Nerves punched my chest from the inside and made my legs shake. I played bare-bones versions of the songs we had played full band in Baltimore, which calmed me somewhat, and “Don’t Even Think About It,” the only song from Before that I still tolerated. No one booed.
I sold fifteen album codes and five T-shirts that night. Three kids asked for records, which I hadn’t brought. Made enough to cover the coffees I had bought over the previous weeks.
“Will you play again next week?” the barista asked.
I shook my head. “I want to see what’s going on in other cities.”
“Come back anytime. I’ve got a friend with a basement house concert in Cleveland, if you want me to tell them you’re coming.”
I hadn’t decided which way to go yet.
“Perfect,” I said.
26
ROSEMARY
Bridge
The sign read OUT OF ORDER, like the bridge was an elevator or an automatic teller. Do Not Trespass would have made more sense, or Authorized Access Only, or even a simple Danger, or Keep Out. “Out of Order” wasn’t intimidating at all. Beneath it, someone had scrawled Ce n’est pas un pont.
Rosemary scaled the chain-link fence, careful where she placed her feet, remembering the last fence she had climbed. She made it over this one with her feet below her head where they belonged. On the other side, stone steps crumbled, the mortar between shifting slabs gritty underfoot. Easy to see why they didn’t want people trespassing in this area of the SHL compound. Out of order, out of time. It didn’t even span water anymore. This bridge had been here long before SHL, long before congregation laws, long before an After had been made by a Before.
She knew this wasn’t the smartest idea, hiking into parts unknown without telling anyone where she’d gone, but she didn’t know her destination, other than someplace to pretend she was unreachable. She knew people now who lived their entire lives noncomm or semi-noncomm, people who might never speak to her again. Luce, Joni. They had only been in her life a few weeks, but their absence still stung, as did her part in it.
She’d omitted that from her debriefing. Omitted the fact that she’d caught movement in the upstairs window when she knocked on the door at 2020, that for one moment she’d glimpsed Luce behind the curtain and thought maybe she hadn’t broken everything. She had. She knew now that it was all on her.
They had brought her back to the campus, back to a room identical to the room she’d stayed in the previous time, but on the compound’s far side, a small building called the Retreat Center. She was the sole inhabitant, with food droned in from the other side. It wasn’t a prison, but it matched her mood: she was a part of nothing, and better left where she couldn’t taint everything she touched.
Management met with her in hood, in a virtual replica of an office in the building across campus, complete with meadow and woods out the window. Their avatar sat in a leather office chair, a massive oak desk between them and Rosemary. The furniture and the avatar were overlarge, so slightly as to be almost imperceptible, obviously meant to leave her feeling small.
“Why do you do that?” she asked Generic Management—Male (1 of 5). “Why are we meeting in hood when the real me is here, and the real you is here? It’s a nice day outside.”
“I’m at a different compound. Washington State.”
Oh. “Then why bring me back here at all? We could be having this conversation anywhere.”
The fake breeze through the fake window rustled in his fake hair. “Best practices dictate bringing recruiters back to decompress after their first successful acquisition. We can send you home if you’d like, too, but that tends to be trickier emotionally.”
“A little vacation while we struggle with our consciences? What percentage of us come back?”
“Sixty percent.”
Enough to justify their ridiculous policies. Enough turnover to teach them they shouldn’t waste too much time on training. A perfect system. “At this moment I’m wondering why anyone keeps this job.”
“Most don’t actually see a venue shut down on their first assignment—it’s not supposed to happen until after you’re gone. The reaction is less visceral if you hear about it from afar. Anyway, it’s a good job, and you know it. Money, travel, expense account, excitement, music. We’d like you to stay. You didn’t disappoint.”
“How could I disappoint?” Rosemary dug her fingers into her palms; her av echoed the motion, though it was too cheap to bleed. “You only hired me because I liked music and I looked naive enough to lead you straight to a venue for you to close.”
“We hired you because you were competent in your old job, in a way that usually translates to competence in this one. Which it did. We got two promising new acts from you, and would have gotten more if it hadn’t been for our own screwup.”
At least they acknowledged their screwup, even if their apology had to do with timing, rather than the act itself. And she’d connected SHL with the Handsome Mosquitoes and Kurtz, both of whom wanted the connection. “They both passed the audition?”
“Yes. We’re signing Kurtz and Josh diSouza. They both show tremendous star potential.”
One of her nails broke skin. “Josh diSouza—not the Handsome Mosquitoes?”
“He’s the whole package. Looks, voice, presence. He’s a little tall for the cameras, but we can make adjustments.”
“But the band wrote the songs. The band is amazing.”
“If he can’t write, we’ll get someone to write for him. The band was sharp, but they had bad optics.” Management held up his thumbs and forefingers to form a box, squinted at it. “He’s the real find.”
“Did he fight for them?”
“A little, but we told him he’d go further without them, and he saw reason. He was beyond excited, really.”
“I need to finish this debrief later.” She tried to control her voice.
He gave an oblivious wave. “I’ll be here all day. Buzz me when you’re ready to finish.”
Rosemary studied the map and then headed off through the woods in the opposite direction of the manicured walking trails, into the unmapped areas, which was how she found the old, unmarked path, and then the cordoned-off bridge.
She stood on the bridge and peered over. The width and height suggested it had spanned a decent-sized body of water in the past, but the river was at this point nothing more than dried mud. Maybe it came back after rainfall. Or maybe it was like so much else she’d encountered, forever diminished.
At least this wasn’t her fault. She pictured the looks on the faces of the Handsome Mosquitoes when they were told their singer had signed on without them again. Did they blame her? Would they go back to Baltimore and keep playing? Not that they had a place to play anymore. She kicked the bridge, then again, harder, until her toes protested.
Her phone buzzed, surprising her since she’d had no reception last she checked. She expected it to be Management, telling her she had strayed too far, telling her to make a decision, to stay and accept what she’d need to become, or go home and try to forget all the destruction she’d caused. It was her mother.
She wasn’t ready to talk to her mother yet, either, to put her complicity into words, so she ignored it. Kept the phone in her hand as she leaned on her elbows. She contemplated tossing it off the bridge, watching it smash on the rocks, running away into the forest to live on tubers and berries. The Ghost of the SHL Woods.
It was as reasonable an alternative as any, and at least she wouldn’t be able to cause any more trouble. SHL would hire somebody to take her place. She’d haunt their windows at night, whispering warnings, so they knew what they were committing to, so they’d go to their first assignment with their eyes open, or quit before going at all.