Page 36 of Spread Me
Mads looks all around the room. Everywhere that isn’t Kinsey. They stand up and look at the pictures on the wall, look at the door, smooth the covers on the bed. Finally, when Kinsey can’t stand it anymore, they clear their throat. “The cryptobiotic crust,” they say. “I’ve heard you guys talking about it, and I haven’t paid much attention because, to be honest, I just—I don’t know, it seems too complicated. But the thing is—fuck.” They press their head against the wall, their voice thick. “Fuck.”
“Woah. Hey, what’s going on?” Kinsey stands and takes a step closer to them, not sure whether or not she should reach out or leave them alone. “Mads?”
“The crust. The cryptobiotic crust. It’s a living thing, right?”
“Well—no? It’s not just one creature, it’s a whole network. It’s a living thing the way a coral reef is a living thing.”
“Right. Okay. But that means it’s all connected. Which means that this lichen we discovered—it can live down there.” They straighten. Their forehead is red where it was pressed against the wall. Tears stream freely down their cheeks. “It might have been living down there all along. It could be propagating all across the desert. The virus probably spread to whatever else is living down there, way before you guys dug up that specimen. Who knows how long it’s been down there. Who knows how far it’s already spread.”
Kinsey feels everything in her body go still. “That can’t be right,” she whispers, even as she knows that it is. “The lichen we’re dealing with is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s got to be specific to one kind of fungus, right?It’s not like a virus that size can be supported by just any network of hyphae.”
“That’s a good point,” Mads says, letting their head fall back on a mirthless laugh. Their tears stream across their temples, soaking into their hair. “You know viruses. Notoriously unadaptable. Wouldn’tdreamof mutating to gain access to a more favorable environment.”
Kinsey feels a faint thrill of hope. Even if Mads and Nkrumah get to see their plan through—even if the three of them die and the station ends up a smoking pile of ashes—that won’t be the end of the virus. It’s a feeling she knows she shouldn’t have, but she can’t help having it.
This is why she put herself into exile in the first place. She can’t help rooting for the wrong team.
Kinsey drains the last of her water, then screws the cap onto the empty bottle and tosses it at Mads. It hits them in the arm, and they look up, startled. “Fine,” Kinsey says. “Everyone’s going to die and we’re all doomed, so we might as well get drunk. It’ll be easier to kill ourselves if we’re hungover. Won’t feel like much of a loss, right? Do you still have your secret stash?”
Mads looks at her blankly, then bursts out laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that comes out like vomit, a cleansing hysteria that turns into silent gasping before it eases off. “I didn’t know you knew about that,” they say at last.
“Everyone knows about it,” she says, then winces internally at the way “everyone” has diminished. “It’s the only booze here that we can be sure Jacques won’t drink.”
Mads dives to the floor, reaches under their bed, and fishes around for a moment before emerging with a mostly full bottle of whiskey. They open Kinsey’s empty water bottle and pour in a few glugs, then take a pull directlyfrom the whiskey bottle. The two of them sit on the bed and toast each other.
“To the end of everything we ever loved,” Kinsey says.
Mads meets her water bottle with their whiskey bottle. “To the end.”
Saskia sits on the floor of Kinsey’s bedroom, her legs crossed. She’s rolling joints for Jacques, who is giving up alcohol for a week to prove a point to Mads. Saskia doesn’t smoke, but she has deft hands and loves repetitive tasks, so there are twenty neat, compact joints in a row on the floor in front of her.
“Vareniki and pelmeni are different,” she’s explaining. Kinsey is only half listening, but that doesn’t deter Saskia. “With vareniki you cook the filling ahead of time. Pelmeni, you fill raw. It’s a completely different vibe.”
“Right.” Kinsey adds another line to the email she’s drafting to TQI, asking for an increased grocery budget. She deletes the line, then puts it back in. “And pelmeni is the sweet one?”
“Never,” Saskia says vehemently. “You don’t listen, Kinsey.That one is never sweet.” She runs her tongue along the edge of a rolling paper. “I’ll make them for you and you’ll understand. Can we get ground pork? Will TQI let us have that?”
Kinsey considers. “I think so? But you should talk to Nkrumah, I think she doesn’t do pork.”
“Beef,” Saskia says. “She had a pet cow when she was young. But either way, I could do a mushroom filling. What you don’t understand is that it’s really all about the wrapper. You have to roll it so thin…”
She keeps going. Her words wash over Kinsey like puffs of smoke. She describes stewing sweet spiced cherries, mixing sour cream with horseradish, chopping dunes of dill and toasting walnuts. She rolls joints until she’s gone through Domino’s entire stash of rolling papers. The floral sap-smell of decent weed fills the room.
It takes Kinsey an hour to write the email to TQI. She asks for special budgetary allowances for cherries and ground pork. Saskia is there the entire time. It’s only the next morning that Kinsey stops to consider that Saskia was keeping her company, so she didn’t have to work alone.
Kinsey wakes up gently. She doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t move her body. She’s warm. It’s quiet. Her skull hisses with the static noise of a not-quite-hangover, the impact of whiskey and panic gentled by an enormous amount of water and the gravity of deep sleep. She can feel the worse that might have been, but miraculously, there’s no headache waiting to reveal itself—there’s only the soft velvet cushion of deep exhaustion, waiting for her to sink into it.
As she pushes her face into her pillow, Kinsey is struck by the kind of wisdom that lives on the cusp of unconsciousness, the kind of thought that she won’t be able to grasp when she’s fully awake. Exhaustion, she realizes, is only unpleasant when one has to resist it. But when succumbing is an option—when everything is still and quietand there’s no reason to push the strong arms of sleep away—exhaustion is ecstasy.
A solid band of pressure at her midsection stops her from rolling onto her stomach. She lets her hands drift toward her stomach, fingers spider-walking over the blankets to try to find whatever tangle in them has got her stuck in place. But where she’d expect to find a thick twist of fabric, her hands instead encounter warm, well-muscled flesh.
Her eyes snap open. On a deep breath, Kinsey arches her back. Her spine curls, her ribs expand, and she feels herself pressing into the soft wall of a chest.Mads,she thinks, connecting the sensation with the smell of someone else’s sweat on the pillow, fuzzy memories of the night before. She’s in Mads’s bed. She’s in Mads’s arms.
Their belly fits perfectly into the small of her back. As the tide of sleep pulls away from her brain, it leaves recognizable sensations behind: warm breath on the back of her neck, pressure on the back of her head where Mads’s forehead must be pressed into her hair. They’re wrapped around her like a tongue cupping a sip of soup.
It’s nice.
Enjoying this moment is a new experience for Kinsey. She doesn’t want to surge away from Mads, like she normally would. Their skin against hers isn’t a clammy smothering hell. It reminds her of the first time she enjoyed wine, when the sour burn she’d always hated transmuted itself into something warm and complex and really very pleasant.
