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Kim turns the dial on his wireless. A fuzzy sound—which Kim recognizes as distant crowd noise—filters through its little speakers. A man’s voice breaks through the din—crisp and clear. “And it’s Gilles who spun off there in Turn 2.”
Hugo Laaksonen, one of Kim’s favorite retired TipTop drivers, Insulindian Champion of ’42 and ’44, is commentating on the race. “Oh, it doesn’t look good, though. Oh, dear. That is a nasty one, Carin.”
“Oh, goodness. I do hope he’s all right.” Another commentator sighs heavily, his voice crackling with static.
Fucking signal.
“Awful luck for the driver from Revachol,” Laaksonen clicks his tongue. “Really good start, Carin. Really good start he had. Just had that lock-up going into the turn and lost the back end. Nothing he could’ve done, I’m afraid.”
Kim can imagine the scene. A young driver lies motionless in a crumpled chassis with yellow and orange livery. Thick black smoke rises from the engine, reaching toward the sky. The marshals run down the track toward the car, medical kits in hand. In the stands, spectators mutter among themselves, craning their necks to get a better look over the barriers. The marshals surround the car like a swarm of black bees.
Everyone is asking themselves the same question: is he dead?
“Absolutely, Hugo, I’m just glad that Droz was able to avoid him there. That could have made it all so much worse. This is a red flag, for sure. Lots of debris on the track. To everyone listening in, we’ll keep you updated as clean-up progresses over here…”
Kim turns the dial back until it clicks under his fingers. There’s a strange sort of lump in his throat, a tightness in his chest. He isn’t positive that the young man is dead, of course, but the somber tone of the commentators is not a good sign. It’s not that death is so uncommon in TipTop Tournée, so why does this one feel different? Why does he feel as though he can’t catch his breath?
Perhaps Kim has reached his monthly quota for all things dead and dying. He’s finished listening to the race. Time to do something else. If only there were something else to do.
Still slightly groggy from this afternoon’s dose of painkillers, Kim sits up straight and looks blearily around his sitting room.
The late afternoon sun sends long beams of light across the floorboards, highlighting the fine layer of dust that has settled there. It’s been a while since he’s cleaned this place. How long? A week? Three weeks? Kim can hardly remember. Time seems to have warped since Martinaise.
The Before, Kim thinks. Before THE HANGED MAN. It feels like a different life.
Somehow, his fried brain always finds its way back to Martinaise. It’s hardly useful anymore. He’s written the report, submitted the report, revised the report. He’s sat through countless hours of debriefing. He’s read and re-read his notes. He lies awake at night, just remembering. Remembering and remembering. And in the morning, he remembers some more.
It’s exhausting. He’s exhausted.
Kim picks himself up from the couch. He feels lightheaded and waits a moment for it to pass. Then there are the pins and needles in his right arm. The sensation has been coming and going for the past few days. It’s probably a slipped disc impinging on a nerve somewhere. He flexes his wrist, then his fingers. The feeling persists, although it dies into a soft prickle. He wonders if there are any other injuries, hidden under the surface, that the medic did not catch.
Permanent brain damage, perhaps?
Kim eyes the pile of mail on the hall table. With some trepidation, he gathers the small stack of envelopes that he set aside the night before. RCM Post, bill, bill, a summons to a deposition, a second deposition, bill… His stomach sinks. It’s always the same, isn’t it? Martinaise changed nothing in that regard. He places the stack back on the table.
On second thought, he separates the bills and walks them to the kitchen counter. This way he can’t ignore them. He places the mail by his coffee machine. The carafe is still half-full from this morning.
Speaking of coffee…
Kim rummages through the cabinet where he keeps the dry goods. He finds the tin of coffee, a specialty light roast from Samara, and opens it. The tin is about a quarter full. The smell of the coffee grounds is sweet and slightly acidic. Kim finds himself grimacing a little; the smell is unsettling his already unsettled stomach. He shuts the tin and replaces it in the cabinet. Then he digs around the drawers for a pen.
