“I didn’t mind.”
“How have you been? Still in Vegas?” she said.
Underneath her question, Colton sensed impatience. She’d always been lousy at pleasantries. “Vegas was the closet for too many skeletons. I’m in back in Seattle now. For a couple of years of what I call my post-Sarah era.”
“Took you a while.”
“You see, I kept one of your old voicemails on my cell. The time you asked me to get formula on my way home. Yana had turned red from crying while you were taking a shower and you called because it couldn’t wait. Then you dropped the phone in the water.” He chuckled. “The message died midsentence, before you could ask for the formula, but I figured it out. I could finish your sentences back then.” He coughed to steady his voice. “I copied this message from phone to phone, for more than three years. But holding on to it felt like a monument to my sins. I deleted your voice and moved to Seattle, starting a life of starting to forget you. But your call the other night…”
“Always the poet who chooses the bigger good, over the lesser evil,” she said. “Are you married now?”
“No more marriages for me, Sarah. Not after you.”
“Don’t...”
“You asked.” He closed his eyes.
“I have no room for distractions. Living with Yana and without you has been good, until this tragedy. Which is why I called last week. Should have handled it better, but I still need your answer.”
“First you call me a distraction then you say you should have asked me to die in a more thoughtful way.”
“Don’t fight me on this, unless you’ve already voted.”
“Only for me to know,” he said, wondering when was the last time they had a conversation without fighting.
“I need to know too.” He could hear her teeth clench. “If there was a way to avoid knowing, I would have.”
“You find the best words to convince a man, Dr. Parker. Or are you back to Dr. Perkins?”
“My surname is irrelevant.”
“I haven’t voted yet,” he said, “or sacrificed.”
“Then I have to.”
“You have to what?”
“Ask my question from the other night. But I don’t need an immediate answer. You still have a couple of weeks to decide.”
“Until Defiance Day?” Colton’s hand that wasn’t holding the phone, rubbed his eyes. A headache was tiptoeing underneath his temples, not at full strength yet, but coming.
“It would mean Yana lives.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“How about I re-marry you?” she said.
“Is remarriage the going rate for my life?”
“If there was another way, I’d have found it.”
“Which only makes you a High-Potential, prohibited from Sacrifice or earmark,” he said.
“Focus on what matters, Colton.”
“What does? As a Hi-Po, maybe you can explain it to me.”
“Voting matters.”
“Is that what you call forcing a person to choose another person for extermination?”
“It’s a legal earmark vote.”
He laughed. “So if the extermination is legal, then it’s good extermination.”
“Think of how lucky she would be. To survive Defiance Day with the other Sacrifice recipients.”
“You know people call them Silver-Spooners, right?”
“I don’t care about people’s high-minded bullshit. Defiance Day will solve Earth’s population problem with one sweep that’s legal and efficient.”
“And barbaric…” he said.
“There’ll be no more castrations afterwards, Colton. No more curfews and no more disappearing species.”
“Just a few million Silver-Spooners with an irrevocable sense of entitlement, tasked to rebuild our world.”
“Stop being such a child. Vote Sacrifice if you hate voting earmark so much.”
“Which is what you’d have me do.”
“Law requires you to vote one way or the other,” she said.
“If Defiance Day is this humane process, why do you need my Sacrifice to save your daughter?”
“She’s your daughter too. Whom you almost killed before her first birthday.”
“I can always count on you to remind me.”
A noisy breath through the nose. “You win. OK?” she said. “I’m begging you. I’m not telling, I’m begging. Do you realize how hard this is for me?”
He did. The Sarah Perkins he used to know was the one on top. Always. An oversized painting of “La Niña,” the sole Columbus ship to survive the journey to the New World, hung in her lab. The words of the Great Explorer were etched on it, “All my life, I’ve been chasing the Sun. Now I’m going to catch it.” She was born a Sun-chaser. He suspected she married him to have a child and keep colonizing the unknown, through Yana, long after her own death. Now Columbus was begging him and he hated having pushed her so far.
“I’ll think this over. How do I get a hold of you?”
“The number I’m calling from should be on your Caller ID. I’ll make sure I call you too.”
The phone went dead. She was getting good at hanging up without giving him the chance to say goodbye.
two years and forty nine days till defiance day (15
Wet hands covered Colton’s face and closed his eyelids, forcing the high-noon sun to dip into darkness. A giggle tweeted from behind and made him jump in the chair. “Guess who?”
He turned his head, but the wet fingers stayed on. With purpose, he grabbed the foreign hands, their skin smooth and supple against his grip, pushed them away and saw her. The motley eyes, the tear-shaped bob like a blonde Afro, the dimpled smile stretching from side to side. He stitched the parts together and gasped at the full picture.
“Sylvya?”
The snickering exploded into laughter. “Hello, my love.” She stood before him, in the Seattle downtown library, with wet hands, which he had forgotten to let go. She leaned in and kissed his mouth, making a noise and prompting several library patrons to look their way. Colton shook his head, as if she had slapped his face instead of kissing it. He set her hands free and she hugged him hard.
“I’ve missed you,” she said in his ear. “Don’t run away anymore.” She held him for another second before letting go.
