Founder, Installment 13

Chapters 25 and 26

Chapter 25

Afterwards, November 2021

Silvia sits yoga-style on her seat, a laptop balanced on her thighs. She has removed her Birkenstocks and set them on the floor beneath her. Hugh is across from her, drinking stale coffee from a paper cup and scrolling through Instagram on his mobile. It is just after four in the morning and, besides the two of them, only a handful of people remain in the waiting room, most slumped in their chairs or asleep on the floor. The lighting overhead is stark and unrelenting, the kind of light that seems not to cast shadows. Depending on where one stands, the walls are either beige or pale yellow, and the seats, arrayed in ranks of four throughout the room, are upholstered in brown vinyl. Everything in the waiting room is some shade of beige or brown: the walls, seats, carpet, doors. Anesthesia colors—to dull the wits of worried people. The wall-mounted television is tuned to an African wildlife show, though the volume is muted. At the nurse’s station, two women in blue scrubs converse quietly, their voices the only sound in the oppressively still room. Suddenly, one of the nurses bursts into laughter; then she appears to catch herself, covering her mouth with her hand. Hugh turns and glares at her; Silvia looks up from her laptop, then reaches over and touches his knee.

Since he arrived at Great Easton Road Hospital, Hugh’s anxiety has vented itself mainly as anger—toward the doctors, the nurses, the two Sikstand officers who showed up to question him, anyone suggesting he calm down or take a seat. He figured out a long time ago that, if he lets his blood sugar run low and focuses his thoughts appropriately, he can become angry instead of anxious. In situations like this where he can’t afford to shut down, it’s a helpful strategy. But it doesn’t endear him to many people.

Earlier tonight, after he hailed a taxi to the hospital, his first call was to Silvia. Her manner was cool at first; but after hearing Maggie had been attacked, she offered to meet Hugh at the emergency room. He knew he didn’t deserve her help, and it felt weak to reach out the way he did. But if having Silvia around would help him advocate for the old man, he’d have called her a thousand times over.

Now, feeling Silvia’s hand on his knee, he turns to her. “We should just go,” he says. “The nurse said he’ll be out all night, and we need to get some sleep, yeah?”

“Okay,” says Silvia. “That’s fine.” She doesn’t look as tired as he feels, just concerned, and unwaveringly vigilant.

“I mean, I wanted to be here if he woke up, you know?”

“Right,” says Silvia, her eyes locked on him.

“But we’re not doing any good just sitting here…”

Silvia edges forward in her seat. “If you feel like you need to stay, we can stay…”

Hugh laughs wearily and shakes his head. “If it were me lying in there, Maggie would’ve gone home by now.”

“You think?”

“Not because he doesn’t care,” Hugh says. “That’s just him, yeah?”

“Right.”

Hugh picks up his mobile. “I’ll get us an Uber. We’ll do two stops.”

“Good, thanks.”

While Silvia packs up her laptop and charger, Hugh orders their ride, then walks to the nurse station to confirm they have his mobile number. On his way back to Silvia’s seat, he drops his paper cup in the rubbish bin.

Outside, the late-November air is refreshingly cool after the stultifying atmosphere of the waiting room. Hugh and Silvia descend the hospital steps to the curb where everything—the sidewalk, the grass, the shrubbery—is frosted pink by the sodium street lamps. Traffic on Great Easton Road is light, the tires of passing cars hissing on the damp asphalt. Stepping into the hush of the pre-dawn city, Hugh finds himself reluctant to speak, as if a word could shatter the quiet like a crystal goblet. They go to the curb; Silvia zips up her fleece while Hugh finds a Gauloises in his pocket. He is about to light it when their car comes into view. As the SUV pulls up, Hugh pockets his cigarette, opens the car door for Silvia, then slips in after her. The driver glances over her shoulder.

“Two stops?” she asks.

“Right. Morton Mews, then West Gursey.”

The driver nods; the car pulls away from the curb.

