She dials Bernie. He answers with his mouth full, TV blaring in the background. She tells him wherever Margot’s kids are, they’ll need a ride home. She hears him chewing as he checks their location. He tells her there’s only one left, and he’ll text the sentry to give her a ride, they’re almost done now.
She hangs up and walks on, head bent into the snow.
LUCY UNLOCKS HER DOOR, steps into the dark hallway. The bulb’s burnt out, but the ceiling’s so high in this old building that replacing it requires the super and his ladder, and she can’t be bothered to ask. She dumps her keys on the kitchen counter, drags her new bottle of Jameson out of the paper bag. Her card is carrying debt again, but what the fuck after a day like today. The answering machine is blinking; the phone set dates back to when she first got her own place, and she’s never bothered to upgrade. She presses play, and Eva’s gravelly voice fills the empty air, asking where she’s been and why hasn’t she called, and then describing the minutiae of her day. She ate a bologna sandwich for lunch. She’s having a sherry and looking out the picture window. Her latest library book is a bore.
Lucy’s hands fumble as she lights a cigarette. The groceries Detective Bedrosian deposited on the counter are still there. A numbness creeps over her: she stares at the rumpled fleece blanket on the floor, the pile of newspapers the detectives sorted through, the chairs where they sat. The ghost of herself perched opposite them with her hands tucked in her lap. And now here she is, in the same space, what feels like a month later, and nothing’s changed and everything’s changed.
She makes herself move. She empties the grocery bags, opens the milk and sniffs, shoves it in the fridge. The rest she unloads into the cabinet: cans of tuna, refried beans, tomato soup. Then she folds up all the newspapers, stacks them near the front door to take to recycling later. She dusts the coffee table, washes the entryway floor where the detectives didn’t wipe their shoes.
When she’s finished, she finds herself on the couch right where she sat this morning. Maybe she thought all this activity would bring some kind of revelation, yield a plan. But she’s got nothing. All she’s got is herself, sitting in the dead quiet. Fighting the dread pooled inside her belly.
The words, unearthed from their dark place, won’t quit repeating in her head: He became a liability. The dank, mildewy smell of the basement, the noisy dehumidifier in the corner. The wooden crate loaded with machine guns for transport to Eden, to be added to the stockpile in case the Gate ever came down on them. Joe Brynn sat on the edge of the crate, his slick egg head shining. He opened his hands, asking, You get it? Julian nudged the serv on the floor with his foot. He’d been beat up pretty bad, and he wasn’t moving. Lucy didn’t have to get any closer to know he was dead.
She got it.
She’d been after Julian ever since he moved her into the apartment and made clear her new role as a nobody. I don’t deserve this, she kept insisting. I can hack it. I’m fine with the grabs, she even wept in hysterical sobs after a Service. That message, she regretted even as she left it, because it was over the top, not at all the way back into their good graces. To make up for that debacle, a few days later she left a message on Theo’s line, real friendly and logical, reminding him of everything she sacrificed to be with them, reminding him of his promise that he’d dupe her, stuff like that. Inarguable truths.
That she could go so far kind of amazes her now; but she wasn’t in her right mind. All she dreamed of was getting back to Ayer, where she’d giggle with Ernesto and munch on Turkish Delight. All she yearned for was to stand outside under a sky full of stars and put her cheek to the brown horse’s muzzle, secure she’d be there forever.
But now, she got it. She got that she had to stop dreaming, that it was really, truly over.
She followed Julian out of the basement, into the kitchen of Joe Brynn’s bunk. A serv was there frying sausages, and the air was heavy with greasy smoke. They stepped out onto the back stoop. Julian gave her a cigarette. She screwed up her courage and asked, Can’t I just go my own way? I won’t tell anyone about Theo or anything.
He narrowed his eyes at her through the smoke. What about your ma? You haven’t said anything to her, have you?
Her Source flared, a blast of agony that left her gasping.
Because, Luce, that would be a big mistake.
I’d never! Lucy cried. Julian, you know that! She’s got nothing to do with anything!