Coffee, he adds to a half-finished shopping list. This note has been sitting on the counter for at least two weeks now. He started it Before. The rest of the note reads simply, garlic, Freesia apples, milk, flour, good bread.
This reminds him of the bread at the Whirling-in-Rags. That was not good bread. But he ate it, without complaint, morning after morning, gazing out his window into the wet courtyard below. Sometimes he would review his notes from the previous day’s work, just waiting for something to click. It was quiet on most days; almost peaceful. Kim guessed that Cuno and his companion were still asleep at this hour.
Kim would typically spend the morning in his room, but on the coldest days, he joined the rest of the patrons in the cafeteria, where the heating units were stronger. Harry joined him there once or twice, complaining about the draft in his shack on the coast. “It’s a shack,” Kim would remind him.
They played Suzerainty on one of those early mornings, huddled by the out-of-service summer doors, sipping too-hot coffee from mismatching mugs.
Harry. Lieutenant double-yefreitor Harrier du Bois. Harry was unique. It took Kim a while to admit it to himself, but he liked Harry.
Not that it was easy working with the man—far from it. Kim vividly recalls the uncertainty of it all—the never-knowing-what-was-coming. Like that damned phone box by the pier. Trust Harry to find the one working phone out on the coast. Trust Harry to pull that woman’s number out of his speed-addled brain. Trust Harry to dial it.
Kim watched the conversation unfold like a somber one-act play. He finally tried to intervene when Harry punched the phone—what a painful sound that made—but Harry merely hit it again, seemingly oblivious to Kim’s pleas of “don’t, officer, stop, Harry, leave it—”
Eventually, Harry turned to look at him, cradling his hand against his chest.
“Sorry,” he said, his eyes glassy with tears. “Let’s finish checking the traps. I know it’s not real, but we did promise Morrell.”
Kim followed him wordlessly, watching drops of blood fall into the snow.
Kim wasn’t afraid of Harry. Nor was he concerned that Harry would hurt a bystander or even a suspect. But he did wonder if it was only a matter of time before Harry hurt himself. That first night that they shared connecting rooms at the Whirling, Kim listened carefully whenever he heard Harry shuffling around next door. At one point, a particularly loud thump made Kim start at his desk. He envisioned Harry’s body dropping lifeless to the floor in the bathroom.
He was about to get up and knock on the bathroom door when Harry’s voice called to him: “Sorry, Kim! Slipped on the floor here. I’ll have a word with Garte in the morning. There really should be a fucking mat in here. It’s just a safety hazard, really—”
Oh. Kim shakes himself.
He's remembering again.
He opens his refrigerator next. Nothing remarkable. Nothing much at all, really. He examines the vegetables and finds a few speckled with fuzzy white mold. Those go into the trash and he adds a few more items to the list.
The rest of the kitchen is mostly as he left it. Nothing is out of place; nothing looks particularly different. It’s never as dusty in the kitchen as in the sitting room, likely due to the front of the apartment facing the main road. The kitchen, on the other hand, faces a large municipal garden.
Kim lingers by the window for a moment, gazing down at it. Everything is wet and dead now, but in the summer, it isn’t so bad. It’s got a wild beauty to it, like an urban forest. The project was the brainchild of some local businessman who quickly abandoned it when he moved to another district. But the garden continues to bloom. A variety of wildflowers—some of which Kim doesn’t see anywhere else—return year after year. It won’t be long now until the green starts to poke through again.
Kim pulls himself from the window. It’s difficult, for a moment. His feet feel heavy. His body is ungainly.
The bedroom is not as tidy as the kitchen.
He has to do laundry, he realizes, noticing the tangle of bedding in the hamper. It’s not like him, to tear old sheets from the bed and not wash them. But he couldn’t bring himself to do the laundry yesterday. He didn’t have the energy. That, or he simply forgot. Or didn’t care.
That’s something that Daniel would have done, he thinks. Daniel hated doing the laundry. We can do it later, Kim, he’d say. Let’s go out. We never go out, come on.
Let’s not go there. Daniel’s been gone for a long, long time.
