Relief Map (22 page)

She woke up several times during the night and lay quietly, trying to flex her legs without waking him up. She thought of her parents standing by the fire. She hoped
they were finished burning it, and it was safely buried and they were in bed, and that the police would have no reason to pick their way into the wash. Nelson murmured in his sleep.

People she knew at school were always getting the idea of growing their own, and they were always being found out by their parents, or their neighbors, or their younger siblings toddling into the hedges and coming back with handfuls of it. It was an indiscreet plant. It had that prickly, caustic smell. She knew from a couple of boys she worked with at the restaurant that growing it was complicated and time-consuming, and it took the single-mindedness of a person in love with the plant. She thought of her parents going for walks together in the afternoons on her mother's days off. Livy had always been happy to stay in the house and watch TV while they were gone. It was nice to flip through the channels without their disapproval, moral or aesthetic, hovering in the background through the kitchen door. If she'd been more in the habit of going outside during those intervals she probably would have spotted them a hundred feet from the house, barely hidden in the woods.

Her parents had always been uncomfortable in groups, at children's birthday parties, at Girl Scout jamborees, at Parents' Night. There was an air always coming from them—
Livy was just now identifying it—that they expected to be disapproved of, and took some pride in it. She knew people like that at school, too. It was a little childish, this ostentatious claiming of separateness, and so was the large risk they were taking for the small pleasure of getting high and the little bit of money that must come from selling to the neighbors. She felt like a traitor in some way for calling them childish. But it was true. At the same time, she felt a new, sharp imperative to protect them. To keep away trouble like Revaz and Dominic, and the police.

She rolled over and her knees collided with Nelson's. He murmured something. She couldn't tell if he was awake or not. She turned her back to him and he shifted easily into the space she made: his belly to her back, his
bent knees to her bent knees.

4

When Revaz had been riding for forty-five minutes he risked a stop at an all-night gas station. There were only two other people inside, both men, and they looked just as haggard as he did, just as sluggish, blinking in the same suspect manner in the bright light. There were road maps in a stand by the door. He took one, then went to the counter and pointed to the rack behind the clerk, where hot dogs turned on rollers under a red lamp.

He ate the hot dog in the dark behind the building, where he had left the bicycle. When it was gone he stood there hesitating for several minutes and then went back in and bought another one. The clerk smiled when he handed him the change, nodded to the hot dog, then pointed at his own face, and Revaz realized he had mustard on his chin.

The moon had dipped below the trees, and it was quite dark outside. He stood beside the pumps, slowly eating the last of the hot dog, tracing out his route in the light of the filling canopy. Another forty-five minutes on the bike and he would be at the train. His stomach was full, and the night was cool. Insects shrieked and thrummed in the trees that edged the lot—sounds of the forest barely held at bay by the highway. The asphalt crumbled at the edges, turning to burr-filled weeds. It seemed entirely plausible, for a minute, that he could run and keep running forever. Pleasant, even. He climbed onto the bike.

When Livy opened her eyes the room was starting to lighten, gray now instead of black. Nelson had rolled away and was lying with his back to her, one shoulder humped high, the sheet pressed tight under his arm. The weak early light was like a resin that filled the room, fixing the objects in it. During the school year she woke at this time of day but had to get up and dress quickly, and it was rare for her to be still in this stillness. Revaz was far away by now, long gone. Her part was done. Nelson moved beside her.

“How are you?” he said. His eyes were bright from sleep. He propped himself on an elbow and rubbed his face.

“Fine,” she
said. She noticed she had pulled the sheet up so that only her head and neck were showing over the top of it. It was one thing to go to sleep next to a friend, and another to wake up there. “How are you?” she said.

“Fine.” He put his arms around her and squeezed her hard, pressed his face against her neck. The bruises on her hip ached. The embrace seemed to press her spine straight, ease out the kinks caused by a night in a narrow space. He had broad, flat hands.

“I don't want to go home yet,” she said.

“You definitely shouldn't.”

She laughed. They were lying very close together, which meant they didn't have to look each other in the eye. His hands moved over her stomach in a friendly way, as if brushing crumbs off it.

“My parents are going to be worried,” she said.

“It's probably not even six yet. They're asleep.” He touched the scrape on her cheek. “This scabbed over pretty well.”

“What am I going to tell people?” She put her fingers to her cheek. It was hard to the touch.

“That you fell.”

“I've been saying I fell a lot lately. I told my dad I flipped my bike over in some gravel and that was why I had these scratches . . .” She indicated her arms. “I wonder when they'll notice the bike is gone. My mom hasn't used it in years.” She bit her lip. “Maybe they'll just think
somebody stole it. They don't lock the garage.”

Nelson put his arm across her chest. She took a long, tired breath. “I don't really see a way we can get out of all this with everything together,” she said.

He lifted his head off the pillow and looked at her for a minute. She was tempted at first to look away; he was shirtless, one bare arm was across her chest, and this was a position familiar mostly from movies—male propped up thoughtfully on one elbow, female on her back. The intimacy between them was ordinary and alien at the same time. She made herself look him in the eye. He put one hand flat across her face, covering her left eye and the scrape on her cheek, and kissed her forehead. He lay back down. He wasn't going to say anything, she thought, because he agreed with her.

“I wonder if your mom's awake,” she said.

“Probably not.”

Livy sat up. “I'm hungry,” she said. “I'm
so
hungry.”

Nelson lit up. “We should open the blizzard box.”

