Liquid Snakes: A Novel

by Stephen Kearse

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

What if toxic pollutants traveled up the socioeconomic ladder rather than down it? A Black biochemist provides an answer in this wildly original novel of pollution, poison, and dark pleasure

In Atlanta, Kenny Bomar is a biochemist-turned-coffee-shop-owner in denial about his divorce and grieving his stillborn daughter. Chemicals killed their child, leaching from a type of plant the government is hiding in Black neighborhoods. Kenny’s coping mechanisms are likewise chemical and becoming more baroque—from daily injections of lethal snake venom to manufacturing designer drugs. As his grief turns corrosive, it taints every person he touches.

Black epidemiologists Retta and Ebonee are called to the scene when a mysterious black substance is found to have killed a high school girl. Investigating these “blackouts” sends the women down separate paths of blame and retribution as two seemingly disparate narratives converge in a cinematic conclusion.

Liquid Snakes is an immersive, white-knuckle ride with the spookiness of speculative fiction and the propulsion of binge-worthy shows like FX’s Atlanta and HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. Transfiguring a whodunit plot into a labyrinthine reinterpretation of a crime procedural, Stephen Kearse offers an uncanny commentary on an alternative world, poisoned.

 

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Release date: August 8, 2023

Publisher: Soft Skull

Print pages: 315

Sample

THE HOLE

It wasn’t a sinkhole.

Sinkholes were earthen gulps, soil, groundwater, and sediment inhaled into the maw of the earth in a sustained, breathless slurp. Nature’s gourmands, sinkholes sucked slowly and decadently, savoring the crust as they reshaped it: smacking, chomping, humming with pleasure. Messy, greedy fucks, sinkholes were.

Ebonee had never seen a sinkhole in person, but marathon tumbles down YouTube rabbit holes had taught her their slovenly signature. The depthless chasm displayed on her laptop screen was either a deepfake or geology’s next frontier. The hole was smooth and tubular, like it had been designed or engineered. Its edges were platonically discrete, so precise they seemed artificial, like diagrams in a trigonometry textbook. Its opening was coated in that luxuriant, reflective black reserved for limousine windows and designer denim, the blackness of wealth, industry, artifice. The news helicopter shooting the footage Ebonee streamed from her work desk was reflected right back onto the camera lens, a blot of metal and glass in a shimmering sea of blackness. It looked sublime.

Ebonee walked her laptop over to Retta. Within the chaos of the fusion center, which overflowed with transients and their endless detritus—crumpled temporary name tags, half-empty coffee cups, pushpinned photos of well-adjusted spouses and thoroughbred schnauzers—Retta was a rock. Her work pod was a pocket dimension of order and stability, documents in neat, graceful stacks, binders labeled and color coded, pens uniform and red, always red.

“Does this look like a sinkhole to you?” Ebonee asked, planting her laptop onto a legal pad splotched with cursive.

Retta glanced at the screen, closed the laptop lid, and slid the notepad from under it. “No,” she said, dropping the pad onto the computer’s back. Ebonee couldn’t decipher the text, but it looked like a list of some sort. Where there was order, there was Retta.

“Come on, girl,” Ebonee said. “Have you seen a sinkhole before?”

“Not in person, but I’ve seen you come to my desk, convinced your boredom is everybody’s boredom. I admit that this current module is a drag, but the sooner we finish it, the sooner we can get some grant apps in, some papers published.” She raised the pad in the air. “The field is out there, I promise. But it starts with planning.”

Ebonee retrieved her computer from the desk and flipped the lid open. The live stream jerked back to life. “Retta, please. I really think it’s something big.”

Retta sighed then gently guided the laptop out of Ebonee’s hands and onto the desktop. Ebonee watched the odd image refract onto Retta’s stoic chestnut face, which shifted from bemusement to deep contemplation. “I’d guess an explosion of some sort,” Retta said after a spell. Precisely what Ebonee wanted to hear.

“At first, I thought the same thing,” Ebonee said, “but there’s no way this is an explosion. There’s no charring, no fragments, no jagged edges—it looks like it was dissolved.” She pointed at the screen for emphasis. “I think it’s some sort of chemical spill.”

“That’s interesting,” Retta said with an inkling of intrigue. “But how will we get the assignment? GDPH has first dibs.”

“GDPH is swamped with that mumps outbreak in Buckhead, so this got rolled on up to us,” said Alonzo, their supervisor. The sole drawback to Retta’s desk was that it was adjacent to the Keurig, which she hated for both its over-roasted output and its popularity. Vagrants tended to drift into her conversations.

Alonzo extended his hand toward the hallway. “You know, one of the reasons people are always fighting over the conference rooms is because they’re private.”

Ebonee and Retta shuffled into an empty meeting room, Alonzo trailing behind them. A round slate table retching wires from a hole in its center dominated the space. It was so wide it touched the walls, forcing chairs to bunch together around the curve facing the door. Alonzo paced the cramped room like a frenzied inmate, his bowling-­ball biceps swelling and contracting as he talked with his hands.

