by Rachel Heng
“They said they ordered the buns carb-free.”
“Carb-free? We don’t do carb-free. What will they want next, premium-flavored Nutripaks? Tell them we’re a diner, honey, not some zero-nutrient bar on the Upper West Side. Carb-free. I’ll give them carb-free.” Rosalie pushed beans violently around the pan.
Anja went back out, burgers still in hand. As she stood there contemplating whether to tell the lady that the buns were a new composite that perfectly simulated the texture of carbs, the door clattered open and in came Branko.
“Where the hell have you been?” Anja hissed as he approached.
“I had an appointment,” he said, taking his puffy jacket off slowly.
“Halimah is out sick. It’s been manic here. What appointment?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
He took his scarf off with the same slow deliberation, carefully hanging both items of clothing up on the hook by the door.
“Hurry, won’t you? Ros is going crazy,” Anja snapped.
Branko nodded wordlessly, then headed to the kitchen.
Anja brought the burgers back to the family. She was in the middle of explaining that the carb-free supplier had been in an unfortunate accident when she felt a tap at her elbow.
“I need to talk to you,” Branko said. Anja noticed with a frisson of irritation that he was empty-handed.
“Why aren’t you serving?” she said in a low voice.
“It’s important.”
“Um, excuse me?” The lady was waving a leaf at them. “Your menu also says baby wild arugula? This looks like regular arugula to me.”
Anja turned back to Branko.
“Fine,” she said.
They went behind the bar. Branko pulled out some glasses and began pouring drinks at random.
“What is it?” she said. Now that she was standing next to him, she realized that his hands were shaking and there was a strange, shiny cast to his face.
“I have a guy,” he said. “I can hook you up with him.”
Anja could barely hear him over the noise of the diner and the clinking of glasses as he moved them about the counter.
“What are you talking about? Hook me up for what?” She laughed. Surely Branko wasn’t trying to matchmake her with someone.
He shot her a sideways glance. “Your mother,” he said, quietly.
Something clicked. “Are you offering to get me—” Anja started.
“Not me. I have a guy, like I said. It’ll cost you. But he could get hold of what you need. T-pills, other variants, you know.”
Before she could stop herself, Anja started to laugh.
T-pills. If only it were that easy. If only that were the problem, the simple mechanics of it. Buy some black-market drugs, crush them up, mix with water, dribble down her mother’s reinforced throat.
That was not the problem. The problem was her.
“What?” Branko said. His face closed up. “I’m just trying to help.”
Anja saw the hurt on Branko’s face, but she couldn’t stop laughing. She hated the sound of it, bitter and mocking. Suddenly she saw the person she had become, saw the person she would become if she went on like this.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Kaito had been calling her ever since the party. One call every morning, before she went to work, and one at night, when he thought Lea would be home. Each time the phone rang, Lea stopped whatever she was doing and stared at the lit screen, her father’s name flashing at regular intervals. She’d saved his number under “Kaito Kirino.” “Dad” had seemed too intimate. She longed to pick up, to hear his voice, to pretend that she had never been at the party, that she knew nothing of his plans. But each time she let the phone ring until it came to rest.
* * *
The day Jiang told Lea she was suspended from work, he walked into her office with an odd spring in his step, with a greater sense of purpose than she was used to. He wore a salmon-pink shirt underneath a pressed blue blazer, and shiny leather shoes. More flamboyant than his usual work attire. His thin hair was combed back into some approximation of a trendy pouf, the sides slicked up but already sagging.
He delivered the message with a note of superiority she had never heard before. She took it calmly, observing the steadiness of his hands. Clearly, handling her “case,” as Jiang now called it, had given him a new lease on life. He used words like unfortunate, temporary, and monitoring. Unfit, reputation, treatment. He handed her an official letter, typed out by Joo Lee, the secretary who always asked Lea where she got her shoes. She read the letter, quickly, under Jiang’s watchful gaze. It said nothing that he hadn’t already told her. When she looked up, Natalie was standing outside.
