Page 55 of Trade
“Where were you?” he snarls.
“Working late at the office,” I say without missing a beat. “I’m justswamped.”
* * *
The next morning, when Bennett returns to our quarters with my breakfast tray, he says with a smirk, “Neil says since you’re feeling better, you should get back to work. Here.” He throws a new-to-me pair of coveralls on the table.
“Of course.” I bare my teeth at him. “Sounds good.” It really does. My muscles hurt like hell from yesterday’s climb, but I’m so restless, I couldn’t stand another day cooped up in this room.
I gobble down my protein bar and mixed fruit compote, and to Bennett’s apparent surprise, I change right in front of him. I’m not crouching down behind the bed or something, not with these sore thighs. I don’t care if he sees me in my underwear. It’s like getting naked in front of the furniture. That’s what he is to me now. A crappy old plastic chair.
The coveralls are tight across the breast and hips, but the zipper zips, and that’s the best you can hope for with a new uniform. I don’t wait for Bennett to go to the atrium. Despite my aches and pains, I stroll there with a purpose, greeting everyone I pass, meeting their eyes. That’s what Neil wanted, right? For everyone to see my face and be afraid?
My sense of purpose is even stronger today, although I still have no ideas or direction. It propels me confidently forward until I enter the atrium, and I stop in my tracks.
Everything is sosmall. I thought the smoked glass roof soared overhead, but it doesn’t. It looms. Our American elm doesn’ttowerat all. It’s a shrub. And the smell I always loved—dirt and fertilizer, leaves and bark—is wrong. It should all be stirred by the wind and baked in the sun, but instead the space I always thought was so grand is stagnant and dank.
My chest aches, filled with grief for them. The trees shouldn’t be in here either.
I’m distracted by a shriek from over by the lilac bushes. “Gloria!”
I’m suddenly swarmed by techs—Amy, Alan, Reginald, and Judith—gathering into a tight circle around me, but stopping short of reaching out to hug me. The excitement falls from their faces as they take in the yellowing bruises on my face.
“Oh, Gloria,” Amy gasps, tears filling her eyes.
“Don’t you cry.” Judith tugs Amy into her side. “If you cry, I’ll cry, and it’ll be a mess.”
“Oh, Boss . . .” Alan trails off, stricken.
“We’ve kept everything shipshape for you,” Reginald says gruffly. “Despitesome peopleneeding reminders to not leave their equipment out overnight.”
Alan is too upset to take offense. He shifts back and forth in his boots, frowning like his heart is breaking, his hands shoved into his pockets.
They’re genuinely devastated to see me like this.
They shouldn’t be stuck in here either.
“Gloria!” Cecily comes running, and my little circle opens for her. She doesn’t hesitate. She pulls me into her arms, careful not to squeeze too tightly, but still somehow managing to hug me like she means it. “You’re back.”
And I can hear it—the commiseration in her voice, the regret, the absence of relief. She understands. I squeeze her back. I don’t care that it hurts.
“What do we do now?” I ask her. The question just slips out.
“I don’t know,” she says, her brown eyes shiny and kind, but with a banked anger, too, that maybe has always been there. “You got any ideas?”
I don’t, so we both cry as we smile at each other, mad women together, trapped and hopeless in a concrete box with a smoked glass lid that lets in light but doesn’t allow you even a glimpse or hint of blue.
The others murmur a final “happy you’re back” and head off to work, leaving Cecily and me alone. She wraps her arm around my waist and asks, “Want to see my peas? I’m experimenting with a new fertilizer blend.”
“Absolutely, I do.”
She walks me over to the Irrigation and Fertilization lab area, and on our way, we pass Meghan on her way to the office. She scurries past, eyes glued to the floor, her face bursting into a blush.
Her long hair is tied back in a greasy braid. Guess her source of spare credits for extra hair-washing water has dried up. Her belly is pushing hard on the zipper of her coveralls. She’ll need to switch them out for scrubs soon.
I expect a twinge of jealousy, but instead I’m caught by the miserable expression on her lowered, bright red face. Did she always look this young? She looks like a kid who’s smuggled a pillow under her shirt as a joke.
“Here. Sit.” Cecily pushes me toward a stool by her work table.
