“Ms. Tarjin, the rules are very clear, and as it happens, they are quite specific. Punishment for falsehood is a bulwark. It’s—”
She snorts at the word “bulwark,” as if I were speaking a curse, an insult. Invoking some demon, instead of the whole system of good works that protect the Objectively So.
“It’s part of what keeps us safe, ma’am.”
“It’s not keeping Todd safe. It’s not keeping my family safe.”
“Respectfully, Ms. Tarjin, your son chose to tell a lie.”
“He was desperate! He was trying to help his brother. He—”
“I am aware of the context. I understand the nuances. I was there, remember? But I’m telling you: strip away the context and the foundational truth is that he lied. In a public place, purposefully and specifically, he told a purposeful and specific untruth.”
I get up, and she can’t help but recoil, step back from my height, my weight, just the breadth of me. “Imagine if everyone did it. Imagine if each person was allowed the luxury of claiming their own truth, building a reality of their own in which they can live. Imagine the danger that would pose, how quickly those lies would metastasize, and the extraordinary threat that would pose to the world. To our world. To the good, golden, safe world we have built and in which we all live together.”
I am conscious as I make this statement that it is true and it is also simultaneously a kind of performance of truth. I am performing for Arlo, my mentor and friend; I am performing for Aysa Paige, who stands deferentially listening, absorbing. I am performing for Charlie, hung up there on the wall. But even as I deliver my pronouncement, chapter and verse of the Basic Law, and of the reasons behind the law, I am confronted with the fact that this is not a case study, this is not a training module for the edification of Ms. Aysa Paige, this is a real human person whose life is in the balance, whose heart right now is a bubble I hold in my hand. Ms. Tarjin with her gray-streaked hair and determined chin is a professional problem, and she is an unanswerable conundrum and she is at the same time a person. A person clutching the arm of her unstrung son, her dark eyes alive with emotion, a person in low heels and a green blouse, frantic, desperate, trying to exist in the world, trying, like we all are, all the time, to bend the world into a shape in which we can fit.
Ms. Paige stands patiently, her hands behind her back, looking down at the floor. She is too respectful a junior partner to let me see how she feels about the matter, but she’s also too decent a person for me not to be able to tell.
“Okay, well, then,” says Ms. Tarjin with soft bitterness. “I guess I’ve wasted my time.”
“No. You’ve registered your opinion on the matter,” I say quietly. “You have told your truth, and that cannot be counted as wasted time.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
There is a crimp in the air, a mild bend, as my own half-truth, cynical and self-protecting, rolls through. Ms. Tarjin nods tightly, a single tear running down her cheek, and then Eddie breaks his silence, speaking suddenly in a rapid burst. “Yeah but what if—what if, you know—what if we change places?”
I look at him. “What?”
Arlo looks up from his desk, shakes his head, looks down again.
“Is there some sort of—I don’t know. Is there, like, a mechanism, or… I don’t know.” He looks at me, then over at Aysa, perhaps having sensed that she’s the one with a foot in the world as it exists thirty floors down from here, outside the Service, out in the world.
Eddie must know on some level that his suggestion is preposterous. He is making a performance of his own; it is for his mother’s benefit. It is something he can do.
Paige does me the small mercy of answering in my stead. “No, Eddie,” she says softly. “The law does not allow for anything like that.” She gives me a quick look, and I take a breath, look up at the ceiling, keep my eyes there while I go on.
“All right, Ms. Tarjin. Listen.”
“Yes?” I look at her. The excitement of possibility shivers across her face. “Yes?”
“The one thing I can do is, I can call the prosecuting attorney.”
“You can?”
“Yes. Just about—”
“Oh—oh! Will you do that?”
“Just as far as—”
“Can you promise me?”
She clutches my shoulders. I wriggle in her grasp. “Yeah. I mean—sure. I promise. I can say—not as an official, but as a person—I can formally absolve Todd of that one lie, the one he told me.”
“Is that like—” This is Eddie now, trying on an adult voice, a formal persona. “Like not pressing charges?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “Not really. The PA is under zero obligation to listen to me.”
“But they will. They will, though. Right? They will.”
Ms. Tarjin is hugging me. Kelly is her name, I remember that now, Kelly Elizabeth Tarjin. She is pressing her face tightly against my wide chest. My eyes are still on the ceiling. I close my arms around her, just for a second. “It means his sentence, and I mean if the prosecutor agrees—”
“Could be half,” says Eddie.
“Uh, yes. Could be. Yeah.”
Ms. Tarjin lets go. She steps back. Musters a smile, just a hint of one, and I nod, hoping now I can sit down, drink my coffee.
“Okay,” I say, and then Ms. Tarjin reaches up and grabs a small tuft of my thick red beard and tugs it, just enough so I can feel it. I blink, and she lets go, and pats the side of my face. It’s like I’m a wayward animal, and she is—sweetly but firmly—bringing me to heel. I don’t know if I blush or not, but anyway, I feel like I’m blushing.
“And you promise?”
“I do.”
“Okay.”
And then they’re gone. I am aware of Paige looking at me, and of Arlo over at his desk looking at me also, and Mr. Cullers maybe even stirring from his stupor, but I just focus on my white paper bag, taking out the first of the doughnuts and taking a greasy bite.
“That was nice,” says Paige quietly.
I chew. I shrug. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay. I just wondered what the circumstances are that allow for that kind of decision.”
“We’re not talking about it,” I tell her.
“Okay.”
Arlo is smiling at his desk. I can feel him smiling. I scowl, turn to Aysa, press the point: “Okay?”
“Okay.”
I take a sip of my coffee at last. Sweet and lukewarm. “How’s the review going? Of the courtyard stretches.”
“Slowly.”
“All right, then.” I point at my chair, at my desk, at the monitor. “Better get back to it, then.”
“It’s just—”
“What?”
By now I know the look: keen, attentive, hesitant to just burst out with whatever realization she’s locked into, but determined not to let me move on with my life before she’s enlightened me. “Go on, Paige. What is it?”
“I had a bit of a speculation. This morning. I woke up and I just—because of what you found out yesterday, about the homeowner, his affair with the… the policewoman…” She is slowing down, waiting for me to interrupt, to tell her to sit down like I said and watch the damn stretches. Which I should do. I should lean on her with the full weight of my authority, tell her we will speculate further on this matter when I have decided that it has ripened anew for speculation. I’m supposed to be the ballast, after all. The problem is, so far she’s always been right.
“Go on, Ms. Paige. I’m waiting.”
“So we have Crane, right? We have this roofer—this mysterious roofer.”
“Adjectives,” I say, scowling, waving a hand, and she says, “We have this roofer. He’s there early, he’s there off schedule, right? Flat facts. Anomalous.”