“She’ll be taking over your clients,” Jiang said. He blinked and, for the first time, appeared apologetic.
Lea nodded. There was no point in fighting back. She sensed it from Jiang’s eerie good cheer, his detached calm. They had decided, Jiang and the other partners, that she had become a liability. They hadn’t said it, of course, couched the suspension in terms of her own well-being rather than the reputation of the firm, but she knew better.
She didn’t ask when she could come back. She knew that Jiang didn’t have an answer for her, that he was just the messenger. But as he closed the door behind himself to “give her a moment,” as she packed up her pens and powered off her computer, as her fingertips grazed the cool polished surface of her glass desk, the hard knot in her chest grew.
Her belongings fit into a small box, which she left in the corner of the office. She looked around one more time, taking in the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows, the skylight, the planters lining the walls. She was surprised to feel no anger, no pang of loss, now that a plan was forming in her mind, its edges solidifying like the shape of a person approaching through a fog.
* * *
The morning after she was suspended, Lea ran herself a bath. She lit a soy candle and scrubbed her legs luxuriously, trying to take her time. Then she made herself a trad salad, her favorite, kale and sunflower seeds. She ate it with her hands, picking one leaf after another into her mouth, staring into space. But then, once she had washed and dried the bowl, once she had wiped off the sink and dried her hands, the apartment was so quiet she couldn’t bear it. Lea longed for the soft patter of feet on glass ceilings, for the ringing of phones and the chattering of voices.
She walked out into the living room. It too was quiet. The linen curtains hung straight and limp on either side of the large window, cold white columns guarding the outside world. Lea wondered, briefly, what it must be like to live in a place where the curtains fluttered, lifted by the breeze coming in through an open window.
The curtains didn’t move. Neither did the houseplant sitting in the corner of the living room, or the gray-cushioned sofa. Looking around the living room, Lea decided that the furniture needed to be reconfigured. That was probably why it felt so stale and quiet, she realized; it was all just a matter of interior design. She set to work immediately, dragging this sofa one way, that side table the other. She carefully removed glass-framed prints of harbors and cities from the single bookshelf on the far end of the wall, then slowly pushed the shelf across the room. She reoriented the cream rug underfoot. Placed diagonally it did look better, she thought. Finally she picked up the plant and surveyed the room for the right spot. Next to the sofa, she thought, where the side table had once been. She put it down.
Lea straightened her back and looked around at the living room again. Better, she thought, far more dynamic an arrangement. Previously everything had been all parallel lines and right angles; things pushed up against walls and aligned with one another. Now, the ends of the sofa bisected two walls, leaving a triangle of space behind it. The bookcase was freestanding, the coffee table off to the side.
But as she stood there, as the exertion of moving furniture subsided and the blood cooled in her ears, silence descended once again. Suddenly she felt she could hear her own heartbeat.
The Third Wave. Lea imagined what it would be like when Jessie told her. The euphoria of success, being one of the chosen ones. She would go for treatments immediately—at the recommended pace, of course. By the time it was her turn, she presumed that all issues of misalignment and other side effects would have been ironed out. She would emerge from the clinic week after week, each time stronger, glowing, invincible. The blood running through her veins a liquid life force, the stuff of gods. Her skin dewy and impossibly supple, yet impervious, impenetrable.
She, a goddess. Nothing would ever hurt her again.
Her phone rang. It was her father. For the first time in three weeks, Lea picked up.
“Lea?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Been busy with work? I’ve been trying to reach you.” His voice hadn’t changed. There was no accusation in it, no frantic question. It was as if none of it had happened.
Lea nodded, but then realized he couldn’t see her. “It’s been hectic. New client at work,” she lied.
“Oh dear. How’s that going?”
“Good,” Lea said. “Difficult, but good.”
“Well, don’t wear yourself out,” her father said. For a moment he sounded like Todd, and she thought he would say, Healthy mind, healthy body. But of course he didn’t.
“I won’t. Listen, I have to run. Busy day ahead.”
