Kaito had been calling her ever since the party. One call every morning, before she went to work, and one at night, when he thought Lea would be home. Each time the phone rang, Lea stopped whatever she was doing and stared at the lit screen, her father’s name flashing at regular intervals. She’d saved his number under “Kaito Kirino.” “Dad” had seemed too intimate. She longed to pick up, to hear his voice, to pretend that she had never been at the party, that she knew nothing of his plans. But each time she let the phone ring until it came to rest.
* * *
The day Jiang told Lea she was suspended from work, he walked into her office with an odd spring in his step, with a greater sense of purpose than she was used to. He wore a salmon-pink shirt underneath a pressed blue blazer, and shiny leather shoes. More flamboyant than his usual work attire. His thin hair was combed back into some approximation of a trendy pouf, the sides slicked up but already sagging.
He delivered the message with a note of superiority she had never heard before. She took it calmly, observing the steadiness of his hands. Clearly, handling her “case,” as Jiang now called it, had given him a new lease on life. He used words like unfortunate, temporary, and monitoring. Unfit, reputation, treatment. He handed her an official letter, typed out by Joo Lee, the secretary who always asked Lea where she got her shoes. She read the letter, quickly, under Jiang’s watchful gaze. It said nothing that he hadn’t already told her. When she looked up, Natalie was standing outside.
“She’ll be taking over your clients,” Jiang said. He blinked and, for the first time, appeared apologetic.
Lea nodded. There was no point in fighting back. She sensed it from Jiang’s eerie good cheer, his detached calm. They had decided, Jiang and the other partners, that she had become a liability. They hadn’t said it, of course, couched the suspension in terms of her own well-being rather than the reputation of the firm, but she knew better.
She didn’t ask when she could come back. She knew that Jiang didn’t have an answer for her, that he was just the messenger. But as he closed the door behind himself to “give her a moment,” as she packed up her pens and powered off her computer, as her fingertips grazed the cool polished surface of her glass desk, the hard knot in her chest grew.
Her belongings fit into a small box, which she left in the corner of the office. She looked around one more time, taking in the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows, the skylight, the planters lining the walls. She was surprised to feel no anger, no pang of loss, now that a plan was forming in her mind, its edges solidifying like the shape of a person approaching through a fog.
* * *
The morning after she was suspended, Lea ran herself a bath. She lit a soy candle and scrubbed her legs luxuriously, trying to take her time. Then she made herself a trad salad, her favorite, kale and sunflower seeds. She ate it with her hands, picking one leaf after another into her mouth, staring into space. But then, once she had washed and dried the bowl, once she had wiped off the sink and dried her hands, the apartment was so quiet she couldn’t bear it. Lea longed for the soft patter of feet on glass ceilings, for the ringing of phones and the chattering of voices.
She walked out into the living room. It too was quiet. The linen curtains hung straight and limp on either side of the large window, cold white columns guarding the outside world. Lea wondered, briefly, what it must be like to live in a place where the curtains fluttered, lifted by the breeze coming in through an open window.
The curtains didn’t move. Neither did the houseplant sitting in the corner of the living room, or the gray-cushioned sofa. Looking around the living room, Lea decided that the furniture needed to be reconfigured. That was probably why it felt so stale and quiet, she realized; it was all just a matter of interior design. She set to work immediately, dragging this sofa one way, that side table the other. She carefully removed glass-framed prints of harbors and cities from the single bookshelf on the far end of the wall, then slowly pushed the shelf across the room. She reoriented the cream rug underfoot. Placed diagonally it did look better, she thought. Finally she picked up the plant and surveyed the room for the right spot. Next to the sofa, she thought, where the side table had once been. She put it down.
Lea straightened her back and looked around at the living room again. Better, she thought, far more dynamic an arrangement. Previously everything had been all parallel lines and right angles; things pushed up against walls and aligned with one another. Now, the ends of the sofa bisected two walls, leaving a triangle of space behind it. The bookcase was freestanding, the coffee table off to the side.
But as she stood there, as the exertion of moving furniture subsided and the blood cooled in her ears, silence descended once again. Suddenly she felt she could hear her own heartbeat.
The Third Wave. Lea imagined what it would be like when Jessie told her. The euphoria of success, being one of the chosen ones. She would go for treatments immediately—at the recommended pace, of course. By the time it was her turn, she presumed that all issues of misalignment and other side effects would have been ironed out. She would emerge from the clinic week after week, each time stronger, glowing, invincible. The blood running through her veins a liquid life force, the stuff of gods. Her skin dewy and impossibly supple, yet impervious, impenetrable.
She, a goddess. Nothing would ever hurt her again.
Her phone rang. It was her father. For the first time in three weeks, Lea picked up.
“Lea?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Been busy with work? I’ve been trying to reach you.” His voice hadn’t changed. There was no accusation in it, no frantic question. It was as if none of it had happened.
Lea nodded, but then realized he couldn’t see her. “It’s been hectic. New client at work,” she lied.
“Oh dear. How’s that going?”
“Good,” Lea said. “Difficult, but good.”
“Well, don’t wear yourself out,” her father said. For a moment he sounded like Todd, and she thought he would say, Healthy mind, healthy body. But of course he didn’t.
“I won’t. Listen, I have to run. Busy day ahead.”
“Okay,” he said. He paused. “We’ll speak again soon, Lea. Whenever you have some time.”
They hung up.
Whenever you have some time. Lea looked around at her empty living room. It was silent except for the soft sigh of the ventilation system that pumped fresh air into the apartment. If Lea was very still, if she sat with her arms resting at her side and her face unmoving, it almost felt as if she did not exist, as if time did not exist. She had never thought that one could have too much time, but suddenly, without the daily activity of work, the years of her life stretched out ahead of her. Was this what her father had felt?
No. She leaped up from the sofa. The Third Wave was coming. She would be part of it, whether Jiang, Todd, the Observers, wanted it or not. She would not languish on the Observation List, her number dwindling as the days went by, until one day it was too late altogether. She would do something they couldn’t ignore.
Something her father couldn’t ignore, either.