by Rachel Heng
“You haven’t even swum yet,” Anja said finally.
“No, I haven’t.” Lea’s fingertips were rough raisins to touch.
Anja dunked her head under water. She emerged with a rush, grinning.
“Race me?” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Lea started to shake her head, but then she found herself smiling too.
“Sure,” she said. “There and back?”
“There and back.” Anja nodded.
On the count of three they set off. The sound of the water roared in Lea’s ears. She swam faster, harder than she normally did. She didn’t look to see where Anja was, which of them was ahead, but she wanted to win. She focused on her form, made sure her kicks were clean, her arm strokes deliberate, precisely angled. When she reached the other side, she caught a glimpse of Anja as she turned. They were neck and neck. So Lea swam faster, pushing herself even more on the lap back. It didn’t even occur to her to think about the risk of micro-tears or tendon strain; it didn’t occur to her to think. For those few minutes, she lived in the burn of her calves and the swell of her lungs, the pounding of her still-organic heart in the cage of her chest.
She touched the edge of the pool and turned to look at Anja triumphantly, sure that she had won. But Anja was right next to her, panting heavily, one arm slung over the concrete edge.
“Who won?” Lea asked.
“I don’t know,” Anja said cheerfully.
“So me then,” Lea said, massaging a calf muscle.
“I was trying to be tactful.” Anja laughed.
Lea didn’t want to leave the pool. Everything had seemed easier in the last few hours, and she felt like it would change once she got out of the water and dried herself off. But Anja was already hoisting herself up onto the cold tile. Water sluiced down her legs, slowed in places by tiny light hairs.
So Lea got out as well. As they toweled themselves dry, slipping into robe and T-shirt respectively, Anja asked if she could stay the night. She said it so quietly that Lea wasn’t sure that she’d heard, but when she turned to look, Anja was so busy adjusting the strap on her swimsuit and avoiding Lea’s eyes that Lea knew she’d heard right.
“Of course,” she said, a strange, budding warmth in her chest. “I’ll make up the guest room for you.”
* * *
The guest room was also her studio. When Lea remembered this, she felt an instinctive nervousness, but then laughed inwardly. Anja was hardly the sort of lifer to care. So when they got back upstairs, Lea stacked her paintings in a neat pile in a corner and set up the sofa bed for the first time in years.
Sure enough, Anja didn’t seem to find the paintings strange at all. She didn’t even comment on them, though her gaze lingered on the paint-splattered mirror and the unfinished streaks on the canvas still occupying the easel. Walking over to the window, she ran her fingers along the bottom of the glass pane, where sealed rubber joined glass to cement.
“How do you open this?” Anja asked.
Lea stared at her. Was she serious? When her expression didn’t change, Lea replied incredulously: “You don’t. Directive 7077A.”
“Oh,” Anja said. “What a pity. You’d get such a breeze up here.” She pulled her fingers away from the window.
“All done,” Lea said as she finished plumping the last pillow.
“Thank you,” Anja said, smiling, as if Lea had done her a great favor.
Lea knew she should say good night now, leave the room and go to bed. But she didn’t want to. Instead, she said: “The music! You said you wanted to see the music. Listen to the music. We haven’t even done that yet.”
“Yes,” Anja said. “The music.” Suddenly she looked tired, and something about her expression made her look very young, almost childlike. Lea wondered for the first time what her number was. She realized all she had done that day was talk about herself.
* * *
Lea led Anja back into the living room. She felt the foolish urge to please her, so she started with the most controversial items she owned. Sliding a cabinet door open, she revealed shelf after shelf of plastic covers housing compact discs, each procured at great expense and effort over the years. The advisory on classical music meant that you couldn’t stream it through the ordinary channels, that you couldn’t stream it at all, really. The only way to listen to it was physical copies, which in turn were difficult to procure, rare, and expensive.
Anja ran her fingers over the plastic spines. Lea stared at her eagerly, hoping her face would light up with joy or excitement or wonder, that she would turn to Lea and share her enthusiasm for her shameful, secret hobby.
