Lighthouse Island (22 page)

 

Chapter 28

E
arly the next morning the guard yelled out that cot number thirty-four was to come to the door and be escorted to her counseling session.

Nadia stood up. There had been no warning. The guard handed her her knapsack as she came out the door and, from the other women in the reeking and dirty Q ward, little faint good-byes. Too bad, said Head Prisoner. She meant that Nadia had to go and face whatever she had to face with no breakfast, no water.

Because she had been handed her knapsack out of wherever they had stored it, Nadia knew that she was going somewhere else after the counseling session. She was leaving the quarantine ward.

Live it up, Sendra, said Charity. Luck to you.

N
adia's escort guard said, I'm going off shift. There'll be another guard take my place. She'll be waiting when you get out of your session.

I see, said Nadia. Her heart seemed to freeze in place for a moment and then went on normally.

So here you are. Now you can tell your side of it, can't you? The guard smiled at her and in a moment of sympathy patted her arm. Tell how you're innocent and everything.

Nadia was so relieved to find herself in a counselor's office instead of some kind of screen-test room that she felt giddy. She took hold of herself and stood calmly on the thin carpeting.

The counselor was a youngish pale woman with blond hair tied up in rough plaits, and no wedding ring. Her computer screen was guarded on either side by pieces of cardboard that said
LAUNDRY POWDER INSTITUTIONAL USE ONLY
. There was a half-eaten sandwich on the counselor's desk and a handful of candies. Nadia came in and stood. It was very cold and the carpet was dirty and the windows were painted out here as well. A large glass paperweight held the files down against a blowing current of cold air from the ventilation system. Inside the paperweight were a girl and a bird.

Sit down, the counselor said. My name is Jeanne Uphusband.

Nadia sat down. She put her knapsack on the floor. It was the name James had written on his placemat.

You say Yes ma'am! Jeanne Uphusband turned to her, and for a moment wavered.

Yes ma'am, said Nadia.

The counselor was dressed in the same uniform gray color as the prisoners. Except her tunic top was faced with green piping and she wore a white blouse underneath, and an ID badge on a string. Her little felt hat with a veil sat on top of the computer monitor.

You're charged with not having an ID, being out of your sector without permission and no residence permit. You were seen coming out of off-limits abandoned housing and you were dressed as a boy. The counselor paused. Ah, yes, um, residence permit. This is the reality of it. So? A boy? What were you thinking? Good Lord. The counselor's head wobbled slightly.

What's wrong with field research? said Nadia. Ma'am? I hope you don't imagine all research is done on a computer.

We contacted your supervisor by e-mail. He said the same thing. I gave him hell for sending you out on such an idiotic task. Hey, this is a genuine world here. You people in sociological research think you can get away with anything.

You contacted my supervisor?

Yes. Oversupervisor Thomas Stearns Eliot.

Right. Nadia nodded, no hesitation. Well, I was just observing the area. Specifically, the abandoned apartment towers. Dogtown Towers.

Let's get to the truth. Your backpack had no ID in it whatever.

Well, then, someone stole it. Nadia crossed her ankles. Having spent the last three weeks in quarantine I have heard a great deal of talk of a black market in phony IDs. I have had an interesting time in quarantine. So where did it go? Nadia had recovered her lost interrogatives; they came back like the pigeons to Dogtown Towers.

The counselor stared back at her. Nadia detected a slight hesitation.

How would I know? said Jeanne Uphusband. You'd have to make that claim on an official form. We have to stay in touch with the actual, here. The counselor's head wavered and she closed her eyes and took deep breaths.

Nadia hesitated and then leaned toward Jeanne Uphusband. Are you all right? You seem faint.

I know. Jeanne Uphusband's manner changed for a moment. I had some altercations with my superior and got cut back to one pint. My overly strong objections to these new screen tests. But never mind that. Never mind. We are all prisoners of thirst. I want you to explain what you were doing in abandoned public buildings with no ID and so on and so on . . . She trailed off and then bent forward and inspected the file that had come up on her monitor. Your record isn't all that good, you know.

Nadia said, My record is perfectly good, ma'am.

The counselor said, With your education you could have worked your way up, you know. Earn credits, private apartment, a hundred kilowatt-hours, water features. Two-gallon recirculating Bubbling Woodland spring with leatherette fish or whatever. She wiped her face. Her fingers skipped clumsily over the keyboard and she looked at the monitor and stopped typing. Who is this? Why is this on here? She turned the big wooden monitor chassis with the flapping laundry-box wings so that Nadia could see it.

