Page 45 of The Dream Hotel

S ara comes home to a different apartment. The ceilings are too high, the windows too large, the walls cluttered. And the colors! Everything is bright: the Taznakht rug in the hallway, the children’s drawings on the refrigerator, the balloon bouquet topped with an inflatable purple star that says Welcome on one side and Bienvenidos on the other. After only a couple of minutes standing in the living room she gets dizzy and has to sit down. Elias asks if she’s okay, but his voice is drowned out by the buzzing in her ears. He brings her a tall glass of water and stands by the coffee table to watch her drink it. It tastes so clean that she drains it in one long draw. “Can I have another one?”

“Sorry?” he asks, leaning in closer.

“Can I have another one?”

“You can have as many as you want.”

Such abundance. She has forgotten what it feels like. From the other side of the coffee table, Mohsin is watching her. He is used to seeing her in the gray visiting room at Madison; she must seem out of place to him here. Nor does she look the same without her uniform. Earlier in the day, in the parking lot at Union Station, he allowed himself to be picked up, hugged, petted, kissed, but after a while he clawed at her face and pushed her away. Afraid of how she might look under the cameras, Sara didn’t insist, though her body ached with want. Now her son sips warm milk from a green cup, humming to soothe himself, all the while eyeing her with the skittish curiosity of a civilian for a booted invader.

“Watch Kiki?” Mona asks.

“Now? Why don’t you sit next to Mama for a bit? She missed you.”

“No, Kiki.”

“You’ve already seen it a million times.”

Instantly her eyes mist. It’s remarkable to witness. “Kiki?”

With a sigh, Elias puts an animated movie on the living room screen. Before the title credits are finished rolling, Mohsin has dropped into his toddler chair on the rug. Mona picks up her cup of milk from the table. Both of the children are drowsy with fatigue, the drive from the station having taken longer than necessary because of an oil spill on the freeway.

The television blares. Why are cartoon voices so high-pitched? Mona giggles as a penguin in a Hawaiian shirt cannonballs from a glacier into the sea, splashing his friends in icy water. Carrying her sippy cup she clambers onto the sofa. The movie is so familiar to her that she mouths the penguins’ dialogue while she drinks her milk. Then, getting sleepy, she nestles her head on Sara’s lap.

“I really think we should get you seen by a physician,” Elias says. Hearing about the undercover DI scientist has made him anxious to find out what exactly has been done to her; several times he has asked Sara if she ever ran a fever, if she had aches or pains these last few weeks. “We can try the neurologist my dad was seeing last year. Just to be safe, you know.”

“No,” she says, softly patting Mona on the back. The prospect of putting on a white gown, sitting on a papered table, and submitting to an exam feels like an extension of everything she is desperate to leave behind forever. Besides, she is not sick. “I’m fine, I promise.”

Elias removes a sweatshirt from the armchair and sits down. The shirt belongs to his roommate, a graduate student at UCLA, who offered to stay with friends for the weekend when he found out Sara was coming home. The apartment is cramped, with his bicycle taking up space in the hallway and his books piled up against the wall.

“Are you hungry?” Elias asks after a moment. “You want something to eat?”

“Yes, please.”

She slides Mona onto the sofa, using cushions as guardrails, and follows Elias to the kitchen. On the counter is the Nimble screen, with all their devices listed—their phones, the television, the fridge, the oven, their car, the kids’ tablets—and the precise location of each. How can she disentangle herself from such an elaborate web? She is free now, she reminds herself, she can do anything she wants. She can sever the sticky threads that still entrap her, however long it might take her.

The microwave beeps. Elias sets a plate of picadillo and rice and a fresh glass of water on the table for her. She begins to eat, taking small bites to make the food last.

“How is it?” he asks as he takes the seat across from her. “The meat’s not too dry?”

“Not at all.” She finds the meat juicy, the green peppers flavorful, the onions practically exotic. The knife and napkin sit by the side of her plate, unused.

An anguished howl makes her jump out of her seat.

“It’s just the neighbor’s hot water pipe. She’s been having plumbing issues.”

“Oh.” She returns to her meal, and after a minute becomes aware that her husband is watching her from the corner of his eye. She is not herself anymore, she knows. Or not her old self, at any rate.

As time passes she grows restless, waiting for device check.

But there is no bell—a silence that now feels like mercy.

