Keep This For Me

Sessions remaining: 22

The strap went over the rope scar on Silas’s right palm. One notch of give.

The handler checked it. Then checked it again.

“Two lines.”

Silas looked at her.

“What we take, you lose.”

“I know.”

“What you lose, somebody buys.”

“I know that too, ma’am.”

Corbin sat behind her at the console.

“Density is where it should be. Nine years on him is a fine run.”

The handler looked back at him. “He can hear you.”

“He signed.”

Silas kept quiet.

There was a red light above him. Small. Almost hidden in the second lamp over the chair.

He had asked about it in session two. They told him it was for the record. He stopped asking after that.

Instead, he counted the ceiling. Sixteen panels.

He counted them before every session. Sometimes he counted them after too. He never trusted the second count.

The room was warm. That still felt wrong.

Halloway was warmer than his house in winter. Cleaner too. There was coffee by the door, and somebody kept filling the pot. People back home never believed that part.

The chair had new cream padding. His mother had used the old one.

He remembered her complaining about the cloth catching on her shirt. He remembered that she complained.

He could not hear her saying it.

Silas looked away and started his list.

Ada. Fourteenth of March. Delacroix. Dark green.

All there.

The handler stepped closer. Her badge said LAKE, E.

He had read it before. Nine sessions. Nine times.

He still called her ma’am.

Her hair was pulled back tight. The skin around one thumb was chewed up.

“You can stand for another minute if you want.”

“Can’t.”

She did not ask him why.

He liked that about her.

Her hand went over his left one. That thumbnail was split down the middle. It had been that way for years.

Her thumb moved across his knuckles once. Then stopped.

“Say the name while you’ve still got it.”

“Della Ward.”

“Again.”

“Della Ward. My mother. Five foot even.”

“Good.”

The chair started humming.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then Silas’s whole body pulled against it.

His back came off the chair. The strap caught his wrist. His heels pushed hard against the footrest.

His left hand grabbed hers.

“There we are,” she said. “Ninety seconds. I’ll be with you for the count.”

Silas tried to breathe.

“Eighty.”

His right wrist hit the strap.

“Della Ward.”

“Della Ward.”

“Good.”

Corbin touched the screen.

“Field’s clinging.”

“You know that.”

“I didn’t say stop.”

Silas stared at the ceiling.

One. Two. Three.

He lost count.

Started again.

At sixty, his shoulders hurt. At fifty, his teeth were pressed together so hard his jaw shook.

At forty, he did not know what he was fighting anymore.

His hand tightened around hers.

She stayed.

“Good,” she said.

He did not feel good.

The room started going away. Her hand stayed a little longer.

Then that went too.

Uptown, thirty-two chairs faced a wall.

Thirty-one had people in them.

Nobody talked.

Silas’s face filled the wall. His eyes were half shut. The blue mark under his left eye looked huge up there.

Nobody could see his hands. Nobody could see the strap.

Champagne moved through the rows. There were oysters on ice.

A woman in the second row put down her fork.

The memory came through.

She was in a kitchen.

She was small. Small enough that the table looked high.

There were bare feet on the floor. A yellow bowl on the table.

A woman bent down and lifted her.

Della Ward.

Five feet tall. Her sleeves were pushed up. The kitchen was warm.

The woman in the second row felt Della’s arms around her. She felt Della lift her.

She was not watching it happen to somebody else.

For a few seconds, it was hers.

Then the memory ended.

Silas’s face came back on the wall.

Nobody spoke until the transfer light changed.

Someone clapped three times. A few others joined in.

The woman picked up her glass.

At the end of the row was an empty chair.

There was a card on it. Only an account number. No name.

A glass sat beside it. A little dish of salt.

They had been putting them there for fifteen years.

Nobody had ever used the chair.

The glass always went back full.

Silas opened his eyes.

Same room. Same light.

The strap was gone.

His left hand was empty.

“Silas.”

The handler stood in front of him.

“Look at me.”

He did.

“Name.”

“Silas Ward.”

“Sister.”

“Ada.”

“Birthday.”

“March fourteen.”

“Street.”

“Delacroix.”

She said it back. She swallowed the middle of the word, same as people in the Flats did.

Silas did not think much of it.

“Door.”

“Dark green.”

“Good.”

She had not checked the screen. She never did for this part.