“There’s a lot of confusion on the ground,” Alonzo explained. “GBI told the media it’s a sinkhole, which should buy us some time for a week, tops, but there’s a student missing, that area isn’t zoned for industry, no demolition or construction was planned, and USGS says there’s no aquifers or shale that could have caused this. It’s a complete mystery.”

He planted his feet and placed his hands akimbo like a triumphant sitcom character neatly resolving the latest zany caper at the end of an episode. “This is a serious opportunity, y’all,” he said. “Most of our officers don’t get to work local cases during the program.”

Ebonee stared into the vast table as Alonzo’s voice cracked into joyful squeals. “One year into EIS and you’re already pulling away from your peers,” he said. “I knew you two were special.”

“Mm-hmm,” Retta mumbled.

The odor was inoffensive yet ominous, an invisible hand with bloodied fingertips. Ebonee tried to blot the smell by staring deeper into the pit’s opaque center, but the sight of it only intensified its phantom presence. The hole was smaller than it appeared on her laptop, but the aroma eroded its boundaries, swelling it into a boundless haze. Ebonee felt as if she were swimming.

She covered her nose with her hand and walked away from the hole, her other senses yawning back to life as turf crunched beneath her feet. Compared to the bustle of the stream, the campus effused stillness, the helicopters banished to distant rooftops, the students, faculty, and personnel evacuated and dismissed. Ebonee drifted away from the breach, warm spring sunlight licking her exposed arms. Masked and gloved technicians shuffled past her carrying trowels and buckets. Solemn GBI photographers stalked about, lenses down like prowling hounds. Ebonee turned as a wasp whirred by her and dipped into the pit’s mouth, the smell flaring up as she lifted her hand from her nose to swat the insect away. She missed and kept walking.

She needed to find Retta. There was a blankness to the scene that she hadn’t anticipated, that she didn’t like. She had charged in expecting a challenge, but this was a void. How was she supposed to investigate emergent threats to public health when the field was quiet as a spider step? Every explanation she could muster promised embarrassment or wasted time: an elaborate senior prank, a bizarre promposal, a ruptured well burping up slime. Were career-­ending cases a thing? She didn’t want to find out. Hers had barely started.

Ebonee reached the edge of the sporting grounds, peeved by the school’s relentless pretensions as she read a public directory. She headed toward the empty parking lot, marked “Freedom Lot” on the map. The scent was diffuse here. She heard Retta before she saw her. Her colleague was speaking to two balding white men inside a van marked GBI. Huddled around a computer monitor, hairlines receding, the men gestured at the screen as Retta shook her head.

“It’s gotta be industrial,” Retta said with audible agitation. “There’s no other explanation.”

“That smell, right?” Ebonee asked, peering into the van.

“I’m a smoker; I can’t smell shit,” one of the men said. “You must be the partner. Me and Phil here were just telling Dr. Vickers that I don’t know no damn industry that makes black goo.” He lumbered out of the vehicle then stopped in front of Ebonee and fished in a pocket. His hand sank so far into his baggy pants Ebonee thought his body might follow, but he eventually produced a crumpled cigarette. “Except this one,” he said with a chuckle, then walked off.

Phil beckoned Ebonee into the van. “I think it’s drugs or something,” he said as she boarded. “You’re a doctor too, right? These charter schools are a mess. We busted an Adderall ring at Duvaney Jenkins a few years ago. One girl supplying students, teachers, and a few parents.”

“Just call me Ebonee. You think this missing girl is involved?”

“Nah, I think that’s just one of those coincidences that’ll clear up as things move along,” Phil replied. “She’s probably skipping class. She’s on our minds only because CCTV shows she was in the hallway before this hole was discovered.”

Ebonee nodded and turned to the monitor, where the pit was modeled in three dimensions. It was strange to already be seeing another representation of it. Perspectives were multiplying quickly, relentlessly: sinkhole, chemical spill, breach. Each analogy seemed to amplify its opacity. On-screen it reminded her of the lacunae of the bones she’d cross-sectioned in osteology labs during her doctoral program. Microscopes made miniature universes of everything, but the lacunae, scattered across the bone matrix, felt particularly empty and expanseless. Dead space. After that semester of marrow biopsies and noxious peroxide baths, she’d decided to turn away from pathology because it was too morbid and final. But even in epidemiology, the business of managing the collective life, bones poked through.

“I have another question,” Ebonee said as Phil fidgeted with the model, twirling it across axes. “Let’s say that black shit is a drug. How did it become this?” She pointed nowhere, everywhere, the acrid smell dancing at the edge of her perception. “Is it volatile? Is it stored at the school? Is this missing girl the school distributor?” Retta and Phil shrugged. None of their postulating had any basis.