After they have been underway for a minute or two, Silvia turns to Hugh and asks, as if it is only now appropriate to venture such a question, “Did they say if he’ll be able to paint again?”

Hugh’s expression darkens. “They didn’t say for sure. I guess it depends on whether he gets surgery for all the fractures. It’s possible he could lose some function in the fingers. Either way he’s gonna have a lot of rehab. I’ll know more tomorrow.”

“How unbelievably cruel…” Silvia says. “To do that to an artist.”

Hugh nods somberly and looks out the window.

“Hugh?” Silvia asks after a moment. “You think maybe you should go live somewhere else for a while? Maybe move in with Dory?”

Hugh looks at his lap, then nods.

He remembers Dory telling him that you gotta take this shit seriously, then how a week later, he’d delivered Hugh’s new pistol to the flat. Standing in the kitchen, Dory demonstrated how to load and insert the magazine, chamber a round, line up the sights, and pull the trigger. “Just like that,” he said. “There’s a safety built into the trigger,” he explained, “so you have to pull on it directly for it to go off.” Then he showed how to carry the gun—loaded and cocked, but with the hammer down. “Then all you gotta do is cock the hammer and squeeze.”

When Hugh took the gun in his hand, he felt a shiver run through his entire body, as if the pistol were electrified. He hid the Glock in his bedside table, covering it, for reasons he couldn’t explain at the time, with a blue washcloth. He knew that stashing the gun in a bedroom drawer made it useless for defending himself anywhere but at home, but he wasn’t ready for anything more.

Cock the hammer and squeeze.

All that feels like ancient history now.

“Hugh?” asks Silvia, rousing him from his thoughts.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I could live with Dory for a while,” he says. “I gotta think it all through.”

She nods without taking her eyes off him.

The Uber is now turning onto the V4, accelerating as it merges into traffic. Cool air rushes in the open window. As they head north through the ragged neighborhoods of Oskin, Hugh stares out at the store fronts and their security doors spray-painted over with graffiti. Now Silvia turns toward him, the light of passing cars reflected in her eyes. “You said back at the hospital you’re pretty sure Propago did this…”

“Yeah…”

“But you never mentioned that to the detective?”

Hugh looks away from her. “Nah. I can’t prove any of it’s connected, you know? The car, my bank cards, Maggie. And I worry the Sikkies will just back off if they think Propago’s involved.”

“Wow.”

“I gotta be super careful with telling them anything…”

Silvia sighs. “I know you’re thinking this through—but I’m freaking out that these people will come for you next.”

Hugh forces a smile, though he’s certain his fear must show through.

“I’ll be careful,” he says. “I just need to work it out, yeah?”

Eventually, the car exits the V4 onto Downing Road. Three blocks down, it turns right onto Stanfield Street toward Morton Mews. The driver glances at the map on her mobile then back at Hugh. “Drop you at this end of the mews?” she asks.

“Yeah, that’s good,” says Hugh.

As the car makes its way down Stanfield, and Hugh sees that their time is running out, he turns to Silvia. “I was a total idiot when you stopped by the flat.”

She purses her lips. “It’s alright…”

“You just caught me off-guard, and I had a full-on panic attack, you know?”

Silvia nods, then reaches over and pats his arm reassuringly. “I get it,” she says.

But he is certain she does not get it—that she neither forgives him nor fully appreciates his genius for saying the worst possible thing in critical moments, and how that tendency fills him with self-loathing.

“We showed up for Maggie,” Silvia adds. “That’s the important thing.”

As she says this, the car slows to a stop outside The Spotted Pig where the rusty metal pig hangs in darkness above the entrance. The pub’s windows are closed; the outdoor tables, chairs, and propane heaters are all gathered against the wall and secured with a cable and padlock. The air outside the vehicle smells of ashtrays and stale beer.

As Hugh steps from the car, he turns to say goodbye, but Silvia reaches out and takes his arm.

