Page 28 of The Dream Hotel
T he first thing she notices on her return to the residential floor is the cameras hanging limply from their cords, their glass eyes gouged out. Someone must’ve taken advantage of the power outage and the chaos of the evacuation to destroy the surveillance equipment upstairs. Whoever the vandal is, Sara thinks, she’s a hero. Not being watched, even if it’s only on the second floor and only until the cameras are fixed, feels to her like a sip of freedom. It won’t quench her thirst, but it’ll keep her going. And even though the toilets reek and the floors are blanketed with ash, she has a room, with its bed and blanket, its framed picture of the children, its little window.
This is another thing Madison is trying to teach her, she realizes.
Be grateful for the little you have, a voice inside her says. You never know when they might take even that away.
Still, the return to the retention center is rough. A weird stomach bug, which some of the retainees contracted when they were at Victorville, seems to be spreading fast. It has already laid up five women, and that means their shifts will be reassigned tomorrow, on top of the extended shifts the CRO just announced. There are not enough clean uniforms to go around for everyone, the infirmary is out of tampons, and the smell of rotting food has spread from the cafeteria to the rest of the facility. Dinner has been pushed back to seven to allow time for the kitchen to be cleaned.
But at least there are showers.
Be grateful for the little you have.
For two hours Sara waits her turn. The water, when it hits her skin, is nothing short of a miracle. She lathers and scrubs and rinses for five luxurious minutes. Then the timer beeps, and she wraps herself in a towel and steps into the pale light of the locker room. The bruise on her arm has grown purple, the broken nail on her big toe has fallen off. She rubs lotion all over her body, massaging the areas that are still sore from the nights she spent on the floor of the gym. She brushes her teeth and applies cream to her face, but no matter how long she takes with her anointments she has to put on her dirty uniform again, its smell somehow more revolting than it was before.
But at least there are comm pods.
Be grateful for the little you have.
On her way to call Elias, she passes the Case Management office, where Gardner is removing the Halloween decorations that have been hanging from the service window for the last month. He’s already peeled off the glow-in-the-dark skeleton and the black netting, and now he’s unhooking the string of orange bulbs. A roll of paper towels and a spray bottle sit on the counter. “Hussein,” Gardner says as she passes him, “H-U-S-S-E-I-N.”
It’s a running joke to him; he makes it whenever he sees her. The first couple of times Gardner did this, Sara asked him why he was spelling out her name. Was there an update in her case? Then for many weeks she ignored him, thinking that withholding her attention would make him stop. But today something comes over her, and she laughs along with him, throwing her head back and slapping her knees. It is a scornful laugh, a laugh that says nothing can touch her after what she’s been through these last few days, not even the petty cruelties of small clerks.
Gardner stops what he’s doing to stare at her.
Sara stares back, her lips still stretched into a smile.
“Keep it moving, all right?”
“Sure thing.” She walks down the hallway, noticing at once how good it feels to move her limbs after five days in lockup.
Be grateful for the little you have.
But something has shifted in her, she realizes as she waits in line. The filth and stink of her uniform, which persist even after she’s washed herself, are giving her a new clarity about her situation, its false hopes and stubborn misconceptions. She’s been so focused on her case, from its absurd start through its successive delays, that despite being at Madison for ten months she’s failed to see how much she has in common with the other retainees. Not just the struggle to be free or the rage against stupid rules, but the vulnerability that this place has exposed in them. It comes to her then that facing her vulnerability is the only way to remove pretense from her interactions with others, and allow her to rely on the friendships she has made.
Finally her turn comes. She dials, her heartbeat quickening as she imagines Elias at work, hearing his phone ring, but finding it buried under the usual clutter on his desk. It will take a second or two for him to locate it, press the green button, and sink into a chair to talk to her. But after a few rings, the call goes to voicemail.
Her disappointment is short-lived. On her return to her room she finds out she has mail—an express package from Elias, dated two days before the evacuation. It contains respirator masks, bottles of water, energy bars, hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, and a miniature first-aid kit, each wrapped in plastic. Maybe Elias doesn’t write her as often as she likes, and, yes, they hit a rough patch, but he’s trying to show he cares. He’s taken the trouble—as well as the expense, which these days they can scarcely afford—of ordering these items from the only commercial site approved by Safe-X.
Yet Sara remains puzzled by the arrival of the package. If her husband was keeping an eye on the Perris fire, and had time enough to ship her some emergency supplies, then why wasn’t the CRO prepared? And if he wasn’t, then someone higher up at the company? Safe-X maintains hundreds of facilities spread across twenty-two U.S. states. Surely they have the logistical means to handle an emergency. They’re traded on the stock exchange, for God’s sake. Why didn’t they evacuate the women until the last possible minute, and to an overcrowded retention center ninety miles away? Whether it’s indifference or malice she has no idea.
