The dial clicks forward. Now it is becoming more difficult. She feels the pricking at the right side of her collarbone and in the palm of her hand. Come on, it says, come on. It is like a pressure holding her arm down now. Uncomfortable. She could so easily throw this heavy, pressing weight off and be free of it. She cannot be seen to sweat, cannot show a struggle.
Margot thinks of what she did when Bobby told her he’d been having an affair. She remembers how her body went hot and cold, how she felt her throat close up. She remembers how he said, ‘Aren’t you going to say anything? Don’t you have anything to say about that?’ Her mother would scream at her father for leaving the door unlatched when he walked out in the morning, or forgetting his slippers in the middle of the living-room rug. She’s never been one of those women, never wanted to be. She used to walk in the cool of the yew trees when she was a child, placing each foot so carefully, pretending that if she took one wrong step the roots would curl up through the earth and grab her. She has always known exactly how to be silent.
The dial clicks on. There is a neat row of eight zeroes on the woman’s Xeroxed sheet. Margot had been afraid she would not know what a zero felt like, that the business would be over before it began and she would have no choice. She breathes in and breathes out. It is hard now, very hard, but the difficulty is familiar. Her body wants something, and she is denying it. The itch of it, the pressure of it, is across the front of her torso, down through the muscles of her stomach, into her pelvis, around her buttocks. It is like simply not passing water when your bladder asks you to. It is like holding your breath for a few seconds longer than is entirely comfortable. It’s no wonder that the baby girls can’t do it. It’s a wonder they’ve found any adult women at all with this thing. Margot feels herself want to discharge, and doesn’t. Just doesn’t.
The machine clicks on to its tenth setting. It is not impossible, not even nearly. She waits. The humming cuts off. The fans whirr and then are silent. The pen lifts from the graph table. Ten zeroes.
Margot tries to look disappointed. ‘No dice, huh?’
The technician shrugs.
Margot tucks one foot behind the other ankle as the technician removes the electrodes. ‘I never thought I had it.’ She makes her voice crack just a little at the end of the sentence.
Daniel will look at this report. He’ll be the one to sign off on it. Cleared, it will say, for government work.
She twitches her shoulders and lets out a little barking laugh.
And there’s no reason now not to put her in charge of the programme rolling out this test across the major metropolitan area. Not a reason in the world. She’s the one who signs off on the budget for it. Who agrees the informational campaigns explaining that this technology will keep our sons and daughters safe. It’s Margot’s name, when you come right down to it, on the official documentation saying that this testing equipment will help save lives. She tells herself, as she signs the forms, that it’s probably true. Any woman who can’t stop herself from discharging under this mild pressure is a danger to herself, a danger, yes, to society.
There are strange movements rising now, not only across the world, but right here in the US of A. You can see it on the internet. Boys dressing as girls to seem more powerful. Girls dressing as boys to shake off the meaning of the power, or to leap on the unsuspecting, wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Westboro Baptist Church has seen a sudden influx of crazy new members who think the day of judgement is coming.
The work they’re doing right here – trying to keep everything normal, to keep people feeling safe and going to their jobs and spending their dollars on weekend recreational activities – this is important work.
Daniel says, ‘I try, I really try, always to have something positive to say, you know, but I just’ – he lets the pages slip from his hand, fall across the table – ‘your people haven’t given me a single thing I can use here.’
Arnold, Daniel’s budget guy, nods silently, holding his chin in his hand, an awkward, twisted gesture.
‘I know it’s not your fault,’ says Daniel. ‘You’re understaffed, under-resourced – we all know you’re trying your hardest in difficult circumstances – but this just isn’t something we can use.’
Margot has read the report from the Mayor’s office. It’s bold, yes, it suggests a strategy of radical openness about the current state of protection, of treatments, of the potential for any future reversal. (The potential is nil.) Daniel keeps on talking, listing one problem after another, never quite saying, ‘I’m not brave enough for this,’ but meaning that every time.
Margot’s hands are flat against the underside of the table, palms upward. She feels the fizz building as he speaks. She breathes very slowly and evenly; she knows she can control this, it’s the control that gives her pleasure, at first. She thinks of exactly what she would do; as Daniel drones on, she can feel it out quite simply. She has enough power within her to take Daniel’s throat in her grip and pinch him out with one blast. She’d have plenty left to deliver Arnold a blow to the temple, knock him cold, at least. It would be easy. It wouldn’t take much effort. She could do it quickly enough that there’d be no sound. She could kill them both, right here, in conference room 5(b).
Thinking this, she feels very far from the table, where Daniel’s mouth is still flapping open and closed like a goldfish. She is in a high and lofty realm, a place where the lungs fill with ice crystals and everything is very clear and clean. It scarcely matters what is actually happening. She could kill them. That is the profound truth of it. She lets the power tickle at her fingers, scorching the varnish on the underside of the table. She can smell its sweet chemical aroma. Nothing that either of these men says is really of any great significance, because she could kill them in three moves before they stirred in their comfortably padded chairs.
It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.
She speaks quite suddenly, across Daniel, sharp like the knock at a door. ‘Don’t waste my time with this, Daniel,’ she says.
He’s not her superior. They are equals. He can’t fire her. He’s talking as if he could.
She says, ‘You and I both know that no one has an answer yet. If you’ve got a great idea, let’s hear it. Otherwise …’
She lets it dangle. Daniel opens his mouth as if to say something and then closes it again. Under her fingertips, on the underside of the table, the varnish is softening, curling, crumbling to fall in soft flakes on to the thick-pile carpet.
‘I didn’t think so,’ she says. ‘Let’s work together on this one, OK, buddy? No sense throwing each other to the wolves.’
Margot is thinking about her future. You’re gonna pump my gas someday, Daniel. I’ve got big plans.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah.’
She thinks, That is how a man speaks. And that is why.
Rudimentary weapon, approximately one thousand years old. The wires are intended to conduct the power. Possibly used in battle or for punishment. Discovered in a gravesite in old Westchester.
EIGHT YEARS TO GO
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