—

In bed she turns to her side, her husband nestling against her in warm sheets that smell of lavender soap. He loops his arm around her waist and kisses the nape of her neck. It’s been nearly a year since she’s been kissed like this, and it feels wonderful—yet also strange, especially after his hand burrows hungrily under her shirt.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself, whether she should say something or keep quiet, turn around or remain in place. Her skin breaks into goose bumps. Out of nowhere the image of her narrow room comes back to her, the hunger for human touch she felt every day, especially early in the morning or late at night. A knot forms in her chest. Elias draws her even closer to him, whispers her own name into her ear. She can feel his erection through her pajamas.

“Wait,” she says, pulling away from him.

“Sorry.” He clears his throat. “It’s just, it’s been so long.”

She turns around to face him. The scent of his skin is familiar; he smells like home. Yet there is a hint of danger between them that she finds difficult to put into words. For nearly a year, she’s been fighting suspicions that she’s a threat to him; now she’s almost afraid to touch him.

But they’re alone, she tells herself. The curtains are closed, their devices are in the other room. No one can see them. Eventually she takes his hand in hers, runs her thumb across his knuckles. They stay like this for a while, facing each other in the dark, before she brings her lips to his, setting off a hot jolt of recognition, then a current of pleasure.

What a wondrous thing a body is, holding within it tender memories that can be unlocked only by the touch of another. In the unshackling her limbs unstiffen, come to life timidly at first and then with a force that surprises her, and she rediscovers the feel of his skin against hers, the sweet taste of his tongue, the way their legs entangle under the sheets. She remembers what it’s like to surrender to the moment, to savor not just the joy she’s receiving, but the joy she can give, too.

—

“You must’ve been dreaming,” Hinton tells her as he scans her neuroprosthetic. The first cold snap of the season has made his face ruddy, restoring his good looks, and on his uniform sleeve he has a new gold stripe. He pulls out his Tekmerion to write her up for being late for device check.

“I wasn’t.” Didn’t he hear the news of her release? She looks down the hall. Perhaps she can get one of the other retainees to back her up. But the ward is empty; everyone has already gone to work.

“It’s all right,” Hinton says, now in a conciliatory tone. “It happens a lot in this place. Get to the infirmary, they’ll want to do a psych exam. Find out why you’re imagining things.”

“I’m not imagining things. The CRO said I was free. I signed all the paperwork.”

“Right.”

“He did,” she insists. “You can check with him if you like.”

“Why would I do that? I have you right here on this screen.” He finishes his report, then puts the Tekmerion back in his pocket.

“I’m telling you, he signed the papers. I’m supposed to be released.” Her gaze turns toward the gate. Should she just make a run for it? He can’t stop her from leaving, she’s free. Not just free, under observation, but free free.

“No, you’re not,” he says with a laugh. “Not after this.”

With an anguished cry she wakes in her bed, Elias shaking her shoulder. “Honey,” he whispers, “honey, honey, you’re having a nightmare.”

Before she can fall back asleep she has to wait for her heartbeat to slow down. She has to relinquish control, learn to trust her body again, knowing it will return her to the safety of this bed. She nestles her head against Elias’s shoulder, and he strokes her arm to comfort her as she drifts off to sleep.

—

Time is no longer divided into small slivers, the precise use of each dictated to her by Safe-X, but in shapeless morsels she can consume as she likes. There is no rush, she has to remind herself as she washes up in the morning. Take all the time you need. She averts her eyes from the clock, finds pleasure in mundane tasks, like picking out a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, throwing the windows open, smoothing the flowered duvet over her bed.

Her father is waiting in the living room when she comes out. “Welcome home,” he calls out, activating his Ambulator Exo-Legs to get to her. He wears a tattered T-shirt with NASA’s meatball logo on it and a baseball cap that has long lost its color, but beneath his unkempt appearance is a vigor she never noticed in his visits to Madison. He folds her into his arms, the tenderness of the gesture taking her by surprise, and now a sob catches in his throat.

She finds herself patting his back in consolation.

All his life her father has weighed every decision he made, holding himself as a model, yet for all his careful calculations he is one of the unhappiest people she has ever known. He buried a child and a wife, and for the last year watched her struggle to prove that she deserved to be free. The relief that so clearly consumes him now is an expression of love, she realizes, however belated or imperfect it may be. Her safe return is a rare moment of grace.

