosophical!) but I had to cut him off: “I disagree, Martin, & that’s it. Look, I’m sorry, it’s not your fault, but I’m got no more tears in me right now, it’s not that I don’t want to talk, but…tomorrow, all right, Honey?”

“But I’m not finished,” said Martin. Like a little scream.

“Keep your voice down.” I turned to go & close the bathroom door.

Guess Martin thought my turning was trying to say something, I don’t know. I don’t know what the frig I was thinking at that point, but I went down the hall & Martin followed me. He didn’t know poor K was in the bathroom. He grabbed my hand & spun me (I mean Martin).

“Nabilah, when are you coming home?”

& he didn’t keep his voice down. He was distraught.

“You just asked me that yesterday. No, this morning,” I whispered. Frantic & stupid.

“Yes, well, I want to know,” not-whispered Martin.

“Well Honey, I don’t know, I mean, he’s—”

“Then I’ll stay here. We can both stay until he—”

“Martin,” I said.

Midnight in that apartment & I was a hopeless mess. I heard Kenji turn on the water in the jacuzzi.

“Martin, you really still want me?”

“Of course I do. I love you, & you know it.”

He had my hand, he had my arms. My elbows. Around my waist. My husband. I stared at him like the most vacant-headed ninny that Superman ever plucked out of the flames. He drew me close.

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the God he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

I am a selfish woman.

I am silly & weak.

I am a hot air balloon goin shru de trees.

I thought I wanted to be free like the air.

Sometimes what I think just isn’t the main thing. I guess I never really appreciated that.

I absolutely meant to bawl some more & beg for comfort. But when I went in the bathroom, I didn’t see Kenji.

I saw water.

Water turning the floor into an ocean. Water pouring out in waterfalls like when the ocean fills a crater in a reef & then escapes.

I saw Kenji’s hands. Curling at the edge of the jacuzzi. Pushing, pushing up to push his body down into the water. & he was weak enough, it wouldn’t take much, all he had to do was breathe while he was underwater. I couldn’t even scream, I was just thinking WATER, & I think I saw him do it, I saw the water sort of convulse & I plunged in & I grabbed him, my Kenji, my love all my life, he fought me, he resisted me! We thrashed, we banged the tub & faucets, I ended up grabbing his hair, his chin, hauling like CRAZY till I pulled Kenji’s head & arms & shoulders clear out of the water & he hung over the edge, water gushing out of him. I grabbed his armpit so he couldn’t sink, I turned off all the faucets, I pounded Kenji in the back with my 2 fists while Kenji hacked & heaved the water out. & while I pounded I was screeching like a madwoman.

“ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT KENJI?!”

“Go! If you ever gave a flying fuck about me!”

“NO I WON’T GO KENJI!!”

“Please! You will anyway. You have to. You promised him, I know you did, & I can’t do it anymore!”

Selfish woman.

Martin drew me close. I mean before. Out in the hallway. I put my hand on his chest. I said, “I need to think. I need some time.”

I think that’s when the real bad feeling started. Cuz I prbly knew deep down: time’s exactly what I didn’t have. Martin & I were right outside the flippin bathroom, & he (I mean Martin) never did get around to whispering. He cried, “How much time, how long?” & I thought of Kenji falling for how many years. The bad feeling was a chill behind my eyes & in my throat.

“Can you be patient, Honey?” I mewed. I steered him gently toward the front door.

“But what’s to think about? I don’t, I mean, I guess…all right.”

He wilted. Martin never wilts.

“Thanks, Honey, thank you so much. Now go on home, OK? I’ve gotta check.”

I turned & left my husband to let himself out. & while poor Martin ran blindly into the night (I found the front door hanging open later), poor Kenji went in the water, the water rushed into him, & I plunged into the water, I ripped the drain plug out, ripped off my wedding ring, my engagement ring, I threw them in the water, the water falling away, my rings ran down the drain with all the water. & I said, “Look!” & I said, “LOOK!”

Kenji looked at the water tumbling down the hole. I grabbed his head & turned it, I felt myself cracking.

“Kenji, come back, come now, come quick!”

“Why did you do that? You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you do that, Nabi?”

“Cuz I wanna live!” I wailed.

“But Martin.”

“Sent him home.”

“But he’s your family, he’d take care of you. I can’t. I can’t do anything.”

“Yes you can. You’re my safe place, Kenji.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“Yes I do. I love you.”

“But what does that mean? We keep lying about who we are, we don’t know, I don’t know who you are, if all we know is that we’re liars maybe nothing we say means anything ever. Even if what you said means something, it doesn’t solve anything, I mean LOOK AT ME!! & what if it doesn’t mean anything?!!” Mercy, he was shrieking.

“But you know it’s true. Even if we never said it, we would know it’s true. I know you know that, Kenji.” I made him look in my eyes. I had a clamp-grip round his underarm & the back of his neck, I risked one hand. I touched his cheek.

He dropped his head. So I couldn’t see his face no more, only his dripping curls, his shoulders shaking.

& then he gave a racking cry of rage cuz he knew that what I said was true & even suicidal courage might just have to cave to it. The cry left him panting with defeated little moans, it left my insides twisted up & scarred.

But I held the back of his neck as tight as I dared, I said, “You’re right just loving by itself don’t fix nothing. But don’t it mean we’re strong enough to take a shot at getting better? We gotta trust it, Baby, trust each other, not lie anymore.”

Soaked & shuddering & wheezing, I mean both of us. Kenji didn’t lift his head, didn’t pull away either. & then his smashed-up voice:

“Not out of pity, Nabi.”

“No, Kenji.”

“& I mean, you’ll stay?”

“I’ll stay.”

“Meaning like you won’t leave?” Almost screaming again.

“I won’t leave, Kenji.”

“Don’t do it just to keep me here.”

“How about cuz life without you never existed for me & never will. No more falling, Kenji. Hold onto me.”

Now he let me lift his head. I’ll never forget that look, Kenji looking at me like he couldn’t process what he was seeing, my beautiful broken genius. I felt the crack in me break open into zillions of cracks. Then I was a bawling heap of rubble in Kenji’s lap in the jacuzzi, kimono & all, my Kenji sobbing violently into my shoulder as the water tumbled down the drain, so much lost time.

A ring’s just a symbol. A seriously expensive symbol but just a symbol. Martin hasn’t called today. Prbly still bleeding from last night. Nobody from Kenji’s family called either, & that gets to me. I keep hearing Mrs C say that impossible thing to him, I know my family would’ve tied up all the airwaves with apologies. I worry what it’s doing to K inside, but he hasn’t mentioned it.

I’m the one he’s worried about. Sometimes Baby looks at me like he’s not sure he’s not looking at a ghost.

But when he feels bad, he reaches for me on purpose. He let me talk him into sipping water too.

I don’t know what I’ll do later. Trying not to think about it.

A new day was almost gone when I woke up. Fresh sheets, clean PJs, Kenji’s head on my shoulder. & I know my Baby’s breathing, I know how it feels to hold him when he’s fast asleep, & right then that feeling was better than anything I’d ever felt, I even cried, it was so good. Then I tried pretending this was any other Monday, maybe the Queen’s Birthday so we could stay in bed.

But my Love had a week-old beard. Totally not like Kenji. I woke up cuz he sighed & it tickled. He’d lost weight, under his eyes were the salt traces of tears. My rings weren’t on the nightstand where I put them.

No, this wasn’t just any Monday (or Wednesday or whatever it is). This was the 1st day after Kenji, my Love who wanted to die cuz of me, ended up having to choose to live. Also cuz of me. That’s not something you can just sleep thru. & the black fuzz on his face reminded me how fragile Baby’s always been. Just a little brush by time changes the whole shape & texture & color of his face every single day.

So! This acegirl had things to do. Didn’t know what they were, but I knew they couldn’t wait. Baby kept on sleeping when I slipped out. I did some mopping in the bathroom, but halfway thru what I was doing I zoomed to the kitchen, grabbed everything that’s sharp, all the knives & forks & the thing that spins inside the blender, & then Aetna Simmons’ HD clone popped up in the spoon drawer! Mercy, I’d forgotten all about it, I dashed around the kitchen trying to figure out where to put it, I hid it in the most unlikely place. My heart kicking up a racket, I zoomed to the living room & locked the cutlery in the secret cabinet that used to have the drugs in it. I in’t writing where I put the key, so duneenwurrywifit! I zoomed thru all the other rooms prowling for stuff that hurts, stashing a letter opener, a stapler, all our razors. I stood in the hallway fanning myself with my hand. I wracked my brain for stuff to batten down or purge. Like my blood was all up in my head & on the run.

I don’t know what made me think of BHS. For a while there (2 weeks-ish?) it was like I’d forgot my “enterprise” existed! I zoomed around looking for my phone, found it in the hallway in a corner on the floor. Wayneesha burst into tears & I did too.

I said Kenji’s real sick, I said hospital sick, I said I can’t leave him, today’s only his 3rd day home. Wayn said the psychiatrist said no, abortion’s illegal without a yes from a psychiatrist, & what with the high-tension adrenaline zooming around in me I found myself promising to lend her $ to go to NY for a weekend, find a clinic, & do what she had to do if it was really what she wanted, but she had to step up to the plate for us.

“Interim Manager. Dr Caines says you can do it.” Baby hadn’t said that, but he’d written something like it. Wayn jumped at it of course. “Don’t you let us down now, acegirl. Now look, I gotta go.” I heard a swish from the bedroom.

“Wait, Mrs Furbert, tell Dr Caines we’re praying for him, see? Bryan just came in & you know how I write down what you say, so he saw. He says he’s gonna light a candle at his church.”

If anybody’s up there looking at candles, I’d just as soon “They” keep “Their” hands off my Baby, considering how well “They’ve” done for him so far. I didn’t say that. I said a nice thank you.

The swish was Kenji turning over in the bed, looking for me. I tried to keep regret & fear out of our long look. Baby couldn’t manage that no more, keeping stuff out. So even the way we kissed had changed. Cuz now I knew he’d never kissed me without regret & fear, I had to make each touch more reassuring & steady, more complicated than I love you desperately, please stay!, which (face it, acegirl) when I lay down & kissed my lifelong love, was really all I could think of. Kenji let me do it, Kenji kissed me back at last! But he whispered, “I can’t ask you anything now. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

I knew the thing he meant. Thinking about it made me panicky again. (CHECK: bug spray, cleaning fluids, hide keys for bike & car, anything that could be rope.) Baby didn’t mean we need anyone to tell us it’s OK to love each other, he meant he’s too afraid to ask me to count on him for the future. Too afraid of himself. Cuz he’s not counting on himself! I kissed him in a panicky way that I knew would freak him out eventually. So we cut it out. Kenji slept. & I thought, holding him: How did we get so afraid?

Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I homed in on Aetna Simmons.

“Aetna Simmons.” The idea that wasn’t an actual girl that gave Kenji the “courage” to leave me forever, to face the pain & terror of dying & whatever (maybe nothing!) comes after that, & killed his courage for doing anything else, even thinking about the future.

“Aetna Simmons.” The actual human who legally in’t got that name no more, who’s gone off traipsing God knows where, she did that to my Baby by choosing the words she chose, selling them like she did, & not hanging around to answer for it when the chips were down. Instead she talked me into making her an “Unsolved Mystery,” luring my delicate Love into her clutches long after she’d quit caring whatever the Hell happened to whoever got in her clutches! I bet she don’t even know you can get “Heart Failure From Physical & Emotional Stress During Opioid Withdrawal” (!!!!!!). Bet if she knew, she wouldn’t care.

Sometimes I think I should call the FBI. Or whatever. But that’s stupid. Healing’s more important. Getting Kenji to want the living kind of courage. His eyes half-opened (not for long) cuz he felt how my touch changed when that girl got in my head. & I thought all in a flash: I’m gotta throw away that weapon too, I’m gotta rip the saw out that chainsaw. Acegirl, you gotta show Kenji that there was no courage in what that woman did, what she did wasn’t suicide. & that’s just for starters.

She tried not to be remembered. But I do remember.

It was winter, so it was already dark. Everyone was gone. Then came the stranger with our Yellow Pages ad. Just so happened I was poking round Wayn’s desk for something.

She didn’t say nothing, we just looked at each other. But with that look, Jesus (I thought) let me know she was a nice lady in trouble. So here went Smiley-Face: “How can I help you?” She was scared but I was patient. We stayed in my office talking till my husband got worried & called.

After that, when we met up, I told my boys I was figuring out a new billing system, & billing can’t be done off-site cuz of security (true). Neither of my sweeties minded driving in to pick me up however late. She must’ve passed them on the street, walking to the bus. Maybe sometime Kenji’s headlights tripped over her shadow.

She was shy, but we got comfy quick so we could focus. We had a job to do, & at first we didn’t have a clue, but she didn’t mind trial & error. She had a sad smile.

All I had to do was what I did every day. No different from destroying other people’s voided checks, expired memos. Just like Bookmart had no use for last year’s waybills, Island Press had to bury all those fliers that forgot the “er” in “Masterworks,” soon BELCO wouldn’t need to know about her anymore. She’d just be excess data in HSBC’s computer. Same job but with computers. In their shadow world.

It wasn’t the same. Thanks to the shadows, it wasn’t a job. It was burrowing into a cocoon & coming out with big dark wings!

She never mentioned friends. I tried inviting her to dinner or the beach, just the 2 of us. It was dumb. I mean hello, it’s Bermuda. People would see us & recognize me & I’d have to introduce her & they’d remember & that’d just defeat the purpose.

She didn’t say nothing. Poor thing, too sad to refuse & too nice to be snippy about what a dumb idea it was. Then I realized I’d messed up & changed the subject. I kept chopsin foolishness till one day (finally!) a joke about somebody (K?) made her crack a giggle.

I said, “Anytime, acegirl, day or night. Nobody has to know.”

She worried that if she called, it’d put me in an awkward place. But I said if we do our jobs right, then with God’s help that won’t happen. Well, I didn’t think she’d call, but she did! Lots of times. Always after Honey/Baby went to sleep.

It was just chitchat. Anyone could tell acegirl was lonely, so I just said whatever popped into my head. Stuff from Bible Study, gossip from choir, things Baby/Honey said. Name a book, you’ll hear her open up. Baby loves books, so I talked a lot about him: Thomas Hardy, critical theory, speculative realism. I could feel her wanting to say something back to him. I just knew if they met, their thoughts would build on each other till they left the galaxy & the atom in the dust. 2 of a kind, my sweet genius & my co-conspirator. One night she murmured that she understood that I love him, she said his name. Kenji. Next thing I know I’m bawling about bumper cars.

So she & I were bound by the ribbons of our secrets. One time I took too long in the shower, Martin answered my phone. I didn’t know he’d done it till the next day when she told me. He said, “Good evening, who is this?” in his preacher voice & frightened her, poor sight. Well, mercy, she couldn’t say her name! She was too shocked to think of anything, it’d been ages since she’d spoken on the phone to anyone but me. She blurted out “Pauline” & said she was my long-lost sistren. That was a lie, but when she told me I couldn’t stop laughing. Mostly out of relief.

As time went on, she grew a burdened look. It got restless & haunted. Soon I could tell she was wearing herself out trying to be brave. Then one night…

Well, she always hated spending money. I hope it’s cuz she was saving. In the end I couldn’t let her pay me, I said, “Sweetie, I should be paying you.” But anyway, one day I gave her a sistrenly lecture on paying her rent in advance, & she got upset. She said nobody deserves to take anything from you before you’re ready to give it.

I was never sure she really wanted what we were trying to do, I mean wanted it with her whole heart & soul. That night I got less sure. But she wouldn’t let me stop & soon we couldn’t stop. TCD had forgotten her. Her birth certificate, school records, credit cards, phone bills, online orders, all the news stories we could find about the airplane, etc, etc (who knew an ordinary person took up all those bytes!), all of it dissolved in the shadows. Then the theft. She got angry. It was time.

I never got to see her in the sun. When I think back to the night she came to say goodbye, I feel like something in her was already sort of thin, sort of withdrawn like the moon on a foggy night. We hugged, I straightened her sweater. She reminded me to erase the time we’d spent together from the BHS security system’s video archive (I didn’t need reminding, she was just “sistering” me). Then she reminded me to forget her, never look for her. We started getting teary. We couldn’t make a scene so I put her on the bus.

She made mistakes, got in too deep. People used her. When “someone” stole from her too, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She almost told me about it, but instead we FOCUSED. She turned her anger into energy.

As for the “stolen goods” (sigh!), I’d prefer to think she was too focused to keep copies. I’ve thought about this a lot: she faked the W-2 so flags would go up when she filed it, the American government would start asking about Clocktower, but by that time she’d be long gone. Tip the first domino, get out of the way, let revenge take its course while she got on with starting over. That must’ve been her plan.

But she got scared, got tired. Realized how small she was or something. She gave up on the idea of filing it, that’s what I think.

She recycled it instead, drafting something on the W-2’s back, & she meant (she must have meant) to THROW IT AWAY but Mrs T got to it first. She got scared that Mrs T would show it to Erik. If that happened, he & Char could figure out what she had planned.

That’s the best I can come up with. It’s mostly holes, innit. From the looks of things, acegirl printed mockups for all her “assignments” & then made a girt big pile of the things under her bush mattress! So I guess she wasn’t focused after all! Sigh! Girl, come on! Why keep the flippin things? To send to somebody? To torture herself? I don’t get it. It makes everything we did…

Well, Honey was being cynical, missing the point, she got out, that’s what matters. Just bad luck that Mrs T was Mrs T & she stole what she stole & Kenji…

So maybe Martin’s right. We’ll never understand, everything is meaningless.

We didn’t wake up again till night. I got Kenji some water & a little juice. I put my head on his chest & Baby stroked my arm. He’s got a special way of doing it. I don’t think he knows it’s special, but to feel him do it now, just like he’s always done it, after clawing his way back from the edge of death just cuz I asked him to, it flooded me with love & hope.

I asked if he felt well enough to talk a little. If we do it now, like this, we’ll be safe, I thought. “It’s about Aetna Simmons.”

Kenji didn’t say nothing, just stroked my arm. I started thinking maybe he really had forgotten, & it made me panicky again, wondering how sick he really was. I looked at his face.

He hadn’t forgotten.

“I in’t Aetna Simmons, Baby. I just said it cuz…Well, lately I’m not sure why I said it.”

He still didn’t say nothing. My Kenji stared into some darkness that I couldn’t see, looking like he’d woken up on the Sea Venture. He stroked my arm the whole time.

Finally he looked at me. My Love’s exhausted eyes looking trapped in that darkness.

“To rescue her. That’s why,” he said.

“How do you know that, Baby?”

“Cuz you’re you.” Kenji moved so our faces brushed each other, & he whispered, “So, I mean, you didn’t write any…anything?”

“No, my Love. I didn’t write any suicide notes.”

His breath stumbled over my forehead. He kissed me there & then just hugged me. Hugged me like in desperate relief, sort of.

Should’ve left it at that, maybe. K was prbly at capacity just with that. He didn’t ask what rescue meant, didn’t ask nothing.

But it was up to me to cut the last blade down, the sharpest & the fastest.

“I wrote something else,” I said.

My book was in the nightstand on my side. Normally I wouldn’t put it there, normally it lived in my Porte-Documents Jour. My book is big & fat. It’s got handmade pages from on top of a bridge that goes over some pretty Italian waterway with curly boats on it. Beautiful leather cover, black cuz it’s from K. It’s got 2 red ribbons attached inside as bookmarks.

When Kenji saw it, something scaly rose out of the black pools of bad dreams. His hand went to his stomach, he looked like all he wanted was to go unconscious. & then (timing, acegirl, gotta work on it) I thought of my own words from just a little bit ago. Words that K wrote down & thought about even though I said them to put him on the wrong track: “The books are black cuz they can’t be read.”

I think K & I put it together at the same time. We stared at each other & my book.

“…ribbons that start out red but change color, wriggling & flowing like the tentacles around the jaws of the sea-dragon, the very sea-dragon who attacked the diver cuz she stole the magic antidote for the agony of grief…”

Over & over with terror & blood.

“Mercy, Baby, what’s this mean?”

“I don’t know.” He said it twice. He breathed thru nausea, his eyes shut. He said, “I bought that for you, didn’t I?”

“20 yrs ago. Writing in it ever since. On & off, you know. Sometimes I stick stuff in. Like look at this, Baby.”

