'You're cheating. But you're doing it so you'll lose.' She shuffled the remaining deck and turned over the top card. 'Why do you think they're called clubs?'
'I don't know.'
'Do you think it's the kind you want to join? Or the kind that you use to beat someone up?'
Behind her, on the cardiac monitor, Claire's failing heart chugged a steady rhythm. At moments like these, it was hard to believe that she was as sick as she was. But then, all I had to do was witness her trying to swing her legs over the bed to go to the bathroom, see how winded she became, to know that looks could be deceiving.
'Do you remember when you made up that secret society?' I asked. 'The one that met behind the hedge?'
Claire shook her head. 'I never did that.'
'Of course you did,' I said. 'You were little, that's why you've forgotten. But you were absolutely insistent about who could and couldn't be a member of the club. You had a stamp that said CANCELED and an ink pad-you put it on the back of my hand, and if I even wanted to tell you dinner was ready I had to give a password first.'
Across the room, my cell phone began to ring in my purse. I made a beeline for it-mobile phones were strictly verboten in the hospital, and if a nurse caught you with one, you would be given the look of death. 'Hello?'
'June. This is Maggie Bloom.'
I stopped breathing. Last year, Claire had learned in school that there were whole segments of the brain devoted to involuntary acts like digesting and oxygen intake, which was so evolutionarily clever; and yet, these systems could be felled by the simplest of things: love at first sight; acts of violence; words you did not want to hear.
'I don't have any formal news yet,' Maggie said, 'but I thought you'd want to know: closing arguments start tomorrow morning. And then, depending on how long the judge deliberates, we'll know if and when Claire will have the heart.' There was a crackle of silence. 'Either way, the execution will take place in fifteen days.'
'Thank you,' I said, and closed the clamshell of the phone. In twenty-four hours, I might know if Claire would live or die.
'Who called?' Claire asked.
I slipped the phone into the pocket of my jacket. 'The dry cleaner,' I said. 'Our winter coats are ready to be picked up.'
Claire just stared at me; she knew I was lying. She gathered up the cards, although we were not finished with our game. 'I don't want to play anymore,' she said.
'Oh. Okay.'
She rolled onto her side, turning her face away from me. 'I never had stamps and an ink pad,' Claire murmured. 'I never had a secret club. You're thinking of Elizabeth.'
'I'm not thinking of-' I said automatically, but then I broke off. I could clearly picture Kurt and I standing at the bathroom sink, grinning as we scrubbed off the temporary tattoos we'd been given, wondering if our daughter would speak to us at breakfast without that mark of faith. Claire could not have initiated her father into her secret world; she had never even met him.
'I told you so,' Claire said.
Lucius
Shay was not on I-tier often, but when he was, he was transported to conference rooms and the infirmary. He'd tell me, when he came back, about the psych tests they ran on him; about the way they tapped at the crooks of his elbows, checking his veins. I supposed it was important for them to dot their i's and cross their fs before the Big Event, so that they didn't look stupid when the rest of the world was watching.
The real reason they kept shuttling Shay around for medical tests, though, was to get him out of the pod so that they could have their practice runs. They'd done a couple of these in August. I'd been in the exercise cage when the warden led a small group of COs to the lethal injection chamber that was being built. I watched them in their hard hats. 'What we need to figure out, people,' Warden Coyne had said, 'is how long it'll take the victim's witnesses to get from my office to the chamber. We can't have them crossing paths with the inmate's witnesses.'
Now that the chamber was finished, they had even more to check and double-check: if the phone lines to the governor's office worked; if the straps on the gurney were secure. Twice now, while Shay was at Medical, a group of officers-the special ops team, who had volunteered to be part of the execution-arrived on I-tier. I'd never seen any of them before. I suppose that there is humanity in not having the man who kills you be the same guy who has brought you your breakfast for the past eleven years.
And likewise: it must be easier to push the plunger on that syringe if you haven't had a conversation with the inmate about whether the Patriots would win another Super Bowl.
This time, Shay had not wanted to go to Medical. He put up a fight, saying that he was tired, that he didn't have any blood left for them to draw. Not that he had a choice, of course-the officers would have dragged him there kicking and screaming. Eventually, Shay agreed to be chained so that he could make the trip off I-tier, and fifteen minutes after he was gone, the special ops team showed up. They put an officer pretending to be
Shay into his cell, and then one of the other COs started a stopwatch.
'We're rolling,' he said.
I don't know how the mistake happened, to be honest. I mean, I suppose that was the whole point of a practice run-you were leaving room for human error. But somehow, just as the special ops team was escorting
Fake-Shay off the pod as part of their training, the real Shay was entering
I-tier again. For a moment, they hesitated at the door, gazing at one another.
Shay stared at his faux counterpart, until Officer Whitaker had to drag him through the door of I-tier, and even then, he craned his neck, trying to see where his future was heading.
In the middle of the night, the officers came for Shay. He was banging his head against the walls of his cell, speaking in a river of gibberish. Usually, I would have heard all of this-I was often the first to know that Shay was upset-but I had slept through it. I woke up when the officers arrived in their goggles and shields, swarming over him like a clot of black cockroaches.
'Where are you taking him?' I yelled, but the words sliced my throat to ribbons. I thought of the run-through and wondered if it was time for the real thing.
One of the officers turned to me-a nice one, but in that instant I could not grasp his name, although I had seen him every week for the past six years. 'It's okay, Lucius,' he said. 'We're just taking him to an observation cell, so he doesn't hurt himself.'
When they left, I lay down on my bunk and pressed my palm against my forehead. Fever: it was a school of fish swimming through my veins.
Once before, Adam had cheated on me. I found a note in his pocket when I went to take his shirts to the dry cleaner. Gary, and a phone number.
When I asked him about it, he said it had only been one night, after a show at the gallery where he worked. Gary was one of the artists, a man who created miniature cities out of plaster of Paris. New York was currently on display. He told me about the art-deco detail on the top of the Chrysler
Building; the individual leaves that were hand-fastened to the trees on
Park Avenue. I imagined Adam standing with Gary, their feet planted in
Central Park, their arms around each other, monstrous as Godzilla.
It was a mistake, Adam had said. It was just so exciting, for a minute, to know someone else was interested.
I could not imagine how people would not be interested in Adam, with his pale green eyes, his mocha skin. I saw heads turn all the time, gay and straight, when we walked down the street.
It felt all wrong, he said, because it wasn't you.
I had been naive enough to believe then that you could take something toxic and poisonous, and contain it so that you'd never be burned by it again. You'd think, after all that happened later with Adam, I had learned my lesson. But things like jealousy, rage, and infidelity-they don't disappear.
They lie in wait, like a cobra, to strike you again when you least expect it.
