I see Fred onstage, raising a glass of champagne, the color of liquid gold. I see a thousand bright and bloated faces turned toward me, like swollen moons. I see more champagne, more liquid, more swimming.
I bring my hand up. I wave. I smile.
More applause.
In the car on the way home from the party, Fred is quiet. He has insisted that he would like to be alone with me, and has sent his mother and my parents ahead of us with a different driver. I had assumed he had something to say to me, but so far, he hasn’t spoken. His arms are crossed, and he has tucked his chin to his chest. He looks almost as though he is sleeping. But I recognize the gesture; he has inherited it from his father. It means that he is thinking.
“I think it was a success,” I say, after the silence becomes intolerable.
“Mmm.” He rubs his eyes.
“Are you tired?” I ask.
“I’m all right.” He lifts his chin. Then, abruptly, he leans forward and knocks on the window that separates us from the driver. “Pull over for a second, Tom, will you?”
Tom pulls the car over immediately and cuts the engine. It’s dark, and I can’t see exactly where we are. On either side of the car are looming walls of dark trees. Once the headlights switch off, it’s practically pitch-black. The only light comes from a streetlamp fifty feet ahead of us.
“What are we—?” I start to ask, but Fred turns to me and cuts me off.
“Remember the time I explained the rules of golf to you?” he says.
I’m so startled, both by the urgency in his voice and the randomness of the question, I can only nod.
“I told you,” he says, “about the importance of the caddy. Always a step behind—an invisible ally, a secret weapon. Without a good caddy, even the best golfer can be sunk.”
“Okay.” The car feels small and too hot. Fred’s breath smells sour, like alcohol. I fumble to open the window, but of course, I can’t. The engine is off; the windows are locked.
Fred runs a hand agitatedly through his hair. “Look, what I’m saying is that you’re my caddy. Do you understand that? I expect you—I need you—to be behind me one hundred percent.”
“I am,” I say, and then clear my throat and repeat it. “I am.”
“Are you sure?” He leans forward another inch and places a hand on my leg. “You’ll support me always, no matter what?”
“Yes.” I feel a flicker of uncertainty—and beneath that, fear. I have never seen Fred so intense before. His hand is gripping my thigh so tightly, I’m worried he’ll leave a mark. “That’s what pairing is about.”
Fred stares at me for a second longer. Then, all at once, he releases me.
“Good,” he says. He taps casually against the driver’s window once more, which Tom takes as a signal to start the car again and keep driving. Fred leans back, as though nothing has happened. “I’m glad we understand each other. Cassie never
“Cassie?” My heart knocks against my rib cage.
“Cassandra. My first pair.” Fred smiles tightly.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
For a moment he doesn’t say anything. Then, abruptly: “Do you know what my father’s problem was?” I can tell he doesn’t expect an answer, but I shake my head anyway. “He believed in people. He believed that if people could only be shown the right way—the way to health and order, a way to be free of unhappiness—they would make the right choice. They would obey. He was naive.” Fred turns to me again. His face has been swallowed up by darkness. “He didn’t understand. People are stubborn and stupid. They’re irrational. They’re destructive. That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s the whole reason for the cure. People will no longer destroy their own lives. They won’t be capable of it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I think of Lena and those pictures of the Wilds on fire. I wonder what she would be doing now had she stayed. She would be sleeping soundly in a decent bed; she would rise tomorrow to the sun coming up over the bay.
Fred turns back to the window, and his voice becomes steely. “We’ve been lax. We’ve allowed too much freedom already, and too much occasion for rebellion. It must stop. I won’t allow it anymore; I won’t watch my city, my country, be consumed from inside. It ends now.”
Even though Fred and I are now separated by a foot of space, I’m as frightened of him as I was when he was grabbing my thigh. I have never seen him like this, either—hard and foreign.
“What are you planning to do?” I ask.
“We need a system,” he says. “We’ll reward people who follow the rules. It’s the same principle, really, as training a dog.”
I flash to the woman at the party:
“And we’ll punish the people who don’t conform. Not bodily, of course. This is a civilized country. I plan on appointing Douglas Finch as the new minister of energy.”
“Minister of energy?” I repeat. I’ve never heard the term.
We reach a stoplight—one of the few that still work downtown. Fred gestures vaguely at it.
“Power isn’t free. Energy isn’t free. It has to be earned. Electricity—light, heat—will be given to the people who have earned it.”
For a moment I can’t think of any response. Power-outages and blackouts have always been mandatory during certain hours of the night, and in the poorer neighborhoods, especially now, many families simply choose to do without dishwashers and laundry machines. They’re just too expensive to maintain.
But everyone has always had the
“How?” I finally ask.
Fred takes my question literally. “It’s simple, actually. The grid’s already in place, and all this stuff is computerized nowadays. It’s simply a matter of collecting the data and a few keystrokes. One click turns on the juice; one click turns it off. Finch will be in charge of all that. And we can reevaluate every six months or so. We want to be fair about it. Like I said, this is a civilized country.”
“There will be riots,” I say.
Fred shrugs. “I expect a certain amount of initial resistance,” he says. “That’s why it’s so important that you be on my side. Look, once we get the right people behind us—the important people—everyone else will fall in line. They’ll have to.” Fred reaches out and takes my hand. He squeezes it. “They’ll learn that rioting and resistance will just make things worse. We need a zero-tolerance policy.”
My mind is spinning. No power means no lights, no refrigeration, no working ovens. No furnaces.
“What will people do for heat?” I blurt out.
Fred laughs a little, indulgently, as though I’m a puppy and have just learned a new trick. “Summer’s almost here,” he says. “I don’t think heat will be a problem.”
“But what happens when it starts to get cold?” I persist. In Maine, the winters often last from September until May. Last year we had eighty inches of snow. I think of skinny Grace, with her doorknob elbows, her shoulder blades like peaked wings. “What will they do then?”
“I guess they’ll find out that freedom doesn’t keep you warm,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. He leans forward and knocks on the driver’s window again. “How about some music? I’m in the mood for a little music. Something upbeat—don’t you think, Hana?”
Lena
Night is coming quickly, and with it, the cold.
We’re lost.
We’re looking for an old highway that should lead us toward Waterbury. Pike is convinced we’re too far north; Raven thinks we’re too far south.
