Chapter 31
Notes
A quick content note—there’s a fairly hostile interaction with the police in this chapter.
Piper finds Kevin Ng and Karen Gavras in Kevin’s office, door propped open for office hours, their heads bent together and their chairs scooted next to each other at one of the desks. Julian and Charles stand a little bit behind Piper, waiting; Julian is brimming with energy, and though he wouldn’t say why he needed to look in one of the historicists’ offices, his excitement is catching. Charles keeps looking at him, darting glances that hurry away; Piper thinks he seems a bit scattered, but infected with Julian’s urgency. They’re standing close enough together that Piper guesses Charles has not yet confronted his uncertainty about their relationship.
Piper hesitates on the threshold of the office, then knocks on the doorframe. Kevin and Karen’s faces move through surprise and into wary hostility very quickly.
“Um,” Piper says. “Hey. So…this is, uh, Julian. And his, uh, assistant, Charles. And they’re…well…”
“We know who they are,” Karen interrupts. She eyes them suspiciously.
“Right,” says Piper. “So, they were wondering…”
“Can’t you all just leave us alone?” Kevin asks. His voice is tight. Karen squeezes his arm. “Please?”
Piper looks at Julian who looks at Charles, who blinks, steels himself, and then relaxes into an apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” he says, stepping forward. “I know this is totally weird. I get why you wouldn’t want to talk to us, but—honestly, we’re just trying to find out what’s going on here.”
“Sure.” Karen’s voice is brittle. “And you’ve got a good clear objective picture of the situation, have you?”
Piper falters under her glare.
“Well, no,” says Charles frankly. “Probably not so much. That’s why—well, that’s why we want to…talk to you.” He glances at Julian questioningly. Piper wonders suddenly if Julian hasn’t told him why they’re here either.
“We want to search your office,” Julian cuts in.
He is met with expressions of shock and then derision—“Excuse me?” says Karen—but then Charles, understanding dawning on his face (Piper is still in the dark), says, “Sorry, that sounded bad! We think…” He looks at Julian again. “We think there might be something in here. Something you didn’t put here.”
Julian glances at Charles and Piper’s breath stops for a moment at the look of pleased approval on the detective’s face.
“What do you mean?” Kevin says slowly, but he’s already looking around, like maybe he has an idea.
“Feel around under your desk,” Julian says.
Kevin slides a hand underneath. After a moment, he shakes his head.
“Try that one,” Julian says, nodding at the desk next to Kevin’s.
Kevin reaches, feeling around. Then he stops.
“Well?” Julian demands.
Slowly, Kevin pulls out his hand. In his palm, tiny and gray, is a miniature listening device.
“Oh my god,” says Piper.
“Holy shit,” says Karen.
The three graduate students look at each other.
Kevin says, “What the fuck is going on?”
Twenty minutes later, they have collected two historicist professors and two more listening devices.
Marco Spina is loud. He is gesturing emphatically, his voice angry. Dr. Arla Catlin is quiet, a slightly stunned expression on her face as she looks at the tiny bug she found hidden in her bookshelf.
“Who is responsible for this,” Spina blusters, “this is a complete breach of privacy—”
“Dr. Spina,” says Julian, “you know these devices were also found in the offices of several of your colleagues a week ago—”
“I am going to the Dean,” Spina presses on, “and we are going to get to the bottom of this—”
“Marco,” says Catlin quietly, “we need to tell the police.”
That brings them all to a halt.
“We need to know if there’s a listening device in Francis’ office. And surely if there is, that means…”
She trails off. But Piper knows what she was about to say; they’ve been thinking it themself since they found the first device in Kevin’s office. Unless everyone here is a very good actor, or unless Pace distrusted his own colleagues and graduate students to the level of paranoia, the historicists didn’t bug the presentists’ offices. Somebody else bugged them all.
Why?
“I have a key,” Spina says. His bluster has popped. His face has gone saggy and drawn, like a deflated balloon. He looks—well, Piper thinks, he looks worried. “I’ll open Francis’ office. And if there’s something there—well, either way. You’re right. We’ll let the police know. And surely they’ll see that he couldn’t have…”
An awkward, uncomfortable silence. Piper looks at the floor, heart thumping. Instinctively, they are feeling exposed, braced for a fight, surrounded by these professors, these students; only having Julian and Charles at their back keeps them on a relatively even keel. But at the same time their head is whirling. They hadn’t realized just how much they’d believed, deep down, that Francis Pace or some combination of his followers was responsible for all this. But now the battlefield map in Piper’s head is in disarray, lines rearranged, camps scattered. It is as if they have all gotten word that elsewhere, some unknown third party has dropped a bomb, or released a dragon.