There was a photograph of a young woman Nadia didn't know, with the name Nadia Stepan at the top, and an ID number. Nadia felt her veins beating in her neck but she said, I don't know. How am I supposed to know who that is?

But Nadia knew it was Sendra Bentley. She gazed coolly at the monitor. Also under the name Nadia Stepan was a notation:
Arrest when found. Theft of gov't property and marital endangerment. Ref: Oversec. Blanche Warren. Keyword: Slut.

Wait. There's more in that file. The woman bent to her keyboard again and the first key she touched caused the photograph to disappear and then a PDF file came up. Author Sendra Bentley.

Ah yes, said Nadia, and she bent forward and read some of the first page. Yes. Nadia read quickly. It contained phrases such as
the politics of renaming
, and
disappearance of the homeless as an analytic category
and
collective identification of objectives in utilization of marginal urban spaces
.

How did that happen? cried the counselor. Why is that there? I never brought that up!

I have no idea. Nadia read on. I loved writing that paper. Marginal urban spaces are the least known and the least explored. We tend to ignore them; I suppose it's our celebrity culture.

Celebrity culture. The counselor was dubious. Perhaps.

Nadia said, Arbor Square and the abandoned public buildings there are an extremely rich field for spontaneous vernacular management of disregarded areas. It is exciting.

The counselor reached for her metal tumbler and turned it up from habit. There was nothing in it. Write out an explanation. Someone educated like yourself, I don't see why you have to go running around in boy's clothes in abandoned buildings. I forgot about the boy's clothes. She looked up but her eyes were not focusing well. The judge will hand down your sentence.

I thought you said there would be mediation.

It's just a word. They like it. Doesn't mean a damn thing. Sounds good. You're going to have to spend quite a lot of time in solitary. Down in the refrigeration units. Then corrective labor. Good for you. Builds character. Only your supervisor's intervention here is preventing something worse.

Nadia paused, thinking,
Worse how?

I know what you're thinking. The counselor braced her hands against the desk and a drop of sweat trickled down from her hairline. I know, I know. The guards are making jokes. Want to be a star? Want to be on TV? God. She wiped away the sweat.

Nadia said, How long in solitary?

Shortest, a year. Longest, five years. Jeanne Uphusband's head was unsteady. She looked up and did not quite focus on Nadia. I'll call the guard. The counselor stood up. The motion of suddenly standing up made her blood pressure drop like a stone. She took one step clear of the desk and fell, making a soft thump on the ragged carpet.

Nadia rose from her chair and stood for a moment, wavering. Paused. Listened. Nobody at the door. Then she bent down and stripped the tunic with the white dickie from Jeanne Uphusband, jerking at the flopping, limp arms. She took the ID badge on its string. Then she ripped off her own jailhouse tunic and wrestled the unconscious woman into it. She was almost panting with nerves and animal fear.

Nnnnngaaaahh, said the counselor. She opened her eyes halfway and her pupils were rolled up in her head.

Nadia grasped the paperweight and struck the woman on top of the head. The bird within it flew through the glycerin and hundreds of bits of bread drifted around the girl's head like snow.

Silence.

Well, there you go,
Nadia thought.
I've killed her. I've killed her.

She put on the counselor's tunic and adjusted the little white dickie. Jeanne Uphusband made a snoring noise and one of her arms twitched.

Nadia had to calm down; she had to appear only a little flustered by the fact that a prisoner had fainted.

She would have to leave the knapsack here on the floor. Nadia pulled the tote bag out of the knapsack, shook the tote open, and stuffed the
Girl Scout Handbook
into it. From beyond the door she heard voices. A loud, harsh laugh. A new guard. She grabbed her dress top and her little heels with the rosettes, her straw hat and the journal. She jammed them into her tote-bag purse and then the horrible red polka-dotted runners. Then she dropped to her knees and grabbed everything she could; the blister card and her money and the feather duster and the tortoiseshell glasses and her combs and the precious flashlight, the crocheted cat, the water bottle and its woven cover. The sewing kit in its little tin had spilled open; leave it, leave the electronic thingie too. She grabbed up the silver St. Jude dangle on its chain.

She took the counselor's hat and the stack of files. She took the counselor's shoes and shoved her own straw jail slippers on the woman's feet. Nadia turned to the chair she had been sitting on and knocked it over to the floor with a loud thump. She opened the door and looked at the guard with an irritated little shake of her head. Please, she said.

