Of course Maria did not eat her chicken. Maria is halfway across the world in some amazing resort or other with some new employer and their ungrateful spawn—she’s not sneaking around their shitty Brooklyn apartment stealing chicken chunks in Cajun spice.
—
IT WILL BE ANOTHER THREE days until the smell from the unused stairwell alerts a neighbor to the dead homeless man lurking down there, and a minor police investigation into said death ensues. A query is briefly raised by Freya when she overhears the super charting his own movements the day the man entered the building. The super mentions that he had let Maria into their flat a few hours prior and then done maintenance work for the rest of the afternoon. The police ask Freya if she can contact Maria, but when both Freya and the officer involved attempt to call, their calls go to voicemail. But not before the international call tone sounds. Maria, to all intents and purposes, is still in Gorda.
And in a sense that none of them could possibly ever understand, and is of course purely metaphorical, Maria always will be Still in Gorda.
In reality, Maria is on a flight to London. A string of messages on the dead man’s phone led her right back to the woman with the too-tight chignon. An office in Mayfair, an address, a name.
Maria verified her own death on the man’s phone, confirmed the job was done, but it would only be a matter of time before the man does not show up where he is expected and Maria’s story will begin to unravel.
But for now, she has a momentary advantage, and the savings she’s been accumulating for her future to fund it.
The people who hired her to go to that house want her dead now, and it seems unlikely Maria will be allowed to move on with her life until certain conversations have taken place.
CHAPTER 29
NINA
N ina is treading water now, the screen impossible to see without ducking beneath the rising water. She snatches another breath and dips her head under and there the final question fills the screen:
Read with your hands, using your head,
the rhythm of the water is what the thunder said.
Nina looks down past the screen to the faucet about five feet below her. Even submerged she can see the stop/start of its stream.
Morse code. The realization coming to her as if directly from her father’s mind. They’d learned Morse code together as a joke to get them out of boring visits.
She recalls a Parents’ Day at her school; she must have been twelve or thirteen. A teacher of hers had been explaining as they both sat there that while Nina’s work was technically perfect it lacked originality or spirit. This from a woman in Christmas tree earrings in mid-November, Nina had thought.
Nina had watched her father listen and nod, but around his eyes that telltale crinkle as he looked down at her. They both knew exactly how much spirit she had. And almost in answer Nina had let her hand pat the desk in time.
It would have looked like a nervous gesture to that woman, just a thoughtful pat-pat. But he saw it for what it was; he understood. The word go in Morse code—and if that wasn’t spirit then God knows what could have been. Two slow palms on a table, one nail tap, and three more slow palms. Dash-dash. Dot. Dash-dash-dash.
Nina shakes off the immediate link between what’s happening to her now and what happened that day. It raises again the question of why he would be doing this to her, of his meaning, of his intent. She does not have time to analyze the whys and wherefores of any of this while the room around her fills with water.
The point is, the tap is spelling out a word. A four-letter word. God knows Nina can think of a few of those off the top of her head right now without the help of a submerged tap but her words sure as hell wouldn’t be the right ones.
She will have to dive down and watch the tap, feel the pulses.
The timer on the screen below gives her five minutes of remaining air. And with that she tips her head back up to the surface, the ceiling looming close above her, takes a deep breath, and dives down to the bottom of the room.
She grabs the tap to stop herself floating back up and waits for it to stop pulsing.
When the water stills, she places a hand beneath the nozzle and waits.
The first short jet comes hard against her fingers.
Dot, dash, dot, dot. That signifies the letter L. A pause and then the tap jet restarts.
Dot, dash, dash, dot. That signifies a P.
Another break and then: Dot, dot, dot, dot. That signifies an H.
The water stops then restarts in one sharp burst. Dot. An E.
These are the four letters. But they don’t make a word. Four nonsense letters? LPHE.
