The Completionist Read online

  “Let’s walk. I don’t like this,” she says curtly.

  “Okay. You’re the boss.” We head down the paved path that leads toward the loudest, most crowded part of the park. “You been waiting long?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you so pissed off?” I give her a smile; she gives me a look. I’ve been demoted from exasperating to moronic. Also easy to recognize from having two sisters. “Well, thank you anyway.” I’m trying now. This meeting has taken a lot of effort to arrange. “I realize it’s not easy for you to get away. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.” We’re coming up on a particularly loud not-bird, set on a branch at the height of a grown man’s shoulder. Someone has knocked the top of its head off so that the little plastic voice box, broadcasting its chirps and tweets, is visible and totally unmuted. This is where I start to slow my pace. “I really don’t have much time,” Natalie B. says. Then she notices the bird. “You do that?”

  I don’t answer. “I know you’re in a rush. I just need to know when and where you saw Gardner last.”

  Natalie shakes her head. “You already know I can’t tell you that.”

  It’s hard to control my temper even when I’m not standing in hard-ass dress shoes right next to a piercingly loud robot bird with a chopper circling overhead that’s been ripping up my eardrums for a good half hour. “You agreed to meet me.”

  She snorts. “Like I had a choice.”

  I hadn’t given her a choice, she means. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks messaging her nonstop, asking her—begging her, really—to meet with me, somewhere, anywhere she wants. Because if anyone knows anything about what happened to my sister, it’s got to be Natalie B.

  I try another charm offensive. I hold out my hands, big ones, imploring. “Look. I’m begging you here. She’s my sister. You know why I have to ask.”

  This Natalie B., standing by the loud not-bird, puts her hand on her hip and looks up at me, and I can tell she’s trying to actually see me—she’s doing her best to understand what I might look like if she didn’t have to squint at me through a veil of irritation and anxiety. I’m white and she’s not, and that’s part of it. I’m a combat veteran and she’s a civilian. That’s part of it, too. But she’s a veteran of a sort herself—between Pop and my sister Gard, I’ve known enough medical people to understand that they form their own kind of armed force, a professional tribe who have seen unimaginable, disgusting, beautiful things most people won’t have to—and in that world I’m half a civilian, because I’ve seen those things, too, but not because I was trying to fix them.

  Also, I make her irritated and anxious. I have that effect on people, just in general—more often than I like.

  Finally Natalie says, “I don’t know why. You could have a million reasons for wanting to find your sister.”

  That surprises me. I can feel my heartbeat starting to galumph, and a strong, familiar smell of flowers is crawling down my throat. These are not good signs. Suddenly I’m talking fast. “The hell does that mean? She’s my sister. I haven’t heard from her in months. I’m worried about her. She could be dead.” Now in my ears there’s a ringing. So I have to stop.

  After a beat, Natalie says quietly, “Gardner’s not dead.”

  At this point I’m just trying to catch my breath. “What—what did you say? How do you know?”

  Natalie shakes her head. “I can’t tell you any more.”

  “You know? You know she’s not dead? You know where she is?” I need to calm down. Need to. Calm down so you can hear what she’s saying. Breathing. Breathing here and now. In and out.

  “Not here. I can’t tell you any more here.” She touches her forehead, and the exasperation is back. “Look, if you really want to know—”

  “Wait. Wait, wait, wait—” I hold up a hand, the other hand is shielding my eyes. I gulp in a few wheezy breaths. After two-plus years out west it’s hard for me to catch my breath even under the best of circumstances, but I have to get myself under control or the ringing in my ears will start again and I won’t hear a word she’s saying, and I might never get another chance. “I just need a second, wait.”

  I’ve either frightened or surprised her, so she stops talking. After a couple of moments I take my hand away from my face, but I keep my eyes low, on the ground. Her shoes are the on-my-feet-all-damn-day type of rubber-soled clogs. One thing we share anyway—our feet hurt.

