Tyrannia by Alan Deniro Page B

her own awful truths was slipping away from her.
    “I know, I know,” he said. “She’ll have doctors in the detention facility.” He snorted. “She’ll have better medical benefits than we do.” That was the Lord’s line. “All right, get her out of here. Hook that gurney up to my cycle. And Marigold, go to her building now and rest.”
    Marigold nodded. She looked for the concierge, but he was gone. When she got the key from him later, in his little lobby booth, she was going to tell him about the agent being taken to Lord Manhattan (who wasn’t even in Manhattan; White Plains, rather), but he gave her a look that said, I already know, and I’m not taking this lightly.
    She thought that the phone call might have been the concierge buzzing her—to play a trick on her, maybe?—so it was a genuine surprise to find Amar on the other end. She didn’t know that the agent was an agent. Did something with books, of course, but books weren’t really up Marigold’s alley. There was a five second delay in the transmissions, so after a few minutes of meaningless back-and-forth, during which the agent’s predicament was not established to Amar’s satisfaction, Marigold asked him:
    “Are you from Albany?”
    “What?”
    Albany was one of the few freestanding cities around the area she could think of, and also the farthest away she’d ever been. To deliver heart medicine. She biked all the way up there and took the river back and lived to tell about both trips.
    “You have a nice office,” Marigold said. “And you sound far away. So I was thinking you were maybe from Albany.”
    Amar licked his lips and closed his eyes. He was sweating. He said, with his eyes still closed: “Could you tell me when she’s coming back?” When he opened them, he wanted the agent to be there, to have willed the agent into existence in that room, speaking to him.
    Marigold was still there. “Well, that’s kind of hard to say,” she said. “It depends on how long they treat her.”
    Amar took a lot longer to speak than the normal delay. “Please tell me she’s not hurt.”
    “Well, a little. But she’ll really be all right.” She wasn’t sure if she sounded convincing.
    “Okay . . .” He took a deep breath. “What about the notebook? You have to have the notebook there, right?”
    “I . . . Wait, well, was that . . .” She didn’t know why she was trying to be so helpful. Maybe she wanted to see his office a little longer—the mahogany desk, the office supply dispenser, the window overlooking what she thought was Albany. But of course it wasn’t Albany—the trees and grass, even in Albany, would not have been that green, and the wind shaking those trees would not have been so clear (without specks), and the children’s bicycles on the curb would not have been so unstolen.
    “You have to tell me!” he said.
    “Well, she was going to the Kinko’s to scan something—”
    Amar leaned back in his chair and sighed, relieved. “Yes, that is the document.” For the first time he gave the impression that they were speaking the same language. “Yes, thank you. So where is it?”
    “I’m not sure.” Marigold knew, however, that her supervisor had discarded it. Maybe that was part of the agent’s punishment as well.
    A woman entered the office. She was in a dark suit and wore sunglasses with whirling blue lights on the sides. “Amar, is everything all right?”
    He turned around and waved both of his hands. “Not now—get out!”
    “I heard you screaming, the children—”
    “Out!” He stood up from his chair. “Out!”
    She saw the wastebasket, the vomit. “Are you sick, Amar?”
    “Please . . . please . . .” He opened the door wider and pushed her backward. It took her a few seconds to realize what was happening—Amar never did things like that—but by that time he had shut and locked the door.
    “You have a really beautiful wife, Amar.”
    He squinted. “How do you know my name?”
    “She said