Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [86]
“No, it’s not lucky. I’ve been waiting here in front of your cousin’s door for half an hour. My thighs are frozen, my feet are almost numb, but here I still am waiting, all this time waiting just to ask the old man a question. This is so not covered in my job description.”
“Babe. What do you need to know that could be so important?” I pulled out one of Garth’s protein bars as I talked, taking the time to remove my gloves and unwrap it for her. To my surprise, Angela didn’t grab the offering from me, instead with her gloved hands she cupped my bare ones, guiding them to her mouth. There was no risk of the chocolate melting on her gloves, as cold as it was. Looking at her, her lips drained to gray, I found it hard to believe there would be enough warmth in her gut to melt the food either. Seeing her lips part and then collapse as they chewed, I was overwhelmed by the desire to touch them. To touch any of her, and not just acrylic thermal padding.
“I want to know if he’ll switch jobs with me.”
“You want him to come all the way across Tekeli-li to scrub down that kitchen floor?” I asked.
“No, I want to trade households with him. Even if it’s only for a day or two. You’ve seen Booker: he’s the only one of us who looks well fed and not beaten down.” I had noticed this in my quick passing in Tekeli-li’s main square. I put it down to the legendary Jaynes endurance in the face of opposition, but a generous employer was the more likely factor. “He’s your cousin, Christopher,” Angela continued, squeezing my hand, which she still cupped in hers. “You talk to him. I need this. I called his name into the cave a few times; I heard something in there, the moans those Neanderthals make sometimes. But I don’t feel safe going in uninvited.”
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore. I have an escape plan for us,” I told her. There was intimacy in the way I said “us,” and no small amount of expectation on my part. I admit I wanted desperately in that moment to play the hero, for Angela to see me in that light. This might be the final break she would need to mentally annul her second marriage. Not reacting to any of this, Angela instead became excited about the main point of my statement and jumped to the conclusion that the modern world had reappeared in the form of radio contact or the workers’ ship arriving, and that we would be soon traveling back to it. This assumption contrasted painfully with the reality that I was really discussing Garth’s belief that if we marched out onto the uncharted ice we might find the hidden lair of his artistic crush.
“Chris, that’s just insane. That’s not even stupid, it’s past stupid and straight into suicidal madness,” Angela nearly whispered, pulling away from me and tugging absently on her snowsuit’s zipper as if a half inch of flesh had been exposed.
“Staying here is suicidal madness,” I rebutted, trying not to sound hurt.
“Maybe. But at least it requires a hell of a lot less effort. And anyway, Nathaniel isn’t going to make it on the ice: he can barely limp out of the village square.” Angela paused for a moment, dragging the image of her ailing second husband into both our minds. “Even if I wanted to go, if I wanted