Chapter 30
Ronny has decided that we can’t stay in the city anymore, he says it’s too risky. I argue with him, I try to get away.
“Get in the car”, he says when the argument gets heated, holding me against the car’s side, gripping my wrists to the point where it’s painful for me to fight.
I don’t stand any chance to win now, so I relax, shrug and let Ronny slip me in the front seat of the car. Joshua is already on the back, and squeezes my shoulder – for a brief moment – as I sloppily sit in the position in which Ronny placed me, as if I were a puppet.
I turn around after a moment, and stare at him blankly. I have no clue about why he is there, but my ideas are too blurred for me to process the possibilities.
“Hey, we’ll be all right, you know?”, he says
I don’t and Joshua doesn’t either, but still the lie soothes me.
“I need to find my father”, I whisper, not knowing if I am talking to myself or him
He nods yes, and then says, “Quiet now”
This is not his usual tone, and I wonder if he has a plan.
I sit without talking and my silence is loaded with constrained tension. But the speed is like a lullaby as we roll along Highway 46, and by the time we reach the swampy grounds around Poydras the landscape is no more than a green blot faintly filtering through my blurred senses.
“So how did you find Veronica?”, Ronny’s voice startles me awake
“Veronica is the one who found me, I had no clue about her existence”, Joshua replies
“So Veronica shows up and knocks at your door, and then she tells you ‘we’ve got to go to NOLA’, just like that?”, Ronny asks with a skeptical edge to his voice
“No, she shadows me in a convenience shop and tells me Iris needs me. I have no money, but she does. Our time together was supposed to last longer, but then events precipitated and you know the rest”, Joshua replies, returning Ronny’s skepticism with an ironic twist in his tone
“So what was your role supposed to be?”, Ronny insists
“To come here and gather information, find you two essentially”, Joshua explains
“Sounds like a pretty vague plan. You couldn’t possibly come here with nothing but this information, tell me the rest”, Ronny pushes
Joshua shrugs
“Veronica told you to trust nobody, but we’re on the same side. Do you think I don’t care to know who I am? I am not here for you or Iris, I am here for myself. But we’re a team, and if something happens to you guys we all lose. Understood?”, Ronny says
“Yessir”
“So now, tell me. How did you and Veronica find us?”, Ronny insists
“Veronica and I flew out to Amsterdam. She figured that Iris had been to a certain pub, don’t ask me how. Veronica tried to share as little as possible with me, for safety reasons she said. I wouldn’t have done any of the things I’ve done if she had not looked like Iris. I trust her just because of that”, Joshua says
An infinite tenderness floods me as I hear this, but the pride I feel to be loved this way fogs my eyes with tears
I sense a shift in Ronny’s perception, and I can tell he starts looking at Joshua from a different angle.
“Ok”, he says
“And what did you find out in the pub in Amsterdam?”, he continues after a pause
Joshua is silent for a moment
“A woman dying on the floor, and two guys trying to get information from her. It was night, the pub was closed. It should have been open, but it wasn’t. One could see nothing from the front, but some dim lights hinted at someone’s presence. I would have just left, but Veronica wanted to scratch the surface. She picked the lock on the back door, and we got in”, Joshua said
So someone shot the woman I had met. And she was dead now. I feel uncontrollably sick.
“Stop”, I whisper
Ronny ignores me, I wonder if he even heard me.
“Ronny STOP”, I repeat, loudly now, almost angrily, and when he pulls his car on the side of the street the food of the past two days gushes out painfully, burning my throat, filling my eyes with tears. I empty myself completely and collapse to the ground.
I feel a strange sense of fulfillment as I sit in contact with the dirt, as I drag myself to the base of a tree, grasping the humid grass and the mushy earth. I lose the perception of everything, except of the primitive connection I feel for the earthy elements around me. I close my eyes, and for a moment I am at peace with myself.
“Here, drink some water”, I hear Ronny say
I moan what is supposed to be a no.
Joshua comes closer, I sense his presence. He takes some leaves from the ground and rubs my face clean. Then he opens the bottle, and brings it to my mouth. I drink and unwillingly pull myself up.
“Thank you”, I say, balancing myself, longing for past gone instant of ephemeral integrity I lost the moment I stood up
My jeans are wet and muddy now, they stick on me uncomfortably when I buckle up in the back seat.
“And what happened after you found the dead woman in the pub?”, Ronny asks after steering the car back on the road
Ronny’s lack of reaction when he learns about the dead woman in the pub makes me think he already knew about her. What else does he know? He is simply testing Joshua?
“Veronica tracked down Iris father and we found you through him. He left hints around, Veronica wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a trap. She loathes the man, but she respects his slyness and she knew that the hints were not a mistake. They had been left there for her to find them. She couldn’t figure out his plan, she was scared. But then she decided to risk it, and I followed her to NOLA”, Joshua says
“My father? Is my father not Veronica’s father?”, I really need to know
Joshua doesn’t reply immediately, his silence draws me in like a black hole.
“Not in the same way”, he says at last
“What do you mean?”, I insist
“I don’t know for sure. Veronica has her hypothesis about this, but…”, Joshua starts and pauses
“Come on, tell me”
“You are your father’s natural child, but Veronica is not. She has been engineered. Your father analyzed the characteristics of the seed from which you are born, and modified a second seed to be identical to it. He recreated your mother’s ovule and produced an artificial womb, which hosted Veronica till the day you were born. You and Veronica were supposed to be identical, but you weren’t. That was the first test”, Joshua tells me
“And what is the second test?”, I ask, my mouth dry
“Veronica #2, grown in an artificial womb, truly identical to Veronica but assigned to a different mother from day one”, Joshua tells me
“Is there a third test?”
“I don’t know…”, Joshua tells me
“Of course there is. What is the third test, Ronny?”
“As I told you, the idea is to produce as many of you as possible with slight variations, to make a statistical analysis of the factors that count”, Ronny tells me
“So you told me, yes”, I reply drily
I bow my head, closing my eyes.
“What the…”, Ronny mumbles, as Joshua unbuckles and grasps my hand before I understand what is happening
I look up and there’s a truck blocking the road.