Chapter 21 Reece
TWENTY-ONE
REECE
Eleven days. That’s how long I last after Saturday.
Eleven days of waking up next to him in a bed that’s slowly stopped being only mine, or only his, depending on the night.
The bed not feeling like it belongs to one of us anymore.
Eleven days of seminar. Of routes that include him now — the bench by the river on Mondays, his apartment on Tuesdays after class, the gas station coffee with him on Thursdays because the basement of Hartwell is too public for the way we look at each other now.
His hand finding mine, again and again, on a table or a counter or a bed. Eleven days of being seen.
He has stayed at my apartment four nights.
I have stayed at his three. The pattern has tipped, slightly, toward mine.
Toward me being the one who is hosting. Toward him being the one who is coming over.
I have not said anything about it but I have been watching.
The pattern has been changing in real time and on the eleventh day Mendez calls.
The call comes at four-fifteen on a Wednesday. I am at my desk. I have not seen Griffin yet today. I am supposed to see him at seven.
“Reed.”
“Hi.”
“Standard call. You good.”
“I’m good.”
“Address still the same.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone been around. Anything weird. Anyone you have noticed.”
“No.”
“Cohort going okay.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone in your life I should know about.”
I pause. I pause for a half-second. The pause is the kind of pause that is shorter than a sentence and longer than nothing. Mendez hears it. Mendez hears everything. Mendez has been doing this for fifteen years and he has heard ten thousand pauses and he knows what a pause is.
“Reed.”
“No.”
“You sure.”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Okay.”
He says okay the way Mendez says okay when he has decided not to push. He has heard the pause and he has decided not to push. “Same time, two months,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“Yeah.”
“If there’s anyone, you tell me. We figure it out. We can figure it out. What we cannot figure out is what we do not know.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
He hangs up.
I sit at the desk. The laptop is open, the response paper that’s due in four days on the screen.
The sentence I added in October — the archive holds what it cannot say — is in the middle of the third page.
I haven’t deleted it. I’ve been working around it.
I sit at the desk. I don’t move. I lied to Mendez.
I’ve been lying to Mendez for a month and I haven’t let myself look at it.
I have been telling myself the program does not need to know everything, my life is my life and the program does not own all of it.
The program does own all of it. That is the sentence I have been not saying.
The program owns all of it because the program is what is keeping me alive.
What is keeping me alive dictates what I can have.
What I can have does not include a man whose name is on a public roster at the same school as mine.
A man I have been with twice a week for a month.
A man who knows my cover name and could say it to the wrong person and put it all at risk.
I could say I have someone to Mendez right now. I could call back. I could.
If I call back, Mendez is going to ask who.
How long. Whether the someone knows. The someone knows.
The someone knows everything. The someone knew the old me before he knew the new me.
The someone is, by every measure the program uses, a vulnerability.
If I call back, the program is going to start considering whether to move me.
If I call back, the someone, Griffin, becomes a thing the program is now tracking.
The program does not track people without consequences.
The consequences are downstream of me lying for a month.
The consequences are going to be Griffin’s consequences too. I do not call back. I sit at the desk.
I am supposed to see him at seven. I see him at seven.
I walk to his apartment the way I have been walking to his apartment for a month.
I do not check over my shoulder, which is a thing I haven’t been doing for two weeks now, and I’m someone who notices what I have stopped doing.
I have stopped checking over my shoulder.
For two years I have been checking over my shoulder.
I stopped without noticing. I noticed last week, walking home from his apartment, and thought huh, and didn’t do anything with it.
I am thinking about it again now, walking to his apartment.
I am becoming a person who does not check, who is not on alert, who has dropped his guard.
That is what the program told me, two years ago in the briefing, was the thing that would get me killed.
He opens the door before I knock. He has been doing this.
The opening before the knock is a habit now.
He does it on Tuesdays and on Thursdays and on Saturdays and tonight is Wednesday and he is doing it on Wednesday too.
