Part 33 (2/2)

Claire just stared at me; she knew I was lying. She gathered up the cards, although we were not finished with our game. ”I don't want to play anymore,” she said.

”Oh. Okay.”

She rolled onto her side, turning her face away from me. ”I never had stamps and an ink pad,” Claire murmured. ”I never had a secret club. You're thinking of Elizabeth.”

”I'm not thinking of-” I said automatically, but then I broke off. I could clearly picture Kurt and I standing at the bathroom sink, grinning as we scrubbed off the temporary tattoos we'd been given, wondering if our daughter would speak to us at breakfast without that mark of faith. Claire could not have initiated her father into her secret world; she had never even met him.

”I told you so,” Claire said.

Lucius

Shay was not on I-tier often, but when he was, he was transported to conference rooms and the infirmary. He'd tell me, when he came back, about the psych tests they ran on him; about the way they tapped at the crooks of his elbows, checking his veins. I supposed it was important for them to dot their i i's and cross their t t's before the Big Event, so that they didn't look stupid when the rest of the world was watching.

The real reason they kept shuttling Shay around for medical tests, though, was to get him out of the pod so that they could have their practice runs. They'd done a couple of these in August. I'd been in the exercise cage when the warden led a small group of COs to the lethal injection chamber that was being built. I watched them in their hard hats. ”What we need to figure out, people,” Warden Coyne had said, ”is how long it'll take the victim's witnesses to get from my office to the chamber. We can't have them crossing paths with the inmate's witnesses.”

Now that the chamber was finished, they had even more to check and double-check: if the phone lines to the governor's office worked; if the straps on the gurney were secure. Twice now, while Shay was at Medical, a group of officers-the special ops team, who had volunteered to be part of the execution-arrived on I-tier. I'd never seen any of them before. I suppose that there is humanity in not having the man who kills you be the same guy who has brought you your breakfast for the past eleven years. And likewise: it must be easier to push the plunger on that syringe if you haven't had a conversation with the inmate about whether the Patriots would win another Super Bowl.

This time, Shay had not wanted to go to Medical. He put up a fight, saying that he was tired, that he didn't have any blood left for them to draw. Not that he had a choice, of course-the officers would have dragged him there kicking and screaming. Eventually, Shay agreed to be chained so that he could make the trip off I-tier, and fifteen minutes after he was gone, the special ops team showed up. They put an officer pretending to be Shay into his cell, and then one of the other COs started a stopwatch. ”We're rolling,” he said.

I don't know how the mistake happened, to be honest. I mean, I suppose that was the whole point of a practice run-you were leaving room for human error. But somehow, just as the special ops team was escorting Fake-Shay off the pod as part of their training, the real Shay was entering I-tier again. For a moment, they hesitated at the door, gazing at one another.

Shay stared at his faux counterpart, until Officer Whitaker had to drag him through the door of I-tier, and even then, he craned his neck, trying to see where his future was heading.

In the middle of the night, the officers came for Shay. He was banging his head against the walls of his cell, speaking in a river of gibberish. Usually, I would have heard all of this-I was often the first to know that Shay was upset-but I had slept through it. I woke up when the officers arrived in their goggles and s.h.i.+elds, swarming over him like a clot of black c.o.c.kroaches.

”Where are you taking him?” I yelled, but the words sliced my throat to ribbons. I thought of the run-through and wondered if it was time for the real thing.

One of the officers turned to me-a nice one, but in that instant I could not grasp his name, although I had seen him every week for the past six years. ”It's okay, Lucius,” he said. ”We're just taking him to an observation cell, so he doesn't hurt himself.”

When they left, I lay down on my bunk and pressed my palm against my forehead. Fever: it was a school of fish swimming through my veins.

Once before, Adam had cheated on me. I found a note in his pocket when I went to take his s.h.i.+rts to the dry cleaner. Gary, Gary, and a phone number. When I asked him about it, he said it had only been one night, after a show at the gallery where he worked. Gary was one of the artists, a man who created miniature cities out of plaster of Paris. New York was currently on display. He told me about the art-deco detail on the top of the Chrysler Building; the individual leaves that were hand-fastened to the trees on Park Avenue. I imagined Adam standing with Gary, their feet planted in Central Park, their arms around each other, monstrous as G.o.dzilla. and a phone number. When I asked him about it, he said it had only been one night, after a show at the gallery where he worked. Gary was one of the artists, a man who created miniature cities out of plaster of Paris. New York was currently on display. He told me about the art-deco detail on the top of the Chrysler Building; the individual leaves that were hand-fastened to the trees on Park Avenue. I imagined Adam standing with Gary, their feet planted in Central Park, their arms around each other, monstrous as G.o.dzilla.