Terminal Verna stood up her full six feet. She had teeth like burglar bars. She had a nightstick and handcuffs and deep sunken green eyes. Hands like front-end loaders.

What?

The detainee has fainted. Please remove her and her effects. I believe she goes straight to solitary.

Well, damn. Terminal Verna loomed in the doorway.

How can I interview detainees when they are not being given enough water to think properly? She didn't even make sense.

The big guard walked into the room on her thick shoes and looked down at Sendra Bentley.

Please call medical, Jeanne Uphusband said and hurried off down the hall.

 

Chapter 29

M
ost escapees spend many hours and days planning an escape from their immediate detention but then have no further plans once they get out. Where to go. How to blend in. They simply parade down the street in a state of delirious joy at being out of confinement and enforced hebetude and back into the skin of their own selves. They laugh, they skip, they sing, and their speech is alive with exclamation points and interrogatives. They are quickly spotted and rearrested. Nadia, however, sank deeply into the persona of Jeanne Uphusband as if into the cushions of a luxurious conveyance and planned on driving this conveyance for as long and as far as she could.

Nadia hurried along that latticework of remembered paces and turns, counting her steps, into the great main hall, prisoners lined up in front of the monitors, shouts and commands. She bent down the brim of the little hat and pulled down its veil. She walked through the big doorway to the screen-test room, nodded briefly to the C&E guy at his desk, and headed for the outside door.

When she stepped outside she calmly flipped open a file and even though she only glanced up briefly she could tell that something was different with the world since she had been in jail. It was cloudy and very cold and a bitter thin drizzle was falling that seemed to threaten to actually turn into sleet or cold rain. Everything looked washed. She checked the files, nodded to herself, and strode on in Jeanne Uphusband's shoes. They were too big. She had to curl her toes at every step to keep them on.

She was in a courtyard and the only way out was through the courtroom building.

At the entrance there was a security gate with a metal detector; as she approached it she saw a man go in ahead of her with a metal sippy cup in one hand. The alarm did not go off. It was just for looks. Nadia held up her badge on its string and showed it to the guard and he barely lifted his eyes from a TV screen.

She saw other women counselors dressed like herself look at her curiously and Nadia thought,
Somebody is going to recognize this hat, the picture on the badge is not me, I have to get out of here. Where is an exit?
Nadia heard the women talking about shopping at the New Curiosity Shop and filed it away; local information, specific places.

She kept her head down but watched on all sides for bars of clouded, outdoor light that would tell her there was an exit, an open door into the street and the wide world and freedom. The accused slumped guiltily on benches alongside their lawyers. Their tattered shoes said,
There is no way out
. Messenger girls slunk along respectfully; in this legal atmosphere they had lost all their street brash.

Nadia saw a man with a white cane approaching her through the crowd of people. People bumped into him. She could use this man to get out of here.

She came up to him. She laid a hand on his shoulder, her tote-bag straps on one shoulder and the files in her other hand.

Can I help you?

Yes. Yes. Help me find the men's room.

Nadia patted him on the shoulder. It's all right. I'll find somebody. Just a minute.

She reached out and stopped a lawyer. She hoped it would not prove to be Jeanne Uphusband's boss or boyfriend or brother.

She said, Look here, this man needs to find the men's room. The one near the exit.

Certainly, glad to help. Here, sir, I'll take you.

Nadia followed them at a distance. After a while the lawyer and the blind man turned into a very wide hall and headed toward a large open portal that led to the street. She heard a bleeping sound behind her coming from some hidden loudspeakers. People stopped and looked up, then at one another. Nadia glanced down at the ID badge. The little purple light was blinking. She walked out of the entrance in a slow, self-assured pace mainly because Jeanne Uphusband's shoes wallowed around on her feet.

In the street she bent her head against the bitter wind and the fine drifting mist in the air. It was terribly, startlingly cold. She looked weird without a coat. She had to hold on to her little felt hat with the veil against the wind and after a block she stopped at a street vendor's cart. The street vendor was selling hot drinks at prices now far beyond Nadia's reach. As she bent over to look at the coffee and hot tea containers she deliberately caught her badge string on the push-handles and tore it off.

Whoops! said the vendor.

Oh, it's always catching on things, said Nadia. So irritating. She took it in one hand so as to cover the blinking light and went on. In a crowd of people who had lined up for something she saw a woman with a toddler in one arm. She was peering ahead at the line.

Cute kid! Nadia said and slipped the badge into the toddler's baggy pants.