He noticed that a long time ago.

He never said anything.

Silas sat up. The room stayed still.

He thought about being nine. Then ten.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Nine.

Ten.

The men at the dock had shown him how to check. Pick a year. Move forward.

If something was gone, there would not be a hole.

A hole would be easier.

This was smooth.

Nine. Ten.

There should have been something between them.

He could not find where it had been.

“Ma’am.”

“Yes.”

“What did they take?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Right.”

“You know I can’t.”

He nodded.

“Everybody asks?”

“Yes.”

“Every time?”

“Pretty much.”

“What do they want to know?”

She was quiet for a second.

“If it was theirs.”

Silas looked down at his hands.

“Was it bad?”

“No.”

“I mean, was somebody hurt?”

“No.”

“All right.”

She gave him water.

He drank all of it.

Then she put the release tablet in front of him.

He pressed his finger to the box. His mark looked nothing like his normal signature.

Under it were four words.

KEEP THIS FOR ME

Small gray letters.

He had seen them before. Every session.

He had never asked.

He looked at them.

The handler saw him looking.

Neither of them said anything.

Corbin spoke from behind them.

“Four thousand against ninety-one thousand. Twenty-two sessions left. Thursday.”

Silas gave the tablet back.

Ninety-one thousand dollars.

He owed it.

He did not have it.

He had work tomorrow. He had bus fare.

That was about it.

The handler walked him to the door.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“No need to thank me.”

“Right.”

Silas took the stairs.

He always did.

On the second landing, he stopped and put his hand on the wall.

He ran the list.

Ada. Fourteenth of March. Delacroix. Dark green.

Again.

Ada. Fourteenth of March. Delacroix. Dark green.

Still there.

He went down the rest of the stairs too fast.

Outside, there were nine cars in the lot and one company van.

The far end had flooded again. One of the white parking lines disappeared into the water.

Silas made it between the van and another car.

Then he sat down.

Wet ground went straight through his pants. His father’s coat hung wrong on him.

Always had.

Silas covered his face.

He cried.

There was nobody there, so he let himself.

After a while he started checking.

He always checked.

Ada. March fourteen. Delacroix. Dark green.

The dock. His foreman. The scar on his palm. The split thumbnail.

The blue dot under his left eye.

He touched it.

He had put it there when he was fifteen. A sewing needle.

He remembered doing that.

He did not remember why.

That afternoon was gone.

He had sold it.

The reason went with it.

Silas sat there and tried the rest.

His mother was five feet tall. He knew that.

She used to shift from one foot to the other when she got tired of waiting. Ada did it too.

He knew that.

But when he tried to put all the little things together and make his mother out of them, it did not work.

Nothing else felt missing.

That did not mean much anymore.

Somewhere uptown, somebody had been in his mother’s kitchen.

Somebody had felt her pick them up.

Silas knew that had once happened to him.

He could not remember it.

He wiped his face.

Then he got up.

Ada was waiting by the fence.

She had his gray shirt on. The sleeves were pushed up.

“You look awful.”

“Light’s in my eyes.”

“It’s five.”

“Ada.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You just did.”

“That doesn’t count.”

He almost smiled.

Ada did.

Only for a second.

Then she put her hand into her jacket.

“School sent the bus form.”

“Baton Rouge?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me see it.”

She kept hold of it.

Silas looked at her.

“What?”

“There’s something else.”

She took out the bus form first. It had been folded a few times. The school had signed its part.

Then she pulled out another paper.

Cream. Thicker.

Silas knew it before he read anything.

There was one like it in the kitchen drawer.

His name was on that one.

His mother’s too.

His stomach went tight.

“When did you get that?”

“Tuesday.”

“This Tuesday?”

“Yes.”

“You waited two days?”

“I knew what it was.”

“Ada.”

“I knew.”

She held both papers together. The bus form on top. The Halloway contract under it.

Both needed a guardian’s signature.

Silas took them.

The cream paper felt too clean.

Halloway Reclamation.

Standard donor contract.

Guardian approval required until eighteen.

He looked lower.

There was her name.

Ada Marie Ward.

He read it again.

Ada Marie Ward.

Then his eyes went to her birthday without him meaning to.

Fourteenth of March.

He looked up.

Ada was already watching him.

“You told me I was off the hook,” she said. “You’ve been telling me that since I was thirteen.”