Work Text:
LIMBIC SYSTEM: You swim in an ocean of darkness. You float, effortless, in the waters, like the cool marble flow of a statue’s robes. Dolores Dei, Mother of Innocence. Her arms encompass you, lending a coolness to your overheated skin. You could stay here forever, you know.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You can’t. Far overhead, a roar. A buzz.
There is an aerostatic, high above you. By the sound of it, it circles, like a hawk.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Or a buzzard.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: It’s going to bomb you. To end your putrid, stinking existence.
Reach for your gun.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: No. It has done nothing to you. It is more worthy of being alive than you are.
It’s beautiful.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Yes. It is. Are you going to shoot it down?
No.
The aerostatic circles, lower and lower. You can feel the air displacement on your skin, like a kiss. When’s the last time you were kissed? It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: Do you even remember how?
….
LIMBIC SYSTEM: The air is cool on your skin. It feels good. You can feel good sober.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Lies.
Maybe.
What does the aerostatic want?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: It wants to look at you.
Why?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Maybe it thinks you’re beautiful, too.
You drift. The sound of the waves comes to you, soft and unceasing, far off. It means nothing to you, nor you to it. The aerostatic hovers.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Wake up. There is someone you are disappointing.
Who?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: The aerostatic. You said you were done with that. You promised.
1. Life is one disappointment after another, and the aerostatic better get used to it, baby.
2. Aerostatics don’t feel disappointment.
3. Who am I disappointing?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: This one does.
1. Life is one disappointment after another, and the aerostatic better get used to it, baby.
2. Aerostatics don’t feel disappointment.
3. Who am I disappointing?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: The Lieutenant.
Wake up.
The ocean swims away and is replaced by a sheet of cool white linoleum. You are face down on it, can see where it runs to the bottom of the counters and curls up. You’d like to curl up. But it’s too hot for that. You can see table legs, chair legs.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Detective, what are you doing on my kitchen floor?” His voice betrays a combination of mild alarm and amusement. He’s trying not to show either. You only recognize them from months of working with him. You’ve memorized the way the corner of his mouth compresses, very slightly. It’s what a good partner does.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Is it?
You turn your head to the other side. Now you can see Kim’s leg’s, planted apart. His usual pose. Doing this requires great effort, and you grunt slightly. The linoleum is hot under your cheek, sticky with sweat, and you wriggle like a worm, stomach down, to find a new, cool place to lay your other cheek.
SHIVERS: Across the bay, a red-headed boy kicks a dumpster, hard. “Fucking worm-pig!” He spits.
It’s hot in Kim’s kitchen. It’s hot everywhere. It’s summer in Revachol, and if it weren’t for you forgetting all about this awful stinking heat, the way the city traps it in between its crowded buildings, jealously, trying in vain to seal it inside its dirty pavement before it escapes, every night, to the heavy clouds above, you might not have come back.
VOLITION: Yes, you would have.
Kim’s apartment is not much help, being a small one-bedroom place, scrupulously clean. It boasts a small kitchenette, a bathroom, a living room, Kim’s bedroom. There is a model Kineema on the coffee table. You are very, very careful not to break it. It means something to him. You are not certain where you rank yet: above it or below it.
You sleep on a pull-out bed in the living room, which is separated from the bedroom by an open doorway. “I haven’t had much need for doors,” Kim had told you the night you moved in. He doesn’t seem to have much need now, either, which means you get to hear him sleep, every night.
LOGIC: [failure] It’s because he’s planning to get rid of you the first chance he gets!
INLAND EMPIRE: It’s because he wants you to go in there one night. You have trouble sleeping. Both of you do. You hear him sometimes, tossing and turning. He hears you, too. He wonders what you’re thinking about. What keeps you up at night.
EMPATHY: How he can help you.
The kitchenette is small, a small table, smaller counters, a fridge Kim is repeatedly tinkering with. He does not do very well, it seems, considering he is always working on it.
EMPATHY: He likes it. He likes having something to work on.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Bodes well for you.
