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Nicky sets the steaming mug in front of her and walks around the table to sit facing her. It isn’t Nile’s favorite blend (and how weird is it that she has favorite blends now? She’s not sure she ever even had hot tea in her first life) but it gets the taste of saltwater and screaming out of her mouth.
It’s kind of him to always do this for her, but she’s too tired to smile or thank him. He doesn’t seem to mind, and they drink their tea in companionable silence for a while. Eventually he says, “I am starting to worry for you. None of us had the dreams so often, even in the very beginning. You should not be missing so much sleep.”
She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s worse than he knows, that he doesn’t actually wake on all of her bad nights. She just says, “It isn’t always Quỳnh, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a rotating selection. At least I never get bored, right? Some nights it’s Quỳnh. Some nights I’m dying, or Andy is. Some nights I dream about all the people I’ve killed, and sometimes it’s my family…and sometimes I’m so stressed about what it’s going to be that I can’t sleep enough to dream in the first place.”
“That sounds very difficult.”
“I don’t love it.”
“No.” He looks at her the same way he did at their first meal together, kind and concerned and maybe a little awkward. “I imagine there is not a lot that you love right now.”
They drink a little more tea, and he asks, “What can we do for you, or with you, that you would love?”
Go to Chicago, go to actual Paris, stay in a 5-star hotel, call Mom… “I think you mean, what would I love that Andy and Copley would agree to. I’ll let you know if I think of anything.” Actually… before she can stop herself, the question she’s been holding back for weeks flies out. “Could you tell me about her?”
“About Andy? I think you already – "
“About Quỳnh.” Still too tired to be polite.
He looks wary. “There is not much more to tell.”
“I don’t mean what happened to her. Tell me about her. Who she is, what she’s like.”
“I might not be the best person to answer that. I can understand why you would not want to ask Andy, but perhaps Joe?”
This only makes her more curious. “Is it too painful? You didn’t seem to mind, that first night.”
“It is not too painful, no. But though we were with Quỳnh for centuries, we have now been without her even longer.”
“So you’re…starting to forget her?” Her heart seems to stop and speed up at the same time. How can you forget someone you knew for so long?
“Dio, no. Not at all. It is more that…after all this time, the meanings of the memories change. I remember that Quỳnh had a temper, and that she sometimes liked to make us lose ours because she hated to be the only one angry. Telling you this now, it’s endearing, one of the funny little quirks that makes you love someone more. But I think that at the time I hated it. Which is the truth of what she was like? The person I am now, who lost her, cannot speak for the person I used to be when she was here.”
Quỳnh’s anger is not new information, and not at all something Nile wants to know more about. She stares down into her mug to hide her disappointment. “And it’s not an issue for Joe?”
“Joe will at least use much better words to talk about it. Did something happen that makes you curious?”
“Nothing new. She’s one of us, right? Andy said she lost a soldier, and I should know who’s on my team. Even if they’re MIA. Besides, I thought…it would remind me she’s a person and not the, the monster under my bed.”
“And you think this would help?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I won’t tell you not to try. But I think you already suffer with her, and it will not help you to mourn for her as well.”
He’s trying to be kind, and she doesn’t know how to tell him that this isn’t just for her sake. He’d said they dreamed because they’re meant to find each other, and if destiny isn’t going to lead Nile to the bottom of the ocean then she’ll have to find Quỳnh some other way. She feels like she owes it to Quỳnh somehow. Maybe it’s not something that anyone who doesn’t dream those deaths can understand.
“Sun’s starting to come up. I think I’ll go for a run, clear my head. Thanks for the tea.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to rest for a little while? I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I happen to know that Andy is taking you back to the horses today.”
Son of a bitch. “Are you telling me not to run? Or not to come back?”
He snorts. “As long as I know how many people to make dinner for, you may do what you like.”
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Another late-night waking, another glimpse of the iron coffin. She’s been trying to be quieter, these days, to wake Nicky less often, but by the time she’s put on sweatpants and rinsed her face, he’s in the kitchen with the kettle on. She’s wrung out, more tired than before she fell asleep, and she has no plans to talk about anything more serious than the reality shows she’s trying to get them interested in. (Bake-Off was a hit with everyone, but Nicky can’t stand Gordon Ramsay. Andy, of course, thinks he’s great.)
She sticks to the plan for about as long as it takes for Nicky to set down the mugs and join her. “Andy said God doesn’t exist.”
“Andy has seen and learned a great many things. But she cannot explain us, and she cannot explain God. Even Andy is not an authority on everything.”
“What about you?”
“Do I believe in God? I believe in…something. I have faith. In what, well that is harder to explain.”
“You said you believed in destiny. Does that mean this is Quỳnh’s destiny? God or the universe or whatever wanted her to drown for hundreds of years?”
He shakes his head and looks away. “I have struggled with this for a long time. The question of theodicy is far older than I am, and will continue after I’m gone. All I can tell you is… we cannot know the meaning of something until after it has occurred. If there is a reason for what Quỳnh is suffering – and I believe that there must be – it isn’t one we can know. At least not yet. We can only carry on, and hope it will become clear in time.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. My dad died, and I still believed in God. I served in a war zone and I still believed in God. But seeing what’s happening to her? It’s so much, and for so long, and I don’t understand how there could ever be a good enough reason for that.”
“I had those same doubts and questions, for many years after we stopped searching. I am sorry to say it will take you many years as well. Booker, as you might have guessed, could never reconcile it.”
“That’s another thing I don’t understand. No offense, but…how could you stop? You said you try to do what’s right, you try to do good, and you just left her. How do you live with that?”
