I don’t bother looking at him. “You went through my employee file.”
“I no say nothing.”
“Then you know my mother-in-law left it to me.”
On the way to the train station I see him zoom away in his battered truck, squirrel heads swinging. The truck’s bumper wears a sticker:
We find a car abandoned on the roadside. There is enough gas to take us twenty-two kilometers. The Swiss drives. During that brief journey, I forget what it’s like to be wet.
When the motor splutters and gives its final death rattle, we keep walking and I forget what it’s like to be dry.
“Tell me about your work,” the Swiss says. I am hunkered down under a tree, figuring out how far we have to go. A hundred kilometers, give or take. Best case, five days. It’s March tenth. That means I have nine days before the
I fold up the map, stow it in my backpack. “There’s nothing to tell. I clean. At least, I used to.”
“A cleaner who knows Darwin.”
“I know a lot of things.”
On the other side of the tree, Lisa is opening cans of mystery meat.
My stomach growls.
“What did you clean?”
“Floors. Cages.”
“At Pope Pharmaceuticals,” he says. “This is what you told me at the barn.”
“Yes. Have you heard of it?”
“It is well-known in the medical community. What did you do before?”
“I had a job where someone else did the cleaning.”
He watches me eat.
When we’re moving again he asks, “Who is the father of your child? Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Too many women don’t.”
Lisa is limping.
“Blisters,” he says. “Tend to them, otherwise she will get an infection and you will have saved her for nothing.”
The envelope arrives on a Friday. It’s clean, white, has my name printed on the front in a masculine hand I instantly recognize.
I place it on the coffee table and stare at it, unopened. The room bulges with elephants: first the jar, now this.
The phone rings. The machine picks up.
James’s voice floods my apartment. “How’s my favorite woman? Listen, Raoul asked me to call. He wants to know if you’ve opened the jar yet. If not, we’ll pick you and it up and X-ray it. What do you think? Say yes. I’ll be your best friend.”
I pick up the envelope. Light. Flimsy. Although maybe it contains the emotional equivalent of anthrax within its paper walls. My finger catches the tacked flap and tears.
It’s signed simply:
My check falls from the envelope, floats and sways to the floor.
James answers on the third ring. “Zoe!” he says; then: “Raoul, he’s not here.”
Raoul calls, “Socrates, Socrates,” from another room.
“Hey, I can call back.”
“No, no, it’s nothing. You know cats. They come home when they’re ready.”
I think of Stiffy, and how he hasn’t shown up yet, and how Ben doesn’t care.
“So you and Raoul…” The question dangles.
“Oh, it’s on. Or it will be once he gets better. That’s why I’m at his apartment. He’s sick so I’m making my fa-a-a-mous chicken soup. So, can we do it?”
“When Raoul’s feeling better, sure.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Are you sure no one at the museum will mind?”
“They won’t know. And even if they did, they like a good historical mystery same as the rest of us. If it’s some kind of missing link like Raoul thinks, the board might ask if they can acquire it. Something that important would put us on the map.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“Honey?” he calls into the belly of Raoul’s apartment. Raoul’s reply is distant, but moves closer as they play this affectionate game of Marco Polo. “Honey? Zoe gave us two thumbs up.”
“Maybe just one,” I say, and he laughs.
“Just one thumb.”
Raoul snatches up the phone. “We’ll take it.”
“I hope you feel better soon.”
“You’re a peach,” he croaks. “No wonder James adores you. We were supposed to fly to Miami next week but there’s a maybe-hurricane forming.”
Then he retches.
A spider crawls up my spine.
Lisa’s screams jerk me out of a hard sleep. My watch says 2:24 a.m., my body says 8:15 p.m., which is fifteen minutes after I laid my head down on my backpack, beneath the tree’s generous sprawl.
She’s different now. Bits of her have broken off. More than an eye.
I blame myself. My rational self tells me I was exhausted, that sleep was coming for me that night whether I was willing or not. Sometimes the Sandman collects what’s his regardless of the price. But my other self tells me I could have done more to protect my flock of one.
“What’s wrong?” My throat is thick with sleep fog.
“Just a dream,” the Swiss says. Tonight he keeps watch.
Two. Lisa and my unborn child. Although it’s not really a child yet, is it?
What’s happening in my belly now? I can’t remember. The events between conception and birth blur the harder I try to separate them into their individual weeks. There’s a heartbeat now, I know that. And fingernails. But I remember that from a movie, not from the skeleton crew at the makeshift clinic nor from the book the medic told me to steal because he didn’t know diddly about childbirth. He gave me vitamins and wished me good luck, because that’s all he had to give. Pregnancy isn’t important. Not now. Birth isn’t high on the priority list when everyone is dying. New life does not replace the old.
I could ask the Swiss. He would know which cells are dividing and congealing into organs, the ratio of human-looking to alien. He would know if the tiny flutters are normal.
I consider asking, but the Sandman is coming again. He’s striding across the field, one hand in the sack, digging for dust. He’s here beneath the tree, standing over me.