Emails from Baby @harvard.edu stuck in beside emails from me. So I could pretend we were saying with our voices:

“‘Loquats are out. Found a serious sweet fat one with 4 seeds in it down on the Railway Trail in Somerset.’ I tried to draw the loquat, see? ‘Estimated actual size.’ Then I remembered I didn’t have no scanner or camera-phone to send it. I wrote, ‘I miss you.’”

“Nabi.” Poor Baby. He shook his head like, Don’t.

So ya girl keeps on going! I felt like I was chasing a seagull with a butterfly net.

“Stuff I should’ve said to you but ended up keeping in, a lot of it’s in my book. So’s Aetna Simmons. (Deep breath, acegirl!) I want you to know. I think it’s important. Kenji, Aetna Simmons didn’t die. I’m the only one who knows.”

His eyes opened. He said thickly, my poor Kenji, “You what?”

That “Sea Venture” look hit me like a giant bee sting, but too late to turn back: I put my book in Kenji’s hands.

Nobody else has been allowed to touch my book since the last time Kenji did. All those years ago. We held it up together with a pillow’s help. The red bookmarks (I always thought they were so classy!) hung back over the spine.

Kenji asked me to read for him, my words in my own voice, straight out of my body woven together with his, so each time I took a breath, Kenji couldn’t help but feel it. I couldn’t help but feel how what I did & said touched him, whether he tensed or stopped breathing. I handled turning pages, flipping past the stuff that wasn’t hers (Martin, hymns, Iesha, Kenji, Kenji…) unless I couldn’t help it (always Kenji), & sometimes Kenji asked me to turn back. “Go back to the part where you taught yourself Python/Java/broke into whatever/built them a new website so stuff looked like it was normal but really you were in the shadows changing everything…” Another time he looked at me. I worried cuz of what his eyes were doing, but Kenji said, “You learned all this by yourself.” I almost burst into tears cuz my Love was proud of me & too confused & beat up to show it except with pain. He said, “Go back to the part where we were talking hard drive shredders & you sang.” So I did. Kenji said, “Read it for me.” So I did. Partway thru, Kenji said, “Nabi,” & I said, “Look at what you do to me,” & then it took an hour to calm each other down. Those were the easy parts.

Aetna’s Instagram & stuff, Aetna & Jude the Obscure, those parts made Kenji sick. He said, “Take this (the book), take it,” & threw up in the trash bin. I figured that’s why he lost his temper. He groaned, “Who are you?”

“I’m me, Baby. I’m here. Just breathe.”

“Then who’s that? (Mercy, he meant in my book!) That took years, a _____ lifetime! To cultivate a mindset that could _____ erase somebody while she’s sitting there in front of you!”

“I didn’t just erase her.”

“No. No, you deleted ‘Aetna Simmons’ from the world. You replaced her with something. A bunch of memories of what never happened. Memories of some made-up somebody who’d done all that daredevil _____ that Aetna never did. & you stuck a name on that, that construction, & you stuck her body on it. A body that the rest of us idiots think is dead. That’s what you did.”

& Kenji retched, he had gritted teeth & a gloss of sweat when he lay down, but as I wiped his face I couldn’t help myself, I whispered, “Should’ve known you’d understand, should’ve known you’d see exactly. Somebody had to help her, right, Baby?” Inside I thought: At last somebody knows besides me! Finally someone to help me bear the weight of her secret! Not just anybody either, the only one who understands both me & her. I put my book aside, I felt dizzy with relief, I wanted to flop out in Kenji’s arms, let Kenji carry all of me.

But Kenji said, “Help her?! She was raw material for you, that’s all. So you could change yourself into this—this unnecessary, narcissistic, _____ incredible metamorphosis—into something mighty & elite & terrible.”

I was halfway between the nightstand and flopping out. I stopped in the middle, squished between horrified-insulted, horrified-ashamed, & just plain shocked. Kenji lay on his back with his hand over his eyes.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said.

“Yeah it was. You wrote it. All that _____ about creation, making something into something else, the Art Of Vanishing. Like you think you’re some kind of god. & all that time, Nabi, you—you wouldn’t let me—Aetna was my inspiration, my opportunity, my vengeance, and Nabi you willfully destroyed… You told me not to give up, but you only meant it as long as you thought I’d never succeed. When I started to think I’d actually get somewhere, for once in my life achieve what I set out to do, you let me think I was crazy. Just to cover your own _____. Or maybe CAM put you up to it. Did they? Or you came up with it yourself, right? So you’d always have a reason to go back to him?”

“Baby, you’re not making sense. It was never about you.”

“I could’ve helped you. I understood her. I would’ve understood.”

Never crossed my mind, but it’s true. Kenji would’ve noticed stuff in her that wasn’t just face value, stuff I never thought of. & as soon as she said no questions, I guarantee my Baby would’ve let her have it with the questions.

“Instead you let me think I had nothing,” said Kenji.

I wish he’d screamed it. Seriously. He didn’t have it in him. Everything just drooled out of him. Yeah, some of it was crazy, but it all made sense, I mean from Baby’s point of view. It’s just I never bothered thinking thru that point of view.

Me. Kenji’s acegirl & his love.

If it was anybody else, it would’ve floored me long before today, that’s for true. I would’ve told the shameless so-&-so to sit in a church & read the part about Judas & ask themselves some questions. I snatched Kenji’s hands. His eyes were the scary kind of tired. I said, “Forgive me. Please, my Love.”

It was like he had to dredge his voice out of the sand. “Do you know what I had to do? What I had to promise Char so she won’t hunt you down?”

“It’s in my mind every second, all the time, what you did. Don’t worry about that woman, Baby. I’ll make everything right, I promise.”

“I made a deal. If I don’t keep it, she’ll find us. She’ll know that you’re my reason for not keeping it. She’ll infer that you’re neck-deep in this. She’ll use her suspicions to disgrace Martin & pressure BRMS to make him betray you. Maybe he won’t crack, but I know Char. She’ll crack something.”

“You don’t know her, thank you very much, & she do not know you.”

“If she figures out what you’ve done, she’ll ruin us. & Martin. & Aetna.”

“Well, she won’t figure it out. She may think she’s all that, but I’m here to tell you she don’t know nothing about handling herself digitally. Listen, Baby, you won’t have to. OK? I promise when you’re better, I’ll figure something out. You just don’t worry about nothing. You just—just love me, Kenji. Love me & don’t let go.”

“But this is what I meant, you don’t trust me. You trusted Aetna, a total stranger. What you did, Nabi, that’s computer crime. That’s what you did for her. That’s why she pretended to give a _____ about you. Anyone who looked for her, the most they’d ever find is you. For her, that was your only purpose, & you knew it. You knew that _____ spineless _____ planned to hang you out to take the heat. She used you and you let her. & I—& Nabi, I—I stuck your neck out. When you tried to tell me, I couldn’t stop, I wouldn’t stop.”

“Only cuz I didn’t really tell you anything. We were hardheaded about not talking to each other, but that’s cuz we love each other!”

“We think so, but what is that? What are we but a couple of impostors?” (!!)

His eyes sort of hollowed out. I got scared he might turn his face away from me, I couldn’t handle it if Kenji did that now, I tugged his hands like a lost little kid.

“You don’t think we can get better? Kenji, come on, give us a chance.”

He couldn’t answer. He lay like a dead tree washed out to sea & washed back up.

He hated all of us for a sec. Me, her, himself. But he didn’t take his hands away.

Maybe he understood it wasn’t all my fault: Baby knows I’m a silly goose & a hacker, but that’s a far cry from what she did, & it’s not my fault she didn’t tell me what was going on. Or maybe he was just tired of fighting dragons.

Or the truth was something else. Kenji turned my hands over & looked at them.

They’re bare now. They go naked. Their emptiness gave me a shudder, but I hid it. Kenji looked at my eyes, didn’t say nothing.

He let me hold him. We kissed, we took our time. He laid his head on my breast.

Watching Kenji sleep. I want to stay awake in case he dreams. Or doesn’t dream but wakes up thinking about a future as a man without a voice, trapped in the minds of dead people. When he opens his eyes, I want to be the 1st thing he sees.

I also made him a promise. It’s time to wrack my brain to figure out how to keep it. Once he was deep asleep I made myself some espresso.

My Love needs to know that what I say really means something.

Mercy, 3 days? 5 days gone? This acegirl don’t even know. I’m had to start sneaking to get a moment with my book! Haven’t even had time to miss it (sorry book!). I’m so busy I in’t answered none of Wayn’s texts (poor child hasn’t phoned, so hopefully she’s OK?).

It started right after I showed Kenji my book. I’d planned to stay up all night, but! So much for espresso. I have this hazy memory of my book & pen going away. I woke up in some nice arms, Kenji mumbled, “Go back to sleep,” & he did too. Later I got up for Tylenol, he mumbled, “When’s the last time you ate, Nabi?” I got an orange too. My Love was having quite a bit of pain, but he said, “You in’t getting enough rest. Think I don’t know, innit. Come on & lie down.” Stuff like this went straight to my achy little heart. It’s all Kenji wants to talk about. Even though poor sight’s still throwing up (they say it can go on for weeks!!). The difference is in his eyes.

Every now & then, Baby & me look at each other & I see something like a new star being born real far away. That kind of thing needs watching, so you see I’m very busy.

Once or twice in these chockablock days, I thought I heard a noise. I was too blissed out to know for sure. I texted anyway: Did u come by? I’m sorry, I was asleep!

No answer at 1st. Couple days later Martin texted: ILY.

I answered: ily2 hope ur ok.

Next morning he answered back: Morning.

I answered: Morning honey.

We’re scared of being apart. Couple mins, OK. More than that, I start to worry what Kenji might be up to, I think he starts to worry what I might be thinking of, & then we both get antsy & that’s not good. So we bathe together. Plus there’s the issue of the bathroom & jacuzzi. I have panicky flashbacks every time I look at them. Kenji doesn’t seem to mind them, maybe cuz he’s so exhausted by the time he gets there.

Anyway, we’re in the bath. I made it hot cuz K was feeling “like a football after a football game.” He’s admitted that the pain goes right down into his bones.

He had his arm around my shoulders, his shoulder under my head: perfect recipe to make me fall asleep, just what I didn’t want to do, afraid aceboy might sink.

He said, “You wrote that you gave her a new name.”

Kenji with his eyes closed, a frown below his stitches.

“A name that nobody & nothing in the world, not one damn computer, not even that book of yours could link up with the name Aetna Simmons. Nobody except you.”

I began a fresh study of the stitches.

“What’s her new name, Nikkou?”