“Could we sit for a moment?” he said. “Better yet, let’s go to the lobby. This is the quiet floor.”
“A boy scout as always. But who’ll take care of you, Mister?”
He left the question unanswered, grabbed her hand and led her out, under an increasing hail of disapproving glances. In the library café, they sat at a corner table, him holding her hand all along, as if she were a child.
“You’re visiting Seattle, of all places?” His eyebrows formed an arch with a tip in the middle of his forehead.
“I’m not visiting, silly. I am relocating.” She yodeled the last word with Christmas-like cheer. “The kids and I arrived from Las Vegas, last week. The one-hour bus ride from the airport took almost a day because this city has one highway left that’s not under water. And don’t get me started on the curfew checkpoints. Why are you guys so anal up here? The bus made five checkpoint stops.” Her smile pushed through the annoyance. “But that’s not important. Seeing you makes it all worth it, in the end.”
Colton’s mouth twisted. “You decided to take the kids and just leave Vegas?”
“I didn’t just leave,” she said, slapping his shoulder with a hand. “I’m not such an airhead. After evaluating my life options, I chose to move to Seattle and start fresh. Plus, there’s so much crime in Las Vegas now and no jobs.” She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again in different order. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“I’m… surprised. Did you know I lived in Seattle before you moved here?”
“I did.” She looked away with the quiet pride of a student expecting praise from her math teacher. “But in case you want to know, you’re looking at the n
ew Chief of Nursing at Virginia Mason Oncology. Can you imagine?” She clapped hands in the air. “I started last week.”
“I’m… happy for you.”
“Well…” her lips puffed air. “It’s not all glory and unicorns. Their staff is so overworked they are sleepwalking with exhaustion. I’ve worked my share of night shifts in Las Vegas, but didn’t realize how much worse the coasts had it. It’s like a different way of life here… the highlands versus the coast.”
Colton stared at a passerby outside, then ventured a smile. “How did you find me in the library?”
“Pure fate, dear.”
He had to admire the benevolent energy of a woman who could love with a full heart. Why couldn’t he respond? Why was he so stuck on Sarah who, chances were, hated him still? Humans were born screwed up and, in that department, he was a model human.
“I was out, strolling along these burly suspension bridges you call downtown here. I’m drinking my frozen beverage…” She waved an empty Starbucks cup, as if presenting important evidence to a jury. “And who do I see as I walk by the library’s windows?”
“I… I have to run home,” he stammered.
“Wait,” she tapped a finger on his nose. “You can’t leave without giving me your number.”
“I live in… that direction.” His thumb jabbed at the air behind his back.
“That was clear… Not.” She gave a pout after the deliberate pause. “I live and work there.” She pointed a finger in a random direction. “But that didn’t give you my contact information, did it? So let’s get rid of the guesswork and have dinner at my place tonight? You’ll see how much the kiddos have grown.”
He stood up. “I have to leave,” his voice full of ice. “Virginia Mason is lucky to have you.”
Sylvya’s face turned red. “I can imagine how busy you are, but we must make plans to see each other.” She held to his green suede jacket as he was beginning to leave.
“I need to go, Sylvya.” He ran outside, among the Seattle pedestrians whose purpose, together with everyone else on Earth, was to kill time until the day of their deaths. Sylvya ran after him, jostling bodies out of the way.
“Wait… wait for me,” she said.
He kept walking, the back of his head bobbing up and down among the sea of others. Then he dove into the Starbucks at the corner of Denny and Fourth.
She stormed behind and slammed the door shut. “I only saved your life,” she screamed.
He turned around. She was right. He would have died without her.
“And now you’re running away from me,” her face twisted; mascara, dark and splotchy, invading her cheeks. “How can you be so selfish?”
He took a step away from the entrance, pulling her with him. “I admire you for saving my life,” his head hung as he spoke, “and won’t forget that. But you see… I don’t feel about you the way you feel about me. And should never have led you on.”
She reached inside her purse and dabbed her eyes with a crumpled tissue.
He raised a hand. “Let me, at least, get you a latte,” he said and headed for the counter before getting an answer. He returned with two paper cups, a latte for her and some other brown liquid for him. They sat down and he took the lid off her cup. “It will cool down faster this way,” he said. Heart-shaped foam swam like a melting iceberg in the middle of the hot coffee.
“Am I not attractive to you?” she said. “Is there someone else?”
He gulped whatever his cup held, bottoms-up, and clenched it with both fists, careful not to shred the paper to bits. His love and allegiance would always belong to Sarah, even if Sarah hated his guts. “You are a looker. And no, I’m not dating anyone else. It’s just that… you should deal with your life first, before you get to me.”
“Deal with my life?” Her moist voice gave way to a harsh undertone and Colton shuddered, unsure if this other voice was a permanent part of her, lurking under the tears when she didn’t get what was hers.
“Let me be,” he said. “You can have any other man you wish.” A smile hung on his face like a coat on a tin hanger. “Your kids. Your husband, if you are still married. They are the most important. Your new career in Seattle. I don’t come before any of these.”
