(eng) Nancy Kress by Maximum Light

Author:Maximum Light [Light, Maximum]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I get back to Washington forty minutes before the hearing, which goes real quick. I stand next to Nick, who might look like shit these days but is still important and rich. I wear a white dress I stole on the way to the courthouse. My hair is caught in a ribbon at the back of my head. I bow my head a little and speak soft. I try to look like an orphaned national resource who just needs a little guidance. The judge puts me on probation.

“You little fraud,” Nick says outside the courthouse. He has to lean against the building wall. “Where have you been for three days?”

“New York,” I say, and right away he gets it. He may be dying, but his brain works just fine.

“The Aldani Ballet is there on tour. You went to badger Cameron Atuli.”

“And it didn’t work,” I say, even now hating to admit that. “He don’t remember nothing. He had a memory wipe.”

Nick don’t react. He just says, “Are you certain? Tell me why you think so.”

So I go through the whole story, leaving nothing out, telling it straight.

“FBI,” Clementi says, like he’s trying the idea out. But he still don’t look really surprised, which surprises me. He’s holding out on me.

“And what did you find out while I was gone, Nick?”

“Nothing,” he says, and he’s lying. Suddenly I’m furious—with him because I thought he was really on my side. And with myself, for believing it for half a shitty second. Nobody’s on your side but you.

He says, “Let’s go home.”

So I can’t show how furious I am, because he’s still giving me a place to stay, and if I don’t stay there I’ll never find out what else he knows that I don’t. So I take his arm and we start off slowly for the cab stand. His steps wobble. In just the few days I’ve been gone, he’s worse.

So what. This old fart don’t matter to me. Let him die.

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