“I shouldn’t tell you that, my Love. I promised her. She asked me to forget her.”

“So tell me the name & then forget her.”

When we’ve been thru a hurricane & the electricity’s been out forever, so we’ve been living in the dark, running to & from the tank with a bucket on a rope & existing on canned peaches & cereal, & then all of a sudden there’s a surge, just for a second, a throb goes thru the house (lights flicker, fridge groans), & everything might go dark again right after but we’ve got hope now, we know it’s trying: everything that ever had a spark of energy, everything that ever lived is trying to come back…that’s the throb I heard in Kenji’s voice right then. From that moment, I knew I can’t let myself miss out on anything he says, any word, ANY little blankety-blank word could bring the fire back!

So I thought it might kill me to stamp out that early spark. “It don’t matter what her name is. It’s better you don’t know, my Love.”

“No, it’d be better if I were the only one who knew. If someone figured out what happened.”

“No one’s gonna do that, Baby.”

“Well, if someone tried. Char’s not stupid. Char won’t hesitate.”

“Thought you weren’t gonna think about her no more, Love.”

“Just tell me,” said Kenji softly. “You see, I’d rather… If somebody started asking around about Aetna Simmons, they’d find me before they found you. I’d try not to tell them. But if I had to, I would. There’d be no need for them to find about you then.”

I don’t think Kenji knows how huge it is, him saying that. He just said it. Thinking about me, not about himself. But what I heard louder than the foghorn on a megaship was Kenji thinking forward. Like Baby thought he might have a future after all. Here with me, with the strength to protect me. I put a teary smackeroo on him cuz what’s a silly girl in love supposed to do? I said, “Let’s keep her as my secret. If Char Richards or anybody like Char Richards ever shows their stinkin ugly face round here, they gotta deal with me. OK, Baby?”

“Well, no, it’s not OK. You know everything, Nabi, you saw her face—”

“& I in’t talking about that either, so duneenworrywifit.”

“But Nabi, you’re the only one who could put Aetna Simmons back together with herself. That means you’re not safe.”

“I already promised we’re gonna figure something out. Now slow down, OK? Trust me.”

I kissed him all over his face, I found his lips with mine. My ditsy little soul felt like fireworks in the sky.

I’d already sent the email. The other night when that espresso let me down. I’m thinking now we should’ve talked it thru 1st, K & me. Oh well. I didn’t tell him. I’d put too much on him already.

I told him later.

Late afternoon sometime I was giving K a belly rub. Should’ve noticed he was deep in thought, but my eyes were closed.

He said, “What you told me about Erik. What you wrote. What Erik told you about Char.”

Again with blankety-blank Char! I woke up real fast with some firm words to say. But Kenji’s eyes were closed with a frown-ridge in between.

“The idea of some woman erasing herself over & over. Char prbly enjoyed it. Unconsciously, you know. The idea of making Erik pay Aetna to do it. & the idea of me, I guess, erasing—”

“Baby, I emailed Mr Falk.”

Another shock, poor Love!

“I was gonna tell you later. If anything comes of it. If not, we’ll try something else.”

Baby said, “Jim J Falk. Clocktower’s Chief Risk Officer.”

“That’s the one, sweet genius. You wrote to me about him.”

“Yeah but, but…”

“I emailed to say I’m concerned that a VP on Mr Falk’s team wants to use my company, Bull’s Head Shreds, to destroy evidence of fraudulent practices. I implied that I’d refused to sign a contract with this person but instead decided to tattle, urged on by my conscience. I invited Mr Falk to contact me for further info. & I cc’d you & Martin.”

Kenji struggled up onto his elbow just to put his hand under my chin. He looked at me like I was a funny thing he’d picked up on the beach.

“That was rash, Nabi. And devious. Also pretty savvy.”

Now he looked like he was wondering if the funny-looking thing he’d found might be a diamond, & that puffed me right up. I made my announcement.

“The whole thing has to stop. That’s it. That’s the only way we can be positive we’re safe,” I announced.

If Mr Falk even sees my email, let alone reads it, it’ll be a miracle. (Plan B? Pending.) I knew Kenji knew that, but an email is still something, & what Kenji needs is hope in any form. He watched his little worker bee chatter on about taking down an international high-finance racket. He looked doubtful like he thought maybe he should grab me before I buzzed into a praying mantis. But this acegirl was soaring.

“Kenji, you really think after what you wrote I could fail to understand what it means to spend your life writing suicide notes? Pretending there’s some mistake in wanting to be alive? Baby, forget it. I don’t care what I gotta do.”

“Well, I do. I’m not worth any kind of risk.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Kenji, just one of your breaths means more to me than anybody else’s life.”

“You shouldn’t say stuff like that.”

“I’m saying I love you.”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

He was getting upset. Like really upset. He lay down, I pulled his hand out of his hair, his voice made me think of too much water.

“Nabi, I betrayed you.”

I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t want to say anything. Like I don’t want to say anything about Martin or worry over what counts as “betrayal.” All that mattered was Kenji’s voice climbing & constricting cuz of that helpless rage that scares me like nobody’s business.

“Never before. & never again. Right?” I said.

“Yes. Only Char.”

“OK, then let me tell you we’re OK. WE’RE OK.” We were scared stiff. Kenji let me envelop myself in his body, I closed my eyes & tried pretending we were like those snails that find a nice wall to stick to & sleep the summer thru. But I heard myself beg, cowering against his chest, “Please believe me. Please, Kenji.”

He whispered, “All right, Nabi.” Cuz he knew I was afraid. I know it’s not enough.

Later Martin texted me a moon. I texted: sweet dreams honey.

How much of all that was bravado? How much was the espresso kicking in just long enough for tappity-tap + Send? None, I thought. Kenji knew better. I’ve never been sometimey when it comes to sleeping, I never have bad dreams, I’m not a ceiling-starer. But I popped up in some crazy hour & bugged poor K till he woke up. Baby wasn’t even all that surprised.

“I’ve gotta ask you something, Kenji. It can’t wait.”

We let a little just-in-case light sneak under the door. Besides that it was pitch dark.

“You gotta follow the question all the way thru like always. Wherever it goes, Baby, OK?”

I reached up into the dark. I found Kenji’s face exposed to the night’s most slippery hours. He held me so I lay on top of his lungs.

“Kenji, would I, like if I’d known…I’d have shown that girl the door & nothing else. Wouldn’t I?”

It came out feeble. But Baby knew I meant Aetna Simmons.

He said, “It’s OK that you’re not psychic.”

“Yeah, but I should’ve asked her, innit. I should’ve asked her SOMETHING. Sure, we don’t ask clients why they’re destroying what they’re destroying, but document destruction isn’t the same as breaking into immigration & all that. I care about our business enough to understand that. I’m got common sense. So what happened, Baby? I mean like, in my head.”

I could never ask anybody else something like that.

I already knew the answer too. But I hoped Kenji would answer something else. Something to prove the real answer wasn’t true.

He said, “Pride.”

So gently!

“You said it in your book. You wanted to show me & Martin a thing or two.”

My cheeks were on fire. But Kenji didn’t sound disgusted, he caressed my face & stroked my back & said, “The fact of where I went to school doesn’t mean I’ve ever thought I’m better than you. I’ve always known you’re stronger. Upstairs & inside. Whatever the Hell I did to make you think otherwise, I’m sorry. I never wanted you to feel condescended to or stifled or like the scum of the earth, like you’re throwing yourself at the walls in a padded soundproof cell day after day.”

Shame made me fidgety. “It wasn’t that bad, Baby. I got no right to judge you.”

“Whatever, just don’t hate yourself for anything. Don’t hate anything ever. OK?”

“But Baby, do you think if I’d asked what she was running from, I mean if I’d known Aetna Simmons was guilty of something awful, something bad enough to run from…”

“If you’d known she was a forger for an insurance racket, you’d have told her to get crackin.”

“You really think so, Love?”

We lay quiet in the dark. I don’t know why I kept pushing this question. Cuz it’s the question of what I am, I guess? So like: me + Kenji = ? Me + Martin = ? Cuz me = ??! Who’s got time to worry about “me = ”? This worker bee’s too busy buzzing. But what if I filled every second up with my own buzz cuz even though I didn’t know it, deep down I was scared of the answer to “me = ”?

I said in an all-new kind of panic, “Kenji, you know me better than anyone. So I mean, look. You started working for the chemist cuz you were desperate. I wasn’t. It just didn’t occur to me that anything I did would ever hurt anybody. Kenji, if I just didn’t let that occur to me, how far could I have gone to make myself feel liberated & empowered or whatever even if I did have all the info? You know what I’m saying? Could I risk everything we have just to show what I’m made of?”

He thought about it. Long & serious like he always does.

“Turn the lamp on, would you, Nikkou?”

I turned it on. Orange light on one side of Kenji’s face showed that new star struggling to learn to twinkle, trying to fight its way out of his ancient black hole. Darkness swallowed the other side. His love beamed thru the darkness & the light in waves of mysterious energy like they’re always finding out in space but here, right here in the quick parting of his lips & the tremor around his eyes. It rocked me with a shockwave every day of my life & sometimes I didn’t even know, I was so busy buzzing, I didn’t even know it was the kind of energy that could burn him out forever. What kind of acegirl fails to see that? What kind of “me” just fails to see it?

“My friend, this is an existential crisis,” said Kenji.

“I knew you was gonna say that, bye.” I felt like bursting into tears.

“I think Martin would prescribe going to church.”

“Prbly. What do you think?”

“I have a lot to learn about you.”

He thought long & serious about that too.

He said, “You still got Aetna’s hard drives, Nabi? The original & the copy?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Where I keep them.”

“Where’s that, Nikkou?”

“Pretty briefcase you got me.”

“You’ve been carrying those fucking things around with you all this time everywhere you go?!!”

“I couldn’t leave them hanging around for poky snoberses to—”

“Fack! That’s why you started looking at hard drive shredders, innit,” Kenji breathed.

Now, which one of us set out to make BHS a laundry service? Clue: it wasn’t K. All he wanted was to help me build something, just so happened that drug money was all he had to do it with. But which one of us set out to spend however many hundred-thousands to make our “confetti counter” cover up a crime, & which pathetic stupidhead never even thought of it that way cuz she let herself stay ignorant & figured she could do no wrong?

