Part 6 (2/2)
”This,” Shane said respectfully, ”is beyond him.”
Caleb looked spectral. Shane had thought it was the physical stress he put on his body that had aged his brother so drastically, but now he saw there was more than that.
”You work with doctors,” Caleb whispered. ”You know about new drugs. Can you find out what we should do?”
”I . . .”
Caleb bent his forehead to his brother's. ”I'll leave here to help her.” He pulled back, blinking, as if shocked at having said these words out loud.
Shane stared at him, his mouth dry.
Caleb walked past him to the deck, opened the back door, and Shane followed him through the kitchen, into the main room, where some of the Happy Trails members sat by a fire drinking black beer. Together they ascended the creaking stairs.
At the landing, instead of going left for his room, Caleb turned right. At the very far end of the hall was a door. The old floors creaked underneath them as they moved toward it. Caleb hesitated, his face narrowed in concentration.
He reached for the doork.n.o.b, quietly turned it, pushed the door open. Shane took in a pale light. On the left side of the room he saw June, standing over something he recognized. She looked up, smiled shyly, waved him over. A sweet, familiar smell rose around him. He realized now that he'd caught traces of it in the air downstairs, that it had been there the whole time.
A wooden crib had been pushed against the left wall. Shane walked over slowly and peered down. Inside, a baby was sleeping. Wisps of reddish hair s.h.i.+mmered in the starlight through the window. She seemed very thin, and pale. She wore a yellow sleeper that was too big for her, her tiny milk white arm curved above her head as if performing an arabesque. She was, Shane guessed, maybe ten weeks old.
A sound came to him then. It stopped him. A sharp, high-pitched wheeze that pierced the air like a kettle, coming from the baby's breaths.
”This is Lily,” Caleb smiled.
Shane gripped the crib's railing, watching, listening, confused.
Outside, a breeze tumbled down from the mountain, gaining speed as it headed for them, as if it intended to rattle the wooden cabin and everyone in it and strip them down to their basic cells.
PART TWO.
Orphans.
1.
On Monday morning, Shane began his first day at Helixia.
He was greeted unexpectedly at the second-floor elevator by a short, Sicilian-looking brunette wearing oblong maroon gla.s.ses over a punchy nose.
”I'm Stacey,” she told him. Shane started to shake her hand. Instead, she tossed him a baseball. ”You're Janelle's husband?”
”It's amazing, I know.”
As they walked down the hall she waved at a few people.
”Dennis says you were a star at Orco.”
”That seems overstated.”
”I can see why you left,” Stacey frowned. ”Any company where frat boys make two hundred grand a year has to be full of a.s.sholes.”
He felt unsure how to respond. She dropped him at a cubicle with a wave.
”I'm on your team. There's a weekly sales review with Dennis in half an hour. I'll pick you up.”
Shane stood in his empty cube, staring at a note from IT about his computer. Leaves from a plant spiraled down the right side of the part.i.tion from the adjacent desk.
His flight home had been difficult. He had spent Sat.u.r.day night watching the Happy Trails house fill with guests. Many of them looked like other runners; some were clearly locals there for free beer. He had drunk moderately, his eyes lifting frequently toward the second floor, where he knew the baby to be sleeping. Although Caleb had spoken of going up to Boulder to see a band, he had not had time alone with him again.
”I'll leave here to help her.”
The words had burned through Shane's body as he drove back to Denver. During the flight he lost himself looking out at the Rockies. They seemed alive to him, rippling and flowing with some inner force. He could make out small roads along their slopes. He imagined the overwhelming awe of the first settlers who encountered them. Which of them had dared dream that they could scale these sharp, infinite peaks? What kind of person had laid down these roads? He thought of his brother.
By the time he had landed, his exhaustion had turned into a thick syrup behind his sinuses. Janelle greeted him with jasmine tea, and they sat on their old white sofa. She had put some Internet radio on, and sleepy ambient music soothed his head. Outside their bay window, a streetlight battled with the fog.
”Is it his baby?” Janelle asked right away.
Shane watched her; the intensity behind her eyes might, he thought, be the thing that made her most beautiful. ”He says no.”
”What's June like?”
”Kind of mousey. But she runs these ultramarathons, so how mousey can she be?”
Janelle placed his hand on top of her belly and pressed down, and he felt their baby push back. It filled him with something like magic.
”What are the others like? Super weird?”
”A little weird, for sure. But they're nice, you'd like them. There's twenty-year-olds, thirty-year-olds, forty-year-olds. One guy, John, is in his, like, late fifties. You know, they all work in local towns, or even up in Boulder like Caleb. They see a lot of regular people. They're not trapped in some compound.” He nodded to himself, as if just realizing something. ”They could leave there anytime they want to.”
”They're brainwashed,” Janelle p.r.o.nounced, sipping her tea. ”Four hours of sleep a night? Two meals a day? Eight hours of running a day? They're all exhausted, dependent physically and emotionally, on this Mack guy. He can give them some leash, they're not going anywhere.”
”Just to play devil's advocate, it seems to work.”
Janelle frowned. ”How do you mean?”
”They kick a.s.s in these ultramarathons.”
”Well, I guess their lives are great then.”
”This is good,” Shane yawned, finis.h.i.+ng his mug. ”What did you put in it?”
”Tell me about the baby.”
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