Page 15 of The Dream Hotel

T ime passes. On his sixth try, Adam Abdo manages to get Sara a hearing for eight on the following Friday morning—a prime slot, though Sara gets only one day’s notice about it because the case manager at Safe-X was out sick last week and didn’t update his files until he returned. It doesn’t matter, Sara tells herself; there’s really nothing to prepare. At dinner she can barely eat the chicken casserole on her tray, even if it’s one of the better dishes from the MealSecure menu. “Don’t be nervous,” Toya advises. “It doesn’t do any good.” In the morning Sara borrows Emily’s hair dryer and spends long minutes in front of the mirror, straightening out her hair, oblivious to the conversations that are taking place behind her in the locker room.

The hearing takes place in one of the prekindergarten classrooms on the first floor. There are still coat hooks at child height by the door and toy cupboards lining the wall beneath the window. The room is air-conditioned, though, a pleasant respite from the residential floor or the cafeteria. Three people sit at a table, with name cards in front of them. At the center of the table is Andrew Nicosia, whose card identifies him as an agent from the RAA. He has trendy glasses, a weak chin, and ultimate authority over the case. On the left is Pauline Ford, a senior case agent with Safe-X. She has beside her a Tekmerion, in a larger size than the kind used by attendants to report violations to the code of conduct. Completing the panel is Jamie Yuen, whose name is handwritten on the card, as if he’s a replacement or a late addition. His affiliation isn’t listed.

“Ms. Hussein?” Nicosia says as Sara approaches the table. “Have a seat.”

The chair is steel-framed and stackable, designed for hearings with single or multiple retainees at once, a detail that strikes Sara as strange. Still, she’s eager to get on with it, explain whatever needs explaining. One thought alone occupies her mind: securing her release.

With a glance at the panel chair, Pauline Ford asks, “Shall we begin?”

Nicosia consults his notes. “I believe we’re expecting Ms. Hussein’s attorney.”

“He should be here any minute,” Sara says. Where the hell is Adam Abdo? Late, today of all days. Elias chose him because, though still a junior associate with Kreidler Sara hopes she doesn’t hold the attorney’s tardiness against her. At least, Yuen doesn’t seem to mind: he’s doodling on his notepad. From where Sara sits she can see he’s drawing the room they’re in, complete with its wooden cupboards and vintage light fixtures. His hand moves with the confidence of an experienced draftsman. How did he end up adjudicating retention cases?

The door opens a few moments later and Adam Abdo walks in, full of apologies. He looks different than he usually does, though Sara can’t pinpoint the reason. Somehow he seems taller this morning, or perhaps it’s an effect of the fitted blue suit he’s wearing. “Sorry, everyone,” he says, putting his briefcase on the floor and draping his jacket on his chair. “There was an accident on the freeway.” He sits down beside Sara, puts a hand on her arm. “How are you, Sara?”

“On the 60?” Yuen asks. “They really need to fix that narrow lane. I almost sideswiped someone the other day.”

Abdo brushes a strand of hair away from his face. His fingernails are neatly manicured, and he wears a fashionable mesh bracelet on his left wrist. No wedding ring. “The 60, yes,” he tells Yuen. “There was a massive pileup, with a big rig and a boat.”

“A boat! The lake’s been dry for five years.”

“There’s always one more idiot on the road than you expect.”

“Death, taxes, idiots on the road,” Yuen says, flashing a smile at Abdo.

Ford clears her throat. “Well, we’re glad you could join us. Shall we begin?”

“Please,” Abdo says. He sits back in his chair, crosses his legs, but makes no move to bring out any documents from his bag. The confidence with which he carries himself is infectious. Sara feels encouraged, even if she can barely breathe from the anxiety that presses against her chest.

“Let’s start with the Safe-X report,” Nicosia says.

“Certainly,” Ford replies. She slides open her screen and begins to read. “Sara Hussein has been retained in this facility since December 22 of last year. Her physical shows she’s in good health, her lab tests have come back normal so far, and her psych evaluation shows no sign of psychiatric illness. However, her behavioral record remains a concern. She’s had two Class A disciplinary actions in December, another Class A in February, and a Class C in April.”

