The Heavens Rise

33

How ’bout you fuck yourself?” Marissa finally said to the lawyer. “How’s that sound?”

Hilda Lane’s lackey and henchman had been lecturing her for a good fifteen minutes on how her actions had violated the standards clause in her contract, giving the Lanes grounds to fire her as editor in chief of Kingfisher without severance.

The man hadn’t even bothered to inquire after her physical condition when he’d forced his way into her room, even though she’d just been moved out of post-op recovery two days before after running a high fever for the three days. He’d been droning on about how even though there were no witnesses to her shooting, the simple fact that an officer of the law had seen fit to put a bullet in her—God rest his soul; the poor man hadn’t survived his injuries—combined with the slanderous allegations she made against Hilda Lane during their last phone call gave Kingfisher’s owner ample cause to—and then she told him to go fuck himself and things got real quiet all of a sudden. She’d said it brightly and casually, as if she were suggesting he try adding a little Tabasco to his scrambled eggs every morning.

“I take it this is your way of saying you don’t intend to—”

“I’m real tired and I don’t feel that well and you’re a jerk. So no, it’s my way of saying you should go fuck yourself is what it is.” Maybe it was fatigue that kept her tone breathy and casual. Or maybe she really thought it was good idea for the beady-eyed prick to use some blunt object on one of his orifices. She’d lost track of which pain meds they were giving her. “Seriously, take that contract in your hand, roll it up real narrowlike and see how far up it’ll go. I’ll wait right here till you’re through. And I’ve got some pills lying around if it starts to hurt too bad.”

“Okay,” the lawyer muttered. He sprang to his feet, placed the contract in question back in his briefcase and closed it with a punctilious snap. “Ms. Lane asked me to inform you that she appreciates the time you gave to her—”

“Her? Her newspaper? Is that what you were going to say? Well, you tell Ms. Lane I was working at that paper when she was doing PTA. And I’d rather mop floors before I go back to being her house negro. She’s not getting any fight out of me. Don’t you worry your bald little head.”

“I wish you a speedy recovery, Ms. Powell.”

“Then get outta here and let me get back to it.”

And then she was alone again with rebroadcasts of that morning’s WWL Eyewitness News and the endless photos of Anthem Landry that kept rolling across the screen, along with the now familiar helicopter shots of the giant grain ship he’d allegedly been at the helm of when it speared the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. There were more tearful interviews with Landry’s relatives, some of whom looked vaguely familiar to her from birthday dinners and crawfish boils where she’d been the token black lady over the years. And she prayed that whatever had happened with that damn ship, whatever had caused Anthem to go missing, was the real reason Ben hadn’t come to visit her.

Indeed, her only visitors over the past five days had been Mr. Suit and a bunch of police officers who were desperate to find out why one of their own had put a bullet in her, even though she insisted to kingdom come, and despite the influence of all manner of tongue-loosing medications, that she couldn’t remember a damn thing that happened out there on that river after the corpse of Danny Stevens had bobbed to the surface. She’d gone from being included in their collective head-scratching sessions to being flat-out accused of all manner of crimes; all of which only served to convince her the cops didn’t have a damn clue what had happened out there either. Not with the murder of Danny Stevens and his wife, not with the explosion at the house, and not with the bullet some cop had seen fit to put in her. But she was a lot more willing to put up with their nonsense than she was some prick Uptown lawyer who’d been dispatched by a boss too cowardly to fire her in person.

The doctors came about an hour later, told her she would be free to go in the morning, and she put on her best game face, tried to look grateful over the news, and then they were gone and she was back alone with the news. She dreamed fitfully that night, dreams with Anthem Landry’s face in them and corpses tumbling through green water.

The map was there when she woke up, folded neatly and resting on the tray table she’d been eating her meals on.

When she opened it, she saw a thick red line that went from the hospital she was in, across Lake Pontchartrain, then west on I-10 before meeting up with 310 Freeway just past Louis Armstrong International Airport. She traced the line with her finger, past Destrehan, over the Mississippi River on the Luling–Destrehan Bridge, and then on some crazy unfamiliar spur that appeared to lead right into the swamp, to a fat red dot. And right next to the dot, Ben’s handwriting: As soon as you can.

Then she saw her own car keys, tucked underneath the map.

