“Swanny, wait up, seriously. Do you know how to tell if a rat bite’s infected or not?”
The meat locker where Duluth lives is way out near Nick’s, in a patch of Torchtown with no buildings left standing. Swanny steps over the broken bricks and charred cinder blocks into what remains of the butcher’s basement: a concrete depression with a steel chamber occupying one-third. The deep freeze. She knocks at the entrance, two quick raps. If he doesn’t answer, she’ll—what? Turn around and go right back to the Chaw Shop?
But he does, the door opening with a refrigerator’s suction smack so immediately it startles her. She sees the disappointment in his eyes and understands why. He thought the twins had come home.
“I have horrible news,” she says. “May we step inside?”
* * *
“OK, keys, check, address, check.” Moments earlier, the two of them watched Duluth, that mountain of a man, quake and crumble, mere words bringing more harm to him than blows ever could, his boys’ names shifting the earth from beneath his feet until he could not stand. Swanny had expected a towering rage, threats of revenge, but instead Duluth could barely muster the energy to locate his keys before reclining with the side of his face pressed to the cold concrete floor. Swanny has become a destroyer of worlds; she detonated a human’s hopes and life and family with a single sentence. But if Ripple’s disturbed by the spectacle of grief they just witnessed, he’s decided not to show it. “Let’s get this show on the road. Swanny?”
“You go ahead. I forgot something back at the shop.”
“You’re going back there?!”
“I’ll be two minutes, Duncan, there’s no cause for hysterics.”
“Um, not to question your judgment, fem, but you’re wandering into serious jump-scare territory. What’re you going to do if your psychotic sexmonger’s there?”
“I’ll tell him I was running an errand. And then I’ll promptly leave again at the earliest opportunity.”
“What’s going on? Have you changed your mind?”
“No—no, of course not.”
He scrutinizes her. “Look, I want to tell you something, but I don’t want to piss you off.”
“What?”
“When I crashed my HowFly in that garbage dump—you know, Hoover Island, where I met Abby—I didn’t totally want to get rescued, you know? I was like, I’m getting a tan, I’m banging this fem (sorry)…it’s all good, basically. Then Osmond swooped down in his HowLux, and boom, everything got fucked again.”
“How is this supposed to comfort me, exactly?”
“Because I’m glad he showed up.”
“Why?”
“Because I was lost.”
“Thank you, Duncan. You have an uncanny ability to condescend and allude to your infidelity simultaneously.”
“Swanny, hey, where are you going?”
“I told you, I’ll meet you at the garage.”
“How long should I wait?”
She doesn’t turn around: “As long as you like.”
Back on Scullery Lane, Swanny lets herself into the building, avoids the squeaky floorboard in the entryway, tilts her head to listen. But Sharkey isn’t here. She’d be able to sense him if he were. She waits for a full minute, as still as a statue. If he walks in right now, what then? She could behave as if nothing has happened, reply airily and tranquilly to his queries, sit down to a late breakfast in the kitchen and ask him to read her the choicest passages from SLAKELESS over toast and tea—he reads her the loveliest poetry sometimes (“Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made / For kissing, lady, not for such contempt”). She could stay all afternoon. She could stay another night, another morning, stay until Duluth rallies enough to take his revenge or the dragons get them all. She could stay until Sharkey’s pull on her weakens and this terrible feeling passes and she doesn’t need him anymore. Don’t you trust me?
She doesn’t trust herself.
Swanny inhales sharply; her knees give, as if she’s awakened poised on a precipice. It’s been hours since she last chewed: her eyes burn, her jaw aches. She checks her watch, but it stopped weeks ago. The time is now. Swanny scales the stairs two at a time and patters back down carrying her klangflugel in its case. She goes out through the kitchen window, down the fire escape, and out the back alley.
Instrument in hand, she walks as briskly as she’s able, but it still takes her nearly ten minutes to reach Sikes Way, another desolate lane near the southern Outer Wall. Normally, she never would notice the garage; it’s a ramshackle structure crammed between two gutted storefronts, its red siding streaked with soot, its steel shutter door rolled down and marked with unreadable squiggles of graffiti and, of course, the omnipresent leggy snake. But today, something sets it apart.
Sharkey is waiting for her there.
He leans against the jamb, you couldn’t say surprised. Sinister sorrowsworn deathlord, guardian of the underworld. He wasn’t wearing his top hat when he left this morning, but he certainly is now.
“If you ever come back, I’ll kill you.”
Swanny can’t stop her voice from quavering: “I know.”
“Good.” He spits on the ground. Walks away.
* * *
Sharkey walks alone. Sparkers and cocottes clear the sidewalk when they see him coming. Nobody bumps into him on the street, nobody meets his eye. Nobodies. And who’s their king? Sharkey is, with only God upstairs to judge him. He used to like it this way. He considered his solitude a privilege, a sign of respect. Fear was a tool he could use. Loyalty, friendship, love—those were crutches that left you crippled when they fell away, and they always did. Or so he thought.
Turns out he was right.
I can’t live without you, she told him once—not so romantic, if you think about it. Desire without alternatives isn’t passion, it’s weakness. But Sharkey makes his living off the weakness of others. He understands how deals are made. A deposed baroness is better than none at all. Swanny was worth more to him damaged, orphaned, addicted, with the lack he opened at her core. If you want to keep a swan in your pond, you have to break its wing with a croquet mallet; he read all about it in Lifestyles of the Ostentatious. She needed him, his chaw, his protection, even his touch: he made sure of that.
He tasted her blood. He took her past death and back again. Every pleasure he gave her was richer than life itself. But that wasn’t enough. Not for her.
He had her, but he did not keep her long.
I can’t live without you. Not so flattering, if you think about it, and it wasn’t even true. Yet he’d kill to hear her say it, just one more time. It’s him who’s saying it now, over and over. I can’t, I can’t. He can see the future, but it doesn’t matter anymore. She’s already gone.