He cuffs my wrists and then uses a third set to attach me to an eye ring on the table.
“I’ll cuff your ankles now. Try to kick me and there will be a penalty. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Number 36 should come out of it soon. Perhaps twenty minutes. I’ll be watching. You’ll have your five minutes, and then I’ll return.”
He walks off, and I am left there, staring down at Leo. It hurts me to look at him. He’s so young, too young. Was I ever that young? Yes. I was almost his age when Alexa was born. It seems like a lifetime ago.
Time passes. Leo’s eyes open once, then close. They open again a few minutes later and he blinks to clear away the fog. I wish he could sleep forever, baby-faced and serene.
“I’m so sorry, Leo.” I start to cry.
“Hey,” he says. His eyes fill with concern. “Wh-what’s happening?” He’s here but still sluggish.
“I’m not sure. He’s given us five minutes together, but … but I don’t know why.”
The decision to lie comes from somewhere I can’t identify. I haven’t decided what I’ll decide, but I do know that I want to spare him the knowledge. This uncertainty.
A sly voice creeps around inside me, cozening and impure.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Shitty. I …” He pauses, swallows. “I talk to myself a lot. I think I’m going a little bit crazy.”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks.
“Jeez. Stop crying, Smoky. We only have five minutes; don’t waste it being all weepy.”
I laugh, tribute to the hollow humor. “Tell me about your girlfriend, Leo.”
“Christa?” He smiles. “She’s got long, soft brown hair and green eyes. Wicked combination. She laughs a lot. She thinks I’m sliced bread. She’s smart.” The smile fades. “I was going to ask her to marry me. I guess I’ll never see her again, though.” He sighs. “I was really looking forward to being married. I wanted to see what that’s like.” He glances up at me. “What is it like? Is it cool?”
I bite back more tears, aghast. A train of answers runs through my mind. What’s it like? It’s a collection of moments, constantly falling like the leaves of October, burnt-orange happiness, dark-red anger, brown for the normal. It’s sharing a bed, day in and out, through tears and sex, laughs and fights. That bed becomes an island, where nakedness is more literal than actual, the place where all the biggest decisions are made, where new life is made, where new you is made.
Above all things, marriage, when it works, is not being alone.
“Yes,” I say, unable to express all of these things to him. “Yes, it’s cool.”
He nods, cheek against the steel. “I thought so.” He looks at me again. “I need to ask you something, and then I need to tell you something.”
I glance at the camera in the corner. “We’re not alone.”
“It shouldn’t matter. The first thing: If you get out of here and I end up like Dana Hollister, I want you to promise that you’ll kill me. I won’t lie around like that. I won’t do that to my family, to Christa, or to myself.”
“Don’t ask me for this, Leo.”
“Who else am I supposed to ask?” The desperation in his voice matches the fear in his eyes.
“Okay,” I say, to soothe him. “I promise.”
I am made aware of the time by the far, faint sounds of Dali coming this way. Leo hears it too. “Lean forward,” he says, his voice urgent. “I don’t want him to hear this. Hurry!”
I lean forward so that my ear is next to his mouth.
“It was Hollister,” he whispers. “Hollister has to have tipped Dali off. Check out the servers Hollister worked with. Get”—his voice cracks—“get someone really good to look at them. I think you’ll find something there.”
“Stand up, number 35,” Dali orders, coming into the room.
I kiss Leo’s cheek and turn my lips to his ear. “I’m sorry, Leo. I’m so sorry.”
They’re not the last words I ever say to Leo, but almost.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Comes a time, baby. That’s what Neil Young said. A time to live, a time to die. A time to go fucking insane.”
Baby is silent. There’s no light in this meadow anymore. The sun is eclipsed by the moon, shooting out light from its circular edges, bathing the world in hush-lit shadow. The trees have been stripped of leaves, and their branches twist and creak in the harsh and ever-present wind. The flowers are gone, and a dust cloud, a thousand feet high, sits on the horizon, rushing toward us in slow motion. Baby remains fuzzy and faceless, and half lit like everything else.
Leo was destroyed one week ago. I chose myself over him, though I tell myself that if I wasn’t pregnant I would have taken his place. I don’t know if it’s true, but it keeps me from chewing through my wrists to get to the veins.
“Decide,” Dali had said, then nothing else.
I had stalled with my silence. I knew what I was going to say but didn’t want to say it.
“Decide in ten seconds or it’s you,” he urged. “Don’t make me do this,” I whispered. “Five seconds.”
Then four and then three and then I spoke.
“Leo! Take him, you fuck.” I started to cry, continued as he un-cuffed my wrists and then pushed me into the darkness of my cell. What was now my home.
The guilt crushed me into oblivion and has continued to obliterate me every day since. Dali never came back to tell me that it was done, but I have no doubt of it. Dali may play games, but not those kinds of games. He does what he promises where destruction is concerned.
I have dreams about Leo. I don’t dream about Tommy or Bonnie or Alan or anyone else. I dream about Leo. I dream of his smile, and then I watch as it falls into slackness, as drool begins to drip from his chin, as his eyes fill with a blowing wind of nothing. I fall asleep on my back. I wake up curled into a fetal ball.
Nothing has changed about my environment. I breathe darkness. The rectangle of light appears three times a day. I eat. I expel. I exercise. I talk to my baby under the eclipse and the daytime stars, and I dream of Leo losing knowledge of himself as a person. Christa, his girlfriend, appears in these dreams sometimes. She points at me with an accusatory finger and laughs like a hyena, then she gathers Leo into her arms like a baby and lopes off into a forest of dead trees. I search for my small victories, the dictate of Barnaby Wallace, but victory these days is bitter.
“When are you going to start showing, baby? And what happens when you do?”
I didn’t really start looking pregnant with Alexa until I was into my fourth month. What will Dali do with a pregnant prisoner? Has he dealt with it before? I am certain that I don’t want to know the answers. Dali’s God is pragmatism. He’ll do whatever is most cost-effective.
“Perhaps he’ll let me keep you.” I shiver at the thought of Dali being gone while I go into labor. Giving birth in darkness, fumbling for my child in blindness, bringing him to my breast without ever having seen his face.
“Is that why you’re fuzzy, baby? Maybe I can’t give you form because I’m not sure you’ll ever have one.”
Baby stays silent. I moan in my dream, and my eyes fly open. I wake up to the black, and then I force myself to fall back asleep.
Unreality is a better world than here.
One more day passes before he appears again. The lights blind me, and he stuns and drugs me. I fall into nothing and wake up facing Dali. The table, it seems, can be upended to a vertical position. Dali regards me, wearing his ski mask and jacket and hiking boots.
