Vox

by Christina Dalcher

  The last time, there wasn’t any talk. I still had my wrist counter on, and Lorenzo stayed silent, perhaps out of solidarity. He didn’t whisper my name, as Patrick did, and he had no words of pity. He simply didn’t speak as he moved over me and in me. We’re still quiet today, our hands and bodies reciting the words for us, but inside me are the clangs and horns of an orchestra playing full out.

  After one round of love, we go at it again, this time slowly and unrushed, as if we had days or years, not hours. Not fractions of hours.

  When he finally softens—in every sense of the word—Lorenzo lies on top of me, covering me with his body like a shield that blacks out the world.

  “I can get you out,” he says.

  For a moment, I’m not sure what he means, but he reaches over to where his jeans lie with mine, twin puddles of denim on the pine floor, and comes back to me with a slim burgundy booklet in his hand.

  I recognize it immediately, the cogwheel and five-pointed star surrounded by branches—olive for peace, oak for strength.

  “How did you get this?” I say, leafing through the new passport. Page two has my picture, but another woman’s name: Grazia Francesca Rossi. The birthdate matches my age, roughly.

  “I have friends,” he says. “Well, friends who can be bought.”

  “Who’s Grazia?” Rossi is a common surname in Italy, but the coincidence seems over the top. “Your sister?”

  Lorenzo shakes his head. “No. I don’t have a sister. Grazia is—was—my wife.” He doesn’t wait for me to ask before explaining. “She died five years ago.”

  “Oh,” I say, as if he’s given me a piece of ordinary news, a weather report, the outcome of the World Series, where the next Winter Olympics will be hosted. I don’t ask questions, and he doesn’t offer answers. “I can’t leave, you know.”

  There’s no argument from him, only his hand running down my body, starting at my collarbone and stopping an inch above my sex. “What if it’s a girl, Gianna?”

  FIFTY-TWO

  What if it is a girl?

  I lie on my side, one finger tracing the gold emblem on the front of my passport, this gift that cost Lorenzo the earth, my ticket out of hell. Our ticket out, I think, holding my other hand to my belly. Only an hour ago I was thinking about Styron, and now, here I am, his short-lived Sophie, lying with her man, a terrible, Solomonic choice dangling in the space above us.

  Which one? Which one do I save?

  “How long do I have to think about it?” I ask, here in the dark of our bedroom.

  We both know I don’t have long, not once we stage our first trial on Monday.

  “We could stall the project,” I say. “Buy a few weeks.”

  “Would that be enough?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly I’m thinking of a beach from more than twenty years ago, not a posh beach, not Cancún or Bermuda or anything—Jackie and I could barely scrape together the cash for a couple of nights in a crappy motel with no ocean view. But we went every summer to Rehoboth, to drink beer and sun ourselves and escape the madness of grad school for a few days. The last time we were there, I told her I’d socked away some money. We could stay another day, maybe two.

  “Would that be enough?” Jackie said, sucking on a Corona she’d plucked from the cooler and squeezed a wedge of lime into.

  “No.” I laughed.

  “It all ends, Jeanie. Sooner or later. You can’t stay in the vacation bubble forever, you know.”

  I don’t remember whether we stayed the extra day in that motel room, or whether we drove back the following morning. What I do remember is thinking, once we hauled the beach bags and suitcases full of bikinis and suntan lotion into our apartment, that it really didn’t matter. Sooner or later, we’d be right there in our Georgetown hovel, throwing leftovers turned science experiments out of the fridge, checking the piled-up mail, losing our tans, diving back into the academic grind.

  Jackie, once again, was right. Sooner or later, it all ends.

  “It crossed my mind,” I tell Lorenzo. “When Reverend Carl first asked me, I thought maybe he’d invented the whole story about the president’s brother’s head injury. I remember standing in my kitchen, wondering if he’d take my work and reverse engineer it.” I flop back on the pillow, wishing it would swallow me whole.

  “Not your fault,” Lorenzo says.

