“Oh, good.” He stabbed his salad with a fork and pulled a huge pile of greens into his mouth. “I couldn’t tell for sure,” he said around the food.
“I shouldn’t tease.” She leaned back on her palms, watching Jesse on stage. He had gotten the trio members to harmonize with him on the chorus, giving the words “right night” a spectral quality. He looked good. Even with his shaved head, even in his scrawny white microsuit that could pass for long underwear in this light and context. Edie was reminded of all the things that had drawn her to him, not the least of which was his talent, though his talent was obscured by his desire to be widely known, widely adored. Did she love and adore him? She had tried, hard. But gratitude wasn’t the same thing as love. And what he’d done for her—had it cost him much, really? What did it say about Edie, that she felt so indebted to, so unworthy of, this person who may well have been the baby’s father, who had every self-interested reason in the world to make the offer he’d made to her?
But he hadn’t had to stay with her. He hadn’t had to publicly claim her, at a time in his life when dating a bartender at a shitty dive bar was a liability to his career, at best.
“He’s a lot to take,” Wes said.
“Yes,” Edie said tiredly. “But there’s more to him than this.”
“Sure. Of course there is. And none of us is at our best right now.”
“That’s true, too.”
Wes sipped from a glass of water. “Earlier today, at the Town Hall,” he said. “That didn’t go so well.”
“You mean, plotting our escape?”
He nodded.
“I don’t think this is a group of people who are used to collaborating,” Edie said. “Or maybe there were just too many of us. Too many people, not enough time. Too much pressure.”
“Yeah,” Wes said. “I thought that, too.” He looked around—a bit obviously, Edie thought—and leaned in. “So yeah. I want to tell you something. But I’m not sure about your boyfriend. Sorry about that. I know it puts you in a weird position.”
“It does,” said Edie. She was instantly on edge. She’d sensed his—well, crush was probably a strong word for it, but his notice of her hadn’t escaped her own notice, nor had it escaped Jesse’s, she was sure. Was he going to declare himself?
“I’m not saying you can’t tell him,” Wes said. “I mean, I’d rather you didn’t. But I’ll trust your judgment.”
“Okay,” Edie said. Now she was just confused.
“So what do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
“About whether or not you’ll tell him,” Wes said impatiently.
“I guess that depends on what it is,” Edie said. “I mean, obviously it does. How couldn’t it?”
The trio (plus Jesse) finished “Right Night for You.” Edie and Wes clapped a little with the rest of the audience. Edie held herself stiff, wondering if Jesse would stop singing now and rejoin her—if his doing so would mean her never hearing what Wes had aimed to tell her—but they kicked into another song, and she exhaled. “I don’t want to be rude, but you need to just spit it out.”
“All right. Just, you know. Discretion and all that.”
Edie circled her hand impatiently.
“Marta snuck something out here. Something useful.”
Edie leaned forward, thinking phone. Thinking, gun. “What, for God’s sake?”
“A canister of Quicksilver.”
Edie slumped back. “Quicksilver.”
“Shh!” Wes hissed.
“Quicksilver. Like, pepper spray.”
“It’s a lot more than that and you know it,” Wes said. “Or you should. It’s fast and it’s quiet. She said she has at least four sprays’ worth.”
“OK, OK,” Edie said, raising her hands in surrender. “You’re right. It’s something. It’s better than nothing. But what can we do with it?”
Wes sighed and picked at a thumbnail. “I had a thought about that. Half-formed.”
Edie sensed there was something here to dread. “Yeah?”
“Marta’s fifty-four. She’s in good health, but she’s led kind of a sheltered life, from what I can tell.”
Edie waited. Wes stole a glance at her, then went back to his thumb.
“Lee—well, you know what we’re dealing with there. Which isn’t much. The Tanakas might be part of whatever that woman’s cooking up. Like I am. So our presence here might, like Anastasia said, be some protection to the rest of you.”
“You want me to be the one to try to steal off and get help,” Edie said. She felt sick with fury at this realization—and also just sick. And disappointed, and embarrassed. She had thought Wes liked her. Actually, he had just been sizing her up, gauging whether she might risk her life in his place.
“Please lower your voice,” Wes whispered. He was pink-faced, and still not making eye contact. Ashamed, maybe. Good. “It wouldn’t just be you. Tia—I talked to Tia. She knows these woods. She feels pretty sure she could get to a Quarantine or even slip back past the Salt Line if necessary. She wants to do it. But she can’t go alone. She’s going to need help.”
“Berto and Anastasia? What about them? God, Wes. At least they look like two people who could handle a night in the woods. Aren’t they supposed to be survivalists or something?”
Wes’s face darkened. “Yeah. I thought so, too. But they said no. They’re all for the idea. They just don’t want to be the ones to do it.”
Edie shook her head, disgusted. “Well, neither do I.”
“And I can’t make you,” Wes said. “You might not want to leave Jesse. I don’t think it would be a good idea to take him with you. Or maybe it is, and my judgment’s clouded by my dislike of the guy. I’m sorry. He seems like he’d be a liability. But maybe he has—I don’t know—hidden reserves.”
He did, Edie thought. But not the kind that helped you survive a night flight through a dangerous forest.
“If you want to do it, I think tonight’s the night. There’s a lot of activity. The ones with the guns are half-drunk. You and Tia tell them that you need to go pee, break off from the group, use the Quicksilver. Then you run.”
“With no weapons, no food, no Stamps,” Edie said. “No map. No clue. You have got to be kidding me.”
“It’s a huge risk, I know,” Wes said. “But it’s a risk not acting, too. Some of them are nice, sure. Got themselves a little country idyll out here. Bluegrass band and Town Hall and moonshine. But there’s something we’re not seeing, or they’d leave the zone alone. They’re driven by desperation. That makes them dangerous.”
“Or maybe they’re driven by their ideals,” Edie said, thinking about June’s story. Thinking about Violet.
“That might be worse, honestly,” Wes said. “Ideals make people stupid. Believe me, I know.”
Edie stared at a distant bonfire until her eyes watered. She closed them. The fire printed the backs of her eyelids in neon.
“You know what I notice about all this?” Edie said.
“What?” His voice was wary.
“Tia and me. We’re the disposable ones.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”