24 September, 2050
Roxie took out the large, marinated roll of beef steak from the fridge and cut along the length into smaller rolls.
The Kryjowka, the Polish eatery where she secured a part-time job last night. The drill was mouth-watering. Knead the dumplings. Fry the cabbage. Color code the salad. Shape a big ball of beef into dinner.
Ida the owner-chef. A tester. A teaser. Roxie could take it.
She stuffed the rolls and laid a batch in the pan.
Snippets of the morning's conversation sneaked through a cloud of savory lemon mist. Shimmer, bubble, fry.
The Fairy Rock mood had dissipated by breakfast. Brian’s doleful eyes with happy crinkles kept her from turning her angst on to their host. She wanted to slap him, punch him, question him. He had laid the red carpet first then swept it from under her feet. The ground had turned to quartz salt before it could be shaped into a brick.
Picking through the omelette, Harry had picked the signals she was holding something back. He stayed aloof and himself looked like he had something to hide, which of course he had. He paid her upfront for her promise to keep Brian company and cook up a froth. She played along and left a half full pressure-cooker pot of meaty soup on the stove tame for the master.
She set about cutting the veggies for goulash in wait for the beef to go gold.
The pressure was on, though pleasant. Ida had berated the spiaca mysz - her name for the lazy cook - and fired him after tasting the first golabki of her new recruit’s hands. “You may have a shade of Goa in your fingers," she said to Roxie, "but you'll drive up traffic.”
With no other help but an old Armenian lady who cleaned and sent out the orders, Roxie knew Ida would juice out her bones before parting with precious money.
She set about with more zest, swatting away the morning's lingering buzz like flies above the fruit. The kitchen was spacious enough, the breeze rolling in from the sea keeping it cool. She had nice widths of work space on both sides of the stoves and on the central island.
What on earth was a boy doing without ID documentation of whatever kind in his nest? Kept them strapped on his person all the time, like she had to? What about the cheap Acer? Broken? Not charged? A relic of better times? Her suspicions hung the same as last night, not deepened, nor lightened.
The meat in the pan sizzled. She turned the rolls. One had taken a browner aspect than the luscious gold. She dipped her spatula, and lifted the roll onto Ida's plate, covered that up. Took a knife to the kielbasa for the rice.
All she'd found were medical records of one Brian Lutwidge Dodgson of Greenwood, Arkansas. Other than that: one old, torn, dog-earned notebook, spineless, no cover back or front. A woman's pretty, pencilled filigree.To the last curling page, it was scribbled through with a sense of haste when thoughts fly by with a train’s speed and the station master stares after. Try as she might, Harry's phone gave too weak a flashlight to read the light graphite mark.
And that mysterious file. Blue. Sealed. A nonsense phrase jotted down on a scrap affixed to the front. What the hell was a Mandrel Theist? She wouldn't wanna be found out by breaking the seal so no bone there. Instead, she had carefully put back the phone outside, right how she'd found it, then back to a restless sleep. She had heard the rustle outside of the boy's return from his secret tryst.
She willed her hand to rescue the rolls in time, saute the stew, and stir the sausage into the rice.
Even the lively bustle of the busy eatery out front couldn't cause a dent to her inward mood. But at last it did. The bustle had turned into a commotion of sorts.
She lowered the flames under the pans and floated through the flavor-drenched kitchen air to the hatchless opening in the wall adjoining the serving area.
A lot of people were crowding a spot between two tables. Ida, propped with an elbow on the service deck, flicked an eyebrow back at her. Roxie would've turned back, but just then the crowd parted and a young, large African American man turned around to yell:
“My brother is down. I dunno what happened. Can anyone help?”
She knew him!
Instinctively, she drew back from the open hatch, out of view of the area.
The reason she'd wiggled her way into the old chef's purview was that she was safely tucked inside the kitchen; she wouldn't be required to go out. The eatery itself was in a dead-end alley, just where the streets of Eagle Haunt gave in to the inundated beach. The commercial block in turn was safely hidden in the most rundown part of the old Estero Village, now even less populated than before due to half-year long tidal flooding just a few meters down.
She had confirmed last night that the places still occupied in this area were all locally owned. Moreover, the price plunges meant the realtor sharks would leave the region alone for now.
All that was fine, but a human life out there could be fighting to draw its last breath as she hid. She was put to shame.
If she went outside, the large young man would instantly recognized her. On her first night in Florida, she had misjudged the distance to Cockroach Colony and got off the bus early. Feeling quite lost, she had followed a nice looking, buxom lady into the streets. Anxious and uncertain of the strange surroundings, she mindlessly strolled behind the woman hoping to stumble on a shelter. The lady, however, yelled at her upon reaching the hood and called Roxie a mugger.
He was one of two local men who rudely walked her back out to the stop, telling her never to return.