Wait. Sara didn’t get a Class C in April—or at least she wasn’t informed of it. She turns to Abdo, waits for him to object to Ford’s report. From his pocket, the lawyer takes out his phone. Sara must be old-fashioned because she expected him to keep his case notes on a tablet, or even in a paper file, not on his personal device. He’s probably going to pull up the most recent Safe-X report, which doesn’t list a Class C in April, and take the opportunity to point out that none of Sara’s disciplinary actions have ever involved a threat of violence. Her record has been spotless for the last four months, her risk score is at 502, and she’s served out all her extensions. Abdo touches his phone screen, and starts scrolling.

“Any other issues since April?” Nicosia asks.

“Hold on.” Sara raises a hand. “My attorney needs a moment.”

But Abdo is still scrolling on his phone, looking for the file. Ford continues with her report as if Sara hasn’t spoken. “No issues since April,” she concedes. “However, given the number of disciplinary actions on Ms. Hussein’s record, her associations with known fraudsters and suspected arsonists, and the severity of the crime under investigation, we would recommend an extension, in order to minimize the risk to others.”

“That’s absurd,” Sara says. She’s sharing space with other retainees, she’s not conspiring with them. Plus, Ford is wrong about her record; no disciplinary actions were filed against her in four months. By the RAA’s logic, Sara should be released forthwith. She turns to her lawyer, expecting him to object to Ford’s reasoning, but instead he’s writing a text or an email. “Aren’t you going to say something?” she whispers.

Abdo doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Thank you for that, Pauline,” Nicosia says. “Jamie?”

Yuen stops doodling. “The dream data I have so far is in line with what I would expect for an individual who’s been in confinement. I see numerous images of clear skies, mountains, spacecraft, flying, and so on. But I’m sorry to say that allusions to the predicted crime continue to crop up, the most recent one in September. It’s pretty graphic, actually. I sent you a copy.”

Yuen works for Dreamsaver Inc., Sara realizes. Is he a data engineer? A neuroscientist? A clinical psychologist? Adam Abdo should ask about that. But he’s still on his phone. What the hell is going on? If Sara doesn’t say something, the opportunity she has to present her side of the case is going to vanish. Yet she doesn’t have the legal acumen to mount an effective response and she’s afraid of making things worse for herself if she says the wrong thing. A lump forms in her throat. No, she has to say something, she can’t sit by and let them extend her retention. “I have committed no crime,” she says, barely recognizing the sound of her own voice. She’s been clinging to this simple fact for months now and feels the need to repeat it. “I have committed no crime. And in any case I didn’t have a Class C in April. Why are you keeping me here?”

“Because you’re a murderer, Ms. Hussein,” Nicosia says.

The accusation is so outrageous that Sara stands, throwing her chair back—and wakes up as she falls from her cot to the floor.

It takes her a good minute to register where she is. Her left shoulder hurts where it hit the floor, her heart is beating ten thousand beats per minute. Rubbing her shoulder she gets back in her cot and lies in the dark, staring at the ceiling, where the moonlight dapples branches of the paloverde trees. Except for the distant call of coyotes, Madison is quiet at this hour. But she can’t calm herself; doubts crackle in her mind.

Sara, a murderer?

Even in moments of pure rage, and God knows she’s had a few in her life, she’s never seriously entertained the thought of harming anybody. The closest she’s ever come to violence was more than twenty years ago, when she was a junior in high school. With two girls from her soccer team, she’d managed to get floor tickets to a Roaring Tweedies show at the Forum in Inglewood. For weeks, they talked of little else, and because the show ran late they each lied to the others’ mothers that they were having a sleepover. On the day of the concert, though, their rideshare hit traffic downtown and by the time they arrived at the venue the opening band was already playing. They wouldn’t be able to get close to the stage now. Worse, Sara had trouble getting her ticket scanned. “Text us once you’re in,” the other two girls said, abandoning her with shocking ease at the doors.

Sara tried to get help, but the usher took one look at the pass on her phone and told her to step aside, her ticket was already used. He was an older man with skin tags on his neck and narrow eyes that seemed to expect the worst in people. “You can’t come in.”

“I have a pass. Look.”

“It’s fake. You think I can’t tell?”

With the bravado of a fifteen-year-old, she cussed him.

The next moment the black suede boots she’d saved up for months to buy were grazing the floor as he dragged her by the collar toward the main gate. She was breathless from the shock of the assault, but she recovered and elbowed him until he let go of her. “Get your hands off me, asshole.”

