Her first reaction is pride in herself for having taken three hours to notice her minority status.
Her second is shame in having noticed at all.
Her third is outrage at the system for being so predictably racist, when this place should be filled with Wall Street spouses.
Her fourth is shame that her third wasn’t her first.
Her fifth is to picture Devor in a bright orange jumpsuit, addressing a quorum of inmates. His lecture begins with the Old Testament—Exodus, Kate thinks, Moses and Aaron standing before Pharaoh, a brief exegesis on unity and brotherhood—and makes stops at the Russian Revolution, Malcolm X, and Black Lives Matter, before Devor executes a daring twist and returns to Marx, because all injustice stems from the skewed relationship between capital and labor.
Kate knows this fantasy is racist, Devor as white savior bringing light to the wildlings, like those two famous Johns, Smith and Snow. She tries hard to avoid the white man’s burden in her classroom, reprimanding herself for any slight neglect to check her privilege. Yet she’s been known to excuse the same behavior in Devor. Maybe because she holds men to lower standards. Maybe because her boyfriend’s earnest elation at his own sense of wokeness provides refreshing contrast to the canned ardor of politician-speak. Devor doesn’t dumb down or slow down or condescend, and it’s this quality—a rare, informed optimism—that keeps her hanging on despite his mounting tally of relationship fails. So she’s surprised by the spirit-dampened Devor who emerges from lockup with more gray in his beard than she remembers it having before. Kate reminds herself that he’s only been in jail since lunchtime. She stands and opens her arms. He falls into the hug, forehead to shoulder, like a marathon runner, too blistered and chafed to realize he’s won.
Back home, after talking to the lawyer over sake and gyoza, they sit in bed. Devor has his laptop and she has her iPad. The only parts of their bodies that touch are their feet. Kate scratches the dead skin on his heel with the nail of her big toe.
“A year,” she says. “Nothing.”
“Twelve months,” he says, clicking through Facebook, liking statuses he’s tagged in that link to outraged pleas for his release. Longer posts are awarded with thumbs-up emojis. Sometimes hearts. “Fifty-two weeks. Three hundred and sixty-five days.”
“Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,” sings Kate.
Devor doesn’t react. He may not get the reference. She once suggested they watch Rent and he said maybe on her birthday.
“Do you know what happens to guys like me in jail?”
“Sure,” Kate says. “They unionize the inmates. Protest the lack of organic produce. Reform the prison healthcare system from within.”
This list of possible deeds seems to tire Devor. He slides farther down the headboard. The lawyer was adamant about their options. Devor can testify against the doorman and go free. Or he can suck it up, plead out, and hope for a lenient DA. Best case, he gets three to five, and is home in a year with an ankle monitor. Maintaining his innocence is not on the table. The evidence against him is strong. Sophia agreed to testify, under threat of her professor ex-boyfriend’s deportation. Devor seems more crestfallen by this fact than the prospect of prison. Kate kisses his cheek. Touches a finger to his lips, then runs it down across his sternum. She puts down her iPad, shuts Devor’s laptop, takes his hand.
“You’ll survive,” she says. “I promise.”
She traces his lifelines, keeps scratching his foot. She was hoping for the kind of sex that couples have in movies when bombs fall on cities or aliens invade. She tries a less subtle tack and undoes his belt. Pulls down his jeans and runs her tongue up his inner thigh. Devor neither consents nor complains. It only takes a minute. She swallows. He pats her head.
“Think you can go a year without one of those?” Kate asks.
“No,” Devor says. “I don’t think I can.”
“Hm,” Kate says. “We can always petition for a conjugal visit. I’m sure they’ll make an exception for a nice boy like you.”
Devor nods. He picks up his phone and starts playing Candy Crush. His underwear is bunched around his ankles. Kate takes off her nightgown. She retrieves the vibrator from her nightstand drawer and offers him the item.
“Do I get a turn?”
“I’m tired,” says Devor. “Maybe in the morning instead just this once? I know it’s not fair but I’m tired.”
She accepts this excuse and goes into the bathroom. Devor says something, but she can’t hear over the running water.
“Did you say something?” she asks when she gets back in bed. She lifts his arm and fits her head on the pillow of his chest.
“These power structures,” Devor says. “They’re deeply embedded. I could see that, when I was locked up. Things became clear. I was naïve to think I could change them.”
“Locked up for four hours,” says Kate.
“I’m tired of fighting.”
“You’re just tired.”
“I guess,” says Devor.
He rolls onto his side and falls asleep. She reads Twitter for a while, then gets bored and turns the vibrator on. Devor stirs and she turns it back off. She doesn’t want to disturb him. He needs his rest.
43.
Wendy wakes to her cellphone’s symphonic ring, Beethoven’s fifth, a five-second snippet: Michael. She reaches for the device in slow motion, afraid to wake her companion. He’s all but dead, knees to chest and lead-heavy in his spot on the far side of the California king. She mutes the phone. There are twenty missed calls from Michael. There are voicemails but she doesn’t
