Future Home of the Living God(81)

“Poor Bernice,” said Phil. “She was getting drunk alone. She couldn’t stand herself. I decided to immobilize her while she was drunk. Tie her up, gag her, I guess. Find out where she got the booze.”

Then Phil grins at me. I can see his face in the gloom cast by a tiny vent near the ceiling line—I’ve never seen that sick smile before. His teeth are knocked out of one side of his jaw. I look away.

“I know the things she did, more than you can imagine,” he says after a few moments. “Actually, I decided to kill her.”

I can just see the fuzzy gray outline of his ruined features, the pits and scars and burns all over his face and neck. He turns to me, suddenly, grips my chin hard in his hands and crushes his mouth to mine. I know he has suffered, even suffered for me, but his grin was a caffeine jolt, reality. His kiss numbs me. My heart turns over.

“What did you do?”

“I started a fire.”

“Not the most inconspicuous way to kill someone.”

“It was kind of an accident.”

“Nobody starts a house fire by accident.”

“Unless you’ve got a gas can. I went in there. While she was groggy I poured the gas on her. Then I lit her up with my Bic.”

“You did not.”

“No, of course I didn’t. She’d left something on the stove. You could smell it. She got up and staggered into the kitchen, grabbed the pan, which was smoking hot. She burns her hands. Staggers to the sink. Then she throws water on the fire.”

“Grease fire?”

“I guess. Next she flaps dish towels on the fire and the towels flare up. It’s almost comical. She throws them at the curtains. Massive flames. It’s crazy. She was throwing fire around the room, laughing. She was high, too, maybe. So I just tiptoed away.”

“So she did it to herself,” I say.

“I was halfway down the street when I hear this big whump. I look back and suddenly fire’s coming out of the roof.”

“Probably the Finnish vodka.”

“Oh. What a waste. Then as I was turning the corner there were explosions, rat-a-tats, like a firefight.”

“The wall was filled with ammo.”

A small voice inside me starts hissing mortal sin mortal sin mortal oh my god I am heartily sorry. Bernice was a terrible person, a killer herself, but there is no equivalence that absolves someone . . . me? Not me. I put my hands over my face, as if to hide from my wasted guilt.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Phil says eventually. “I’m wanted. And they have searched the house here twice by now. They are probably everywhere, still looking.”

“Wait,” I say. “You said you were with Mother. Now you say you’re wanted. Which is it?”

He stutters, filling me with fear.

“It’s both,” he says. “They picked me up. I stole a car from them and got away.”

“Aren’t they arresting enough women? What do they want me for?”

Phil looks at me in surprise.

“You don’t know?” he asks.

“Know what?”

He stops talking, and now I don’t want to hear it. But eventually I tell him, Say it.

“You might be carrying one of the originals,” he says. “There aren’t very many so they put you in special security hospitals. You already escaped from one.”

“Originals? What are you talking about?’’

“Just a regular baby,’’ says Phil. “Like the ones before.”

“So my baby’s okay.”

He doesn’t answer for a while, then says, “Our baby. I’m the dad. Remember?”

My voice is scratchy, my mouth has gone dry. My blood starts buzzing and I am sick, faint. Then you kick and roll as if to tell me that you’re healthy, you’re ready to be born. And that’s the moment I know, right there in the back of the Superpumper, that you’re somebody. Before, to be honest, no matter how I tried to talk to you, the truth is I felt that you were not altogether you. You were a fragment of me. That’s why I kept writing, to convince myself, to prepare myself for you to be a person, apart from who I am.

Now I feel you listening.

Phil is talking, musing, and his talking makes me ill.

“After all, it’s a global crisis, it’s the future of humanity, so you can see why they need to keep an eye on women. Every living thing is changing, Cedar, it’s biological chaos, things going backward at an awkward rate.”

Your kicks and rolls make me giddy. I am having trouble taking a deep breath. I am panting, quietly. The air is cold and sharp. Again, I think of Glen’s words so long ago, in the old world, over pancakes, when life was still golden. How Mother Earth had a perfect sense of justice.

And you are still listening, under my hand, a peculiar new sensation. You seem to have tuned in to your father’s voice, but like me you seem suspended, alert to something bad beneath his words.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Phil. “I’m not with them, honey, I don’t believe in capital punishment for abortion, but I understand. They’re fucked up and scared. I’m with you like lots of decent guys! We’re on your side, we’re armed. But I sure could have used what you’re telling me was ammo in those walls.”