“I loved her, boy,” he replied, a hint of steel in his voice. “You can do what you want here, I can’t stop you. But I won’t have you questioning that. I loved her from the moment we met to our last kiss goodnight. I still do.”
The old man’s voice didn’t quaver a bit, but his eyes were watery and his hands trembled.
“Can I sit?” Amos asked.
“Suit yourself. Let me know if you want more tea. Pot’s full.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m sorry about rousting you like that. But when I heard, I worried —”
“I know who Lydia was before we met,” Charles said, sitting down on a small couch facing him. “We were always honest with each other. But no one ever bothered us here. She just had a leaky artery and it gave out one night while she was sleeping. Nothing else.”
Amos rubbed his scalp for a moment, waiting to see if he believed the old guy. Seemed like he did.
“Thanks. And, again, I’m sorry if I came on strong,” Amos said. “So, can I take a few of those roses?”
“Sure,” Charles said with a sigh. “Ain’t my garden much longer anyway. Take what you want.”
“You moving?”
“Well, the guy who was doling Lydia stopped when she died. We had a little set aside, but not much. I’ll be going on basic pretty soon, so that means the government block.”
“Who was floating her?” Amos asked, already knowing the answer.
“Kid named Erich. Runs a crew in Lydia’s old hometown. Somebody you used to know, I guess.”
“Used to,” Amos agreed. “Does he know about you? That Lydia was married?”
“Sure. He kept in touch. Checked up on us.”
“And he cut you off after she died.”
It wasn’t a question, and Charles didn’t answer, just sipped at his tea.
“So,” Amos said, standing up, “got a thing I need to go do. Don’t start moving out yet. One way or another, I’ll make sure you’ve got the money to keep this place.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Sort of do.”
“For her,” Charles said.
“For her.”
The high-speed to Baltimore took less time than the walk to the station had. The city itself hadn’t changed at all in the two decades Amos had been away. The same cluster of commercial high-rises, the same sprawl of basic and minimal-income housing stretching out until it hit the orderly blocks of middle-class houses on the outskirts. The same rotting seaweed smell of the drowned eastern shore, with the decaying shells of old buildings sticking out of the murky water like the ribs of some long-dead sea monster.
As much as the realization bothered him, Amos had to admit it looked like home.
He took an automated electric cab from the train station to his old neighborhood. Even at the street level, the city looked the same, more or less. The streetlights had been swapped out for a different, boxy design. Some of the streets had changed from pedestrian-exclusive to mixed use. The thugs and dealers and sex workers were different faces now, but they were all on pretty much the same corners and stoops their predecessors had worked. New weeds growing in all the city’s cracks, but they were the same cracks.
He had the cab let him out at a corner coffee stand that was licensed to accept basic
ration cards. It was in the exact same location as the last place he’d ever eaten in Baltimore before he left. The cart and the franchise brand were different, but the assortment of rolls and muffins looked identical.
“Tall cup and a corn muffin,” he said to the girl working the cart. She looked so surprised when his terminal transferred actual money instead of basic ration credits that she almost dropped his food. By the time his Ceres New Yuan routed through the network and into UN dollars, with every exchange and transfer tacking on fees, he wound up paying triple for his snack.
The muffin tasted like it had been recycled from old, previously eaten corn muffins. And the coffee could have passed for a petroleum product, but he leaned against a wall beside the stand and took his time finishing both. He tossed what was left into recycling and thanked the girl. She didn’t reply. His space money and foreign clothes left her staring at him like some sort of alien creature. Which, he supposed, he sort of was.
He had no idea where to start looking for Erich. But he didn’t have to walk far before a teenage girl with machine-quality braids and expensive cotton pants drifted out of a shadowy doorway.