There was more commotion out front now. No one among the local workers, fishrmen, sailors, rehabilitation crew and other regular patronage seemed to know how to respond to the call for help. She flew to the stove and turned off the gas knobs.
She had heard the words heart attack two times now.
For a fleeting second her conscience tussled with her instinct of self-preservation. Was she really gonna let a boy slip into the land of the dead for a fleeting chance that somebody out there might recognize her, act malevolently? What about a comeuppance from the skies? Weirdly, she still believed in those.
She rushed outside.
Recognition flashed on the man's face as she pushed people away to reach him. Shock followed seconds later as she lost no seconds announcing:
“I know CPR.”
***
The Calvary Brothers had entered the old Polish joint a while ago and ordered pork perogies. Rumi, a wiry seventeen-year-old with lopsided rimless glasses holding onto his ears, was jittery from the get go. The kid talked incessantly and his voice gained intensity as the perogies were gobbled up and beer columns went down in the tumblers.
“I mean, what kinda brother are you? I'll go tell Rose. This very hour, Jibran. Ima leave and go knock her door.”
“You wouldn't do anything stupid. I can't be more clear.” Jibran's voice had a suppressed threat in it.
“You got me shackled, man.” Rumi lifted up both his hands, fisted and shook them under Jibran's nose. His arms trembled even when he stopped shaking his hands.
“You see the hankuffs? Na, why would you? I see them, Jib. And I hear them.”
The boy laughed hysterically as he pretended to jingle the chain between the cuffs.
“Cut it out, man. You're making a show-”
“Your homies made the show. They're circling above the roof right now with their talons, planning their kill as we eat.”
“You're being a ninny, Rooms; it's not like that,” Jibran said dismissively. “All you gotta do is find Tea Brew, punch him real hard and call Brie on him. Play detective and you're done your part.” He had the calm assurance of a man who runs a crack ring on the side for all his legal life, which he had. He had warned and trained and toughened up Rooms well before the kid began saving up for college in earnest. Or so he had thought.
“Tebs is my childhood friend!” Rumi still called Tea Brew with a middle-school endearment.
“Not anymore. Not since he stabbed us in the back with his disappearing act.”
“We stabbed him first, Jib. Barlow jumped the bridge not a month ago. He couldn't take the cramps and the freaky bug-crawling anymore!” Rumi's eyes bulged out of their sockets with the stress of his emphasis.
“Look,” Jibran spoke kindly, “Tebs may have failed controlling his lil bro. But I certainly can. I'll take care of this for you. That okay?”
“Not okay. Can't you see? I can't take this anymore! When is this all gonna go away?” The stress had gotten to Rumi at last. His voice had a higher pitch and he was crying in earnest. Other patrons threw them a few glances. The crone in charge, Ida, lodged herself by the donation jar and fixed them a witch's gaze.
“Just calm down, Rooms. Finish your food, then le’s go. I'll get ya few more days out of Brie.” Jibran's voice was reassuring but it didn't ease Rumi's nerves.
“How can you understand? I haven't even finished Harry Potter yet, Jib! You are … Denzel! And I'm a nerdy … Urkel! You can go be Maverick all you want, while I? I'm the wet-haired, unmarried version of Goose, man, without Aviators! I mean, I've never even gone third base, ever, man!”
After this splurge of his frustrations, Rumi lost some steam. “Why should I try? If this’ how it was supposed to be, let’em kill me. Let'em come and get me! Be done with it!” His facial features were now twisted into a bunch in the middle and he was pulling his hair at both his temples.
“Rumi! Rumi! Just listen to me, bud!” Jibran began but Rumi got up with a sudden grating of his chair against the floor, with a scowl on his face.
“Don't you buddy me, you piece of gunk. You're the one who got me into this mess!”
With that, Rumi lunged at his brother across the tabletop. But the bigger man responded with an eagle's reflex and pulled on his arms, yanking him away from the food.
The kid buckled on his knees and clutched his heart, a stab of pain shooting across his face. Ready to fight a second ago, he now desperately hung on to Jibran, eyes popping out of his head.
“What's happening to me?” he wailed. “Am I dying already? Tell me, I ain't!”
Jibran tried to calm him down, help him, only he didn't know how. Clumsily, he tried to pin down the frantically moving limbs of the kid. At last laying him on the floor, he noticed the gawkers and stood up to yell for help.
Deafness was in the air. Everybody knew better not to get involved with this stuff, though they stood and gawked. The kid had screamed that statement about letting 'em kill him.
At last, he began to attempt CPR, though he didn't know the abc of it. Just ineptly copying movements he must have seen done on TV.
That's when she appeared like an angel. There was a flash of confused recognition in Jibran's eyes before he heard her say:
“I know CPR.”