The Murdered World 23

The dining room was an oddity after the straightforwardness of the kitchen. It was set up like a banquet hall, but in miniature. Teak legs supported a thick glass table. Light came from a fake skylight over the table; sunlamps shining through rustling rubber branches. The place mats were rattan while the plates and cutlery were sterling silver. A white linen napkin was held in a ring of hollowed-out bamboo. The glassware was Baccarat, elegant in its sheer sleekness. The chairs were oak with green moss growing on them, but not touching the white cloth of the backs and seat. A candelabra stood in the middle of the table. The candlesticks were exquisitely carved out of crystal.

If a person didn’t go nutty living down here, Frank thought, then they did dealing with the internal decorator.

Christina sat with her knife and fork poised over her plate, vaguely watching the steaming fillet while she talked. “It’s funny, but I feel saner now than I have in years. Angel, he just, he stressed me and he gaslit me and even when things were good, I was thinking of how to please him or worrying that they would go bad, and then I’d blame myself, and it got so I was being a bitch almost preemptively? To show him he couldn’t make me be nice to him? And then I’d feel bad about how bitchy I was being.”

Frank just ate.

Christina began sawing into her salmon. “Now, though. Now he’s gone. He’s gone. I don’t have to worry about him anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I, I acknowledge the situation. Nuclear war. Big deal. But it isn’t like there’s much I can do about it. And we’re safe, my sister’s safe… it’s not like I have, had a lot of friends to worry about. When you’re a mobster’s wife, your friends are other mobsters’ wives, and they were… well, I’m sure you’ve met a few. I’m surprised you didn’t shoot me on sight, knowing what they’re like.”

“I don’t do women, I don’t do kids.”

“Well, that’s a little sexist. What if I had a gun?”

“I’d shoot you in the leg.”

“Why don’t you shoot men in the leg?”

“They usually keep coming.”

“And a woman wouldn’t?”

Frank shrugged.

“Angel has some pretty slight men working for him. Did you see Enrique? Reedy little guy. See his ribs when he takes his shirt off. Short, too. I probably weigh more than him. I don’t think he could take a bullet to the leg and I couldn’t.”

“Your salmon’s getting cold.”

“You sound like my dad.”

“You may not have warm salmon in a while,” Frank told her.

“Yes. Yes, of course. It’s just…” Christina shoved a quick bite in her mouth and chewed it. “I could never talk while Angel was alive. That’s not why I’m glad he’s dead, of course, not at all. But it’s at least worked out well for me. Would you like some wine?”

“No.”

“Angel treated this place a little like a big junk drawer. We used to have this huge movie collection, then he got big into streaming—he owned stock in Netflix—and he put it all down here. I have some dresses that aren’t very fashionable at the moment; they’re down here too. I suppose we should’ve stored some of the art down here, since it’s probably radioactive now, but even Angel actually wanted to look at art after he bought it. Redeeming quality. But he was the biggest wine snob. He’d buy bottles just so he could take them out, show them to his friends—he didn’t even touch the cork. And if he bought something really good and didn’t have room for something he didn’t think was as impressive, he’d put it down here. He has a curated wine cellar. Well, he had. The yacht fell into it. And he died, of course. But this is still very good wine. I think you’ll be surprised.”

“Let’s finish eating first,” Frank suggested.

He didn’t think this mania of hers would be easier if she paired wine with an empty stomach.

“I was making a point. What point was I making?” Christina thought about it as she chewed another bite. “Sanity!” she told him as soon as she swallowed. “I was really acting crazy in the cupola, wasn’t I? Touching you and saying things… I just wanted to tell you, that was the heat of the moment. I’d just seen my husband trying to cheat on me with my sister, you had killed seven people in front of me, I didn’t know what I was saying. Or doing. I’m not usually like that, at all.”

“Relationships are tough,” Frank said.

“They are. They are. And now I have to worry about my sister. Not that I don’t love my sister. I love my sister. But she’s a lot to take in, you know?”

“I know,” Frank said, straight-faced.