It was a mistake, Adam had said. It was just so exciting, for a minute, to know someone else was interested. It was just so exciting, for a minute, to know someone else was interested.

I could not imagine how people would not be interested in Adam, with his pale green eyes, his mocha skin. I saw heads turn all the time, gay and straight, when we walked down the street.

It felt all wrong, he said, because it wasn't you because it wasn't you.

I had been naive enough to believe then that you could take something toxic and poisonous, and contain it so that you'd never be burned by it again. You'd think, after all that happened later with Adam, I had learned my lesson. But things like jealousy, rage, and infidelity-they don't disappear. They lie in wait, like a cobra, to strike you again when you least expect it.

I looked down at my hands, at the dark blotches of Kaposi's sarcoma that had already begun to blend into one another, turning my skin as dark as Adam's, as if my punishment were to reinvent myself in his image.

”Please don't do this,” I whispered. But I was begging to stop something that had already started. I was praying, although I couldn't remember to whom.

Maggie

After court had adjourned for the weekend, I took a trip to the ladies' room. I was sitting in a stall when suddenly a micro phone snaked underneath the metal wall from the cubicle beside mine. ”I'm Ella Wyndhammer from FOX News,” a woman said. ”I wonder if you have a comment about the fact that the White House has given a formal statement about the Bourne trial and the separation of church and state?”

I hadn't been aware that the White House had given a formal statement; there was a part of me that s.h.i.+vered with a thrill to know that we'd attracted that much attention. Then I considered what the statement most likely had been, and how it probably wouldn't help my case at all. And then then I remembered that I was in the bathroom. I remembered that I was in the bathroom.

”Yeah, I've got a comment,” I said, and flushed.

Because I didn't want to be ambushed by Ella Wyndhammer or any of the other hundred reporters crawling over the steps of the courthouse like lichen, I retreated into a foxhole-okay, an attorney-client conference room-and locked the door. I took out a legal pad and began to write my closing for Monday, hoping that by the time I finished, the reporters would have moved onto a fresher kill.

It was dark when I slipped on my heels again and packed away my notes. The lights had been turned off in the courthouse; distantly, I could hear a custodian buffing the floors. I walked through the lobby, past the dormant metal detectors, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The majority of the media had packed up for the night. In the distance, though, I could see one tenacious reporter holding his microphone. He called out my name.

I forged past him. ”No comment,” I muttered, and then I realized he wasn't a reporter, and he wasn't holding a microphone.

”It's about time,” Christian said, and he handed me the rose.

MICHAEL.

”You're his spiritual advisor,” Warden Coyne said when he phoned me at three in the morning. ”Go give him some advice.”

I had tried to explain to the warden that Shay and I weren't quite on speaking terms, but he hung up before I got the chance. Instead, with a sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and rode to the prison. Instead of taking me to I-tier, however, the CO led me elsewhere. ”He's been moved,” the officer explained.

”Why? Did someone hurt him again?”

”Nah, he was doing a good job of that on his own,” he said, and as we stopped in front of Shay's cell, I understood.

Bruises mottled most of his face. His knuckles were sc.r.a.ped raw. A trickle of blood ran down his left temple. He was chained at the wrists and ankles and belly, even though he was inside the cell. ”Why haven't you called a doctor?” I demanded.

”He's been here three times,” the CO said. ”Our boy, here, keeps ripping off the bandages. That's why we had to cuff him.”

”If I promise you that he'll stop doing whatever he's doing-”

”Slamming his head into the wall?”

”Right. If I give you my word, will you take off the handcuffs?” I turned to Shay, who was studiously avoiding me. ”Shay?” I said. ”How does that sound?”

He didn't react one way or another, and I had no idea how I was going to convince Shay to stop harming himself, but the CO motioned him toward the cell door and removed the cuffs from his wrists and ankles. The belly chain, however, stayed on. ”Just in case,” he said, and left.

”Shay,” I said. ”Why are you doing this?”

”Get the f.u.c.k away from me.”

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