I shrugged and took a bite of the flaky roll. It was delicious, sweet, and buttery. I finished it quickly.
“Do you think he’s here?” I asked carefully, wiping crumbs from my mouth with the back of my hand as my mind turned to Hessa, and then Orry. The aching pain etched a new wound across my insides. I missed them so much.
Joseph shook his head, looking up at me with intensity, his eyes swirls of muddy gold. “He has to be.”
The heavy, wooden door creaking opening interrupted us. We stood to attention, bracing ourselves for violence. Our eyes widened, and my mouth dropped a little as two guards dressed in black marched into the room with clean clothes, towels, and toiletries in their rigid arms.
They laid them on the bed carefully. The one with dark, bushy eyebrows and brown eyes stated, “Este will speak with you tonight. You are required to shower thoroughly using the… er… antibacterial soap provided and change your clothing.” He cast his eyes critically over our dirt-encrusted jeans and not-so-white-anymore t-shirts. “You’re clothing will be laundered and returned to you if they are acceptably free from contaminants.”
Both of us nodded slowly in dumb shock. Were we being toyed with? The room, the food, the clothing… it all seemed like trick. Surely, any minute now, the guards would shake off their cool and pleasant demeanors, like a cicada kicking off its skin, and throw us in a cell. I didn’t understand it or like it.
The soldiers stood rigidly, waiting, until we picked up the clean clothes and nodded. The tall one bent down to whisper, “You’ll do it right? I mean, you’ll take the shower and change?” His face was all kinds of nervous.
I raised my eyebrows, watching them shift back and forth on the balls of their feet uncomfortably. “Oh ok,” I said, understanding they needed confirmation we would follow the order. “Yes, we’ll do it… as soon as you leave,” I said brazenly, my eyes moving to the door. They didn’t react and, once assured we would follow their request, they stepped out of the room calmly, almost respectfully, which creeped me out even more. The bolt slid back into place with a final, metallic click, just to remind us we were prisoners, not guests.
Joseph threw me a look as if to say ‘Just roll with it,’ and shrugged, pulling his shirt off as he walked towards what I assumed was the bathroom door. I watched his muscled back covered in fresh bruises, the perfect match for gun barrels, moving away from me. It didn’t make him any less perfect. I found myself wishing, yet again, that I could take just one tiny part of his attitude. But I felt like a bird in an invisible cage, flying up again and again, only to hit the bars and lose more of my feathers. Soon I’d be picked clean. Nothing felt right about any of this.
“You coming?” he threw over his shoulder.
I blushed, sitting on the bed with my arms wrapped around my knees. I let the thought tick over for one second, and then my body reacted before my brain could stop me. Quite honestly, what did it matter? We were in as much trouble as we could possibly be in.
I sprung from the bed a little too enthusiastically and ran to his side.
He looked down at me in surprise and smiled. “I never know what you’re going to do.”
I grabbed his chin and pulled his mouth towards mine, stopping just short of kissing him. I grinned. “Good.”
He chuckled and held out his arm. “After you, Sleeping Beauty.”
I rolled my eyes and walked into the bathroom.
We’d been sitting in the bedroom for hours. I’d paced the four walls. I’d pulled back the plush curtains, only to find the window bricked up and a projected image of a garden with a single bird flickering in the fork of a stupid, plastic-looking tree wavering across the space. It gave me shivery flashbacks and reminded me why we were here—save the babies, and create a distraction.
Slumping in a chair, I exhaled heavily. I reached my finger up to trace the gold-embossed wallpaper. It was a bird, swinging on a seat in a cage. How fitting. I let my shoulders fall even lower, until I started to resemble a triangle of flesh and bone.
Joseph lay on the bed with his arms wrapped behind his head. He could have been relaxing at home for all the worry he was showing right now. I pursed my lips, trying very hard to keep the insults inside and glued to my tongue.
The clothes they’d given us were simple and elegant. A clean, white, button-down shirt and dark pants for Joseph and, to my dismay, a similar shirt and fitted skirt for me. They gave me tights, but I decided they were optional.
I scowled as I scratched at the paper with my last useful fingernail, seeing if I could remove the bird from the cage by erasing the bars. Gold dust fell in my lap, and I brushed it off violently with a humph.
“You all right?” His deep voice sounded from across the room.
I continued scratching and didn’t turn to him. “I don’t understand why we have to wait like this. You would think she’d want the information right now. It feels like they’re doing this on purpose, you know, to unsettle us.”
He left the bed and came to stand over me. “I know.”
I kept peeling and scratching, the gold paint rubbing off on my fingertips, “God, Joseph, do you think we did the right thing? I miss Orry so much.” I dragged my nails across my chest, pulling at my heart. “And I’m scared. I know no one else would do it. I know we decided we couldn’t let all those kids die. I mean, what kind of parents would we be if we just ignored it? But damn it, sometimes I wish we could be those kind of people. You know, the blind-eye people.”
He put his hands on my bony shoulders and rubbed the tired, tiny muscles. It just hurt.
“I’m glad we’re not the blind-eye kind of people, Rosa. And I miss Orry too. So damn much. But you’re right. We couldn’t let all those babies die… Every time I…” He stopped talking and pulled his hands through his hair, breathing deeply. I wanted to wrap him up somehow, buffer all the horrible feelings that were running through his mind. I looked up, waiting for him to finish. “I see them. Every time I close my eyes, I see them, suffering, seizing in numbers I can’t imagine. In pain, like Orry was. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that was happening, and I did nothing to stop it.”
I snatched his hand and squeezed. I knew exactly what he was saying. But the fear and disconnected aching I felt every time I thought about Orry was dragging me back to him. The ribbon was stretching between us. I was so very nervous it would snap and wither like a band that had lost its elasticity, curled and distorted.
The door creaked open, and the same guards walked in. The bushy eye-browed one looked me up and down, pausing on my bare feet inside the leather shoes. He raised the caterpillars but didn’t comment.
“Your presence has been requested. Follow us to the laboratory please.” He stood, leaning against the door, his arm outstretched welcomingly.
This place was so weird. I had never heard a guard, soldier, or guardian ever use the word ‘please’. His whole demeanor made no sense.
Our eyes connected briefly before we were escorted out of the room and into the hallway, his brown and warm, mine wrong and wide with surprise.
I had been unconscious the first time we entered, so I was looking at everything with new eyes. My head snapped back and forth, as I attempted to take in the lush details of just the hallway. The electric vrooming of a vacuum cleaner seemed misplaced in this heavy, old environment, like it should be straw brooms and cloth. Thick, woven carpets lined the floor, colored in heavy blood reds and sharp blacks. Tapestries hung from the walls, curled around wooden poles. A woman busily, hurriedly ran a vacuum over one of the tapestries, sucking in the nose of a creepy little kid with wings and curly blond hair like Orry’s.