But she knows she can’t be grateful for it.
—
The cafeteria is full to capacity, the windows already steamed by the time Sara and Emily get their trays and join the others at their usual table. The hum of conversation is a perfect current, drowning individual voices in its ebb and flow. Dinner is spaghetti in a meat sauce, served with a kid-size apple juice and a cheese stick. It takes Sara a couple of tries to unwrap the cheese stick; they haven’t had anything to eat since they left Victorville, and her hands are shaking with hunger.
“Our room was searched while we were gone,” Alice says.
“The cots were turned over,” Toya cuts in, eager to tell the story herself. “Pillows and sheets all over the place, a total mess. But the weird thing is, our photos and papers and things are untouched. Even my origami birds are where I left them.”
“I wonder what they were looking for,” Sara says.
“They searched 203 and 209, too.”
“Was anything missing in those rooms?”
“Nope.”
Sara takes a bite of cheese. 203 is Linh Nguyen and Claire Lopez, and 209 is Ana Guerrero and Stephanie Michaels. They’re all long haulers with a history of disciplinary actions. “They’re trying to identify the saboteur,” she says.
“The what?” Emily asks.
“Whoever broke the cameras. They’re looking for what she might’ve used to cause so much damage to their cameras.” She finishes the cheese stick in two quick bites, then picks up her spork. “But even that doesn’t make sense, because they should’ve searched the entire floor, not just those rooms.”
Emily sucks her teeth in mock disapproval. “You can tell Hinton’s not on duty.”
Sara’s thoughts flit to her journal. Before coming down to dinner she went to check the trash cans by the back gate, but they had been emptied already, the only garbage in them remnants of the attendants’ lunch. If she wants to find out what happened to her notebook, she’ll have to ask Hinton. “Maybe he has the day off.”
Emily frowns. “In the middle of the week? That’s not like him. Anyway, maybe it wasn’t the attendants who turned the rooms upside down. Maybe it was someone looking for shit to steal or trade.”
“If it’s another retainee,” Alice says, looking suddenly aggrieved, “they had plenty of time to go through our stuff. We were on the last bus back, ’cause we got delayed behind a truck at the freeway exit.”
“A lot of good it did them.” Toya laughs. “I don’t have anything worth stealing.”
“But still, that’s messed up,” Alice continues. “You think you know people, but really you don’t. I mean, look what happened with Lucy Everett.”
Marcela looks up from her food. “Don’t mention that bitch again. I want to eat in peace.”
“ Soo -rry,” Alice says, raising her hands. “Speaking of which, did you all notice that the screens in the hallway haven’t been updated? They still show the hearings from last week.”
“They haven’t pushed the button is all. You’re up again soon?”
“In December. But I wonder what’ll happen to the people who missed their dates because of the Perris fire.”
Sara takes a sip of apple juice. “They’ll go to the back of the line. Like it was with me when the government shut down.” Madison is run like a factory, she thinks. The conveyor belts move twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn’t matter if there’s a snowstorm or a tornado, if there’s a presidential election or a championship finals game, if a worker is sick or pregnant or injured: the conveyor belts keep moving. Every retainee is processed through Safe-X’s software, which keeps track of dates, infractions, and extensions. When a hearing with the RAA is marked Missed, the retainee goes back in line to wait for the next available hearing—assuming she’s not written up for bad behavior in the meantime.
“God,” Alice says, wiping tomato sauce from the side of her mouth, “I just hope there’s not another fire before my hearing.”
Marcela chuckles. “Or a flash flood.”
“A mudslide.”
“A blizzard.”
“An earthquake.”
“Come on, guys. That’s not funny.”
The women eat their sticky, greasy spaghetti without complaint; it’s the first hot meal they’ve had since they were evacuated last week. How relieved we all are to be back to our narrow rooms, Sara thinks, our hot showers, our square meals. But in a day or two we will want more, and then what? “We have to stop the conveyor belt,” she says.
Marcela puts her hand over her nose; the stench from Sara’s uniform is powerful, and rifling through the trash cans before dinner didn’t help. “What’re you talking about?”
“We have to stop working. This place can’t run without us, and the longer they hold us, the more money they make. That’s why they’re always writing us up, and when we follow the rules, they come up with new ones for us to break.” She looks around the table. “But if we refuse to work, their costs go up, and their revenue goes down. They might decide this facility isn’t profitable enough, and close it. And anyway even if they don’t, why should we help them keep us locked up in here? Why should we contribute to our own detention? We should make them pay for having us here. We have to stop working.” She pauses to take another sip, moving the straw around the bottom to catch every drop.
