Authors: Nancy Kress
A long wait. Amy stared at the people crossing the lobby without really seeing any of them. What if Violet refused to come to the phone?
She didn’t refuse. “Amy?”
“The hospital cafeteria. In half an hour. Be there.” Amy hung up, unwilling to say more. Violet’s phone could be tapped.
Was she being paranoid? No, she hadn’t been paranoid enough. But it had become so hard to tell what was real and what was not. That’s what the show had done to her, to all of them.
Time to even the score.
Thirty-seven
W
EDNESDAY
IN THE NOISY
cafeteria, Amy sat at a table in the corner and waited. She was hungry but had no money to buy food. She should have snagged something off Rafe’s tray.
Violet appeared in twenty-two minutes. She looked terrible: haggard, with uncombed hair. She must have jumped straight into a cab on Portman Island. “Is Rafe—”
“Like Rafe was ever your first concern.” But then Amy relented. “He’s fine. They’ll probably release him today. Violet, why did you do it?”
“I told you on the island, I had no idea about the infected squirrel, I thought there would just be a bit of melodramatic acting and—”
“Not on the island. The phone call during the hotel fire, telling me that everybody in Room 654 was dead and there was no safe place to go. When there was.”
Violet went very still. A busboy clattered past with a cartful of dirty, rattling dishes. “How do you know about that?”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. Why did you do it? Waverly and I could have been killed. People were shot during that hotel riot, and there was fire on the upper floors.”
“I didn’t know how bad it was for you! I didn’t know until after it was all over, and Myra told me in that phone call that you had an easy, safe passage out!”
That much was true. Amy studied Violet, trying to see beneath the surface. How could you ever be sure what anybody’s motives really were?
She said quietly, “What hold does Myra have over you?”
Violet didn’t even hesitate. She spoke like someone glad to unburden herself. “She has evidence that I was betting on the show. Through a friend of a friend. I already knew who behaved how, of course, from talking to all of you. That’s what the FBI was sniffing around after. It violates interstate commerce laws.”
Amy blinked. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t that. “Did you win?”
“One point three million dollars. I was going to start my own dance studio.”
“‘Was’?”
“Myra traced us. I thought I was being really careful but I guess not careful enough. She has recordings, film. She took back all the money and said if I do what she asks on the show, she won’t give any evidence to the FBI.”
“Why does the FBI care about a stupid TV show?”
“I told you, it violates some sort of interstate law.”
Amy considered. “I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe Myra. I think she found out about your cheating and made up the FBI stuff to get you to cooperate. God, Violet, the whole country is falling apart! Do you think the FBI has time to worry about TV betting?”
“But Waverly said some agents with ID came to ask her—”
“She told me that too. But I’ll bet that Myra hired a few actors to pose as agents, to make her whole scam on you look more legitimate.”
Violet leaned back in her cafeteria chair. A group of doctors in scrubs went past, carrying coffee and talking in low tones. Finally Violet said, “You’ve changed, One Two Three.”
“And you never were what I thought you were. Come upstairs. You’re going to tell Rafe all this.”
Violet looked unhappy, but she agreed. Kaylie had arrived and was sitting with Rafe. Amy surveyed her sister’s outfit: upscale and pulled together.
Good
. Amy said, “Kaylie, I need you to say absolutely nothing while Violet talks. I mean it, it’s really important, and I have something important for you to do afterward. Nothing at all, OK?”
Kaylie glared at Violet but nodded sullenly, perhaps lured by the “something important to do.” Violet told Rafe her story. Kaylie, miraculously, didn’t interrupt. When Violet finished, Rafe took a sip of water and said to Amy as if Violet weren’t there, “What are you going to do?”
“
We’re
going to do it. Myra will be here soon, I think.”
Kaylie said, startled, “Myra?”
“If Tommy’s hotel phone is bugged, which I suspect it is. Kaylie, I need you to do something really fast. Fenton Street is four blocks west of here. Beside the Tuileries Café is Nang’s Electronics, a high-end electronics store. Go down there and steal a microcam, anything with both visual and audio. Steal it quick. And don’t get caught.”