They find a listening device in Pace’s office. Dr. Catlin calls the police. An hour later—an hour of lingering in the halls, of low murmurs and suspicious glances, of checking the remaining offices and classrooms just in case—Pace walks up the stairs on which Jack Hart bled out, hands jammed in his pockets, head bent wearily, eyes tired.
“Francis!” Relief breaks across Spina’s face. “They let you go!”
“Are you all right?” Arla Catlin asks.
Pace shrugs, lifting one shoulder and then dropping it again. “It…wasn’t pleasant. But I’ll recover. I…” He glances at the peculiar mix of people standing around and frowns. “Shall we…talk elsewhere?”
“My office,” says Spina immediately. “We’ve combed it high and low. There was a bug, but it’s gone now.”
Pace nods. “Okay. Give me ten minutes, and I’ll see you all there.”
He disappears into his office. Piper knows—everyone knows—who “you all” means. Slowly, the group disperses, back into its component parts, its separate factions. They feel a peculiar twinge of disappointment as the historicists peel away, heads bowed toward each other: the world returning to normal.
Piper doesn’t sleep well that night. They wake up tired, eyes gummy, limbs heavy. They go through the steps of making coffee in the French press, wishing for once for a drip coffeemaker that they could dump the grounds in and stare at until coffee appeared. Boiling the water; grinding the beans; stirring them together; waiting, waiting, waiting. Piper pushes the plunger down and pours a cup.
They aren’t the kind of person who requires coffee to function. Neither is Lu. They both like it for its smell, its not-quite-pleasant taste, the ritual of drinking it every morning. Today, though, Piper is hoping the caffeine does its job.
They sit in their armchair, looking at the false fireplace and the Persian slipper and the stack of letters fixed in place with a knife. With Lu there, the sitting room had felt like a stage set in the best kind of way: ordinary items turned magical, taking on a strange unreal sheen, the carpet worn down by imaginary boots and imaginary feet, everything taken out of its normal circulation and placed here to play pretend. That odd reality-bending effect is absent now. With Lu gone, the chairs and rugs and books and trinkets have returned to their pedestrian state. They are an assortment pulled from Goodwill, from thrift shops, from some stranger’s attic, and they will someday return there, price tags on and context removed, back into the twenty-first century.
Piper shuts their eyes. It should be tea, not coffee, that they’re holding; they should be drinking tea for this to work, that was their first mistake, but they set the coffee aside and breathe in deep, trying to recapture the particular enchantment of a carefully curated alternate world.
Holmes, stretching his long legs out toward the crackling fire. Holmes, picking up the book of Rossetti poems (Lu had found it at Caliban Book Shop on Craig Street) and snorting at the mentions of goblins and maidens as he thumbs through. Such drivel, Watson, he says, not even trying to mask his fondness. Piper runs their finger along the book’s spine, faded green and clothbound with dull gold lettering, and wills themself to feel the echo of Holmes’ touch. They look at the Persian slipper on the mantelpiece full of tobacco (they’d gotten some off one of Tyler’s friends who rolls his own cigarettes) and pictures Holmes pinching a bit between his fingers and stuffing it into his pipe. Hand me yours, Watson. Their fingers brushing as Watson passes Holmes his pipe.
Slowly, Piper begins to relax. Although the real world is clamoring at the edges of their mind, waving and shouting for attention, they manage to let it go fuzzy, to fade into the background. Outside the windows are hansom cabs and streetlamps, cobblestones and carriages. Outside, there is fog and damp filling up the cracks and crannies of the world, there is mud, there is the chill of London winter in the air.
The front door buzzer rings. The sound breaks Piper’s fragile daydream like an axe, shattering the thin veneer of unreality they have spun into existence, sending their heart into their mouth and their pulse racing. The adrenaline has them up and across the room to the call box before they’ve consciously registered what the noise is.
“Yes?” they ask, pressing the button. “Who is it?”
“Detective Nablock and Detective Boehm.”
Piper freezes, their finger still on the button.
“Ms. Awasthi?”
They barely register the hurt of the Ms., the little ice shard dig into their skin. “Yeah,” they say, heart starting up again, a rapid tattoo. “Uh. Call me Piper?”