Julian felt bad: she saw it in the twist of his mouth, the way he buttoned up whatever threat he was supposed to deliver next. Instead, he said, Look, all you gotta do is as you’re told, Luce, and quit your whining. You do that, everyone will be O.K.
I promise, she said, nodding her head like it was on a spring, desperate to be believed.
He tossed his cigarette and went back inside. The unlatched screen door creaked on its hinge in the breeze. The serv who was cooking stepped out with a pan of grease, poured it over the railing into the dirt, and only then did Lucy find her legs, take off down the steps.
For years, she hasn’t thought about that day other than in passing. The chaos of that time faded long ago, molded into the robotic rhythm that now defines her existence. The phone rings, she answers, she does what she’s told, comes home. The phone rings again, she does what she’s told, on and on. Even the tiffs with Julian, the bouts of despair she endures in privacy, it’s all part of the clockwork routine, neither here nor there. It’s just how it is.
And that’s the point, she tells herself.
She’s never once stepped out of line. She’s always done what she’s told, even if she complains now and then. I am not a fucking liability.
She lights another cigarette, holds her hands out to examine her trembling fingers, curls them slowly into fists and squeezes. She spins the cap on the near-empty bottle of Jameson, finishes what’s left in one gulp. She opens the new one.
By the third shot she’s found a modicum of relief from the ache in her chest. She activates the burner she bought along with the whiskey, dials Julian’s cell. It rings and rings.
“Hey, it’s me,” she says. “Call when you get a chance.”
WAITING FOR THE PHONE to ring, Lucy opens the windows to let in the winter cold. She lies on the cool tile floor in the kitchen, folds her hands on her chest and presses down hard. Stop it, you fucking former self, she begs. The fantastic, grand sensation of me she felt at Theo’s is a long-gone dream. She tried to hang onto it. She really did.
You came to us, Theo lectured, the first time she dared to beg for a dupe. You were free as you were. But you came to us, because in your heart, you understood the truth that you were not free.
She lay on his couch wrapped in a blanket, bruised and sore, and now humiliated. She’d come on her own after an all-night Service, sure her pitiful state would move him. Instead, she was getting this lecture in front of Alita, who was visiting from Maine. Alita listened in amusement, her legs crossed over the chair arm, dressed all in black, svelte as a movie star. Being around her made Lucy feel clumsy and dumb.
Do you understand, Lucy, that you were not really free?
Yes, Lucy whispered.
You lived a coddled life, Theo explained. Real people cannot begin to grasp the notion of what it is to suffer. In what way did you suffer, Lucy? In what ways do you think you suffered?
He wasn’t looking for an answer, though she had one or two. Sean’s da Uncle Seamus, huddled over a glass of gin and ice, leeching bitterness and rage. Eva hollering for him to stop beating on Sean, her bare feet skidding out on the slick floor till she landed on her knees with a crack and Lucy screamed. Her own wrists over the white sink while Eva rinsed away the blood.
She said, We didn’t suffer.
Real people, Theo went on, are oblivious to what they have. Just as you were. But now, you will earn your freedom. You will deserve it. Do you understand?
She nodded. There was a bit of cork floating in the wine, and she worried at it with her fingertip, gave up. Tears ro
lled down her cheeks.
You’ll see, Lucy-goosie, he said, and he came to her side, held her close. I will take you on a journey you can’t even imagine.
She becomes aware of the painful stiffness in her joints from lying prone on the cold tile floor, drawing her back into the present: the narrow kitchenette with its crappy brown cupboards, the pipes dripping a permanent rust-colored stain down the wall, mouse turds under the stove.
A journey she couldn’t imagine, he had that right.
HER CELL PHONE RINGS, buzzing hard and thunking on the wood table top. She scrambles to her feet, rushes over to answer.
“How in hell did you end up downtown?” Julian demands. “What do they know? What’d they ask?”