“Maybe I should crash here tonight,” she says. “Tommy’s got a deposition in the morning and I don’t want to wake him up. I’ll be super quiet when I leave. I promise.”

“No, that’s fine,” he says. “You feel safe here, though?”

“Not really,” she laughs. “But I think it’s better if I don’t go home.”

Now, as Silvia informs the driver of the change in plans, Hugh lights a cigarette. It is nearly 5 AM and dawn is only a couple hours away. The mews is dark except for Mrs. Geedy’s porch light, which casts a meager radiance over the cobblestones. The two walk in silence, both of them looking warily from side to side. When they reach number 15, Hugh drops his cigarette butt in the flowerpot and fits his key in the front door. The overhead fluorescent light is off now, and only a radium green exit sign shows in the darkness of the foyer. A copy of yesterday’s Record sits on the linoleum floor, rolled and rubber-banded. Without a word, they mount the wooden stairs and let themselves in the flat. As Silvia removes her jacket, Hugh flips on the light and engages the deadbolt, turning it clockwise once, then twice. When he takes off his own coat, he sees Silvia looking around the living room as if encountering it for the first time.

“I always loved this flat,” she says.

“Yeah,” he replies, almost in a whisper. “It’s a good space, yeah?”

“It is.”

Before he can ask if she needs anything before bed, Silvia turns and walks down the hallway to her bedroom. He calls goodnight after her, then switches off the lights and heads to his own bedroom. In his dresser drawer, he finds a bottle of CBD tincture and takes a dropper-full, following it with a melatonin tablet—a combination his therapist once recommended for sleep. It tends to leave him groggy in the morning, but he’s willing to deal with that for a few hours of quality shut-eye. He plugs his mobile into the charger cord on his nightstand, then undresses and slips into bed. Before turning off the light, he opens the drawer of his bedside table, pushes aside the blue washcloth, and takes the Glock in his hand. The gun is heavier with a full magazine, the gray polymer cool to the touch. He shifts the firearm from hand to hand, feeling its weight in his palms, then returns it to the drawer. He looks at it for a long time, lying there in his nightstand, hidden away like a Penthouse magazine. He begins to chastise himself for not having the courage to carry the gun, but realizes he couldn’t have gotten to NCA in time to protect Maggie. Then, with a start, it dawns on him that he acquired the gun to save himself—and then, only if he can lay his hands on it.

Now, beginning to feel the effects of the CBD, he closes the drawer, eases back on his pillow, and turns off the lamp. The room has not been dark for more than a minute or two before he hears strangers’ voices in his head, and shapes begin to form behind his eyelids, twitching and lurching like shadow puppets.

They’ve requested an ambulance.

Ambulance.

Ambulance.

Hugh covers his head with his pillow, to blot out light and sound, to smother the phantom images parading before his mind’s eye. Then a clearer picture forms—Maggie’s face, swollen and purple, covered by an oxygen mask that fogs and clears and fogs again. Above his right eye an angry gash has been stitched together. His hands, lying at either side, are wrapped with gauze, gray-blue fingertips extending from the bandages.

Slammed a door on his hands.

Bands.

Stands.

Hugh hears laughter now, then a door slam, and the crunch of tiny bones—dry twigs snapping underfoot.

Deliberate act.

That’s a fact.

He rolls onto his stomach, then to his back again, trying to focus on the slow expansion of his ribs, the rise and fall of his diaphragm. He counts backward from 100 and feels his mind at last easing into sleep.

99

98

97

As his mind drifts at last into oblivion, he sees, or imagines he sees, a figure at his bedroom door—pale against the darkness, utterly still.

96

95

A second later, a weight settles on the mattress beside him; his torso pitches toward the depression. The skin of his forearm grazes bare, warm flesh; he reaches blindly for it. A hand meets his hand, and he grasps it.

Lips touch his forehead, his eyelids, his cheekbones, his mouth.