  “Okay. Okay.” As usual when this happens, I hate myself more than I’ve ever hated anything.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Just—please. Continue. If I want to know where Gardner is I should come to your clinic. That’s what you were going to say.”

  She steps closer to me, close enough that I could smell the scent of her, if the flowers weren’t choking her out. “Why did you think I was going to say that?” Her voice is low and not pleasant.

  “I didn’t know everything about her life, but I knew some things.”

  “And you wonder why she disappeared.”

  “I do. I do wonder why.”

  “I always heard they drafted the dumb ones for the Wars.”

  I roll my eyes and smile for her. “You think that’s supposed to hurt my feelings? I grew up with two sisters, Doc.”

  “You think this is a good time for a joke.” Natalie B. is spitting daggers. No amount of charm is going to work on this one. Time for a change of maneuver. My head is still ringing, I can barely breathe, and I’m tired of charming.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s appropriate here. I’m not a detective; I’m not Security. I’m not anything. I’m just home because my sister’s missing and no one but me seems to care about finding her. And you, you acting the way you are, you’re giving me this feeling, Natalie, that as worried about Gard as I already am, I’m not worried enough.” I rub my eyes, still trying to clear them. “Is that right?”

  Natalie B. is no dummy. Her expression is carefully composed. “She’s not dead. I’m pretty sure. But other than that, I couldn’t say.” Then her eyes narrow, and she actually sneers at me. “Even if I wanted to scare you, I can’t imagine what would frighten someone who’s been to the Wars. I imagine it would take a lot.”

  People hate us. I know that. I learned it while I was over there, and I keep relearning it every day now that I’m home. The Wars have been dragging on for so long—too long, most people say, now that life in the New Cities is tolerable again. Long enough for the conflict to seem less like a necessity or a reality and more like a cruelty, an unending sucker punch. One side just getting kicked and kicked and kicked, and nobody can sort out why, not the kicker, certainly not the kicked. And meanwhile the way we’re fighting over there has escalated out of all proportion to what’s on the receiving end of the firepower. It’s just an obliteration party.

  So all I can do is agree with Natalie: “It would take a lot.”

  This time, she doesn’t swing out at me with a follow-up punch. Maybe I’m not just an annoyance to be swatted at after all. She folds her arms, stares into the tweeting larynx of the decapitated not-bird like it’s trying to explain how it got like this. She’s not walking away. Yet. I still have a chance.

  “Natalie, I know I don’t know much. About anything. I admit it. But Gard told me she trusted you. She told me once that she owed you her life. I know you worked together, I know she . . . I know she was having a hard time. Before she disappeared.” Natalie’s eyes soften at this; it’s noticeable, even though she still won’t look at me. “She told me some things. Not much. But enough that I guess, I mean, I’m glad to have met you, just to say thank you for looking out for her.” Now Natalie glances up at me, with some surprise. I lean closer to her, partly because I want to and partly because I don’t seem to be able to help it. “She liked you. She trusted you. So I trust you, too.”

  Natalie clears her throat a bit and murmurs something like okay. It’s hard to catch, it’s mostly delivered toward the b
aked and cracked ground we’re standing on.

  “So. If you wouldn’t mind telling me where I can find my sister.”

  The moment breaks. Natalie throws her hands up. “How many times do I have to say it? I can’t tell you. If you really want to know you’d have to— Oh, for God’s sake, forget it. You know what, I’m leaving.”

  She sidesteps into a crowd of people moving past us and is carried off in their current, just like that. I’m alone in the crowded park with the not-bird. I scare people, more often than I’d like.

  • • •

  I’ve searched through Gard’s place and looked at her portal. I’ve tried to talk to Gard’s friends, the few I could track down other than Natalie B. I’ve asked Pop, Fred, the few other people who I thought might know anything, the same pointless questions. Where did you see her last? Where do you think she went? I’m no detective, just like I told Natalie B., but if she’s the only one saying Gard’s still alive, somewhere, then I have to believe she might also know where somewhere is.