Her heart pounds furiously. It’s all she can do to speak, let alone cultivate the indifferent tone she’s planned on. “Did I see a man and a boy,” she manages. “Did I know the boy. Was I there that night. Blah, blah. They don’t have anything. I told you.”
“They have the boy,” Julian retorts. “And somehow the fuck or other, they have you.”
Lucy’s throat is a wad of hurt, blocking speech.
“How?” he demands. “Was it that kid boss who showed up?”
Margot made her own bed, but it still feels like shit to give her up. “It must’ve been.”
“Tell me what you said.”
“To who?”
“The cops, Lucy. The cops!”
He makes her go over the whole interview. What they asked, how they seemed, did she give anything up. She becomes aware of the tautness in her frame, feet pressed hard on the floor like she might spring up at any moment. Her throat is raw from cigarettes. Julian won’t quit asking the same things over and over.
“Jesus, enough,” she interrupts. “I already went through this today.”
“Don’t even,” he warns.
Lucy bites her tongue, sets her jaw. Waits for her orders.
“Is there anything at your place that ties you to us? Anything at all? No scraps of paper, no pictures?”
“Nothing.”
“Make sure you clean, you hear me? I don’t want my prints popping up.”
“You haven’t been here in ages.”
“What’s that?”
Lucy hesitates. Then says through her teeth, “I’ll clean.”
“Now you listen. It’s dead in the water, you understand? He’s a runaway kid with no name, they can only expend so much effort on him. It’s just a matter of time.”
“O.K. I understand.”
“You just act normal. Go about your normal business.”
“What if they come here again? I mean, do I talk to them? Don’t I have to?”
There is a pause. The hiss on the phone goes muffled, as if he’s placed his hand over the receiver to consult with someone else. Theo, probably, which pricks her with unexpected hurt. Because this is such a special circumstance, you’d think he might speak with her directly, but no.
Julian comes back on the line. “Do you think they’re onto you, Lucy?”
“No! I swear.”
She holds the phone hard against her ear. Inside her head a frenetic spool of images: the detectives holding up the newspaper; herself, guilt pouring off her like an odor.
“We’ll just take this day by day,” he says. “And Lucy—”
“What?”
“Don’t screw this up, or else.”
He hangs up without bothering to say goodbye.
Lucy sets the phone down on the table. She’d forgotten, really. She’s gotten so complacent over the years, talking back, getting snippy as he calls it. She’d forgotten the actual mind-numbing, draining terror of that day in the basement, and what he said after, about Eva.
Or else.
Just this morning, she was standing in the grocery store fretting over whether to indulge in Barilla pasta or stick with the cardboard-flavored store brand. The stupid, pointless scene brings on the sting of tears, and she shoves her palms against her squeezed-shut eyes, she’s so pissed, so helpless, she’s gone round and round in circles her whole life, always back to this same shit place. Service, running errands, riding up the elevator with whatever arrival they’ve dumped on her, it’s the same crushed, mangled feeling of being trapped with no way out.
She’s tried and tried. She even enrolled in online courses last year to become a paralegal. To have a real career ready for when she hits quota. What a joke. She couldn’t even keep up for one semester, and is still paying off the debt.
And now—she’ll be out all the extra bits of cash she relies on. Till this blows over, there’s no way Theo’s giving her any work, even crap errands, not so long as she’s taking a ride.
There’s no stopping her spiraling panic: what if she loses this apartment? If this drags on, she’ll have no value. He’ll boot her, and there’s no way she can get a place on her own, not without first month, last month, security. She’ll end up in a bunk with a bunch of bottom-feeding, drug-addled, thieving servs. Her professional life will go down the tubes: there’s nowhere in a bunk to keep a wardrobe, shoes, bits of jewelry, and no boss would approve her doing that kind of work, anyway. Which means she won’t be able to pay off Eva’s loan. Eva will lose the house.
Jesus, pull it together!
Think.
She has a couple hundred stashed in the bank. Julian might be guilted into helping: he knows damn well this mess isn’t her fault. All she needs is a room somewhere. She doesn’t need a whole apartment: she’s been spoiled. A room, a closet, she’s good to go. Theo can go shove his precious apartment.
