“Oh, Duncan dear, it wasn’t in your power to prevent. You know your father never would have valued your opinion.” Is Ripple actually crying? “I mean—err—”
“No, yeah, you’re right. That’s the way I’ve got to think about it. They were murdered, basically.”
“Then why aren’t you trying to assassinate Sharkey?”
“Like I said, I killed before. I’m never doing that again.”
The opposite ethos from Sharkey’s. Or maybe just Ripple’s lazy way of feeling superior to more decisive men. Swanny feels a surge of annoyance: who is Ripple to be playing the innocent victim all of a sudden? He wasn’t exactly sympathetic when her mother met a grisly end. At least she was super old. “Perhaps you’re just a coward.”
“I dunno, maybe.”
But that knife cuts both ways. Swanny perches on the edge of the bed, looks down at her pale hands folded in her lap. She speaks as if the accusation has come from him rather than her own mind: “So is that what you think of me? That I’m a coward?”
“No.”
“I tried to murder him, you know. I even fired a shot. But in the end I just…couldn’t.”
Sharkey is downstairs, in his den; if a trapdoor opened beneath her now, she would tumble into his arms. It would be so easy. You want to, and you’re used to getting what you want. But is this what she wants—to spend her days slinking around the shop like a wounded cat, frequently unwashed and smelling of sex, molasses, and dry toast, which is all she’s been bothering to keep down lately? Staring into books and seeing only the surfaces of words, the serifs and kerning, and bored, so bored, but too foggy and languid to do anything about it? She loves the release, her fingers on the keys of the klangflugel, her nails on Sharkey’s hairy back, but nothing can release her from the inexorable pull of time. Chaw may not kill, but it exchanges one’s present for specters of the past. It chews one up from the inside.
She shuts her eyes.
Ripple sits down beside her on the mattress. “Wake up. That just means you’re a good person. Better than me, anyway.”
“It means I’m a failure.”
“You’re not a failure, Swanny. Trust me, seriously.”
“What am I, then?”
“You’re a Dahlberg.” To be a Dahlberg—it’s something quite refined. “You used to be really into that.”
The vows, the marzipan roses at the reception, the yeti sex that followed. Swanny had hated Ripple then—had believed she would always hate him. But now they’ve lost so much. Must they lose each other too? “I suppose I’m also a Ripple.”
“Yeah, but look on the bright side.”
She takes his hand in both of hers. It’s loathsome with germs and soot, scraped raw from asphalt and bricks. She holds on. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m going to die,” she says.
“Chillax. You’re probably just super high.”
“No, I’m quite serious. I’ve seen the X-rays. My teeth…”
“What, like cavities?”
“It may be incurable. I’ve heard conflicting reports. You may be putting a lot of capital into a short-term investment. Wouldn’t you rather reunite with Abigail? She seems as healthy as a horse.”
“She was my first love, but you’re my wife.”
Swanny stiffens; she would have preferred for him to characterize the girl as a “meaningless fling” or perhaps “a regrettable misjudgment never to be repeated.” Some frost returns to her voice: “I don’t see what difference that could possibly make.”
“I remember some fine print about ‘till death do us part.’?”
“I’m not certain that either of us read that document very closely.”
“Maybe not, but we signed it. It’s binding.”
“It isn’t your duty to ‘save’ me, Duncan.” Although Swanny does seem to recall a stipulation about unconditional support through drug rehabilitation in the emotional non-abandonment clause. Her mother planned for every contingency during those negotiations. When it comes to ink on paper, it’s either there or it’s not. “Even if it is—I absolve you of it. I’m neither your property nor your responsibility, regardless of what some piece of paper states. Obligation is a peculiarly nasty way of making sense of one’s relationships.”
“I know. I’m just trying to trick you into taking me back.”
He’s never sounded so sincere. “Why couldn’t you have behaved this way before it was too late?” she asks.
“Just stupid, I guess.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Swanny, come on. Please. Swanny.” His forehead scrunches, as it did that first night, when he struggled to sound out the words printed in her book. But this time it’s her heart he’s trying to read. You strange, otherworldly thing. “Lemme love you.”
Close enough. Swanny kisses him. He tastes of water, of air, of nothing at all, and she realizes how strongly she’s flavored herself with the chaw, but he doesn’t pull away. Did they even kiss before? If they did, she’s happy to forget it. This is the first, the only time that matters. The clock starts now.
She gasps, yanks herself away from him. They’re not alone.
“Swanny? What—” Panicked, Ripple scans the room. But he doesn’t see what she sees.
“Oh,” she says, “oh no, no, no…”
“Damsel, hey damsel, it’s OK. What is it? Did you hear something?”
Swanny points with a single trembling finger. Across the attic, atop the trapdoor, stand Grub and Morsel, glowing in translucent grayscale.
“Maybe you’re hallu—”
“Be quiet, I don’t want to frighten them.”
“We’re not scared,” says Grub.
“We’ve been here the whole time,” says Morsel. “But we was hiding.”
“Better than we did last time.”
“We sure learned our lesson last time.”
“You poor children, you must hate me,” Swanny murmurs.
“What for?”
“You didn’t wring our li’l necks.”
“That was Sharkey!”
“But I placed you in the way of danger. I never should have attempted…”
“Every fem in this city is bonkers,” Ripple observes. Swanny shushes him.
“We’re not mad,” says Morsel. “We got something to tell you.”
“We know the Way Out,” Grub supplies.
“That’s very kind of you, but my husband and I”—she tries to put it as delicately as possible—“we’re looking for a different route than the one you took.”
“No, we don’t mean you gotta die!”
“Honest we don’t!”
“I’m listening,” says Swanny, cautiously.
“You gotta talk to Duluth. Tell him Sharkey killed us.”
“Show him proof.”
“Show him the slingshot.”
“It’s still in the shop.”
“If he knows that Sharkey killed us, he’ll get real mad. So mad that he’ll—”
“—that he’ll show you the way to the limo. The way to Sharkey’s Magic Garage.”
“The Way Out!”
Swanny scrutinizes the kindlings for a hint of the sinister, but they’re still as scruffy and adorable as ever, even as disembodied spirits. “Pardon me if this sounds suspicious—I don’t mean to question your motives—but how do the two of you stand to benefit from all this?”
“We don’t.”
“We’re dead.”
“But we’re s’posed to help you.”
“Duluth said.”
“And at least this way he won’t look for us every day.”
“He looks everyplace.”
“It makes us sad!”
“Because he’s not gonna find us.”