Olivia gives it to her reluctantly. ‘My little boy’s out of hospital,’ she tells me. ‘He’s on a ventilator on the couch.’ She laughs. ‘Guess what happened, Malachi?’ She reaches again for the sheet, but Meirong is already zipping it into her briefcase.
‘Where is your roommate?’ Meirong asks me.
This woman is emotionally stunted, she must be. I am hardly a normal citizen, but even I can read simple feelings. Olivia’s fingers flutter to the table top. The doorway remains empty.
If I had a tongue I would say, Tamba is waiting for his hard on to soften. Last time I saw him, he was trying to pee through a tree.
Tamba sweeps in just then, his eyes innocently wide. ‘Sorry,’ he breathes. He lifts the top slice of toast, sets the pile teetering, like the atmosphere in this breakfast room. Tamba butters his toast lavishly.
‘It’s eleven minutes past, Tamba. Do you not care?’
Tamba floats his fried liver between them, drops it on his butter substitute.
‘This is the third time,’ Meirong says.
‘Really?’
‘Don’t think there will be no consequence.’
‘For God’s sake, Meirong. Eleven minutes.’
Meirong leaves a Chinese-sized bite in her white toast, arrives on her feet. ‘Olivia, I’ll inspect your growth markers at ten.’ She turns to Tamba and me. ‘I want both of you on your jobs by half past.’ Meirong strides through the door, choppy with indignation. Janeé almost crushes her on the other side. ‘Janeé, please report to me if they stay late.’
When Meirong is gone, Tamba says under his breath, ‘Stupid bitch.’
Janeé pours caramel-coloured tea from a silver teapot. The sound of a delinquent wind reaches my ears now. A shadow floats across the portholes above our heads. Yes. The clouds are racing. Romano steals in, grunts some Portuguese greeting. Eases his tired body onto the bench.
Olivia tells him, ‘Timmy’s hooked up to a ventilator day and night, but he’s getting better. Guess how we know?’
Romano scoops half of the marmalade jar onto his toast. ‘How?’
‘He got off the couch and crawled to the glass cabinet. He turned the key. I mean, he’s only twenty months. He opened the blimming thing and he broke Little Bo Peep.’
There is a bewildered silence. Is this good news?
‘It was my granny’s best piece. It was, like, old china. Do you know what he did? He said, “Ahh, sha-a-ame.”’
We wait.
‘His first words, I mean except “Mama” and “Nana”. “Ahh, sha-a-me.”’
Romano’s tired eyes reflect Olivia’s pleasure. He talks with a huge piece of toast in his cheek. ‘My little girl, she talked at one and a half years. My wife said, “Say Mae, say Mae.”’ Romano utters a laugh that has been soaked in pure love. ‘She said, “Papai.”’
Olivia chuckles. ‘My granny stuck the Bo Peep together with superglue. I just wish . . . I just wish . . .’
I know what Olivia wishes. She wishes time would rush like a tidal wave, crush the pipettes, the poached eggs, the thousands of rivets and bring the day they carve out a pair of new lungs for Timmy.
Which prisoner is cultivating them, I wonder?
Janeé spoons three sugars into her tea, stirs vigorously. ‘It’s twenty-nine past,’ she says meaningfully.
Tamba slashes at his liver with his butter knife. ‘I take it your son is stable, Janeé? His veins?’
Janeé spills hot tea on her chin. She grabs for a serviette.
‘They say if you’re diabetic, sugar’s like heroin,’ he says spitefully.
‘Time to go,’ Janeé says grimly. She collects the plates with a surprising quietness. It’s amazing how guilt can make clumsy people delicate, turn noisy plate-crashers into nimble plate-stackers.
Olivia floats from the room, still delighted about Timmy. I bow slightly to Janeé, I suppose in pity. Follow Olivia out of the seething atmosphere.
* * *
In her laboratory, Olivia hands me my bucket of clean white towels. ‘All strength,’ she says, powerful now that her child is strong enough to break Little Bo Peep into pieces.
As I walk down the corridor, the sea lets loose a warning wave against the metal legs of the rig. Or am I imagining it?
Disappear, Malachi. Be a shadow in the wings.
* * *
My father used to make us enact our English pieces on the factory simulation mezzanine. Instead of our role-plays like, ‘I am worried about the productivity over Christmas’ or ‘Section ten’s figures are corrupted. Who is responsible?’ Hamri nudged us onto the tiny, high stage to replace dry factory language with floral Shakespearian.
* * *
Be gone, Father.
* * *
I raise my key card from my heart, turn the red light green.
* * *
When I reach Samuel’s cage, I can’t help but stare at his nails. They are the same length as yesterday before I cut them. Those nutrients could grow a human in the same few days as a GM chicken. I put my bucket down, latch the leather glove to his prison.
Samuel doesn’t even let me reach his little finger. ‘Do you believe me, Malachi?’
He must be talking to himself. I do not exist.
‘Do you understand my English?’
Second in the English Olympiad two thousand and twenty. Selected to work in America, Mister Journalist.
‘Forget about me.’ He inclines his head towards the old crone with the crocodile skin. ‘Think about Eulalie. She’s psychic, Malachi.’
The old woman smiles a wry, old smile.
‘That means she can see things with her mind.’
I wipe the sweat from the skin between his fingers.
‘She saw corpses buried in a swimming pool in Eritrea. Children.’
Oh, no. Help me.
A gust of wind beats the metal casing of this ship. I dig my thumb beneath the buckle, release Samuel’s fingers.
‘She told the prime minister’s wife. The woman spoke out, so they poisoned her. They said it was Eulalie.’
Fuck off, monsters, this has nothing to do with me.
Sorry for swearing, Hamri.
I finish Samuel’s feet, start on the old witch’s astonishingly young fingers.
‘Just look at him, Samuel,’ the husband killer croons next to me. ‘Such lovely smooth skin. He