Kim mostly eats out. You mostly eat out, because you’re staying here, now, with Kim. Do you remember how it happened?
[Remember.]
SPRING: You had gone back to your old apartment, a basement shamble, down a set of crumbling concrete steps into darkness and mildew. It was utterly unfamiliar and completely destroyed. There were roaches. There was mold. There was the unmistakable stink of alcohol in the air and you opened your mouth when you walked in and stuck your tongue out like a child in the snow as if you could take it in, somehow. At least you managed to shut your mouth before Kim turned around.
You walked around the apartment, picking things up, looking at them. Looking for a glimpse of your past self. The mirror in the bathroom was broken. Its glass crunched under your heels. There was a hole in the plaster - there were several holes in the plaster - there were more holes than plaster. One of them appeared to be a cache for empty bottles.
VOLITION. You’re such a piece of shit. You should be ashamed of yourself. Except you have no shame, do you?
You turned to look at Kim, who had picked up an old RCM t-shirt from the floor.
ENDURANCE: Don’t pick that up.
Too late.
There was a strange look on Kim’s face as he looked down at the shirt. What did it mean?
EMPATHY: [medium: success.] It was pity. Pity and sadness and a little disgust, too, as he tried to use his other hand to pull the t-shirt off his right glove. It stuck to the left glove, too.
EMPATHY: He was going to have to burn those gloves. He liked those gloves.
VOLITION: Just another thing you’ve destroyed. Like the pale: waiting to devour. Unable to help it. It’s just the way you were made.
[-1 morale.]
SHIVERS: Kim had taken those gloves off to stitch you up. Don’t you remember?
You remember pain. You remember the dark, whispers reaching out to you, soft as a spring wind through branches, delicate as a tracksuit brushing against itself. You remember other things, too.
God, please.
Harry, please do not die.
We are not yet done with the case, you know.
You do not yet know what happens to Dick Mullen.
A hand, soft and cool and slim, brushing back your hair. Checking your temperature, hand to forehead.
Kim was still staring at the soiled shirt. You didn’t know what else to say. You looked around at the ruins of your past life. Where was Garte when you needed him?
1. “Hey, we could call Garte out here!”
2. “Do you think they still have my room in the Whirling-in-Rags?”
3. “Do you think there’s a bed under there?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “I doubt he would come all this way.”
1.“We could make him!”
2. “You’re probably right.”
3. “I could clean this room. ”
COMPOSURE: [Failure.] It came out as a question. Get it together, Harry. The Lieutenant had managed to scrape the t-shirt off of his glove using the edge of the kitchen table. He looked down at his glove, then back at you. Still that same look.
EMPATHY: It looks like it hurts.
Quick, think of something, before the look gets worse.
1.“Hey, we could call Garte out here!”
2. “Do you think they still have my room in the Whirling-in-Rags?”
3. “Do you think there’s a bed under there somewhere?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Do you really want to go back there?”
1.“Hey, we could call Garte out here!”
2. “Do you think they still have my room in the Whirling-in-Rags?”
3. “Do you think there’s a bed under there?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Not a useable one." He shifted position, his hands behind his back, legs well apart. His thinking pose. His head was down, and you looked at him.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: He looks good.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He looks tired.
AUTHORITY: [failure] Tired of your shit. You’ll wear him out.
KIM KITSURAGI: He raised his head. The weak bare bulb flashed on his glasses. Flashes of light on stained glass. He said, “You cannot stay here, Harry.”
1.“What are you, my landlord?”
2.“Wait, do I have a landlord?”
3. “Wait, do I have to pay rent?”
4. “Where am I supposed to go?”
5. Say nothing.
KIM KITSURAGI: As if he shouldn’t. As if he can’t help it. “You can stay with me. If you would like."
Of course, when you’d agreed, you hadn’t known he’d lived in a fifth-floor apartment. Heat rises. You remember that much. At least in your basement nest, it would’ve been cool.
VOLITION: And lonely.