“Told her to leave me her laptop,” I mumbled. “Figured we could get a HDS & after a while I’d sneak it in with some work order. Told her if it took too long to get our own, I’d sneak off overseas to somebody who’s got one.”

I never thought the words “computer crime” till Kenji said them. Seriously.

My jaw shivered. My sweet Kenji said real soft, “Hey, acegirl, come here.”

I’m a traitor. I am blind. I hid my face in Kenji’s neck. Where his breath moves & his pulse flutters & his voice lives. “I’m the worst Managing Partner ever!”

“The best, you mean.”

“The worst criminal too!”

“Hey now, you weren’t trying to be a criminal. You thought you were helping her. Even if you had other motives too, you really did want to help her. Didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I whimpered.

“Course you did. My Nikkou.”

Kenji kissed me on my head. Like he could hear all the rubble in it flying around & smashing.

“Once you decided you were gonna help her get away, you didn’t just follow thru, you went above & beyond.”

“To cover my own blankety-blank.”

“Yeah, that too. I’m glad you didn’t neglect that.”

Even though I lied to him for it. Kenji kneeling in the grass, Kenji drowning in poisons. I couldn’t even ask the question that I knew hid behind my other questions. Could I hurt BHS without realizing? What about: Could I hurt you, my Love, without letting myself realize??!!

He didn’t make me ask it, he didn’t ask it. He asked, “Nabi, is there a way to shred hard drives without a shredder?”

“Power drill.” I sniffled.

I couldn’t think about no power drill. This “existential crisis” blew up literally right that second into a life-&-death-level freakout: me & my pride & not asking enough questions, all my buzzbuzzbuzz sent Kenji up that hill to DIE.

“Kenji, how is it that you still love me?!”

He said, “You’re all I care about. You’re all the reason there is.”

His voice was steady. & I could tell by his breathing he was doing his genius thing, & all this decked my bravado: What if I can’t protect him, what if I can’t prove to him that it is worth it to keep struggling, what if I get in the way of my own efforts to protect him…???

Nothing lay between Kenji’s chest & my messed-up head, so the sounds that only he can make went deep in me. His life throbbing thru him filled my head & throbbed thru me & throbbed in everything. The air, the dark. The walls. The light under the door. I listened all night long.

His new thing was this power drill. Day after day: “Let’s do it today, Nikkou.”

I miced. “Too sleepy, Baby, wanna snuggle here with you.”

He admitted that sounded nicer. Only to get right back on the other thing.

“Do you own a power drill, my Love?”

“Well, no.”

We couldn’t buy one on Amazon. Well, we could. But after we’d paid more than any drill was worth to get the thing across the ocean, we’d still have weeks to wait for it to land & clear customs, etc, etc. Kenji didn’t want to wait that long. But going out to buy a power drill didn’t even need discussing. It’s Bermuda, our track record sucks, the last thing we need is someone being able to say they saw me buying a drill, & Kenji isn’t well enough to go into town. Standing up makes him dizzy. Nausea makes him angry & depressed. I’m scared to leave him alone, scared of finding him with a pen or something in his throat.

“Don’t we have one down Bull’s Head?” he asked.

“Prbly. But I’d have to tell Bryan I’m taking it, cuz he’d miss it. Cuz remember I put it in the contract for those lot: all Bull’s Head Shreds equipment stays at Bull’s Head Shreds, & it’s Bryan’s job to make sure—”

“OK, OK. Did I sign that contract?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Fack.”

“Anyway, I want to keep Bull’s Head Shreds out of it. From now on, you know. We made that, Baby. We depend on it. It’s ours.”

Kenji kissed my hand. He refuses to let me stay ashamed. I give into him easy, I don’t like guilt, I like smiling at my Baby. He was on the couch. His 1st day sorta but not really out of bed, he was in his PJs on his back under a blanket. I’d talked him into trying out the living room. It’s way brighter with the sliding glass & white-tiled balcony & sea & sky. I cotched beside him & we held hands & ate the plain white bread I’d made. Now & then I nuzzled his cheek with mine or under his chin with my lips, I couldn’t get enough, cuz that morning Baby’d shaved his beard off (with help & supervision!) just like he always does & just cuz he wanted to!

“What about Martin? Team Leader got a power drill?”

“Yeah, he likes being prepared. But Baby, I don’t want him involved.”

“Why’s he gotta be involved?”

Sigh! So that’s how my Love & me wound up sneaking into my own house in broad daylight. Kenji didn’t want me going by myself. I didn’t want Kenji staying home & looking at the ceiling by himself. We called ahead to make sure nobody was there. I’d texted Martin already that morning to say hi, so he had no reason to think anything “unusual” was going on.

We bundled Kenji up in a sweatshirt. We took South Shore Road so I could show him the ocean & beaches & lighthouse & bay grapes & banyan trees, all the stuff we’ve been looking at forever but it’s different now. Now I’m saying, “Check all the tents down Church Bay, Baby,” meaning Don’t you want to stay & enjoy stuff like this, stuff that’s all about life & color & noise?, but without actually saying it cuz saying it would be too much. Now I’m sneaking glances at Kenji in the passenger seat of his own car, he’s looking out the window & I can’t tell if he’s seeing the blue-gray sky & snow cone guy or not, I’m worrying like maybe I shouldn’t have pointed out the tents cuz it means it’s Cupmatch weekend coming (& it’s true all the other cars got their red&blue/blue&blue flags flying for the Cupmatch teams), Bermy’s favorite long weekend that K & me never spent together cuz, well, it was a long weekend.

“Feel OK, Baby?” & he took my hand in both of his. He didn’t say nothing, maybe he felt carsick, the more we drove the more he looked like he was concentrating like crazy on looking at my fingers & then not looking at them.

Anyway, we got there, Martin’s car was gone, he was at work. I sorta wanted Kenji to stay in the car cuz he’s slow-moving, poor sight, & he could honk if there was “trouble” (???). I also didn’t want him staying in the car in case he started to feel bad & went & sat down in the road instead. Kenji really wanted to stay in the car, he was breathing real deliberately, he said, “It’s just the pictures.” & that settled it, I wanted him where I could grab him, I dragged him in the house.

I offered to get a chair, but we thought we wouldn’t be too long. K leaned on the counter & I felt him watching me like he was scared to look anywhere else. I thought the drill would be in the junk drawer with the stuff Martin uses to hang pictures. It wasn’t. Sigh! So I tried the cabinets. That kitchen’s got a lot of cabinets. I started with the less used ones high up, no luck. Poor Kenji sat down slowly on the floor in a corner, & I started on the lower cabinets.

Part of me kept thinking I didn’t really want to find it. But I did want to find it cuz Kenji wanted to find it & I knew that hardheaded bye would insist on going into town if we didn’t find it. Maybe I thought if we found it, got that much out of the way, I could snuggle him into forgetting what he thought he wanted to do with it. I looked under the sink.

“Oh look, Baby. DeWalt. Don’t they make drills?” It was a black & yellow bag like an overnight bag. It had the drill, all the little pieces to go with it, & a screwdriver set too. & now I think about it, I must’ve been the one who bought it, prbly for Martin’s birthday or something (this head & soul of mine need a vacation). “OK Baby, we’re good to go.”

Then the front door opened.

“Nabilah? You’re here? You’re home?”

Martin.

Do you, Martin Alan Furbert, take…

Martin.

He came around the counter, spotted Kenji in the corner.

My boys gaped at each other. The 2 boys gaped at me. The 3 of us who’ve known each other for how long, & the shock of being together turned us all to stone.

“Good afternoon?” said Martin.

Like that, like a question. Not sarcasm, just shock.

“Hi Honey. How are you?”

Kenji murmured, “I’m so sorry. I’ll go. I’m really sorry—”

“No, Baby, stay right here. It’s OK, really.”

I set my hand on Kenji’s shoulder. He was trembling & everything, instantly almost-off-the-charts distraught. Some days it takes nothing whatsoever to upset him. Like when he fell asleep & let the cup of tea I’d made for him get cold, I think the word for that is “inconsolable.”

“Martin, you doing OK?” I said. Too loud, I think.

Martin nodded & shrugged & tossed his hands in the air all at the same time. He looked thin, poor Honey. Tired. Not as thin as K & not even half as tired, but anyway I just don’t want to think about the silence.

Martin: “Well, I was actually just coming to call you. Coming here. That is. To call you. Instead of calling from work. & then after that I was going to go back to work. Cuz it’s a work day.”

“Nabi, I should go,” K whispered.

“No, Kenji, don’t move a muscle. Oh really, Honey? What about?”

M & K were back to staring at each other. Not like cowboys in cowboy movies, more like stray cats staring at oncoming cars. Except both of them were already in pain. Cuz of me.

“Martin? What did you want me for, Honey?” I said gently.

He cleared his throat & said, “Well.”

He looked at K & cleared his throat again. My hand on K’s shoulder was a clamp, the other hand had the bag with the drill in it. Of all things, Martin came out with: “Char Richards.”

Kenji closed his eyes. Like the executioner’s right behind him with the axe.

“I understand she’s left Clocktower,” said Martin.

My hand gave K a squeeze. He blinked at Martin, blinked at me.

“You didn’t get the email?” Martin took out his phone.

I said, “No, we…” We’d been zonked most of the time. Kenji held onto the hand I’d put on his shoulder.

“One of Falk’s secretaries copied all 3 of us. ‘Mrs Furbert. The employee concerned in your inquiry is no longer with the company. Regards.’ So I did a little digging. You may be aware that I have certain official-unofficial contacts with access to sensitive information. They’re unofficial in the sense that I can’t share what they say or who they are with anyone, but I can use what they say to point my team in the right direction, if you follow me. They’re official in the sense that they’re intimately connected with law enforcement—”

“Char’s dead, isn’t she,” said Kenji.

“What? No, she isn’t dead. What gave you that idea? Actually, you know what? Don’t answer that,” said Martin.

“Honey,” I said gently.

“She’s joined the FBI,” said Martin. To Kenji, really. Then my husband looked at me & said, “FBI.”

Kenji groaned. Martin looked at the kitchen counter like he wasn’t sure it really was his own kitchen counter.

I said, “Just like that? Any so-&-so can just up & join the FBI?”

“Typically, no,” said Martin.

“& she can’t have got fired all that long ago. When’d you say the secretary wrote you?”