“Piper,” says the voice, laden with static and impatience. “Can we come up, please?”
There’s nothing in Piper that is capable of refusing right now, however unwelcome the intrusion is. “Okay.”
They buzz them up, then open the door onto the narrow staircase. The detective’s footsteps are muffled by the cheap carpet, but they still fall heavy on Piper’s ears. Whatever this is—and Piper doesn’t know which of the possible reasons to talk to them the detectives has selected from their array of swatches, bright and beckoning like paint samples, Lu, Jack, listening devices, Francis Pace—Piper isn’t ready for it. Piper doesn’t want them there, and a quiet panicky edge rises up in them as they mount the stairs: get them out, get them out.
“Morning,” says Nablock. Boehm nods at them as he closes the door behind him and his partner.
“Morning,” says Piper.
Nablock looks around and shakes his head, as if he’d forgotten what their apartment looked like. “Some place you’ve got here. Musta taken a long time to put it all together.”
“221B,” says Boehm. His voice is deep and slow. “That’s what it says on your door.” He turns to Nablock. “Ring a bell?”
Nablock grins at Piper. “Detective fan, are you? You and your friend Lucretia?”
“Lu,” Piper says automatically. “Uh. Well. We…study nineteenth-century lit, so…”
“Well, she doesn’t anymore, does she?” says Nablock. He takes a seat without asking. “Dropped out, right?”
“Just a few days before Jack Hart’s murder,” Boehm adds.
They both look at Piper. They know the answer already; they mentioned it when they visited before. During that previous encounter, they had been casual, almost unconcerned about Lu’s whereabouts. Something has shifted, now that Tyler has told them the whole story, now that Pace has been released. Their eyes focus sharply on Piper’s face, Nablock’s dark in his heavyset face, Boehm’s a disconcertingly light blue.
“You heard from her yet?” Nablock asks.
Piper shakes their head. The detectives exchange glances.
“You wanna tell us about what’s going on in your department?” Nablock asks, voice easy, eyebrows raised. “The more we hear, the more it seems like something’s not right. You think that’s why she left, your friend?”
Piper feels their hackles raise—feels that automatic prickle of alertness that happens when anyone brings up the departmental troubles. It’s well past time for that now. Still, they choose their words carefully. “It’s…possible. There’s a certain amount of scholarly disagreement amongst us, and…”
Boehm snorts. Nablock shoots him a reprimanding look. “Scholarly disagreement?” he asks doubtfully. “That’s what you call it?”
“It is scholarly,” says Piper quietly. “Some of us have fundamentally different views about the impact and purpose of our work.”
But the words ring hollow. Maybe they always have, in a way, diversion and understatement that they are, but Piper has always believed that at the bottom of everything, all the nastiness and politics and infighting, is this crucial ideological split with serious political and academic stakes. Now the world has spun so out of control that it’s hard to keep hold of that kernel of truth.
“And that’s enough,” Nablock asks, “this—scholarly disagreement—to make somebody plant illegal listening devices in all the department offices?”
Piper bites the inside of their lip, mind racing. “It does look like it,” they say carefully.
“Is it enough to make someone commit murder?”
Boehm shoots this question into the conversation from his reclined position in his armchair, legs crossed, everything but his voice relaxed.
Piper inhales. “So you’ve…definitely decided it wasn’t the man you thought who did it?”
“We’ve reopened our inquiry,” Nablock says briefly.
Piper knows this, but it still sinks like a stone in their belly.
“Well?” Boehm leans forward. “Can you see someone committing murder because of this disagreement?”
Piper opens their mouth, of course not on the tip of their tongue. But it’s absurd to maintain that protest now. They saw the listening devices, the confrontation between Isabel and Pace, and Jack Hart sprawled on the floor, blood leaking from his slit neck in trailing red lines…The floor tilts beneath their feet and they take a deep breath, trying to dispel the image. “Um,” they say. “I wouldn’t have thought so, before. But…”
“But?”
Piper is still seeing red blossoming in their mind. The police officers don’t seem inclined to give them time to recover, however, so they take another breath and say, “But someone has been murdered. So.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you’d found listening devices in your and your colleagues’ offices when we came to talk to you about Lu?” Nablock asks abruptly.
“Um.” Piper tries to pull their attention back together. “You mean, the first time we found them?”
“Yes,” says Nablock. He glances at his notepad. “From my information, most of the bugs were discovered about a week ago. One of them in Ms. Fairchild’s office.”
A pointed silence.
