It was a package about the size of a walnut shell, of brown paper wrapped around something hard. The paper had been secured with tape, and after peeling it off, I found that beneath the first layer of paper was a second, and then a layer of thin white tissue, which I also tore away. And then I was left with a small black pouch made of a soft, dense fabric and pulled tight with a drawstring. I loosened the drawstring and held out my palm and shook the bag, and into my hand fell Grandfather’s ring.
I hadn’t known what to expect, and only afterward did I realize that I should have been scared, that I could have been carrying anything: an explosive, a vial of viruses, a Fly.
But in certain ways, the ring was worse. I cannot quite say why, but I’ll try. It was as if I was learning that something I had known to be one way was actually another. Of course, that had already happened: David had told me he was not who he said he was. But I had been able to disbelieve him until I saw the ring. I had had what Grandfather had once called “plausible deniability,” which means you can pretend to not know something while knowing it as well. And so, if David was telling me the truth about himself, then were the other things he said also true? How did he know about the disease? Had he really been sent to find me?
Were other countries not like this one after all?
Who was David?
I looked at the ring, which was as heavy as I remembered, its pearl lid still smooth and shiny. “It’s called nacre,” Grandfather had explained. “It’s a kind of calcium carbonate that a mollusk produces, building layers and layers of it around an irritant—like a speck of sand—in its mantle. You can see it’s very strong.”
“Can humans make nacre?” I had asked, and Grandfather had smiled.
“No,” he said. “Humans have to protect themselves in other ways.”
It had been almost twenty years since I had seen the ring, and now I clenched it in my fist: It was warm and solid. I had to give it to the fairy, Grandfather had said. The fairy who looked over you while you were sick. And although I had always known he was teasing, and although I knew there were no such thing as fairies, I think this is what made me saddest of all: That Grandfather hadn’t had to pay a price for me returning to him after all. That I had just come back to him anyway, and that, one day, he had sent the ring someplace else, to someone else, and now that it had been returned to me, I no longer knew what it meant, or where it had been, or what it had once stood for.
* * *
We met again the following Thursday. That morning at work, I had gone to the bathroom, and when I returned to my desk, there was a small folded piece of paper tucked beneath one of the boxes of saline, and I grabbed at it, looking around to see if anyone was watching me, although of course no one was: It was only me and the pinkies.
When I reached the center at 19:00, he was already there, standing outside, and held up his hand to me. “I thought we’d walk around the track,” he said, and I nodded. Inside, he bought us both fruit juices, and then we began to walk, slowly but not too slowly, at our regular pace. “Keep your helmet on,” he’d said, and so I did, opening the little slot around the mouth when I wanted to take a sip. It was cool inside the center, but some people kept their helmets on anyway, just out of laziness, and so this raised no suspicions. “I’m glad to see you,” David said, in a low voice. “Your husband’s on his free night,” he added, and it was not a question but a statement, and as I turned toward him, he shook his head, just slightly. “No amazement, no anger, no alarm,” he reminded me, and I redirected my gaze.
“How do you know about our free nights?” I asked, trying to stay calm.
“Your grandfather told my employer,” he said.
It may seem odd that David had not asked to meet in my apartment, or in his. But aside from the fact that I would not want him in my apartment, and would not be willing to go to his, the reason is that it was simply safer to meet in public. In the year of the uprisings, before the state’s return to power, it was widely assumed that most private spaces were being monitored, and even now, you had to deeply trust someone before visiting his or her apartment.
For a while, neither of us said anything. “Do you have any questions for me?” he asked, in that same quiet voice, which sounded so unlike the David I knew. But, then again, I had to remind myself, the David I knew did not exist. Or maybe he did, but he was not who I was talking to now.
I had many questions, of course, so many that it was impossible to know where to begin: What to say, what to ask.
“Don’t people in New Britain sound different?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We do.”
“But you sound like you’re from here,” I said.
“I’m pretending,” he said. “If we were somewhere safe, I would use my regular voice, and I would sound different to you.”
“Oh,” I said. For a while we were silent. Then I asked him something I’d been wondering for a long time. “Your hair,” I said, “it’s long.” He looked at me, surprised, and I was proud of myself for having surprised him. “Some of it fell out of your cap that first day I saw you in the shuttle queue,” I said, and he nodded.
“It’s true, I had long hair,” he said. “But I cut it, months ago.”
“To fit in?” I asked him, and he nodded again.
“Yes,” he said, “to fit in. You’re very observant, Charlie,” and I smiled, just a bit, pleased that David thought I was observant, and pleased because I knew Grandfather would be proud of me for noticing something that perhaps some other people would not have.
“Do people in New Britain have long hair?” I asked.
“Some do,” he said. “Some don’t. People wear their hair how they like.”
“Even men?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “even men.”
I thought about this, a place where you could wear your hair long if you wanted—if you were able to grow it long, that is. Then I asked, “Did you ever meet my grandfather?”
“No,” he said. “I was never so lucky.”
“I miss him,” I said.
“I know, Charlie,” he said. “I know you do.”
“Were you really sent here to get me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the only reason I’m here.”
Then I didn’t know what to say again. I know this will sound vain, and I am not a vain person, but hearing that David had come just for me, just to find me, made me feel light inside. I wished I could hear it again and again; I wished I could tell everyone. Someone had come here to find me: I was his only reason. No one would believe it—I didn’t believe it myself.
“I don’t know what else to ask,” I finally said, and once again, I could feel him looking at me, just a bit.
“Well,” he said, “why don’t I begin by telling you the plan,” and he looked at me again, and I nodded, and he began to talk. Around and around the track we went, sometimes passing other walkers, sometimes being passed by them. We were neither the fastest nor the slowest there, neither the youngest nor the oldest—and if you were watching us all from above, you wouldn’t have been able to tell who was talking about something safe, and who was, at that moment, discussing something so dangerous, so impossible, that you wouldn’t have thought they could still be alive at all.