Kaylie, Rafe, and Violet all stared at Amy. Then Kaylie said, “What have you done with my real sister?”
Violet choked out, “I have some money and a credit card—”
“No. This has to be untraced. Kaylie, go! We don’t have much time!”
Kaylie sprinted from the room just as a nurse entered it to give Rafe a sponge bath. He argued, but lost. Violet and Amy were banished to a waiting room, where a boisterous family joked and laughed about finally taking home a patient named Horatio. Or maybe Horatio was their dog; it wasn’t clear. Beneath the din, Violet said quietly, “Are you going to throw me under the bus, Amy?”
“No. I’m not.”
“I don’t see how you can confront Myra without implicating me. I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything, ever. Not that I don’t deserve being made a scapegoat.”
“Too bad you don’t play chess, Violet.”
“
Chess?
What the fuck does chess have to do with anything?”
“By the third move the board can have 71,852 different configurations. There is
always
a huge choice of moves to make next.”
Kaylie returned, carrying nothing. Disappointment lanced through Amy. But then Kaylie pulled something from her bra: an impossibly small something, round and metallic, connected by a thin wire to something only slightly larger.
Violet, despite everything, smiled. “Now, I could never do that. Not wearing a thirty-four A.”
“It’s video
and
sound,” Kaylie whispered, although she could have shouted and her words would still have been lost in the din about Horatio. “You just—”
“Myra!” Amy said.
“Hello,” Myra Townsend said. “It’s lovely to see so much support for Rafe. How is he?”
She stood behind Kaylie, who kept her back to her. Over her shoulder Kaylie said, “I don’t want to talk to you!” and flounced into the ladies’ room. Amy saw why it had taken Myra this much time to arrive; she was impeccably dressed and groomed. Slim silk trousers, cream summer-weight jacket, makeup fresh and dewy under her blonde bob. The queen gliding regally across the chess board.
Amy said cordially, “Rafe is fine. A nurse is with him, but we can go back into his room in just a minute.” What did Myra think that Amy knew?
Everyone stood in awkward silence until the nurse came out of Rafe’s room. Violet rose and led the way back in. Amy and Myra followed, and then Kaylie from the ladies’. Myra began to gush over Rafe, who said nothing.
“You’re looking so well! Rafe, it’s remarkable the way you—all of you—can take a situation gone horribly wrong and turn it into acts of bravery and heroism. It’s so inspirational for our viewers! I’ve authorized a bonus for all of you four, of course, twice as large as your previous one. And you, too, Kaylie, our newest heroine.”
Kaylie lounged against the far wall. On the front of her shirt was a curious pin: a knot of silver chains, ends dangling at different lengths, like something Waverly might wear. In the middle of the chains, practically unnoticeable, was a small glass circle. Kaylie gave a tiny nod to Amy.
They were live.
Amy interrupted Myra. “We have something to say to you. We know you deliberately brought an infected squirrel, and maybe other animals as well, to the island to make the show scenario more dangerous and exciting.”
Myra looked shocked. “Amy! That’s ridiculous! We would never put you participants at risk! Why that’s just—Amy!”
Amy had hoped that Myra would say “Prove it,” which might have been at least a half-assed admission of guilt. But Myra was too wily for that. She’d declined the gambit. Amy brought out her next attack.
“I can’t prove anything about the squirrel, no. But here is something I
can
prove. The night of the hotel fire, I called 911 and they told me to try to get to Room 654, which was the safest place in the hotel. But you called Violet and told her to call me and lie that the cops in Room 654 were already gone.”
Violet tensed. Myra looked even more shocked and began to protest her innocence. Rafe took Mark’s miniature tape recorder from the drawer of his bedside table and played the tape.
“Violet!”
Myra’s voice said.
“Call Amy now. Ask where she is. She’ll say in a stairwell. If she asks about Room 654 being safe, tell her that it’s not anymore. Tell her the militants took the room and there was a firefight that killed someone and nobody is there now.”
Violet’s voice:
“Did protestors take the room?”
“Just do it!”
“No. Not if you’re just sending Amy into more danger for your fucking show!”