A whistle swept through the van, shrill and staccato. It was Phil’s partner, smoke on his skin, a wooden block in his hand, covered in what looked like ink. He held it up. “Doc, she might not be missing.”

BLACK SUBLIME

Kenny’s hand hovered above the coffee grounds, a firm grip holding the tiny kettle in place as he traced concentric circles with the heated water. The liquid landed gently below, flowing through the crushed beans and drip-dripping into a ceramic mug. As Kenny flicked his wrist up to halt the hot stream and let the water seep, the customer observing him spoke.

“Are you the owner?” she asked in a warm lilt. There was a cheer to her voice that Kenny liked.

“I am,” Kenny said.

“I’ve always wanted to ask how you came up with the name.”

Kenny eyed the timer and scale and resumed pouring.

“Always? I’m sorry, I’ve never met you before,” Kenny said as the grounds fizzed and gasped, tiny gas bubbles forming and bursting from the boiled water’s heat. Baristas called this phenomenon the bloom for the way it swelled and expanded the grounds like petals waking to light. The customer kept watch.

Kenny enjoyed the audio more than the visual. This dulled murmur was unbeknownst to the Yelp reviewers and harried commuters who worshipped his specialty coffee shop. Kenny felt it took place on a private frequency, an intimate channel reserved for the folks who appreciated the brewing process, who knew every cup was a miracle.

Tony, ponytailed restaurateurs in denim aprons were the face of specialty coffee, but the real ones knew coffee depended on the tenacity of delicate plants grown in volcanic soil, harvested on treacherous hillsides by chapped hands.

Cherries dried by a benevolent sun, hulled by a persnickety mill, screened for beauty by hawkeyed sorters.

Enterprising suppliers with links to countries flush with conspicuous consumption and paved roads and stable governments.

Roasters that pledged their lives and elbows to scrubbing away chaff and caffeol from the narrow guts of ovens.

Cafés in possession of multi-setting grinders routinely purged of grounds.

Baristas with bills, kids, egos.

The whisper of the bloom was one of the last links in this sprawling, baroque chain.

Kenny dumped the grounds in a nearby waste bin and slid the mug to the woman. “I’m sorry,” Kenny said, meeting her soft gaze. “What I meant was, welcome to the shop.”

The woman smiled. “Thank you. I pass by here all the time,” she said, letting the mug linger on the counter. “I’ve always been too busy to come in, but ‘Black Sublime’ has stuck with me. It sounds so peaceful.” She lifted the mug with her hands and held the rim right under her nostrils. “It smells so peaceful,” she added.

Kenny grinned. He believed he owed his patrons nothing more than good service and good product, but in two years of business this woman was the only customer who had approached him with curiosity rather than entitlement. He felt no tractor beam of urgency as he prepared her drink, no self-importance.

“You ever heard ‘Coffee will make you black’?” Kenny asked.

“It’s a book, right?” she said.

“It is. But it’s also just an old black thing. Either to keep caffeine away from kids or to disparage dark skin, black folks would say it. My grandma used to say it, and I never knew what to think, but I drank coffee anyway.” He paused. This was the friendliest exchange he’d had with a customer since Black Sublime opened. What was she really doing in his tiny Decatur shop on a Thursday afternoon? Did Kingman Coke kill people the old-fashioned way too?

He looked at her closely. Athletic physique, skin brown as wet bark. Two nose piercings, neat hair, modest business attire. Inquisitive, but not prying. Polite and kind. Not quite the contract-­killer type.

Still out of place though.

“Okay?” the woman said, confusion sprouting across her face.

“Sorry,” Kenny said. “I’m just appreciating the moment. No one’s ever asked.”

She drank the coffee, her eyes closed as she sipped. “Damn,” she whispered.

Kenny’s eyes dropped to the counter with relief. He hated when he distrusted black people he didn’t know. It never felt like a choice. “I promise,” he said, “to finish this story so we can both get back to work.”

The woman sipped her coffee then nodded.

“So I came up with black sublime because I thought that if coffee makes you black, every cup should put you closer to blackness. It should connect you to black people and history and culture. It should blacken your outlook, your sense of purpose, your love of self and community.” He paused again. It was awkward to be so forthright with a stranger, to lust for their approval.

“It’s just coffee, I know,” he continued, “but that sense of duty and fulfillment, to learn black, to love black, to become black, that’s the black sublime.”

The woman placed her mug on the counter and lightly applauded, her claps echoing through the empty shop. Kenny responded with a sheepish bow. The commissioned portraits of Afeni Shakur, Andile Mngxitama, and Grace Jones that hung on the shop walls suddenly felt embarrassing. Kenny imagined how the woman might describe him to her group chat: “hoteps finally branching out. met a nigga today that sells black soap and black coffee.” (Black Sublime did not sell soap, but Kenny sensed this woman was an accomplished storyteller.)

