We Leave Together, стр. 30
Know that neither Salvatore nor Jona did anything to help the dead man. For this sin, alone, they deserve their fate.)
Jona stood in the dark, watching the rain fall, and wondering what exactly had happened up ahead, where he could barely see through the torrential rains.
It was so thick in the air, and he was so tired of following Salvatore and of living someone else’s life, when anger boiled up cooled into a simmer until it didn’t matter that he was angry. He was tired, and wanted to go somewhere warm and dry.
He went home.
Salvatore didn’t seem to recognize him, anyway.
***
Clouds curled into themselves like gray hair in water. The old woman of the winter storms wiped away the sun’s summer rage with her mop of thick, gray hair.
The rain was far worse than the summer heat for the Pens District. Salvatore’s building flooded out, and water devoured the limestone foundation. Half the building crumbled into rubble. Salvatore was asleep in his hammock. He woke to the groaning in the walls where the bricks worked loose from mortar. Then, the crash and the screams.
Salvatore’s room, on his half of the building, hadn’t collapsed, yet.
Salvatore rushed out of his room, and down the hall and to the stairwell and on one hand he had sturdy brick walls and on the other open air and rainfall where wall used to be and a dozen screams fighting up through the fallen bricks and some of the people of the street had thrown aside their parasols and hats to tug at the bricks and some of them kept walking like this catastrophe was just another street trick to sucker them.
Survivors piled furniture on carts, covered them with blankets and bed sheets that didn’t keep the rain out.
Two little kids—for laughs—were beating on the dead with sticks. They were cursing this mangled body for the crimes it had committed in life, and these kids were laughing.
Salvatore shuddered at that.
I’m convinced he shuddered at that. It’s the sort of thing that would happen there, and it’s the sort of thing that would make him shudder. He is a wicked thing, but he does not believe in his own wickedness, and he can not love wickedness in others.
CHAPTER 9
“Wake up, Djoss,” whispered a voice. “Djoss!”
Djoss groaned.
“Djoss!” shouted the voice. It was Rachel. He felt fingers on his arms. Fingers wrapped around his wrists, and pulled at him. They were Rachel’s fingers.
“I’m awake,” he said. He opened his eyes. His legs and arms still weren’t working right. In his hand, he still held the long stem of the hookah.
Djoss smiled. “I had a horrible dream.” Djoss looked around the room. A low haze of purple smoke hovered in the air. Soft pillows stank of vomit and pink smoke and spread along the filthy cellar floor.
“I was looking for you all night!” shouted Rachel. “I didn’t know where you went!”
Djoss laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You spent all of our money, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said. His body slowly discovered solid ground below him.
“How much did you waste this time?”
“Not all of it,” he said.
Two mostly nude men with the tans and hats of foreign sailors watched listlessly as the siblings fought. From upstairs, a bouncer peered down into the cellar. The light and the noise of the tavern spilled in from the open door. He shouted, “Take it outside!”
“I had to pay just to come down here and find him!” she shouted.
“I don’t care!” shouted the bouncer, “Keep it down!”
Djoss nodded. “We’ll go,” he said, “Will you help me outside?”
“No,” she said. She let go of his hands. She had been holding his hands. He sank back down to the pillows. She snarled, and grabbed his hands again. She dragged him to the stairs.
He struggled to work his legs. He couldn’t quite make them work.
“Hey, you!” shouted Rachel to the bouncer. “Hey! I’ll pay you to throw him outside!”
The bouncer shrugged. “I’ll do it for free just to be rid of you.”
Djoss dropped asleep when the bouncer picked him up. Djoss dreamed of flying. He woke up lying in an alley behind the tavern, his face covered in mud. He looked up to see his sister’s frowning face. He grimaced. “Rachel,” he said, “Have you been here long?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Have I been here long?” he asked. He tasted the rising bile on his tongue.
“Yes.” She folded her arms. “How much did you spend?”
He threw up into the mud.
***
The siblings sat on his bed below the window. Djoss stared at a cup of tea she had made for him. He didn’t feel well enough to drink it. He held the teacup in his palm like an egg.
Rachel sat across from him, and stared at his tea. She didn’t want to look at him.
She leaned back, calmly. “Aren’t you going to tell me you’re sorry?”
“Probably not,” he said.
“Are you sorry?” She looked at his face, desperate to see remorse in the crevices.
He thought about his answer. He looked down into her eyes. “Yes,” he said.
The tea’s waves of steam faded into tepid nothing. Time passed in silence.
“Drink your tea,” she said.
“I’m not ready, yet.”
She sniffed. “Drink it anyway.” She was calm.
He nodded. He held his breath, and swallowed as fast as he could. It burned down his sore throat. When it landed in his stomach, it sunk like lead weights.
“Feel better?” she said, bitterly.
“No.”
“Good,” she said. “What are we going to do with you, Djoss?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“We have to leave the city,” she said, into her hands, “I would rather spend the rest of my life sleeping under a tree than watch you do this to yourself. We have to leave any city that has that awful stuff.”
“Where will we go?”
“Do we have any money left?”
“I have a bit in my pocket.