“They wrote to you, Nabilah. They copied me. Nabilah, you start a stone rolling down a hill like this & don’t keep track of it?! Don’t answer that either. Richards wasn’t fired, she resigned. You’re right she left the company mere days ago, prbly after you sent that reckless email. I’m not claiming there is any correlation between the 2 events—”

K: “Course there is. Char wouldn’t risk triggering an investigation. She doesn’t want anyone presuming to decide her fate. If she was gonna take a dive, she’d want to do it her own way.”

Me: “Excuse me. You do not live in no demon-woman’s head, thank you.”

M: “She’s an expert financial auditor. There’s no doubt she’ll be a certified fraud examiner within weeks.”

Me: “Prbly got lots of practice. Looking for ways to portray people as embezzlers or gambling addicts or whatever. So it’d make sense that they’d you know.”

“Do themselves in,” said M.

I gave him my kick-under-the-table look. K was rubbing his head & frowning at the drill bag. M has a way of not noticing looks or kicks when they’re inconvenient. He looked at the drill bag too.

“I’ve inferred from what I’ve heard that as soon as she decided to resign, Richards offered her services to the Bureau & was recruited on the spot.”

“Power means more to Char than money. Sticking it to whoever,” said K.

“Yes, well, it seems to me, though this will never be confirmed, that they recruited her on the spot not only cuz of her credentials & the Bureau’s sorry track record as an equal-opportunity employer, but also cuz she offered in exchange, on the proverbial silver platter, the names & details of multiple corporate executives whom she claims are guilty of insider trading, inflating expenses, selling nonexistent shares, & so on. & not just in the insurance sector. Not just men either, contrary to what you might—”

Kenji grabbed the drill bag. “Can we borrow this? I mean, I guess, can I borrow this?”

Me: “Baby, wait. Sit down. We gotta process this. Obviously the Bureau (!) don’t know about Aetna Simmons. Or about Erik. Or I mean anything about Bermuda, right, Martin? Kenji, bye, gimme that thing.” I put the bag of sharp hole-making things on the counter.

Martin: “One would infer that since what Aetna Simmons did would be of no help to anyone besides an insurance company, it would hardly be in Richards’ best interests to mention her or Erik. For the same reason, I should think former-VP Richards would avoid drawing any connection between herself & Bermuda.”

My sigh of relief nearly floated me to the ceiling. Then it went all the way thru my toes into the floor.

“Thank you, Martin,” I said.

“Not a problem,” he said softly. He put his phone in his pocket.

The knot in Martin’s tie was a little off. Not askew, just not precise enough for Martin. I pulled the wraparound bit down about 2 mm to finish covering the knotty bit. I’d forgot about my rings, but Honey saw of course, he looked horrified. Kenji in his corner had his head in his hands. Martin & I looked at each other, poor Honey bursting to say something & wishing with all his heart I’d say it for him. Something to do with hope.

I said, “Thank you. We should go.” I put my hand in Kenji’s hair. “Seriously, the drill & stuff. Can we use it?”

Martin sighed. Not like my sigh.

“Just don’t tell me what it’s for,” he said.

“I’ll bring it back.”

“You will?”

My husband of 8 years looked at me with hope & terror. I glanced at Kenji on the floor, the man who loves me more than his own life looking at me with hope & terror.

I’d never imagined this. I’d been trying not to think about this. Trying like crazy.

I looked at Martin & told myself I wouldn’t cry.

I said, “Yeah, I will, but I won’t stay.”

Kenji let his breath out. Martin looked at the floor.

“I’m real sorry, Martin. I’m real grateful—”

“If we’re finished, Nabilah, say it. Say it or make a promise. Don’t expect me to do it for you. & don’t make Kenji do it. Whatever you do now is entirely your doing,” said Martin.

His face was trembling. Kenji’s too. I felt like I was dying. I know I’ve got enough love & laughs & strength in me for both of them, I know I do.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just arrogant. Maybe being arrogant almost made me a murderer.

& by the way, acegirl, who are you kidding about the strength? You looked at Kenji, you looked into his eyes, you lifted up his chin so you could see his love & soak it up & turn that strength of his, the courage to go on loving you, into courage of your own—but a whole different kind.

“We’re finished, Martin. I’m sorry.”

You wouldn’t have thought anything, not gods or anything, could love with the love that hurricaned in Kenji’s eyes right then, acute just like the storm, lavish like leaves & grass & snails & whistling frogs & things the rain brings out of the woodworks, mixed up & excessive like the colors that the sun flings all over the sky for no reason, & the thing is, he couldn’t help it! Kenji wouldn’t have done it if he could help it, he wouldn’t have exposed himself like that in front of Martin, especially not in that moment. That was the kind of moment where Kenji would’ve held everything in, swallowed it & hidden it & even smiled at me, just so no matter what I did I’d feel like I was doing the right thing. But he can’t do that no more. Doing it all those years used him up to the last drop, so now my Kenji is too weak not to show the helpless strength of his love. & instead of holding it in, he surrendered to it, he had to, he surrendered everything, & the strength not to resist it anymore filled his eyes up, & if it wasn’t for that strength, I kid you not, I would’ve puddled on the floor in the awful silence.

“Yes. Well,” said Martin.

& in the other awful silence.

“Please go now. Both of you,” said Martin.

Kenji flung out his hands. I pulled him up, & he made sure I didn’t fall.

We couldn’t say anything. We held each other around the waist as we walked down the drive. Kenji walked me to the driver’s side of his car cuz he saw I was dazed, but he didn’t say nothing, he was dazed. By the time we got to Middle Road, I couldn’t see. Kenji said, “Pull over, Nabi, quick.” & I did & I crash-landed in the arms of the best friend I almost killed.

We didn’t even think about who might be watching, we couldn’t have cared less, Kenji kept crying, “I promise! I promise!” as we blocked up the entrance to the plant nursery, Kenji’s expensive car all slanty half in & out the street cuz the driver kept on crying. & Kenji held my face & Kenji kissed me everywhere that there were tears & Kenji said, “Nabi, we have to go get rid of everything. We gotta go & do it now.”

“No Kenji, take me home, hide me forever,” I moaned.

“I will. I promise you I will. I love you, Nabi, I’m so sorry about everything, that’s why you gotta help me, I can’t do this by myself, I’ve gotta make sure you’re safe. I need us to be sure, Nabi, as best we can.”

His feverish look said clear & deafening he couldn’t rest till we’d done whatever he thought we had to do. Cars & bikes must’ve been wiggling around us, people trying to pass the plant nursery, but we lot didn’t have a clue. I whined some more, & Kenji whispered, “I know. It hurts real bad & you just want to fall asleep in the darkest possible place. Believe me, Nikkou, I know. Just this one thing. I can’t do it without you. Then we can sleep & then, you know, if you want, face the rest of it together.”

“I won’t get thru one more second unless you’re here. Now. Every now. You understand? Kenji, I’m serious. Do you understand how much I love you? Do you finally?”

We flooded each other, I felt weak like I would faint, Kenji breathed into my mouth again & again, & I couldn’t help throwing myself open, surrendering to the aching wish we’d always known & never understood cuz our love is better than both of us. & Kenji put his forehead against my forehead, Kenji said, “I understand.”

Then there was this BRRRPPP!!! from the water truck that was just trying to pass the plant nursery or visit the plant nursery. Baby & I jumped a mile, my Love wiped my face with his hands, his acegirl hollering, “Don’t go calling me an impostor ever again, don’t go acting like one either!” & Kenji said, “OK,” & said, “Get us outta here, Nikkou.” & ya girl made a squealing U-turn in the plant nursery & cut off the water truck & a minibus full of tourists to get back on Middle Road. My sweet genius was in the middle of telling me his idea when he spied Southampton Post Office & we peeled in. I jumped out, grabbed an armload of the phone books they had in the doorway, threw them in the trunk.

However many trips to & from the car, Kenji wouldn’t let me make a single one of them alone, he refused to take one step empty-handed. Besides our other stuff, it took 2 of us to carry the charcoal from the shop at the marina. K looked terrible by the time he plopped on Ethelberta’s bench, feeling sick & fighting it. It was too much, he knew it & wouldn’t stop. I plopped beside him, but he’d only let me hold him for a minute.

“Sun moves so fast,” he whispered. He kissed me, anxious & badly out of breath. He went & started up the engines, I cast off the moorings. He didn’t want to stop at the gas station (“We lot gonna be out of gas long before the boat”), but I insisted on that one thing. We didn’t know how far we’d be going, not like accurately.

So while Ethelberta glug-glug-glugged herself up to the brim, Kenji & I made a point of not seeing how much it cost, I leaned against him & said, “Don’t do it. Just let me wipe everything from the past 2 months or so. I bet I can make it so it was never there.” Baby just shook his head.

We drove around Bermuda’s curly tip. The sun chased us southwest. I wanted Kenji close to me, the 2 of us squeezed onto Ethelberta’s driving bench. I made him promise to keep an arm around me at all times.

My need for him scares me, how it’s exploded. It’s physical need but not just about attraction, it’s psychological & I guess spiritual but not only about love. Maybe it’s not even new, maybe I just hadn’t noticed it. That scares me too cuz I can’t afford not to recognize what Kenji’s feeling anymore, cuz I need him & it scares me…

The ocean was restless, steely blue, it frightened me like it never did before. It’s too big for us, it has no sympathy for us, what if it doesn’t accept our secrets, what if it swallows us instead before we’ve even had a chance? & once we left Dockyard there was nothing to see ahead but ocean, & I could only look ahead. I was tired fit to cry, but I was driving. Over the Rim Reef & Terrace Reef we went (according to the sketchy maps we’d glanced at on our phones before we sailed away from all the cell towers). Outside the reefs, the ocean rocked us & spat on us. The swells got bigger & grayer, the sky got grayer & thicker, the sun & ocean closed in on each other. Ethelberta’s pointy end climbed & dropped & climbed & dropped.

I worried Kenji might get seasick. I don’t think he knew his fingers dug into my hip. I called out, “OK, my Love?” but Baby didn’t reply. He gazed at the horizon with the wind pushing his black curls & slapping him in the face, with all the rage & darkness of his history, all his fragility & all that’s left of his life that he threw into his riskiest gamble ever: me.

Letting him down scares me more than anything.

