"Tell your kids how long you'll be. They'll come back. Evening, Anne."
"Jube! Come on up! Have some tea with us."
"Can't stay, lovely lady. Sorry." Jube turned to the black and white escort, who had ranged themselves at the bottom of the steps.
"Two hours," Zoe said.
"Got that?" Jube asked.
"Got it," Needles said. The kids vanished. Zoe couldn't see jube anymore either; he'd fitted himself into some invisible space in the twilight.
The dingy stairs still creaked. The yellow fog put out by bare light bulbs still twisted the shadows into monstrous shapes. Home again, same as it ever was.
Bjorn sat in his disreputable leather recliner, his feet wrapped in hot towels and a heating pad, his thick legs covered in postman's blue twill. He still had his job, then. Jube had made her wonder.
"Hi, handsome," Zoe said. She kissed him, the bristle of his five o'clock shadow rough on her lips. Something was wrong, some pain had layered itself over his usual physical aches, had marked his face with deeper lines and reddened his eyes.
"Hi, skinny."
Zoe perched on the arm of the recliner.
Bjorn sat up and unwrapped his feet. Red-brown fur covered them, down to the vestigial claws on his splayed, short toes. He pulled on his ancient and disreputable slippers and leaned back again.
"Got news for us, do you?"
He knew it couldn't be just a duty visit. He knew her.
"Bad news. Very bad news."
He sighed and shifted his weight. "Seems to be the only kind there is these days."
And they waited, both of them, while she said "Uh," a couple of times, while she tried to figure out the best way to begin. "I've been called to a grand jury hearing. About some theft that's been going on in the company."
"They want you to be a witness or something?" Anne asked.
"Worse than that. I'm likely to be indicted for embezzlement."
"You?" Anne said.
"Or you. The stolen funds are in an account with your name on it, momma."
"Oh, my," Anne said. She sank back into her corner of the couch and waited. Not panicked though. Anne worked for a lawyer. Legalese wasn't likely to scare her.
"How much?" Bjorn asked.
"Half a million." And then the words came tumbling out, the neat, small transactions that Nosy had put together, the faked invoices for things that wouldn't have been noticed, now that the company had gotten bigger.
The mandatory wild card testing had started this. We can't have people like that working here, Nosy had said. Nonsense, Zoe had told him. Nosy, the disease is not contagious. But, he'd said. But nothing, Zoe had replied. This is a company that hires chemists. Jewish chemists, Japanese chemists, any old damned chemist who can do the work. And that includes wild card victims, Nosy. She'd put her foot down, he'd looked abashed, she'd thought the matter settled.
"An order showed up for a tanker full of acetone for the plant in Jerusalem. Paid in full. We haven't built the plant in Jerusalem yet. Accounting spotted it and called for an audit. I got a subpoena today. And a lawyer. Mendlen."
"He's good. But you should have called me," Anne said. "No, you couldn't, I had a clinic appointment. I wasn't in this afternoon."
"The funds were diverted to a signature account. We'll get a handwriting expert on it, momma, and you'll be cleared of all this."
Mendlen hoped.
"So what do I do now?" Zoe had asked.
"Act as if nothing has changed," Mendlen told her.
Right.
Bjorn was staring at the mute TV set, and he was trying not to look worried.
"I like Mendlen," Zoe said. "I'm going to see him again tomorrow. Dad? What else is going on here? Jube seems to think you've lost your job."
"No. No, I still get to carry mail around. As long as I can walk, I guess." He reached his arm around her and patted her hip. "The job's fine."
"So what's wrong? Something is!"
"Zoe, it's nothing you need to worry about."
"Don't make me crazy. Tell me, daddy."
He sighed and shifted in the chair. "My pension's gone."
"That can't be! You're a federal employee, for God's sake. The government hasn't lost its pension funds!"
"I'm a wild carder. What they said, is that - oh, just a minute here." He rummaged along the edges of the chair cushion. "Here's the brochure. I got it today."
He held it at arm's length and began to read.
"See? It looks like real good stuff. Wild card victims get cared for in special 'Biological Research Units,' they say. No Medicare or Medicaid, not for us. We get 'special treatment,' and 'individual financial assistance.' Got that, honey? 'If medical problems arise from these tragic infections.'"
"Barnett," Zoe said.
"Yeah." Bjorn sounded resigned. Zoe took the brochure from Bjorn's hand and scanned through it. It was as opaque to read as an insurance policy, but a sickening concept came through. Sick jokers would be spirited away, isolated.
"They can't do this!"
"Well, they did. It's enough to make me believe the Card Sharks are real." Bjorn patted Zoe's hip as if she were the one who was hurt, not him. "Barnett's in the White House, and Hartmann's dead."
"I never trusted Gregg Hartmann," Anne said, sotto voce.
"I did. Let me finish, Anne."
From her nest of pillows on the couch, Anne winked at Zoe.
"We've got another election before I'm due to retire," Bjorn said. "I think the law can't stay on the books, Zoe. the ACLU and the JADL will get it revoked."
"Sure."
"So, daughter. This mess you're in. It's a business mess, it's a money mess, but you've got your health and your strength. You can't let it get to you, Zoe. I'd hate to think some nasty little nat could stress you so much that your card would turn. Don't let that happen, Zoe."
Denial was a wonderful mechanism. Bjorn and Anne must have known that their daughter was no latent. Her deceptions could not truly have fooled them, back when she was small and not so clever. She'd known, even as a tiny child that they desperately wanted her to have escaped the wild card.
"There's pot roast and cranberries, Zoe," Anne said. "I can heat some for you, if you'd like."
Bjorn's dietary preferences ran to meat and fruit.
"Thanks, momma. But I had a sandwich at work." That was a fib. She just couldn't eat, not now. My family has always operated on a structure of polite lies, Zoe realized. Momma is facing a charge as an embezzler's accomplice, and she wants me to eat my dinner like a good girl.
Zoe got up from the arm of her dad's chair and went to sit on the couch by her mom. Muted by the thick insulated draperies Anne kept over the windows, a siren wailed, rap music blared, and the popcorn sound of automatic gunfire peppered the night, but it was far away.
As if tonight were an ordinary night, they watched while the TV ran its retinue of nightly news. The Great and Powerful Turtle was going to appear on Peri's Perch; tune in tomorrow.
"I've got to go home, momma," Zoe said. "No, don't get up." She paused with her hand on the doorknob. "What clinic appointment, ma?"
"Breast lumps. I'm waiting for some biopsy reports. I'll know tomorrow."
"Holy shit."
"Language, language, baby." Anne got up from the couch.
"I'll go to the clinic with you."
"You have an appointment with your attorney." Anne stretched on tiptoe and kissed Zoe's cheek. "You'd better keep it."
"Yes, momma."
"Your room's still here. There's always a place for you here, if you don't want to be alone."
"Thanks, sweetie."
Zoe kissed her and left.
She went down the stairs at speed. Her life felt unreal, the day's events impossible. Cancer. Poverty. Disgrace. She had to make these things not happen, and she didn't know how. Scenarios of a grim future kept popping into her mind; Anne dead, Bjorn locked in some walled enclave. She saw herself in gray cotton in a prison workroom, stitching useless things on old sewing machines. No.