  But it is. And my fault didn’t start when I signed Morgan’s contract on Thursday. My fault started two decades ago, the first time I didn’t vote, the umpteen times I told Jackie I was too busy to go on one of her marches or make posters or call my congressmen.

  “Tell me I don’t have to leave this bed,” I say. “Ever.”

  Lorenzo checks his watch. “The mice have two more hours to go. It’ll take forty-five minutes to drive back to the lab.”

  “An hour,” I say. “For me, at least. Remember, I’m not Mario Andretti.”

  “So we have an hour.”

  I say I can’t, but I do. And this time, I’m not silent. I scream with my body and my voice, nails digging into the bedclothes or into Lorenzo’s skin. I bite and moan and scratch like a feral cat on amphetamines, letting out all the stress and all the fear and all the hate, pouring it from me into him. He takes every last drop of it, then gives some back, pulling my hair, gnawing at my lips and breasts, attacking me with kisses. It’s violent, but it’s still love, a tandem scream from us to the rest of the world, and all of the world’s sins.

  FIFTY-THREE

  We allow ourselves fifteen minutes to clean up and decide what happens next.

  “There’s another lab,” I say, letting the shower rain over my skin. The hot water stings when it hits an abrasion. I look down and realize I’m a mess. “Oh Christ.”

  “Your face is fine. Perfect, actually,” Lorenzo says, working up a lather in my hair. “And you’re right: there has to be another lab. But we won’t get inside it.”

  “We have to.”

  He rinses off and leaves me to deal with the rat’s nest my hair has become. Two minutes later, he’s back in the cramped bathroom, leaning one hip on the sink while he talks. “Listen to me, Gianna. Even if we get into their other lab, which we won’t, what then? Arson? We’d be caught. Steal their supplies? Sure, and if we weren’t caught by those security creeps with an armful of vials on our way out the door—which, by the way, we would be—then what happens? It’s the government, honey. It’s a machine. They’ll only start again. By next year, you and Lin will be picking fish guts out of your nails.” Lorenzo pauses, then says, “If you stay.”

  I consider this. He’s right. “So we do nothing?” I step out of the shower and start toweling. “Nothing at all?”

  “No. We do something. We get the fuck out of here.”

  “I have kids, Enzo. Four of them. Even if I could leave Patrick—”

  He looks me up and down, pausing at the swell of my belly. “Well. I have one, too. Do I get a say?”

  “You could take her—it, him, whatever it is. You could take her away.” Even as I speak the words, I know it’s impossible. By the time this baby’s come to term, who knows what new enforcements will be in place?

  “We both know that can’t happen,” he says, sterner now, decisive. “It’s now or never, Gianna.”

  “No. It’s next week or never. I have a test on Monday and should have the results by midweek.”

  “And?”

  And here, in this crab shack that smells of sweat and semen and love, I make my decision.

  “If it’s a girl, I’ll go with you. As soon as you want.”

  He waits, watching me dress and comb out my hair. He waits an eternity before speaking. Then he pulls me close, whispering into my ear. “Okay, Gianna. Okay.” His voice sounds strong, but I know he’s praying to a god neither of us believes in that the genetic analysis comes back as a double X. A bab
y girl.

  “Come on,” I say. “We need to get back. I’ll go first.”

  The air is cooler now, and the few spare vacation houses cast shadows where, when I arrived at the shack, there were none. I click open the Honda, climb in, and think about what I would pray for—a boy or a girl. Stay or leave. Watch Sonia taken away from me, or, in a marginally more pleasant scenario, watch while some uniformed male nurse, following orders, injects her with a concoction that will take all her words away, forever. I don’t think I could stand it either way.

  I pray to a god I don’t believe in for a girl, so I don’t have to witness any of this. And I pray to that same god for a boy, so I never have to leave my Sonia.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Lin has not made an appearance today, the soldiers at the security checkpoint tell me as they pat me down for a third time.

