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By Root 1551 0

which is why I brought these. (takes out binocs) My eyesight and night vision are so much better than when I was a human, but I’m nowhere near where the Brothers are, so I need these. I like to watch the parachutes come out.

J.R.:

(desperate to ask him to explain about V, but respecting his distance) How long does it take you to build them?

Butch:

’Bout a week. Phury paints the exteriors. (Goes over to launching platform and sets up rocket. When he returns, he nods at the ignition box.) Ladies should do the honors, don’t you think?

We count it down, and this time we’re coordinated. As we rise to our feet and watch the rocket shoot to the heavens, I can feel that he’s about to say something.

Butch:

I am in love with Marissa. But without V I’d be dead, and not just because of the whole healing thing.

J.R.:

(glancing over) And that’s what surprises you most?

Butch:

(trains binocs on rocket) Here’s the thing, that relationship with V? It doesn’t fit into any neat buckets, and it doesn’t have to . . . although sometimes I wish it did. I feel like it would be smaller and less important if it was just best friends or brothers or some shit. It’s hard enough to be wicked vulnerable to one person, like your wife. But to have this other guy out there in the world, banging and crashing into lessers . . . See, I worry about losing them both, and I hate that. V’ll go out on his own sometimes and I can’t be with him, and I check my phone constantly until he gets home safe. There have been nights when Jane and I have sat side by side on my sofa in the Pit and just stared straight ahead. (Pauses.) It’s a pain in the ass, to tell the truth. But I need them both to be happy.

Butch goes back, gets another rocket, and explains to me the ins and outs of its construction. This one is about the same size as the Lag and is painted black with silver bands. We go about shooting it off, and he’s funny and charming and irreverent, and you’d be hard-pressed to imagine that just minutes before he’d shared something so deeply personal. I assume the serious conversating is done for the night, yet when we launch number three, he returns to the subject of Vishous—as if the rocket’s flaring rise and parachuted fall creates a special zone for talk.

Butch:

It’s not a creepy incest thing, by the way.

J.R.:

(eyes bulge) Excuse me?

Butch:

V and I being tight. I mean, we were tight like that way before the Omega . . . you know, did that shit to me. Sure, Vishous is the Scribe Virgin’s son and I’m . . . what I am thanks to Her brother, but there’s nothing sleazy about it.

J.R.:

I never thought that.

Butch:

Good. And P.S., I like Doc Jane a lot. She’s a real ass-kicker, that one. Man . . . (laughs in a bark), she’ll hand him his head on a plate if she has to. Damn fun to watch—although he behaves himself most of the time around her, which is disappointing.

J.R.:

And Marissa? How’s she dealing with another roommate?

Butch:

She and Jane get along like a house afire, and Jane’s been a real help. She does the checkups at Safe Place now. It’s much better to have a woman physician doing the exams. The nurses Havers sent over were nice enough . . . but it’s easier with Jane, and she has more medical training.

J.R.:

Have Marissa and Havers had much contact?

Butch:

No reason to. He’s just another physician. (looks over at me) Family is what you make it, not who you were raised with. (turns back to duffel)

Butch sets up our last rocket, and this is my favorite of all of them. It’s the biggest and has David Ortiz’s Sox uniform and the words Big Papi painted on the side. We do our countdown and I press the button . . . and there’s the whiz and fizzle as what Butch built goes barreling up to the sky. As I watch the glow at the tip rise, I see that this one is going really high. At its apex, it becomes the only star in the cloudy night sky.

Butch:

(softly) Pretty, isn’t it.

J.R.:

Lovely.

Butch:

You know why I build them?

J.R.:

Why?

Butch:

I like to watch them fly.