“I don’t know,” Piper says. “It…didn’t seem relevant.”
Boehm lets out another small snort. Nablock shoots a glance at him; Piper thinks it’s meant to be one of reprimand, but they’ve read enough crime fiction to guess that probably everything these two do is done in tandem.
“Why weren’t all the offices searched for bugs before today?” Nablock asks.
Piper swallows. The barrage of questions is turning their stomach seasick. And all the reflexes, the instincts, the habits that they’ve built up over their years at Schenley have them snapping their mouth shut in response to any question about departmental strife. Downplay, they hear Isabel’s voice saying, coaching them before conferences and campus talks by visiting speakers. If anyone brings it up, downplay it. It’s a normal scholarly disagreement. That’s all. “Um,” they say. “Because…well. I guess we assumed that…” They bite their lip. “We assumed that it was just us. Just those of us who—well, there’s a group of us who work together, and we thought—well, we thought we’d been…targeted.”
“By whom?”
“The…other group.”
“Who belongs to each of these groups?” Boehm asks, flipping his notebook to a new page and poising his ballpoint pen just above it, waiting.
Surely someone has explained this already? Piper squirms. “It’s not…I mean it’s not official or anything…”
“Who did you think was being targeted?” Nablock asks briskly.
“Um. Me, Lu…the professors would have been Isabel Ortiz, Jordan James, Sarah Rasmussen, and Fatima Amir. And the other grad students are Katie Lin, Phoebe Koenig, and Antonio Ramirez.”
Boehm is scribbling busily. “And who did you think planted the devices?”
Piper hesitates. “Well,” they say carefully, “now I don’t know. Now that they seem to have also been targeted at…”
“But before. When you didn’t know that. Who did you think it was?”
It’s one thing to list their allies; it’s another to halfway accuse people of a crime. Nablock seems to clock Piper’s hesitation and rephrases: “Who would you say is generally on the opposite side of your disagreement?”
Piper can’t find a way to not answer. It’s not like it’s not common knowledge, they tell themselves, but they feel a wave of nausea as they list the names. “Professors are Francis Pace, Marco Spina, and Arla Catlin. Grads are Karen Gavras and Kevin Ng. And a couple others who just started in the program, but they weren’t bugged, so. Those are the main ones. Plus…”
A silence.
“Jack Hart?” Boehm asks, raising his eyes from his notepad to train them on Piper.
Piper nods.
“So let me get this straight,” Boehm says. “Your friend Lu disappears. Leaves a note, so, everything’s probably fine. Trouble at school, maybe a lover’s tiff…” He eyes Piper up and down. Piper flushes. “But. Then. Another grad student is murdered. Somebody Lu didn’t like—is that right?”
“Well,” Piper says warily. “I mean, they didn’t work together.”
“Right,” says Boehm. Nablock is listening intently. “So it seems to me that suddenly things have changed. Something really wrong is happening here. And then you discover that someone has been listening in on your conversations. That’s messed up, yeah? So. In my mind, that’s when you go, maybe my friend’s disappearance wasn’t so innocent after all.” He cocks an eyebrow at Piper. “See what I’m saying?”
Piper swallows. “I mean…”
“Because the thing is,” Boehm continues, “when we asked you if there was any reason to think Lu’s disappearance was something to worry about, you said no.”
It takes a lot for Piper to not blurt out half-apologetic defenses at this. Their body is on high alert, nerves tingling, struggling against its ingrained impulse to immediately accommodate all authority figures so as to defuse any possible conflict. Huge in their mind is the awareness that somewhere out there, Lu might be in serious danger, and they have no idea what the right thing to do is.
“I…”
“Your friend Tyler,” Boehm presses, “He talked to us recently, after we got the tip about Lu’s disappearance and came to visit you. He seemed to think there was reason to be worried.”
“Wait,” says Piper, momentarily distracted, “do you mean Tyler wasn’t the one who called you initially?”
Boehm shakes his head. “No. It was a professor from Lu’s department. Piper, Tyler told us all sort of things about the situation. Things you didn’t mention.”
Piper’s head is reeling. Oh, no, they’re thinking, oh shit. Tyler.
“Did you think we’d be suspicious of the timing?” Boehm asks, wrenching their attention back to the questioning. “Lu ‘disappears,’ and then a few days later, someone she considers an enemy is killed?”
Stunned, Piper stares at them in silence. Boehm is leaning forward, elbows on his knees. Nablock is watching him, eyes occasionally flickering to Piper.
