“There could be a connection.”
“Like this isn’t crazy enough without throwing that in.”
“I’m not throwing it in.”
“I mean, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking it’s the same year. ’09. And that’s weird, Kate. It’s a very weird coincidence. What I’m thinking is, the whole fantasy could be coming out of that. If you’d had the baby—”
“Just stop it,” she said.
And he did stop. And hasn’t mentioned it since, though Kathryn has thought about it plenty. The conversation comes back to her in these sorts of moments: alone in the car, backed up on the Northway while the sun capsizes in a sea of tropospheric aerosols, another day ending with the colors of holocaust. What happened in ’09 was, she was with Griffin and then she was also with Mitch. When she got pregnant, the question of whose could only have been answered in one way — and what would be the point of having such a test if not to choose one man or the other based on its results. One fate or the other. Maybe some people can make a decision that way, but not me. Is the future all mine to shape? What am I going to do, award myself to one of them like a prize? I can’t start a life that way. Thus went her reasoning all those years ago, twenty-six years ago now, when what she did was, she let it go, all by herself. Didn’t tell either one of them. Believing there was purity in this. Knowing, not much later, that abortion had been a way to protect herself against what she’d thought of as total loss. What if you lose both of them and the baby. In the end, she had told Mitch (and can see even now the way he had squinted his eyes, as if trying to see through a swirling fog), but the truth is, by then, what was this admission but itself a kind of test. If you love me.
Exit 8.
She calls home and leaves a message saying she’ll be late (what’s new) and is anyone working on dinner.
She turns on public radio.
The news is: There are elected officials out there, governors and senators, saying that their provinces and colonies, in defiance of the recent court ruling, will close their borders to all former internees. Turn it off. Can’t take it. These poor people. How many different ways must you prove your hate for them. She wonders what Dorian is thinking about all this. End of the camps; the renaturalizations. Should have talked to him weeks ago. It’s your own fault he’s back-sliding. Of course the news is setting him off. He sees these people as criminals. They’re set free and, abracadabra, this bizarre projection of his reappears. This symbol. There’s nothing mysterious about it at all. You studied psychology in college. It’s not complicated. He sees her in dreams and she is nothing but fear given form in a dream. Stop thinking about what your husband said that time. Which he only said for his own selfish reasons. A weird coincidence, yeah. But Dorian cannot know anything about that. Still. If you’d had the baby, it might have been a girl. She would’ve been conceived in ’09. Would’ve been eighteen when he was three. And she could have been in the city when it happened—and when you step into this current of imagination, you lose your balance, emotion passes between you and rationality like a moon between planet and sun. Shadow over your heart. There’s something feasible here. If you had done one thing different.
One of the first things the old guy does is get him a smartphone; and once Karim has it, he starts thinking about what Abdul-Aziz instructed him to do. Call the number. Not immediately calling the number does not mean he’s not going to call the number. Karim will do as he was told by the sheikh (which is the rightful thing to do in the eyes of God, and which he wants to do), he just can’t seem to bring himself to do it today. Tomorrow, he tells himself. Same thing he told himself yesterday after the old guy had taken him to the mall and bought the compact device in its red metallic casing, giving Karim the power to access the Internet, take pictures still and moving, download and play games, and make unlimited audio and video calls. He had never used one of these before. In the camp, they were contraband. Somehow, though, the sheikh possessed one; and once, after dark, Karim had held it in his hands, Hazem and Yassim on either side of him, and the boys watched the glowing screen, blinking like moths winging at a flame. “Don’t be afraid,” said Abdul-Aziz, as the boy in the video was prepared by men in dark hoods, as plastified explosives and tubes filled with nails and steel balls were taped to his skin and bones. But fuck were they afraid, all three of them terror-filled, expecting that at any moment, by design or accident, the boy might burst on the screen before their eyes into a cloud of blood, flesh, bone, and guts. Which he did not. Though he did no less suddenly burst into tears; and when a voice asked him why he was crying, he sobbed, “Because I am so happy. I am going to see my mother in the highest gardens of heaven …”
June 22.
Only three days past Dakota. But the camp and his friends, the lean-to they’d built out of scrounged cardboard, sheet metal, and particle board: all just disappeared. And now this house. Soft carpeting, gentle gusts of cool air, staircase leading to a second floor and a room all for him (with a futon whose plush makes him feel like he’s remembering something from before the encoding of memories), and in the back yard, get this, a pool, a real swimming pool filled with clean water and covered by a transparent dome. He can’t swim. But the depth is only four feet from end to end. He can lunge around, make some attempts at the rudimentary strokes, and float on a giant yellow smiley face with holes for eyes. You put your ass in one of the holes and let your head rest on the big happy mouth, and eventually Satan will ask a question of you: Is it possible you’ve already laid down your life — a painless passage, as the sheikh promised — and this is Paradise?
It could be ten minutes, could be a century later that he hears a muezzin chanting the azan.
“Allahu Akbar …”
“Allahu Akbar …”
The voice is not coming from a minaret, not from a loudspeaker (as it did at the camp); it’s coming from the smartphone. Karim paddles over to the ladder and pulls himself off the float. He drapes a towel over his shoulders. Picks up the phone. “Come to prayer … Come to prayer …” He exits the dome. A few steps on soft grass, a few more across flat stones that burn the soles of his feet. Sliding glass door. Stepping inside is a dream-change. You are now in a subzero dimension: molecules of chlorinated water freeze into crystals on your skin. Across the room, there’s a magic machine. Push one button, you get jewels of ice; push another, a cascade of perfectly tasteless water. Karim drinks until his brain aches. As he puts the glass down, the old guy says from the doorway:
“Time for salat?”
“Mm.”
“Good, good. You look good today. You feel good?”
“Pretty good,” Karim says.
“Good.”
“God is greatest,” chants the muezzin.
“I was thinking,” the old guy says. “Around sunset, how about some mini-golf.”
“Some what?”
The old guy joins two fists and makes a funny knocking motion. “You don’t know? It’s a game.”
“Oh …”
Down in the basement, the old guy has made a place for him to pray. Persian rug. On the wall, a framed picture of the Grand Mosque. Karim stands on the rug and faces Mecca. As he recites the first sura, he raises up his hands. Folds his hands on his chest. Bows. Sits. Kneels. Lowers forehead. Touches forehead to rug. Asks for protection from the torture of hellfire. When he’s done, he picks up his phone.