When She Woke (35 page)

Hannah grew increasingly nervous as she listened to this matter-of-fact recitation. She’d forgotten, during her weeks at the Straight Path Center and the safe house, how hazardous a place the world was for a Chrome. She repeated the instructions after Simone, committing them to memory, knowing she couldn’t afford to forget again.

Finally, Simone showed her how to load and fire the pistol. Feeling its cold heft in her hand, Hannah wondered if she was capable of using it. On herself, yes; if she were about to be captured, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t hesitate. But could she do as Simone said and shoot someone else, aiming for the chest, for the kill, without stopping even for one second to think about it or trying to reason with her assailant?

Simone took the gun from her and set it back on the table. “We have a little time until sunset,” she said. She ran her hand lightly up Hannah’s arm to her neck and gave her a knowing smile. “How shall we pass it?”

Hannah stiffened, just barely, but Simone felt it. Her hand dropped to her side and her eyebrows lifted.
“Non?”

“I, I don’t know,” Hannah stammered. This morning she’d thought Aidan was lost to her, but now that she knew he wasn’t, that she’d be with him in two days, how could she be intimate with Simone again? How could she want to? Because the fact was, a part of her did want to. “This is all just—” she broke off and looked down at her hands.

“Hannah.” When she didn’t look up, Simone gently lifted her chin. “Listen to me. Do not worry about this …” her hand waved rapidly between the two of them, “about what has passed between us. Perhaps you are a lover of women or perhaps not. You cannot possibly know, in the midst of a
crise
of this kind, who and what you are. But I pray to God that you will have the chance to find out one day.”

The sincerity in the other woman’s voice took Hannah aback. Somehow she’d always assumed Simone was an atheist. “Do you mean that literally? That you pray?”

A Gallic shrug. “But of course. Without God, we have no purpose, no soul. We are just walking sacs of blood and bones.”

“But … But—you’re a lesbian.”

“So?”

“So how can you pray to a God who considers you an abomination?”

Simone let out a distinctly impious snort. “I do not believe in this God of theirs, this pissed-off, macho God of the Bible. How can such a being exist? It is impossible.”

Hannah found herself envying Simone’s certainty, even as she doubted her words. “What makes you say that?”

“If God is the Creator, if God englobes every single thing in the universe, then God is everything, and everything is God. God is the earth and the sky, and the tree planted in the earth under the sky, and the bird in the tree, and the worm in the beak of the bird, and the dirt in the stomach of the worm. God is He and She, straight and gay, black and white and red—yes, even that,” Simone said emphatically, in answer to Hannah’s skeptical look, “and green and blue and all the rest. And so, to despise me for loving women or you for being a Red who made love with a woman, would be to despise not only His own creations but also to hate Himself. My God is not so stupid as that.”

MY God.
Hannah shook her head, stunned by the concept. There was only one God, you couldn’t just make up your own. Certainly not in the faith she’d been raised in, which was fixed as absolutely as a figure in a painting. The Mona Lisa’s hands would always be crossed just so. She would never turn to look at the view behind her, never smooth an errant lock of hair from her face, never yawn or grin from ear to ear. You could observe her, but it certainly wasn’t your place to take a brush in your hand and change something you didn’t like about her. Even to think of doing so was heresy.

And yet, Hannah’s parents had taught her that faith was deeply personal, something between her and God alone. The contradiction struck Hannah now, as she fully appreciated how little volition she’d ever had in her own faith, how little her opinion had ever mattered.

“My God is a God of infinite wisdom and love and compassion,” Simone was saying, “not some bully who spends His time in throwing fire and uh … rocks of
soufre—
”

“Brimstone,” Hannah supplied.

“Brimstone
at homosexuals.”

Could it be true, or was it just wishful thinking on Simone’s part—and her own? Because if Simone were right, Hannah might yet find a way back to Him.

“Your God is beautiful,” she said.

“But of course,” Simone said.

Beautiful, and seductive. Hannah’s mother would have said this was Satan whispering in her ear, but it didn’t feel that way at all; it felt too clean for that, too numinous. She hesitated, then asked, “Did you ever lose Him?”