She’d pocketed both by the time she was ready to leave a few hours later. A silent assemblage of most of the cops who had questioned her during her stay were waiting next to the nurses’ station as she walked past, and she wasn’t quite sure how to read their brusque nods and penetrating stares. But there was no sliding out from under the terrible weight of the feeling it left her with. An accomplished journalist and writer, a graduate of one of the best universities in the country, one of the hardest-working girls ever to come out of her neighborhood, and now what was she? A black lady with no job, nursing a gunshot wound in her left side, leaving a hospital under a cloud of criminal suspicion.

Once she was in the open-air parking lot, she hit the button on her remote and the headlights of her Prius flashed several rows away.

This better be good, Uptown Girl. Please, Lord. Make this good.

• • •

Fifteen minutes after she turned off the highway, Marissa came to a ruined chain-link fence surrounding what looked like an abandoned zoo. The Keep Out signs along the fence were as stained and perforated as the chain link itself, and in the center of the concrete courtyard, a ridiculous statue of a smiling, humanoid alligator with a plumed hat welcomed her with open arms, even though the fountain basin around its feet was dry and choked with vines. Past the old ticket booth, with its shattered front windows, there were three one-story wooden buildings around the courtyard, each with a steeply pitched roof, and signage that was no longer legible.

The door to the center building was standing open, and when she entered, she found herself staring at the glass wall of a giant aquarium tank, filled with cloudy green water. The tank’s glass panel had once been bordered by carved wooden alligators and snakes, but the paint had faded away entirely, leaving behind a jumble of dark wood that looked more like the outline of a dark lava flow.

She kept walking, waiting for Ben to show himself at any moment, too exhausted and too dispirited to marshal anything close to fear. So often in her life fear had taken the form not of self-regard, but of concern for those who’d first receive the news of her car accident or stabbing or immolation in a house fire. But now her mother, the same mother she’d returned to New Orleans for, had been in the ground for years. There’d been no real man (or woman, for that matter) in her life for some time. (Unless you counted Ben.) This realization felt strangely liberating, but it also left her feeling hollowed out.

She passed the aquarium and stepped into the room at the end of the hallway. Once, long ago, it had been a gift shop of some kind. Many of the shelves were still there, a couple of rusted metal spin racks still leaning against the walls. There was enough pale daylight coming in through the door she’d left open behind her that she almost moved on without noticing the single gooseneck desk lamp, new-looking and startlingly out of place amidst the decrepit surroundings. It had been set on what had once been the cashier’s desk, and positioned right under its halo was a scored, leather-bound journal, with a single notecard on top that said READ ME.

She glanced up briefly when Ben entered the room, but when he didn’t say a word, she went back to reading. As soon as she turned the last page, he began to tell her the rest.

34

Prove it,” Marissa said.

“What? On you? No way. You heard what I just said—”

“Ten seconds, fifty seconds. What’s it gonna hurt?”

“You! It’ll hurt you.”

Ben rolled his eyes, brushed past her and threw open the back door. A few seconds later, a tiny sparrow zipped into the room and landed on the cashier’s desk right next to the journal.

“Left,” Ben said. The sparrow fluttered up into the air, then dropped to the table a few inches to left. “Right,” Ben said.

The sparrow complied, and Marissa felt a strange heat spreading through her abdomen, then turning to icy chills as it ascended her spine, and suddenly her hands were going to her mouth against her will. Ben continued to manipulate the tiny bird. Left, right, left, right . . . And then the thing’s skull collapsed into a tiny little spill of gore and it fell to one side with a soft plop and all Marissa could hear was the sound of her own breaths rasping against her sweaty palms.

Ben walked toward the aquarium, holding the door open until she found the wherewithal to follow him, and then they were standing before the cloudy, moss-dappled glass, and finally she saw it, pulsing in floating tendrils through the water. And even though she wanted to bring her hands away from her mouth, she couldn’t, and this made her feel both terrified and terribly self-conscious at the same time.

“We wouldn’t have to hurt anyone,” Ben finally said. “Not physically, anyway. We’d never have to spill a drop of blood. Not one.”

“We?”

“Think of the potential, just for a minute. Before you freak out. Think of the confessions we could force from their lips when the cameras were rolling. Think of what it would mean if we married it to our investigative skill. Vultures will start to feed off an animal just because it’s stopped moving. And they’ve been feeding off this city for years, Marissa. If we scared the vultures away, this city could walk again. Hell, it could run. We could—”

“I need to go. I need to . . . just . . .” She started for the open doorway to the courtyard. “This is . . .”

“We don’t have time,” Ben called out to her. “Isn’t that what you said to me that day, after the pipeline blew? This city lost its margin of error fifty years ago. That’s what you said, Marissa. And somebody’s supposed to be telling the truth. Even when no one wants them to.”

