“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
Down the door I slide until I’m using my knees as a chin rest.
“Okay. Good.” My eyes drift closed just for a moment.
When I open them a moment later, it’s dark. The constant
All that listening, and it takes me several minutes to understand Lisa is missing.
My breath catches and holds. If I drown out my own sounds maybe I’ll hear hers. People make all kinds of noises: sniffing, throat clearing, belching. Even shifting inside a space can produce sound: the rub of fabric against fabric, or the squeak of sweaty skin.
Breathing. There should be breathing at least, but there’s just a house full of emptiness.
“Lisa?” The name falls into the room like an iron lump. I try to remember the topography of this space, but sleep came too quickly for my surroundings to sink in.
Once more, with as much volume as I dare: “Lisa?”
In this dark room, the nothingness stretches on forever. She is not here. Not alive, at least. The house is too small—I remember that much, and I would hear something if she were.
How far can she have gone by feel alone? I hope I can reach her with my voice.
The door is at my back. I wrench it open, throw her name into the wind. In the distance there’s a golden glow, small enough that I can cup my hands around the light and snuff it. A flame? A light? There is no steady electricity, hasn’t been for at least three months—maybe longer, maybe less here—so I know it’s not that. Greasy hair strands flog my cheeks and forehead, until I’m wincing from the blows.
And then I see it’s not raining.
I trot down the steps, raise my head to the sky. The clouds are still a thick blanket obscuring the stars, but it’s not raining. For the first time since I stepped on Italian soil, it’s not raining. I want to laugh. It’s right there, bubbling in my chest, waiting for my diaphragm to push it free. Here it comes…
…and dies in my tightening throat. My fingers clutch at what’s binding me and touch the harsh fibers of rope. I’m reeled in like a gasping fish.
Someone speaks. “Why aren’t you dead?” A voice with all the softness of a sack filled with nails and broken glass. “Tell me,” he rasps. The rope tightens and burns. “Why aren’t you dead?”
FIVE
Never get attached, I remind myself. Don’t give the lab mice names. They have numbers assigned according to their birth date and sex; they don’t require more. Blowing kisses as I sweep the laboratory floor is borderline acceptable.
Pope Pharmaceuticals’ labs are a stereotype, taking white to new shades of pale. They’re filled with the usual array of machines, each costing more than a house in California, test tubes, petri dishes filled with agar. A chip packet is a bold sun against the floor. Laboratories on television are always clean. In my reality the lab workers eat lunch at their computers and desks. I don’t mind my work. It’s a means to a specific end: I want an education.
I’m mopping when Jorge comes in. He’s a grease spot on an otherwise pristine work environment.
“Don’t forget to see the doctor, eh?”
“I won’t.”
“Good, otherwise…” He mimes snapping a neck that’s clearly mine. “You want me to come with you?” He acts like he’s my supervisor. I act like he’s my barely tolerable coworker. One of us is right and I’m sure it’s me.
The cleaning cart sticks on the door tracks. I persuade it with a shove.
“I suspect I’ll manage.”
From there I go to the women’s locker room, change out of my uniform, and toss it down the hatch that I know leads to the laundry. Another fresh one will be waiting for me next shift. With my bag slung over one shoulder, I take the elevator up to the tenth floor, where the medical facilities are located.
Biannual physical. Company protocol. No checkup, no job, no paycheck, ergo: no college.
Dr. Scott is waiting. We go through the routine I’ve performed three times before today: blood pressure, EKG, weight. He takes a vial of blood and then he’s back with another needle. It’s not the first time.
“It’s that time of the year again,” he says. “Company orders.”
He rolls up my sleeve until my upper arm is bare, then swabs an area the size of a quarter. The tip goes in like I’m butter.
“Hold still,” Dr. Scott says by rote, even though I’m a statue.
The pain is a spider unfolding impossibly long legs.
“What the hell?” It takes all I’ve got not to jerk away. “What
“Flu shot. Keep still. Nearly done.” He eases the needle out. “All done. You know the routine.”
I do. Rest for half an hour to make sure there’s no reaction. The fire blazes long after he drops the needle in the hazardous-waste trash.
“Seriously, what was that?”
“Flu shot,” he repeats, like they’ve made him practice the words a thousand times. “Everyone has to have one. You can go now.”
My breath comes in desperate bursts. The rope grinds into one of my tracheal valleys, held snug there in the shallow V. Pounding in my chest blocks out all ambient noise.
“Where’s Lisa?” I try to say.
The rope jerks and my mouth opens in an airless gasp.
“
The accent isn’t American or British, but the wind could be distorting the softness of the vowels, the crispness of the consonants.
My fingers work the rope, searching for weakness, a gap I can exploit the way the rope holder exploited mine. I find it at the back and discover he’s looped it around my neck without bothering to twist, which means there’s space enough for two fingers. Cracking my head into his face isn’t an option, because his mouth is shoved up against my ear.
Rough fibers grate my fingers as I ease them along the path. They burn new grooves into my whorls and loops. No helping hand comes from the weather; the wind dumps dust in my eyes before whisking away the irrigating tears.
“Why are you alive?”
“There are still people alive.”
He shakes his head against me. “Not without a good reason. What are you? Somebody important? You’re just a woman.”
“I’m nobody.”
“Liar.”
He might have a weapon. If he has rope, then chances are better than good that he does. But I do, too. There’s the paring knife in my pocket, nestled between the seams. One of us has to be faster, and from where I’m standing—with a rope around my neck—that had better be me.
I close my eyes, try to blink away the grit. Maybe it’s my imagination but the wind seems less determined now, like it’s running out of breath, too tired to go on.
