Page 42 of Poster Girl

“Something weird happened,” he says. “Someone came to my office today—from the Triumvirate.”

“You work for the government. Aren’t all of you ‘from the Triumvirate’?”

“Technically. But I mean someone higher up.”

Sonya sighs a little. “You’re going to have to connect the dots for me here, Price.”

“My office is a shithole,” he says. “It’s in the very back of the old, mildewy administration building where Suza was an intern, remember that place?”

The summer after she graduated secondary school, Susanna had come home every day complaining about the musty smell and dim interior of the administration building—about the stained carpeting and the peeling paint on the walls and the fact that she was working with all the people the Delegation forgot, as she put it. And their father didn’t correct her, which meant she was probably right.

“No one has ever taken an interest in what we’re doing,” Alexander says. “I’ve been investigating restoration claims since the Delegation fell, basically, and it’s never mattered to anyone. But today, this guy John Clark shows up in his fucking fancy shoes and tells me it’s time to let the last case die.”

“He told you to give up?”

“Not specifically.” He shakes his head. “It was the same kind of rhetoric people have been spouting about our office a lot lately... that the only way to heal is to leave some things in the past. So he framed it like—like he was trying to have compassion for Grace. As in, it’s been ten years, and maybe it’s better to just leave her where she is—that kind of thing. But...”

“But why now?” Sonya says. “Why not earlier?”

“Yes,” he says. “And coming down to tell me himself instead of just talking to my boss . . . kinda seems like overkill.”

Sonya nods. The wind blows mist onto her cheek, onto Alexander’s hair.

“And you came all the way here to tell me this,” Sonya says.

“Right now, they’re just asking me to drop this. Pretty soon, they could be telling me.” He takes a step back. “I just thought you should know.”

A newspaper—a copy of that day’sChronicle—is rolled up and tucked into the lapel pocket of her coat. Williams doesn’t give her a second look as she passes through the entrance to the Aperture. She walks down Green Street, her hands in her pockets, and down the tunnel that leads to Building 3’s courtyard.

The courtyard is a maze of sheets hanging on the laundry lines. Jack sits among them, at a small table with moss growing on the legs, a notebook in his lap. He nods to her.

“Hey,” she says, “do you know which apartment is Marie and Kevin’s?”

“Right next to Renee and Douglas, third floor,” he says. “Can’t pry those four away from each other.”

“Thanks,” she says.

Sonya climbs two flights of stairs, unzipping her coat at the top to cool off. She knocks on the second door on the left and unrolls the newspaper to look at the front page.representative turner proposes relaxing restrictions on elicit networks.The grainy photograph beneath it is of Easton Turner shaking hands with the president of one of the top Elicit manufacturers, Auriga, according to the text. Sonya has never seen a picture of Easton Turner where he wasn’t smiling. Standing at his shoulder is a man wearing a suit with sharp shoulders.John Clark,the text reads,assistant to Representative Turner.The man who visited Alexander.

The door opens, revealing Renee in an old negligee the color of champagne, the lace fraying along the low neckline. It goes down to her knees. There are snags in the fabric that stretches across her belly. She isn’t wearing a bra. The smell of burned food wafts into the hallway, and a radio crackles. Behind Renee is an apartment the same size and shape as Sonya’s own, a big room with a kitchen spilling into it. Renee’s and Douglas’s clothes are piled here and there, along with unwashed plates and glasses, cigarette butts stabbed into them. Renee raises an eyebrow at Sonya, who holds up the newspaper.

“You must have really wanted that cigarette,” Renee says. “Come on in, I’ll find you one.”

Sonya follows her in, but only a few steps. She doesn’t close the door behind her. The radio plays an advertisement for a signal interrupter, brand name Your Space.Don’t let intrusive signals eat away at your privacy! Build yourself a fifth wall with Your Space! Setup is quick and easy, and for just three payments of—the signal fades, crackles. Renee digs in a plastic crate she’s set up next to her bed, as a bedside table.

“Anything new out there?” Renee asks her.

“The other day I saw an ad for glowing vodka,” Sonya says. “Does that count?”

“Not really,” Renee says. “Any idiot with a glow stick can make that a reality.”

Sonya sets the newspaper down on the kitchen counter, next to a cutting board with papery garlic peels sitting on top of it. They look like feather down.

Renee crosses the room with a cigarette pinched between two fingers. She offers it to Sonya, who reaches for it, only to have Renee pull it back, her eyes narrowed.

“You sure you remember how?”

“Oh, shut up.”

---