Page 3 of Trade (After the End #7)

He coughs, clearing his throat. “Listen, Gloria. I didn’t mean for it to happen, it just did. I know it’s hard. It’s not what I wanted, but now I have to do the right thing. We all have to do the right thing. Even if it’s hard.”

He falls silent like I know what it is, but I have no idea. Did he fall out of love with me? That doesn’t mean divorce. We talked about this before we got married. We agreed if things didn’t work out, we’d open the marriage. He swore no matter what happened, he’d never let me go into the lottery.

He would never do that to me. Bennett is a good man.

Why isn’t he talking? Why is he sitting there like he’s said enough, face pinched like this is a meeting that has run over time?

I look to Neil. He gives Bennett an expectant stare. Bennett glowers at his yellow legal pad like he’s cramming for a test, and it’s blank.

Susan Jordan jumps into the breach. “These situations are unfortunate, of course, on a personal level, but as leaders, our first consideration must always be COG and the good of the bunker.”

She waits for me to nod in agreement, and so help me, I do. COG. Continuity of government. The good of the bunker. The most important thing. The reason we’re all alive and safe while the rest of humanity was scattered to the wind like dust.

I blink, my wide-eyed gaze staggering from point to point around the windowless room.

The four pieces of sepia-toned tape stuck on the wall from some long-ago notice.

The threadbare spot on the orange carpet, right in front of Neil’s desk.

My husband, the line of his thick black hair only a few centimeters farther back from where it was when we were young.

Wrinkles only showing at the corner of his mouth because he’s frowning.

“What are you doing?” I ask him. “They’ll put me in the lottery.”

The rock in my stomach bursts to life, sprouting wings and talons, leaping up my throat. They’ll throw me outside, into the moldering decay, and while the air poisons me, savage men will use me—rape me—maybe until I die.

And my husband is talking like he did when he decided not to let Neil move lab-grown protein from AP to Food Services.

“Listen, Gloria, I’m sorry,” he says, drawing himself up like, despite his regrets, he simply has no choice.

“I didn’t go out looking for it. It just happened.

It really has nothing to do with you—or us—but Meghan is pregnant now, and she and the baby need my full support.

You’ve got to understand.” He says that not as a plea, but as a statement of fact.

Of course, I can do nothing but agree—mothers and babies come first. They’re the future.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he adds with all the certainty of a man who cannot meet my eyes. “Meghan didn’t mean for it to happen this way, either. She feels terrible.”

“Why the hell would I care how Meghan feels?” I hardly even know her. She’s the long-haired junior tech who killed our oldest ficus by the end of her second month on the job. I reassigned her to the office.

Where Bennett works.

Oh God.

“Now, Gloria,” Susan warns like I’m the one getting out of hand, like of all the things happening in this room, the word hell is what crosses the line.

I don’t take my eyes off Bennett. “You said she’s annoying. You can’t stand her.”

He’s always telling stories about her. Meghan spelled phlox with an “f.” Meghan answers the phone “yell-low” instead of “Department of Agricultural Preservation.” Meghan called out sick because she had her period, and she didn’t understand why that wasn’t an excused absence.

“Meghan is pregnant? By you?” Of course by him, by my husband who suddenly became so swamped at work, even though there has never in the history of the bunker been a rush job in Agricultural Preservation. Oh my God, it’s so painfully obvious. How did I not see? I can read people. That’s my thing.

“I asked her if she’d consider a plural marriage,” he says, finally meeting my eyes so I can see his sincerity, so I know he didn’t just throw me into the lottery without a second thought so he can sex up Meghan with the nipped-in waist and hair so long she must trade at least five food rations a week for the water to keep it shiny and clean.

“Plural marriage,” I mumble, my fingers rising to my forehead like if I rub, I can make this bullshit make sense in my brain.

My husband—who asked me to pluck an ingrown hair from his sweaty thigh crease two days ago, who laid on his back and lifted his knees so I could get in there with the tweezers—he’s been banging an eighteen-year-old. He got her pregnant. No one gets pregnant these days.

“She feels like that kind of situation wouldn’t be a good environment for her to carry the baby, considering—” Bennett trails off, and once we’ve had a moment of silence for his morals, I guess, he continues.

