Vox(70)

“Yes.”

“Is it mutual?”

I hesitate, and I suppose that’s what gives me away, there in the dark, even though my own face must be nothing more than a vague outline.

“All right,” he says. “All right.”

As if it were.

“How about you put some coffee on, babe?” he says.

“Sure.” I know he needs a minute, maybe several of them. In the kitchen, I measure out five scoops of high-test, fill the reservoir with water, and watch the coffee maker as it drips black tears into the empty carafe. When it’s ready—when I’m ready—I load a tray with mugs and sugar and milk from a carton that is almost full, an awful reminder that Steven is gone. And I go back into the office.

Whether Patrick cried or not, I can’t tell. He’s all business now, making notes and looking up forgotten stoichiometric symbols in a chemistry text he’s opened on the desk.

“Well?” I say.

He shakes his head. “It looks reversible, even easy, but I can’t do it. For one, I don’t have a lab. Second, it’s been twenty years since I’ve worked in one. What about your—” He pauses, correcting himself. “What about Lorenzo? It’s his brain baby anyway, right?”

At the word “baby,” my coffee goes down the wrong way. “Right. What about the water-solubility problem?”

Patrick actually beams. “That’s the brilliant part. It’s already water soluble, at least for our purposes. Assuming you don’t care about unwanted side effects.” He points to Lorenzo’s final work, the cognitive key that, when turned in the lock of cells in the superior temporal gyrus of the brain’s left hemisphere, will open the door to repair. Or, in the case of the anti-serum, create a room full of word chaos.

I know what Patrick means, and I don’t care about whatever ancillary problems might result from systemic application of the drug, not when we’re talking about Reverend Carl Corbin’s system. Or the president’s.

“Think he can get to it by Monday morning?” Patrick says.

“That’s soon.”

“That’s when the next all-staff meeting is scheduled for Project Wernicke. Your entire building will be at the White House.”

“What about Reverend Carl?”

Patrick nods. “Him too.”

Okay, I think. Monday. The clock on Patrick’s desk glows six four one.





FIFTY-NINE




Wicked or not, I sleep, and for three sweet, dreamless hours I don’t think about the plan, or Patrick, or Lorenzo. I don’t think about where Steven might be, or whether Del the mailman turned spy is sitting in a locked room deciding whether to talk or watch his daughters beg while Thomas works them over. I don’t think about Olivia King’s burnt stump where her hand used to be, or whether Lin and Isabel have been caught and are now on their way to a prison.

Sleep is a fantastic eraser, as long as it lasts.

With nothing but coffee in my stomach, I leave for the lab, Patrick’s notes folded up inside the powder compact I keep in my purse.

Lorenzo is in his office, making coffee.

“Want some?” he says.

“No way.” I can already feel one ulcer burning through my stomach lining. I take out the compact, open it, quickly palm the paper, and slide it across his desk. “I’ll go set things up for Mrs. Ray. Meet me downstairs when you’re ready.”

My own office is empty and dark, exactly the way I left it yesterday. I know Lin hasn’t come back. Worse, I’m sure she’s not going to come back.

So I have a plan. Hope, not so much.

In the elevator, my reflection stares back at me from three sides. From the front, I don’t look so bad, a little puffy under the eyes, hair misbehaving as usual, face drawn somewhat from my recent diet of coffee and water. The side views show a different me than I’m accustomed to. I remind myself to straighten my shoulders and pick my chin up; there’s no sense in letting Mrs. Ray see me beaten down; she’d only worry. I try sucking in my belly, but it’s no use. The irregular bulge under my blouse reminds me I had to leave the top button of my jeans undone.

Christ, I hope Patrick didn’t notice when he kissed me goodbye this morning.

Inside the lab, I say hello to the remaining rodents and rabbits, ignore the freezer where the dozen dead mice wait to be dissected, and prep one of the side rooms for Mrs. Ray. It’s sparse and sterile, not exactly what I had in mind for her first moments rejoining the land of language, but I can make it better.

I head back into the room of cages and pick a snow-white rabbit from the top row, placing him in a plexiglass cube with airholes high on each side, adding a bed of wood chips, a water tube, and a scattering of food pellets from the storage container. I know they’re alfalfa, but they smell like crap.

“There you go, Thumper,” I tell him. “Got a new friend for you to meet.”

Morgan walks in.

“What’s that, Jean?” he says. “I thought you were finished with the animal tests.”

Again, my brain tells my body to stand up straight. “He’s for Mrs. Ray. I thought she might like to see something besides a white wall.”

He shrugs, as if our first subject is nothing more than another lab animal. Which, I think, she is, in Morgan’s mind.