He looks, for the first time, as ancient as he is. She remembers how red and wet his eyes were, the first night he told her about Quỳnh. “With difficulty. And because we have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice! You could have kept looking. What if it had been Joe?” Shit, shit, that’s too much, she can’t make him think about that. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry Nicky, I shouldn’t have –"
“It was a fair question. And we have talked about it, of course. I always thought that whatever brought us to each other would never split us apart, but I would have said the same about Andy and Quỳnh. I still believe Joe and I are meant to be together. But perhaps there may be…unpleasant interludes. So we have talked about what we would do, and we have made certain promises.”
“To never stop looking?”
“To look for as long as there is hope. And to stop when the hope is gone.”
That can’t be right. “I know I don’t know all of you that well yet, but I’d expect you to say that there’s always hope?”
Nicky’s face lights up briefly. “You know me better than you think. Say instead that we would search for as long as searching was doing any good. I still hope to see Quỳnh again one day, but searching the ocean one meter at a time will not help that happen.”
Nile is still skeptical. “I just don't believe you'd ever really be able to do that." She shifts uncomfortably, wondering again if she's crossed some kind of line, but not backing down. "People promise things they can't do all the time."
Nicky nods, seemingly unaffected. "They do. I have. But Nile," he leans forward, "this immortality has given me three great gifts. The first is the ability to help people, in ways no one else can. The second, of course, is Joe. But the third was the opportunity to become the kind of man who could appreciate the first two. You saw Copley’s board, no? How much of that could we have done if we hadn’t stopped looking for Quỳnh? How much would be left undone if I gave it all up for Joe, or he for me? Would I still be someone he could love, if I placed our pain above that of so many others?”
This is intolerable. He’s either lying to her face or he really means it, and she can’t stomach either one. “No way. You’re telling me that if the ‘love of your life’ was locked up somewhere, dying, you could just walk away? Live your life as if nothing had happened? That is bullshit, Nicky. You can’t just say that to me.” Finally she gets a reaction. She doesn’t know what that face means, but she knows it means something.
“I did not say that. I would not say that.” He scoots his chair back from the table, runs his hands down his face, and takes a deep breath. “You did not know Andromache before we lost Quỳnh. You did not know Sébastien when his family was alive. We survive things that should destroy us; that does not mean they have no effect. All I am saying is that, should the worst happen, we have promised each other to be more like Andy and less like Booker.”
Nile thinks about Andy standing in a drug runner’s plane, drinking vodka like water, and she’s not so sure she’d use that as a model. But Nicky is looking as tired as she feels, and she’s lost whatever interest she had in this hypothetical nightmare. Her real nightmares are bad enough. “I’m sorry for bringing all this up.”
“It’s all right, Nile. I want you to ask. I have had a very long time to make peace with this life, but I remember what it was like to be new.” He clears his throat and reaches for her mug as he stands. “I also remember what it was like when I first began to train with Andy. I think you should try to get more sleep. If I promise to make a real American breakfast, will you go back to bed?”
That little quirk of his lips is the equivalent of a warm smile from anyone else, so that’s what she gives him in return. And a punch to the shoulder, like she’s seen Andy do (but gentler, because of the mugs, and because she’s not Andy.) “You can’t make a real American breakfast, the bacon here is all wrong! And your coffee is – " The death glare is too much, and she slaps her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing loud enough to wake the others. “All right, all right, I’m going!”
There’s still something…itchy, something in her stomach maybe, or between her shoulderblades. Something unsatisfying in Nicky’s perfectly logical, perfectly mature answers to perfect horror. But training is exhausting, and she does want a big breakfast (even with the weird bacon), so she climbs back into bed and counts her breaths until she falls asleep.
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They’re walking through the eaves of the forest. Nicky is supposed to be teaching her how to find firewood, but her city girl brain can’t process it. There are trees, and sometimes pieces of the trees are on the ground. Nicky starts talking about density and dryness and hardwoods and softwoods, and Nile’s brain turns to mush and “that’s what she said” jokes. Nicky has given up, or is biding his time, and it’s a nice afternoon for a walk.
“Tell me some more? About Quỳnh?” She bends down to fiddle with her shoelaces so she won’t have to see his face. “Just so I know. Nothing deep. Something she liked?”
By the time she straightens up, Nicky is looking up at the trees and his face is soft. “She liked a great many things, but… monkeys. She loved monkeys.”
“Seriously?” One of these days, or years, she’s going to learn how to tell when he’s bullshitting her. “Thousands of years of living, and you’re giving me monkeys?”
Nicky smiles, and she thinks he might actually be for real this time. “I don’t mean she liked them the way you like terrible pizza. I mean she loved them the way Andy loves sweets. She used to wish for one as a pet, and when we were bored she’d talk about all the things she’d train it to do for us. And we’d tease each other with it – ‘be nice to me Quỳnh, or I’ll make sure Andromache never buys you a monkey.’ ‘Yusuf, if you damage my bow I will take your sword to the market and trade it for a monkey.’ I once called it ảo tưởng, an illusion, and somehow that became its name. She told stories about Ảo Tưởng the monkey for years, always getting grander and more epic. I think he saved the world once. But only because Quỳnh trained him so well, of course. He was a… voọc? I don’t know what kind of monkey that is in English. But they have very sweet faces.”
He’s still looking up at the trees, and his face is still soft, and Nile isn’t sure if he even knows he’s crying. She tries to imagine the fury that haunts her dreams telling stories about a heroic monkey and threatening to sell Joe’s sword. Nicky was right; it doesn’t help. “Do you remember any of those stories?”
“Some of them. Joe knows more. He illustrated a few, many years ago. They’re in the basement of a safehouse somewhere, I think.”
“Could you… I mean, if you wanted to. Tell them to me? On the nights when I can’t sleep?”
He looks her in the eye, now, and she looks back. “I would love to.”