“These guys are awesome. Local. This is a compilation, money goes to fighting poverty or something.” She pulled discs out one by one.
“I’m looking for a specific song. It has the word ‘light’ in it.”
The girl laughed. “That’s all you know? Who wrote it?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know. This kid I know keeps requesting it. A song about light.”
“Man! That’s insane!” Still, she divided the row into two stacks and handed James half. They put their legs out in front of them, the discs in between like they were dividing Halloween candy. “Light … light …” she muttered. At the end of ten minutes, they each had three discs with songs containing the word “light” in the title.
“Thank you,” said James, pulling himself to standing.
As she bagged the discs, she said from her black chapped lips: “Thanks. That was fun, sir.”
Ana had missed three days of work. This long an absence was unprecedented, a fact underlined for her by others several times during the day. In a meeting, Christian’s small, loud greeting: “Nice of you to join us. How was Aruba?” But the evidence against Aruba was in the looking; Ana was pale, thinner. The skin around the bottom of her nose glowed, ravaged and peeling, its redness unsuccessfully damped down by copious amounts of foundation and concealer. But even tired and only slightly recovered, Ana fell deeply into her work, investigating soybean seeds spliced in laboratories, impervious to disease, and twice as expensive as regular seeds. Genetically modified. Ana typed the phrase eight times in one hour.
As a researcher, Ana could pluck the legal issues from any subject she was assigned like a butcher removing the feathers from a dead chicken. But the substance of the question only appeared to her when she stopped to blow her nose. She thought of the wands the doctors had put inside her, the confidence that her body could make something of itself. The doctors were certain that life could be inserted, removed, that pieces could be implanted in other people’s bodies, in other people’s lives, and that this future was something everyone could live with. But she had heard the weeping woman in the room next to hers at the fertility clinic, absorbing the bad news of another wasted round of carefully placed embryos. Ana was suspicious.
She had consented to the treatments, but had she ever really felt the need, the urgency? She couldn’t remember. James had felt it. He was rushing to the petri dish; he was desperate to keep existing. Maybe that’s the difference between us, she thought.
At four o’clock, Rick Saliman appeared in her doorway.
Sitting himself down without invitation, he said: “Croissants. Café au lait. St. Laurent Boulevard. Bagels.” Ana nodded. She had long ago realized that speaking as little as possible around Rick was the best strategy. He would simply pile on top of her words anyway. “Have you ever been to Saint Joseph’s Oratory? People throw down their crutches and crawl to the top of the dome on their knees.” Rick was enormous. He crossed his legs in the little chair. Ana felt as if a dinosaur had entered her office.
“I’ve never been there,” said Ana.
“To Montreal?”
“No, the Oratory.”
“Me neither,” he said. “We need bodies in Montreal. They’re struggling since the restructuring.”
“Bodies?”
“Your body, Ana. Would you consider it? They’re desperate for a first-class researcher. A transfer? Not permanent, just six months or so. Unless you wanted it to be permanent.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s a given that you’re beyond capable. But you’re also mobile. With James working on his book, no kids—it’s an opportunity.”
“Opportunity” was another word for “chance.” Ana felt that she had a very close relationship to chance these days. Futures kept raining down on her like cold hard pellets, scattering this way and that. She was not sure which way to look anymore. She liked the idea of making a decision one way or another. She liked the idea of croissants and a city without her childhood in it.
“Can you outline in more detail—” she began.
“The proposal. Of course,” said Rick. “I’ll e-mail it to you this afternoon.”
He stood up, broadening as he did.
“I can’t say this officially, of course, but I believe this is the fastest way to equity partnership for you,” he said. “I think you could expect that within a year, pending review.”
Ana nodded. This was what she had wanted. It looked duller up close.
“You’ve been away,” said Rick at the door.
“I’ve been sick.” Ana said it quickly.
“Nothing serious, I hope?” The inquiry was a rough, ill-fitting effort, a delicate glass object in a big hand.
“Just a cold,” said Ana. But his point had been made. The afternoon cleaning Sarah’s house; the illness. These were to be the last absences. She was being as measured and monitored as a parolee. She needed to be in the chair.
At 5:30, as the room darkened, Ana turned on her desk lamp and watched the man in the tower opposite hers reach around to turn off his computer. He buttoned his coat and flipped up the collar. Then, with his hand on the door and his back to Ana, he froze for a moment, as if steeling himself. He stood like that for long enough that Ana felt embarrassment and looked away, checking her e-mail for the first time in an hour.
Subject: You should know
She clicked.
I’m writing you this because I think you deserve to know. Your husband is not a good man. Ask him about the girl in the black coat. Your being made a fool of. I think you deserve to know but Im sorry to tell it to you like this.
Signed,
A Friend
Ana’s practical sense took over even as her emotions drained out of her body. She checked the return address—a 1234 Google account. Garbage. Then she read it again, annoyed by the spelling and grammar. For all the appearance of intrigue, it wasn’t much of a mystery, really, she thought, as she fumbled for her coat, her fingers sticking on the buttons, her breath short.
Where did Ruth sit? she wondered. She came out of her office. Most desks still had people at the helm, bent and clicking keyboards, murmuring into headsets. A few were in the process of gathering their things to leave. She gazed across the room to the small, exposed cubicle in the center. Ruth’s cardigan hung over the back of her chair, but her lamp and computer were off. The girl was gone.
A hand touched her elbow.
“Who are you looking for?” asked Elspeth.
Ana shook her head, offered a smile. “No one. I think I should go.”
“Lucky you,” said Elspeth. “I’m here all night. I just lost one third of my team.”
“Who?”
“Do you remember that blond girl? Sort of pointy?”
“From the party.”
“Right. Erin. She quit. She’s pregnant, so she quit. Can you imagine? The arrogance! She’s going to lose her mind. She has no idea what’s in store.”
Ana nodded. She began to cough violently, retreating to her office. She found her briefcase and, turning out her light, stopped and looked again out the window at the office opposite hers. She half expected the man to be standing there still caught in his reverie, but the lights in his office were out. Ana clicked off her own.
She decided to walk home, in the direction of the hospital. Ana couldn’t see the need for drama, for the rush home in the taxi. This uninvited e-mail would not ruin her plan for the early evening.
The sun had set, and once in a while she passed an office worker in costume: A witch carried a briefcase in one hand. A man in a suit wore devil horns.
The lobby of the hospital was crowded with people in face masks, and at first, Ana thought this was simply a part of Halloween. Then she realized they were real; was there a new infection for her to be afraid of? She couldn’t muster anxiety over theoretical viruses, even when the security guard insisted she accept a squirt of hand sanitizer. In the crowded elevator, every person but Ana had a white cotton mask across the mouth, staring straight ahead. Ana coughed. Around her, eyes cringed.