“I’m not, I promise you. She has a clear, safe passage out. Just do as you’re told—”
Amy clicked off the machine before the part where Myra revealed that she had some kind of hold over Violet. Amy said, “But Violet didn’t listen to you. She tried to call my cell, and then Rafe’s, to tell us we should go to Room 654. Only mine had slid off the cart that Waverly and I were maneuvering down the stairwell, and I never got the message. Neither did Rafe, because he was hurt and unconscious. But we found Violet’s message later, after everything was over, on his cell. She tried to get us to safety despite what you told her.”
Myra looked directly into Amy’s eyes. Amy had never seen a gaze that steady, that hard, that unrelentingly cold. “No,” Myra said, “that can’t be right. If you never got this horrible message that you said I told Violet to convey—and that’s not true, Amy dear, I just don’t know why you’re saying this!—if you never got that message from Violet, you would have gone to Room 654. But you didn’t. You didn’t even try to get to the sixth floor. I’m afraid you’re contradicting yourself, my dear. You’re confused.”
“No. I’m not confused. We didn’t try to go to the sixth floor because
you
called me then and said that everyone in Room 654 was dead.”
“I did not! You’re lying!”
“There are cell phone records of the call.”
Watching Myra’s face, Amy saw the moment that the older woman realized. Myra had called Amy’s cell during the hotel fire, just as she’d called everyone’s cell, with her fake checks on whether they had gotten out all right. But although the cell-phone records at Verizon would show that Myra’s call to Amy had taken place, it would not show the content. If Amy said that Myra was doing her best to send Amy and Waverly into deeper danger, Myra had no way to disprove that. And her earlier call to Violet lent it plausibility.
That Amy was lying did not bother her at all. This woman was evil.
For just a second Myra’s eyes flared with hatred. Then she had control of herself again. She was good, Amy had to give her that. Amy had hoped to provoke her into an admission of guilt, but instead Myra said gently, “I’m afraid you
are
confused, Amy dear. Of course I called your cell, I called all of you. Alex and Mr. Taunton and I were so worried! Until we knew that you six, and Kaylie too, of course, were safe outside the hotel, we were just beside ourselves with anxiety. Of course I called your cell. And Cai’s and Waverly’s and Tommy’s and Violet’s and Rafe’s.”
Rafe spoke for the first time. “But we still have that recording of your call to Violet. That looks pretty incriminating, Myra.”
“Does it? I don’t think so. I think you faked that recording, pieced it together from other speeches you somehow recorded of mine that—”
“You mean, the way you did for ‘dialogue’ of Amy and Waverly during the hotel fire re-creation in the tunnel? You can’t get around that call to Violet. You made it. You sent two young girls and a sick old lady away from safety and into danger just to make your show more exciting, and you put infected animals on Holtz Island for the same reason.”
“Oh, Rafe, I think the infection is still addling your brain. Perhaps it’s a good thing that all your contracts with TLN are over.” Myra swept from the hospital room, looking sad, concerned, and not at all guilty.
Amy dropped into a plastic chair and sagged with disappointment. “She didn’t admit anything. I thought that if we pushed her enough—Kaylie, you can stop filming. We don’t have anything that could take on TLN’s lawyers, anything that would really hold up in court.”
Kaylie said, “So now you’re a lawyer, too, on top of everything else? You don’t know that!”
Rafe chewed his lower lip, which all but disappeared between his teeth. Finally he said, “Amy’s right. I’m not a lawyer either, but that one recording of Mark’s—it isn’t enough. They could twist it every which way. They could say, for instance, that Myra genuinely did believe Room 654 had been taken by militants. I’ll bet Myra could even bribe witnesses to say that they were with her when somebody else told her that. Then Myra would look like she was trying to save Amy and Waverly, not kill them.”
Amy said, “So we’re screwed. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do.”
Rafe leaned forward in his bed. His brown eyes gleamed brightly. “Not necessarily.”
Kaylie demanded, “What do you mean?”
Rafe said, “Myra holds all the artillery of her generation: lawyers, courts, television. But we have our own generation’s artillery.”