Had their confrontation ended there, it would have been unremarkable, the kind of thing that happens at concerts all the time, but Sara was so angry that he’d ruined her shoes that she shoved him. She was a midfielder on her soccer team, was used to tackling and being tackled. But the usher turned out to be more fragile than she expected, and he fell from the force of her thrust, hitting his arm on the metal railing before landing on the ground.

A bunch of concertgoers stopped to gawk. “Call security!” someone shouted, and a minute later two burly guys showed up, asking what the hell was going on.

“She attacked me,” the usher said. He barely had a scratch on him, but now he was nursing his arm as if Sara had broken it. She told the security guards that he’d put his hands on her first and showed them her ticket, but even though they conceded it was valid, they escorted her out to the main gate. You’re lucky we didn’t call the cops, one of them said.

Sara used to have a temper on her, she’ll be the first to admit that. But as she got older, went to college, transitioned to a career, she learned to maintain her calm even if she was boiling with rage. Take a beat, she’d tell herself. Count to three before saying anything. How else would she have managed to keep a job in the bourgeois milieu of museum work? Rarely does she give in to her first impulse anymore. She learned to be cautious; that was the price of the ticket.

The algorithm sees something else in her, though, something unruly and violent, and expects her to yield to these instincts. Its designers would say that the algorithm knows her better than she knows herself—an idea that makes her want to put her fist through a wall.

But she won’t, she won’t.

—

The cafeteria is especially loud this morning. From the kitchen comes the hissing of an aging refrigerator, the gurgling of water in the sink, the clacking of metal trays. A maintenance worker stands on a ladder with a drill, repairing a loose camera mount on the far wall. Beneath the windows a service truck is idling, angry music blaring from its stereo. But the noise doesn’t appear to bother anyone else at the table; they chatter on as usual. Lucy is complaining that the greasy food at Madison has made her put on weight; she would do anything for fresher and healthier meals. At this, Eisley perks up, but Lucy raises a hand to stop her. “Save it. I’m not talking about exercise, I’m talking about the food.”

Sara takes a sip of her herbal tea. It has a stronger body and a smoother finish today, without the bitter flavor to which she’s grown accustomed. “Is this a new brand?”

Alice tries it. “Tastes the same to me.”

Marcela breathes in the aroma of her cup, and closes her eyes. “Hmm-mm. Such a delicate blend,” she says, “with just the right hints of chlorine and soap.”

The others laugh.

Yet Sara finds the tea reviving, and even flavorful. She’s already used to processed meats and fake fruit, so this is only another adjustment. What else will she start liking out of sheer habituation? The toilet-and-sink combo in her room? The shower that automatically turns off after five minutes? With a clank she drops the metal cup in its slot on the tray.

“I don’t care much for tea myself,” Lucy says, jabbing at her fried potatoes in a quick, repetitive motion. “Apart from decent food, what I miss most is a good drink. A glass of wine with dinner, a little amaro after, a cocktail every now and then. Keeps the engines running, you know what I mean?”

Marcela sniffs. “I knew someone like that when I worked as a cater waitress. She liked to have a drink or three with dinner. I remember she always gave the same toast. May the roof above us never fall in, and may we as friends never fall out. She was a lot of fun, one of the best waitresses I worked with. Never complained when the guests were rude or the party ran late. Then she got caught stealing jewelry and got fired.”

“Did that happen a lot?” Eisley asks.

“Stealing on the job? No, of course not. That’s why we were all so surprised.”

If this is a sly reference to the accusations against Lucy, Sara thinks, it seems to be working, because Lucy has gone quiet. She stabs at her food with renewed vigor, looking like she’d rather be somewhere else. Changing tables would attract the attention of the attendants, though, so she sits glumly through the meal.

The idling truck outside departs in a roar. For a blissful moment Sara thinks it’s gone for good, but it stops in a different spot on the street and the idling starts again. Is it not possible to have a moment’s peace in this place? She turns to Alice. “Where’s Toya?”

“She didn’t want to come down for breakfast. She got an extra three months, and she’s taking it pretty hard.”

“She must’ve done something,” Eisley says, shaking her head.

Sara frowns. “None of us are here for what we’ve done, remember?”

“Right. But I mean, if they’re keeping her here this long, then they must have something on her.”

Sara suppresses the urge to snap; after all, she was once the new girl, too, she knows what it’s like to cling to the belief that the system works, despite its shocking flaws. Eisley is desperate to be out when her twenty-one-day hold is completed, ergo the only people who are held longer at Madison must have done something to deserve it. She’s still in denial, Sara thinks. “How hard do you think it is to make one of us look guilty?” she asks. “We’re already under suspicion. Once the algorithm has a case to make, it picks out the evidence it needs from the data it can access.”