Baby’s idea was to go to one of the downed airplanes or modern shipwrecks that “encircle the whole Island in waste & failure & buckling corpses” as he put it (sigh). My idea was to do it around Challenger Bank, an underwater mountain about 13 mi offshore. Its highest point is 50 m below, & it’s full of unexplored caves & sinkholes. Baby’s idea had to do with hiding in plain sight. My idea had to do with vanishing. The wrecks are only a few miles off Bermuda in just a couple m of water, shallow enough for scuba tourists. The mountain gets far fewer visitors, & none of them except the whales can go as deep as the water goes. I got Kenji to agree with me pretty easily. (Right now I think he’d agree if I said let’s buy a submersible.) I told him outright I don’t want him thinking about “waste & failure” & staring at airplane skeletons in the middle of the ocean with a power drill in his hand. & hey, who knows if we’ll get lucky with a sinkhole?

I didn’t talk about the sinkhole for chuckles, I’m too freaked out for chuckles, I feel like half of me just broke off like a piece of sandstone cliff, & I know the missing half isn’t just Martin, that’s the thing, it’s a piece of myself that’s turned into a shade, the piece that thought ya girl had it all figured out. Life in general, stuff like that. & Kenji’s right it hurts like a phantom limb, & I think Kenji has to be the one to do something about it, that’s just how it is. He could do something about it if he was himself, but Baby’s not himself, & if he’ll ever be himself again depends a lot on me—Kenji is everything now, he is everything—but maybe it doesn’t just depend on me, & what’d I just say about me anyway?! As I drove our little blue boat straight into nowhere, I worried like crazy about my wounded Love “dissolving in oceanic molecules,” going overboard by accident or on purpose. I clamped my arm around his waist & took up one-handed boat steering.

Ethelberta’s GPS thingy told us when the mountain was maybe underneath us kinda-sorta. I slowed the engines down. Baby put his nose in my hair, gathering strength, & then he started pulling away to get ready, but I held onto him. We’re not very good at the GPS thingy. We’re used to using Bermuda to navigate, but we couldn’t see Bermuda. Either cuz we’d gone too far or the gray in the water was seeping into the sky or the sun couldn’t stand to look at us no more. We were the only boat out there. I doubt even the whales were there.

& another problem. Kenji didn’t have to see my face to see the problem, he felt it in the way I held him without looking up. Or he’d seen it already in what I’d written, & he understood it cuz of what he’d written. He reached over & cut the engines. A gust of silence swept in. Without the reefs to calm them down, the waves sent our little boat swinging side to side.

Kenji said, “You don’t want to let her go. You think Aetna Simmons was the biggest adventure of your life. You think she took you out of yourself in a good way. I get it. But you got lots more to do, Nabi, OK?”

“You too, Kenji.”

“& I’ll love you like crazy all the way, just like you are, all complicated like that.”

He brushed my lips with his but quickly. We went to the pointy end where we’d put all our stuff. On one of the cushiony benches, we made a stack of phone books & wrapped it in duct tape.

This year’s phone book has a cover picture of the Arboretum. Baby & I looked at each other when we saw it. It cut into Kenji’s voice. His voice cut into the dirty-cotton clouds, the ocean’s splish-splosh as we swung:

“Aetna first. You get the rest.”

I kept him in tackle range while I got out a screwdriver. I got out her HD.

The HD of Aetna Simmons, the original. A small rectangle I’d wormed out of its laptop body. Silvery on one side, green on the other, 6.8 cm long & not even 1 cm tall. Kenji held it in his hand. “This is everything she did.”

Well, technically, it used to be. Till I erased it all with sanitizing software. Poor Kenji seemed to have forgotten that. I didn’t say nothing. He held the HD in both hands.

“Every death. Every becoming. This blunt thing. This rigid thing.” He sounded weak & sick. He stroked the HD. Just once. Maybe instead of aluminum & nickel phosphorus, my Love saw the dark shapeshifting ghost who threw herself into the ocean in his imagination when it ran off all harum-scarum. Maybe the look of agony on Kenji’s face was cuz he was at a crossroads, & in the dark in front of him was the decision to lose Aetna forever or join with her forever & lose everything else, & I in’t having none of that.

“Let me do it, my Love.”

“No, Nabi.”

Kenji duct-taped the HD to the stack of phone books. He put on a snorkel mask like I’d told him, he plugged the drill into Ethelberta’s outlet, he stood in front of the bench & used his knee to brace the phone books against Ethelberta’s hull, he pointed the drill at the HD. My Kenji. & no, this isn’t the proper way.

“Stay back, Nabi.”

I told myself I wouldn’t think about Python & shadows, the woman clutching our ad from the Yellow Pages, Kenji writing & writing.

“NABI?!!”

Like jumping up in the middle of the night, except the cry was my name too. I rushed to him, I slid my arms around him, Kenji holding a power drill like it was a pistol & shaking head to toe. I put my lips to his back, I put my hands over his. I squeezed, Kenji squeezed. The shrieking of the drill ripped thru both of us.

We drilled 10 holes in her HD platter & controller board. I don’t know if we meant 10 or it just happened. I had to tell Kenji to stop.

He didn’t want to stop. His voice was all torn up. “Get the others, Nabi.”

Aetna’s clone. Aetna’s RAM. The storage chips & SIM cards in our phones. HD from my laptop. HD from Kenji’s laptop. “Aetna Simmons’ Final Words,” Pauline’s phone number, Char’s phone number, Erik’s incriminating vmail: “Aetna Simmons” was all over our flat little silver boxes which looked almost just like hers. Like our hearts & lungs & nerves are almost just like hers. I held Kenji from behind & Kenji held the drill & the drill butchered everything we’d done. So I can never get it back, all those bits of code I wrote, all the notes I took on what I learned. Kenji’s archives from Harvard, the unfinished thoughts he never went back to, they won’t get to be anything now, Kenji’s unnamed confession, Kenji’s suicide letter to me. I begged him not to, I cried for the Harvard stuff & the unfinished things that never had a chance, but it was like my Kenji was consumed by our destructive frenzy. He didn’t say a word when I put the SIM card from his “business” phone under the drill with all our other ghosts & maybes. I wanted to save our laptops, what was left of them, I told him we could put new HDs in easily. But Kenji, oh, my Baby, he threw everything overboard, every last microchip. We weighted down each thing with bunches of teardrop-shaped bits of lead, fishing sinkers held on with duct tape. Kenji threw the things in all different directions, he threw them as hard as he could.

He threw hers last. The original. I imagined it sinking, sinking, sinking, & nothing about its body would help it stay afloat, sinking into a sinkhole that got too narrow as it sank, so the little box got stuck sinking in the sinkhole, more waste, another corpse. & Kenji watched it sink. He kept watching after it was gone.

He wouldn’t let me do any throwing. Baby said the worst was yet to come. He said I should save my strength for the worst. He refused to lie down after everything disappeared under the water, but he wasn’t doing well at all. He said, “Please Nabi, get us out of here.”

I tried to turn an exact about-face. Then I realized I should check the GPS thingy cuz the ocean’s got its own mind, the ocean could’ve spun us around without us knowing. I turned us so the GPS said we were heading sorta north. & mercy I have never been so relieved to see Bermuda in my life, I even said, “Kenji, look, it’s Bermuda!” even though none of us felt like talking. I saw Gibbs Hill Lighthouse 1st. Then lights in the houses along the shore, then Pompano Beach & the last bit of sunset in the sky. Kenji was at the wheel with me & then he wasn’t.

He was vomiting over the side. & the thing is boats don’t have brakes. Ethelberta took a century to stop.

It was like the ocean grabbed him by the throat & tried to yank him in. Worse than that, it was like the ghosts we thought we’d killed rose up out of the ocean & wanted to make Kenji one of them by ripping him out of himself & eating him. I hunkered down, gripped his shoulder, braced his forehead, “Baby, we’re safe.” & Kenji heaved, the darkening Atlantic all up in his face. We hung over the edge, half in the boat & almost in the water. I said, “Don’t give her any more of you. Don’t grieve for her, she doesn’t want it. & don’t be scared for her either, my Love. Forget her. That’s what she wants.” I tried to sound brave instead of hanging-off-a-building terrified, not thinking of how Martin didn’t come to the door, didn’t watch us drive away. I wanted to be solid instead of shrill, but I wasn’t, not when I said, “I in’t letting you go,” meaning get the Hell back in this boat or we’re both going over!

Kenji let me draw him back in. But mercy, he was crashing. He vomited in Ethelberta’s emergency bucket until he had nothing left, & still the sickness flogged his hidden parts. When it finally took a breather, we headed for the wheel, but on our way there Baby sat down hard on the floor without meaning to! I got him up again but barely, Ethelberta’s got these movable vinyl panels that can make the whole pointy end into a lounge bed, & Kenji collapsed there, Zohytin’s vengeful ghosts overwhelmed him from inside.

We lay face-to-face in the middle of the sea. We used our double-wide sleeping bag as a blanket. We couldn’t talk, I just stroked the back of Kenji’s neck. Ethelberta cradled us, the ocean rocked us not too gently, making a sucking sound against the boat. & no, there was nobody at the wheel. & what did I just say about the ocean’s mind? It’s stupid to not pay attention, people die from it, K & I know that better than anyone, but for once I felt like I was making the right choice about what to ignore. Night coming fast & cool. Our little Island sinking into darkness, shrinking to the size of the light from the lighthouse. The light reached for us & pulled away, passed over, slipped away, came back. I gave Baby a kiss & went & got one of our storm lanterns so I could look only at him. When I got back, Kenji had his hands over his face.

I let him mourn. I know what I said about not grieving is impossible. I kissed the creases in his face & didn’t make him tell me who his agony was for. An image of her hand & our Yellow Pages ad got into my head, just her hand & the torn-out page. Then the little yellow house & Martin’s face when he made us leave it. & those images stuck. I know they could get infected, I know how we’d feel if they got infected, I know cuz of Kenji’s nightmares & the Unfinished Church, & I clung to him & mourned. The lighthouse waved its filmy hankie in the sky & took it back.

Baby didn’t even twitch when I started the engines. Could’ve set a course for home, but something in me understood it’d be dangerous to stop, we couldn’t make ourselves try again if we gave up. & if we tried to do it at the apartment or marina, people would hear us or smell us & say something.

I know when my sweet genius envisioned this “operation,” he was thinking of Bermy’s more remote outlying islands, the kind that’re just rocks barely big enough to stand on. But the only one I could think of after Kenji fell so heavily asleep was this cute little place he & I enjoy on weekdays when nobody else bothers. I don’t know what its name is, it must have one, Bermudians name everything, but anyway instead of heading to Dockyard I took us under Watford Bridge, & there it was.