The blood is pounding in their ears. The room looks strange and unsteady. The implication of Boehm’s words hangs between them, souring the air.
“No,” says Piper slowly. “No, I…didn’t think that.”
“Really? That’s not why you wanted to keep us in the dark?”
“No,” they say. “No. That’s not—that’s not why I didn’t say anything.”
Boehm exchanges a glance with Nablock, leaning back in his chair, face impassive.
“Then why?” asks Nablock.
Piper exhales. “I just…it’s the department. We don’t…we don’t usually talk about things like this outside of school. The disagreements between us, I mean. It isn’t good for—for Schenley’s reputation. So…yeah, I guess I thought maybe Lu’s disappearance had to do with Jack’s murder somehow, but…” They trail off. Boehm is looking skeptical but says nothing.
“Well, it’s looking more and more like your friend Lu does have something to do with Mr. Hart’s murder. You see…” Nablock makes a show of hesitating—Piper can tell it’s just for effect but tenses up anyway—and then says, “We found texts from Lu on Jack’s phone. Arranging to meet with him a few days before he died.”
Piper blinks. “What?”
Nablock cocks his head. “You didn’t know about this?”
“No, I…” Piper takes a breath. “Are you sure? It’s just that Lu and Jack didn’t really talk.”
“Pretty strange she wanted to meet with him, then.” Nablock gives Piper a meaningful look. “So soon before he was killed.”
The room shifts again, the energy tightening, the grey sky outside the windows pressing in.
“Could we…” Nablock exhales, his expression growing gentler, his voice less aggressive. Piper doesn’t trust the change. “Look. I know you don’t think your friend had anything to do with Jack’s death. But we have to rule her out, right? So we were hoping you’d let us take a look around her room. We might be able to help you figure out where she’s gone. And if there’s anything to tell us what she wanted with Jack, anything that would help clear that up, we’ll find it.”
Fear shoots hot through Piper’s blood, reddening their ears, warming their cheeks. Fuck, they think, oh, fuck, because they know the right answer: no, no of course not, of course you can’t; they’ll take whatever they want and twist it into the story that suits them, they’ll put their hands all over Lu’s things and make them mean whatever they need them to; or—or even if they won’t, even if Piper’s being paranoid (you’re not, they think, but can’t shake the feeling), the answer should still be no. They think of those posts on Tumblr that tell you what to do if you’re talking to the police: don’t help them, don’t let them in without a warrant. Piper doesn’t want two burly white men holding up the strap-ons and anal plugs, the letters addressed My dear Holmes, Love Watson, the stupid pair of sparkly paper glasses with the eyes made of the two center 0’s of 2000 that Lu wears every New Year’s Eve.
But cop shows always suggest that not assisting the police makes you look guilty. Piper doesn’t want to look guilty. And they’re positive there’s nothing that would actually link Lu to Jack’s death, of course, so maybe refusing to let the police search just makes it seem like they’re being unnecessarily hostile. Wouldn’t it be better if they appear polite and helpful?
Maybe that ship has sailed, though—brown and gender-nonconforming and a literature student—does that make Piper a threat or a pushover? They swallow. Their throat tastes sour, like bile.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” they say, barely managing to get the words out.
Nablock puts on a surprised look. “What? Why not?”
“Uh,” says Piper, heart racing. “I just—Lu’s a pretty private person.”
It isn’t true. Piper’s a private person; Lu is not.
“Ah,” says Nablock, giving an understanding nod. “Yeah, I see. Wanna protect your friend. But see, Piper, if you really wanna protect her, you gotta let us help. She might be in danger, you know that?”
A different tactic, Piper notes; he’s no longer implying Lu is a murderer.
“Sorry,” they say. They are trying not to glance at the door, to plan their escape if the police officers get threatening.
Nablock gives them a long look, and then, letting out a huff of disappointment, turns to Boehm. “You were right,” he says. “Guess we needed it after all.”
Boehm reaches into his pocket and takes out a square of paper. He unfolds it, then passes it to Piper. “Search warrant,” he says briefly. “We’re gonna have to take a look around, whether you like it or not.”
“It’s our job,” Nablock says. He shrugs, like, what can you do? “No choice for any of us, I’m afraid.”
Piper stares at the piece of paper. SEARCH WARRANT, it says at the top. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA. COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY.
“But…”
“But nothing,” Boehm says, lifting himself up from his chair with a grunt. “That’s the law.”