“Easy for you to say,” Marcela says, cutting a meatball in half. “I bet you have money in your commissary account. And when it runs out, your husband can send you more.”
“Not really,” Sara replies. When she turns in her damaged sheet to the laundry office, she’ll be hit with a financial penalty for damaging company property, so any money she might receive from Elias will go first to repaying Safe-X before it can be put in her commissary. In any case, she doesn’t want to ask her husband for more money, because he already has two mortgages to pay, her student loan to service, diapers and formula to buy, not to mention the upkeep for the Volvo he bought on a whim before their lives took an unexpected turn. Even after taking in a paying roommate and cycling through his credit cards, he’s been struggling. The truth is, they’ll be paying debt from her retention for years to come. “But you understand what I’m trying to say?”
Alice’s eyes dart to the attendant station, where Ortega sits, looking at his Tekmerion. He’s a lanky guy who ordinarily works the main gate, checking visitors’ credentials and biometrics, but tonight he has been put on cafeteria watch. Then Alice asks, her voice dropping even further, “You want to go on s-t-r-i-k-e?”
Sara becomes aware she’s taking another huge risk. It is foolish to tempt fate again, after miraculously escaping notice last week. But how else can she survive this place? She has to take a chance on the other retainees, joining her life to theirs. “Yes,” she says, the acknowledgment making her face flush.
“Let’s just eat in peace,” Marcela pleads. “Can we do that? Can we eat in peace?”
“I’m up again soon,” Alice says somberly, her voice so low Sara has to lean over the table to hear. “I don’t want any problems.”
“We just got back today,” Marcela adds, her tone halfway between horror and admiration, “and you’re already looking for trouble.”
Something about the phrase takes Sara back to her childhood, to those awful years spent watching herself, not daring to jump around, make a mess, be loud, get in a fight, or even bring home a bad grade lest her father lose his temper. Even now, the idea that she might be to blame silences her, makes her feel alone.
“That’s not what this is,” Toya counters. “She’s talking about collective organizing, which is a protected right.”
Gratitude washes over Sara. “Yes, exactly.”
“Except in this place. Prisoners don’t have a right to s-t-r-i-k-e.”
“I thought you said this wasn’t a prison.”
“It’s not.” Toya tilts her head. “But it’s not not a prison, you know? The courts haven’t ruled on retention centers, so it’s kind of a gray area.”
“Oh.” Sara feels deflated again.
“The only way to find out,” Toya adds, with mischief gleaming in her eyes, “is to go ahead and do it. See what happens.”
Marcela dips her cheese stick in the spaghetti sauce. “Can’t we just eat in peace?”
“Look, I don’t want another extension,” Alice says. “I can’t take any more of this shithole, I just can’t.”
“We get it,” Toya tells her, patting her arm. “You’ve made yourself clear.”
All of a sudden Ortega gets up from his chair, his Tekmerion in hand.
The women fall silent, but Ortega walks past them to a table where five younger, rowdier retainees are eating. Still looking at his Tekmerion, he touches Victoria on the shoulder. “You’ve been selected for blood and urine tests,” he tells her.
Victoria’s usual bravado is gone. She points to her tray, asks if she can finish her meal, please, she’s only halfway through. But Ortega won’t budge. After a minute she gets up and follows him to the door, where another attendant stands, waiting to escort her to the infirmary. A moment later, the din of conversation picks up again.
“So what about you?” Sara asks Emily. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
Emily shrugs.
“Just look what happened last week,” Sara presses. “They weren’t prepared for the evacuation, didn’t even give us masks. We barely made it out.”
“But we’re not in any danger now.” Emily has lost her appetite for adventure, it’s clear.
Sara turns to Alice and Marcela again, but they give her the same studiously neutral expressions they reserve for the cameras. She and Toya will have to do this on their own.
—
The next morning it is Williams who walks through the gate at six, dragging his heels, leaving long, dark streaks on the gray floors. He runs through device check at a leisurely pace, at one point stopping to chat with Victoria, though she doesn’t seem particularly interested in talking to him; she goes back to her room as soon as her scan is complete. But this isn’t the only thing that feels out of the ordinary, and it takes Sara another minute to tease out what it is: the cameras that track everyone’s movements are dead. She can stand over the white line, chat with her roommate, laugh about her situation or cry over it without feeding morsels of information to a greedy algorithm.
“Where’s Hinton?” she asks when Williams brings the scanner to her head.
“Out sick.”
“How long will he be gone?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you care?”
“Just wondering.”