“I thought I had, after I was raped, but that was idiotic. How can you lose what is inside of you, what is integrated in each molecule of your body? You cannot lose God any more than you can lose your brain or your soul. Without either of them, there is no you.”

“There is only the void,” Hannah murmured, and as she said it, her dream from when she was unconscious came back to her. Only the void, cold and black and empty. A place she never wanted to go back to. She shuddered. Simone saw it but made no move to comfort her. The other woman’s gaze was steady and compassionate, demanding nothing.

Hannah leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek. “Thank you. For everything.”

Simone smiled. “It was my pleasure.”

And mine,
Hannah thought,
and there’s no getting around it.

Simone went to the window, pulling the curtain aside to peer out. “The sun has set,” she said. “It is time to go.”

As they packed up, Hannah reflected how easy it was, in hotel rooms, to lose track of time. With Aidan, it had always passed too swiftly, and then it was time to steal out, her first and then him, into the night, to their separate lives. She’d never once done as she had this morning with Simone: lain beside him and seen the light of dawn illuminate his face.

In two days, perhaps, she would.

When they got to the van, Simone surprised Hannah by asking her to drive. It had been months, and she was a little jerky at first. Simone gave her directions but was otherwise silent, contemplative. Hannah found herself tensing. Did Simone suspect something? Was she about to change her mind? Hannah kept her eyes on the road, trying not to appear as culpable as she felt.

But when they arrived and parked in the lot, Simone programmed the van to respond to Hannah’s biometrics and then pulled a large book from beneath the passenger seat: a battered North American road atlas, ten years out of date. “What’s that for?” Hannah asked.

Simone gestured at the dash, and Hannah noticed for the first time that there was no nav. “We do not use navs. They have memories, and the sat companies keep records that the police can access whenever they want. So, we navigate in the old-fashioned way.” She handed the atlas, along with a wristwatch that was also a compass, to Hannah, who eyed them dubiously. “In all cases,” Simone said, “the jammer blocks the sat signals, so even if there were a nav, it would not work. You will be invisible. Not even we will be able to track you.”

Simone was watching her closely, and Hannah nodded, hoping her relief didn’t show. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that the Novembrists would be able to follow her movements.
Some terrorist I’d make.

“The most important thing to remember, Hannah, the thing you must do immediately if you think you are at the point of being caught, is to turn off the jammer. That way, we will know, and we can take the necessary steps to protect ourselves.” From whatever Hannah told the police, under interrogation. “And if you are caught outside the van, let fall the ring if you possibly can.”

“I will,” Hannah said, humbled suddenly by the enormity of what Simone was risking in letting her go. This was pure faith on the other woman’s part—faith, she was uncomfortably aware, that was partly misplaced. She slid her hands under her thighs to keep from fidgeting.

As if reading her thoughts, Simone locked eyes with her. “I trust that you will keep your word and not contact anyone you know. You do not have a port, but this will not stop you from using a public netlet if you choose, or of calling once you arrive to Canada. When you feel yourself tempted to do this, and you
will
be tempted, if not today then next week or next year, remember, you hold in your hands the lives of many good people.”

Hannah waited, expecting a threat, but none came. Somehow, that made her feel even guiltier. “I’ll keep my word,” she said.
Except in this one thing.
“And I’ll keep your secrets.” That, at least, she could honestly promise.

“Bon,”
Simone said. Her expression softened. “And now, we must follow our own roads. There are two ways we say goodbye in Québec. One is
adieu,
which is ‘goodbye forever.’ The other is
au revoir,
which means ‘until we meet again.’” She leaned forward and kissed Hannah lightly, first on the lips and then on the forehead.
“Au revoir, ma belle. Courage.”

“Au revoir,”
Hannah replied automatically. It was only as she was pulling out of the lot that she realized she hoped it would prove true.

S
HE HEADED DUE
northeast, pulling over periodically to consult the atlas, cursing the lack of a nav and the need to leave the interstate every time she crossed a state line. The maps weren’t completely accurate, and she burned a good two hours trying to find back roads into Alabama and then Georgia.