Kim grimaces in discomfort. He touches his chin. The swelling is gone, but the bruises remain, as does the soreness. That concussion has scrambled his brain, he’s sure of it. Maybe this is it for him—for his career. Maybe all that’s left for him is to fall headfirst into the black hole of the past. Live in the pain. Embrace it.
Poor Harry, he thinks. Is this what it’s like?
Kim wouldn’t have admitted it to Harry, but he did get it—the drinking and the drugs. The self-loathing. The suicidality, even. In another life, Kim would be right there with him. He doesn’t have to guess. He knows. It’s in his blood. His father was the same as Harry, he was told. A drinker. A man in pain.
Kim doesn’t like to keep alcohol in the apartment, but he does. Not a lot, but enough. Mostly for the sake of company that he no longer invites.
It’s here, actually, in the hall closet. Kim opens the door and flicks the light switch. The bulb gives off one final white flash before it burns out.
Add it to the list.
Kim crouches down to reach the bottom shelf. He can’t see, but he doesn’t need to, because he always keeps these items in the same place.
He pulls a heavy, rounded bottle from the shelf. Here she is, the Lethe-brand gin that Daniel was so fond of. It’s distilled with cardamom and rose. Kim takes the bottle into the kitchen and examines it. Its pale yellow label is just as pretty as ever, having been safely resting in the closet away from direct sunlight. Kim places the bottle on the kitchen counter, setting it neatly beside the coffee maker with its label facing outward.
Why did you do that?
He knows why.
He looks at the bottle. It seems to look back at him. On the label, under the name LETHE, under PREMIUM GIN, there is a small tagline: FORGET ALL ELSE.
Kim picks a highball glass out of the cupboard. There is a part of him that’s saying: don’t do it. It’s not worth it. It won’t make you feel any better. It’s a maladaptive coping strategy. If anything, it’ll make you feel worse a few hours from now.
The other part of him is saying fuck it.
Kim eyeballs about two fingers, although when he holds the glass at eye-level, it looks like… more. He mixes it with soda. Kim doesn’t drink anything neat and he never will.
He raises the glass to his nose. It has quite a lovely smell, really. Sweet, warm, and herbaceous.
He takes a sip. It glides across his tongue, fragrant and agonizingly familiar. It leaves a soft trail of heat down his throat.
FORGET ALL ELSE.
Kim nurses his drink as he goes through the rest of his apartment, tidying and making mental notes of tasks that he must complete before he goes back to work. By the time he feels satisfied with the state of things, the sun has set and a chill has settled into the air. Kim turns up the heat, only a little, to stave it off.
As he fumbles with the thermostat, Kim blinks and realizes that he feels loose. Something inside of him feels lighter, as if his head has lost a few pounds. It’s the booze, he realizes, smiling to himself. It’s a nice feeling. But there is something missing.
Another human being, perhaps?
He won’t say that he misses Harry, specifically.
All right, maybe that’s not quite true.
He does miss Harry, specifically. He misses Harry.
He thinks back to their last meeting outside the Whirling. Harry followed Kim out of S.O. Vicquemare’s motor carriage, asking if he needed any help packing the Kineema.
“From you?” Kim asked, nodding toward Harry’s leg. “No, detective. But thank you.”
“Fair enough,” Harry said, looking around himself, almost sheepishly. “That makes sense.”
“I suppose this is goodbye for now. I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.” Kim didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to say something more meaningful, more grateful, but nothing was coming to mind. Instead, Kim extended his hand, hoping that the gesture would be understood as he meant it.
Harry seemed almost despondent as he shook it. By way of explanation, he muttered under his breath, “I’m not sure I want to go with them.”
Kim looked over Harry’s shoulder at Satellite-officer Vicquemare, who met his gaze briefly before turning away. Kim couldn’t blame Harry for being anxious about his newfound friends. While Trant and Judit were pleasant enough, Vicquemare was a very different story. Throughout their investigation, he had alternated between icy indifference and simmering rage. Whatever he and Harry had between them, it was deeply and irrevocably personal.