  “No, ma’am,” one says. He’s the same spit-polished youngster who frisked me when I left. The name above his left breast pocket is PETROSKI, W.

  “I need to see Morgan,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Dr. LeBron.” Calling him “Dr.” anything brings a nasty taste of bile to my mouth. He doesn’t deserve the title.

  Sergeant Spit-and-Polish Petroski checks my bag, even though it’s already been X-rayed, and nods to his partner. After two rings, Morgan picks up.

  “What?” he says.

  The soldier picks up my key card, turning it over in his hands, reading my name. “Dr. McClellan says she needs to see you.”

  “Tell her I’m busy.”

  That strident voice, as squeaky as a lab rat’s, pierces the air between the soldier and me. It’s how I think of Morgan, as a rat, a foul and vicious, but not too bright, creature.

  “Tell him we’re about to check on the mice,” I say to the soldier. “But I want to brief him first.”

  Again, the squeak, this time tinged with a thin hopefulness, says, “Send her up. With an escort.”

  Thirty seconds later, I’m in an elevator with a man—no, a boy—not much older than Steven. For no reason I understand, I think of what he might have been like as a college kid, sucking cheap beer through a funnel bong, pledging at a fraternity, dragging himself sleepy-eyed to an early-morning calculus class.

  “Did you go to college?” I ask.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What did you major in?” I’m thinking poli-sci or prelaw or history.

  He stiffens next to me but doesn’t turn. “Philosophy, ma’am.”

  “They teach you how to fire one of those in Epistemology 101?” I say, nodding to the service piece on his hip. I expect him to clam up, tell me it’s none of my business. Move along now, ma’am. Nothing to see here.

  But he doesn’t. Instead, his lower lip trembles slightly, and I see the boy inside Sergeant Petroski’s smart uniform.

  “No, ma’am,” he says.

  The old saying goes Keep a stiff upper lip, but as I watch his reflection in the polished steel walls of the elevator, I think that it isn’t the upper lip we need to worry about. The bottom one gives our terror away. Every single time.

  I decide not to torture him with further questions. Petroski’s only a boy, after all, a kid who took a wrong turn at a sign somewhere along life’s road, not so different from Steven. Although Steven, after a brief detour, turned back. Maybe this one will, too.

  “There’s still time,” I say, not really knowing whether I’m talking to the young soldier or to myself.

  The elevator doors slide open into their hidden pockets at the same time a mechanical voice—female, it turns out—says “Floor Five,” and the young Petroski turns slightly, extending his arm, showing me out. It’s so quick, I almost miss it, the three measured blinks of his eyes.

  Blink once for yes, twice for no.

  Or three times for Not Pure.

  I bat my eyes at him, a gesture that the cameras might pick up, or not, but if they do, I can make something up. A bug in my eye, a stray lash, strain.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  On Saturday afternoon, the fifth-floor corridor should be a ghost town, all those generals and admirals out golfing or batting tennis balls or playing Axis and Allies in their basements. But every office door is open, and behind every door is a man at a desk, busy and focused.

  The third door on my right after we’ve left the elevator bank has a brass nameplate with WINTERS, J. on it. Inside, the man behind the desk looks up from his work, scowls, and returns to reading. He’s the same one I saw yesterday afternoon, and the same name I read on the Gold team’s list last night.

  “Here we are,” Sergeant Petroski says. He knocks—three sharp military raps—at Morgan’s closed door.

  “Enter.”

  Petroski turns on one polished heel. “Good luck, ma’am. On the project, I mean. I’ll take you back down when you’re ready.”

  Morgan stands when I enter, offers me a seat, and punches a button on his desk phone. “Andy, bring coffee for two.” He looks at me. “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Black,” I say, returning the smile. If he’s feeling magnanimous, why not join the party, even if his eyes do remind me of the lab mice Lorenzo injected this morning?

  He relays the order to Andy, his assistant, and sits in the chair behind his desk, the chair that he’s ratcheted up so that he looks larger. It must be painful, I think, to sit like that without your feet touching the floor.