Kenny tidied the counter as she resumed drinking. He tried to will himself to continue talking with her or at least invite her to take a seat rather than stand, but he wanted her to leave. She made him feel too eager.

She took the hint. “Well, you’ll certainly be seeing me again, Mr. . . .”

“Kenny,” Kenny said.

“Mr. Kenny?”

Kenny frowned. “No, my first name is Kenny. Well, Kenneth. Last name is Bomar. See?” He pointed at a certificate hanging on the doorframe.

“Showing me the door already? Okay, Mr. Bomar,” the woman said. She slurped her coffee then reached into her wallet and produced a cream card. She kept it pinched between her fingers rather than dealing it to him, her face blank as if she were trying to conceal a winning hand. Kenny gently touched the paper, sliding it from her fingers.

The card was embossed with black print, sans serif. “Ebonee McCollum, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Epidemic Intelligence Services,” Kenny read aloud. “Am I under investigation, Ms. McCollum?” He was surprised by how calm he sounded. His heart was hammering his sternum.

“I hope not,” Ebonee said with sudden seriousness. “I’m already stretched thin.” She drained her mug then turned and left.

Kenny eyed the maroon film of lipstick that lingered on her mug. It looked better on her. Most things probably did. Was that a warning?

He began to clean to settle his mind. He couldn’t afford to lose himself to paranoia on such a marquee day. He’d acquired a new customer, Valencia was free, and soon he would be too.

Cleaning the narrow wooden counters took only a few swipes of his dustrag. He’d already brushed the crumbs and debris from the grinder and wiped the espresso machine before Ebonee came in. He repeated both as his mind drifted. What kind of pour-over drinker grabs coffee at 1:45 on a weekday but doesn’t stop by for a morning cup? He’d changed the operating hours from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. to cater exclusively to his base. Through his shrewd social engineering—not listing the prices, reducing the menu to no drinks with milk or sugar, axing the Wi-Fi—the tweens and college students that used to stop by at unpredictable times, talking over the symphony of the bloom and the soothing purrs of the espresso machine, purchasing one drink yet loitering for a full workday, had dwindled. As had the techholes who drank solely cortados and tried to pay with cryptocurrencies. Kenny wasn’t a control freak, but his domain was in order. Who was that woman?

Kenny grabbed a broom and dustbin. Ebonee worked for the CDC. What the hell would epidemiologists want with Kenny Bomar, small-business owner? The government had far greater priorities than a humble coffee roastery in Decatur that had a perfect record of health inspections. They had immigrants to terrorize, roads to leave unpaved, foreign elections to . . . Kenny stood straight and held the broom away from his chest, breathing slowly. Aimless rage was just as paralyzing as unchecked fear. Besides, the CDC was as toothless as a newborn. Even if they knew his designs, what could they do to him? Recommend that he stop? Encourage him to consider alternatives? Peer-review his schemes?

He chuckled and resumed sweeping, his body embracing the task. After five vigorous minutes, the broom had collected nothing. Too meticulous to leave a job unfinished, he mechanically swept air into the dustbin, emptied the nothingness into the wastebasket, then took his talents to the sunny curb in front of the shop. Work was available in the form of dirt, pollen, and a pigeon pecking at a half-eaten Chick-fil-A waffle fry. Kenny and the bird shuffled around each other like veteran MARTA riders: appendages tucked, eyes down, neuroses contained to a bubble.

The bird’s commute was short. Kenny watched it rise into the warm spring air; then he swept the waffle fry, now whittled to a goldenrod potato nub, into the dustbin. Order restored, he returned to Black Sublime and declared the day done. Closing time was hours away, but he was in no mood to work.

Kenny locked the front door and retired to the storage room and office. He sat at his desk, where he removed his phone. It powered on slowly, as if waking from a pleasant dream. He opened Signal and called Thurgood. His friend answered quickly.

“You’re calling early this week,” Thurgood said. He wasn’t a cop, but he had an innate ability to make all observations feel accusatory.

“I’m feeling lucky,” Kenny lied. A gust of static struck the call, a regular feature of the app.

“Christ, Kenny, why do we use this janky-ass app if you’re going to still sound like a drug dealer pretending to not be a drug dealer?”

Kenny put his legs on his desk. “Put some respect on our names, T. We’re not dealers; we’re designers.”

“Tell that to the DEA, the FTC, and the ACS. I miss anybody?”

“You forgot DowDuPont and Top Dawg Entertainment.”

Thurgood cackled. “Well it ain’t my fault hiipower is catchier than benzoate—”

“I know the formula,” Kenny interrupted. “I’m just checking that you’re good to chef next week. I’ve had a funny day.”

“What kind of partner would I be if I bailed without telling you?”

