“It’s just Zhang now.” Zhang smiled. “You want to start putting the books into groups so we can see how much space each genre will take up?”
Vienna saluted happily and made her way toward the mass of stacked boxes. Malik shrugged as they watched her dig through the first pile. “She thinks it’ll do more damage if I hide or avoid things,” he said. “She’d rather know she’s forgotten something, for as long as she can remember she’s forgotten it, than not.”
“SO HOW WAS SHE?” AHMADI ASKED AS SHE WENT OVER TO her small table, where a squat paper bag sat in the center. Zhang had knocked on her door next to his after dinner, to tell her Vienna had come to volunteer at the library that day.
“Just like herself.” He smiled. “I think Malik was happy too, to see her like that again.” He felt better than he had in a long time. “Today was a good day.”
“It was,” Ahmadi said. She held up the bag. Something liquid sloshed against a jar inside. “Guess what I learned New Orleans has today.”
“Is that alcohol?” Zhang’s mouth tingled. “Honest to God real alcohol?”
She nodded. “Moonshine. One of the wall guards makes it.”
“Promote him immediately,” Zhang said as he jumped up to retrieve a cup from the other side of the room.
“Taste it first,” Ahmadi warned. She pulled the bottle out of its paper bag. “The only thing that’s the same is the name.”
“As long as it gets the job done.” He grinned. There was only one chair in the room and then the bed, so they sat down cross-legged on the floor facing each other next to the lantern, and Ahmadi poured him half the liquor. They clinked the cup and bottle together and went for it.
“Oh, God, it’s disgusting,” Zhang sputtered, laughing. “It’s like gasoline!”
“If only we didn’t remember what the real stuff tasted like.” She took another swig and coughed.
Zhang tried a second sip and coughed again, too. He drank more anyway. That warm, floating feeling he’d almost forgotten prickled at the edges of his brain. Not enough by far, but at least it was there at all. It made him remember how it was supposed to feel. He told her about his day at the library, and Ahmadi told him about her day on the wall. She was smiling more. They finished the whole bottle, still coughing with every swig.
“You’re right,” she finally said. She held up her empty jar and studied it. “New Orleans needs a new moonshine maker.”
“Do you know how?” Zhang asked.
“No.” She shrugged. “Only archery.” Her eyes unfocused a little, gazing through the wall of their house, somewhere much farther. They glimmered softly in the light of the lantern. “I miss Tehran.”
I miss Arlington, Zhang thought. Did he actually, anymore? “I miss Portland,” he said instead, but it wasn’t really true either. I miss Elk Cliffs. That was true. Max. Paul. Imanuel.
“It’s strange to finally know you,” Ahmadi said.
“What?”
“I mean, in person.” She smiled to herself. “Paul used to tell all of us so many stories about the two of you as kids or teenagers. His way of remembering you. Prom. The first car you wrecked. When you both got caught toilet-papering your science teacher’s house.”
For a moment, the ghost of the Red King had been there, but Ahmadi’s smile, her laughter, was chasing it away. She knew only the old Paul, the blustering teddy bear with a temper that was all bark and no bite. Something deep inside healed over, a little bit.
“Am I not how Paul made me seem, now that you’ve met me?” he asked.
“No—the opposite.” Ahmadi paused. She seemed as if she’d just admitted something she’d wanted to say but hadn’t meant to. She smiled again, nervously this time. “This is going to sound weird, but after all the time I had with Paul, all the stories, when you finally found us . . . It almost felt more like you’d returned again rather than just arrived for the first time.” She risked a look at him. “It felt like you’d come back home.”
Maybe it was the alcohol, he told himself as he watched her in the dim glow of the firelight. But it wasn’t. The stuff had been so weak it was barely more than dishwater. There was no clouded, dull wonder as he leaned closer to her in the small room. Only a focusing, as if everything around them became sharper, and time slowed down. He could feel the exact contours of her through the air from two feet away, as if she cast waves of pressure in the shape of her form. Sound contracted. Ahmadi had stopped talking, staring frozen at the point of his Adam’s apple.
She’s so short, Zhang thought. His skin tingled. He had never realized how short she was. Even crouching, he had to bend gently at the shoulders to reach her.