by Thea Lim
Instead of a lounge, through the curtain was a lengthy passageway clogged with military gear and drinkers. Where there might be light fixtures, there were flashlights clamped to the tops of clothes racks, and between the thin spotlights you had to look out not to trip. She could tell by how new their clothes were and how clean their necks were that the crowd was mostly American. When she said “Excuse me” to get past, they didn’t budge. But the walls had give, being mostly made of flak jackets and camo pants, and Polly made her way along the folds. The passageway ended in a bar. Racks of tin cups and unmarked bottles of clear liquor lined the walls. Beyond was a staircase to the second floor.
She let the crowd push her back into a swinging display of gas masks. What was the plan? Even if she were to find a passenger manifest or whatever else Baird promised, she had no currency. Though there were other things a girl her age could offer.
Tangled in the masks, the hair on her arms and legs stood up so straight, it was as if her skin were peeling away from her body. All she wanted was to cross the road and go back to her room.
But it had only been a few months—weeks, really—since she had last seen Frank. It was little enough time that they could still resume their life together. All this could just be a disastrous, forgettable blip. It was not too late for their story to end differently.
Maybe she could find someone nice, and perhaps it would only be once, and couldn’t that be managed?
She could just go look. She didn’t have to make a decision.
She came into the light of the landing. She took one step, and then another, and then another. A man and his friend teetered around the corner and down the stairs and walked right into her.
“Hello,” the man said. “Come for a drink.” He put his arm around her and snuggled her down the stairs, his friend on the other side of her. The men had bulbous heads and white teeth. Their arms behind her back were like a cordon, and the only way out was down.
At the foot of the stairs, she tried to unwind from the first man’s hold. But he tightened his grip at the same time as she tensed to bolt.
“Don’t worry,” he said into her neck. “I can pay.”
Her almost-resolve evaporated. In another life, this never would have happened to her. This was terrible and ridiculous. But the men marched her to the bar and ordered drinks in tin mugs, keeping her between them. She could run. But what if they followed her? Her mother’s advice on how to deal with unwanted male attention faded in and out inside her head: Politely and firmly remove his hand. She looked around for help, but no one would make eye contact.
She looked at the one who had offered her money and tried to picture doing the thing with him that, seconds ago, she thought she could do. He was gulping down his drink, his lips glistening like slugs. The smallest muscles in her body vised shut.
Down the bar, a commotion flared. The bartender wanted a drunken patron to leave, and security was ambling forward with the intention to eject. The pushing of the crowd unhooked a display, and helmets came tumbling down like pots and pans. People scattered with hands over heads. Polly was about to take this chance to run, when she saw that it was Baird who was causing the problem.
He was draped over the counter, his right cheek pressed in a puddle. From this vantage point he saw Polly. At first he did not appear to know her. Then the fog of liquor cleared. He saw the men beside her and the look on her face, and some kind of calculus clicked in his head.
He sat up and said, “You two, leave her alone.”
Throughout the hubbub, the men had stayed by the bar, ignoring the splattering of citizens around them. Now the first man looked at Baird.
“You’re not talking to me,” he said, a statement.
“Stop bothering my employee.”
The friend looked confused. “We didn’t know she worked for you.”
Baird squinted, like he was examining a fissure in a table leg. Then, without warning, he lunged forward, grabbed a bottle from the bar as he traveled, and cracked it over the big man’s head.
People screamed as alcohol and slivers of glass sprayed everywhere. The two men vanished. Baird was clinging to the inside edge of the bar while a bouncer tried to detach him.
“He’s had too much!” a patron cheered.
For such a thin man, Baird was solid around the middle. Hard as the bouncer pulled, Baird looked unconcerned. When the bouncer slapped him across the face, Polly shouted, “He’s an old man!” though Baird was gazing up with delight.
“You know him?” the bouncer said. “Get him out of here before I beat him to a pulp.”
Polly shoved into the crowd, dragging Baird with her. Warm blood was leaking from somewhere on his face onto her arm. The crowd was returning to the bar, dragging her back like an undertow, and she gripped the walls to propel them forward.
