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Barron is looking very pleased with himself. “Not only did I manage to get myself some new wheels, but I filled up the trunk with a bunch of tins of caviar and bottles of Krug that were just sitting around. Oh, and some cell phones I am pretty sure I can resell. Altogether a pretty good Saturday. How about yourself?”
I roll my eyes, but I’m already relaxing in the warmth of the heater, leaning back against the seat. “I’ve got to tell you some stuff. Can we go somewhere?”
“Anywhere you like, kid,” Barron says.
Despite his extravagant offer, we wind up getting take-out Chinese and heading to his place in Trenton. He’s fixed it up some, replacing the broken windows he’d previously just covered in cardboard. He even bought some furniture. We sit on his new black leather sofa and put our feet up on the trunk he’s using for a coffee table. He passes me the tub of lo mein.
On the surface his place looks more normal than it used to, but when I go to the cabinet to get a glass, I see the familiar pattern of sticky notes on the fridge, reminding him of his phone number, his address, his name. Whenever he changes someone’s memories, blowback strips out some of his—and he can’t be sure which ones will go. He could lose something small, like his memory of eating dinner the night before, or something big, like the memory of our father’s funeral.
It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what’s left is all construct, all artifice.
I’d like to believe that Barron has stopped working people, the way he promised he would, that all these little reminders are here because of habit or in case of an emergency—but I’m not an idiot. That warehouse wasn’t unguarded. I’m sure someone had to be made to “remember” paperwork that let Barron load up a car with whatever he wanted and drive it out of a government building. And then that same person had to be made to forget.
When I come back to the living room, Barron is mixing a concoction of duck sauce and hot mustard on his plate. “So what’s up?” he asks.
I explain about Mom and her failed attempt to sell Zacharov back his own diamond, and the long-standing affair she appears to have had with him.
Barron looks at me like he’s considering accusing me of lying. “Mom and Zacharov?”
I shrug. “I know. It’s weird, right? I’m trying really hard not to think about it.”
“You mean about the part that if Zacharov and Mom got married, that would make you and Lila brother and sister?” He starts laughing, falling back on the cushions.
I chuck a handful of white rice at him. A few of the grains stick to his shirt. More stick to my glove.
He keeps on laughing.
“I’m going to go talk to the forger tomorrow. Some guy up in Paterson.”
“Sure, we could do that,” he says, still giggling a little.
“You want to come?”
“Of course.” He opens the chicken with black bean sauce and dumps it over his mustard and duck sauce concoction. “She’s my mother too.”
“There’s something else I should tell you,” I say.
He pauses with his hand on a packet of soy.
“Yulikova asked me if I would be willing to do something. A job.”
He goes back to pouring out the sauce and taking a first bite. “I thought you couldn’t get put to work, since you haven’t officially joined up.”
“She wants me to take out Patton.”
Barron’s brows draw together. “Take out? As in transform him?”
“No,” I say. “As in take out to dinner. She thinks we’d make a good couple.”
“So you’re going to kill him?” He regards me carefully. Then he mimes a gun with his fingers. “Boom?”
“She didn’t tell me much about the plan, but—,” I start.
He throws back his head and laughs. “You should have joined the Brennans if you were just going to become an assassin anyway. We could have made a lot of money.”
“This is different,” I say.
Barron laughs and laughs. Now that he’s off again, there’s no stopping him.