“Wait. Are you an engineer?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know how algorithms work.” Eisley looks around the table, as if she expects the others to agree with her. But she’s still new around here, and the other retainees wait to see how this plays out.

“No, but I know how archives work. When you have a database of millions or trillions of items, you can’t go in blind. You have to find a way to sort through the records. Like, you might start with a name, or a year, or a subject heading, and see what materials you find and what story they tell you. The problem is, if there’s contradictory material and it happens to be indexed with terms you don’t use or don’t know about, then you’re not getting the full story. I’m pretty sure the algorithm does the same thing. It’s looking for data that relates to our suspicious dreams, nothing else.”

Eisley seems surprised at this retort, and it takes her a moment to recover. “But obviously if they kept your friend for this long, they must have proof she’s a serious risk to others. I mean, there’s no smoke without fire.”

“What proof are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. They must have some kind of record on her.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eisley rests her chin on her hand. “Please, enlighten me.”

The nerve of this woman! She knows nothing about Toya Jones, met her only a week ago, and yet she keeps making insinuations about her guilt. “I’m saying,” Sara replies, her voice sharpened by irritation now, “the RAA is bound to miss exculpatory evidence because it’s not looking for it in the first place.”

Four pairs of eyes stare at Sara. Although the women can argue for hours on end about frivolous subjects, any mention of actual guilt or innocence makes them uncomfortable. It’s too sensitive a subject, liable to bring up imperfect pasts, tense futures.

Plus, with Hinton nearby, who would want to say anything about the RAA at all?

“Now who’s being loud?” Eisley asks. She takes a bite of the potatoes, then, shielding her chewing behind a dainty hand, she turns to Alice. “Didn’t you tell me they charged someone a couple of months ago?”

“Sybil Wyatt.”

“See?”

“No, I don’t.” The police came when Sara was doing an evening shift in Trailer D, but she’s heard the story enough times from the others she feels as if she’s witnessed it herself. “They’d told her she was in for child endangerment, but when they came they charged her with mortgage fraud after one of her business partners turned her in. So the charge had nothing to do with the algorithm.”

“How can you say it had nothing to do with it? She committed fraud! The algorithm was right about her, she’s a criminal. And what about the one who was arrested for assault? Gordon.”

“Gorda, you mean. That’s just her nickname, by the way. Her real name is Angie Moreno. That happened here, they arrested her on the residential floor. She cut her roomie during a fight.” Heat rises to Sara’s cheeks. “But my point is, the algorithm didn’t predict shit. This fucking place drove her to violence.”

“How do you know she wouldn’t have attacked someone outside Madison?”

Sara has no answer to this. The very logic of this place is that it protects innocent people. Every arrest confirms the necessity of forensic observation, and every release proves that compliance is all that is required to reenter society.

“Aren’t you two a ray of sunshine in the morning,” Lucy whispers.

At some point during the back-and-forth with Eisley, the idling truck left. The maintenance worker who was fixing the camera mount is done; he’s carrying the ladder to the door, trying not to hit any tables on his way out. It’s finally quiet again. “I’m just saying,” Sara mutters.

“Usually, we can’t get a word out of this girl,” Marcela says, “and now she’s talking our ears off about archives.”

Alice nudges her. “You been holding out on us, Professor. What else you got?”

“Nothing.” Sara wanted to stand up for Toya, but she was also defending herself, in case one of the others casts doubt on her behind her back. No matter what the RAA says, she is not planning to commit a crime.

The bell rings. Sara was too busy talking; she didn’t eat her meal.

—

The hallway is dimly lit, the wall cold to the touch. As the line for the PostPal comm pods moves, snatches of conversation reach her: one woman asks about her teenage daughter’s college applications, another whispers to her husband, a third begs her brother for updates about her legal case. An hour passes before it’s Sara’s turn. She waits for the system to bring up her face and ID number, then dials Elias’s smartphone. He picks up on the fourth ring, accepts the collect charge. Then his face fills the screen. “Is everything okay?” he asks by way of greeting.

“Everything’s fine,” she says, reflexively. Everything is not fine, not by a long shot. Still, she holds back her complaints, tries to start their conversation on a positive note. “How are you?”