Where is her notebook? It’s one thing for an AI to digest data from her dreams, spitting out predictions as it goes, but another for the senior attendant at Madison, a man she despises, or tells herself she despises, to read the narrative of her dream life, entertaining himself with the impressions and memories and questions she has so carefully recorded. She would do anything not to cede that power to him.
But maybe she’s wrong, she tells herself consolingly, and Hinton hasn’t bothered to look at her notebook. His mind was on the fire, surely, and he was eager to evacuate. So he tossed it away, maybe in the garbage can in the attendants’ locker room, and now it’s somewhere in a landfill, buried under mountains of trash that seagulls are picking through for anything edible. She lingers over that image, disturbing as it may be, for the assurance it gives her that her secrets are safe.
The thought that Hinton might have turned in her dream journal as evidence to the RAA is so depressing that she packs it away in a far corner of her mind, never to be brought out again.
She returns to her room and wraps herself in her blanket. Madison isn’t properly insulated; it’s always either too cold or too hot. Emily eyes her from the mirror above the sink, where she’s washing up. “So you’re not going to work?”
“No. That’s what I told you yesterday.”
“I thought you were just talking, and got carried away.” She dries her face, then stares at Sara for a minute. “Your score’ll go up if you don’t work.”
“I’ve been working for eight months, look where it got me.”
After Emily leaves for her early shift, Sara washes up and goes to the window. The sky is slowly lightening to silver. White clouds sit like cotton balls on the horizon. The creosote bushes that border the road tremble in the breeze, but it seems the jackrabbits and roadrunners that ordinarily live on the mountain have yet to return. The bus stop is empty. Perhaps the old woman hasn’t returned to Ellis from wherever she was evacuated. Or, a more tragic possibility, her house has been damaged in the fire, the straw she uses to make her baskets feeding the flames, and she can’t return home yet.
Like me, Sara thinks. Home feels so remote to her these days that it’s become less a place than an idea, whose expanse she can hold in her mind but no longer inhabit. Madison is where she lives now, where for the safety of others her impulses and dreams and desires are contained.
A moment later the bus comes down the street, the driver not bothering to slow down at the stop sign, and Sara turns away from the window.
She wants to find out more about the fire, but when she goes down to the library she has to wait until the breakfast bell rings before people begin to leave and a seat at the computers opens up. The photographs in the Los Angeles Times look like snapshots of the apocalypse: red and orange skies looming over San Bernardino, evacuees sitting in gridlocked traffic, frightened horses being herded onto a trailer, trees shorn of leaves and burned black. Worse are the pictures from Lake Perris, where the whole town burned to the ground.
Even in Ellis, she discovers, the damage is far more extensive than what she glimpsed from the obscured window of the Safe-X bus. The fire has claimed some fifty buildings on the eastern side of town, including a grocery store, a pharmacy, and two fast-food restaurants, but also a historic pool hall, built in the same architectural style as Madison, and which had been used by a local community organization as a space to provide services for the elderly. At least two people have died, and dozens suffered injuries and smoke inhalation. Sara tries to find out more, but Ellis is too small of a town to command much coverage in the Times, and after clicking and scrolling for a while without success, she turns to the rest of the news.
The congressman whose corruption allegations dominated headlines a few weeks ago has disappeared from the front page, replaced by a television actor who’s been caught with an underage girl. The pharmaceutical company that makes Cerephy is standing firm on the cost of its dementia-treatment pill, despite mounting pressure from advocates and families of Alzheimer’s patients, who accuse it of rank extortion. Tensions continue to rise between the two private water companies in California, and there is speculation about a hostile takeover.
Disappointingly there is no news on the RAA. Instead, the paper is running an editorial on criminal justice reform, which calls retention a humane tool for reducing violence because it saves American communities both the trauma of the crime and the cost of prosecuting it. It’s time to leave antiquated notions of punishment behind, the editorial concludes, and expand our bias-free, science-based crime prevention system.
Sara tries not to think about this system, and focus instead on Madison. She doesn’t want to contribute to Safe-X’s bottom line any longer. What a shame that Toya is the only one in her group who agrees with her about the necessity of the strike. She was hoping to find more support, at least among her friends. Still, even if her efforts are too small to be of consequence, she has to start somewhere.
I have to do this for my own sanity, she thinks. My self-respect.
She returns to her cell, finding it empty. The solitude feels like a wonderful novelty after the week at Victorville. Sitting on her cot, she eats one of the power bars Elias sent her. She chews slowly, savoring the taste of nuts and caramel, and with her fingernail picks out all the crumbs that fall on her blanket. The hint of apricot she detects beneath the caramel brings back memories of her mother, who used to make jams and compotes every summer. The house smelled of fruit and sugar for days, while the top shelf in the pantry slowly filled with mason jars labeled in her neat handwriting. Even now Sara associates that fruity scent with happiness, with a time in her life when her family was whole, mother father daughter son, in a cluttered cottage not far from campus, with a magnolia tree out front and a lemon tree in the back.