The woman glared at her. Get one of your own, she said.

Blocks went by. Five, seven, nine. Then ahead of her she noticed a building with a peaked roof and white stone facing. Outside people were sitting and smoking on the steps. It must be noon. They were on their lunch break. Over the double doors: Urban Print Regulatory and Security Directorate.

This was where books were transferred to memory plates to save them for the archives, for some putative future generations who might care to read books. Even though there was no way at present to replay the memory plates. People were sitting around outside taking a break and cigarette smoke drifted around their heads.

Are they hiring? Nadia said. She paused with an ill-fitting shoe on the step. She had to get off the street. She strode on so fast that she was temporarily warm. She had to get rid of her counselor's tunic and get into her old street clothes. She put her hands in the pockets.

Yeah. Just temps. You don't have to have a work assignment card. Alls you need is an ID. A young man threw down his cigarette and stepped on it. The smoke and ashes streamed across the steps in the nipping wind.

Oh good, she said.

He said, Looks like you work for Forensics?

Yeah. A temp. I do temp work for anybody.

She walked into the building. Transferring books to archival memory plates was low-level work, they weren't going to be too choosy but on the other hand she had no ID and she was tortured by thirst and the thought of those hot drinks in the vendor's carts. An entire silver quarter apiece. Never mind. She had to get rid of the gray tunic. She was no longer Jeanne. Jeanne was in a baby's diaper. She slipped into a janitor's closet and changed. The khaki top was wrinkled as wadded paper.

Inside the computer room she spotted an empty chair in front of a monitor, one in a long line of monitors and busily typing people. She edged her way down the line and sat in the empty chair, pulled out the keyboard. She put the veiled hat on top of the computer tower. She bent down and took out her own high heels with the rosettes on the toes and kicked the counselor's shoes far under the desk and out of sight.

A young man with a crafty expression and dark hair falling in his face was poised with arachnid fingers over the brassy keyboard. He hoarded a pile of Quench candies to one side. He turned to her.

Are you a temp for Julie?

Yes. She continued to stare at the blank monitor. Then down at the keyboard.

You go up there and the desk lady gives out the books, said the man. People hammered away at keyboards, and sighed, and pressed their hands against their eyes, blinked, looked away and then back to the open book on the stand and the monitor in front of them.

I still have my book from last week. Nadia reached into her tote and took out
The Girl Scout Handbook
. I took it home with me. I love reading. She opened it at random and read out loud:

A shadowgraph screen may be as simple as an old sheet stretched across the doorway, with newspaper covering the space above and below the screen.

Hmmm. Then she said, Oh, I forgot to show my ID to the desk lady. She slumped in her chair. I'm tired already. It's only just after lunch and I'm tired.

The young man said, Nah, you don't need to. Just slip it in there. He pointed to a slot below the Menu button. He didn't ask why she didn't know that but stared at her curiously.

Oh, right. She sat there and wondered if she could pretend to type. People to either side of her couldn't see her screen.

Then she thought of the blister card. She groped around in her tote bag and found it wrapped in a crumpled page and jammed safely inside the notebook. She slid it into the slot. After a few moments the screen lit up with a dull gray light. Letters swam across it.
Welcome to the Urban Print Regulatory and Security Directorate
. She watched in a kind of tired fascination. It worked. The card worked here as well as in vending machines.

She turned to the young man. He gazed at her with a loose, fascinated smile.

You're cuter than Julie, he said.

Thanks. I guess. She smiled back. Are there vending machines around here? I have one bottle allowance coming to me.

No, sorry, not in this building. He reached down and lifted a two-pint bottle of water and handed it to her. There. You can owe me.

She tipped it up and tried not to appear too thirsty. She felt him studying her in her wrinkled khaki top and the gray prison skirt. Her little hat with the veil poised on top of the monitor.

There's vending machines at the bicycle repair. The water is two silver quarters.

Good Lord! Well, I'll pay you back tomorrow, she said.

That's a deal. Go ahead, it's yours. I got a quart coming tonight.

She finished it and handed him back the glass bottle. She felt water flowing into her veins and arteries and flushing her skin. The relief was unbelievable. She sat stunned for a moment and then said, Thanks. Thank you so much, and as she turned back to her monitor there was a loud explosion.

It was a hard, deafening crack and a flash of intense light through the windows, and then it rumbled on and on. Everyone in the room ducked, and then turned to stare at one another.

What the hell was that? said the young man.

Thunder and lightning, said Nadia. I read about it once.