Page 66 of Gifted & Talented

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Philippa looked, well, dead, was how Arthur put it to me later. The whole thing felt surreal, gray, dark. It was dark—Eilidh still hadn’t fixed that, still didn’t know how to. Likewise, Arthur didn’t really know how to explain to anyone why he, of California’s Twelfth Congressional District, was the emergency contact in a British aristocrat’s phone. He still had no idea why he kept dying. He knew only that something was severely out of order; that much seemed obvious. This was Philippa, who had been alive only yesterday.

There were a small, scattered group of photographers outside, given Philippa’s high profile, and Yves’s, and, less interestingly but still of some significance, Arthur’s. Most journalists, it seemed, were now covering the ongoing apocalypse rather than anyone’s (Arthur’s) deficiencies, but one or two held out hope for a celebrity headline. Again, Yves made a convenient cover for Arthur’s inexplicable presence, though it was Arthur who lingered, alone, in the morgue after Philippa’s identity had been confirmed.

“Was she pregnant?” Arthur asked the medical examiner.

“No,” the examiner said, sounding surprised that he would ask.

“Oh,” said Arthur.

Death comes in threes. Thayer. Philippa. Finally, a third: Riot. There, now Arthur could neatly close the book. The rest of the world was safe. Assuming the next time he died he didn’t stay dead. Four deaths in one week just seemed absurd.

And Riot had always been real to him; so real he didn’t know how to properly mourn her. He didn’t know how to explain that he needed to dig a grave, to bury his sorrows in fresh earth. That there was no other way to suffer honorably than with his hands, with his sweat, with the carnage of his devotion. But Riot had never actually existed and there was no one to say goodbye to, because she was just an idea he’d once had—no more his than any other silly wish upon a star.

“You’re that congressman, right?” said the examiner.

The words “for now” crossed Arthur’s mind. He wondered what the Oakland Tribune would print about his appearance at the hospital, and whether his coverage in the weekend’s posts would be sympathetic. Maybe his week of private tragedy would make for meatier public consumption. Maybe it would cause people to look closely, see the oddness of it all. Arthur no longer knew how to understand himself without the backdrop of disapproval by 332 million strangers he would likely never meet. “Yes, I am.”

“What was your relationship to her?” asked the examiner, meaning Philippa. He seemed to have gathered that Arthur wasn’t the husband or a father or a brother. He’d clearly ruled out all the intimate things, probably because Arthur was having trouble bending his head around the heaviness of loss, such that he didn’t appear to be struggling at all.

Inside, Arthur was thinking things like arrange your face so that you don’t look like a serial killer. Move your hand, that’s a doorknob. Turn it. Yes, good, Arthur, good.

“Oh, uh. We’re cousins,” said Arthur. Truthfully, he didn’t know why Philippa listed him instead of Yves in her phone, except maybe for the knowledge that Arthur would come. That if she invented a baby for some very labyrinthine personal gain, Arthur would simply believe it. That if she said dance, monkey, dance, Arthur would salsa joyously on the spot, no questions asked.

“Oh yeah? You from one of these fancy British lines, too?”

“I’m of slightly less fancy stock,” said Arthur, improvising madly on the spot. It was easier given that his mind was elsewhere. “One of the bastards.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh,” said the examiner meaningfully. “You’d think you’d be darker, then.”

That jarred Arthur a bit. “What?”

“I looked up the family online.” The examiner flashed Arthur a screen with Philippa’s family crest on it. “All that money came from sugar plantations in the Caribbean.”

Right, the Barbados of it all. Arthur felt an inward collapse of cringe. “We’re actually not biological cousins,” said Arthur quickly. “More like, you know, our moms were friends.”

The examiner looked sympathetic.

“She was a really lovely person,” Arthur added. “Really lovely.” Smart, funny, silly, weird. He missed her dearly then. Enough feeling came back to him that he could do it in a way he hadn’t yet managed for his father, a more complicated grief. For Thayer, Arthur still felt the tirelessness of longing, the yawning emptiness of things he knew they’d never say. For Philippa, he thought simply Oh, Mouse. She’ll miss fashion week in the spring, and I’ll look up at the blossoms and know she isn’t there, and I will miss all the funny silliness of her.

“Yeah,” said the examiner with the arch of a brow, “I’m sure she was great.”

“She didn’t have her own personal slaves,” Arthur attempted to reason with him.

“Sure,” said the examiner. “Can you just confirm her place of birth for me?”

“Oh. Uh. Saint James, I think.” Arthur realized the examiner was making a political point about colonization and what reason an English woman might have for still being in a country even after it had fought a bloody war for independence. Which seemed fair, albeit unproductive.

Arthur said, “Is it cool if—” If I loved a person and not an idea. If I carry guilt and desire in the same very misfortunate heart. If I honestly thought it was an improvement on her palate, and didn’t really ask a lot of questions about why. If I felt the charity work was kind because it seemed conflicting to view it as patronizing. If she was honestly very funny and strange, and I’m acting very calm at the moment, but actually I’m in shock, because I don’t like the things I’ve had to acknowledge today, but also, importantly, I didn’t really want her to die. I really didn’t want her to die, I lost a person and a future today, or maybe I already lost them, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same. So is it okay—?

“If I leave?” he finally managed.

“Sign this,” said the examiner, and Arthur signed it and left.