I can do it in fewer than the thirty-seven words I’ve got left. In my head, I rehearse my half of the telephone conversation:

I want three things, Mr. President. I want my daughter’s counter removed. I want her excused from school; I’ll teach her at home Friday through Monday. I want Lin on the project full-time, not just backup.

No need to mention any other names. Lorenzo will be back in Italy now, anyway.

Sonia and the boys are in the add-on rec room watching cartoons whose sound effects trickle all the way into the kitchen. It’s cooler in there, because of the window unit, and that leaves Patrick and me alone.

“Go on, babe,” he says after yelling to Steven to turn the volume down. “Make the call.”

I’ve never dialed the White House before. Patrick’s job there started after the wrist counters went on, and I have little reason to phone him at work, unless all I want to do is engage in some telephonic heavy breathing. I don’t. Not with Patrick.

My fingers find the numbers and press each one, hovering over the last. I almost miss it and dial a five instead of a four; that’s how badly my hands are shaking. A voice answers, not of a secretary or any other gatekeeper, but his, and I speak my thirty-six words.

“I’m sorry, Dr. McClellan, but I can’t do that.”

Except these aren’t the words he says in his gruff voice, a voice I sometimes think is unnatural in its harshness because I suspect the president is, at heart, a weak and insecure excuse for a man. I suspect they all are.

What he says, after a slight pause, is, “Very well, Dr. McClellan.” And he ends the call.

“Wow,” Patrick says. He’s been close to me, breathing beer-scented air into my nostrils as he listened in. He seems shocked.

A moment later, the phone rings. Patrick answers it with a cheery “Hello!” and says single words: “Yes.” “Fine.” “Okay.” I have no idea what he’s agreeing to.

“Thomas will be here in a half hour,” he says. “To take off the—um—”

Don’t you dare call them bracelets.

“Counters,” he says.

I nod and take out two boxes of pasta for dinner. Tomorrow, I’ve already decided, it’s going to be steak. A mountain of steak. We haven’t been eating much of it lately.

While I’m squeezing peeled tomatoes into a pot for sauce, I think about Sonia, how in less than thirty minutes she’ll be free of that metaphorical collar, free to sing and chatter and answer questions that involve more than a nod or a shake of her head. What I don’t know is how she’ll greet this freedom.