[Continue.]
KIM KITSURAGI: “Detective,” says Kim again. Kim’s kitchen is hot and still, the faint sounds of Jamrock coming through the open window. Open to let in whatever passes for fresh air in these parts. It smells like spilled fuel, and urine, and fried food. The heat presses down on you, clinging to your skin, melding to it. Like a good drunk. Or a bad one.
You look up at Kim, boots first, then pants, then jacket, mostly unzipped. His tight vest tucked into his pants.
KIM KITSURAGI: “What are you doing face-down on my kitchen floor?” he says again.
LOGIC: He’s worried you’re drunk.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Brilliant idea! Nothing better in a Revacholian heat wave than a cold vodka! Or a dozen!
But you’re not drunk. That’s why you’re so hot.
1. “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
2. “Know where I can get a dozen vodkas?”
3. “I’m not drunk, Kim. I’m just hot.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He studies you. This isn’t even the strangest thing he’s ever seen you do, he thinks.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: The other officers make bets. Where do you think that twenty reál came from that he bought kebabs with the other night?
VOLITION: Are you angry?
No. You said you wanted kebabs. Then you went out, the two of you, in the street, and Kim bought kebabs, and then you walked side by side and ate them, talking of various things. It was nice.
“I’m hot, Kim,” you say, rubbing your face on the white linoleum floor like a cat. How do cats stay so cool? It must be genetic. Maybe that’s where Kim gets it from. The linoleum is cool on your face. It’s so clean. Impeccable.
INTERFACING: Of course it is. It’s Kim’s.
VOLITION: Does it really matter to you? You’ve laid on worse floors, face down in your own vomit.
Not anymore, baby.
VOLITION. No. Not today.
You look up at Kim. His eyes are unreadable, magnified strangely behind his glasses. “Maybe I’m sick,” you suggest hopefully.
KIM KITSURAGI: An expression flits over his face. He gets down on his knees beside you and reaches forward - the whisper of his jacket as he moves - and peels off his gloves slowly. Deliberately. You watch him pulling each finger off, then the whole glove. His hands are revealed. He has nice hands.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Tell him! Tell him he has nice hands!
SAVOIR FAIRE: Don’t say that. Don’t make it weird.
KIM KITSURAGI: He leans forward and presses the back of his hand to your forehead. It’s scarcely cooler than your face. He’s hot, too.
DRAMA: Prick him, doth the man not bleed?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Well, that’s an interesting turn of phrase.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Khm. Perhaps you are a bit heated.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Hot!! He called you hot!!
SUGGESTION: Calm down, Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor. He thinks you might be ill.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Ask him if he’ll play nurse.
VOLITION: No.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Too late!
Your mouth opens. You’d like to mash it into the floor to muffle what’s about to come out, but that means moving away from Kim’s touch, which moves onto your cheek, then the back of your neck, feather-light. Is that how you check a temperature? You have no idea. The words come out, free and unencumbered.
“Want to play nurse, Kim?”
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim pulls his hand away, sits back on his heels. His face shutters, and he puts his hands behind his back.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: That’s a nice pose.
INLAND EMPIRE: He hates you.
EMPATHY: He does’t hate you. You’ve just made him uncomfortable.
1. “You hate me now, don’t you, Kim?”
2. “Why do I make everyone hate me in the end?”
3. Say nothing.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim turns his head to look out the window. He can only see the building next door, a tenement identical to this one, with the same clotheslines, the same sad, drooping herbs in planters. You like when your clothes hang together on the clothesline, yours next to his. Like it means something. It does something to that hole in your chest. Fills it, just a little bit. As if with wings.
You’ve looked out this window often enough while Kim slept, listening for his nearly nonexistent breaths in the other room. Once, you went to the door and looked in at him. Kim sleeps on his back. His face, without his glasses, looked younger. Of course. His lips had been parted, a little. Like he would look in bed beside you. His glasses sat on the bedside table, their arms extended, ready to put on, next to his gun.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: A good officer. Always ready for anything. Never drove his motor carriage into the sea.
