“China takes money.” And passports, I think—a thing Luka inquired about earlier today. In private, I wondered aloud why we needed them at all, given my success at the passport agency.

“You can’t persuade a check-in kiosk or a customs camera,” he said. And I had to give him that.

“Money is easy to get,” Piotrek says. “We are Utod. The world is our orchard.” But his expression is weary.

“Oyster,” I say.

“I don’t like shellfish.”

“So it’s settled. China,” Claudia says. “What will you do about Luka?”

Do I imagine it or do she and Piotrek look at me at once?

“Bring him with me, what else?”

“Suit yourself,” Claudia says after a beat, untangling her legs onto the floor.

A few moments after she has gone down the hallway to collapse into bed, Piotrek rolls his head toward me.

“She gets this way every few months. Wanting to leave like a restless lover.”

“Do you ever? Leave, I mean.”

He shrugs a shoulder, eyes half-lidded. “For days. A week, maybe. At most, two. But we always come back.”

“You don’t want to see the world?”

“Of course. But for as much as we say we want to live, we are far too good at merely existing. And the underground court is that, because it means safety. And so we create our own world, every night. Again and again.” His gaze is distant. He sounds as tired as he looks. “Claudia believes that life is short. She wants to consume it. But you cannot consume life in safety. And in the end, we want safety more, even, than life.”

I think, not for the first time, that maybe this is what it’s like to have a terminal disease. To know that every minute is just one in a limited and dwindling supply and that you’d better squeeze some life in while you still have the choice. No wonder the image of my mother in the rain has never left me since the monastery. The moment is all we’ve ever had.

He rolls to his side, gets up, and then pauses. “But she is right. Perhaps we should go a few days early. Wait for court in the next city.”

“We can’t leave,” I say. “At least not yet. We haven’t gotten our passports.” And the truth is, I no longer care if we get them at all.

“I will contact Jester tomorrow,” Piotrek says, before ambling down the hall.

To my relief, Jester is silent. Claudia sings the next evening as she powders her face, all talk of China forgotten.

25

Pounding on the door wakes me, impossibly, from sleep. My limbs are leaden, weighted to the bed. I glance at the old digital clock across the room on the dresser: 5:07 P.M.