“Okay,” he said. He paused. “We’ll speak again soon, Lea. Whenever you have some time.”
They hung up.
Whenever you have some time. Lea looked around at her empty living room. It was silent except for the soft sigh of the ventilation system that pumped fresh air into the apartment. If Lea was very still, if she sat with her arms resting at her side and her face unmoving, it almost felt as if she did not exist, as if time did not exist. She had never thought that one could have too much time, but suddenly, without the daily activity of work, the years of her life stretched out ahead of her. Was this what her father had felt?
No. She leaped up from the sofa. The Third Wave was coming. She would be part of it, whether Jiang, Todd, the Observers, wanted it or not. She would not languish on the Observation List, her number dwindling as the days went by, until one day it was too late altogether. She would do something they couldn’t ignore.
Something her father couldn’t ignore, either.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The meetings were usually held in people’s homes, Anja had told her, away from prying eyes. Lea already knew this, of course, but she nodded as if she didn’t.
This meeting was special. It was to be in a restaurant.
The place was a nice one, set in the airy archways of an old converted church in Borough Two. It was one of the few low-rise buildings left in the Central Boroughs (even so, ten floors of underground space had been tunneled out beneath it), undoubtedly protected by a wealthy benefactor with Ministry friends. Surprising that the Club meeting would be here, Lea thought, but then she remembered the party, the comfortable house uptown, the people in their silks and furs. What is it GK had said? The Jackmans. Let’s say they’re well-connected.
Lea thought of GK now as she walked into the restaurant. His pale skin, so susceptible to sun damage, his watery blue eyes: recessive genes that would soon disappear from the population altogether. She felt a surge of pity for him, crammed into the tiny office with the huge desk, transcribing mundane details with his advanced degree. Now that they were working together, so to speak, Lea no longer hated him. No, she saw that it was not GK’s fault, that he took no pleasure in his work. The thought of AJ, though, still brought a flash of anger, the old feeling coursing through her veins. Poor GK, working with someone like that.
Never mind, though. Lea brightened and adjusted the mother-of-pearl button in her chiffon blouse. It was amazing how small cameras could get these days, small enough to fit into one of the four eyes in a button. A fish-eye lens, guaranteed to capture a hundred and eighty degrees in all directions, so she wouldn’t have to worry about where she was facing. The microphone was sensitive too, the man on the Internet had assured her. It was even smaller than the camera, a wire that ended in a rounded tip no larger than the head of a pin. This was tucked in the cuff of her sleeve.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” The maître d’ wore an impeccably pressed suit, his hands held clasped in front of his abdomen like an opera singer’s.
“Reservation under Anja Nilsson, please,” Lea said, flashing him a smile. Under the thin chiffon she was sure her heart could be heard pounding in her chest. Antisanct, she heard in her head, antisanct antisanct antisanct.
The maître d’ gave a brief, polite nod, indicating she should follow him. No alarm sounded, no glances were exchanged, no phone calls were made.
The restaurant was a hollow, arched space, all gray stone and warped colorful glass. Since it was just one floor, the ceilings were high, higher in fact than Lea had ever seen. The candlesticked tables and their well-dressed diners appeared tiny in the space, insignificant. Lea noted that it was the usual clientele one found in such restaurants—coiffed, polished lifers, sipping daintily at their flavored Nutripaks. It was the kind of place her clients would eat at, she thought, glancing around surreptitiously to see if she recognized anyone. She did not.
No one stared as she passed through the restaurant, and why should they? She looked just like them. She was just like them, Lea corrected herself, fingering the button in her blouse again.
He led her to a sliding door in the back of the space, knocking gently, two polite raps.
“Come in,” a voice called. Lea strained to recognize it, but it wasn’t Anja.
The maître d’ slid the door open and extended his arm with a slight bow. Lea stepped into the room, and the door shut behind her.
The lights were lower in here than in the main restaurant. When her eyes had adjusted to the dimness of the room, she saw that it was dominated by a long table, with people sitting on either side. The seats were wooden benches that looked as if they had been once been church pews.