But after Sa?d died, Omar’s questions about the accident lingered over the house like a foul smell. Why did Sara’s mother stay home on the day of the Millers’ party? He got headaches all the time, and he still went to work. Why did Aunt Hiba go to the store for more ice? The children were left unattended for over an hour. Why did Uncle James have to play music at such a high volume? Sa?d must’ve cried for help, thrashed in the water, made some kind of noise. What was he doing outside, anyway? The children had been told to stay inside. Why did Zach give up looking for Sa?d? They were supposed to play together. And the worst, the most painful question of all: Why did Sara not let her brother hide in the coat closet with her?
Omar was well versed in the role that chance played in shaping the cosmos, yet he had trouble accepting its minute effect over his own life. He wanted to apportion blame for the accident and, dissatisfied with the answers he got, he retreated into pained silence, spending as much time as he could in his lab. The Millers decided to move, putting an entire continent between them and Omar’s denunciations.
But Sara’s poor mother accepted her guilt without complaint or protest, and set about redeeming herself. She was always on watch, fearful that in a moment’s inattention something might happen to her only surviving child. She never let Sara walk home from school or take the bus with her friends, instead shuttling her in the car anywhere she needed to go. She scheduled regular visits to the pediatrician and treated even the mildest cold as though it might be a sign of pneumonia. Sara’s friends were the subjects of stealthy, yet thorough investigations into whether they used drugs or alcohol. At times the attention could be suffocating, and in order to get away from it Sara had to lie to her mother.
Maybe “lie” isn’t the right word, Sara thinks. She just taught herself to be careful what information she shared, and with whom. As a teenager she created two social media accounts, one to use with her friends and one curated for her mom, and proved so adept at keeping them separate that she made a habit of it. Her well-behaved self was what she showed to the adults in her life, so that her more troubled self could roam free with the friends she trusted. Hearing her mother click her tongue in disapproval every time she scrolled through Zach’s Printastic feed confirmed Sara’s belief in the necessity of her choice. “That kid’s gonna get in trouble,” Sara’s mother would say, inhaling deeply from her cigarette.
What an irony that Sara is now under retention, while Zach is writing to her with advice. But is it true, as he said in his email, that it was Sa?d who chipped her front tooth when they were playing the zombie game? That afterwards her father had tried to keep the peace by pairing her with Zach during their fishing trip? No, no, no. Sa?d was only six or seven at the time; it had to have been Zach who pushed her down on the driveway. In any case, Zach seems to have turned his life around now, even getting an award from the Chamber of Commerce in Orlando for his service to the community.
The sound of hammering from the other end of the building interrupts her thoughts; the construction workers are back this morning. It seems there are more of them, too, because the noise is louder than before. They must be trying to catch up on lost workdays. There haven’t been any new admissions this week, Sara realizes. Perhaps the CRO is waiting for construction to be completed before admitting new cases. According to Alice, who heard it from someone in custodial, bed capacity will increase to 184. How the same cafeteria, showers, library, and infirmary will serve nearly fifty percent more retainees, Sara has no idea.
She’s discarding the wrapper from her breakfast bar when Jackson appears at the door. She wears new prescription glasses, with tortoiseshell frames that make her look like a prep school matron, the impression somehow undermined by her multiple earrings and the electric blue of her nail polish. “Hussein,” she says, “get to work. You’re late.”
“I quit.”
“What? No one told me.” Jackson scrolls through the work schedule on her tablet. “You’re still listed here, see.”
Sara’s gaze falls on the tablet, where a color-coded grid shows a list of retainees, their work assignments, current locations, and performance metrics, the numbers rolling at an astonishing speed. Again she’s reminded of colonial censuses, the piles of ledgers maintained by small clerks across the empire, and that made the extraction of labor more efficient. The whole enterprise depended on careful note-taking, on accounting for every native with the highest degree of accuracy. “That’s so strange,” she says, her voice rising to indicate surprise. “I filled out the form on the day we evacuated. Maybe it got lost when the power went out?”
“Great, just great. My schedule’s already messed up after last week, and now you’re quitting on me.” With one finger Jackson types Sara’s name on her device, waits for the profile to load, and enters the date. Then, reading from the prompt, she asks, “What’s the reason for resigning from your assignment?”
“I just told you, I quit.”
“That’s not on the list.” She scrolls through the pull-down menu again. “I’ll just select Unwilling to Work .”
