BZRK (BZRK 1)

“We’re doing what—”

“We’re not leaving Jin just because some killer in a goddamned velvet hat says to!”

Plath wondered whether now, finally, Vincent would lose his cool. No.

“Do you know where they have him, Wilkes? Because I don’t. Maybe if I did? But I don’t.”

“Get hold of Lear, tell him—”

“He knows.” Vincent waited to hear anything else Wilkes might have to say. But she had apparently used up all her outrage. “Find rooms. Wilkes, you and I will take the first watch. Keats? There’s a small basement room. Take Dr. Violet down there. Lock the door. Bring me the key.”

Plath’s choice of room was easy: her own. Getting there was the hard part because she had to walk by the master suite, where her parents had been, back, back so long ago.

And Stone’s room was next door.

Plath did not allow herself to open the door to see and hear the emptiness of her parents’ bedroom. But she did open the door to Stone’s room and stood there, leaning in slightly without letting her feet cross the threshold.

It was professionally decorated with Montauk-appropriate themes of sailboats and dunes, sandals and kites. Only the faintest sense of Stone as an individual showed: a Frisbee on the desk, a huge stuffed white rabbit wearing a woot! T-shirt, a single framed picture of Stone and … and Sadie, definitely not Plath, when he was maybe ten and she was a sadly dorky-looking seven. The picture had been taken right here on the beach. On the wall was a framed replica of an old-style gold record: the Rolling Stones’ Beast of Burden. It was an inside joke between them, the idea that Stone as the heir apparent was the beast of burden.

“I don’t know what room to go to.” Keats, just a foot away. He’d come up unnoticed. How long had he been standing there? How long had she?

“My room,” she said. “I can’t sleep there alone.”

She crossed the hallway to her own room. She snapped on the light and did not see what she expected. Her room was just as she’d left it when she’d last been here. Was it two summers ago? No, not that long. And somehow, it was all unchanged. But if she had changed, how could her room still be the same?

Her bed was made. Her window shades were open to the sea. Posters of Against Me and the Methadones. Books, actual old-style, physical books, filled a couple of small shelves. Knickknacks. Beach kitsch, all displayed to achieve maximum ironic effect. A basket with half a dozen bathing suits, mix-and-match tops and bottoms. A framed, autographed picture of Christopher Hitchens hung next to a framed, autographed picture of Tim Armstrong. A Ramones beach towel. That made her smile.

Keats stepped in and looked carefully around, noting details, nodding to himself every now and then.

“Well?” she asked him.

“You used to be Wilkes,” he said.

The observation was so surprising her jaw actually dropped open. She looked around, saw it as he was seeing it, and laughed. “Huh. I was just thinking how alien it all feels.”

“Yeah. Well, things changed, didn’t they? All this craziness, it has a way of, I guess, pushing everything in a different direction. Maybe before all this started happening Wilkes was some little Catholic schoolgirl wearing a plaid frock with her hair in pigtails.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Plath said.

“That’s a big bed.”

“I thrash in my sleep.”

“I noticed. The other night. But on that narrow bed the thrashing potential was limited. One could thrash in this bed.”

“Are we talking about having sex?” Plath asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted wearily.

“You want to,” she said flatly.

“I thought I had you fooled.”

“There are certain signs …”

“It seems weird not to, I guess. Have sex, I mean. I’ve been inside your brain. You’ve been inside mine. It’s not as if there’s anyone to yell ‘for shame!’ at us.”

“No,” she agreed. “The only thing stopping me …” She fell silent, not sure how to explain.