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THERE’S A PHARMACY open two blocks down from the noodle bar. It rings with the brisk sound of spoken Mandarin and gunfire from the arcade machine in the corner being commandeered by three teenage boys with shaved heads. She steps inside.
She knows what she’s looking for but meanders a while up and down the aisles, enjoying the bleaching harshness of the fluorescent lighting after the soft lantern red of the noodle bar. She picks things up and puts them down. A young man stacking shelves stares at her.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing,” he replies.
She shakes her head slightly at him and carries on toward the family planning section of the aisle, where she gazes numbly at the pregnancy testing kits.
Her head spins with the weirdness of everything. Noodles with Danny Rand. Going to the UK. And this…this gigantic freaking six-foot flashing-light question mark hanging over absolutely everything. She turns her head suddenly at this thought, and through the window of the pharmacy she sees a cab idling at a set of lights and there in the back of the taxi she sees a child turn to catch her eye, and she gasps. It’s her again, the little girl in the silver coat. The girl raises her hand to her, and Jessica raises hers back. The girl kisses the palm of her hand and throws it to her, and Jessica breathes in softly, not sure how to respond. She suspects she’s meant to catch the kiss and hold it next to her heart, but that sort of thing is not really in her DNA. She notices that the girl is alone in the back of the taxi and also, strangely, that the driver has not switched off his duty light. She lets her hand drop, the girl turns away, and a second later the taxi drives off.
Jessica drops the packet of pregnancy testing sticks she’d been holding on to a shelf and leaves the pharmacy. She is four miles from home. What was that child doing alone in the back of a taxi? Why was the for-hire light still showing? And does the girl even exist, or is she a figment of Jessica’s imagination—a signifier, maybe, that Jessica is in fact going full-blown, stone-cold nuts?
“Malcolm who?” asks Amber the following morning. She’s called using FaceTime and consequently Jessica has a jumpy view of her scowling face from under her chin as she walks down a busy street somewhere.
Jessica adjusts her phone so only half of her own face is showing. It’s too early for this shit. “Powder. Malcolm Powder. I told you. But he’s going to use the name Sly McNeil.”
Jessica sees Amber push open a heavy chrome door, disappear, and then reappear a second later in an opulent foyer. The background noise recedes and is replaced by the babble of people as Amber moves through them.
“And you trust this boy, do you?”
Jessica bites her lip. “Yeah. Totally,” she says. “He’s super trustworthy.” She has no idea, of course. She barely knows him, but he’s her only option right now and she will have to trust her gut.
“And he’s not going to blow our game?”
“No. He is not.” Jessica shakes her head decisively, but in reality this is her biggest fear, that he will do something or say something stupid, and Lark and Fox will somehow divine that they are under surveillance.
Amber nods. “Good. And I got notification today that your passport will be ready to collect Monday morning. So I’m looking at London flights for you for Tuesday. Are you good with that?”
Jessica’s stomach turns a little and a shiver of nerves runs through her. “Yes. I’m good with that.”
“Excellent. And maybe we can get together again over the weekend. Talk through the plan for your trip. Are you free?”
Jessica nods and smiles wryly. “No plans at all.”
She hears the ping of an elevator arriving and then an automated voice telling Amber to stand clear of the doors. “Listen,” Amber says. “I have to go. I’ll send over the details for the boxing class tonight for this Malcolm boy. He’ll need to sign up on their website for the six p.m. class. I’ll send a link. Okay, Jessica, I’ll speak to you later. Bye.”
And then the screen goes blank.
Julius invites Jessica over for takeout that night, to thank her for feeding Speckles.
“Don’t bring anything,” he says. “It’s all on me.”
But she heads to the bodega down the block beforehand anyway and picks up a bottle of something called Psycho Ghost Chili Hot Sauce and a bag of Herr’s Smokin’ Hot Ghost Pepper Potato Chips; if nothing else they will give her and Julius something to talk about for a moment or two.
She passes them to him at his door at six thirty and he eyes them curiously. “You like spice?” he asks, one perfectly micro-bladed eyebrow tipping up slightly.
“Yeah. Doesn’t everyone?”
She follows him into his living room, which looks plush and glowing with the light from every last one of his numerous table lamps. Speckles appears from the kitchen and moves purposefully toward Jessica. She leans down to greet him, and he meows loudly.
“Well, look at that,” Julius observes. “Besties now, I see.”
“Yeah. We bonded,” says Jessica. “He thinks I’m cool.”
“Well, Jessica, you kind of are.”
“That,” she says, “is not true. But thank you. How was your trip?”