  So. My first meeting with Natalie may have been a bust. But I can still keep sending her messages. Which, from the first bar I can find near New Grant Park, I do. While sitting over a nice, cold, golden, engineered beer.

  The truth is, the mysterious Natalie B. is the only lead I have left.

  Dec 18 2:27 PM

  Sorry to bother you again, Natalie.

  I just wanted to let you know

  I appreciated your meeting with me today,

  and I heard you loud and clear.

  I’ll meet you at your clinic tomorrow.

  I take a long drink.

  Dec 18 2:30 PM

  You don’t have to reply.

  I know where it is.

  A nice long drink.

  Like most human beings, certainly like most veterans I know, I’m a better person—funnier, calmer, more decent—with about five inches of beer in me. But I’m not a drunk. I know better than that. I’ve known a lot of guys who come back and start drinking like it’s their new job, which, to be fair, in a lot of cases it is.

  I also do not have a job, obviously. Which I’m sure is why Fred holds me fully responsible for our mission to track down Gard. And also why I’m in a bar drinking at two thirty in the afternoon on a weekday.

  This bar is the kind of place I might have ended up at every day if I were a different kind of person—a guy like Fred’s fiancé, maybe. It’s empty now, but by a few minutes past the start of happy hour it’ll be full of men, traveling in packs with other men from their offices. Department guys. There’s a suitable engineered bourbon collection, and the bottles gleam in the colored afternoon light coming through the stained glass windows at the front of the bar. I’m not a bourbon drinker, but if I were, the sight of those bottles would be something religious. It’s as cool and dark and sleek in here as it is hot and glaring and wild out there. The guy behind the bar is wearing a collared shirt, watching the portal screen overhead while absently polishing the glasses. No one’s paying any attention to me. No one has been, in fact, since I came back. Honestly, I can’t decide whether that’s such a great thing. The military puts you in the habit of being watched, and on watch, at all times. Partly because you and your buddies are obligated to keep one another alive, if you can, but also because they’re convinced that you’re always about to fuck something up colossally. They’re right, of course.

  I have sent Natalie B., who I’d never met in person before today, about a hundred messages, by my estimate. Scrolling through the most recent forty or so, I would say that I’ve been polite but persistent. Not stalking or harassing, not exactly, but not unintrusive, either. My sister Gard had a name for this kind of thing: she called it “gentle pressure, relentlessly applied.” Sort of a catchphrase of hers. Gentle Pressure, Relentlessly Applied would not have been a bad operation name for most of what I ended up doing in the Wars, in fact.

  As I’m rereading the thread between me and Natalie B., a message from Fred slides in over the top layer.

  Dec 18 2:48 PM

  What are you doing at a bar?

  Why aren’t you out looking for Gard?

  Of course Fred would know where I am. Her wearable, like mine, like everybody’s, shows her not just her own Care Hours balance and her heart rate and her messages and her account balances and her med status and her reminders but also her geo status, and the geo statuses of her immediate family, because that is supposed to keep families safer, because this whole system of Care Hours and Care Standards and everyone knowing everything is supposed to be all about keeping families safe; it is precisely what’s supposed to prevent people from getting lost or disappearing.

  Dec 18 2:50 PM

  I don’t like this, Carter.

  Why are you at a bar?

  I don’t particularly like that I’m here, either, come to it. I allow that some part of me might be here just to piss her off. But I know better than to respond with that.

  Dec 18 2:52 PM

  Just resting my paws. Long day on the hunt.

  Dec 18 2:52 PM

  Anything new? Please say yes.

  Did you talk to that NC she knows?

  Dec 18 2:53 PM

  I did.

  I have to pause, think about how to put things. There is little gentleness about Fred but plenty of relentless application, probably the one thing you can’t help but understand about her if you’ve spent so much as five seconds in her company.

  Dec 18 2:55 PM

  I can’t quite get a read on her.

  Dec 18 2:55 PM

  Do you think she knows anything?

  Dec 18 2:57 PM

  I hope she does.

