The vaccine was introduced to the public through a stubbornly icy last half of January. It was heralded by health officials as a turning point, and in the end statistical evidence would support the claim. In the meantime, confusion ensued after its release. Death counts spiked in that period. Half the citizens thought the inoculation wouldn’t work. They believed it would hasten their deaths or that it was a part of one of many conspiracies. The other half of the population, who submitted to vaccination, viewed it as the end of their troubles. They found themselves in four-hour lineups and got visibly upset when clinics began their days without supplies.
Raymond Siddhu watched these developments from home in his pilled bathrobe. He subscribed to his old newspaper and tried not to read their articles like a former employee or a competitor would. Opening the door each morning to get the paper from his front step was his only exposure to the world outside his house in the three weeks since he’d returned home.
He had become, as he feared, a stranger to his own sons. When they were reunited at last, Ranjeet bawled at the sight of him and Ravinder did not make eye contact. When Uma went out to the gym or the mall, he watched the boys until they were tired of being watched. He’d turn his back to get more blueberries from the refrigerator and they would burble back to life. He wished he hadn’t given his yo-yo away.
Siddhu traded bowls of ice cream for smiles and hugs. He let them watch TV beyond the rationed time allowed by Uma and stood in front of it until they spoke to him. By the end of the third day, they responded to him, shrieking and tumbling into his arms. They wrestled on the couch after he delayed bedtime.
“It’s harder with the kids now that you’re back,” Uma fumed. “We had a structure.”
While the boys napped, he laboured slowly on his escape story for GSSP. Horne-Bough wanted it badly and sent Siddhu texts twice a day to inquire about its progress. “Our readers want this,” he said. “You swam in garbage, you wrestled with rats, then you busted out of the city. You’re a fucking hero.” Siddhu felt an obligation to finish the story but worried about the scrutiny his illegal act would invite.
“Once you publish that story, the cops will come for you and take you right back to the city gates,” Uma said. “Are you sick of us already?” She had been jittery since his return. She wanted him to fix the running toilet and screamed at him when he couldn’t leave the house to buy the parts. Then she tearfully stroked his arm. “Why have you become so cold?” she asked. She had become so hot.
He hadn’t gotten used to sleeping on only half the bed again. He lay there, coiled, worried he’d spring if he dropped his guard. His body may have left the barricades, but his mind had not escaped. He did not, of course, want to return. And yet, he’d not been ready to leave.
One night, he attempted to have a video chat with Megan Tso. She didn’t accept his call. When she called back, he was already in bed. Uma was drifting off and was startled by the incoming call. He took his tablet into the kitchen.
“Is it too late?” Tso asked from Janice Grossman’s apartment. She was drinking wine and eating Triscuits with slivers of apple and cheese.
“A little,” Siddhu admitted. “But I’m glad you called. Still hiding out, I see. What’s the latest on your stalker?”
“You don’t want to know,” she told him. Her expression was more resigned than fearful. “Let’s just say he’s still looking for me.”
He heard someone say from offscreen, “Is that Rrrrrrrrrrraymundo?” Tso nodded. Grossman appeared onscreen in pyjama pants and a tank top. On one of her bare arms she wore a bandage. She had been vaccinated. “We miss you, buddy. And not just because you had the best yo-yo tricks. The quality of news coverage has dropped. Where am I going to learn the truth about City Hall?”
“We could ask the mayor himself,” Tso suggested. “We just spent eight hours with him, scrubbing bathrooms and driving old people to clinics.”
Siddhu pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt an acute nostalgia for the drudgery of the Sanitation League. “I feel like I’m in two places,” he confessed. “The whole time I was in that hotel room by myself, I’d fantasize about being beamed home, like on Star Trek. Now I’m home, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s like I’m still being beamed back, like I’m transparent and there’s sparkly light coursing through my body, and I’m not quite here yet. Does that make sense?”
“Star Trek is with the Vulcans, right?”
He could normally tell when she was being sarcastic. This time he wasn’t so sure. “Yeah, it was set in the twenty-third century, when humankind had to leave earth to find problems,” he said. “Am I crazy for missing my old life? This whole thing has been terrible, but I felt like I was in a community for the first time.”
“It’s true. I’ve seen people risk their lives for strangers, people who would otherwise be unheroic. Being at home surrounded by family, in safety, must be a comedown.”
He knew that was sarcasm.
They chatted about Judge Oishi and Tso told Siddhu about his daughter. Siddhu asked her about Rieux, but she only mentioned that he looked tired. Then she yawned and said good night.
He returned to bed. Uma was now awake, lying on her side, scrolling through her social media feed on her phone. Her face was pinched. “Sorry,” he told her. “It was a call from a friend.”
