Elisa knows that Zelda tells the tale to lift Elisa from the doldrums she is unable to hide and declines to specify. She is grateful, and between pitching items into carts, she signs interjections with as much vigor as she can muster. They finish and push their carts into the hall. Elisa has the squeaky one; it caterwauls enough that an Empty pokes his helmeted head into the far end of the hall to evaluate the threat. Their route takes them right past F-1. Elisa strains to listen for telltale sounds while trying not to look like she’s listening.
They turn left and head down a windowless corridor black but for the orange parking-lot lights eking through double doors being held open by a block of wood. Zelda pushes open a door, pulls her cart after her, and holds the door for Elisa to follow. They are met, as they often are, by the other graveyarders, standing like birds on a wire, puffing on cigarettes. Scientists dare flaunt Occam’s smoking ban, but not janitors; several times per night they gather at the loading dock, their quarrels suspended for the duration of a smoke. It’s a risk: Breaks are allowed in the main lobby, but not here, not this close to sterile labs.
“You need to oil those wheels,” Yolanda says. “I heard you squealing a mile away.”
“Don’t listen to her, Elisa,” Antonio says. “It gives me time to comb my hair nice for you.”
“Is that hair?” Yolanda gibes. “I thought that was the clog you plunged from the bowl.”
“Miss Elisa, Miss Zelda,” Duane calls. “How come you two never smoke with us?”
Elisa shrugs and points to her neck scars. One puff of one cigarette in the work shed behind Home was all the experiment she’d needed; she’d coughed until blood had darkened the dirt. She wheels the squeaky cart down the ramp, waves at the Milicent Laundry driver in the van’s side mirror, and begins chucking material through the open rear doors into waiting baskets. Zelda parks her cart alongside Elisa’s but turns back to the others.
“Oh, hell,” Zelda says. “I do kind of miss the taste. Give me that cigarette.”
The others hurrah as Zelda joins them at the top of the ramp. She accepts a Lucky Strike from Lucille, lights up, takes a drag, and nestles the elbow of her smoking arm into the palm of the opposite hand. It’s a pose that has Elisa fancying a younger, lither version of her friend being slung about a brass-blasted dance hall by a zoot-suited suitor, maybe Brewster. Elisa follows Zelda’s exhaled smoke as it rises, catching the sodium light before drifting in front of a security camera.
“Don’t worry, sugar.”
She’s startled into looking down at Antonio. He winks one of his crossed eyes and swipes an innocuous broom from where it rests against the wall. He lifts it, handle upward, until the end taps the bottom of the camera. An accumulated spot of dirt on the camera’s bottom panel reveals how the janitors tilt the camera upward, the same way every night, before tapping it back down into place.
“Make us a little blind spot for a few minutes. Pretty smart, huh?”
It takes a minute for Elisa to realize that she has ceased loading laundry. The Milicent Laundry driver honks; she doesn’t react. Duane tries to joke her awake, asking her how come she brings so many more boiled eggs for lunch than she can eat; she doesn’t react. Zelda finally stubs her cigarette, gestures for the driver to relax, and hustles down the ramp to do her share of the loading.
“You all right, hon?” she asks.
Elisa hears her neck bones crackle in a nod, yet can’t look away from the smokers as they toss their smoldering butts in capitulation to the clock and leave Antonio to nudge the security camera back into prosecutorial position. She barely hears Zelda shut the van doors and bang them to tell the driver he’s free to go. Blind spot: Elisa nuzzles into the phrase, explores it, finds it familiar, almost cozy. Zelda and Giles aside, she lives her whole life in a blind spot, forgotten by the world, and wouldn’t it be something, she thinks, if this invisibility were the thing that allowed her to shock them all?
7
DAYSHIFTERS FILTER INTO the locker room. Zelda makes eye contact with those she trained over the years. Funny how they got promoted and she didn’t. They pretend to look at watches, busy themselves with purses. Well, Zelda doesn’t forget a face. Some of these fancy-pants dayshifters had been the graveyard shift’s worst rumormongers. Sandra once claimed to have seen, in B-5, flight plans used in gassing the populace with sedatives. Albert declared that the cabinets of A-12 hid human brains simmering in green goo—probably, he theorized, the brains of presidents. Rosemary swore she’d read a discarded file on a young man, code-named “Finch,” who didn’t age.
That’s what rumor mills do: They grind. So Zelda puts little stock in the gossip swirling around F-1. Is there something strange in that tank? You bet there is—it bit off two of Mr. Strickland’s fingers. But strange is Occam’s racket. Anyone who’s been here a spell knows not to get into a lather about it.
That ought to include Elisa. Lately her friend’s behavior has Zelda at sixes and sevens. Oh, she saw how Elisa behaved when they pushed the laundry carts past F-1. That squeaky wheel might as well have been the girl’s whine. Zelda figures it will pass; everyone takes her turn getting gung-ho about government conspiracy. Try as she might, though, she can’t shrug it off. Elisa’s the one person at Occam who sees Zelda for who she is: a good person and a darn hard worker. If Elisa gets herself fired, Zelda doesn’t know if she can take it. Selfish, maybe, but also true. Her knuckles ache, not from gripping mops but because fingers are how Elisa talks, and the idea of losing that daily conversation, that daily affirmation that she, Zelda Fuller, matters—it hurts.
One true thing about F-1: It had top dogs pulling harder at service personnel than anything before. Elisa keeps lingering around that lab, she’ll be playing with real fire. Zelda finishes dressing, sits on the bench, and sighs, enjoying the sharp smell of Lucky Strike. She unfolds a QCC from her pocket, gives it another look. Fleming keeps transposing details, trying to trip them up; if she were Elisa, she might suspect Fleming did this to keep them too busy to concoct theories. Zelda rubs her tired eyes and keeps checking, every row, every column, as the dressed dayshifters bang lockers. The QCC is full of empty, unfillable boxes, the same as her life. Things she’ll never have, places she’ll never go.
The locker room is crowding with women. Zelda looks around, past legs being hoisted, clothes hangers being untangled, bra straps being adjusted. The QCC isn’t the only reason she has lingered here. She’s been waiting for Elisa, so they can wait for the bus together—waiting to wait, the story of her life. Admitting it makes her feel pathetic. The last person Elisa’s thinking about these days is Zelda. The QCC fades before her vision until the night’s biggest unchecked box is revealed to be Elisa. Where is she? She hasn’t changed out of her uniform. Which means she’s still inside Occam. Zelda stands, the QCC gliding to the floor.
Oh, Lord. The girl was up to something.
8
THE MATRON’S VOICE rings through her skull. Stupid little girl. Elisa slows her gait to wait out two gabbing dayshifters ambling toward the end of the hall. You never follow directions, no wonder all the girls hate you. There: She’s alone. She scoots to the F-1 door and slots the key card. One day I’ll catch you lying or stealing and throw you out in the cold. The lock engages, and she throws open the door, an outrageous act at this hour. You’ll have no choice except selling your body, you shameful girl. Elisa slides inside, shuts the door, presses her back against it, and listens for footsteps, her fearful mind conflating nightmare images of the Matron hurling little Mum down the steps only for David Fleming to catch her.