He might be awake now, though he cannot tell if his eyes are open or closed. A hand draws the covers back; cool air touches his chest and stomach. Then she is next to him—the flesh of her body pressed hard against his. And he knows the smell of her neck, the texture of her hair, knows the arms around him. He reaches out to embrace her, but she rolls onto her side, then raises herself up, her hair hanging loose about her face. For the first time, he can make out her features in the darkness, her eyes peering down into his, her lips parted. He sees her strong, naked body above him—her neck, shoulders, breasts, stomach. She is studying his face, and even in his dream-state he feels the intensity of her gaze. She brushes her hair back from her cheek as if to see him more clearly. Then, holding his gaze with her eyes, she slides one leg over the top of him so that she sits astride his hips, her face over his face. She kisses him again, longer and more earnestly than before.

When at last her hand moves down his chest, along his stomach, to where their bodies meet, he says to himself or to her—he cannot tell if his voice is audible—I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry, he says. And then he is lost.

Book VI, Chapter 26

Eason Rint, November 2021

A telephone rings across the street, or down the hall, or on a nearby table—vaguely at first, then louder until at last Hugh rolls over and opens his eyes. It appears to be mid-morning at least, and the sun is bright in his bedroom window. His mobile is ringing and vibrating on his nightstand. The bed is empty beside him.

His eyes are still blurry from the melatonin he took last night, and he cannot make out the number on his screen. He answers anyway because he is expecting an update from Maggie’s doctor. CT scan results, maybe. Or news on his hands.

“Hugh Warding?” says a male voice, vaguely familiar. “Hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

Hugh sits up in bed. “Who’s this?”

“Eason Rint,” says the man, absurdly upbeat. “With The Propago Foundation. Do you remember that we spoke a while back?”

Hugh cannot think how to respond. Adrenaline floods his body.

Back.

Pack.

Stack.

“I’m following up on the results of our research,” says Rint.

Hugh swings his legs out of bed and sits upright, mobile close to his ear. “Results?”

“Yes,” says Rint. “We have mixed news, I’m afraid. We were able to track your lineage as far back as the 18th century, but I’m sorry to say that the inconsistency you identified—involving Arno Warding—turned out to be a dead end. Looks like you’re figan through and through, which is a mark of distinction in its own right…”

“Really…”

“Yes, indeed,” Rint continues. “So, while I know this isn’t the news you’d hoped for, it is 100-percent conclusive.”

“It is.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s interesting,” says Hugh, now gathering his wits. “Because I actually think you’re full of shit. The Ministry never shared my information with you...”

Rint laughs as if there’s been a simple misunderstanding. “I realize this must be disappointing...”

“You don’t know shit about my claim, and I’m moving ahead with it.”

Now Rint sighs. “Perhaps I didn’t fully explain the nature of our work, Hugh. We do a different sort of work from the Ministry—more what you might call supplemental research. We look at past as well as present connections—friends and family, that sort of thing.”

Hugh’s throat tightens.

“For example, we acquainted ourselves with your coworkers at Bar Bruka, Oliver Lindberg, and your school chums Louis Gergits and Charlie Nult.”

Silence.

“We were also delighted to see that your uncle Maghil Warding is having some success with his artwork, though his recent injuries might prove an obstacle. I do hope he’s recovering.”

“You motherfucker.”

“Great Easton is an excellent hospital, though…”

Though.

Snow.

Doe.

“Naturally, we got to know your situation better, Hugh. Bank accounts and so forth.”

“You just keep talking, you fucking flogger,” shouts Hugh. His tightening vocal cords make his voice sound thin and frail. “I’ve got friends in B-Opps and they’d love to come see you.”

Hugh is about to unload more invective when Rint cuts him off, now speaking more pointedly. “I understand you’re disappointed, Hugh. We can, of course, continue with our research, if you like. We haven’t completed our review of the Spalding family—though I see that Dorian has a successful training business on Danby Close…” After a brief pause, he adds, “Or you could withdraw your claim and there would be no reason for us to continue…”

Hugh does not reply. His chest is weighted by an anvil.

