Certain Dark Things(42)

“Godoy,” she said.

Elisa nodded gravely. She didn’t ask anything else and Atl walked toward the elevator, one hand in her pocket, the other on the dog’s leash.

On the subway she thought of axolotls and her mother’s head, delivered in a cooler.

Hide, Atl. Hide, Izel whispered in her ear.





CHAPTER

15

The ride back was quiet. Atl kept her head down in the subway. Sometimes she would close her eyes and Domingo would think she was asleep, but then a sudden movement would jolt her and she’d snap her eyes open. When they reached her apartment Atl walked straight toward the bedroom, flopping upon the bed and pressing her hands against her face. Her dog padded in behind her, lying down at the foot of the bed. Domingo hovered at the door, not knowing if he was allowed inside.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want some of that tea?”

She did not reply. Domingo put the kettle on to boil. He found the sugar, the tea, and picked two mugs. One of them was chipped, a hairline crack running down a side of it. He dragged his thumb over the crack. When the tea was ready, he walked back to her room.

He knelt by the bed, a cup in his hands, and looked at her. With her eyes closed, Atl’s features seemed to soften, like a switchblade that has yet to snap out. He guessed he should have been afraid of Atl, but he wasn’t. The terror wasn’t there. It was as simple as that. He supposed he was foolish, but couldn’t be bothered to worry. Not yet, at least.

Domingo bit his lower lip, wondering if he should wake her up. He extended his right hand, his fingertips resting upon her shoulder.

He felt an immediate jolt, like an electric current, running through his veins and something like a spark lighting him inside. All of a sudden the apartment was gone, melting beneath his feet. He saw a barren desert landscape with a sky of the most unbelievable blue; a blue he’d never seen before. A tortoise walked before him, slowly following a highway that was a black ribbon, twisting, turning, melting into the distance, and he sank into the highway, into the melting blackness of the pavement. Then he was running through a city. Past warehouses and shacks, past a circle of homeless people sipping booze in the darkness, until he reached a chain-link fence and scrambled up it. The fence was gone and he was holding a gun in his hands, and then it wasn’t a gun, it was a decapitated human head. He dropped the head and it rolled onto the floor, spreading a coat of red upon the white tiles. Red the walls and red the ceiling and red every single speck of everything until—

Atl’s hand wrapped around his wrist, steadying him, and he stared at her.

“You’re going to drop your cup,” she said in a hushed voice.

Domingo blinked.

The cup, he thought, and looking down he realized yes, he was holding a cup.

He took a deep breath.

“I got you a drink,” he said.

Atl sat up on the bed and took the cup from his hands. She sipped her tea. Domingo stayed by the side of the bed, still too rattled to attempt to stand up.

“They’re just memories,” Atl said.

“Huh?”

“Memories,” Atl said. “My memories. It happens, when you’ve shared your blood with someone. There are echoes, bits and pieces that stay in your head. When you touched me … I’m tired, I wasn’t prepared for it, and you saw.”

That’s almost like a superpower, he thought.

“I saw a highway,” he said, frowning, and now he did move, by her side, sitting on the bed. “And there was a human head. What was that? Was that real?”

“They sent the head in the cooler,” she said, speaking as if she’d informed him about the weather or the time of day.

Domingo blinked.

“My mother’s head,” Atl said. “They chopped her head off and delivered it to our house in a cooler. The funny thing about a decapitated head is that it looks completely fake. You stand there and think, ‘This isn’t real,’ because it’s simply so rubbery. And my sister, they killed her too, burned her.” Her eyes fixed on him, cold, unpleasant. Her gaze was hard, black enamel.

Domingo didn’t know what to reply. He swallowed.

“They killed her. But I got back at them. I got them where it hurts. There is a phrase, ātl tlachinolli, ‘the water that scorches the earth.’ My name means ‘water’ but it is also war.”

She laughed, a brief burst of derision.

“What did you do?” he asked.

She shoved the cup back into his hands, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. I’m too tired and hungry and it’s not making any sense and you shouldn’t know this. You shouldn’t listen to me.”

Atl covered her eyes with both hands. He thought she might cry by the way her voice cracked, and it might have been better if she did because he was befuddled, watching her sudden distress and not knowing what to do. She teetered at the edge of panic but did not quite fall.

“Do you want blood?” he asked. His body, after all, was the only thing he could offer.

She snapped her head up and stared at him. “Blood volume is replaced within twenty-four hours. Red cells need about a month for complete replacement. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“I can’t be drinking too frequently, no matter how much I want it.”