Marta’s husband’s sudden interest in legitimacy was not actually so sudden, in retrospect, but it took her by surprise nonetheless. Oddly, it troubled her. She wasn’t exactly thrilled with the turn her life had taken, as his wife—had never imagined, marrying him, that she was signing on to be the first lady of a crime boss—but in the world of Atlantic Zone’s dark underbelly, its secret economies, his power at least had its limits. So, too, did his ambition. If David wanted to be legit, he must be seeing his way around those limits.
There were the parties he wanted her to host at the house, the dinners out to five-star restaurants where groups of four or six or eight, never more, perched around tables set on daises, or tucked into lavish back rooms. Men in fine suits. Silent, beautiful women in couture gowns. Marta knew who some of these men were. David’s dealings with politicians weren’t new; he’d long depended on greasing the right palms as a way to get the outer-zone contracts he needed for his business fronts, or to encourage legislation friendly to his business interests. But this public socializing was very new, and so, too, was David’s manner in these meetings. He was polite, deferential—even obsequious. She had never seen him listen so intently without asserting his own strong opinion. She had never seen him agree so readily. And when he did speak, the things that came out of his mouth bore little resemblance to what he said at home, when he was alone with her, or when she overheard him conferring with his most trusted inner circle. At the parties and dinners, he said things like, “Well, all the science points to this tick thing getting worse before it gets better,” and, “It’s clear that the smart funding is going to the Wall.” He said, “Now’s the time to circle the wagons, not spread out. Gulfers and Midwesterners are already attempting border crossings. We have to shut all of that down while we still can.” He nodded gravely when one suit bloviated at length about the importance of penalizing feticide like any first-degree murder, despite the fact that David had, Marta knew, taken care of a little problem Enzo got himself into out on the coast. He hadn’t told her about doing this, much less asked for her advice or permission; she’d overheard a conversation between father and son during the boys’ first Christmas vacation visit home from college. “You need to start wearing a goddamn raincoat,” David had said. “I’m not paying to get another girl flushed. Do you understand what I’m saying? Need I spell out for you the alternatives?”
“No, Dad,” Enzo muttered. “I mean, yeah. I understand. You don’t have to spell out anything.”
Was this when she started using the Salt? It was not long after, at any rate, when the boys packed their suitcases, lavished her with kisses and promises to call, and drove back to Wilmington to finish the academic year. Enzo, the younger twin (by three minutes), had once been hers, had told her everything: about his school crushes, the bullies, the embarrassing “sticky dreams,” about the times his father scared him or shamed him. They were coconspirators. And now, what did she know? Enzo hadn’t come to her with this problem. She couldn’t have fixed it for him if he had. But still. It wasn’t just that he’d had sex, or been careless, or even the abortion. It was that calm, cowed, No, Dad. He knew the alternatives. He accepted them, easily, as part of his reality, his privilege and burden as David Perrone’s son. Marta had, all these years, convinced herself that the boys had been shielded, protected. They didn’t know. They weren’t tainted. She was a fool.
Now, at these dinners David wrote old-fashioned checks (required by law, for political donations over fifty thousand credits) in smiling, dramatic shows. And when he handed them over, he held them in his grasp for an overlong moment, still smiling, and extracted some promise: the golf game, the drink at the club, that weekend retreat to Casinolake. Driving home from these dinners, or closing the door on the last guest at their home, he would mostly sulk in brooding silence. Every now and then—over a final nightcap, or as he and Marta turned the sheets down on their bed—he’d let loose with some rant about “that fatass” or “that idiot,” or he’d say, “Deek’s wife’s aged about a decade since the last time I saw her” or “Wonder who Sagong thinks he’s fooling with that half-rate rejuv job.” Empty, bitter insults. If Marta asked questions—“Why are you having to deal with him?” or “What did you say it was he does at the magistrate’s office?”—he waved her off or ignored her entirely.
Then there was Helle. A year ago David had introduced her to Marta as “new to my staff, a consultant.” More strange words out of his mouth: staff, consultant. The woman who extended a chiseled, long-fingered hand to Marta was fortyish, vaguely Nordic; she had bladelike cheekbones and dark blond hair, worn straight and cut blunt at the shoulders—broad, strong shoulders. Beautiful. Like a supermodel just past her prime. A lover, Marta assumed, put on the payroll as a way to keep her busy and flattered, or as a formal courtesy to Marta, so that her constant presence wouldn’t serve as an outright humiliation. But as the weeks passed, Marta wondered. Maybe Helle was a lover, but she wasn’t only that. She was doing actual work for David, though the nature of that work still wasn’t entirely clear. Helle spoke to David the way only a few of his capos did: firmly, even roughly, at times. She got up in the middle of meals to take calls, came back, gave David a look: You’re going to want to hear this. It was revealed, offhandedly, that she had worked until recently on the president’s staff. The president’s. “As in Glenn Nichols?” Marta had asked David, perplexed. “That president?”
David had shaken his head, exasperated. “Is there another?”
But, like the situation with Enzo, Marta was the last to know, the last to put two and two together. Still the fool. This evidence all mounted, and it wasn’t until David announced the “legit” deal and Marta’s impending trip beyond the Wall that she started to understand what all of this might be building toward. David didn’t just want money. Or power. He wanted to be visible. He wanted a platform.
On the morning she was to begin the OLE training camp, David sent for a car and offered, magnanimously, to accompany her on the ride. “It will be nice to have a little quiet time together.”
Marta, warily, had agreed.
The city, its familiar contours, rolled by outside her tinted window. It was early, not yet 6:00 a.m., and the streets were mostly empty in this posh area of town, and the only unshuttered businesses were the corner coffee shop, the Greek diner, and the bagel shop that David called “the Jews’”: Heading down to the Jews’ for a bagel and lox. Want anything? Today, they didn’t stop. Marta’s stomach was a cauldron of churning acid, and she popped another antacid, swallowing just enough water to get the pill past her throat. It slithered through her chest like a stone.
“I know what’s running through your head right now.”
“Do you?” Marta asked. She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
“I do,” David said. He was looking at his tablet as he talked, scrolling past feeds with his thumb. The orange-gold band on his right hand, emerald nestled in its center, glimmered. “You’re thinking this is an exile. You’re being shipped off. Discarded. You’re thinking, ‘David isn’t taking care of me anymore.’ Am I right?”