“Is that why you’ve been so off?” Uma asked. “I have noticed.”
Siddhu wanted to say the same to her, but he started to weep. Uma wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him for the first time since the night of his return. He felt her own tears on his arm.
“I need to tell you something,” Uma admitted after he had quieted. “I’ve been seeing someone.”
They both remained still long enough to notice each other’s wet breathing.
“How did you find the time?” he finally asked her.
She sat up on the bed. “Is that really what you want to know?”
“Are you still having an affair?” he asked.
“Yes. But it’s not anyone you know. We met online.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“I don’t know where it’s going. I thought you wouldn’t be back for a while. And then, there you were in the shower one night.”
“Do you still love me?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
He felt a warmth pooling from separate directions, the sadness in his head and the despair in his body.
They agreed to talk about it the next day, and Uma started to snore within five minutes. Siddhu found himself braced against his edge of the bed. He got up and made the pullout in the spare room, then fell into the middle of the thin mattress like a skydiver and plummeted from the waking world.
In the morning, he heard Uma feeding the kids. Their laughter was brighter around their mother. It was laughter that hadn’t been coaxed.
Siddhu changed in the master bedroom. This was the day Uma’s mother came over from the other side of the duplex to watch the kids. Sometimes she took them to the park so Uma could nap or read a book. Probably Uma used that time to meet her lover. The thought of it made him sob as he ran a toothbrush across his teeth. He took his laptop and grabbed the car keys from the table by the stairs.
At the McDonald’s drive-through he ordered an Egg McMuffin and coffee. He turned off the engine in the parking lot, opened his laptop, and reviewed the latest draft of his story. Once he completed his read-through, he sent it to Horne-Bough along with edited video clips from his hidden camera. He felt the satisfaction, the dread, the relief, of doing something he couldn’t take back. Horne-Bough instantly replied that he would release it in an hour. “This is the story I’ve been waiting for—and you did it all on your own,” he wrote. “Prepare to have your name on the tip of everyone’s tongue.”
Earlier in his life, this would have been a dream realized. Now he dreaded the idea. He did not want his phone to light up. He had seen what happened to Romeo Parsons. The mayor had fallen more quickly than he had risen. Siddhu wanted his daily bread, his daily practice. He wanted all the time available to watch his boys grow up.
He drove to the hardware store and bought a new flapper for the toilet. In the hardware store parking lot, he sent a text to Uma to tell her where he’d gone. “I hope you didn’t need the car,” he wrote. He sent another text to say his story would be posted.
How did they drive into this ditch in their relationship? Uma had attended the same high-school as Siddhu, two grades below him. Her older brother played basketball with him. As a teenager, Siddhu spent an evening on a couch with her watching a Batman movie. He had forgotten about that night until she mentioned it to him seven years later when they found themselves seated next to each other in a banquette of a lounge bar. They were at the birthday party of a mutual friend and he’d had to work to make her laugh. He used to be popular with women, now he couldn’t remember how.
He couldn’t imagine dating again at his age. He felt like a blob.
He checked his phone. Uma wanted to know if he was doing okay. His article still had not appeared. No one would come for him in a patrol car, not yet.
He hated killing time, but he ended up at Guildford Town Centre Mall in Surrey. In the mall, he bought some Duplo blocks and Play-Doh for the boys. He looked at his watch and decided he had enough time to buy himself two new shirts. He had lost weight in quarantine, despite eating at greasy restaurants once or twice a day. It must have been all the walking.
He checked his phone again. The article still hadn’t appeared.
He checked his phone again.
He checked his phone again.
He checked his phone again.
He checked his phone again.
He checked his phone again. This time the website was down.
Then came a text from Uma. “Read this,” she wrote. She’d included a link.
It was from his old newspaper. An image of Horne-Bough loaded onto the screen, a photo taken a few years ago. Horne-Bough was wearing a fedora and an eyebrow ring. The headline loaded afterward: “Media Entrepreneur Charged with Hacking.” The breaking news item was brief. More details were to follow.
An anonymous tip and a cache of information led the RCMP to the arrest. Mostly, staffers within City Hall had been hacked. The mayor’s private email address as well as his web-search history had been hacked. Siddhu figured the whistleblower was one of the disgruntled GSSP staffers who’d left in December. It made so much sense to him now. His own email had probably been compromised. Hadn’t Horne-Bough anticipated his needs well?
Siddhu felt his anticipation dissipate. He was on a hot air balloon that began drifting back to the ground soon after its ascent.
“I guess my story has nowhere to go,” he wrote to Uma. “I’m coming home.”
But all he wanted to do was keep walking around the mall. He had no reason to hurry. And the world had opened its door to him once more.