He opens the door. He is in a sweater I know.
He has been waiting. He looks at me. He looks at me for a half-second and his face registers something before I have said anything.
“What,” he says.
“Hi.”
“What.”
“Can I come in.”
“Of course you can come in.”
I come in. The throw blanket is on the back of the couch.
The lamp in the bedroom is off, which means he has not been planning to make tonight one of those nights.
He has been planning to make me dinner. The smell is in the kitchen, something with garlic.
He has been listening for me on the stairs.
He has been waiting for me. He has been making me dinner. I cannot look at the kitchen.
I had not thought about the dinner. I had thought about the sentence.
I had thought about the sentence on the walk over, and at the desk before the walk, and on the train back from the registrar last week when the sentence first showed up uninvited.
I had told myself I was not going to say it.
The sentence is in my mouth and the dinner is in his kitchen and .
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“Sit down.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Sit down. Reed. What’s happening.”
I sit down. I sit down because he has told me to and because if I keep standing I am going to lose my nerve.
I have the nerve right now, in this moment, sitting on his couch with his throw blanket near my knee.
If I get up the nerve is going to leave me.
He sits down on the chair across from me.
He does not sit on the couch. He has read the room and the room is telling him not to sit on the couch and Griffin reads rooms.
“Talk.”
“I have to stop.”
He looks at me.
“Stop.”
“This. Us. I have to stop.”
He does not move. He does not move for a long second and his face stops, the still version, the processing version, the version where and the rest of him is held.
“Why.”
“I…“
“Why, Reed. Tonight. Why tonight.”
“Mendez called.”
His face changes. Just at the corner of the mouth. He has heard the name once before. He knows what it means.
“What did he say.”
“Nothing. It was a check-in. They are routine. He calls every two months.”
“Okay.”
“He asked if there was anyone in my life.”
“And.”
“And I said no.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I said no, and I sat at my desk for an hour. I’ve been lying to him for a month. Lying to the program for a month. The program is what is keeping me alive, and I’ve been lying to it, and I can’t keep doing it.”
“Then tell him.”
“Griffin.”
“Tell him. Tell him there is someone. Tell him my name. Tell him whatever he needs.”
“If I tell him, he is going to consider whether to move me. He is going to put you in a file. He is going to start looking at whether you are a risk. I do not know what he is going to do. I have not been in the program long enough to know how that conversation goes. I know it does not go well. I know it does not go well for the person I tell him about.”
“Then don’t tell him.”
“I cannot keep lying.”
“Then we figure out a third thing.”
“There is no third thing.”
“Reed. There is always a third thing.”
“There is not always a third thing. There is the program, and there is being outside the program, and the inside of the program does not have a category for what we are doing. There is no third thing the program offers. The program offers you are alone and you are not in the program. There is not a you are with someone and the someone gets briefed. That is not how it works.”
“How do you know how it works.”
“Because Mendez has told me how it works for two years.”
“Has he told you how it works in this exact case.”
“No.”
“Then you do not know.”
“Griffin. I know.”
“You think you know.”
I look at him. I look at him and his face is the fighting version, which is not a version his face has been with me in a month.
His face has been the soft version for a month, the version that woke up next to me on Saturday morning and said I want this generally, both ways, sometimes.
The soft version is gone. The fighting version is back.
It is the version that stood on the second-floor landing of Carrigan in October and said what did you decide would happen.
The version I broke when I told him the truth in his apartment and he sat with it for three days and decided to want me anyway.
It is back because I am breaking the deal we made in the kitchen on Saturday morning, and he knows I am breaking it.
“That’s not the only reason,” I say.
“What.”
“That’s not the only reason. The Mendez thing is true. But it’s not the only reason.”
“Tell me the other reason.”
“I…“
“Reed. Tell me.”
I look at him.
“I have stopped checking over my shoulder.”
He waits.