Kenny fell silent, partner echoing in his mind. He’d never thought to label their arrangement. It was hazy how they’d come to be designers and merchants of nootropics. Saskia had died and Maddy had left and suddenly Thurgood had reappeared, the dizzying chemistry of their graduate school days catalyzed and stable after a series of raucous happy hours. With a dead child and parent between them, they both had reasons to hate Big Chem, but Kenny couldn’t quite place when or why they started fashioning themselves Merry Men and Monsieurs Robot, their weeknights and ends spent trawling the compound libraries of universities, governments, and transnational corporations, gleaning forbidden knowledge of trademarked reactions and devices. Initially, they vowed to release their pirate cache to the public, but the logistics overtook their laurels. There were always new isomers to pilot, old syntheses to perfect. “Why do it if it can’t be done right?” Kenny had asked an eternity ago. He regretted the conviction of that moment.

“You there?” Thurgood said.

Maybe. He was very much there, in his Decatur roastery, on a call with his best friend. But he was also there, back in Thurgood’s guesthouse, spending night after night clearing spiderwebs and proofing drywall to install a vasculum of tubes and basins and refrigerators and pumps, their hands cracked and blistered from burns and spills. They were renegades on those nights, spiking middle fingers at the companies that had broken their families.

Then one day they were disruptors. ADD72, their miraculous, spatchcocked hack of Adderall, had seventy-one precursors, and Kenny couldn’t recall testing a single one. There had been so many failures and side effects and dead mice, he’d stopped caring. The discovery of ADD72 was so groundbreaking that they immediately doubted themselves. Surely two grieving niggas weren’t smarter than a whole-ass corporation. They made and tested a second batch. A third. A fourth. They’d really done it, Kenny finally declared after his fifth pill, his thoughts crisp and vast, a thunderstorm of clarity. They’d created a true wonder drug: no crash, no side effects. Just pure effect. Hiipower, he called it.

It must have happened then, Kenny realized as he remained silent. He couldn’t have stopped Thurgood from giving hiipower away for free on web forums, but he could have leaked their trove himself or chosen a name with less mystique, less promise. His hesitancy had doomed them. Before he knew it, the compound was being praised, then being revered, then being demanded, Thurgood’s lab molting its chaos as it bloomed into a streamlined factory. One drug, one direction. That was the partnership: even division of labor; odd, oblique fit. Kenny and Thurgood were partners the way Nelson and Murdock were partners, their public union obscuring their private differences. Kenny knew the ending. He yearned to twist it into something more fulfilling. In fact, he planned on it.

“I am here,” Kenny said. “And I was just thinking you can have my share.”

“Your share?” Thurgood chuckled. “This ain’t the family fuckin’ farm. This is a criminal enterprise. Are you boosting again?”

Kenny rubbed his wrist. “Of course not. Between this, the roastery, and personal projects, I just feel a bit buried. And I don’t need the money.”

Now Thurgood lulled. For Thurgood, money was the motive. He lived to protect his bread and to preserve it, and every space Thurgood entered eventually conformed to that vision. Kenny had known this since their days in UGA’s Order of Black Chemists. Maddy was president, Kenny vice, Thurgood treasurer, but the hierarchy was a polite fiction. Thurgood was the puppeteer, and he didn’t just pull the OBC strings; he tightened them, rewove them, made the song cry. Under the Thurgood Houser regime, member dues were paid early. All parties were sponsored by alumni or local businesses. Student conferences yielded jobs and charity donations. For Thurgood, the idea that a revenue stream that filled black pockets with white money should be choked off was offensive, irresponsible.

“You don’t need the money either, do you?” Kenny said. He had never learned how to veil his accusations, how to translate naked irritation into the cunning of diplomacy. Maddy always said that lack of subtlety made him a great vice president. Their divorce lawyer informed him it had made him a rubbish husband.

“Of course I need the fucking money,” Thurgood said. “You think I’m cooking narcotics for fun? You think I’m risking my career and my freedom for thrills? In this climate?” He laughed at length, his voice shattering into shrill crows then gurgling into clammy wheezes and gasps, his breaths heavy and racing.

Kenny wasn’t surprised when the laughs turned to growls.

“They’re dead, Kenny. Stone fucking dead. Pop, Saskia, Linda, Cornelius. Just because we were broke.” His voice descended to a whisper. “According to my estimates, we need to chef for at least two more years. Then we can release the libraries. I promise.”

Kenny knew the pledge was a performance, that Thurgood already had concocted ways of continuing without him, that Thurgood never had truly hoped to bring down the pesticide company that had sued his parents into bankruptcy, had poisoned his neo-­sharecropper father then waved Thurgood and his mother away with a settlement too life-altering to decline. Kenny couldn’t judge. He and Maddy had settled with the fuckers too. Different chemicals and company, but the same genus of Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor lawyers offering the classic deal: take our money and fuck off, or waste your money and fuck off. The choice was obvious. The choice was not a choice.