If we had the energy, we could cover the whole rock at a stroll in about 3 mins. It’s got a couple casurina trees, beautiful formations of black stone in the water, a little beachy semicircle nestled among the stones, cozy bit of seagrass easy to anchor in. That’s it. It was too dark to see any of that stuff when we got here.

I do see a resort when I look across the water to the main Island. So I mean, this place isn’t ideal. Any old so-so tourist could look across & see our little fire if we ever get around to it. You’re not supposed to light fires on the beaches, I hate it when I stumble on the stinky remnants of people’s charcoal. Anyway, when we got here, the sprawl of pink bungalows was just a sprinkling of sparkles in the dark. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. Knowing the resort was there made me feel something like loneliness.

I knew I wasn’t lonely. In the pointy end my lifelong love was running a fever. That meant he was fighting with every cell in his body, fending away the past, all for me. But watching Kenji fast asleep, the lights from the resort over his shoulder, quiet little sconce-lights that jumped into the water & wriggled toward us without reaching us, I felt a new kind of confusion, totally unfamiliar like something mythical, nightmarish—like an invisible monster pouncing on me from behind. I started worrying I’d passed on my existential crisis to Ethelberta! Ethelberta was built for pleasure & sunshine, not for covert missions of destruction, not for imaginary monsters that each of us tried to fend off all alone. Ethelberta was for me & Kenji to be comfy in together & no one else.

Sure I know what I gotta do, but it’s scary & I’m small & tired & hurting! I took one look at the 40-odd-lb anchor & knew I’d drop it if I tried to lift it by myself. Instead I slipped my legs under the sleeping bag with K, sitting up & leaning on Ethelberta’s padded backrest. The water lay flat like it had drifted off to sleep in the embrace of all the reefs & little islands that are Bermy. Kenji moved his head into my lap without waking. I turned down the lantern so it wouldn’t hurt his eyes, then I couldn’t see his face but my fingers found him by themselves. I was stroking his cheek when I realized that weird confusion wasn’t as sharp or pressing as I’d thought.

I opened my book. On the bench between the lantern & where we rested in shadow.

The last thing in my book was “Existential Crisis 101.” So I started with “How Not To Get A Power Drill In Bermuda” aka that very morning. Which is yesterday morning now.

I wrote all night. I wrote thru dawn. I kept an eye on the resort, the bridge, the black stones in the water easing out of the dark. If the boat drifted too far from the island or too close to the stones, I got up & moved it to a safe spot over the seagrass. Then I wrote some more.

It was weird, I was sleepy, but I didn’t seem to get any sleepier. I didn’t want to write what I was writing, I even cried some of the time (like when I wrote that K said, “Can we…I mean, I guess, can I…”), but I couldn’t stop writing & knew I shouldn’t. Baby woke each time I moved, but he was dangerously tired, exhausted in every way, I just had to say “We’re OK” & he drifted off again. Like we’re home right where we are. We’re not home, we don’t have food or different clothes or anything. Sometime I got up to pull Ethelberta’s sunshade over the pointy end. When I sat down, K said, “I’m real sorry about this, Nabi.”

He lay on his belly, I rubbed his back. “Rest, my Love, don’t worry.”

“What’re you writing?”

Baby knows I can’t be trusted when it comes to my book. I’m addicted to my book, I write stuff that can’t be read.

I said, “Martin. You know.”

K & I looked at each other for a while. He took my hand. The one that wasn’t writing “see his love & soak it up…that strength of his, the courage to go on…”

“Take as long as you want, OK?” He meant it, he knows what writing is. But I can’t make Kenji wait for us like that no more. He closed his eyes & a line showed up, left of his nose. That line means a headache, I brought Tylenol & water, but he shook his head. I rubbed his back until he slept.

Then I scrawled for both of us. Cuz of what we’d come out here to do.

I wrote all day. A day & night of writing!

Kenji sat up slowly when the sun was almost gone. He was dizzy, he didn’t think we could lift the anchor either, even with the 2 of us. If we weren’t pooped we would’ve laughed at all the moaning & groaning we did just to get into our bathing suits. We tied Ethelberta to a sticking-out bit in a stone formation in the water. Our knot was pathetic, our arms were too tired. & we still had to wade onto the beach, hauling charcoal on our shoulders to keep it out of the sea.

I told Kenji he could help carry the charcoal only if he let me set it up, gather sticks, & deal with starter fluid by myself. Poor Baby had to agree, he sank down on the sand, I could tell he ached all over, he looked like part of him was having trouble waking up. So I built our “funeral pyre.”

After that, I was too shaky to get a match going. Kenji had to do it. Kenji lit the fire. Then he held me in his arms. We watched the smoking pile of sticks.

Kenji said, “I’ll do it for you if you want.”

I wanted to say no, I should be the one to do it.

But this will be a break, & I am brittle, & I’ve learned to feel it. I shrank against my Baby.

“Together?” I said. What a wimp.

“OK,” said Kenji softly.

“Only way I can get thru this is if you’re here & now with me.” & yeah, I said that already. Won’t be the last time either.

“I’m here, Nikkou.” My Love.

So with his knee touching my knee, Kenji’s hand in one of mine, I opened my book in my lap. I found the page where she showed up with our Yellow Pages ad.

“OK but 1st you have to kiss me, kiss me so it’ll be all we remember,” I blurted out.

I’d wrapped him in a beach blanket. Kenji wrapped me in it too & looked at me with love & sorrow. & then he closed his eyes.

His breath, his love & sorrow, the warmth in his body filled up the whole moment. I could hear his heart or maybe it was my heart or the rhythm of the tide all around us, all I want is more of it. I nearly cried when Kenji drew back hesitantly, & it had been some time already, I know cuz the fire had grown up & become light. It got into his eyes & revealed the deep young star that was quickening his breath.

I tore the page out of my book. Kenji took it from my hand before I could change my mind. He said, “Don’t look, Nikkou.”

He put it on the fire. A piece of my book. Straight out of its delicate insides.

The shadows are hungry, the shadows are burning: Seabird, “Aetna Simmons,” nights in shadows with dark wings. The smoke is making Kenji sick, he keeps clearing his throat & swallowing. But he won’t take his eyes off the fire except now & then to peek at me. Like he’s forcing himself to look at the fire, like it’s punishment.

I peek at the boat. If one or the other of us falls asleep, neither gonna be fast enough to catch Ethelberta if the tide comes up too strong & sudden. Soon as we left Harbour Road, we were marooned, that’s one way to see it, but I can’t look at it that way. This acegirl gotta make sure we’re fast enough for Ethelberta cuz I’m the fraidy cat who’s gotta be the harbor now. That’s why I wrote all day & night. I’m having trouble stopping, I’m too used to my book, I write stuff as it’s happening just cuz I can’t stop. So it’s no “document,” it’s not a memory, it won’t survive. That means my book isn’t a book anymore, it’s something else now. A shadow on the sand? A reflection in water?

“You doing OK, Baby?” (A little while ago.)

Kenji shook his head. “Don’t look, Nikkou.” He put another couple pages on the fire. Stuff to do with bank-hacking & HD shredders. Kenji takes what I’ve done & feeds it to the fire. & it hurts like heartburn: what happens in our chests when we don’t get enough to eat. At one point Kenji put some bits of my book on the fire, then he crawled to the ocean & vomited. I went to him & brought him back to the fire.

My Love’s face is the scene of the battle between Hell & Heaven. The night & firelight & shadows thrown out by the firelight attack each other, leaping, crashing, & falling right there on Kenji’s face & inside him.

“Lean on me, my Love, come on.”

“When you’re done writing.” Baby turned aside to cough. & I realized I’m doing it again, fiddle-faddling!! But the limbo is death & always was. Focus, acegirl. Make it true, what you said to him: We’re safe! True so Kenji believes it.

I tore out some more pages. “All right, Baby, let’s do this.”

Kenji took the pages. He read by firelight. “You sure? This stuff’s from years ago. We only need to burn stuff that mentions—”

“I think we should do it all. It makes things look one-sided when they weren’t.”

Shadow & gleam fight over Kenji. History & future, breath & time, fire & water.

I rubbed his shoulder. “Just get me a new book, Baby, get us matching ones.”

I tore out the pages with Martin & the drill. Kenji read them twice, I think. He cleared his throat a couple times. Then something occurred to me.

“Let me do those ones, Baby.”

I took the pages back, I took them to the flames with my own hands.

I groped for Kenji’s hands. Kenji put his arms around me. I kissed him where the light fell on his face, I kissed him where the shadows fell down into him. We watched pages become ruins become ashes, then they weren’t there anymore. How do we build a harbor out of ashes?

Kenji whispered, “The crew of the Ethelberta.”

He said it like he’d never seen that phrase before, like he didn’t write it himself. Baby was the 1st to write it, I just shared it, but he looked at what’s left of my book like he’d forgotten! (This was a couple mins ago, the past comes on so quickly!)

“I like that,” said Kenji.

Me (no more crying, acegirl): “Somebody should see about the anchor in that case, innit.”

The faint sound Kenji made was laughter or the opposite. I’ve been extra attentive to sounds ever since. All kinds of sounds, water against the boat, water against the beach, fire against the air. & nobody stood up to get the anchor. We kissed while I tore out the page Kenji was looking at.

“Don’t look, my Love.”

“You neither, Nabi.” Kenji put the paper on the fire, & then I turned him from the fire, we kissed & sank into the breath passing between us.

The leather cover of my book won’t burn. That’s why we’re ripping pages out a couple at a time. Nobody feels like looking for the emergency knife we feel sure Ethelberta has. The whole crew is too emotional to remember where we keep it. So we can’t cut the binding or slash all the pages out at once. & anyway it’s too painful to think about being violent with my book, worse than trying to do it gently. Baby & I didn’t have to talk about that to agree on it. I have a feeling something will happen to my book’s black mask & red ribbons while I’m driving Ethelberta home.

Kenji curled up on his side on the sand. He laid his head down on my knee.

“Hear the whistling frogs, Baby?” I caressed his complex cloud of curls.

“I hear you. I see you, Nikkou, everywhere. Don’t let me fall asleep.”

My book will notice one more thing. Then it’s going to stop, & I’ll just take care of Kenji. In the dark & in the light.

Maybe it’s cuz of the water or the frogs, but I notice that the pages make a weird sound when they burn. It’s almost like no sound at all.