“And, of course, with the Fertility Initiative, our priority must be doing everything we can to bring every pregnancy to term, and that means keeping Meghan’s stress low and supporting her in any way we can. ”

Why is he talking like he’s reading from the COG manual? And like Meghan is somehow my responsibility? As if, of course I would want to support my husband’s mistress in any way possible. For the baby.

“How could you do this?” A wave of pain crashes over me, stealing my breath.

This is Bennett. My Bennett. When we were angsty teenagers, we’d hide in the access ducts, propping ourselves up with our backs pressed against one wall and our feet on the other, singing to hear our voices echo in the tubes and talking for hours about nothing until our thigh muscles went numb.

One time, early in our marriage, my period was late, and I’d believed with all my heart I was pregnant. When it turned out I wasn’t, he traded a week’s worth of rations for a bathtub full of water and held me while I soaked and cried.

We love each other. We know each other like the backs of our hands.

The pain slowly gives way to horror. “You’re sending me out to die.”

Bennett looks up at me with the sad bad-news eyes he summons up when a plant has died, an AP request was denied, a budget item was slashed.

I’m sitting on my butt with my feet flat on the floor, but nothing under me is solid. Like a dream of falling. Without thinking, my hand reaches for Bennett before I remember and tuck it back against my chest like I can staunch the bleeding.

He’s not Bennett. He’s the one who did this to me.

Tears stream down my face.

Susan Jordan clears her throat. “This change in circumstances will mean adjustments for everyone. You will move to the unmarried women’s dormitory, and of course, you will be entered in the lottery.

This whole situation is highly irregular, and regrettable, and I assure you, leadership has discussed it at length, but we cannot make exceptions due to rank or position.

Discipline must be upheld, and we’re all called upon to do our part for the continuity of government, the future of the bunker, and of civilization itself. ”

“Did you? Did you do your part, Susan?” I ask, raw hysteria in my voice. I know she didn’t. She got married the day she turned eighteen, just like me.

For a split second, pity flashes in her washed-out blue eyes. “The bunker is grateful to all who sacrifice for our good and the future of the human race.”

It’s not an answer. She knows it. We all know it.

“How can you do this to me?” I ask Bennett, snot running down my face. “You’re sending me to be raped. Bennett, some people don’t come back. How can you do this to me?” My chair screeches on the tile. Somehow, I’m standing and shouting.

I’ve never shouted in public in my life. I’m shaking, weeping, and Bennett sits there with his shoulders slumped like this is happening to him.

The door creaks open and a guard slips in. Susan and Neil back away from the table.

“I never wanted this,” Bennett says with great dignity, gazing up at me with pain in his eyes as if the question is cruel, and I’m heartless to demand an explanation when he’s hurting, too. He didn’t want this. He’s a victim of circumstances.

I’m going to puke.

I recognize the expression on his face. I saw it whenever I said something about Dad picking him over me for department head, and recently, I saw it every time I asked him what time he’d be coming home.

Why couldn’t I just accept that Dad felt he was the better candidate?

Why was I hassling him when he was so swamped?

Why am I so demanding? So impossible to please?

Rage and panic leave me in the same rush as they hit me, and I collapse back into my seat, crumbling into pieces, staring numbly at these people I’ve known my whole life.

Susan and I grew up on the same hall. When I was young, years before Bennett and I got together, I saw her sneak into the ducts with her boyfriend.

That’s how I knew the trick of getting in there.

Neil was Dad’s best friend. We went to a party at his quarters every Christmas Eve, and the adults would put us kids into the bedroom, which was actually separate from the living area.

They’d play us movies from the Before to keep us out of their hair while they drank potato wine.

I watched The Wizard of Oz curled up on his bed with his children.

And he’ll trade me for a few barrels of oil or truck loads of grain. They all will. Even Bennett, my husband, who rested his chin on my lower belly just the other night, stared up at me, and said, “I love you. You know that, right?”

They’d all make that trade, and even though I’m apparently capable of ignoring all kinds of writing on the wall, I’ve never been able to lie to myself when faced with the cold, hard truth, so I can’t stop my brain from chanting, You’d make the trade, too, Gloria.

All these years, you’ve been safe. You let other women go in your place, just like they’ll let you go in theirs now.

You made the trade.

And it’s your turn now.