Now she looked at him and pursed her lips, trying not to cry. She stepped closer, up to his face.
“I’m so so pissed at you right now,” she whispered. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”
Then she kissed him on the forehead. It was so quick he wasn’t sure it had really happened afterward. He saw Nell grinning in the doorway.
“Let’s go, Professor,” she said to her mother.
Jules turned quickly and went to Nell.
“Text if you need anything, Dad,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Cap.
Then they were gone. Cap glanced at his phone, which was almost out of juice and overrun with texts and voice mails. He didn’t have nearly enough energy to navigate them, so he turned his phone off and leaned back on the pillows. He shut his eyes, and his mind sailed along in drugged exhaustion. Again with the small beach and the soft tide. He couldn’t recall ever seeing such a beach—maybe near his parents’ in Florida? Except that they had to be Gulf waves; the Atlantic would push you over if you got in past your knees. Still it would be nice to try that water—warm if not clear, lying on your back letting the salt push you up.
Then he had a feeling he wasn’t alone. He opened his eyes, and Vega was there now, at the foot of his bed, watching him.
“Are you really there?” he asked, genuinely unsure.
“I think so,” she said.
Cap sat up and forced himself to wiggle his big toes and make fists, all the old tricks he used to do on a long shift to keep himself awake.
“How’s your ear?” said Vega.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I mean, my career as an ear model is over, but my hearing’s fine.”
Vega nodded, the littlest squiggle of a smile on her lips.
“How are you?” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m here to give you a ride.”
“That would be great, thanks,” he said.
Her hands were clasped in front of her, one wrapped around two fingers of the other, and it made her look very small and young to him suddenly. He felt like he could finally picture her as a kid. For the past week she had seemed to him one of those people who was born as a thirty-year-old.
“Then I have to get going,” she said. “Back to California. I have another job.”
“What? That’s it?” he said.
He felt short of breath, blood rushing out of his head.
“Traynor and the Feds are going to need us for postmortem, for paperwork,” he said quickly.
“I can do it all online,” she said.
“Have you told them that?”
“No,” she said. “They’re busy.”
“What about media?”
“I never do media.”
Cap swung his legs over the side of the bed and prepared to stand. He wiped his eyes.
“So that’s it?” he said again.
She stepped closer to him.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said. “Dena Macht’s father wants to press charges against me. So does this guy I hit in the face with a wrench the other day.”
“Then you can’t leave,” said Cap. “You’ll be a skip.”
Vega rolled her shoulders.
“I’m not worried about it. They can extradite me if they want. Or send me an invoice, whatever.”
Cap pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the thousand and four things he wanted to say to her, foremost among them: Please don’t leave; let’s have dinner; could I just run two fingers along the line of your hip; we are bound together by what has happened here. Please don’t leave.
She came closer to him.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said quietly.
She wasn’t looking at him. He liked to think she couldn’t, that it would be too overwhelmingly emotional for her, but really he didn’t know. What he did know: he knew she liked to break down service rifles to relax and that she liked tea instead of coffee. Her mother died when she was young, and her mentor died a few years back and that seemed to follow her around. She had a high tolerance for pain and a low tolerance for bullshit. She moved her hands and fingers when she was trying not to assault someone. She was the kind of beautiful that snuck up on you. Once she kissed a man she just met in the woods on a warm spring morning.
“That’s it,” he said for the last time. “You’re gone. Like a traveling circus.”
That made her smile, and then something caught her eye against the wall. It was a lunch order that had been delivered to Cap’s examination room by mistake. She reached over to it and grabbed the bread roll, the applesauce cup, and the small pack of cookies. She held all three in her hands and looked at them thoughtfully, mouthing numbers.
And then Alice Vega started to juggle the items successfully, her eyes following each one as it ascended, her mouth in an open grin now, and Max Caplan laughed and laughed and wondered just how long she could go without dropping them.
—
Jamie Brandt had the dream again.
She couldn’t see anything—either it was dark or she was blind. She was looking for the girls but they were babies, and she could hear them crying, the two-year-old toddler wail and the quivering scream of a newborn. Then Jamie was on her knees, clawing around in the dirt or sand, looking for them like a set of car keys. She must have dropped them; they must be here.
She woke up in her bed and realized it was she who was screaming, yet she couldn’t stop herself.
Bailey came running in and jumped onto the bed. Kylie followed behind her slowly in a trazodone daze, which was the only way she would sleep at all since she got back.
“Mama!” yelled Bailey, holding Jamie’s face in her hands. “Mama, stop, wake up.”
Jamie stopped.
“Breathe, Mama,” said Bailey. “Take deep breaths.”
Jamie breathed.
“You just had a bad dream.”
Jamie nodded. Bailey’s face was like a flashlight in the room. Kylie slipped into bed next to Jamie and was already on her way back to sleep while Bailey spoke the words.
“We’re here. We’re right here.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louisa Luna is the author of the novels Brave New Girl, Crooked, and Serious As a Heart Attack. She was born and raised in the city of San Francisco and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.