KIM KITSURAGI: “It is not an experience I wish to repeat. Playing ‘nurse’ with you.”
INLAND EMPIRE: You were a nightmare patient.
VOLITION: Oh my god, did you grab his ass?
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Sexual harassment is inexcusable, Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor.
AUTHORITY: Sexual harassment is awesome! Fun for the whole precinct.
EMPATHY: Don’t ask. If you do, you’ll only make him uncomfortable.
[Failure].
“Kim, I didn’t grab your ass, did I?”
KIM KITSURAGI: "You didn’t - no, detective. Why would you grab my ass?” He turns his gaze away from the window to look at you.
1.“Why wouldn’t I?”
2.“Because I want to know how it feels in my palms. Skin to skin, pulling you on top of me, your mouth on mine. Your arms around my neck.”
3. “Because you loaded me up with drouamine and I can’t be held responsible for my actions. You know how I am, Kim.”
4. “For science.”
"For science.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He continues to study you. From this angle, kneeling above you, he looks like a statue. Untouchable. Cool.
Something to pray to.
KIM KITSURAGI: “And what step of the scientific method would that be classified under?”
Prayer? None.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: He means ass-grabbing. You don’t know anything about the scientific method, do you?
1. “Research.”
2. “Experiment.”
3. “Communication.”
[Failure.]
KIM KITSURAGI: “Right.” He continues to study you, his eyes unreadable behind his glasses. “Perhaps a cold shower,” he says, with some amusement.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Sometimes you go in the bathroom after Kim. It’s steamy and foggy. You imagine Kim’s bare hot skin. His gloveless hands.
“I’m the King of cold showers, and trust me, it does not help.”
AUTHORITY: Does that come with a crown?
INLAND EMPIRE: A shower cap.
Kim has a shower cap. It’s adorable. You’ve never seen him in it. You want to see him in it.
KIM KITSURAGI: “It cannot be that much cooler down there.”
1. “As cool as you are, Kim.”
2. “As cool as a polar bear’s” - you know what? I’m not saying that.
3. “Not really.”
“Not really.”
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim makes a huffing noise, just a low breath of air. You only notice it because you’re listening for it, because you’re used to it. You’re partners, now.
EMPATHY: It’s been strange for him, living with you, for almost four months, working with you, too. He’d transferred to the 41st precinct. To be with you.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: To keep an eye on you.
EMPATHY: Maybe. You’re partners again. Still. You drive into work together. It’s cute.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You’ve overheard the others calling you Mr. and Mrs. Tequila Sunset.
Wait. Which one of us is Mrs. Tequila Sunset?
AUTHORITY: Do you really want to know?
EMPATHY: Kim doesn’t mind your constant presence. He likes it. He likes keeping an eye on you.
VOLITION: You’ve slipped up. Of course you have. The Lieutenant had expected it. Don’t think any less of yourself for it.
Too late.
[-1 morale].
1. THE APARTMENT.
2. THE TIE
3. THE CASE
A few months ago, it had been spring. Of course it had. That’s how time works. The breeze had gotten into you. The light made you restless. A strange swelling in your chest, filling up the emptiness. Echoing in the vast hollow chamber of your heart. Even Kim had seemed to feel it, the windows down in the Kineema as he had driven, just this side of too fast, weaving through the streets. You had wrapped up a case easily. It should have felt satisfying. Good.
But it didn’t. You were still restless. You had been released into the spring afternoon, the sun hot on your head, your neck. You sweated uncomfortably, prickling, as you walked. Kim had stayed behind to work on paperwork and so you had walked and walked and walked, trying to refamiliarize yourself with your streets. You had passed a girl who smelled like apricots. You had turned. It wasn’t her. It was never her. You kept walking and walking, but it was hard to lose yourself when you were already lost.
You had gotten thirsty. You stopped by a kiosk to get an orangeade. They were all out of orangeade. Who the fuck drinks orangeade, anyway, thought the man behind the kiosk, except kids and drunks. You know what they weren’t out of? Vodka.