“Ben . . .”

“Not one drop of blood. Not one. Words, Marissa. We’d be working with words. Only, instead of ours, we’d be working with theirs. We couldn’t go after the ones we hated directly, you see. The risk of changing them would be too great. But we could take away the environment they used to thrive in, piece by piece. Crook by crook. Thief by thief. Liar by liar—”

“Ben, this is absolutely. You just can’t—”

“We could take away their luck. Their good fortune. Their culture of corruption. Don’t tell me you can’t see the potential. Don’t tell me that you weren’t sitting there wondering what kind of good this could have done if some little privileged white family from Uptown hadn’t keep it a secret for eight years.”

“You want to go there with me?” She whirled on him, finger pointing, words flying from her faster than she could think. “You want to play that card while you talk to me about the casual enslavement of other human beings? Because that’s what this is, Ben. This is a violation of everything anyone who values the human mind believes in. Including me. A person’s ability to think for themselves. Free will, for the love of God. Where would I be without those things? Where would you be?”

“Small moves with a giant hand,” Ben whispered. “Small moves with a giant hand, Marissa. That’s what this would be. Precise, specific, brief. And just enough to advance a bigger objective.”

“What bigger objective?”

“Our city, Marissa! The same one the rest of the country is ready to cut loose into the sea as soon as they’re done with their wild weekend. The same one they want to blame for their racism and their addiction to oil because they can’t manage to care about most of the people here because they’re black and they’re poor. It’s the same objective we’ve had for eight years, Marissa, and only now we wouldn’t have mountains of lies standing in our way.”

“This is insane,” she whispered, her vision blurred by tears she couldn’t bring herself to fight.

“You’re right. Maybe we should have given up a long time ago. But we didn’t.”

“Tell me,” she said quietly. “Do you really believe this is the only way to do any good here anymore? After everything you’ve been through, after everything you’ve seen, is that really what you believe?”

“After everything you’ve taught me. Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Okay . . . Then I quit. If this is truly what it takes, then I’m out. I can’t do it anymore.”

His eyes fluttered shut as if he had tried to brace himself against the blow a second too late, and she could see he was fighting tears as well. But now that the words had left her mouth, she was backing away from the tank’s sweep of glass and its terrible, pulsating potential.

“Marissa . . . please . . .”

“No, I’m sorry, Ben. That’s it. I’m done. But don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me and I’ll be long gone by the time you get to work. So don’t you worry . . .”

“Marissa!”

She expected him to call after her again, but there was only the sound of her shoes crunching twigs as she hurried to her car.

She got almost as far as the freeway when her foot slid off the gas pedal and found the brake, and her hands left the steering wheel and ended up bunched together in her lap. For a few seconds, she thought he’d followed her and was using his power on her. But wouldn’t she have blacked out? Wasn’t that how it worked? But here she was, alone in her car, the rutted road behind her empty save for shadows cast by branches and moss. And she suddenly wished that he had forced it on her instead of leaving her with this bitter litany of all the sacrifices she’d made for her profession, for her city.

But was that why she was hesitating now? Not because she truly wanted what he’d offered her, but because she wouldn’t be able to face the sacrifices she had already made if she gave up on everything now. And why did she have to give up? Why did she have to leave? Did she truly think he would hurt her if she didn’t?

But the question that had brought her to a standstill was the one she’d just asked him a few minutes ago, a question so pointed and absurdly leading she never would have been able to include it in a professional interview in good conscience. Did Ben truly believe his newfound power was the only way to help New Orleans?

Maybe not. But you sure do.

You prayed for courage and you got an opportunity to be courageous. That was what the true believers in her mother’s church had always preached. You didn’t get to pick what the opportunity would be. That wasn’t how the universe worked, or seemed to work, anyway.

You didn’t get to pick your miracles You could either lean into them or run the other way. And that’s all she was doing. Running.

Ben must have heard her car coming back down the road because he was standing in the middle of the courtyard when she returned. He held his ground as she approached, as if he thought any sudden moves might spook her again, but his eyes were bloodshot and every muscle in his body appeared to tense with each step she took in his direction, as if she were a fearsome wind he was determined to lean in to without loosing his balance. The tiny building behind him looked too forlon to be harboring such an earth-shattering secret, and for a while she studied it as Ben studied her.

“Come inside, Marissa,” Ben finally whispered. “Come with me. Please.”

And then she felt him take her hand, and together they stepped out of the cypress-filtered sunlight and into the shadows.