“Lea. You made it.” A hand waved from the far end of the room. It was Anja. “I’d get up, but these benches…” She gestured down. “They’re such a pain to get out from. Anyway, everyone, this is Lea. Lea, everyone.”
A chorus of hellos filled the room. It was a small, echoey space, and the rumble of greetings seemed to come from inside her own head. Lea lifted a hand in greeting. “Hi, everyone,” she said. Who was everyone? Did they know her father?
What if her father was here? Suddenly she was struck by panic; she hadn’t considered what to do if he had been invited tonight. She turned her head quickly, scanning the other guests’ faces in the dim light. But she saw quickly that he wasn’t, for if he was, she would’ve sensed it right away. As she had on that sidewalk, how long ago now?
Almost two months ago. It was a mere blip relative to the hundred years she had lived, yet it felt like a lifetime away. How different her life had been then, how certain, with Todd, Jiang, the solidity of her status as a lifer.
Everyone was still looking at her. Lea shook herself and forced a bright smile.
“Where shall I sit?” she said, hoping that Anja would call her over. But she stayed still, made no move to shift and make room for Lea.
“There’s a space here,” a voice said.
Only after Lea sat down did she realize where she had heard that voice before. The woman who’d spoken had her back facing Lea when she’d come in, so she hadn’t seen her face at first. But now that she was seated next to her, the angular cheekbones and dark, liquid eyes were unmistakable, except that the woman was no longer wearing a red sequined dress.
“And what is your name?” Mrs. Jackman said.
“Lea,” she responded, before wondering if she should give her real name. But it was too late, and Anja knew who she was, in any case. “Lea Kirino.”
She thought of the tiny microphone in the cuff of her sleeve, now resting gently on the starched white tablecloth. “And you?” Lea said,
boldly. As if she didn’t know who she was.
“Cassandra Jackman,” she responded. “Mrs. Jackman, to most.” She smiled. Her teeth were very white but uneven at the edges, as if she ground them in her sleep. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she ground them thinking of all the people she had murdered. Perhaps she ground them thinking of her daughter, Dominique.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” Mrs. Jackman said. “Anja’s told me all about you. WeCovery. You poor things, having to go through that tedious ‘treatment.’ What a farce.”
She tapped one long fingernail against the base of her wineglass. The noise was high and sharp. Lea seemed to feel it in her spine. Everything about Mrs. Jackman—the smell of stale smoke on her breath, the delicate crepelike texture of her neck, her strong hands with their white palms that reminded Lea of her own mother’s hands—everything about her jarred. Decrepit yet dangerous, carefully preserved yet reckless.
“Oh, God, that sideshow. I had to do it too,” the man sitting across the table from Lea and Mrs. Jackman said. He had the soft, striking features so common amongst multiethnic lifers, and wore his curly black hair down to the crisp white collar of his shirt. He placed his elbow on the table and his chin in the base of his palm, like a gossipy teenager. “Tell me, does George still perspire as much as he did when I was there?”
“You were at WeCovery?” Lea said. “You were on the Observation List?”
“Aren’t we all, darling. How else would the Ministry keep themselves busy?” He laughed, and those around him laughed, too.
“I don’t understand,” Lea said.
But before the man could answer, the waiters arrived, filing in one by one. They stood poised behind their seats, plates balanced on right-angled arms. At some invisible cue they bent down simultaneously, placing the plates in front of the guests.
“Oh, wonderful,” the man across from her said, picking up his knife.
A trad meal, then, Lea thought. Of course. The table had been set with forks and knives of different sizes rather than the single spoon that would be used for a Nutripak meal. But despite having some interest in cooking trad herself, she couldn’t identify the vegetable that was on the plate in front of her. It was a rectangle with neat corners, the color of a sunset, some way between pink and yellow. A paste, Lea observed, as those around her began cutting into their slabs. Pastes were not uncommon in high-end trad meals, together with foams and gels. Perhaps this was cauliflower or radish, with a hint of tomato; that would explain the color.