She made her first stop outside of LaGrange. The van’s charge was getting low, and after six and a half hours behind the wheel, she needed to stretch her legs and use the restroom. She decided to bypass the busy, well-lighted chains just off I-85 and settled instead on a small, dumpy juice station a couple of miles down the road. She chose it because it was poorly lit with no other customers in sight.

She was scanning the cash card Simone had given her when she felt the prickling of eyes on her back and turned to see the clerk watching her from inside the store. She started the charge, locked the van and headed for the restroom at the rear of the building, walking quickly with her head down.

“Hey, lady, where you think you going?” a male voice called out.

Hannah turned and saw the clerk standing in the doorway. He was middle-aged and dark-skinned, with eggplant-colored half-moons under his eyes. His stance was unmistakably aggressive. “To the restroom,” she said.

He wagged his finger at her. “No. No Chromes using toilets.”

Her bladder was burning. If she didn’t go soon, she’d wet herself for the second time in two days. “Oh, come on. I’m paying for a full charge. Surely that entitles me to use your restroom.”

As soon as she’d said it, she knew it had been a mistake. The clerk stepped outside and strode toward her. He was a little shorter than her, but his slender body had a wiry strength. Hannah cursed herself for her imprudence. Why had she argued with him? She felt in her coat pocket for the gun and realized she’d left it in the van.

As he neared her, his hostile expression turned speculative. His eyes dropped to her breasts, returned to her face. He smiled, revealing stained, crooked teeth. “Yes, lady, you are right, and Farooq is wrong. Farooq must keep the customer happy, this is the number one rule. Come, he show you where the restroom is.” He waved toward the back of the building, sending the reek of unwashed male wafting toward her.

Hannah felt a hot bolt of fear. She glanced quickly at the road, but there were no cars in sight. She was completely alone with him. “Never mind,” she said.

She started to edge away from him, toward the van. Still smiling, he mirrored her movement, keeping his body between her and escape. He spread his hands wide. “Why you leaving, eh? Farooq is very sorry, he should not have said no. He have a nice clean toilet, good for lady, you will see.” He took a step toward her, and she stepped back instinctively. Another few feet and they’d be behind the building, out of sight of the road.

“I really need to get going.” She considered running for the van but knew she’d never make it in time. Her mind raced, trying to remember the moves Simone had shown her. In the motel room, Hannah had felt strong and confident, but here, now, she wondered how she could possibly pull them off. He took another step toward her. This time she held her ground.

“Stay away from me.”

His eyes narrowed. She could feel the aggression coming off him in waves, like heat off newly laid tar. She subtly widened her stance, inching her left foot slightly forward and bracing the right one for kicking. All she had to do was disable him long enough to get to the van. He moved a little closer, but not quite close enough. His stench was dizzying. She drew her arm back, bending her hand at the wrist to expose the heel.
Smash the nose first and then attack the balls.

Just then, she heard a vehicle approaching, a motorcycle from the sound of it. Farooq froze and angled his head in the direction of the sound, but he didn’t take his eyes off Hannah. They stood together for long seconds in a tense confederacy, the foggy strands of their breath twining in the chilly air. The motorcycle slowed and its whine lowered to a drone. Farooq scowled and looked over his shoulder as it appeared and turned into the lot. It pulled up to the pump directly behind the van.

Weak-kneed with relief, Hannah stepped out from behind the clerk, and the driver swiveled his head to look at them. She started walking briskly toward the van. She was halfway there when he pulled his visor up, revealing his face.

His bright, lemon yellow face.

As she neared him she saw that he was young, about her age, with African American features, and big. His biceps strained against the leather jacket he wore. His eyes, she saw, were a startling aquamarine, like two exotic fish swimming in a yellow sea. They moved from her to the clerk and then back to her. “You all right, ma’am?” he asked. His voice was unexpectedly soft and genteel.

She stopped in front of him. “Yes, thank you,” she said in a quavery voice. “Thank you so much.”