But only greed could explain Thurgood naming his parents’ dead dogs alongside Saskia and his father. Thurgood detested Linda and Cornelius, their lifelong allergy to discipline an insult to his regimen of order and calculation, their every leap and whimper a reminder that there were variables he couldn’t control in his relentless pursuit of financial freedom. Thurgood was a capitalist—a black one, but the genuine article nonetheless, perhaps even more mercenary than his white brethren because he was an anomaly. Every capitalist feared atrophy, muscle going limp as value seeped out of a beefcake and into a disruptive new market or government coffer.

But for the black capitalist, this fear centered on the heat death of a particular orifice. Hell hath no fury like a black capitalist who ascended the American summit and found that at a certain altitude, virility went moot. They tended to become quite irate, in fact, frantically invoking every metric they’d learned to live by, to survive with. Length, girth, square footage, horsepower, APR, degrees, minutes per game, signing bonus, credit score, Hilton points. The numbers did not not matter, but the truth was that the adjective—enhanced, discounted, inflated, adjusted for local-judicial-system bias—didn’t change the fact that it was still just dick. The twenty-­first century was erupting with cocks; they pussed out of bodies and Etsy accounts and phone screens. They came in nonbinary and organic, probably non-GMO. Kenny wasn’t glib enough to believe he could cure his black capitalist friend’s inevitable dysfunction, but he wouldn’t take away his comfort. Kenny stroked his wrist. Everyone needed comfort.

“I don’t have that kind of time,” Kenny said. “And I don’t need the money. But I’ll give you six more months.”

“You’re a real one,” Thurgood said.

The call ended and Kenny lingered at his desk, his mind racing to the edge of this improvised timeline, thrilled by its finitude. Where he once saw cascading clauses, subjects and predicates curling into inertia, running off into babble, he now spied punctuation, his death sentence legible. He’d have to thank Ebonee McCollum for the clarity, Valencia for the liquid courage, Kingman Coke for the contempt. Only six months, two conferences, one swig separated him from Saskia. No power—higher, chemical, state—could stop their reunion.

DEADLINE

To Ebonee, Alonzo’s office was a sanctum. Alonzo had been with the Epidemic Intelligence Service for two decades, practicing applied epidemiology in contexts exotic and banal. He’d been on the front lines of two Ebola outbreaks, COVID-19, the opioid crisis, the vape wars, the Nalgene recall, and the fracking boom. He’d witnessed nearly every horror that inspired Ebonee to become an epidemiologist.

Alonzo’s escapades were memorialized in a massive glass display case that Retta called the museum of death. Ebonee’s favorite artifact was a can of the original formulation of Four Loko. She’d never tasted it in any form, but in the first week of training, she was introduced to online videos from that era and grew enamored with the fearless and frequently hospitalized youngsters who’d drink the surreal beverage then rip through their small towns and college campuses twerking on cars, humping statues, sledding down staircases. She was the only EIS officer who laughed during the slideshow of clips, an outburst that she was immediately certain would get her scorned. It did, but only by her classmates, not Alonzo. He too found the videos charming, he told the class as he returned to the case study across different lectures. Addressing public health often meant understanding the public’s desires, he said. Every time Ebonee saw the can, she knew she was in the right place.

“Ever heard of Africatown?” Ebonee said. It was printed in boldface on a laminated certificate in the back of Alonzo’s display case. She’d never noticed it.

“No,” Retta replied.

“Me neither. Sounds culty. Wasn’t the leader of MOVE named Africa? I could see him founding an Africatown.”

“I think there’s more pressing things to wonder about. Like, what liquefies a body and evaporates dirt?”

“I’m just curious.”

“I am too,” Alonzo said as his hushed phone call ended and he swiveled to face Ebonee and Retta. “You really went and got coffee after that field visit?”

“Yeah, I was a little tired,” Ebonee said. She still was.

Alonzo huffed. “More power to you, McCollum. Anyway, sorry for the wait. Apparently our impromptu meeting earlier today pissed off Carlton of ICE. Do you guys know him? He’s constantly giving me shit. It’s odd. Historically I’ve done well with black men.”

Ebonee stole a glance at Retta, who had dated Carlton briefly. Or fucked him. Perhaps both. Alonzo, the fusion center’s resident Sulzberger, certainly knew this, because he had told Ebonee. So his comment was obviously an on-ramp to a lighter conversation, likely one in which he divulged his latest exploits among the ICEmen. But Retta’s steeled gaze told Ebonee to stick to the surface streets. Which was fair. The woman had had her day and probably the next few months hijacked.

A recap of the day’s unplanned events: Retta had been roped into an unplanned field visit, left the field and been condemned to bumper-to-bumper traffic due to a white-meat shortage at a Popeyes near the fusion center, endured Ebonee’s yammering about the best coffee in the world for hours (between Serious Work Discussions, to be fair), and then been trapped in Alonzo’s office.

Ebonee peeked at Retta’s armpits: cloudy with a chance of drip. Yikes. The woman was a powder keg.

“Sir,” Ebonee said, “given the gravity of today’s events, I think it’s important we focus on next steps.”

