Upstairs, the hallway opened into five rooms, each with four single beds, and two bathrooms. The bathrooms were tiny and identical: small metal sink bowl underneath a cloudy shatterproof mirror; a small toilet that vacuumed away waste like an airplane toilet; a cramped shower stall that a plus-sized person wouldn’t be able to fit into with the door closed. But the water was hot—even for Edie, who drew the last turn—and she wept with joy for most of her fifteen minutes under the stream, lathering twice, a third time, with the rosemary-scented soap, switching the sprayer to the massage setting and letting it pound her neck, then her lower back. Finally, the suds gathering around her toes were white. A few minutes after that, she shut off the water and folded herself into a clean white robe that smelled a bit musty, of storage, but still felt luxurious.
Andy had given them each a little toiletry kit from one of the locked pantries. She brushed her teeth with the fresh toothbrush and paste, flossed. She clipped her toenails and fingernails, rubbed a thin greasy lotion into her face and the backs of her hands, rubbed a tube of ChapStick over her dry lips. The microsuit she’d been wearing for the past week was—thankfully—in the incinerator. A new one awaited her in her room. Well, the room she was sharing with Marta. Her underwear and sports bra were in the washing machine, mingled with everyone else’s to save time and water. Which was a little strange, though there wasn’t much left to hide from these people, for good or ill.
She passed Berto in the hallway heading back to her room. He looked almost absurd in his white robe, which barely reached his knees, tall as he was—like a bodybuilder stopping by the sauna after a tough workout. “I guess you’re happy,” he said. “You got your way.”
“I don’t think there’s a lot in this situation to be happy about,” she said. “But yeah, I’m glad that we didn’t leave Wes out all night to go through this alone.”
“You don’t even know him, really,” Berto said.
“I don’t know you, either,” Edie told him.
He looked like he was thinking of saying something else. Instead, he sighed—huffed—shook his head a little, and went to his room. Edie thought he probably would have slammed the door shut behind him if that had been an option, but instead the door snicked softly closed, and then the vac seal engaged.
In her own room, Marta was stretched out on one of the beds, head nestled against a pillow. She raised up sleepily when Edie entered.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Edie said.
“Mm. Just dozing.” Marta rolled onto her back and stretched, the crack of her back and toes audible even across the room. She rubbed the bottoms of her feet against the sateen duvet. “Bed. Pillows. You would think it had been years and not days.”
Edie crawled under the covers and exhaled. “Yep.”
They lay there several minutes more, not quite asleep and not quite awake, drifting enough that Edie thought she heard Wes calling for her from down the hall, and then she roused enough to realize that she hadn’t heard him, that she wouldn’t be able to hear him even if he shouted, because his room was vac-sealed.
“I want to go in there with you,” Edie said. “You’re going to need the help. And he’s going to need the support.”
“No,” Marta said firmly.
“But why would you—”
“I’m not trying to martyr myself,” Marta said. “I’m being absolutely practical here. You’re the only one I trust on the other side of that lock. Not Andy. Not Ken or Berto. Not even Violet. If you’re not out here, I don’t know that they’ll open the door after the hatching.”
Edie nodded. She hadn’t thought of this. But she recognized the truth of it, and she realized, with that recognition, what a grave responsibility had fallen on her. If it came down to it—Edie against four—she would have to find a way to act. She would have to do it for her friends.
“Besides,” Marta said, “I don’t think he’d want you there.”
“Why?” asked Edie, wounded a little.
“Because he’s going to be at his worst. And he won’t want you seeing him like that.”
She recognized the truth of this, too, though it hadn’t occurred to her before.
“Tell him . . .” She hesitated. She had no idea what she wanted Marta to tell him. “Tell him I’m worried about him. And—and that I was willing to come with you to help him.”
“I’ll tell him,” Marta said kindly.
Edie looked at the ceiling, thinking. At first what she saw didn’t register, and then it did: a water stain. There was a water stain. And she wasn’t shattered or even surprised by that, but it was proof, if she needed more of it, that there were no impenetrable fortresses, out here or maybe anywhere. Maybe even in-zone.
She had wanted away from Ruby City. Out of that storage shed. But what now? Where now? Jesse was dead. She couldn’t return to the set of rooms he kept at the Hilton or to his little apartment on Savoy. Her old workmate, Inez, would probably let her crash on her couch until she could find somewhere more permanent, but Edie could eke out only a couple of weeks that way, a month at most. She didn’t have a job. She didn’t have any family left. The absence of her mother . . . God, that ache was still so fresh, even after all of this. As long as she’d had Jesse to take care of, his whirlwind lifestyle to emulate, she could keep the grief at bay. But now?
“Is it weird that the thought of getting back home makes me feel almost nothing?” she asked Marta.
Marta didn’t answer right away. Finally she said, “I don’t know. For me, getting back past the Wall means seeing my sons again. Well, and showers and a soft bed like this one. That, too.”
“Yes, that,” Edie said, smiling a little. “Beds are good.”
“But if my children were on the moon, the moon is where I’d want to be. If they were in hell, hell is where I’d want to be.”
“I don’t know if I should be jealous of you or sorry for you,” Edie said. “That’s heavy stuff.”
“Both? Neither? I don’t know. Do you want kids?”
“No,” Edie said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
“Well, you’re young yet. You may change your mind.”
“Women your age always say that.”
Marta laughed. “That’s true.” She rolled to her side to face Edie. “May I ask why not?”
Edie closed her eyes against a flood of tears, glad that the room was too dark for Marta to see her. She swallowed until she thought she could speak without her voice warbling. “My mother was this tiny dynamo. Mexican and Filipino. Hard and sweet, like rock candy. She worked at an industrial laundry after my daddy died. When we moved to Atlantic Zone.”
“How did you pull that off?”
“Death benefits. Daddy worked out here for a timber company. Died of Shreve’s.”
“Oh,” Marta said.
“I was eight. We left everything behind. Her family, Daddy’s family. Never saw any of them again. Well, we messaged, you know, but I never got to sit in my abuela’s lap again, or hold Granddaddy Emilio’s hand. But they understood, because it was a no-brainer to them. You find a way to get into a good zone, you go. Whatever it costs, or whoever. Say goodbye. Hold them in your heart.”
“That must have been hard,” Marta said.