The bouncer in the vestibule was staring at a corner of the ceiling with her hands clasped over her knee. She looked upon Polly and Baird woefully as they tumbled into her space.
“Wait outside. I’ll get you a car,” she said.
Down the stoop they went, to the black silence of the street. Baird collapsed gracefully onto the curb and she dropped beside him. The door completely muzzled what was inside, but the bawling from the bar still rang inside her ears. It was minutes before she could hear the still of the night.
She couldn’t have been in there more than a half hour, but her nerves were singed. When she thought about what she’d almost done, she felt like she’d swallowed a bag of marbles.
“I’m not a bad man, Nader.”
She was startled by his voice and its softness. His face was blotted out by the shadows of the street.
“Of course not,” she said.
“But I always put myself first. Forgive me, Nader.”
Slowly, oxygen eased back into her lungs.
“You rescued me tonight,” she said.
To her surprise, he gently took her arm.
“It was my fault Leonard got sick. I used to make him go out, to get groceries and things. I’ve always been afraid of germs.”
In the end she could never resist being nice to him. It was his piteousness and his bluster, as if he were a swaggering toddler.
“I’m sure you made the best choice you could.”
Out of nowhere, like a creature from the deep, headlights flickered and a car pulled up.
“I’m very sorry. I really am.”
“Where to?” the driver asked.
Polly helped Baird into the car and shut the door. Baird stuck his hand through the open window.
“Good-bye Polly Nader,” he cried to her, on the sidewalk.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
But he repeated his farewell, his earnestness unsettling. The taxi moved away with his hand still wagging out the window, clutching sightlessly for hers. Two high-heeled American women pushed past her on their way to the bar.
Night clouds hung in the sky like phantoms. When she turned the corner and the front doors of Moody Plaza came into view, she almost cried with relief.
It was then that she realized, with abrupt clarity, that this, here, now—this was her life. Home was no longer at Donna’s, the little pink house in Riverside. Home was her room on the fourth floor, by the ferry terminal, where the boats blew their horns. Pain stalled her. She went stock-still, as if by stopping all activity, she might yet be able to reverse to just a few moments earlier, when Frank was still her most true life.
She tugged on the glass double doors. They were locked.
She knocked lightly, hoping someone who wasn’t Norberto would hear and let her in without making a report. But Norberto’s face appeared behind the glass, big and pale like the moon.
“Do you have to charge me for after-hours entry?” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
It took him ages to fill out the paperwork, and when he was finished, he did it all over again so she had a copy, even though she insisted there was no need.
“Trust me, you wa
nt a copy of everything. You know I don’t believe in all of this.”
“Sorry?”
“I don’t think these regulations are fair. Are you kidding? I do what I can to combat the basic injustices, prevent undue distress, but there are major limitations on what I can do. I can’t lose this job. I’ve almost saved enough for my next venture. It’s a daily struggle to balance my own interests with the guys who are higher up the ladder and the guys who are lower down.”
When he finally unlocked the stairwell for her, she was so tired, she could hardly stand.
“Tomorrow is another day,” he said.
* * *
“GOOD MORNING! IT IS 0645 HOURS AND TODAY IS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1998! THE TEMPERATURE IS 69 AND RISING, SO GET OUT YOUR SUN HATS AND SANDALS! THE ASSIGNMENT FOR POLLY NADER TODAY IS: REPORT TO HENRY BAIRD at HOTEL GALVEZ. YOUR SCHEDULE IS: AT 0730 HOURS, PROCEED TO THE LOBBY FOR PICKUP.”
Baird didn’t come to work. Even by lunchtime he hadn’t arrived. She wondered if he hadn’t made it home. But, returning from the rocks after lunch, she saw his outline faintly in their window.
She got in line to have the gate guard check her ID against his list.
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” His voice droned as, one by one, he let the workers in. He took her ID. “Hang on,” he said. “It says that I have to call.”
“What? Who?”
“Wait over there.” He pointed to the shred of shade by the side of the guardhouse. “Quédate.”
