“The mills of God . . .”
Footsteps cross toward me. I take a step back, but not quickly enough. The door flies open. A woman is standing in the doorway. She is probably only a few years older than I am, and punch-bowl pregnant. Startled, she draws back to allow me room to enter.
“Were you coming in?” she asks pleasantly. She betrays no signs of discomfort or embarrassment, even though she must suspect that I’ve overheard her conversation. Her gaze ticks down to the stain on my dress.
Behind her, two women are lined up in front of the mirror, watching me with identical expressions of curiosity and amusement. “No,” I blurt, and spin around, and keep going down the hall. I can imagine the women turning to one another, smirking.
I round a corner and plunge blindly down another hallway, this one even quieter and cooler than the last one. I shouldn’t have had the champagne; it has made me dizzy. I steady myself against the wall.
I haven’t thought very much about Cassie O’Donnell, Fred’s first pair. All I know is that they were married for more than seven years. Something terrible must have happened; people don’t get divorced anymore. There’s no need. It’s practically illegal.
Maybe she couldn’t have children. If she were biologically defective, it would be grounds for divorce.
Fred’s words come back to me: I was afraid I’d gotten a defective one. It’s cool in the hall, and I shiver.
A sign indicates the way to additional restrooms down a carpeted flight of stairs. Here it is totally quiet except for a low, electrical hum. I keep my hand on the thick banister to steady myself in my heels.
At the bottom of the stairs I pause. This floor isn’t carpeted, and it’s mostly swallowed in darkness. I’ve been to the Harbor Club only twice before, both times with Fred and his mother. My parents were never members, although my father is thinking of joining now. Fred says that half the country’s business is conducted in golf clubs like this one; there’s a reason, he says, that the Consortium made golf the national sport nearly thirty years ago.
A perfect golf game uses not a single wasted movement: order, form, and efficiency are its trademarks. All this, I learned from Fred.
I pass several large banquet halls, all dark, that must be used for private functions, and finally recognize the vast clubhouse cafe where Fred and I once had lunch together. I find the women’s bathroom at last: a pink room, like a gigantic perfumed pincushion.
I pull my hair into an updo and blot my face quickly with paper towels. There’s nothing I can do about the stain, so I detach the sash from around my waist and tie it around my shoulders loosely, knotting it between my br**sts. It’s not the best I’ve ever looked, but at least I’m semi-presentable.
Now that I’ve oriented myself, I realize I can take a shortcut back to the ballroom by going left instead of right out of the bathroom and heading to the elevator banks. As I move down the hall, I hear the low murmur of voices and a burst of television static.
A half-open door leads into a kitchen prep area. Several waiters—ties loosened, shirts partially unbuttoned, aprons off and balled up on the counter—are gathered around a small TV. One of them has his feet up on the shiny metal counter.
“Turn it up,” one of the kitchen girls says, and he grunts and leans forward, swinging his legs off the counter, to poke at the volume button. As he settles back in his chair, I catch sight of the image on the screen: a swaying mass of green, threaded with wisps of dark smoke. I feel a small, electric thrill, and without meaning to, I freeze.
The Wilds. Has to be.
A newscaster is saying, “In an effort to exterminate the last breeding grounds of the disease, regulators and government troops are penetrating the Wilds. . . .”
Cut to: governmental ground troops, dressed in camouflage, bumping along an interstate highway, waving and grinning at the cameras.
“As the Consortium gathers to debate the future of these uncharacterized areas, the president made an unscheduled speech to the press, in which he vowed to root out the remaining Invalids and see them punished or treated.”
Cut to: President Sobel, doing his infamous lean into the podium, as though he can barely keep himself from toppling it over into the audience of cameras.
“It will take time and troops. It will take fearlessness and patience. But we will win this war. . . .”
Cut back to: The puzzle-piece vision of green and gray, smoke and growth, and tiny, forked tongues of fire. And then another image: more growth, a narrow river winding between the pine trees and willows. And then another, this time in a place where the trees have been burned all the way down to the red soil.
“What you’re seeing now are aerial images from all over the country, where our troops have been deployed to hunt down the last harborers of the disease. . . .”
For the first time, it strikes me that Lena is, in all probability, dead. It’s stupid that I have not thought of it until now. I watch the smoke rising up from the trees and imagine little bits of Lena floating away with it: nails, hair, eyelashes, all gone to ash.
“Turn it off,” I say without meaning to.
All four waiters turn around at once. Immediately, they push out of their chairs, readjust their ties, and begin tucking their shirts into their high-waisted black pants.
“Can we do anything for you, miss?” one of them, an older man, asks politely. Another reaches out and turns off the television. The resulting silence is unexpected.