What a distinction, Sara thinks. Resigning is what innocent people do, out there in the free world, but here she’s a retainee, which means that the impulse to quit can only come from laziness or ineptitude or insubordination. Now it can be used to charge an additional penalty anytime she breaks a rule at Madison.
“If you don’t like Trailer D,” Jackson continues, toggling from tab to tab, “I can move you to custodial full-time. I need more bodies there.”
“No, I’m okay.”
“What about your Monday and Wednesday shifts in laundry? Don’t tell me you’re quitting those, too.”
“I am.”
“Lord have mercy,” she whispers, shaking her head. She follows the prompts to the final screen and marks Sara as having refused alternate assignments offered to her. Then she puts away her device and makes a show of waving a hand in front of her nose. “Girl, a shower wouldn’t kill you.”
“I did shower. I just can’t get a clean uniform yet.”
“Well, it’s gonna take even longer now. I have to find someone to replace you,” Jackson says, walking away. Just as Sara sits down on her cot again, she returns. “I almost forgot. You have a visit this afternoon at two.”
“For real?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding? Be downstairs by 1:45, all right?”
—
In her filthy uniform she goes to the PostPal office. She walks through a metal detector, gets a neuroprosthetic scan, and submits to a pat-down, after which the attendant ushers her into the waiting area. Signs posted at the entrance say that All Conversations Are Monitored and Visits Are a Privilege . Rachel Cosgrove from custodial is already waiting, sitting with her hands clasped over her stomach and her head resting against the wall. Her brown hair is parted down the middle, revealing two-inch gray roots that make her look older than she otherwise seems. On the clock above the door, the red hand moves sluggishly across the dial.
“Who’re you waiting for?” Rachel asks.
“My husband.”
“I’m waiting for my daughter. My eldest. She’s driving down from Fresno.”
“That’s a long ways from here” is all Sara can think to say.
“It was easier on her when I was at Fair View, ’cause that’s in Tulare County. Now she has to get up at five in the morning to make it down and back in one day. She’s a hospice nurse, she only gets one day off a week.”
“Fair View?”
“Where I was the first time. I was in three months.”
Sara doesn’t want to hear more; she folds her arms across her chest and turns her gaze to the wall. Rachel gets the hint, and an expectant silence falls between them. A cockroach emerges from behind the garbage bin, scurries across the floor, then ducks behind the bench. Time passes. A sign beneath the observation window says Keep Hands in View at All Times and another says Visits Limited to 30 Minutes, No Exceptions .
Sara starts to count the signs; there are sixteen of them, warning, instructing, forbidding, or ordering. She doesn’t dare move.
Then a few minutes after two, another attendant appears. She leads the two retainees down a gray corridor to the visiting room, where Elias is chatting with a pretty blonde in a jean skirt and platform boots. The perfume on the woman is familiar; it’s a scent Sara used to wear when she was in high school, but had to forgo once her allergies became more pronounced. Mohsin is toying with the tassel that hangs from the blonde’s purse, while Mona sits in Elias’s lap, playing with his car key fob.
At the sound of the door opening, all four look up. Elias stands, carefully depositing Mona on the floor, and comes toward Sara. Regret washes over her—she should’ve worked the laundry, she could’ve had a chance of getting clean clothes this afternoon, she could’ve looked more presentable. She has to fight the urge to run back to her room, to keep her filth hidden from her husband. “Thank God,” he says as they embrace. “I was so worried. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she replies. “I’m sorry about the stink.”
“Don’t worry about that.” He rubs her arms, as if to make sure she’s really there, standing in front of him. “I’m just glad they brought you back. They told us you were all transferred to another facility, but they wouldn’t tell us where or give us much information. Angie and I were just talking about that.”
“Who’s Angie?”
Elias tips his head toward Rachel Cosgrove’s daughter, who is leading her mom to a table across the room. They sit down, and are immediately engrossed in their own conversation.
“Did you have to evacuate, too?” Sara asks.
“Oh, no. But clinic was cancelled for the week because of the smoke. I stayed home with the kids. They went a little feral. Yesterday was the first day I could take them to the park. I think that’s why they didn’t mind the drive out here so much.”
Sara scoops up Mona. Her hair is a tangle of curls, thicker and darker than the last time Sara saw her, more than six weeks ago. But drawn by the tassel swinging from Angie’s purse, Mohsin has followed her to the other table. “Hey, buddy,” Elias calls out to him. “Leave that, please. Come say hi to Mama. Come.”
After some hesitation Mohsin returns. “What happened here?” Sara asks worriedly, running her finger over the huge scratch on his cheek.
