Ilium by Lea Carpenter

Author:Lea Carpenter [Carpenter, Lea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

*

“Jesus, are you all right.”

It was Nikki, standing at my bathroom door. She was eating from a small plate with toast, butter, and jam, probably meant for me, which was just like her. She took casual ownership of everything around her, even people.

“I am fine,” I said, moving a hand over my hip bone.

She sat down on the floor next to me and crossed her legs.

“You don’t look fine,” she said, more like a therapist than a physician. “Where does it hurt?”

“Here. And here. And here.”

“When was your last period.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, you’re probably pregnant,” she said, like she was reading the weather.

I assured her I simply needed rest.

“Well, please stop resting soon as I leave after lunch.”

“Leave?”

“Yes, real life calls, at long last.”

“Where is real life?”

“Ah, now, that’s a very good question.”

And she placed the plate on the floor beside me and left.

Real life, I thought, is a place without graves for the living.

Real life doesn’t have cameras embedded in the walls.

Real life has no pseudonyms, cover stories, or elegant exfiltration plans.

I stood up and looked in the mirror. This is my real life.

“I’ll be back for the party,” Nikki said, alerting me to the fact that she hadn’t left the bedroom. Had she been spying on me? Did she think I was pretending? I looked into the mirror, and there she was behind me.

“What party,” I said.

“Edouard’s birthday. He probably won’t come, but Dasha’s planned it.”

“Why do you call your mother Dasha.”

“I don’t know. What do you call your mother.”

She poked her head around the bathroom door. She licked jam off her palm.

“He’s a Cancer, Edouard. His zodiac sign. You know what Cancer means, don’t you,” she said.

“No.”

“Cold, remote, dangerous.”

“Sounds like an iceberg.”

“Ha, yes.”

And I thought about the white cross, and the green moss, and Edouard’s hand brushing my wrist.

Achilles and Priam in the tent, what Edouard had told me about how, when Hector put his battle helmet on, he’d frightened his son. The boy could not recognize his father when his father had his armor on. Perhaps that was why Edouard always seemed disarmed around me, and around Felix. I could not imagine Edouard threatening anyone, ever, at all.

“The iceberg likes you,” she said, as if it were a warning.

After Nikki left, I opened a drawer under the sink and removed the small terry makeup case. Inside was the phone from Raja. I opened it. There were two “apps” on the home screen: ADDRESS BOOK and CALCULATOR. I opened the former and found two numbers: HOME and FREELANCE. Raja and Jack. I pressed FREELANCE and waited while it rang once, twice, three times. On the fifth ring someone picked up. It wasn’t Jack.

“Ilium,” said a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize, with unemotional efficiency.

Another wave of intense, acute nausea shot up from my waist straight to my brain.

“Who is speaking,” the woman said.

“I am looking for Jack,” I said.

And the line went dead.

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