But Anja was frowning in concentration. She moved her hands over the discs from left to right, first one shelf, then the next, tilting her head so she could read their titles. She was looking for something, Lea realized.
Finally Anja stopped. Her index finger rested on one title, which she stared at, unblinking. Lea waited for Anja to pull it out, to hold it in her hands, ask if they could listen to it. But she didn’t. She was completely still, the only movement in her body a slight flexing of the tendons in her neck.
“Do you want to listen to it?” Lea said at last.
Her question seemed to break the spell. Anja swallowed and nodded, but made no move to pull the disc out from the shelf.
Lea bent down to see what Anja had picked. It was the St. Matthew Passion; the recording Todd had been playing just weeks earlier, featuring the famous Swedish contralto. She wondered momentarily if Anja had known her from back home. Lea placed her hand gently on Anja’s and moved it aside, noting with surprise how cold Anja’s fingers were. She opened the plastic housing, taking pleasure in the satisfying click as she popped the disc from the catch that held it in place.
Lea slid open another cabinet, where the antique CD player was hidden. It had taken her decades to find one—she’d had to go to the Outer Markets to get it, and it was her most prized possession.
Lea hit the Play button. The melancholy voice of a single violin streamed from the speakers, filling the room. Her chest felt full and warm from the day—the fatigue of swimming, the sharing of confidences, the swell of music that entered her bloodstream now. She turned to Anja smiling, wanting to share the moment with her.
Anja was sitting on the sofa, very still. Her feet were flat on the floor and her spine was straight. Her knees were pressed together, each hand resting on one knee. Her eyes were closed.
Lea sat down at the other end of the sofa. Anja didn’t move.
After the first song ended, Lea saw that tears were trailing slowly down Anja’s cheek, from beneath her closed eyelids. She still hadn’t moved. On a sudden impulse, Lea moved toward her, close enough that their legs were touching, and very gently placed an arm around Anja’s shoulder. She felt an imperceptible sigh pass through Anja’s body, a slight tremble of the soul.
They sat like that through one piece, and then the next, and then the one after.
SEVENTEEN
Anja walked small circles over the plush carpet, nerves jangling. As she passed the large bay window for the twelfth time that morning, she caught a glimpse of the guests starting to arrive downstairs. Women with their shoulders naked and heads piled high with hair; men straight-shouldered and slickly sideburned.
The pictures on the wall didn’t help. One face in particular, depicted in a series of portraits, peered out from beneath polished glass panes. Anja had never met the woman in the gilt frame, but she was strangely familiar. She had a high, straight nose that bisected her face, cheekbones carved in improbable angles. Her hair was dark and her lips were darker still, as if stained by wine. She looked happy in the pictures, smiling in a cautious but genuine way, here receiving a trophy, there holding up a fish. The pictures only spanned her girlhood. She must have moved out after that, her parents keeping this room just the way it had been. Anja wondered what she had grown into, whether her features had sharpened or dulled with time
, if she had kept her childhood haircut. Then Anja realized that she would soon be able to see for herself.
Her violin lay unopened in its case. She had told them she needed somewhere quiet to prepare, and they had looked at her with knowing eyes and hushed tones, showing her swiftly to this room.
But there was nothing to prepare. She’d done the preparation three days earlier, sitting on Lea’s sofa, letting the music flow through her. Now she remembered every crescendo and decrescendo, every rest and fermata. More than that, she remembered how the music felt in her gut, in her nerves, in her bones.
What she had really wanted was to avoid the crowd downstairs. It had just started to fill up when she’d arrived, but already she could smell the thick, heady scent of all those bodies simmering in the summer heat.
Anja sat down on the bed and opened the case in her lap. Nestled against dark velvet, the violin’s polished wood seemed to give off an invisible light. She picked it up, held it to her chin, and closed her eyes. She touched the bow to its strings, feeling the music trapped within, the tension of contact. Without playing a note, Anja began running through the piece in her head.