“And I’m not saying she was asking for it. I would never say that. I’m a feminist. I have given tens of thousands to Girls’ Time, which is a women’s charity. Very good work they do. Did. No, I think they have a chapter in Naples, so technically they could still be going.” Christina lowered her voice. “But Emma is the type of person who would absolutely get off on Angel showing an interest in her, you know. She’s a shit-stirrer. She’s not happy unless she has a little scheme in the back of her head that no one else knows about. Makes her feel smart. Do you have a brother? If you had a brother and she knew that she could make you two fight over her, she would set off fireworks.” Her voice rose again. “I’m not bothering you by talking so much, am I? I always tried to hold my tongue when it was Angel and me. You never knew who could be listening, what you might let slip out.”

“I don’t mind,” Frank told her. “Conversation’s like salmon. You never know when you’ll get another one.”

“Oh. Your family. Yes. Sorry if I… it must seem insane to you, me talking about a family member like they’re a burden when you… it feels like we’re on opposite sides, doesn’t it? You didn’t know you were going to lose your family and I didn’t know I was going to be freed from that… It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now…”

Her thoughts were falling into a rut, memories flashing before her eyes, all accompanied with doom. There was barely a salon, a restaurant, a place or person she could think of that hadn’t been destroyed. She’d survived, but that brought no comfort. Christina was condemned to a long life in a world with little to live for. She tried to imagine moving to New York or Los Angeles, a simple nail salon there… the thought seemed impossible.

“I’m sorry,” Christina said, suddenly realizing she was exhibiting poor manners. “I’m feeling rather heady… I was drinking before, you know, the end of the world.”

“It’s alright,” Frank told her. “You’re in shock.”

“Shock?”

“Yes. Adrenaline rush. It’ll pass. Keep eating.”

“Why?”

Frank shrugged. “What else is there to do?”

Christina took a bite of her fish before talking with her mouth full. “When I was talking about what happened in the cupola and I said I wasn’t myself—it’s not that I find you unattractive. It’s just that, well, it would be something of a rebound relationship, now wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“It’s just that you are rather well-endowed, aren’t you?”

Frank took another bite of salmon. He felt damned odd talking to Christina in this state. It felt like taking advantage of her. She was a society wife, not given to these embarrassing flights of fancy. He didn’t feel right locking her into what she’d said or done in such a condition.

And he didn’t feel right letting her dare him to do something and getting away with it.

Sound carried in the underground. He heard Emma’s bare feet slapping the floor, heard her sniffling, before she came in the dining room.

She looked like hell. Obvious tear tracks down both cheeks. Her hair a mess. She’d bitten a blood clot into her lower lip. But she was all cried out now.

She staggered into the dining room, sat beside Christina, and took her plate from her. “How can you eat at a time like this?” she asked before she started eating.

“I might not get a chance to later,” Frank answered.

Emma proved ravenous. She stuffed her face with what was left of Christina’s fillet, then the ones on the platter, and she looked at Frank’s plate as if she might go for that if he weren’t finishing it up. Then she got up and went into the kitchen, but stopped in the doorway, like she’d forgotten what she was doing.

“Do we have any Twinkies?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Christina said.

Emma nodded absently. “You hear that Twinkies last forever? That could be handy. We could parcel them out.”

“Like for emergencies,” Christina replied.

“Or celebrations.” She spoke quietly but with force, like she was holding in the energy clearly roiling within her, saving it up for some hidden purpose. “We can use up all the perishables, and then all the canned goods. By then we’ll be able to go outside. We’ll start scavenging, and then we’ll hunt, and eventually we’ll work our way up to subsistence farming. And every year, we can have one Twinkie a piece. To remember how good we used to have it… and we didn’t even notice… I…”

She screamed suddenly, dropping to her knees. Christina went to comfort her—“It’s okay, Em, it’s alright”—but Emma flung her away before her sister could get her arms around her. Frank stepped in, catching Christina before she could careen to the floor. Then suddenly Emma was there, throwing herself at him… wrapping her arms around his midsection… hugging him tight.

Frank thought he understood. There was a lot of baggage between Emma and her sister. A lot of old wounds. Too much for her to accept being consoled by her.

Whatever Emma’s misgivings about him, he was a neutral party. A blank slate. She could accept whatever he had to give. Though what that was, Frank himself didn’t know.

Cautiously, painstakingly, he wound his arms around Emma’s tiny body. He held her as she sobbed, hoping the solidness of his body and the pressure of his grip would be enough to sooth her.

He’d often felt misunderstood. A sane man in an insane world—the only man sane enough to understand how insane it all was. Now these two helpless women knew too. He hurt on their behalf. And when Emma cried, it felt like she was crying for him too.