You let me in every day, she wanted to say. As the line of workers coming back from lunch trickled away, she kept waiting to see Baird in the window again so she could wave to him. He could come down and vouch for her.
Then Cassie came out. Long, clean strides from the main building. When she was steps away, she removed a pink slip of paper from her clipboard and held it flapping in her hand as she advanced.
Memorandum
Re: Polly Nader, Termination
Polly Nader has been dismissed on account of charges of grand theft. Supervisor Henry Baird reports the party removed and concealed a high-value artifact from the workplace with the intention of sale. On account of this flagrant violation which contravenes the TimeRaiser code of ethics, the committee has ruled that the party no longer be employed at O-1 visa status. The party is downgraded to H-1 status effective immediately and must report to new lodgings at earliest ability.
“This is not true.” Polly’s voice shook.
“We found the yearbook in your workshop. You didn’t remove it from the management office?”
“No. Yes. But Mr. Baird asked me to.”
“Was it his idea to go to the Strand to sell it?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“You didn’t go to the Strand?”
Polly paused for a second. “No,” she lied.
“We have a photo of you there last night, entering alone. Security camera.” Cassie pulled a black-and-white printout of a photo from her clipboard. A dark smudge loomed in the foreground. It took a moment for Polly to decipher it as the bouncer. After that, she was able to make out the entryway to the vestibule, and her own body, distorted in the middle, where the printer had tripped and imprinted her legs to the side of her torso instead of under it.
“This isn’t what happened. Baird told me to go to the Strand.”
“A moment ago you said you weren’t there at all.”
Polly looked up at the window. No one was there. Her arteries were filling with cold water. “Oh my God,” she said. “He set me up.”
Cassie’s eyes knife-flicked from the clipboard to Polly.
“You could contest this.” For the first time, Cassie sought eye contact. “To speak candidly, there have been prior concerns with Mr. Baird’s performance. If you have information, it would not fall on deaf ears.”
Polly leaned against the guardhouse, her legs no longer trustworthy.
“But we’d have to formally charge you and let the courts decide who is right,” Cassie continued. “You’d have to be shifted to a detention center to await trial.”
“How long would that take?”
“I’m not an expert. Not too long. Months, not years.”
“And if I’m found not guilty, can I leave?”
“Of course. After you complete your bond commitment to TimeRaiser.”
An earlier version of herself might have revolted. Kicked in the gate. Ran up the stairs, three at a time. Grabbed Baird by the collar, by the hair, and screamed and screamed until he told the truth. But all roads, except obedience, led to prison. She knew how they treated their workers, those who lived in the containers, people who were free. How did they treat the prisoners?
Polly pressed the heels of her hands to her eye sockets, making ghost lights reel in the dark. She put down her hands. Everything was the same: the guard’s empty face, Cassie’s white shirt, the sea. She had lost the luxury of rage.
“Never mind,” Polly said. “It was my fault.”
AUGUST 1979
* * *
Frank takes two days off work to help Polly move to Massachusetts. He was the one who found the college program for furniture repair and restoration in Worcester. She devised so many reasons why she couldn’t go: it was six hours away; she’d just got a raise; Donna; Frank. But then she applied without mentioning it, always one to keep doors open, and when she revealed she’d been selected, he had to quickly reconstruct his dismay into pride.
They play with the car stereo, they eat Kit Kats, they listen to the final Agatha Christie on tape, and the reality of just how far six hours is sets in. They unload her boxes into her one-room rental, and she goes to get meatball sandwiches for dinner. He offers to go instead, but she says, “I have to get used to doing things on my own.”
It takes the cook an age to make the sandwiches. The knives are stored at the opposite end of the counter from the bread, the cheese is in the back, he’s run out of foil. All the while, the last night of their way of life drips away. She’s gone forty minutes. But when she returns, Frank’s made a bed out of sofa cushions and pillows and a woolly sweater. He’s combed the unkempt front lawn for wildflowers, and he’s arrayed honeysuckle, foxglove, and Queen Anne’s lace in soda cans, coffee mugs, and a roll of toilet paper. He is sitting on the floor, at a dining table constructed from cardboard boxes.