Nablock stands, too. Piper, adrenaline racing, has a panicky moment in which they feel entirely at sea: where will they go? What will they do? Will they stand outside in the cold, waiting? For a split second they think to call Tyler. Then they remember, and the realization of how unfair they’ve been to Tyler hits them like a wet sack of something heavy and hard, right in the gut.
“What do I do?” they ask. “Can I…stay here?”
Boehm is already putting on gloves. Nablock says, “Stay in the kitchen for now. We’ll tell you when we need you to move.”
Boehm, bending to open up his bag, says over his shoulder, “Don’t touch anything.”
Piper makes their way to the kitchen table in a daze. As they cross the threshold of the room they feel like they are stepping onto an island, or an iceberg: stranded, at sea. Nablock and Boehm disappear into Lu’s bedroom. Piper presses their hand to their mouth, trying to keep it together. The sense of being trapped only grows as the minutes begin to tick past. They reach for their phone, but it’s in the other room—forbidden territory. Nothing to distract them, then, but the nicks and scratches on the table.
There are murmurs coming from Lu’s bedroom but Piper can’t make out the words, just a gruff string of Pittsburghese and the occasional thump and thud. Are they moving the bed? The desk? Piper tries to comfort themself with the knowledge that Julian already searched the room, and presumably would have found anything important or incriminating—not that there is anything incriminating, Piper is sure of that, but they aren’t at all sure the police will agree. The ugly image of them rooting carelessly through Lu’s life is dwarfed only by the nagging, gut-churning anxiety that they will emerge with some object that to them spells out guilty. Piper jiggles their knees, trying to breathe steadily. Let them not find anything. Just let them leave.
They hear the detectives move on to another room. The bathroom? Piper’s room? Does the warrant allow them to search Piper’s room? The belated question blooms red in Piper’s mind. Fuck, they think, fuck what’s in there, what’s in there…
Finally the men return to the living room. “Let’s check the kitchen real quick first,” says Nablock to Boehm. “Hey, Piper, budge up for a sec. Sofa’s fine.”
Numbly, Piper obeys. They watch as the detectives open cupboards and drawers, scanning quickly. They finish up in much less time than it had taken them to search Lu’s bedroom.
“Okay,” says Nablock. He jerks his head at the kitchen table. “Back you go. We’re almost done.”
Piper returns to the kitchen, trying to keep their distance from the men. They catch a whiff of Boehm’s deodorant or cologne as they walk past, something chemical and musky. Half the cupboard doors are ajar; the silverware drawer hasn’t been closed with the careful jiggle its messed-up tracks require and it’s jammed open at a wonky angle. Piper goes to fix it and then stops, unsure if that’s allowed yet.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because Nablock and Boehm are in the living room now, and they have begun to pull it apart.
Nablock takes the cushions off the sofa, slides his hand along the crease where the seat meets the backrest, then tips it on its back to check underneath. Boehm takes the slipper of tobacco off the false mantelpiece and, with a suspicious sniff, dumps it out on the floor. They hold the books of nineteenth-century poems and criminology and medicine by their spines and shake them to see if anything falls out; they remove the framed prints from the wall and slice open their paper backings, shoving their hands inside and rooting around. They pull up the Persian rug and leave it slumped in the middle of the room, the ugly carpet exposed and covered in crumbs. Step by step, methodically in scope if not in affect, they dismantle 221B Baker Street, peeling the illusion of another time and place off its warped and whitewashed foundation, stripping away the piecemeal cobbled-together magic of the fantasy Lu and Piper made together like it’s mere wallpaper, in big brutal strips. Below are nicked white walls and scuffed baseboards, holes where pictures hung and empty IKEA shelves; below is the laid-bare reality of life without Lu.
Piper is too stunned to cry. After the first muffled sound of shock and protest, which earns a glance and a “what can you do?” shrug from Nablock, they sit at the kitchen table, looking upon the destruction of their tiny corner of the world like a monk whose monastery is being sacked by Vikings, or a gardener watching the locusts descend.
“All right,” says Nablock, finally. “We’re taking a couple of things. Receipt’s on the table.”
Piper can’t tell by their expressions if they’ve found something important or not.
“They’ll be returned to you at the end of the case if possible.”
If they aren’t evidence? If they aren’t needed in court?
“Sorry about the mess.”
But he doesn’t sound sorry at all. The door slams behind them as they go. Piper walks into the upturned living room, picks up the empty tobacco slipper from the floor, and begins to cry.