“Mona happened. They were stuck at home too long, they started fighting.”
“Let’s go over here.” Carrying Mona, Sara picks the table farthest away from the Cosgroves. She sits down, with Elias across from her, and the clear plastic bag required by Safe-X between them. In it are the twins’ diapers, a changing blanket, a few toy cars, and a stuffed parrot.
“Your dad wanted to come,” Elias says. “But his Exo-Legs are being serviced and I didn’t want to wait. It was hard enough getting a visit through the system for today, I didn’t want to reschedule.”
“He can come on his own, you know. I haven’t seen him since August.”
“Well, it’s not as easy for him,” he says, rummaging through the clear bag for the toy cars. His fingers are long, his skin unblemished. Little tufts of hair sprout beneath his knuckles.
“Did he have to evacuate?”
“No, he was fine. He just couldn’t go on his walks like he usually does.”
“So he could’ve come.”
Though Elias has laid out toy cars on the table for him, Mohsin picks up the Volvo key fob and puts it in his mouth; Elias takes it out. It’s a small act, performed probably a dozen times a day with a toddler, but in its ordinariness it contains everything Sara has missed over the last year. “Come here, buddy,” she asks her son, patting her other knee, but Mohsin doesn’t pay any attention, he’s far too busy trying to get to the key fob again. “You want some chocolate from the machine?” she asks. A shameless bribe.
“No, no, they can’t have chocolate,” Elias says with a frown. “Not until they’re two.”
“Right,” she says, her face burning with embarrassment. “Of course. Sorry.”
She smooths down Mona’s polka-dot dress, parts her hair with a finger, and without brushing out the curls she winds each side into a bun, all the while cooing to her. The smell of her little girl is intoxicating; she buries her nose in her daughter’s neck and inhales.
For a while she tells Elias about Victorville: the dirty bathroom, the moldy bread, the women who had to walk around with bloodied pants, the cruel withholding of news about what’s happening outside the facility. Then the door opens, and a Safe-X attendant walks in. He stands in front of the first vending machine, which sells fruit cups and juices, checking its inventory against the numbers on his tablet. He starts whistling a tune, which Sara recognizes as a lullaby, though she can’t quite remember its name.
“So I talked to Adam Abdo,” Elias says.
This is the moment she has come to expect in every visit, but also to dread, because while the legal details her husband reports vary, the message remains the same.
Elias tells her that just in the last month the lawyer handled two cases that are similar to hers, and was able to win release for both of his clients at the twenty-one-day mark. He tells her it’s crucial that she keep her record clean, that she stay out of trouble, that she follow all the rules, because once they go before a judge, Abdo is confident he can get her out. He tells her there’s no reason why her case can’t proceed like those others. “But it’s crucial,” he concludes, “that you keep your head down. Just follow the rules.”
She can’t tell him about her attempt to escape during the fire, she realizes. Even if she’s evaded notice for it, which she isn’t fully convinced she has, she’s still in violation of the handbook because she tore up her sheet. Elias is working hard to keep up with the bills, and now she’s saddled him with a $300 penalty. She’s stopped wearing her hair in a bun, her uniform is filthy. She hasn’t maintained the standards of grooming and cleanliness that Safe-X mandates. Worst of all, she’s resigned from her job, and is trying to convince the others to do the same.
Sara kisses her daughter’s cheek. “Did you miss Mama?”
Mona examines Sara’s hair, puts a strand of it in her mouth, then gets bored and drops it. Her hand burrows in the neckline of Sara’s shirt, looking for a necklace to play with. A moment later she wants to get down from Sara’s lap. “Stay, baby. Stay.”
“Did you hear me?” Elias asks, his voice tinged with impatience.
“Yes, I heard.” She gets Mona the stuffed parrot from the diaper bag. “Does your parrot have a name?”
“Parrot,” Mona says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. She pushes a button on the stuffed animal, and its red wings make a fluttering sound. Another button, and it squeaks.
“Adam said you’ll get a hearing this month. December at the latest. He says they’re not going to want to carry the backlog from the shutdown into next year, because James Wesley has his eye on a Senate seat and he won’t want any scrutiny over his awful numbers. What, you don’t believe it?”
“It’s not that.” She shakes her head. “It’s just that how things sound out there has nothing to do with how they actually work in here.”
“I understand. But hang in there. Adam says it can’t be much longer now.”
The attendant has stopped whistling. He’s propped his glasses on his forehead and is typing something on his tablet. Across the room, Angie lets out a loud sob. She rests her head on her mother’s shoulder, and weeps unguardedly. Rachel whispers some words of comfort, but the crying only gets louder. The twins turn to watch, mouths open.
“Why she cry?” Mohsin asks.