“I’m working.” He’s walking down a corridor as he holds his phone, passing walls filled with framed posters of abstract art—mostly Klee, by the looks of it. The sight is nearly exotic to Sara now, so used has she become to the bare walls at Madison. Elias turns a corner, and she tries not to think about the motion sickness that handheld cameras usually give her. She tells herself to focus on him instead. “What’s up?” he asks, his thick brows already knotted in anticipation of some problem.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just wanted to hear your voice. We haven’t spoken in a while.” He opens a door and takes a seat at a desk she doesn’t recognize. Finally, the picture stops moving. Elias is wearing the blue button-down shirt she gave him last year for his birthday. A badge is clipped on his breast pocket. He looks tanned, healthy, freshly shaved. “Did you get a haircut?” Sara asks.

“Last week,” he says, running his hand over the top of his head. “It was getting too long.”

“You look great. But where are you? This doesn’t look like your office.”

“I’m on the main campus, filling in for a colleague who’s on sick leave. And it’s Tuesday, so I have my office hours with the new hire.” He clears his throat. “You sure everything’s okay? Did the lawyer get in touch or something?”

“No, I haven’t heard from him at all.”

“So what’s up?”

“Like I said, I just wanted to talk to you. Do I have to have a reason to call?”

“No, I was just asking.” A phone rings somewhere in the office. He looks up, waits for someone to pick up, then returns his attention to the screen.

Sara realizes she’s gripping the plastic ledge of the comm pod. Stay calm, she tells herself, take a deep breath. “How are the kids?”

“They’re fine.”

“That’s it? Just fine?”

“Sara,” he says with a sigh, “now isn’t a good time for me to chat. I’m really busy at work and—”

“You haven’t written me or visited in four weeks. And you forgot my birthday. How about that? You forgot my birthday. Is that a good enough reason for you to take five minutes from your busy schedule to talk to me?”

He looks up, worried that someone might have heard Sara’s angry voice. Then he stands, and the nauseating movement starts up again. She looks away, keeping the PostPal screen in her peripheral vision, until after her husband closes his office door and sits down at his desk again. “I was going to send you a gift, I just haven’t had a chance yet. Between work and the kids, I’ve been crazy busy.”

“It’s not about that,” she says, swallowing bile. “I don’t care about getting a gift, you know that. I just want to hear from you every once in a goddamn while, get a note or a visit. I just feel…” Being forgotten at Madison is perhaps her biggest fear, so rarely acknowledged that her voice fails her. The world has already moved on without her. What if her husband, too, is moving on with his life? “I want to feel,” she says in a whisper, “like I matter to you.”

The retainees in line behind her are eavesdropping—the argument is an entertainment for those who’ve never had fights like these and a consolation to those who have. But for Sara, it’s just another humiliation, to add to all the others that Madison has brought her.

Elias’s lips tighten. “Well, I’m sorry,” he says, his voice rising now. “I’m sorry I have so much on my plate that I didn’t get a chance to visit or write. I had my performance review at work. My roommate clogged the kitchen sink twice this month. And I had to take the kids to the pediatrician.”

“Wait, are they sick? You said they were fine.”

“They needed their shots.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You know, this isn’t easy for me, either. Maybe you should’ve thought about that before getting yourself detained.”

“That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It wasn’t your fault the first time. You shouldn’t’ve been sent to Madison. But all you had to do was follow the rules, Sara. How hard is it to follow directions? You wouldn’t be there this long if you’d just followed the rules, like I’ve been saying this whole time.”

The blame in his voice takes Sara’s breath away. Her life has been stolen from her, but instead of the thieves who ran off with it, she’s the one her husband thinks is at fault. Is this why he hasn’t written to her in a month? Is he starting to believe what the RAA says about her, that she’s secretly a delinquent, that she could be a danger to him? The shock she feels quickly dissolves into despair. If she were charged with a crime, it would be easy enough to dispute the allegations against her, or deny them, or provide an alternate explanation. But without an actual crime she can’t prove her innocence—not even to her husband, apparently. And if her own husband has doubts about her, how can she hope to convince a panel of strangers to let her out?

“Look, I didn’t mean it that way,” he says after a moment. “I’m just tired, and on top of it all work is insanely busy right now.”

“Then I’ll let you get back to it.”

She hangs up without saying goodbye. Even when the screen is off, the bile continues to rise in her throat.