  “So, progress?”

  I check the clock above Morgan’s head. “We’ll know in about thirty minutes. Where’s Lin?”

  The non sequitur slows him, as if someone has just offered him ice cream, then given him a choice between anchovy and tuna. As he processes what I’ve said, the corners of his mouth turn, first down, then straight, then up again. “That’s terrific. Think we’ll be ready to roll tomorrow?”

  “Our first subject is scheduled for Monday.”

  “Change it to tomorrow,” he says. Then, “If you can, Jean. Only if you can.”

  I take the cue to play nice. He wants something; I want something. “Absolutely.”

  Morgan relaxes now, and Andy knocks softly before bringing in a tray.

  “Let me,” I say, tipping the carafe over two white mugs with a blue P emblem. “Listen. I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier.”

  “We’re all under a great deal of stress, Jean. Peace.”

  Sure. Peace. I almost remind Morgan that the word for “peace” and the word for “submission” are virtually identical in some languages, but there’s no point in confusing him. I need the bastard too much.

  “I have a small favor to ask. My mother’s suffered a burst aneurysm. Left hemisphere. Wernicke’s area.”

  Morgan’s eyes narrow, but he says nothing.

  It’s hard to tell whether these eyes convey concern or sympathy or distrust, so I press on, feeling my way one step at a time. “I was wondering, since we’re starting the clinical trials anyway, could we put her on the subject list?”

  “Of course we can. Bring her in tomorrow and set it up.”

  “Well,” I say, “that’s going to be difficult. She’s in Italy.”

  He sits back, one elbow on each of the chair’s armrests, his right ankle resting on his left knee, as if he’s trying to occupy as much space as possible. “Italy,” he repeats.

  “Yes. You know, land of pizza and ass-kicking coffee.” Unlike the crap Andy brought in, I think.

  “I have a problem with that, Jean. Relations between us and Europe are”—he searches for a word—“not good.”

  Just like Morgan. Of all the English terms he has to pick from—“tenuous,” “strained,” “problematic,” “tense,” “adverse,” “hostile,” “unpropitious”—Morgan chooses “not good.”

  He continues, his eyes moving slightly up and to the left, a sure sign he’s creating a lie, or holdi
ng back, but I don’t think Morgan’s aware of the subconscious tic; most liars aren’t. “You understand, don’t you, Jean? I mean, we can’t just send a valuable product like this over to Europe. Not with the current climate.”

  My coffee tastes more bitter with each sip. “What if you sent me? I could administer the serum and—”

  “Ha!” The single syllable is more bark than word. “You know the travel rules,” he says, softening, but only slightly. “No way.”

  How could I have forgotten? “All right, then. Lorenzo. He can travel.”

  Morgan shakes his head, as if he’s about to explain a difficult mathematical construct to a child, a concept so far outside my capacity to understand that he thinks breaking it down would be useless. “He’s Italian, Jean. A European citizen.”

  “He’s one of us,” I say.

  “Not really.”

  “So that’s it?”

  He starts shuffling papers on his desk, Morgan’s classic this-meeting-is-now-over tell. “Sorry, Jean. Call me when the mice are ready, okay?”

  “Sure.” I turn to leave his office. “By the way, where’s Lin?”

  “No idea,” he says, and his eyes move up and to the left.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  As I ride the elevator down to the basement, a series of horrible vignettes flashes through my mind.

  Doctors in France, their brains intact in all but one place, are unable to process the instructions on a bottle of hand sanitizer, let alone talk to their patients, write prescriptions, perform surgery. German stockbrokers will happily tell their clients to Dig! instead of Buy, and Fork! instead of Sell. An airline pilot in Spain, charged with the safe delivery of two hundred passengers, interprets the warnings of an air traffic controller as a raunchy joke, and laughs as her craft dives into Mediterranean waters. And so on, and so on, until an entire continent is drowning in a languageless chaos, ripe to be taken over.