“C’mon, Uncle Osmond. I thought we were buds.”
“I will not be swayed. This behavior is despicable and unsanitary. If your parents weren’t so inexplicably eager for your return, I would airlift you to a pediatrician at once to make sure you’ve had the necessary vaccinations.”
“I like her, though.”
“That’s the infection talking. In my youth, we called syphilitic lunacy ‘the beer goggles of the damned.’?”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? I’ve been banging her nonstop for a week plus. I can’t just throw her out the window like a Voltage can. Besides, she’s got…skills. It’d be wasteful.”
“And what of your upcoming nuptials?”
“Fuck. Is that next week?”
“The day after tomorrow. Your bride arrives tomorrow night.”
Osmond adjusts the acceleration knob. Below them, in the Heights to the north of Empire Island, the Ripple estate is coming into view. More fortress than mansion, it stands six stories high and a city block square, with battlements ringing the roof’s Astroturf landing pad and the terrace around the fifth floor. Despite the late hour, many of the windows are alight and glowing, with shadows passing by the curtains: night sweepers thumping pillows, dust-sucking the furniture, polishing mirrors for a new day. Osmond taps a panel in the dashboard, radioing in their coordinates. “No, I don’t foresee any potential impediments at all to your long-term happiness.”
* * *
When Ripple arrives home, he finds his mother anxiously waiting for him on the roof in her feathered lingerie with two butlers, a maid, a first-aid kit, and his apehound Hooligan straining on a leash. Ripple hesitates on the ramp, wishing he were dressed, wishing he were showered, wishing he didn’t have quite so many of Abby’s claw marks on his back. Beneath them, the city’s whole skyline darkly slumbers—above it, the dragons blot out the stars. Beside him, his uncle Osmond chortles.
“How good to be home.” Osmond raises his arms in a two-handed victory salute. Duncan brushes some coffee grounds off his knee and clears his throat.
There is an art to disappointing one’s parents. It helps if one does not disappoint already low expectations. It helps if one does something for which there is a name, because no one likes to be both disappointed and confused. It helps, most of all, if one can explain what one has done, preferably without profanity and while fully clothed. Ripple realizes that he’s screwed. Fortunately for him, his father stays downstairs.
Katya doesn’t speak as she cleans the gash on his arm with stinging disinfectant, seals it shut with liquid stitches, and rewraps it in a roll of gauze. She puts pressure on the bone and frowns when he winces, then takes his hand and looks closely at his fingers.
“Your nails,” she says sadly.
She’s right: they’re ragged and disgusting, gray-black underneath. For just a moment, Ripple wishes he could transform into another sort of animal, preferably one without hands. Hooligan licks his face.
It takes two hours to coax Abby off the HowLux. It’s a Sin Bun, stuffed with Insomnisnacks from the first-aid kit, that finally does it. Ripple feeds it to her, crumb by gelatinous crumb, until her wild blue eyes turn heavy-lidded and drooping and her whimpers grow infrequent and she loosens her grip on the corpse of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which she’s clutching to her bosom like something precious. Then he picks her up, and to his surprise she clings to him, a drugged and flea-bitten marsupial, her sharp chin digging into his shoulder. With his one good arm he carries her back out onto the roof, where his mother and the servants are sitting on deck chairs, casting long shadows in the landing lights.
“Oh my.” Katya unplugs the meditation aids from her ears. She smiles the way she used to on the bare nightspot stages: like her entire family has just been killed. “Oh my!” Now she’s looking up. The servants follow her gaze; Ripple does too. A piece of the night sky is slowly dropping toward them. With a final fluttering plunge, it perches on one of the battlements. Ripple never thought a bird could glare, but there it is: Cuyahoga.
Under normal circumstances, Abby might resist a bath. But fuzzy-brained and limp-bodied, she sinks compliantly into the Swirlpool with hardly a mew of protest. Later, she will barely remember the numerous pulsing jets, the scented froth, the slick, pearly porcelain that encircles her like the shimmering mouth of a nautilus. What she will remember are Katya’s fingers, patient and deft, scrubbing her hair, working out the tangles, trimming the split ends, and finally plaiting it into a single braid that lies as heavy and reassuring as a hand on Abby’s back as she falls facefirst into her dreams.
* * *
Though they’ve been married for nineteen years, Katya Ripple has only on rare occasions had cause to visit her husband’s office. The room is wood-paneled, windowless, deep in the fortress of the house. She cannot talk to Humphrey here without feeling outnumbered. Mannequin heads line the shelves behind his desk, each one sporting a different toupee.
“So she’s a prostitute?” Humphrey hasn’t had his morning coffee yet. He wears a puce velour tracksuit today with a “Ripple Bros” logo embroidered on the sleeve, and is squirting wig glue between the sparse strands on his scalp.
“Hummer, you do not understand. You need to talk to your son.”
When Humphrey is annoyed, he looks even more like his brother than usual. Who are you to tell me what I understand? “Give me the broad strokes.”
“He fell onto Hoover Island. This girl found him and nursed him back to health.”
Humphrey squishes today’s toupee—a salt-and-pepper thatch with bushy sideburns—down onto his head and combs it in place with his fingers. “Found him? What was she doing out there?”
“It was her home.”
He’s dubious. “What does she want? Money?”
“You didn’t see them together. She was so trusting in his arms. And he—he looked so brave and strong, holding her up. They care for each other.”
“For crying out loud, Kitty. Not this again.”
“Again?”
“Listen, I know you have your doubts about the Dahlberg match…”
“I might have doubts, I might not. How can I know, when I was not CC’d? So many letters, back and forth, back and forth, and you never shared a single one!”
Humphrey digs through a desk drawer, withdraws a large black trash bag. “Kitty, I told you, Pippi and I go a long way back. McGuffin-Stork helped us out of some real scrapes when I was working in Empire. Talking shop, she and I developed a kind of shorthand.”
“Anything you say to her, you should say to me.”
“There’s no reason to have you confusing things you don’t know anything about.”
“I know my son!”
“You don’t know about contracts, or trusts, or the larger holdings of this family. Nor can you possibly, possibly understand the responsibility that comes with carrying on a legacy like ours.”