Alonzo nodded. “Yes, of course, doctors,” he said. “So because GBI worked the scene and there’s a possible death of a minor, GBI will be taking point. Our job is to determine, quickly, whether this is a public health emergency or a one-off tragedy. Our concern is health. Are the school grounds safe? Are the students and staff at risk? Is there more of this mystery substance? To be clear, there will be extensive overlap with GBI’s probe. We will talk to the same people, be at the same scenes, be privy to the same information and pressures. But our goals are different. We are not law enforcement.”

“What’s the deadline for our announcement?” Retta asked.

Alonzo paused. “Sometime between now and now.”

Retta sighed.

“Why so soon?” Ebonee asked.

“Why at all?” Retta asked with a dash of bile. Ebonee had had the same thought. As much as she wanted to escape the fusion center, the CDC didn’t tend to meddle in local affairs. Mumps aside, the State of Georgia had its own health protocols and resources, its own epidemiologists. Many of them were former EIS. (According to EIS recruitment materials, at least.)

Alonzo rose from his desk and closed his office door. Then he idled by his display case instead of returning to his chair. “The short answer is that the DA’s holding a news conference in a few days.”

“What’s the long answer?” Retta asked.

“You guys ever heard of Africatown?” he asked with a slight stammer.

Retta sniggered, filling Ebonee’s body with dread. Retta was supposed to be copacetic. Levelheaded. Unassailable. She had joined EIS in hopes of taking the sexiness out of responding to epidemics. She was immune to the cosmopolite allure of WHO conferences and posh galas with silver-tongued ambassadors and toothy foreign aid officers. She did not balk when colleagues corrected Doctors Without Borders to Médecins Sans Frontières. Ebonee doubted she even noticed. Retta’s concerns were the wolves that were permitted to live as sheep: diabetes, obesity, malaria, traffic crashes, maternal deaths, alcoholism. She no longer practiced family medicine, but she remained rooted in its immediacy.

“Yes, we have,” Ebonee lied, her eyes resting on the display case.

Alonzo perked up. “Well, I’m sure you haven’t heard my version,” he began.

This nigga, Ebonee thought.

“Africatown is a spot near Mobile where I did some consulting a while back. It’s gone by a lot of names over the years. I think they call it Plateau now, but it depends on who ‘they’ are. If you know it, you know why I was there. Because people kept dying and no one knew why. Or at least that’s what I believed. See, black folks had an explanation. Three generations of townies—I never figured out what to call them—dying before their sixties. Cancers, generally. Lung, breast, colon, prostate. Townies pointed to all the industry nearby. Petrochemical plants, paper mills, asphalt factories. Lots of work near Africatown, but lots of death. Black death.”

Alonzo continued. “We knew the root cause because we’ve been studying the long-term effects of carcinogens for decades. When industrial waste isn’t properly disposed of, it ends up in our water, our food, and eventually us. Cut and dry. But our hands were tied because we were there as clinicians, not politicians. I drove I-85 to I-65 and back every Saturday and Sunday for a year trying to develop a framework that fit the politics. ‘Environmental racism’ was seen as too loaded and accusatory. ‘Ambient carcinogenic exposure’ felt nebulous and toothless. We were doing good work, documenting family histories, testing water, visiting waste sites. But we were just mopping around the toilet when these folks needed the plumbing fixed. I don’t know what’s going on over at Harriet Tubman, but if it’s a chance to fix broken pipes, your conscience will not live with treating it like some ordinary cleanup.”

“So we’re supposed to chase this dragon because of skeletons in your closet?” Ebonee asked. Not as smooth as Retta might have put it, but inelegance aside, Ebonee knew she had to take the opening. Retta, curiously, wasn’t going to. In fact, she was motionless but engaged, elbows resting on her knees as she leaned forward, chin plastered to her hands like a Rodin bust.

“Rude, but not undue,” Alonzo said. “You Southerners have made me long-winded! My point is that the EIS doesn’t have to deal with the same bureaucracy as the EPA or the DOJ or even the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the sooner you know that, the greater your impact can be. We get to declare emergencies and secure resources to resolve them now. We can save lives, and I just need you two to determine whether one dead girl is an unfortunate end to a troubled life or the start of something worse.”

“That’s it?” Retta said. Ebonee was flummoxed. The dynamics of the room seemed to seesaw every time someone spoke. Did Retta think they could clear this case quickly? Had she seen something at the school that Ebonee hadn’t? Ebonee read her colleague’s body: shoulders back, hands cupped over crossed legs, brow cocked, eyes flush with pleasure like she had just seen her primped reflection after a long, tedious stretch in a salon chair. Retta had a quiet sunniness to her if you got to know her, but she was not a coquette. Was Retta mocking her? Did Retta think Ebonee had mocked her earlier? The right move felt elusive.

“Yeah, and what happens to our coursework if we’re responding to an emergency?” Ebonee said.

