Hummingbird Salamander(53)

Such a complicated look on Ronnie’s face. Hope mixed with anger or sadness or…?

“She always was paranoid. Didn’t trust people. Played games. Tricks. Tests.”

“I don’t care about that. Why me?”

A look I couldn’t interpret again. Wistful, strange.

“Maybe it’s an experiment. She was big on experiments. Like, looking at you, maybe it’s ‘Will some giant-ass, middle-class suburban woman with no clue about anything be moved enough by the plight of the planet to…’” She trailed off.

It took more than that to bait me.

“To what? What is this giant-ass, middle-class suburban woman supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you know Langer, right? You must know Langer.”

Something rigid about her dissolved; her hands wavered. Maybe it was just that she thought if I was asking about Langer, I wasn’t with Langer.

“An asshole,” she said.

“Seems like it.”

We both relaxed, a little.

“What were you to Silvina?”

“I helped her. For a time.”

This was like pulling teeth. Fusk all over again.

“I got that already. But she hated the wildlife trade, so why taxidermy? Why did she have taxidermy?”

“That was her business. Not my place to tell you.” Loss? Something she’d lost.

“Where would I find a salamander?”

She shrugged, folded her arms, considered me a moment. Was that a hint of a smirk?

“There’s a warehouse full of this stuff. Abandoned. Silvina’s family owns it,” she said.

I wasn’t sure I liked how easily she’d given that up.

“Where?”

She gave me the address. Not as far as I’d feared. East side of town, about half an hour from my house, and forty minutes from the storage palace.

“I don’t know anything else. That’s literally the only thing I know. I’ve been out of her circle for a while.”

“What circle?”

“Friends of Silvina. Rebel angels.”

I’d seen “Friends of Silvina” in Allie’s reports. That almost sounded like an organization. Hilariously innocuous, like a fund-raiser for fighting some disease.

“Are they still around?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you leave because you realized what Silvina was really doing?”

It just came out unintended.

Her resistance stiffened. “How about we back up a step. How did you find me? And who do you work for?”

Like I didn’t have a gun aimed at her.

“I found you through a taxidermist named Carlton … Oh fuck—”

Midsentence, she’d thrown an empty toolbox at my head, followed by a stool that smashed into my chest like a battering ram as she knocked the gun from my hand onto the floor. It made a terrible, sick sound, against the metal and stone.

No match for me, but I hadn’t expected it, and, before I could recover, Ronnie had slid back across the counter and out the door to the back.

I snatched up the gun, followed, quick but cautious, into the back—just in time to hear a splash. There was a kind of hangar door in the middle of the back room, wide open, with nothing but a nub of pontoon and water behind it. Ronnie was getting away by swimming across the lake to the forest beyond.

At the lip where the slick black edge of Unitopia met water, I stood, braced with one arm and the other pointing a gun at Ronnie as she swam.

But I wavered, lowered my weapon. Couldn’t do it. And why would I do it? I hadn’t come to Unitopia to kill her. I just wanted information. Then I started to laugh. Then I stopped. It was comical that someone was doing the breaststroke across a lake to get away from me. But not so funny: the cold. No wonder she was swimming so fast. Perversely, I was rooting for her. The disruption I’d caused, and how clumsily I’d caused it. I’d been so clumsy.

No way to know where she was headed or how to get there. A search on my phone as I watched her disappear out of sight around a little island of reeds. In that respect at least it was wilderness—the island abutted a corridor of woodlands leading to a state park. By the time I got there, Ronnie could be anywhere.

I put my gun away. How useless it had proved. Because I hadn’t been alert enough, had thought a gun was enough. But, also, I’d forgotten to take the safety off.

I was fairly sure Ronnie wasn’t ever coming back to Unitopia. I was pretty sure I’d never see her again. I was positive she wouldn’t call the police.

But now, at least, I had the address for a warehouse “full of taxidermy.”

For whatever that was worth.





UNITOPIA





[59]


Maybe it wasn’t wise, but I lingered in Unitopia. It had a sweet, na?ve quality. No sense of threat, just of emptiness, of abandonment. I thought perhaps I would encounter the man who had popped out of the doorway before, but, no, not even him. And I had to slough off the aftermath of excitement, slow my breathing, try to take a moment to reset.

By then, the midafternoon sun had slanted and deepened in a way that made the holding pond resemble a real lake. The walkway had a bronzed look, under that touch, and the buildings a comfortable, lived-in feel. Even the geodesic monstrosity at the end. Perhaps I felt apart from this, from this idea of “sustainability,” but I realized I could have gotten used to it. That it also felt like “sovereignty.” And those portal views of other places—they had stuck with me. Maybe they would, in time, have become real views from other Unitopias.