Page 58 of Trade
I’m glad Debbie doesn’t see this part. It would kill her to see her babies left on the floor to wither and die. It’s a huge sacrifice for a plan with about a 0.0001% chance of working.
Bennett steers clear of me at work, comes home as late as possible every night, and leaves before I wake up, yet somehow, he still manages to make our quarters smell like the stale liquor soaking through his pores. He’s having a rough time of it. The people who work below him don’t trust him now, and the other heads seem to think he’s a chump for the Meghan debacle.
The days pass, and my herbs get drier and drier. I plot and plan, but mostly, I try to figure out how to steal the matches from the locked emergency kit in Bennett’s office. Every department head is assigned a white metal box with a red cross painted on it. In earlier generations, the kits held medical equipment—bandages and such—but now they hold the rationed resources that only heads are issued, like razor blades, pepper spray, a gas mask, plastic sheeting to contain biohazards . . . and a fire starter.
The box is behind Bennett’s desk in his office, past his secretary and the office staff—five people including the lovely, long-haired Meghan. They take breaks at different times so someone is always on reception, and after hours, both the inner and outer doors are locked.
I consider stealing the keys from Bennett while he sleeps, but even with the amount he’s been drinking, he tosses and turns all night. Several times, the creak of the sofa’s springs have woken me up while he’s shoving a cushion under his neck, huffing and puffing like he’s undergoing the worst possible injustice. I roll over and fake a few snores before I conk out again.
I’m still searching for a plan when opportunity falls in my lap, or rather, Alan falls from a ladder. I’m not even sure what he’s doing, but he’s looking at something near the top of the beech, maybe beechnuts that got overlooked, but he takes a tumble from the top rung of the sixteen-footer and lands on the floor with a thud that shakes the leaves of the surrounding trees.
Amy, the closest tech, pulls the med alarm, and everyone converges, and then Reginald arrives on the scene. He sees the bone poking through Alan’s shin and screams bloody murder.
Bennett had already come running when the alarm sounded, but that scream brings everyone else tumbling out of the office to see what’s going on.
I spare a prayer for Alan while I slip behind the crowd, through the antechamber, to Bennett’s office, and get lucky again. The door is set to lock, but it didn’t shut all the way when he rushed out. I quickly duck inside and go straight to his desk. The box is locked, but it’s a small lock, and all the keys on Bennett’s ring are standard sized. He must keep it somewhere close at hand. I never would have thought so before, but he is most certainly the kind of man who would make sure he had quickest access to the only gas mask available in case of an emergency.
The key ring isn’t in the small manila envelope in his top drawer where he usually keeps it. Did he move it because of me? Did he worry that I’d go after him with the razors? I search the other drawers and under the leather mat and the ashtray where he keeps paperclips and such. My pulse is pounding, and I’m breathing so loud I’m basically wheezing.
Should I try to break the lock? Stomp it? I’ve seen heroes do it in movies from the Before.
Dalton would stomp the lock open. He’d try, at least.
Or maybe I should use the ashtray. What’s harder? My foot or solid glass?
I dump the paperclips and heft the ashtray, dithering, when Bennett’s door silently opens and Meghan with the long hair slips through. She closes the door behind her and leans against it, keeping her hand on the knob. She hasn’t gained any weight at all, so her belly sticks out like it was glued on.
She stares at me, and for once, she isn’t blushing. She isn’t smirking either. When she speaks, she whispers. “I saw you come in here.”
I draw myself up. Her gaze darts to the heavy ashtray in my hand, and her eyes widen. I set it slowly back on the desk. She’s so goddamn fucking young.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she says so quietly I have to strain to hear her, even though she’s no more than five feet away. “Paul’s parents didn’t want him marrying until he had his assignment, and he’s—he’s not good at standing up for himself, you know? I was going to go into the lottery, and my mom knew Bennett liked me. He was always asking me to help him, touching my hair and stuff. Mom said he was a head. He could get me out of the lottery. She said to let him do what he wanted. That it was better than Outside.”
Her eyes swim with tears. My stomach turns.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice breaking, and she turns the knob, ready to run.
I don’t know what stops her, but she makes herself stay one more second before she flees with her balled fist shoved in her mouth to stop her sobs, and she chokes out, “The key is in that book.” She points to G. F. Scott-Elliot’sThe Romance of Plant Life. Bennett displays it on a bookstand on a shelf. “On the page about orchids.”
Of course. Orchids are lock-and-key pollinators.
I don’t have time to say anything before she’s gone. I’ve never moved so fast in my life. I flip through pages so fast I rip them, find the key, open the box, root through like a mad woman, grab what I need, put everything back to rights, and race out of the office like my heels are on fire.
By the time the med alarm is silenced, I’m back in the atrium, standing with the others to wish Alan well as he’s carried out on a stretcher, Reginald following, admonishing the medics, “Be careful, for Chrissake, can’t you see the man’s bone? It’s poking out of his skin!”
My heart doesn’t slow to its normal speed until I fall asleep that night with a fire starter tucked inside my bra.
* * *
My plan is terrible. It requires so many improbable, well-nigh impossible, things to happen that it is almost certainly doomed to fail.
I am going to do it at dinner in the cafeteria on a Friday night. Folks linger over dinner at the end of the work week, and it’s customary to sneak a little shine with the meal. Bennett himself doesn’t see anything wrong with taking a few nips from the old rubber glue jar his family has been using as a flask since first gen.
Earlier in the day, between lunch and dinner, I’m going to use the access ducts to sneak from the atrium to the cafeteria, where I’ll leave my dried herbs behind the vent in the back corner where the vending machines are kept. The machines are relics from the Before. They used to hold tobacco boxes and plastic bags of food. Cultural Preservation uses the shelves to display artifacts, and they included succulents as part of the exhibit. As an intern, I took my turn watering them, which is how I know about the vent.
During dinner, I’ll unscrew the vent I’ve loosened a few days before, and light the herbs on fire. I’ll be sure to sit at a table in the back near the alcove and the cafeteria line, and when the smoke starts billowing, I’ll scream “fire,” just like we were taught never, ever to do.
