Page 133 of Nine-Tenths

They're letting usdie.

It's not concentration and labor camps. But they have the means, the ability, and the instinct to help and heal. And they aredeliberately choosing not to. They are dividing the world into the desirables and the undesirables, and letting the latter category, the larger category, suffer needlessly. It's…

…it's so goddamned stupid.

"And what are the right humans?" I sneer. "White, upper-class, attractive?"

"Preferably," Simcoe agrees. He looks me up and down like a show pony. "At least you're white, and… Alva certainly seems to consider you attractive. We can work on the rest. We have decades."

I'm going to puke.

I'm going to puke up champagne and candy-corn hors d'oeuvres, and I'm going to aim for hisface.

"Don't speak to my Favorite like that!" Dav snarls.

"Your temper, Alva," Simcoe singsongs, and Dav immediately draws himself in, crunches up. "Now, I have other guests to see to. Avail yourselves of the library and calm down before you rejoin the party. Welcome to The Great Confidence. Youwillkeep it."

Dav, seething, only offers Simcoe a low, slow bow. Not knowing what else to do, I follow suit, hand fisted over my heart, loathing every microsecond.

By the time we look up, he's gone.

"I find," Dav growls, "That I am no longer in the mood for dancing."

Chapter Thirty-Six

One of the advantages that film has over books is the 'smash cut'.

This is a kind of editing technique used by the filmmaker to deliberately juxtapose the tone or information of the previous scene with the next. Sometimes it happens mid-sentence for a character, or comes accompanied by a record scratch sound effect, or some sort of audible music sting to really make sure the audience is jarred by the harsh, quick transition.

You can't 'smash cut' in a book. But if I could, this is where it would happen. Imagine the obnoxiously over-decorated, stiff and stuffily-crowded, loud party of Castle Frank and then,bam, Dav and I, in our PJs. Dav is buttoned all the way to the neck,and we're staring at one another over the expanse of the bed, in the tense and miserable quiet of his bedroom.

"Didyou kill her?" I ask.

Dav shudders, stricken. "It was my fault."

"That’s not what I asked. Was it homicide? Was it premeditated?"

Dav gasps in horror. "Of course not!"

"Then why have you never talked about her before?"

Dav scrubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. "How could I? I never wanted you to feel as if you were second best, and she—" He shudders again, curling in on himself, back heaving.

"Okay, hey." I scramble over the mattress to wrap him in my arms. "I don’t feel second-best. I’m just sad that you felt that you had to hide her from me. You loved her. She matters to you. That means she matters to me, too."

"Oh, Mine Own," Dav sobs, and I navigate us down into the blankets.

I pet through his hair, loosening the ridiculous gel he’d put in it to slick it back for his mask, as he hides his face in my neck and mourns. When he’s cried himself out, I say: "Can I ask, if you want to talk about it… if it’s not like they say it was… then how did she...?"

"We met…" his voice crackles. "In France. During, uh, the war."

Which one?I wonder.Simcoe sent you to all of them.

"She was English, a front-line nurse. In the trenches. She was…" the hand wrapped around my middle squeezes. "Brilliant. No-nonsense. Caring. Thoughtful. Beautiful." He cranes his head around and brushes his nose against mine. "Rather like you."

"Onatah said you had a type," I joke, trying to lighten the mood, instead of telling him he's utterly wrong—I'm not beautiful or brilliant, and I'm a selfish little prick some days.

"She agreed to return to Canada with me, to become my Favorite, and we… I loved her very much," he says, like a protest. Like a confession.