How many did you have? Who knew. Enough to forget you’d forgotten. Enough for your tired feet to carry you back to your basement apartment, singing snatches of an old disco song. How nice. You’d left a light on. Except the door was locked, and you didn’t have the key.
You kicked it. There was a well-worn, oft-repaired spot where your foot hit perfectly. So you kicked it, but there was something wrong with your leg, and it hurt, something tore, something not yet healed.
Kim was awake when you fumbled with the lock, when you limped into his apartment, one leg heavier than the other. You could hear it in his breathing as you crashed into the kitchen table, the sofa, the coffee table, barely saving the model Kineema. But you couldn’t breathe easy. Your chest was tight. Another heart attack? Probably not. Probably just guilt.
EMPATHY: Kim was disappointed in you.
EMPATHY: Kim understood.
1. THE APARTMENT.
2. THE TIE
3. THE CASE
You had been caught off guard as you passed a shop window by a tie shrilling loudly at you from the dirty plate glass window. Paisley. Red, blue, and green. An obscene swirling of colors you’d only seen before deep in the DTs in Martinaise. It made your eyes smart. It was just the colors, was all.
No. It was the memory of a fallen comrade.
When you stumbled in that night, Kim was asleep. You went into the bathroom, leaned on the small sink, stared in the mirror. A familiar face greeted you. A painful rictus grin. A flushed face, red, half-lidded eyes.
THE EXPRESSION: Hello, old friend. I’m never far away. Always just under the skin.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Try to determine source of The Expression.
[Failure.] Staring too long into this hideous creature made you woozy. Your heart began to pound, a steady, thickening thud in your chest. Your vision narrowed, then tunneled. You felt the earth spin fast, then faster, leaving you behind…
You woke up on the sofa the next morning, your arms crossed over your chest. As if you were dead. Your shoes were off. You sat up, slowly, and the world condensed into one big headache. Jawache. Your felt your face gingerly, not wanting to look into the mirror again. There was a lump on your jaw. It hurt. You must’ve passed out, hit it on the porcelain sink. You were lucky it wasn’t your temple.
VOLITION: Was I?
Kim was at the kitchen window, smoking. His only cigarette of the day, first thing.
EMPATHY: Must’ve had a bad night.
KIM KITSURAGI: “We’re going to be late.”
So you got up, and began again.
1. THE APARTMENT.
2. THE TIE
3. THE CASE
Another time, the most recent - a month ago, so close it still smarts when you think about it, so close you can still taste the alcohol going down your throat, sweet oblivion - you had had a case. A bad one. There had been a young boy, too young, and he had reminded you of Cuno, and then he was dead. You still hadn’t found all the pieces. You had waited until Kim was in the bathroom, and then you had slunk off to get blindingly, violently drunk.
He had been waiting up for you. Standing. Hands behind his back, legs apart. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke, as if he had been pressed to the window, tightly.
If you stand just right, you can just see a scrap of pavement below, but you have to be close. Desperately close.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Detective,” he had said, and you had dropped down on your knees, where you belong, clinging onto his pants. Like Dolores Dei. His hands no longer behind his back, but fluttering, nervous, like birds. He didn’t know where to put them. You were making him uncomfortable.
EMPATHY: No, you were hurting him. That was hurt you saw in his eyes. He doesn’t like to see you in pain.
All hail Kim Kitsuragi, his Beneficence.
[Continue.]
Your three mistakes. You carry them close with you, rattling around the cave you call a heart.
EMPATHY: He doesn’t mind keeping an eye on you. You keep an eye on him too, don’t you?
No - behind you.
KIM KITSURAGI: Still on his knees, looking down at you, the Lieutenant begins taking his jacket off. He’s wearing a tight vest underneath. Very tight. Skin tight, in fact. You can see his stomach rise and fall with each breath.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You like that.
LOGIC: Who wouldn’t?