She was still sitting like this when the door clicked open, so quiet that at first she didn’t notice.
“What a lovely dress.”
Anja opened her eyes. The figure in the doorway was tall and slim, her hair gathered atop her head so that she appeared even taller.
“Mrs. Jackman,” Anja said, rising and stretching out her hand. “I’m sorry for—” She stopped. A warm flush spread across her cheeks. Was it a loss? Could she call it that?
But Mrs. Jackman was unfazed. She flashed a broad smile, revealing a set of blindingly white teeth. Her hands grasped Anja’s, warm and soft as her mother’s once were.
“None of that around here,” Mrs. Jackman said. “I don’t mind, but there are people who will, as you know.”
She cupped Anja’s waist. Her grip was warm and firm through the thin fabric.
“Such lovely material. Where did you get this?” she went on.
Anja flushed. “Oh. A shop back home. Sweden. I’ve had it a long time,” she lied.
Mrs. Jackman nodded, as if Anja had said something of grave importance. “And if you don’t mind me asking, what will you be playing later?”
“Bach,” Anja said. “Like we discussed.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Jackman said. She seemed to want to say more, but fell silent instead, turning to the pictures on the wall.
“It’s an honor—” Anja started to say.
“Shush. You’ve done great work for the Club. The videos—that was the best idea anyone could have come up with, worthy of Dominique herself. It’s too bad she didn’t live to see them, she would have been so impressed. But it’s really increased our reach. Public opinion seems to be changing, in earnest this time. It’s bifurcated, of course, since we’ve really riled some evangelicals. But even amongst the so-called life-loving, there are whispers that the tide is turning. And it’s all thanks to your idea.”
Anja nodded. She wondered what her mother would have thought of the videos, but then pushed the thought out of her mind.
“So. It’s an honor for us that you’ve agreed, really. There’s no one better placed to take over from Dominique.” Mrs. Jackman paused, reaching out to touch one of the photo frames. “I think she would agree.”
The woman in the photos watched from the walls, a younger, chubbier version of Mrs. Jackman. Given the opportunity, would her cheekbones have shifted beneath her flesh, to match the angles in Mrs. Jackman’s face? Or perhaps she would take after Mr. Jackman, who was softer, rounder, darker skinned. They would never know, Anja realized. She gripped the neck of her violin and followed Mrs. Jackman through the door.
EIGHTEEN
Lea knew she shouldn’t go to the party. Who knew what antisanct business her father was mixed up in? Given the events of the past few months, she should be lying low, attending WeCovery, apologizing to Todd, cooperating with Observers. Attending a shady event her father was eager to hide from her was the last thing she should be doing. It was reckless, foolish, very likely contrary to the life-loving behavior she was meant to be exhibiting right now.
Quite right. She could imagine her mother’s accusing gaze, her lips pressed into a thin line.
But that Saturday afternoon, she found herself standing in front of a beautiful stucco house with its doors and windows thrown wide open. The people milling about on the lawn were dressed in their best and brightest, the overall effect a violent bouquet of primary colors that ebbed and flowed. Silk hems rustled, streamers fluttered in the wind, glasses kissed with melodious clinks. Her father was nowhere to be seen.
It was no sleazy underground smoking den, no alcohol-purveying dive bar, no run-down greasy diner. It was like none of the places her mother had told her about, the places she’d had to fetch Lea’s father from late at night in the weeks toward the end, before he vanished. It looked exactly like the kind of party her mother would have taken her to as a girl, the kind of party filled with Ministry officials and top-decile lifers.
Lea felt a faint flutter of hope, a surge of lightness. Perhaps her father had changed. But then what was he hiding?
Lea stepped onto the lawn. The autumn-dry grass rustled under her pumps. She looked about her; people were still arriving, and she blended right in.