“Grow a pair and spare me the bullshit.” She stood up, walked away and came back to the table, swift and threatening. “I’m smart and I deserve respect, and you… you are pathetic.”
“Why don’t you –”
“I haven’t been myself these days but I am a good person, Colton. If you don’t want to be with me, have the decency to tell me why. Don’t tell me I’m attractive and you’re grateful while you’re acting the opposite. The truth is you despise me –”
“Look, I –”
“And you’re rude and selfish. And you want to keep me around for free hospital access.” Her body shook with sobs. “I thought you were different. I admired the way you spoke about life. Now, I know you’re a coward.” Her shoulder-length hair tossed, as if blown by invisible wind.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m a good person, Colton,” a fresh avalanche of sobs, “I’ve never done this. Doctors ask me out all the time and I always say no. With you… I don’t know. Maybe it was how we met, you in a hospital bed within an inch of your life.”
“I’d be dead without you, Sylvya, but we can only be friends.”
“But you do understand my feelings?”
Colton had heard enough. Expecting her to understand logic was like hoping the sun would rise at midnight. He wiped off a coffee stain on his chair and leaned back, prepared to wait her out in silence until she was done or until the place closed.
As if she had seen through his intentions, Sylvya buried her face in a napkin and soaked the recycled paper with fresh tears.
fifteen days till defiance day (16
The day’s grime and politics were behind Natt, but family dinner wasn’t; a task laden with as many traps as he had navigated during his nine-to-five. He pulled his chair closer to the table. On his right, Eaton and Chloe sat next to each other, chewing in silence. Eating dinner wasn’t a time of many words in the Gurloskey household – it was sitting together for a meal, the old-fashioned way. Natt insisted on this forty-five-minute ritual every night because the streets of downtown Seattle weren’t the only casualties to the rising waters. Notions like family time and finding out about each other’s day were also falling prey to the floods.
Soup didn’t precede tonight’s dinner and coffee wouldn’t follow it. It was a single-meal, main-course-plus-salad affair. Macaroni and chicken flanked a lonesome bowl filled with broccoli and lettuce. Natt never much cared for vegetables, so the salad was the same as last night’s and as from the night before.
He chewed several times before swallowing each mouthful. Chloe and Eaton, too, spent the forty-five minutes stuffing food in their mouths, one deliberate forkful after the other. Natt saw through their conspiracy but didn’t want to push his luck; boring wordless dinners plus on-time curfew sign-ins worked fine to keep his family safe, thank you very much. And family was Natt’s most prized achievement.
Eaton was eight and full of life. After dinner, he would dash to his room to resume charting flight patterns, designing apps, and obsessing over whatever other boys his age obsessed with. Natt loved his stepson with intensity reserved for loving your own. He couldn’t explain why. He hadn’t been present at Eaton’s birth to develop fatherly hormones. The ULE Population Fairness Act hadn’t forced him to report to a ULE Decision Room within seconds of Eaton’s cord being severed. He hadn’t pressed the button new dads pressed that delivered the message “Castration Aborted” twenty percent of the time or, for the other eighty percent, the message “Castration Authorized.”
Natt hadn’t lived through any of that, yet loved Eaton as if he had. Eaton was his ticket to heaven and the proof that no matter how screwed up the rest of life got, Natt would get this one thing right… without excuses. He loved the boy even if the boy’s ab
ilities scared him and sometimes even made him jealous.
Chloe was a different story. He couldn’t recall when and how he’d fallen out of love with Eaton’s mother. Courting, surprise sex and dinner dates had ended as soon as they got married. The city flooded when they moved in together and she stood no chance competing with the rotting Seattle downtown. Once in a while, despite his better judgment, Natt would drop by Déjà Vu, to take the edge off, before going home to his wife. As the months passed, the strip-club trips grew longer, the drinks multiplied and the lap-dances finished with happy endings. He wasn’t proud of himself, far from it. He still believed he was a good person but knew he had become a cheater. Chloe knew it too… women had a sixth sense about these things.
One weekday, they stopped having sex. Fatigue and busy schedules were a logical excuse, at first. Then touching her became unpleasant, compared to how Déjà Vu made him feel. In time, she stopped pushing for it and he was happy to oblige. Chloe’s birthday, three years ago, was the last time they had been intimate. Natt had surprised her by coming home earlier, sneaking behind her in the kitchen, squeezing her breasts from behind, and whispering “Happy Birthday” in her ear.
Since then she had been his in their marriage certificate only and the Seattle Chief of Police was too weak to end it – either his marriage or his infidelity.
fourteen days till defiance day (17
“Last call, Colton…” Sarah sounded like a bartender but, in a way, had described her daughter’s fate as well.
“When can I see you?” Colton asked.
“Maybe after Defiance Day,” she said. “Maybe never,” and he wondered how many hours she was sleeping these days, assuming she slept at all. He had time to sleep and that made him feel guilty.
“How is she?”
“Struggling with algebra. We’ll work on her homework when I get home tonight.”
“They get algebra homework in third grade?”
“There’s nothing like crunching numbers while waiting for someone to vote you dead.”
“You haven’t told her she was earmarked?” His voice was matter-of-fact.
The Refugee Sentinel Page 6
