Embarrassment was Tiphany’s principal recollection of that entire trip. Embarrassment and disappointment. Disappointment because she discovered she liked Mrs. Freeman even more than she’d expected. She liked Mrs. Freeman so much, in fact, that in the years following the convention, as she grew more settled into her position, she ceased to debate with herself about whether it was right for her to be working for a company that profited from pollution and war and destruction. As Mrs. Freeman said, they were the conscience.
Mercifully, the old woman had let her keep her job. She’d even reimbursed her the ten dollars she’d tipped the bellhop, without Tiphany having to ask. And yet it was clear to Tiphany that the old woman’s feelings for her had changed. The more she tried to make up for her mistakes, the more Mrs. Freeman seemed to resent her.
The morning the investigators showed up at Tiphany’s apartment, the trip to New Orleans was two years in the past, but for the last hour she’d been able to think of little else. She wasn’t surprised to see the men in their dull gray suits, though she wasn’t quite ready for them either. It was eight-thirty, and she hadn’t bothered to dress for work. Sasha had already left for his studio. Tiphany was still trying to understand the story she’d seen on the news. Last night, extremists — terrorists of some sort — had broken into HSI. They’d taken the guards hostage and barricaded themselves on the third floor. Her floor. When Tiphany had left for the day, Mrs. Freeman had still been working there. Tiphany had left her all alone.
“Is she okay?” Tiphany said, looking from one man to the next. “They didn’t hurt her, did they?”
One of the investigators opened his briefcase and took out some photos. They were mug shots of five or six people, all close to Tiphany’s age.
“Have you seen any of them before?” one of the men said.
“Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary?” said the other.
Was it possible, Tiphany wondered, that she’d somehow failed Mrs. Freeman again?
Summer
Seventeen
Sylvia remembered the first time, waking in the night, thinking something’s missing.
Looking at the empty half of the mattress beside her, the discolored pillow, thinking, There was something here that’s gone.
And then, in the morning, she found him asleep beside her, breathing through his mouth, like the boy she once knew.
But still there was that feeling: Something is missing.
All day long at work, on her feet, trying to understand what it might be.
Eighteen
He mistook the sound at first for birds. He was blocks away when he heard the chirps, several of them at once, floating in from different directions.
But on second thought, the sound was too dull, the edges of the notes too static. There was no music in it. And it was the middle of the night.
As he drew closer, he saw the forklifts, crawling through the streets, pushing and pulling pallets stacked high with produce, beeping as they went.
It was Saturday, market day. Dobbs had lost track. The sun was nowhere near risen yet, but the overhead doors of the hangar-like buildings were open. Inside he could see vans and panel trucks and pickups. Harsh fluorescent light leaked out from every opening. Everyone was busy, brigades of exhausted-looking people ducking in and out of the backs of trucks.
One of the enormous sheds was in the process of being transformed into a greenhouse, waist-high terraces of pink and white and yellow and red, all in rows, stretched out like the stripes of some exotic flag.
In the other buildings, in the open-air stalls, there was so much produce, it hardly seemed like food. Potatoes were tossed together like rocks; the unwashed carrots and turnips looked like grotesque deep-sea creatures, with their tentacle roots.
No one seemed to notice Dobbs. His exhaustion was indistinguishable from theirs. From the sidewalk he picked up a small, empty crate. As he went, he filled it. Something here, something there. He didn’t know what half of it was. His hands did his thinking for him. No one thought to stop him.
This time the note was stopped up in an empty water bottle, cast onto the porch, as if it had made the voyage here by sea.
Dobbs fished the slip of paper through the neck. Delay, it said. Four weeks.
He tossed the note into the corner with the others.
It was late June. By now Dobbs was supposed to have been done and gone.
But there’d been problems. First it was ten days. Then two weeks, then three. What did they even mean when they said “delay”? It wasn’t as if they were running a factory. There were no raw materials to run out of, no supply lines to get tangled, no labor disputes, no bureaucratic holdups at customs. The entire business had only one piece: take people from here and move them to there. What did that leave? It didn’t take months to change a flat tire.
He’d already spent almost all the money they’d given him in advance, the setup funds. There’d be no more until the shipment arrived.
In the meantime, he’d done everything he could with the warehouse. Sweeping alone had taken weeks. A strange, dense dust had filled the place: crumbling block, flaking paint, shards of rust and glass. His broom had moved across the floor like a shovel through mud. It was as if the floor were made of this — sediment and nothing more.
And he’d spent more weeks clearing away the junk and rubble: cable spools as tall as he was, piles of rusty disks and rebar. Everything was deceptively heavy. Even scraps of wood seemed to have doubled their weight from the damp.
In addition to the mattresses, he’d gathered food, every dented can he could find within twenty square miles. And he had half a dozen syrup barrels, swiped from a bottling plant. He’d filled them with water at the sewerage department.
And now he had four more weeks to wait.
He dreamed he was in an ice cream shop. It was a clean white space. Lots of small tables, matching chairs. Every seat was full. The customers were men, each one dressed in the same tan linen suit. There must have been at least twenty of them, identical but for their ties. The ties came in reds and blues and burgundies. None of the men were eating. They sat perfectly still, brown paper napkins draped across their laps, as if waiting to be served.
Dobbs was minding his own business, bent over the ice cream case, trying to choose what he wanted. But he didn’t recognize a single flavor. The names were typed onto plastic cards, but they made no sense. DON’T BE AFRAID, one of them said. Inside the tub was an orangey soup. Deep within the next tub Dobbs saw a forest, a copse of trees bending in the breeze. LOOK BEHIND YOU, the label read.
It was the girl from the bookstore, from the demonstration. McGee. She was directly behind him. She was even smaller than he’d remembered. There were butterflies now beneath the glass, flitting among the ice cream tubs.
When Dobbs looked again, the men in the tan linen suits had gotten to their feet. They stood shoulder to shoulder now, brown paper napkins tucked awkwardly into their collars. Side by side with their backs to the counter, Dobbs and McGee were surrounded.
“Don’t be afraid,” McGee said, patting his arm.
Beside the cash register was a Lucite box. Inside the box, on the very top shelf, a row of cardboard cups were arranged by size, from small to large. On the shelf below sat a pair of cones, one sugar, one waffle. As McGee reached inside, Dobbs saw the cones weren’t real. They were plastic, for display only. McGee placed the sugar cone in her palm, pointy side up, and then she turned to the nearest man, driving the cone into his open mouth, impaling him with a single jab.