“There's still a blizzard box?”

The blizzard box was a metal locker in the garage filled with canned and freeze-dried food, in case of a major snowstorm. Nelson's mother was prepared for all kinds of emergencies. Nelson had grown up practicing house-evacuation drills twice a year, when the clocks
were set forward and back; waking up to shrieking tests of the fire, radon, and carbon monoxide detectors; memorizing rendezvous points in the neighborhood, the county, the state. The blizzard box was always stocked but never touched.

They climbed out of bed. Livy's hunger rolled through her, pitching and reeling. They crept down the dark carpeted hallway, their breathing light and shallow, and Nelson heaved open the door from the kitchen to the garage. Livy saw the locker half hidden under a plastic toboggan and dragged it out into the light. They sat cross-legged on the floor beside it.

“Beans, corn, blueberries, pumpkin, condensed milk, condensed milk, condensed milk,” she said, pulling out the cans.

“Beans and corn,” Nelson said. “If we had tortillas . . .”

“Tomato soup, mandarin oranges, pearl onions, olives, minestrone soup,” she said.

His brownish knee was bent beside hers. “I love mandarin oranges.”

“Look at all this condensed milk. Let's make pudding.”

“Taco salad and pudding.”

They carried armloads back into the house. His mother would be furious, but they would be full of pudding and it wouldn't matter that much. Nelson turned the radio on the counter on.

“Are you sure?” Livy said.

“She's a
really heavy sleeper after an Ativan,” he said.

Janine appeared in the doorway, trailing a sheet. “Is that Mom's hurricane stash?”

“Yeah,” Nelson said.

“You're asking to get killed,” she said, and shuffled back into the dark of the living room.

They were too hungry to wait for the food to heat. They ate the beans and corn with spoons, cold. Livy dipped her fingers in sweetened condensed milk and licked it off, over and over. Nelson made a stack of empty mandarin orange cans. The radio swooned in the corner.

“These are so good,” Livy said, studying a spoonful of beans. “Better than normal, for beans.” The window over the sink faced east and the sun was just coming up over the hill. The woods were a dark, cool mass. She could look straight out at the horizon from the kitchen. She stood at the sink with her spoon, eating one bean at a time, watching the sun rise. Nelson stood beside her.

“The Harbor County standoff enters its fifth day,” said the radio.

They both lurched toward the volume knob.

“Federal law enforcement officers seeking the arrest of a foreign national have been at an impasse outside Maronne since Monday morning, after tracking him there on Sunday.” It was a woman's voice, maybe from
one of the Philadelphia stations, or a national one. “Revaz Deni is under an extradition order from the Republic of Georgia. At a press conference on Tuesday a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reluctant to reveal further details, citing security concerns and an ongoing investigation by international partners.”

“Georgia?” Livy said.

“Nearby Maronne is growing tense as the standoff drags on,” the woman said. “Some expressed anger at the way police are handling the situation.” An old man spoke against a background of tinny traffic noise. “It's been a mess,” he said. “Everybody thinks so.”

“We'll bring you updates as we receive them,” the woman said.

The traffic report started up. Nelson turned it off.

“Georgia?” Livy said. “Where is that? It's under Russia, isn't it?”

“I think so. It's not in the Balkans, anyway,” Nelson said.

“I don't know anything about Georgia.”

“I wish I still had that encyclopedia.”

“The
Kid's World Boo
k
?” Livy laughed. The book had a cracked spine and had been kept in the bathroom, and she had leafed through it idly so many times that she had memorized the format of its brightly illustrated pages. “If only. We could look up their annual rainfall.”

“Well, it would be something,” Nelson said.

“Knowing doesn't help now anyway,” Livy said.

The kitchen was the brightest room in the house. Livy wanted it to be very early in the morning forever. It was the best, most private time of day, and the air was cool. It was easy to believe that she and Nelson were the only people awake for miles. They ate until they were full and rinsed the cans out in the sink. They were drinking instant coffee with powdered creamer at the kitchen table, sitting in two chairs pulled close together in a pool of light, when there was knocking at the door. Livy's stomach turned over. She saw an instant of panic on Nelson's face before he caught his breath.

“I'll get it,” he said.

They could hear Janine shifting on the sofa in the dark living room. “Somebody's knocking,” she called.

“I
know
, J,” Nelson said.

Livy got up and followed him. There was an obscure protective impulse in this. She jogged across the living room in his wake, plucking at the borrowed shirt so it billowed away from her chest. She saw him catch his breath and then jerk open the door.

Ron Cash was standing there, the top of his bald head shiny as glass.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Oh, thank God.” Livy stopped and covered her face briefly with her hands. She had meant
Thank God it's not the cops
,
and had come close to saying it out loud. Janine sat up, blinking in the light from the doorway. All the shades were down and she looked annoyed at the intrusion. “You shouldn't bang on the
door
like that,” she said.

“We're doing a search,” Ron said. His hands were folded in front of him, over his belt buckle. There were other people with him, though Livy couldn't see yet who they were; she heard low voices, and the clear morning light through the doorway was interrupted by a jumble of shadows.

“You're looking for the guy?” Nelson said.

“That's correct,” Ron said. Livy tensed. She thought Nelson might glance at her at this mention of Revaz, and that people would notice, but he didn't turn. He stepped aside and pushed open the door with a little shrug. Livy saw, in the clump of people now stepping up from the grass to the concrete steps, the bobbing ponytail and long anxious face of Jocelyn.