Escape Read Free Page A

the Post-it with Layla’s name and number.
    Tessa Reid was as close as I came to having a friend in the firm, which was as sad a statement as any. We never socialized outside of work. I did know that she had two kids and two school loans, and that she shared my revulsion for what we did. I saw it in her eyes when she arrived at work, the same look of dread reflected in my own mirror each day.
    She lived three cubicles to the right of mine. Ducking in there now, I touched her shoulder. Her earpiece was active, her hands typing. One look at my face and she put her caller on hold.
    “Do me a huge favor, Tessa?” I whispered, not for privacy, because, Lord knew, my voice wouldn’t carry over the background din, but because that was all the air I could find. I pressed the Post-it to her desk. “Call this claimant for me? We were talking when the system went down. She’s valid.” I was banking on that, perhaps with a lastgasp of idealism. For sure, though, Tessa was the only one in the room whom I could trust to find out.
    She was studying me with concern. “What’s wrong?”
    “I need air. Do this for me?”
    “Of course. Where are you going?”
    “Out,” I whispered, and left.
    A gaggle of clicks, dings, and murmurs followed me, lingering like smog even when the elevator closed. I made the descent in a back corner, eyes downcast, arms hugging my waist. Given the noise in my head, if anyone had spoken, I mightn’t have heard, which was just as well. What could I have said if, say, Walter Burbridge had stepped in?
Where are you going?
I don’t know.
When’ll you be back?
I don’t know.
What’s wrong with you?
I don’t know.
    The last would have been a lie, but how to explain what I was feeling when the tentacles were all tangled up? I might have said that it went beyond work, that it covered my entire life, that it had been building for months and had nothing to do with impulse. Only it did. Survival was an impulse. I had repressed it for so long that it was weak, but it must have been beating somewhere in me, because when the elevator opened, I walked out.
    Even at 9:57, Fifth Avenue buzzed. Though I had never minded before, now the sound grated. I turned right for the bus and stood for an excruciating minute in traffic exhaust, before giving up and fleeing on foot, but pedestrian traffic was heavy, too. I walked quickly, dodging others, dashing to make it over the cross street before a light changed. When I accidentally jostled a woman, I turned with an apology, but she had continued on without looking back.
    I had loved the crowds when I first came here. They made me feel part of something big and important. Now I felt part of nothing. If I wasn’t at work, others would be. If I bumped into people, they walked on.
    So that’s what I did myself, just walked on, block after block. I passed a hot dog stand but smelled only exhaust fumes from a bus. My watch read 10:21, then 10:34, then 10:50. If my legs grew tired,I didn’t notice. The choking feeling had passed, but I felt little relief. My thoughts were in turmoil, barely touched by the blare of a horn or the rattle of the tailgate of a truck at the curb.
    Nearing our neighborhood, I stopped for my husband’s suit and shirts, and picked up his prescription, then entered the tiny branch office of our bank. The teller knew me. But this was New York. If she wondered why I withdrew more money than usual, she didn’t ask.
    The bank clock stood at 11:02 when I hit the air again. Three minutes later I turned down the street where we lived and, for a hysterical second, wondered which brownstone was ours. Through my disenchanted eyes, they all looked the same. But no; one had a brown door, another a gray one, and there was my window box, in which primrose and sweet pea were struggling to survive.
    Running up the steps, I let myself in, emptied my arms just inside, and dashed straight up the next flight and into the bedroom. I pulled my bag from the closet floor, but