It would be a relief to get out of here, actually. Just pack a box and go. She doesn’t have much, and most of it she’d just leave here. The shitty oval coffee table and armchair from the Salvation Army. The couch that was already here when she moved in. She tossed a patterned quilt over it, something Eva’s friend made to celebrate the adoption: a relic concealing a wreck. In the kitchenette, there’s a plastic folding table with one chair. The cupboards are mostly empty. Even her bedroom consists of just a mattress on the floor, no matter if she draws up the sheets and blanket and sets the pillow square and fluffed.
It’s salt in the wound to imagine how, exactly, the detectives saw this place when they walked in: it’s just so pitiful, this ramshackle, poverty-stricken scene with the near-empty Jameson bottle, more like the clustered belongings of a squatter than a young woman who takes temp assignments in fancy offices. She wonders what they made of the few artifacts from her real-person life. Bedrosian mentioned the books and the picture, but did they notice the album Eva gave her for Christmas, next to a glass bowl filled with pebbles from Nantasket Beach? Or the old postcard of Paragon Park taped to the wall right above it? She’s had it since she was a kid. The picture was taken sometime in the 1950s, at sunset, the clouds sweeping the giant sky above the graceful curve of the rails. It’s all gone now, of course. The picture’s an echo, a little winking light in the dark.
You came to us just a year before they broke up Paragon Park, Eva used to sigh nostalgically, and Lucy always felt bad, as if she’d been the harbinger of all that ruin.
The blinking on the machine reminds her of Eva’s message. She pictures Eva leaving it, then treading heavily across the floorboards away from the telephone stand (cordless phones kill you with radiation, she insists) back to her post by the window. Eva loves that picture window. On a clear day, you can see out to the islands.
She picks up the phone and dials while arranging the couch pillows and sinking down, dragging the blanket over her legs.
“Hey,” she says when Eva picks up. “Sorry, I was out most of the day.”
“I just wanted to say good luck on Wednesday,” Eva says. “Are you excited?”
The new assignment—the one she told Eva about, that might lead to something permanent. With all that’s happened, Lucy actually forgot. “Yeah, I am,” she says. “I can’t wait, actually.”
“Will you come on the weekend? We can celebrate.�
�
“I hope so. Yes, probably,” she corrects, swiftly calculating that the way the Service roster stands right now, there’s a good chance she’ll have Friday or Saturday off. “Can you do the meatloaf?”
“Of course,” Eva gushes, always delighted when Lucy puts in a request. “I’ll shop tomorrow.”
They chat about the cats and how Sean repaired the exhaust fan in the bathroom. Eva has tickets to a play in Hingham on Thursday. She and Phyllis are going.
After she hangs up, Lucy lights another cigarette, her leg jiggling nervously. Nothing will happen, she reassures herself. It will all work out. She’s taking a ride, is all: there’s always a first time for everything. She just has to hang tight and not fuck up, or else.
It’s the story of her life. She’s a pro.
LUCY SHOWERS AND DRESSES in her office clothes: cream button-down, navy skirt, neutral hose. She switches to tan slacks, back to the skirt. Arranges her hair into a chignon and finally opts for a tidy ponytail. She’s been temping for years, but with every new assignment, she still gets nervous, preyed upon by the need to impress. She carefully rolls a pair of socks over the hose; she’ll wear boots and change into her pumps once she’s in the building. She stands in front of the mirror, staring at her expressionless, weird face, the skin so white. Ghost-girl, the kids at school used to call her. Vampire. She smoothes her hair back, redoes the ponytail. Blots her lipstick again.
She never looks quite right, as if it shows, the sickness of her hidden, alien life.
But that’s pure fancy. Like anyone would ever think.
She’s cautiously hopeful that things will all work out. She’s heard nothing from the cops for days, and she got a message from Julian via Bernie to just hang tight. The papers are full of new headlines already. It’s going to blow over, like Julian said.
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