  Dec 18 2:57 PM

  We’re almost out of time, CQ. This fucking

  wedding is this weekend. It’s this

  Friday night. I can’t do this without Gard.

  Dec 18 2:58 PM

  Wedding? What wedding?

  Dec 18 2:58 PM

  FUCK YOU NOT FUNNY

  Dec 18 2:58 PM

  You just want to find Gard in time

  for her to talk you out of it.

  Dec 18 3:00 PM

  FUCK YOU ALSO NOT FUNNY

  Fred has always talked a foul streak. As her kid brother I was only too happy to follow her example when it came to gratuitous cussing. Gard, though, usually managed not to swear. If Natalie B. is right and she’s still alive somewhere, Gard is the only person in our family who doesn’t curse like it’s her job, her passion, her one true love.

  Dec 18 3:07 PM

  Don’t worry, Fredlet. I’m on the case

  Dec 18 3:07 PM

  You better be. I’m serious.

  This is fucking serious.

  Dec 18 3:07 PM

  I know.

  Dec 18 3:08 PM

  It’s not about the wedding.

  Dec 18 3:10 PM

  I know.

  Suddenly another window layers in over Fred’s thread. There’s a new message from Natalie. A response.

  Dec 18 3:10 PM

  I don’t know you.

  I don’t owe you anything.

  It’s not a no.

  I’m still thinking about how to reply when one last Fred message layers in.

  Dec 18 3:15 PM

  And don’t forget the wedding rehearsal

  and the party at my in-laws’ tonight.

  Don’t you dare be late dammit.

  F. QUINN

  RISE 8, UNIT 7 LAKE

  NEW CHICAGO 06060601

  NEW STATES

  PFC C. P. QUINN 2276766

  MCC 167 1ST MAW

  FPO NEW CHICAGO 06040309

  November 12, 3:29 p.m.

  CQ:

  Got your note about coming home. Good news. Hurry it up.

  Baby’s kicking now. Hard to believe this is happening. Am completely, completely, off my rocker insane with hormones or something, so, just wanted to say sorry about my last message. If Gardner was around she’d help calm me down, but she’s not. />
  Am worried about a lot of things and not feeling very hungry and have had some points deducted for not meeting Care Standard, but can’t do anything about it. This woman in my Care Circle made a joke that PNG stood for “Pregnant? Not Good,” instead of Pre Natal Guidelines, and of course all those stupid cows acted all shocked like she’d personally aborted all their babies and now no one talks to her but me.

  I am also a fucking cow. You should see me, CQ. Jesus. Like a lot of people, I sort of forgot what pregnant women looked like, since there are so few of us around anymore, and now I’m with this group of them every day, and I gotta say, Fuck me. We’re like a herd of cows. We look exactly like a herd of fucking cows in a picture book. And I have to sit around and moo just like the rest.

  But I also should say that being pregnant sort of feels like being Santa Claus. When I’m not completely enraged or insane, I feel all fat and round and jolly, and everybody’s so happy to see me, I’m honestly grateful. When I’m not feeling like I want to barf all over the place.

  Again, if Gardner was here. You know.

  Okay. Sorry again about my last message. See you soon. Please let me see you soon. Stay alive and don’t get killed right before you get on the transport home. You dumb-ass.

  Fred

  TWO

  Fred’s fiancé’s family’s place is not the kind of place where the wealth is discreetly hidden away in collections or cars or nice furniture, because there’s so much wealth it just keeps spilling out all over everything, like a volcano that can’t help itself. They are unbelievably rich, the kind of rich that hurts your feelings. From their apartment you can still see water, if that gives you an idea. It’s high up in the Lake Rises, and I always thought that the Lake Rises, as a name, was a joke, or some New City planners’ wishful flourish, but now, as I can see from this terrace apartment in Lake Rise 8, it’s an actual description of what you can see if you live this far up, the lake, the goddamn lake—glowing red, about ten or so miles out past the old shoreline, in the winter sunset—and I’m staring at it like it’s a girl I used to love who got sick and died.