All of a sudden, Lea noticed the smell. It threaded its way through the haze of floral perfumes laced with a not unpleasant trace of perspiration (the people at the party were, after all, the sort to perspire sparingly and sweetly). It was a nutty, burnt odor, and yet strangely appealing. It was achingly familiar, yet difficult to place, like a memory from a previous life.
A tall man in a tux stood at a grill. He flashed Lea a grin full of white, square teeth as she approached, then turned his attention back to the sizzling food.
When she saw what was on the grill, a bitter taste rose in her throat, and her stomach clenched. Great slabs of oozing meat dripped red blood onto the coals, thick and marbled with milky white. She couldn’t tell what it was—pork, beef, lamb, or something else altogether—having only ever seen red meat in the Ministry posters that warned against colorectal damage.
“How would you like yours?” the man said to her. She saw that his white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, was splattered with oil.
“Excuse me?” Lea choked, stepping backward. She brought a hand to her nose in an attempt to block out the fumes, stomach-turning now that she saw where they came from.
“Medium rare?” he said. “That’s what I’d recommend, with a cut like this. But you look more like a well done kind of lady.”
He was broad shouldered and smooth cheeked, with no sign of premature degeneration that she could spot. He was the kind of man that her mother invited to dinner parties, a fine specimen who could even be Ministry. Yet here he was, at a party like this, grilling contraband animal flesh.
The steaks were slowly turning reddish-brown, a rich, earthy color. How could anyone bear to put something so bloody into their systems? Lea tugged at the hem of her dress, suddenly wishing she had worn something looser. Sweat gathered at the backs of her knees and under her arms.
The man was still looking at her.
“I—uh—no, thank you,” she said.
“Suit yourself.” He turned back to the grill.
She imagined him sinking his perfect white incisors into the soft red flesh, juices coating his tongue, the charred animal scent filling his nose. Her stomach lurched again, but this time, it wasn’t revulsion that she felt. It was, unmistakably, a kind of desire, so powerful that it scared her. Her mouth filled with warm saliva, her jaw clenched. She imagined running her hands over the man’s chest as he bit into a steak, as the juices slid down his throat. She imagined him sliding greasy fingers through her hair, touching the nape of her neck with filthy, animal-scented hands. She imagined slipping her tongue between his lips, tasting the blood, the salt, the scent of barb
ecued meat.
Lea backed away slowly. She would leave. It had been a terrible idea to come.
But then she heard the music, pouring out of the house to a wave of cheers and whistling. Notes tumbled after one another, rolling and somersaulting through the air. Sometimes they’d pause, suspended somewhere up above, before plunging again, joyfully, chaotically. It was unlike anything she had ever heard before.
Lea was well versed in classical music, but that was not what this was, though something of the same tense energy ran through its core, an electrified vein of urgency that swept you along with its irregular thumps and squeals. Tiptoeing, Lea saw four men on a stage inside the house. The instruments were large and shiny; she recognized the curve of a bass, the flashing movement of a saxophone. It was a live performance. Given the rarity of musicians, Lea had never seen one before, let alone one that played music like this. She stood transfixed, the melody flowing through her, pulling her this way and that, thumping through her veins.
“Great, aren’t they? They played at her wedding. She would have been so pleased we managed to book them for today.”
Lea started and turned. It was the man from the grill, who now stood next to her holding a bloody hunk of meat between two slices of bread. A single rivulet of juice inched down the side of his hand toward a spotless white cuff. Lea pointed at it.
“Oh, thanks.” When the man twisted his arm around, the fabric of his suit stretched to reveal a hard forearm. Lea watched as he extended his tongue, an alien, pink thing, to catch the drops of animal oil dripping down his wrist.
She nodded, hand still pinching her nose closed. The smell was stronger now that he stood right next to her, but it didn’t bother her as much anymore. There was something sweet and primal about it, the smell of meat, that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“You like jazz?” the man asked. His smile was familiar, as if he were alluding to an inside joke. He talked to her like she was an old friend.
“Is that what this is?” Lea said.