“You romantic fool,” she says, and kneels to tuck a dandelion behind his ear.
He doesn’t say anything. He catches her hand on its way down and presses his lips into the bowl of her palm. He doesn’t take his eyes off her.
“What?” she says. She feels nervous. She doesn’t know what to do with intensity. “What are you looking at?”
“I couldn’t stare at you before you were mine.”
“Did you want to?” She plays along, but like it’s a joke.
“My heart would start to race at five p.m. if I thought you might be coming by. I wanted to stare into these brown eyes all day. These cherry cheeks. Those other cheeks.”
She giggles, looks away.
“Stay here with me,” he says.
She looks back, and she is caught. By his eyelashes, and his beautiful mouth.
“How lucky we are to be able to look,” she says.
“I’ve never fully exploited this advantage.”
He hooks his fingers in her pockets and he slides her across the floor, into his orbit. Their movements are deliberate, languid, as if they have an embarrassment of time. He unzips her jacket, each pair of teeth parting one at a time. She counts the hairs on his belly, the ones that meet to make a trail, and she follows them down, down. They rock together, as slow as they can bear. The sofa cushions come apart and they lie in the dip.
He asks her what she would like to eat on their wedding day.
Others would shout, Are you asking me to marry you? and squeal and call their mothers, all reasonable replies. Polly says, Meatball sandwiches. She looks at him through half lids, sly.
What else?
Stuffed pe
ppers.
Cheese balls.
Really? Cheese balls?
Cheese balls. What about dessert?
Lemon cake.
Sounds perfect.
She will borrow Carlo, so Donna doesn’t stand alone. They will have to let Johnny play guitar at the reception, there’s no way around it. Their guests will blow bubbles instead of throwing rice, rice is bad for birds. They will put wildflowers on every table, but instead of toilet rolls they’ll splurge on vases. They will have something of her mother’s there—her bicycle or her rocking chair. They will have a September wedding, so their anniversary doesn’t change. They will have a baby, a girl with chunky legs and curly hair, and then one more: it’s a package deal, if you have one, you have to have another. They will live in a house with yellow walls and wooden floors and light.
In another universe, this timeline becomes actual. In their universe, the vial breaks, the virus spreads, the borders are closed. Frank gets sick. At first he says it’s just allergies, This Texas pollen is savage. He’ll sequester himself in the other room, just so he doesn’t disturb her sleep. But in only twelve hours his skin is a different color and his strong shoulders look to have shrunk. She must be imagining this. Every time there is a lull between coughs, she thinks, Please let this last. And then the rasping starts again, each heave like a lash to the face. He won’t let her touch him. They airdropped flyers with instructions on how to make a virus-containment gown and mask from household materials; she saved one. She makes these clothes for both of them. They look absurd; she wants to be able to joke, but she can’t. They’ll laugh at us when we get to the clinic, it’s only allergies. There are multiple rings of fencing around the clinic, an inner circle and an outer circle, and an armed guard instructs her to wait between the fences, saying, If he’s negative, he’ll come back, if he’s positive, an orderly will further advise you. There is another person waiting in this no-man’s-land: a white-haired woman called Nina. Nina says, I think your fella looked okay, I think it will be okay. A white-haired man comes out of the clinic and Nina says, George, thank God. But an orderly comes for Polly. She starts to cry. Nina takes her arm and says, It’s okay dear, a cure is around the corner. But the orderly rushes to separate them, because Polly has been exposed. There are hours of tests before Polly is declared negative. The nurse in turquoise tells her about TimeRaiser. When Polly finally gets to see Frank, his eyes are yellow and she can no longer deny that he is smaller, his skeleton reversing, towards birth, to a world without him. Outside, she takes two days to make the choice to travel. Inside, immediately, she knows. The meatball sandwiches, the bubbles on the wind, her baby’s thighs. All that love. It can’t die. It has to go somewhere. Their future will be unthinkably different from what they imagined, and in other ways it will be exactly the same: she will give her life to him.