Rain pelted down on the car all at once, hitting the window in spatters that obscured Lily’s view. The sky had been darkening all day, and many of the people outside the barrier were wearing some sort of synthetic bags over their clothing in preparation. Lily wondered if they had to find new bags for each rainstorm, or whether they reused the same bags over and over again.
“Detour up ahead, Mrs. M.,” Jonathan said over his shoulder.
“Why?”
“Explosion.” He pointed out the windshield, and Lily saw an oily sheen of flame through the rain, perhaps a mile ahead. She’d read about this as well; sometimes criminals would climb up and plant explosives on the private highways, trying to block them off, to force people to take public routes. Just one of many constant dangers in traveling outside the wall, but so long as Jonathan wasn’t concerned, Lily wasn’t either. Greg had hired Jonathan for Lily three years ago, in the week before their wedding. Jonathan was a good bodyguard, but an even better driver; during his service in the Oil Wars, he’d been in charge of security for supply caravans, and he seemed to know the entire eastern seaboard’s roadways like the back of his hand. He guided the car through the high streets, which now ran so flush against the buildings that Lily could only glimpse a thin line of darkness over the edge. She pictured the people beneath her, imagining them as rats that scuttled through the gloom. Embeth, a high school friend of Lily’s, had come to New York after graduation to be a nanny, but a few years ago Lily could have sworn she had seen Embeth on a corner in lower Manhattan, dressed in rags, skin grimy and hair looking as though she hadn’t washed it in years. Just a brief glimpse through a car window and then gone.
As they passed over the crumbling remains of Rockefeller Center, Lily saw that someone had lasered blue words onto the pavement where the old fountain used to be, the graffiti so large that it was visible from the roadway above.
THE BETTER WORLD
That was the slogan of the Blue Horizon, the separatist group, but no one seemed to know exactly what it meant. Most of the Blue Horizon’s activities seemed to involve blowing things up or hacking into various government systems to cause trouble. Last year, when the separatists had presented Congress with a request to secede, Lily had been all for it, but Greg told her no; there was too much money at stake, too many customers and debtors to lose. Lily, who thought only of the reduction in violent crime, considered it a good trade, but she left it alone. That had been a stressful time for Greg at work; he was constantly on edge, drinking too much. He had never really relaxed until the petition failed.
Jonathan took a smooth left into the basement of the Plymouth Center and stopped at the Security barrier. Two men with guns in their hands approached the car, and Jonathan presented his pass.
“Mrs. Mayhew, appointment to see Dr. Davis on the fiftieth floor.”
The guard peered into the back of the car. “Open her window.”
Jonathan rolled down Lily’s window and she leaned forward, presenting her left shoulder. The guard had a cheap portable scanner; he had to wave it over Lily’s shoulder several times before her tag registered with a small, cricketlike beep.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mayhew,” the guard said, and gave her a smile with no warmth. He went up to scan Jonathan, and Lily settled back into the leather seat as the car proceeded smoothly into the garage.
The body scanner beside the elevator buzzed loudly as Lily went through; she’d forgotten to take off her watch. It was a big, chunky thing, nearly solid silver with a diamond face, and her friends always eyed it covetously when she wore it to the club. To Lily, a watch was a watch, but like so many things Greg had bought her, she wore it because she was expected to. As soon as she made it through the gate, she stuffed the watch into her purse.
The elevator beeped as it read the implant in her shoulder. The tag would show her location, if Greg should check, but what of that? To the outward eye, Dr. Davis was a perfectly respectable doctor, and many wealthy women consulted him for their fertility troubles. Still, Lily felt a guilty blush spreading over her cheeks. She always got caught when she lied, and she had never been able to keep a secret. Only this one, the biggest secret of all, and the longer she kept it, the more frightened she became. If Greg found out …
But she didn’t let her thoughts go too far down that road. If she did, she would turn around and run out of the building, and she couldn’t afford to do that. She took a deep breath, then a few more, until her pulse slowed and her nerve came back. When the elevator doors opened, she turned left and went down a long hallway carpeted with deep, rich green. She passed many doors advertising various specialty doctors: dermatologists, orthodontists, cosmetic surgeons. Dr. Davis’s was the last door on the right, a thick walnut slab that looked exactly as it should, with a brass nameplate that advertised “Anthony Davis, M.D., Fertility Specialist.” Lily place her thumb against the pad and waited a few seconds, looking up at the pinhole camera fixed to the side of the door, until the tiny red light turned green and the lock clicked.
The waiting room was crammed with women. Nearly all of them were like Lily, white and well dressed, holding high-quality handbags. But a few were clearly from the streets, betrayed by their hair and clothing, and Lily wondered how they had gotten past Security. One of them, a Hispanic woman, perhaps five or six months pregnant, had squashed herself into a chair just beside the door. She was gasping for breath, clutching the arms of the chair, her face pale and frightened. When Lily looked down, she saw that the lap of the woman’s jeans was soaked with blood.
Two nurses came hurrying out of the back office with a wheelchair and helped the woman slide into it. She clasped her swollen belly with both hands, as though trying to hold something in. Lily saw tears trickling from the corners of her eyes, and then the nurses pushed her through the door, to the examining rooms beyond.
“Can I help you?”
Lily turned to the receptionist, a young brunette with an impersonal smile.
“Lily Mayhew. I have an appointment.”
“Wait, please, until we call you.”
There were no seats left but the newly vacated chair, its light green cushion soaked with blood. Lily couldn’t bring herself to sit there, so she leaned against the wall, stealing covert glances at the people around her. A woman and a teenage girl, clearly mother and daughter, sat in two nearby chairs. The girl was anxious, her mother was not, and Lily read their dynamic easily. She had felt the same way the first time Mom had brought her to this office, understanding that it was a rite of passage, but also that it had to be kept secret, that what went on here was a crime. Lily hated this appointment, hated this office, the necessity of it, but at the same time she was utterly grateful for this place, that there were people who didn’t fear Greg, all the Gregs of this world.
But it was a mistake to think of Greg now; Lily felt as though he were looking over her shoulder, and the idea made her forehead break out in sweat. Each year she came here made it more likely that she would get caught, if not by Security then by Greg himself. Greg wanted children in the same way he had wanted a new BMW, the same way he wanted Lily to wear her diamond-studded watch. Greg wanted children so he could show them off to the world. All of their friends had at least two children already, some even three or four, and the wives gave Lily pitying looks at the club, at parties. These looks didn’t hurt at all, but Lily had to pretend that they did. A few times she had even drummed up some tears, small tantrums for Greg’s benefit, solid evidence of sorrow over her failure as a wife. Once upon a time Lily had wanted children, but that seemed very distant now, an entire lifetime that had happened to someone else. Greg was the one who had suggested that Lily go to a fertility clinic, not knowing she’d been coming to Dr. Davis for years, not knowing that he had just made things that much easier for her to hide in plain sight.