“Where else would you go, Lieutenant? Back to Couron?” Kim asked gently, offering him a small smile.
“No, I think that’s over for me. You saw me try to lift those weights. Embarrassing.”
“Well, it was… heavy,” Kim rebutted, although he knew it was a poor consolation. “And you didn’t have the proper gloves.”
“All right, Lieutenant Know-it-all.” Harry’s tone was warm. Without waiting for a response, he put his arms around Kim’s shoulders and hugged him tightly. Kim stood there, rooted to the spot, his face stuck in Harry’s jacket. Kim would not describe himself as a hugger. But with Harry, it was somehow comfortable.
“You’ll call, won’t you?” Harry asked, pulling back, sniffling.
“I… I can call the precinct.” Kim’s face felt hot.
“Sure, but take my personal…” He froze. “I don’t know it.”
“It’s all right,” Kim reassured him, meeting Harry’s searching gaze. “It’ll be all right. I’ll call the station.”
And he did. Kim did call the station. A few times. First to submit a copy of his report, and then to follow up on Harry’s recovery. They told him that Harry was resting at home but that his message would be relayed. The last time he heard from the precinct was late last week. He left his home number, hoping that one of the officers in Harry’s team might return his call personally.
Kim knows that they’re busy; the past few days have been hectic for him as well. Even though he has technically been off duty since Martinaise, he has been in and out of the GRIH to debrief with various individuals of varying rank. Kim supposes that Harry is undergoing a similar procedure at the 41st.
Then why, why is he so anxious?
His stomach churns. He should eat something, he thinks, to soak up the gin. But there isn’t any bread, and he isn’t hungry. He could take a shower, then. Melt away some of the spring chill. It would feel good. His head is beginning to throb dully behind his eyes. He’s been awake for a long time.
He could go to the couch and lie down, or go to bed and lie down. Either one would result in the same outcome: not sleeping and remembering.
Kim sinks onto the couch where he left his radio. He isn’t particularly interested in listening to anything, but he finds the sound comforting. It makes the apartment feel less empty.
Kim turns the dial. They’re talking about the TipTop race, which Kim presumes is now finished. He almost tunes to a different station, but he hesitates—wondering if he might hear news of the driver involved in the collision.
A man with a soft Vespertine accent is giving a recap of the results. “And that’s what we’ve heard so far—I’m quite pleased with that.”
“I think Droz might be able to make up the difference in the next race, to be honest.”
The commentators chatter back and forth for a while, and Kim half-listens as he finishes off the last of the gin. He might consider getting more if it didn’t involve having to get up and walk across the apartment. Kim isn’t sure that he would make it that far. He feels good right here—comfortable. Buzzed.
“And I’m especially happy for young Gilles,” one of the men says, catching Kim’s attention. He blinks.
“Oh, definitely. That’s one of his nine lives gone, but I’m so relieved he’s all right.” This is Hugo Laaksonen again. “He’s a good man.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Laaksonen chuckles—a soft crackle through the radio. “Seriously, there are moments when I’m glad that I’m not in the car anymore. That was one of them.”
“Well, of course, this brings up the question of those controversial safety proposals from last season—”
“The parachute?”
Kim stops listening. He notices his heart thumping in his chest. Gilles is alive? It’s not the news he expected to hear, but he’s happy to be wrong this time. He smiles, lowers his head back onto the cushions. The radio chatter becomes further and further away. Kim wonders if he’s ever been this pleased by the outcome of a grand prix, and he doesn’t even know the winner.
Harry wouldn’t care about the winner either, he thinks. Harry would be a fierce proponent of the most radical safety proposals. Kim smiles again, feeling faintly ridiculous.
He remembers Harry suggesting to him that they change the headlights on the Kineema, citing the improved range of helium headlights over halogen. It would be nice; to finally get around to that. It would be nice to have the company.
Slowly, Kim feels his body relax and the tension begin to ease out of his limbs. He isn’t sure if that’s the booze or the exhaustion catching up to him. Either way, Kim leans into the sensation.
Sleep comes slowly, but when it finally does, Kim is thinking of helium headlights.