Читать книгу The Changeling - Victor LaValle - Страница 12

THIS WAS IN the fall of 1989, and Apollo Kagwa was a junior high school student at IS 237 in Flushing. With Brian gone Lillian reverted to her maiden name and she damn sure did the same for her son. He became a Kagwa by legal decree. They erased the West from their lives.

Even a self-contained and watchful kid like Apollo could end up running with a crew. He had two best friends and did well in American history with Mr. Perrault. Lillian had passed her classes to become a legal secretary and found a better job at a law firm in midtown Manhattan. But the work had her keeping even longer hours, not getting home until eight o’clock sometimes. Latchkey kid was the term. Adults lamented this new reality on the Donahue show. They scolded working mothers who were damaging their poor kids by their need to make a living.

Apollo spent that afternoon as kids do when they don’t have to be home right away: dipping into the nearby diner to play a few quarters’ worth of Galaga, then off to the bodega for quarter waters and chips, looping around the corner to Colden Street, where a game of running bases had popped off. He played for an hour or three, then headed upstairs. It had been—in all honesty—a day or two since he’d had a shower, and the game worked up a funk even he couldn’t ignore. Apollo turned on the shower and had stripped halfway down when he heard heavy knocking coming from the far end of the apartment. When he ignored it—probably just a neighbor looking for his mom—the pounding only got louder. The hot water in the shower started to form steam. When Apollo walked out of the bathroom, it looked as if he’d stepped out of a cloud.

He’d made it halfway across the apartment before a prickly feeling ran across his neck. The knocking at the door continued, but he looked behind him to find the steam in the bathroom flowing out into the hall, as if it was following him. Apollo felt woozy just then. As if, without knowing it, he’d taken a step into someone’s dream. His own dream. He felt jolted by the realization. He’d had this dream, night after night, when he was young. How young? Three or four? There had been knocking at the door, and the sound of running water, the apartment dense with fog and . . .

He ran for the front door. As soon as he got close, the knocking stopped abruptly.

“Wait for me,” he whispered. He felt stupid when he said it. Even stupider when he repeated it.

His father was not on the other side of the door. His father was not on the other side of the door. His father was not.

And still Apollo snapped the locks open. He felt as if he was shrinking. How had he opened the door in that dream? How had he reached the top lock when he was only a small child? Anything was possible in a dream. How about now then? Maybe he’d fallen asleep in the bathroom, sitting in the tub, and some random firing of electricity in his brain had helped this fantasy resurface. Apollo decided not to care. There was a certain freedom in knowing you were in a dream. If nothing else, he might open the door and see his father and be reminded of the man’s features. He couldn’t remember them anymore. But when he opened the door, his father wasn’t there.

Instead a box sat on the threshold.

Apollo leaned out, as if he’d catch a glimpse of his dream father, maybe farther down the hall. Nobody there. He looked back down at the box. Heavy cardboard, one word written on the lid in black marker.

Improbabilia.

Apollo went down on a knee. He picked up the box—it wasn’t heavy—and brought it inside with him. The contents of the box shifted and thumped. He sat on the carpet in the living room. He opened the lid.