“Good then,” chirps Rint after a pause. “We await your decision.”

The line goes dead.

Hugh sets his mobile on his side table and looks desperately around the bedroom. His heart thuds in his chest, his ears ring. He checks the time on his mobile—10:47. Silvia would have left nearly three hours ago, and he slept right through it.

Rint never mentioned her—thank god—though she could still be at risk. The others, though…

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He goes to his closet, slips on a t-shirt and joggers, then sits on the bed and calls Silvia, reaching her voicemail after just one ring.

“Hey,” he begins, then falters. He realizes he has no idea what to say after last night. “Um, hope you got to class okay. Look, Sil, things got dicey just now. The guy from Propago just rang me and he’s threatening my friends and family if I don’t drop my claim. I gotta figure out how to handle this, but please be super, super careful, okay? Eyes open everywhere, okay? And call me when you get a chance. Alright.”

Next, he rings Dory, catching him on the way to the metro station.

“Hugh, you alright?” asks Dory. “How’s Maggie?”

“He was stable when I left the hospital at 4 this morning,” Hugh replies. “But, look D, I got a call from the teep at Propago this morning.”

“Seriously? That’s fucking cheeky.”

“They know the names of my friends, and they’re saying if I don’t back off the claim, they’ll go after them, too.”

“Yeah?”

“He mentioned you, and he knows where your studio is.”

“Well that’s fuckin’ brilliant, isn’t it?” replies Dory.

“I’m really sorry, D. This is all on me.”

“Nah,” says Dory. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Hughie. It’s this system and these motherfuckers who think they own all of us.” He sucks in his breath. “I hope they come after me. I do.”

“Dory…”

“No, jim, I’m fucking sick of taking it from these people. Let ‘em come. I’ve got friends, too, you know? I know some beezers who’d just love a chance to get it on...”

“Wait…”

“No, if that weasel calls you again, Hugh, tell him for me that I’ll keep the door open, yeah? That’ll be the shortest fucking day of his life, I swear to god.” By now Dory is yelling into the telephone and Hugh can’t get a word in edgewise. “If these fuckers wanna take a shot at me, let ‘em come. All I gotta to do is make a couple phone calls and we’ll start a fucking war.”

“No,” says Hugh. “I’m dropping the claim. This isn’t worth it. Don’t start anything, okay? I’m just gonna back off.”

Now Hugh hears wind in the microphone and voices in the background. “Look, I’m gonna lose my signal,” replies Dory. “But listen to me, Hughie. Don’t back down, alright?”

“This whole thing was a bad idea...”

“Nah, you had every right to check this shit out. Now you do what’s right for my boy Hugh, alright? I got your back.” Before Hugh can respond, the call drops and the line goes dead.

Hugh looks helplessly at his telephone, then around his room and at his unmade bed. The adrenaline from Rint’s call has left him shaky and disoriented. Last night, surreal even at the time, in the starkness of morning feels like the invention of a fever dream. Less and less certain if Silvia even came to him, he inspects the bedding for any sign of her—the rumpled pillow, the comforter thrown back. He lowers his face to the pillow and, in an instant, detects her—at once vague and strangely present—the faintest hint of sandalwood and musk. Then, with his face still close to the bed, he sees a dark strand of her hair on the pillow case and, for the moment at least, his doubt is pacified.

Several minutes later, when he is in the kitchen making coffee, he receives a text from Silvia.

Got your VM, she writes. I’ll be safe. You take care.

His heart sinks.

For a moment, he debates whether to ask what exactly ‘you take care’ means, especially in light of last night. But then he feels a surge of anxiety coming on and decides it’s best not to ask right now. Maybe she was in a hurry and got the tone wrong. Maybe, for once in her life, she’s at a loss for words.

He can’t focus on that right now.