Lexicon

Sleeping.”
    “What are you going to do with her?”
    “You know that. Eliot. It is time to let go of Woolf. Let me help you.”
    He said nothing.
    “She is a murderer. She killed three thousand people. In the process of which, incidentally, she managed to inflict the word on herself. Caught a reflection in Broken Hill. An accident, I believe. But she is now under instruction to, and I quote, ‘kill everyone.’ How far below the surface that lurks, we can only guess. She has been attempting to resist it by channeling her thoughts toward me. But it is a part of her. It will never go away. She is irredeemable, Eliot. She always was. Accept this. And please do it quickly, because I have a job for you in Syria.”
    “I am not going to help you rule the world.”
    “Yes, you are.”
    “You don’t know me as well as you think.”
    “Eliot,” said Yeats, “if that were true, you wouldn’t need to say it.”
    • • •
    She woke and felt for the necklace and it was gone. The world was yellowish. It was six feet by eight. It had a padded bench seat, which she guessed doubled as a bed, and carpet she recognized. A thick gray door with a small window in it, obscured by something on the other side. She was in her underwear. Her head felt bruised. No, not her head. Something deeper than that. She sat up. She put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes a moment, because things were very, very bad.
    Time passed. She stood. She paced. She grew thirsty. She discovered a plastic bucket under the bed-seat, which she guessed was for pee. She spent some time breaking off a long, triangular shard, and tucked this into the rear waistband of her underpants. When she positioned the bucket right, you couldn’t tell. It seemed to Emily that this room wasn’t monitored. Maybe it was unnecessary, when you had a person in a six-by-eight cell with nothing but a bucket. But if she got out of here because the organization wasn’t monitoring her, that was going to be really hilarious.
    These were positive thoughts. She was not actually getting out. She was just keeping busy until Yeats turned up.
    • • •
    Someone did come, but not Yeats. At first, Emily didn’t recognize him. He had cut his hair. It had been eight or nine years. But his eyes were the same, and she hadn’t forgotten the way they had bulged in that fast food restaurant bathroom, when he’d tried to coerce her into a blow job.
    She threw out some words, just in case. “Please,” said Lee. The door closed. Emily caught a glimpse of people out there, who would provide obstacles to any attempted flight. She considered it anyway, but decided to save the bucket-knife. It would be a shame to waste that on Lee if she might get a chance at Yeats.
    Lee went down on his haunches. It was kind of an odd pose, but it brought his eyes level with Emily’s as she sat on the bench seat. Her skin puckered. She felt the urge to fold her arms, but didn’t, because she didn’t want to give him anything.
    “We write reports, you know,” Lee said. He looked odd, sickly, but that was probably the yellow lights. “When we recruit someone, we send along a little write-up, saying what we think. Yours . . . well, yours was negative, Emily. I won’t lie. It was extremely negative. I know what you’re thinking: I gave you a bad report because you punched me in the balls. No. I put that aside, like the professional I am. I gave you a bad report, Emily, because you were actually going to suck my cock. It was a simple test. I used weak words. Starter words. And still you were going to do it. You’re fragile. You have no defense. And people like that don’t last in the organization.” He spread his hands. “Imagine my surprise when the Academy
accepted
you. It makes sense now. Now I know you cheated your way in. Eliot taking pity on you. Now, I understand. But at the time, I was amazed. And then they made you Woolf. . . . I took it personally. I don’t mind admitting it. It felt like an insult. I mean, my report was very clear.
Candidate shows no aptitude for mental discipline nor the inclination to develop it.
Those were my words. Well, look at you now. Just like I predicted. And you know what? How it’s turned out is actually pretty good for me. Now I look like a genius. It took awhile but I finally made it to DC.”
    He paused, as if for a response, but she didn’t give him one because she hadn’t figured out why he was here. He sighed and straightened, plucking at his