The Last Of Us Returns

5

Chapter 5

Damon spent the next two days at the warehouse, testing what he could and couldn't do.

He found out on Thursday morning that living things wouldn't move. A mouse ran across the loading floor, and he had touched it by accident chasing it out from under a pallet, but no matter how hard he pushed, it stayed exactly where it was, twitching its nose at him. He couldn't move himself either. He tried twenty times, standing in the middle of the warehouse with his eyes shut and his whole body aching, until Lena walked in and asked why he was standing in the middle of the floor with his fists clenched making constipated faces.

So he couldn't just pull his mother out of the Sterling clinic. He would have to do it the hard way.

"The hard way," Benji said on Friday afternoon, sitting in the van outside the clinic with a stack of papers on his knees, "is me walking into a fancy hospital with Lena's uncle's lawyer and pretending I know what I'm doing."

"You don't have to pretend anything. Mr. Hollis knows what he's doing. You just have to stand next to him and look big."

"I can look big. I'm good at looking big." Benji flipped through the papers nervously. "Run it by me again."

"Celeste signed Mom into that clinic as my spouse. We filed the divorce on Monday, so she's not my spouse anymore, which means her signature on the admission papers is no good. I'm her son and her legal guardian. Mr. Hollis has the guardianship papers, the divorce filing, and my signature on a discharge request."

"And the clinic's going to say?"

"They're going to say they need Celeste to confirm it, because she's paying, and because she'll have told them to call her if anyone tries."

"And then?"

"And then she's going to confirm it."

Benji looked at him. "Why would she confirm it?"

"Leave that to me. When the director gets a text from her saying to release my mother to me, you get Mom into the van and drive her to Lena's. Don't stop for anything. Don't let Grant's guys near her."

"What if Grant's there?"

"Then you look extra big."

At eight o'clock, Damon rode the elevator up to the top floor of the Sterling Tower apartments, and Grant was waiting for him outside Celeste's door in a dark suit, hands folded in front of him.

"Arms up," Grant said.

Damon lifted his arms. Grant patted him down slowly, his chest, his waist, his ankles, and when he got to the left ankle he pressed down hard with his thumb and looked up.

"Feels fine," Grant said.

"It is fine."

Grant smiled and stood up. "She's waiting."

Celeste's apartment was all glass and white furniture and city lights, and she was sitting at a small dining table near the window with two plates of food in front of her and a glass of wine already poured for him. She was wearing a grey sweater and jeans with her hair down, and her phone lay face up on the table next to her plate. Damon had charged that phone for her every night for three years. He had touched it a thousand times.

"Sit," she said. "I made pasta. Don't look at me like that, I can cook. I just never wanted to cook for you."

Damon sat. "Where's my mother?"

"In room twelve, with a view of the garden, a private nurse and her crossword books. She asked for you twice and told the nurse I was a cold fish." Celeste picked up her fork. "I like her more every day."

"What do you want, Celeste?"

"Eat first."

"I'm not hungry."

"You've been hungry for three years and never once said no to food at my table," she said, and she started eating. "So humor me."

Damon picked up his fork and kept both hands on the table where she could see them.

"Let me tell you what I know," Celeste said, between bites. "And then you can tell me what you know. Six weeks ago, a cleaner at our Northgate lab got a fever and bit a nurse in our on-site clinic. Then the nurse got a fever and bit two more people. We've had eleven cases. All of them are in a locked ward on the fourth floor, all of them are getting worse, and none of them recognize their own families anymore." She set down her fork. "My father says it's under control. My father also says the stock price is under control. My father is lying about both."

Damon said nothing. In his last life, he had never known any of this. He had found out about Northgate a year after the outbreak, from a dying scientist on the east side, and by then it hadn't mattered.

"You knew about it," Celeste said, watching his face. "I can see it. You don't look surprised."

"Maybe I'm just not surprised your family's hiding something."

"Don't do that." Her voice went cold. "I'm being honest with you, Damon. I'm telling you things I haven't even told Jace. In return, I want to know how a man who was fetching my father's wine two weeks ago suddenly knows the exact score of a football game, my brother's secret debts, and which warehouse in this city to buy before anybody else does. Because I've been planning to buy Ward Markets since July, and you got there two days before Jace."

"Why did you want it?"

"Because if Northgate gets out, food is going to be the only thing that matters." She leaned back. "So you do know. It's in your face again."

Under the table, Damon thought about her phone.

It was in his jacket pocket. He felt the weight of it settle against his ribs, and her plate stayed exactly where it was, and her eyes stayed on his face. She didn't look down.

"I know Jace owes Mickey two hundred thousand dollars," he said, keeping his hands on the table. "I know that if Mickey's men don't get it by the end of the month, they'll break his arm in your father's garage. I know you've been sleeping with Grant since before our wedding."

That made her pause. Only for a second, but he saw it.

"Who told you that?" she asked.

"Nobody had to."

In his pocket, he slid his thumb across her screen. Her passcode was her father's birthday. It had always been her father's birthday. He found the message from the clinic director, sent an hour ago, asking her to confirm a discharge request from Mr. Hale's lawyer, and he typed back one line without looking down.

Release her to her son. Thank you.

He pressed send and thought about the phone being back on the table. When he glanced down at his plate, it was there, face up beside her glass, exactly where she'd left it.

"Grant is useful," Celeste said. "That's all he's ever been. You were useful too. I'm honest about that. I'm honest about everything, Damon, which is more than you can say tonight." She picked up her wine. "Here's what I'm offering. Remarry me. Come back as my partner, not my husband. Bring whatever you know, and I'll give you half of everything my family's going to build when this city falls apart. Your mother stays in the best clinic in the city. Benji gets a job. Lena keeps her stores."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you're on your own, and so is everyone you care about." She set her glass down. "I don't want to be your enemy. I've watched you for two weeks, and you're the most interesting thing that's happened to me in years. But if you make me choose, I'll choose my family. I always will."

"I know," Damon said. "That's why I'm saying no."

Her phone buzzed on the table.

She glanced at it, and he watched her face. She read the message once. Then she picked up the phone, opened it, scrolled up, and read her own reply. Then she read it again.

The clinic director had replied. Understood, Mrs. Sterling. Mrs. Hale has been discharged to her son's lawyer. The van has just left.

Celeste looked at the phone for a long time, then at the spot on the table where it had been sitting all evening, then at Damon's hands, still resting on either side of his plate.

"You've had both your hands on this table since you sat down," she said slowly. "I've been watching them the whole time, because I always watch your hands, because that's what you do when you're nervous. You never touched my phone."

Damon didn't answer.

Celeste set the phone down very carefully. She didn't call for Grant. She didn't raise her voice. She leaned forward on her elbows and looked at him the way she had looked at him on the steps that first night, with that same quiet, interested light in her eyes, except stronger now, and much more dangerous.

"The keys in the fish tank," she said. "The pallets in Lena's warehouse. My phone." She tilted her head. "Do it again, Damon. Right now. Move something in front of me, and then we'll talk about what you really are."