“There’s beans and cornbread,” June said. “Plenty of it. Help yourself, then we’ll talk. All of this’ll seem more bearable on full stomachs, I’d wager.”
They rushed the table as if it could disappear at any moment. Jesse Haggard made it to the cooler first and grabbed a glass with a shaky hand. He pressed his forehead against the cooler as he filled the glass, and when it had reached the brim, he took a long swig, shuddered, and handed the rest of the glass to Edie. Then he got another glass and proceeded to fill it, too. Anastasia and Berto started at the food, grabbing the cornbread with their dirty hands and piling it high in bowls, ladling in brown beans. The others—their armed kidnappers, too—pressed in behind them, grabbing bowls and spoons, postures rigid with anticipation. Wes, who had always been food-neutral—an aspect of his constitution, this lack of passionate appetite, that he saw as emblematic of, perhaps even responsible for, the single-minded focus that had led to his successes—recognized what he’d come to think of in more comfortable times, smugly, as “buffet stress.” Back home, Sonya had always had a bad case of buffet stress. If they went to a barbecue or a cocktail party, she filled her plate with enough food for two people, returned to the line for seconds after complaining of being full, spent time later in the day reflecting on her choices: Should she have gone for the brownie rather than the pie slice? Why hadn’t she eaten more of that great casserole? Buffet stress had even informed some of Wes’s updates to Pocketz. Twice he’d invited Pocketz Prime members to an App Buffet, with all of the most popular add-on packages offered, for an hour, at steep discounts. These events were hugely popular, hugely successful. Participants filled their shopping plates as quickly as possible with cheap apps, afraid of missing out on something good before the buffet ran out, blowing credits on Line Cutz and Xtra Helpingz.
Wes would pay good credits for a Line Cut right now.
“I guess we waited this long,” he said to Marta, trying to tamp down the stress, the fear of missing out. “It won’t kill us to wait a little longer.” They were a problematic match in this way—neither of them aggressive enough to demand their share, their partnership enabling the other’s passivity.
“It could kill us,” Marta said flatly.
But June had told the truth: the food and water were plentiful, and a woman, the one they’d seen earlier, with the bag of squirrels, came in with a big steaming kettle of beans when the first kettle ran low. The others had taken their food and drink and retreated to the outer edges of the building, staking out seats on the sun-warmed boards next to the east-facing windows, and so Wes and Marta were able to fill and refill their glasses undisturbed. The water was cold, with a delicious, bracing mineral quality.
His thirst quenched, he grabbed a bowl from the top of a rickety, mismatched stack. It was chipped, yellowed porcelain, with a dainty daisy pattern, and he followed the lead of those who’d gone before him, crumbling a chunk of cornbread into the bottom of the bowl and pouring a soupy spoonful of beans on top. He’d resigned himself to giving up veganism during the OLE tour, but the appearance of a pink, fatty rind of mystery meat in the bean broth made his stomach roil. It had been seven years since he’d eaten even fish.
“It’s better than it looks,” Marta said, noticing his hesitation. She had spoken around a mouthful.
His stomach settled by the third bite, and Wes felt then a surge of energy, a lifting of his mood. He gulped down another draft of water, then tucked into the food as eagerly as the rest of the group, spooning around the strip of meat as best he could manage. His stomach filling, he could appreciate the other luxuries of this moment: the relief of getting off his feet, of having space to stretch out his legs in front of him, of seeing Andy and the other guards put their guns down long enough to lift their bowls and shovel food to their lips. Now would be the time to make a move, if there were a hero in the group. But making a move would require movement, and what Wes wanted—and hey, no one had forbidden it yet, so why not—was to free his tender feet of these hot, stiff lace-up boots, then lie on his back and let his eyes lower to half-mast, so that only a little golden light filtered through his eyelashes. He went at his shoelaces with shaking hands, needing several tries to loosen each double knot. His bare feet were shriveled and damp and lined with the imprint of the boots’ seams; his heels were stripped raw, the soles quilted with thick, watery blisters. He bent his toes, luxuriating in the pain that radiated up into the metatarsals, and groaned as he lowered himself to his elbows, then his creaking back.
The floor was hard, so he put his pack under his head. Better.
Didn’t seem anyone else was plotting heroics, either.
“This is where you’ll sleep tonight,” June said. “You can pitch your tents as you normally would, if you’re paranoid about ticks or you want the privacy. But I can’t remember the last time I saw a tick up here.”
“What if we don’t want to sleep in here?” Berto asked. “What if we want a little more breathing room than that?”
“I’m afraid it’s not negotiable,” said June.
Berto nodded. “Just so we’re clear. And no one misunderstands all of this hospitality you’re showing us.”
June had perched on the floor in the center of the large room, her boots and socks off, legs pulled into a tight pretzel and forearms resting on her knees. She looked like she might be about to begin leading a yoga class.
“I wouldn’t want you to misunderstand me. You’re hostages, not guests. Let’s not pretend it’s otherwise. Your comfort here will be contingent on your willingness to contribute to a few—well, Andy, what would you call them?”
“Operations?” Andy said.
“I was going to say ‘projects,’” said June, “but I like that better. Operations. Yes. And Mr. Feingold, you’re going to be especially critical to these operations.”
Wes’s tentative good mood fled him. He had been trying to talk himself out of the sense over the events of the last day that he was watched—noticed—in a way that wasn’t true of his fellow travelers. He could guess easily enough why this would be true, in a general way, but he couldn’t actually imagine what they’d demand of him—what he’d be able to do in the face of their demands. If June and her clan thought he could hack Pocketz, do any redistributing of credits, they’d be in for a bad surprise. The system—by design, by absolute necessity, by law—was protected by layers and layers of safeguards. The only account Wes could access, legally and also in practical fact, was his own. Would that satisfy them? He found that the prospect of surrendering his fortune (in fact, only a quarter of his fortune, the rest of it being tied up in property and investments) didn’t bother him as much as he would have expected it to. He had never done any of this for the money.