project information, files, things the company owns. I do not have to clean off the shelves. I take down the spin spirals that are not my favorites first, the yellow and silver and the orange and red.
I hear Mr. Aldrin’s voice in the hall, speaking to someone. He opens my door.
“Lou—I forgot to remind everyone not to take any project work off-campus. If you want to store any project-related materials, you can stack them with a label explaining that they must go in secured storage.”
“Yes, Mr. Aldrin,” I say. I feel uneasy about those system update printouts in the box, but they are not project-related.
“Will you be on-campus at all tomorrow?”
“I do not think so,” I say. “I do not want to start something and leave it unfinished, and I will have everything cleared out today.”
“Fine. You did get my list of recommended preparations?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Good, then. I—” He looks back over his shoulder and then comes into my office and shuts the door. I feel myself tensing; my stomach churns. “Lou—” He hesitates, clears his throat, and looks away. “Lou, I—I want to tell you I’m sorry this all happened.”
I do not know what answer he expects. I do not say anything.
“I never wanted… if it had been up to me, things wouldn’t have changed—”
He is wrong. Things would have changed. Don would still have been angry with me. I would still have fallen in love with Marjory. I am not sure why he is saying this; he must know that things do change, whether people want them to or not. A man can lie beside the pool for weeks, for years, thinking about the angel coming down, before someone stops to ask him if he wants to be healed.
The look on Mr. Aldrin’s face reminds me of how I have felt so often. He is scared, I realize. He is usually scared of something. It hurts to be scared for a long time; I know that hurt. I wish he did not have that look, because it makes me feel I should do something about it and I do not know what to do.
“It is not your fault,” I say. His face relaxes. That was the right thing to say. It is too easy. I can say it, but does that make it true? Words can be wrong. Ideas can be wrong.
“I want to be sure you really are—you really do want the treatment,” he says. “There’s absolutely no pressure—”
He is wrong again, though he may be right that there is no pressure from the company right now. Now that I know change will come, now that I know this change is possible, the pressure grows in me, as air fills a balloon or light fills space. Light is not passive; light itself presses on whatever it touches.
“It is my decision,” I say. I mean, whether it is right or wrong, it is what I decided. I can be wrong, too.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “You—you all—you mean a lot to me.”
I do not know what “mean a lot” means. Literally it would mean that we have a lot of meaning in us, which he can take, and I do not think that is what Mr. Aldrin is saying. I do not ask. I am still uncomfortable when I think about the times he talked to us. I do not say anything. After 9. 3 seconds, he nods and turns to go. “Take care,” he says. “Good luck.”
I understand “Be careful,” but I do not think “Take care” is as clear. Care is not something you can take and walk around with, like a box. I do not say that, either. Afterward I may not even think about that. I should start now to think what afterward is like.
I notice he does not say, “I hope you are cured.” I do not know if he is being tactful and polite or thinks it will not go well. I do not ask. His pocket tagger bleeps, and he backs out into the hall. He does not shut my door. It is wrong to listen to other people’s conversation, but it is not polite to shut the door on someone in authority. I cannot help hearing what he says, though I cannot hear what the other person says. “Yes, sir, I’ll be there.”
His footsteps move away. I relax, taking a deep breath. I take down my favorite spin spirals and take the whirligigs off their stands. The room looks bare, but