“Kim, what are you doing?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “What does it look like I am doing, detective?”
INLAND EMPIRE: He’s mocking you. The soft lilt to his voice. The emphasis on detective.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: He’s flirting.
INLAND EMPIRE: Yes.
KIM KITSURAGI: He folds the jacket carefully and sets it on the kitchen chair, placing his gloves on top. Bracing himself on his palms - you can see the muscles in his shoulders move under his skin. His arms. His back. He lays down on the floor beside you, on his back. His bare shoulders pressing into the floor.
You are very close. He turns his face towards you.
KIM KITSURAGI: “It is a bit cooler down here.” A confession. He turns his head towards you. The way he looks at you. Almost as if…
DRAMA: You’re a fucking rockstar!
ESPIRIT DE CORPS: He respects you.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: There’s something about him, Kim thinks. He’s so…different.
RHETORIC: Kim wouldn’t think like that.
DRAMA: Okay, so you’re a rockstar.
LOGIC: You’re not - you know what, go ahead. You’re a rockstar.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Does that make Kim my groupie?
KIM KITSURAGI: The Lieutenant is very close. The air is hot, even down on the floor, pressing down on you, an unbearable weight.
SHIVERS: Outside, the sound of Revachol, like an ocean. Life, continuing. Improbably, somewhere, a bird sings.
You could roll into him now, you know. You could reach for him. His eyes trace your face. His glasses are knocked into the linoleum, pushed askew. He makes a little noise, reaches up, takes his glasses off. He folds them and places them beside him. His eyes are dark, two stones thrown into the sea. Sinking deeper, deeper.
You’re sinking.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: This is what he would look like laying in bed with you.
Yes.
He would let you, you know. You could walk in one night when you can’t sleep. Neither of you. You’ve woken up on the pull-out sofa to see him standing staring out the window at the neon FRITTE sign mounted to the top of the next-door building that comes in the window at just the right angle.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Reflected on this face, red and fractured, it makes him look like stained glass.
ESPIRIT DE CORPS: It’s his own horrible necktie. It speaks to him, sometimes.
What does it say? [Failure].
1.Tell him. “Hey, Kim. I think we should sleep together.”
2. Impossible. No words. Just roll onto your side and reach out for his face. Brush his cheek.
3 .Say nothing. Let it be. Don’t fuck it up, Harry.
You say nothing.
This close, he smells of sweat and motor grease, and his one cigarette of the day. You want to kiss it off him. He’s been working on the Kineema in the precinct garage again. He does that, sometimes. Sometimes you stay with him when he does. Hang around, hand him things when he asks, hope your fingers brush. Sometimes they do. He wears different gloves when working on the Kineema. Sometimes, for delicate work, he wears no gloves at all.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I cannot sleep in this heat.” His face is in shadow. Little light gets in the small, scrupulously clean windows. The buildings are too tightly packed together. Not like the ruins of Martinaise, wide open to the pale.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Like the gaping hole in your chest.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: And your brain. Don’t forget the hole in your brain.
“Yeah. Me neither.”
INLAND EMPIRE: His mouth would be cool. Like a dead body.
What the fuck? No.
INLAND EMPIRE: Like ice cream from a polar bear cooler.
Better, but barely. What’s with the polar bear obsession?
LOGIC: They’re cool. You’re hot.
Fine, I guess.
Has he been this close to you before?
Yes.
In the Whirling-in-Rags. His hand, gloveless, on your bare chest, skin to skin. Rising and falling, his hand buoyed by your continued breaths. It’s the only way he can sleep. Don’t disappoint the Lieutenant. For some reason he wants you alive.
Keep breathing.
Your eyes are falling closed in the heat, the stillness. You wrench them open. Kim is beside you. You’re laying on his kitchen floor, together, to escape the heat. His eyes are closed. His chest rises and falls slightly, and he looks -
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Relaxed.
EMPATHY: Happy.
Above, far above, an aerostatic. Something passes across Kim’s face. A smile. Kim hears it too.
You sleep.