Noah takes me inside and speaks to the warden for a few moments. We go through the process of being checked in, and I hand over my weapon. As always, it feels strange to be without my gun. For a time, I didn't have one. When I was on mental health leave from the Bureau, my service weapon sat in a drawer in Creagan's office.
During that time, I got used to living without the daily process of readying my weapon and strapping it to my body, then the nightly routine of dismantling it and putting it away. The circumstances leading up to my holding a weapon again weren’t good. They were brutal and horrifying and put me in a situation in which I shouldn't have bought a new gun and carried it around with me.
But it was that same sequence of events that brought me back to where I was supposed to be. Now I keep my weapon with me all the time when I'm working, even unofficially, and I notice its absence when I'm not carrying it. Especially if I'm going into a situation that isn't normal, such as walking into a jail to look into the eyes of a man convicted of murdering the person supposedly closest to him.
At the same time, I appreciate the precaution of having to surrender it. Not only is it safer, but it puts me on more level ground with the man I'm going to meet. Walking into the room with him with a gun on my hip would be intimidating him again. It would be saying I wasn't open to hearing what he had to say, that I automatically believed what I'd heard about him. That would defeat much of the purpose of being here.
I'm expecting to go into an interrogation room or even to a regular visitation cubicle where a piece of glass will separate me from Xavier. Instead, I'm led to what looks like a family visitation room, complete with overstuffed furniture and vending machines on the walls. I wonder how much of this is Noah's pull, and how much is mine.
I'm under no delusion I actually have any privacy in this room. There are cameras everywhere, recording my every movement and likely every word that's said. As I always do when I'm in a room I know is being monitored, I have the compulsion to talk to the people inevitably watching the footage.
There's no time to start up a one-sided conversation with the corners of the ceiling before the door opens. I look over and see an officer escort Xavier Renton into the room. I've already seen a picture of him, so I know what to expect, but he looks different. Thinner. Paler. There’s no fear in his eyes. Or anger. It's more as if something has faded. Maybe that he has faded. He's gradually ceasing to exist.
“Can you take him out of his handcuffs?” I ask.
The officer looks at me with slightly raised eyebrows.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. “Yes.”
"I'll be right here," he says. It sounds like a warning, but I'm not sure which one of us he's warning.
Xavier rubs his wrists as the handcuffs fall away, and the officer takes his place beside the door. He stands there like a sentinel, his eyes focused directly ahead, and his hands clasped in front of him. Xavier stands there watching him, his head slightly tilted to the side as he seems to evaluate the man, trying to understand exactly what he's doing.
“Don't worry about him,” I say. “You can pretend he's not there.”
He turns to me with a blank expression, and my smile falters.
“I already do,” he says.
“My name is Emma,” I start, holding out my hand toward him.
He looks at it but doesn't take it. He walks over to the vending machine and looks into it, evaluating the packages inside as if he’s never seen them before.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“If one of these snacks was a person, which one of them would be you?” he asks.
“I'm sorry, what?" I ask.
He turns away from the machine and looks at me with the same still, unchanging expression. There's an energy around him. He's a presence, a force, but I don't know in what way.
"If one of these snacks was a person, which one of them would be you?" he repeats.
I shake my head, shrugging slightly. "I don't know."
He turns to the machine again. "It's all in how you think about it, you know? All of us have been asked what we’d be if we had to change ourselves. Which animal. Which color. Which flavor. Which amusement park ride. Always trying to find a definition in something else."
He runs his hand down the side of the machine. "But what if you think about it the other way? How would those things perceive us? How would they define themselves in our being? We say that we're salty, sweet, terrifying, proud, full of unexpected turns. Do those things know that about themselves? Do they know they are salty? Do they know their turns are unexpected? We are asked to transform ourselves into these other things and try to claim the abstract. So, why should they not be able to do the same?"
His voice is calm and steady, not at all weak or tremulous. There's nothing uncertain in anything he's saying. There's an almost lyrical quality to his words that draws me in. I take a couple of steps toward him.
“The snacks?” I asked.
He nods. “Yes. And the animals and the colors and the flavors and the rides. How would they see you, Emma? Which one of them would see itself in you?”
I've made it up beside him now, and I look into the machine along with him. I can see our reflections in the glass, and I watch his eyes move from one end of a row to the other, then down into the next end, then down again