“No, I . . .” I shake my head. “I was just trying to find my way back to the ballroom.”
The older waiter blinks once, his face impassive. He steps out into the hall and points toward the elevators, which are less than ten feet away. “You’ll just want to go up one floor, miss. The ballroom is at the end of the hall.” He must think I’m an idiot, but he keeps smiling pleasantly. “Would you like me to escort you upstairs?”
“No,” I say too forcefully. “No, I’ll be fine.” I practically take off running down the hallway. I can feel the waiter’s eyes on me. I’m relieved that the elevator arrives quickly, and I exhale as the doors slide shut behind me. I lean my forehead briefly against the elevator wall, which feels cool against my skin, and inhale.
What’s wrong with me?
When the elevator doors slide open, the sound of voices swells—a roar of applause—and I round the corner and step into the fierce glare of the ballroom just as a thousand voices echo, “To your future wife!”
I see Fred onstage, raising a glass of champagne, the color of liquid gold. I see a thousand bright and bloated faces turned toward me, like swollen moons. I see more champagne, more liquid, more swimming.
I bring my hand up. I wave. I smile.
More applause.
In the car on the way home from the party, Fred is quiet. He has insisted that he would like to be alone with me, and has sent his mother and my parents ahead of us with a different driver. I had assumed he had something to say to me, but so far, he hasn’t spoken. His arms are crossed, and he has tucked his chin to his chest. He looks almost as though he is sleeping. But I recognize the gesture; he has inherited it from his father. It means that he is thinking.
“I think it was a success,” I say, after the silence becomes intolerable.
“Mmm.” He rubs his eyes.
“Are you tired?” I ask.
“I’m all right.” He lifts his chin. Then, abruptly, he leans forward and knocks on the window that separates us from the driver. “Pull over for a second, Tom, will you?”
Tom pulls the car over immediately and cuts the engine. It’s dark, and I can’t see exactly where we are. On either side of the car are looming walls of dark trees. Once the headlights switch off, it’s practically pitch-black. The only light comes from a streetlamp fifty feet ahead of us.
“What are we—?” I start to ask, but Fred turns to me and cuts me off.
“Remember the time I explained the rules of golf to you?” he says.
I’m so startled, both by the urgency in his voice and the randomness of the question, I can only nod.
“I told you,” he says, “about the importance of the caddy. Always a step behind—an invisible ally, a secret weapon. Without a good caddy, even the best golfer can be sunk.”
“Okay.” The car feels small and too hot. Fred’s breath smells sour, like alcohol. I fumble to open the window, but of course, I can’t. The engine is off; the windows are locked.
Fred runs a hand agitatedly through his hair. “Look, what I’m saying is that you’re my caddy. Do you understand that? I expect you—I need you—to be behind me one hundred percent.”
“I am,” I say, and then clear my throat and repeat it. “I am.”
“Are you sure?” He leans forward another inch and places a hand on my leg. “You’ll support me always, no matter what?”
“Yes.” I feel a flicker of uncertainty—and beneath that, fear. I have never seen Fred so intense before. His hand is gripping my thigh so tightly, I’m worried he’ll leave a mark. “That’s what pairing is about.”
Fred stares at me for a second longer. Then, all at once, he releases me.
“Good,” he says. He taps casually against the driver’s window once more, which Tom takes as a signal to start the car again and keep driving. Fred leans back, as though nothing has happened. “I’m glad we understand each other. Cassie never understood me. She didn’t listen. That was a big part of the problem.” The car starts moving again.
“Cassie?” My heart knocks against my rib cage.
“Cassandra. My first pair.” Fred smiles tightly.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
For a moment he doesn’t say anything. Then, abruptly: “Do you know what my father’s problem was?” I can tell he doesn’t expect an answer, but I shake my head anyway. “He believed in people. He believed that if people could only be shown the right way—the way to health and order, a way to be free of unhappiness—they would make the right choice. They would obey. He was naive.” Fred turns to me again. His face has been swallowed up by darkness. “He didn’t understand. People are stubborn and stupid. They’re irrational. They’re destructive. That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s the whole reason for the cure. People will no longer destroy their own lives. They won’t be capable of it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I think of Lena and those pictures of the Wilds on fire. I wonder what she would be doing now had she stayed. She would be sleeping soundly in a decent bed; she would rise tomorrow to the sun coming up over the bay.
Fred turns back to the window, and his voice becomes steely. “We’ve been lax. We’ve allowed too much freedom already, and too much occasion for rebellion. It must stop. I won’t allow it anymore; I won’t watch my city, my country, be consumed from inside. It ends now.”
Even though Fred and I are now separated by a foot of space, I’m as frightened of him as I was when he was grabbing my thigh. I have never seen him like this, either—hard and foreign.