The television is on—another cartoon, though this time Mohsin is ignoring it in favor of the building blocks that Elias has laid out on the play mat. Mona has wandered off to the deflating bouquet by the window and is trying to grab one, threatening to topple the entire display. “Baboon,” she cries. The velvet clips on her pigtails are coming loose.

Sara rushes over to help. “Balloon,” she corrects as she works to unfasten one cord from the rest. “Bal-loon. What color is it, baby?”

“Yellow.”

“That’s right.” Sara loops the balloon ribbon around her daughter’s wrist. “So it won’t fly away.”

Her father motors back to the coffee table. “I brought you these,” he says, pointing to the pink mums in a tall mason jar, “from my backyard.”

“They’re lovely,” she says, bending to smell them. She’s missed small touches of beauty like this, realizes now how necessary they are to life. “Thank you.”

While she sips her tea he tells her about his gardening projects, the beds he set up for radishes and sugar snap peas, the grow lights he’s considering at the advice of Mrs. Ma, his new neighbor, the movie they saw last week. The chatter is unusual. It occurs to her that perhaps he’s working up the courage to tell her something and when he mentions Mrs. Ma a third time, it comes to her that this is the reason, or at least a reason, for his dwindling visits this fall.

The morning passes like this, in companionship and long conversations that touch on everything except her retention, as if her father and her husband are afraid that speaking of it might extend its hold on her life, on all their lives, when all they want is to put it behind them and move forward. In the end it is Sara who brings it up, because the silence about it bothers her, makes her feel she has something to be ashamed of, when really she doesn’t, and she says, “I should call Toya.”

After their Themis hearings, the two of them had been processed together, then released to the bus stop across from Madison, Toya in the athletic clothes she was wearing at the casino where she was detained and Sara in the flannel shirt and jeans she had on during the flight from London. Neither of them could make a call; their devices were out of battery.

Dizzy with freedom, Sara sat on the metal bench, pressing her shoes into the ground, amazed at the sight of her own laces. When shock finally gave way to anticipation, she went to look at the schedule posted on the pole and began eyeing the road, waiting for the bus.

This was what the old basket-seller did every morning, before she disappeared. Sara turned her gaze to the building, instinctively looking for her own window, the fourth from the right. The joy of being free was tainted by the pain of leaving Emily and Victoria and the others behind, and the crushing urgency of getting them out.

Toya zippered her sweater against the breeze, then came to stand by the pole next to Sara. The two of them were free because they’d managed to disrupt what passed for normal at Madison. The only way to get the others out was to keep on doing it. Even if it wasn’t apparent to them right now, they had to work together to find a way.

“I should call Toya,” Sara says again, “see how she’s doing.”

Her husband and her father stare. She can’t be serious, their eyes say, not after what she’s been through, what they’ve all been through, she should think of her risk score, stay away from any Questionables in order to maintain her good standing. But what they don’t see, what they can never truly see unless they had been, like her, confined and controlled, is that isolation is the opposite of salvation, that she owes her release to the women who joined together to say no.

Freedom isn’t a blank slate, she wants to tell them. Freedom is teeming and complicated and, yes, risky, and it can only be written in the company of others. The work she started at Madison isn’t finished. She intends to see it through.

Her father and her husband are still staring at her, as if unsure how to handle the delinquent newly returned to their home. Contradict her, and start another argument? Or stay quiet, and let her tick up her risk score again?

But now a curious thing happens. Her father pulls out his smart device. “If you’re going to call,” he says, “use my phone.” At eighty-one years old, his risk score is exceedingly low, and it continues to drop month after month. By offering his phone, he’s shouldering some of the hit that being in regular touch with a Questionable might cause Sara. It’s a protective gesture, a fatherly gesture, perhaps the first she has seen, or allowed herself to see, in decades.

This is also what Madison has given her, even as it has taken so much from her—the knowledge that she isn’t alone, that she doesn’t have to be.

The road ahead is still uncharted. She wants to watch her children blow out the three candles on their birthday cake. She wants to help her friends get out of Madison. She wants to sever her ties to OmniCloud. She doesn’t know how to navigate this new road, but she knows she has to try, and that she can only do it alongside others.

She takes the device from her father, types Toya’s name, then hits Connect.