She hesitates. “Hillsdale food court, across from Panda Express, next Friday, eleven A.M. Make sure you’re not followed. Seriously, Jake. Don’t fuck it up.” She walks away without looking back.
Outside, Neil is still watching the basketball game. Dave has wandered off, and Neil is alone, sitting on the concrete wall, his legs dangling over the side. Something about him strikes me as familiar, but I can’t put a finger on it. Alice is still talking to Chuck and Eve. Chuck is telling the story of how they came to have Gene design them a vacation house. Chuck has a slight accent, maybe Australian. “It was a while back, before we were established. He offered to do it, so we scrambled to find the funds to buy a piece of property. My friend Wiggins told me about a lot adjacent to his spread in Hopland. It was cheap, so we snagged it. The whole thing is glass and concrete, views everywhere. Gene is a magician.”
“You guys have to see it,” Eve says. “Want to join us for a weekend?”
I’m fishing through my mind for the appropriate excuse to decline the invitation when I hear Alice say, “Sure, that sounds fun.”
Before I can protest, Chuck is already on to picking a date. “We’re family,” he says, “so this will count for one of you toward your trips for the year.”
Alice blurts out, “Dibs.”
“We have a pool,” Eve adds, “so bring your suits.”
Just before midnight, the party clears out. In an instant, it goes from thirty people standing around talking and drinking to a nearly empty patio, with just me, Alice, Gene, Olivia, and one other couple. Alice obviously doesn’t want to leave. I’m very surprised. While she has always been more social than me, and while we haven’t really gotten out much lately other than our required date nights, I figured we were on the same page with The Pact. My simple logic was that if it didn’t look like there was any way out, and it didn’t, the best thing to do was to minimize the amount of time we spent with the members. The less we see them, the less they see us, the less likely we are to get into trouble. More time together means more risk. Has Alice forgotten this?
We say our goodbyes, and Gene sees us to the door. All the way down the long path to where we’re parked, neither of us says a word. I open the car door and wait as Alice maneuvers herself, collar and all, into the passenger side. Once in the car, I relax. We have, as far as I can tell, survived our first quarter in The Pact.
“That was fun,” Alice says, no trace of sarcasm in her voice.
As I pull out, I notice Gene and Neil standing at the top of the driveway, watching us.
47
On Tuesday, Vivian calls Alice and asks her to meet for lunch at Sam’s, an old-time Italian restaurant in the Financial District. All day, I’m nervous, wondering what they’ll talk about, what bizarre new punishment or directive Vivian will pass down from on high. Or maybe we performed well at the party, and today will bring good news. Does The Pact ever deliver good news? Could this be the end of the collar?
I get home from work at five-fifteen and sit at the window, reading, watching for Alice. At six-fifteen, her car pulls into the driveway. The garage door opens, then I hear her steps on the side stairs. I’m in the kitchen waiting when she opens the door, and the first thing I notice is her posture: more relaxed, more easy, more Alice. The scarf she wore this morning is gone. Her blouse is open at the neck. She does a little spin for me and grins.
“It’s gone,” I say, taking her in my arms. “How does it feel to be free?”
“Great. But strange. I guess I wasn’t using my neck muscles, and now I’m paying the price. I think I need to lie down.”
We go back to the bedroom, and Alice lies on top of the sheets. I fix up her pillow so she’s comfortable and sit on the bed beside her.
“Tell me everything.”
“Vivian was already there when I arrived,” Alice says. “She was sitting in one of the enclosed booths. I went in, and the waiter closed the curtain to give us privacy. There was no small talk. She didn’t even mention the party. She told me she’d received the directive to remove the collar. The removal directive was set for one o’clock, though, so I had to wear it during lunch.” She sits up to readjust the pillow. “I asked Vivian if I could keep it.”
“Why on earth?”
Alice shrugs and lies back down again. “It’s hard to explain, but I wanted it as a souvenir, I guess. Vivian just said it was against protocol.”
The next morning, after Alice has left for work, I’m in the kitchen making coffee when there’s a knock at the door. It’s a bike messenger, a kid of about twenty, carrying a large envelope marked with the telltale P in the upper left-hand corner. He’s out of breath, so I offer him a glass of water and invite him inside. He follows me into the kitchen, filling the room with his nervous energy, answering questions I haven’t asked. “I’m Jerry,” he says. “I moved to San Francisco from Elko, Nevada, three years ago, chasing a job at a start-up. The start-up folded a few weeks after I arrived, and I landed this gig.”
I hand him a glass of water. He downs it in one long gulp. “You guys live way the fuck out here. I’ve got to get a new job. If these Wednesday packages didn’t pay so much, I would’ve a long time ago.”
“You deliver others like this?”
“Yep. They’ve got me on retainer—Wednesdays only. Sometimes I’ll have two or three, other days I have none.”
“Where do you pick them up?”
“This tiny office on Pier Twenty-three, always the same guy. He tells me I’m their only messenger, I’m the only one they trust. The application process was a bitch. Background check, fingerprints, the works. Although I didn’t apply, exactly. They called me with some story about how they’d gotten my name from my former employer, although my former employer was already in Costa Rica by then, spending the VC’s money. Anyway, as soon as I’d passed their test, they sent me out on my first delivery. It’s been every Wednesday since then, just about.”
“Always in San Francisco?”
“Nah, I cover the East Bay, the Peninsula all the way down to San Jose, and Marin. I bike it when I’m in the city, but otherwise I have to drive. I don’t know who they are, but I know they have deep pockets, ’cause I make more money on Wednesday deliveries than I do during the entire rest of the week. Yikes, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that. We’re good, though, right?”
“Yes, we’re good.”
He sets his glass on the counter and checks his wristband—an activity tracker. “Gotta go. I’ve got one last one in San Mateo.” As he’s putting on his helmet, he asks, too casually, “Do you know who they are?”
If this is a test—and isn’t everything with The Pact?—there’s only one correct answer: “Not a clue.”
Before I can ask him any more questions, he’s out the door, back on his bike.
The envelope has Alice’s name on the front, so I text her: You just got a package from The Pact.