“Because she’s upset, buddy,” Elias replies. “She’s sad.”
“Why?”
“She misses her mama.”
“That her mama?”
“Yes, that’s her.”
Mohsin starts for the other table, but Sara stops him with a hand on the shoulder. “I think they’d rather be alone, honey.” With a cry Mohsin wrestles himself out, and Elias has to run after him. “I’m so sorry,” he tells the Cosgroves.
“It’s okay, Elias,” Angie replies. She wipes her pretty face with a tissue and smiles at Mohsin. The strap of her leopard-print shirt has fallen off her shoulder, but she doesn’t readjust it. Sara isn’t an especially jealous person, but today she is nearly overcome with envy for Angie’s clean clothes, the bauble that dangles from her necklace, the pleather shoes that give her an extra two inches. Clearly Elias and Mohsin have both taken a liking to her. “It’s okay. He doesn’t bother me.”
“Come on, buddy,” Elias says, leading Mohsin back to their table and taking his seat across from Sara. In a whisper, he tells her that Angie’s wedding is scheduled for December, but apparently her mom got into a fight with her roommate and won’t make it to the wedding. That’s probably why Angie is crying.
“How do you know?”
“We were talking before you came in.”
“Ah.” Sara pulls her son onto her lap. “You’re such a sweet little boy,” she tells him, giving him a kiss on the cheek. She smooths down his shirt, where yellow hibiscus and plumeria flowers float on a sea of blue. “I wish I could’ve gone to Hawaii,” she says after a moment.
“We’ll go someday,” Elias says. “After you get out.”
“I missed my chance.” The feeling that life is passing her by hits her with such force she nearly doubles over from the pain. What has happened to her? In less than a year she has become someone she can hardly recognize, scared and filthy and stuck in an institution. She’s tried to follow the rules, she’s tried so hard, yet suspicion still hangs over her. She can’t seem to shake it. How does she look under the lens of the cameras on the wall? From this side she’s just a wife and mother trying to spend time with her family, but to the merchants of data from the other side she’s a Questionable trying to pass for a Clear.
The attendant is finished with the inventory; he puts his tablet in his back pocket and walks out, whistling his tune again. Mohsin reaches for a toy truck, revs the engine on his palm, then sets it down on the table. Mona is pressing the buttons on her stuffed parrot one after the other; the parrot whistles and chirps and clicks—a cacophony that seems to absorb her completely.
When Sara looks at Elias again she finds him staring. Does he sense that she’s withholding something from him? All he wants to talk about is keeping her record clean, being docile, doing everything she’s told in order to win her freedom. Why get into a fight and ruin this visit? He’ll find out soon enough about her dark and obdurate nature, which not even ten months in retention have been able to correct.
“What is it?” Elias whispers, taking her hand. “Tell me.”
“Oh, nothing,” Sara says, interlacing her fingers in his. He has beautiful hands, she thinks, hands that have never labored with tools or harsh chemicals. She’s never thought much about them before, but now their beauty is clear to her. Such things those hands could do to her between rustling sheets. Such things they did. She misses them every day. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“This,” she says, her chest filling with new sorrow. She has tried to comply, she has tried so hard, but the truth is she can’t follow the rules. Nor does she want to. “Everything.”
Then another attendant enters the room, locks the door in open position, and stands with his arms on his hips. A female voice comes on the loudspeaker. “Your visit is complete. Please collect your belongings and proceed to the exit.”
Elias puts the toys into the plastic bag, and picks up Mona. “I guess this is it.”
“When are you coming back?” Sara asks, with Mohsin still in her arms.
“I’m not sure. My missed appointments have to be rescheduled, so it’ll be a little while.” With a glance at the Cosgroves, he adds, “Just please remember what the lawyer said, okay?”
“I won’t forget.” Sara puts Mohsin down, but now he grabs her knee and refuses to let go.
“Give me your hand, buddy,” Elias says.
Sara bends down to her son’s level. “I love you,” she whispers into his ear. Quickly she pries his little hands from her legs while the attendant watches from the door.
Elias and Sara embrace, then he turns around and walks out behind Angie Cosgrove.
The clock says that thirty minutes have passed, but that seems like a lie.
Sara’s room feels stiflingly warm when she returns. She splashes water on her face, then uses the toilet. There is spotting in her underwear. Her period is two days early; it must be the stress. She goes to the infirmary to report her period and ask for a pad, then takes her laundry back to the clothing office, where to her relief there is no line at all. But when she stands at the service window, she finds Victoria lounging in a chair with a comic book in her hands. “We ran out of clean uniforms again,” Victoria says without looking up. “Try again tomorrow.”