Retta hit Ebonee with a glare so frigid she felt ice crystals clinking in her chest. True to form, she’d clearly stumbled upon the wrong move. Perhaps she’d let Retta take point for the time being.

“This is your coursework,” Alonzo said excitedly, oblivious to their shadowboxing. “You’re already doctors. We’re not here to test you further. Our goal is to prepare you for what this world will throw at you, and nothing shapes you like the field.”

Ebonee wondered what in Africatown had shaped Alonzo into such a relentless, smiley optimist. His unnatural fortitude allowed him to keep the endless exhibits of death and decay on the outskirts of his retinas instead of lodged behind them, gnawing at his sense of self, feasting on his every fear. For him the field was a proving ground; for her it was the sweet rapture of that smell—which suddenly sprouted in her mind, flooding her senses. Ebonee could feel Retta’s shrewd discretion settling in too late as her thoughts were shrouded in darkness, neglected trigger warnings coming home to roost, clarion and transformed.

The expanse swept across Ebonee’s mind with furious depth and volume, its body swollen with seduction. Love was the message; the message was death. This wasn’t the shrill death of self-destruction, either, that razor klaxon of absolute negation ripping across the membrane of existence. Its timbre was warm and beckoning, a homecoming in a sea of blackness, a funeral pyre of her own making. She could settle here, root herself in this cozy amnion. There was peace in this abyss. True contentment: the silken, pillowy sleep of monarchs and fatigued gods. Eternity quaked through her being. She could finally rest. She would. She must.

But what was this aftertaste?

There was a cold vacuum at the needlepoint of the rhapsody’s center, a pinch of artifice, metallic like sugar in coffee, displaced like blood on the tongue. An opaque benefactor loomed behind all the succor and generosity. The shadow force wanted something from her yet declined to disclose its motives, demanding her initials here, here, here, and here, while insisting reading closely would be a waste of her time.

Alonzo and Retta snapped back to Ebonee’s perception. They were all discussing something, nodding in agreement, a triptych of satisfaction. Retta rose, so Ebonee did too. “Meet you at the elevator,” Retta said.

Ebonee headed to her desk and gathered her laptop and her heavy CDC employee manual, stuffing them into her backpack. She normally used the pdf version, but the heft of the massive print copy made her feel grounded. It had been years since Ebonee had experienced such vivid ideation. It felt dangerous to dwell on the catalyst even though that was exactly what she was supposed to do. Through therapy and jogging and gelato, she’d learned to tune her suicidal thoughts to faint, inessential gammon kindling in the background, a mental cassette hiss. Compared to the callous, boisterous sports radio it had been throughout high school, college, and med school, the static was a reprieve. She couldn’t go back.

“You okay?” Retta asked as Ebonee approached the elevator. She pressed the call button.

“Yeah, just trying to figure out what happened in there.”

“It’s simple,” Retta said.

“Easy for you to say.” The elevator arrived and opened.

Retta flung an arm across the threshold but didn’t step in. “No, actually, it isn’t. I came to work this morning with a plan. I’ve been looking at diabetes data for a few months, and there have been spikes in diagnoses across the Southwest among middle-aged Latinas.”

Ebonee eyed Retta’s arm as the elevator chimed in protest. It wasn’t an actual obstacle to her stepping in, but it wasn’t welcoming either. “Okay. What’s that got to do with our meeting?”

“Because you dragged me into your little adventure, which will go on for weeks, my schedule is thrown off. I’m not here for thrills. I know what work needs to be done and how I want to do it. I can’t diddle about. I’m not young like you are.”

Ebonee processed the comment. Retta never mentioned her age. She was so acute and tireless that the other EIS officers joked—behind her back and very, very far from the Keurig—that she was the youngest person in the program. Unlike her millennial colleagues, Retta never fell victim to scope creep, burnout, or imposter syndrome. All her victories were flawless, her performances S-ranked.

Ebonee admired that poise and knew there was a person beneath the superlative performer, but that person had to speak for herself. “Where was all this skepticism a few minutes ago?” she asked.

“Doctors, stop working so hard,” Alonzo said with untimely mirth from across the office floor. “Go home, get some rest,” he continued as he strutted past them and into the elevator. Retta recalled her arm.

“We will,” Retta said with sardonic treacle. “Just trying to hash out strategy before the big day!” The closing doors barely obscured Alonzo’s epic cheese.

Retta resumed the conversation, her words charged with an air of finality. “Okay, here’s the truth. I’m doing this because I know it won’t lead anywhere. I know that it’s going to die on the vine, and the sooner it does, the sooner I can sit at my boring desk and do the boring work that you think you’re too good to do.”

This time the elevator was summoned with a smack. Silence engulfed them as it returned, as it escorted them to the lobby, as they walked to the parking garage, as they parted. This wasn’t Ebonee’s preferred work soundtrack, but for the moment, it rang louder than her thoughts.