=7=

"Let us proceed," the man says, and pauses an indeterminate period of time. He stares, with great curiosity, as if it were one of the most fascinating things he’d ever seen, at the white button on the cuff of his  standard-issue white oxford cotton dress shirt. 

And to think: it was there at the end of his very own arm the whole time! 

He examines it, at first, with mild amusement, and then, a growing bewilderment, until he is outright stupefied, as if the button doesn't belong there, as if it’s appearance there on his cuff were the most improbable thing to be imagined, a kind of miracle. At last, shrugging it off, as if it were “just one of those things,” he looks up and finishes the sentence he began what seems so long ago now.

“There are a few questions we'd like you to answer."

It is, to all appearances, a typical interrogation room: grey walls of regulation concrete block, ugly wooden table, three uncomfortable chairs, a large mirror, presumably two-way, built into one wall, and, of course, the obligatory naked bulb. The room is cold, as one might expect, and Neena, occasionally shivering uncontrollably, tries to suppress a natural urge to hug herself, which is difficult to do, dressed inadequately as she is in a white paper slip and white paper slippers, as if in preparation for some nasty medical procedure.

Indeed, Neena is nearly overcome with a sickening temptation to look down at her body, to take a quick inventory of any new scars that might indicate a recent surgical procedure, the removal of an organ, for instance, or, equally unsettling, the addition of a new organ, orifice, or limb, the result of some outrageous new transplant or modification. But she manages to resist the curiosity, irresistible as it is, and keeps looking forward, away from the presumably two-way mirror, to the terminus of the man's chin, and the white, star-shaped scar thereupon.

What happened to her clothes, if she had, in fact, been wearing clothes when she arrived, she doesn't remember, nor does she remember who it was that must have undressed her, if she didn't undressed herself (why would she have?). She could almost think, and this thought is beginning to dominate her meditations on the subject with a wearying regularity, that she is wearing some kind of prison uniform, except that the gown, which ties up in the back and therefore at first confounded her, is not made of paper, after all, but of silk or an imitation silk (there is no manufacturer’s label to decide the issue), with a little trim of patterned lace (hearts and hummingbirds?) around the bodice, and hardly standard hospital fare at all. Similarly, it is altogether too sexy for a prison, even a prison of the minimum-security variety, which, in any event, this does not appear to be, or so Neena thus far reasons.

"You are cold?" the man asks, nodding vigorously, encouraging assent. "Yes?"

He allows a little smile to inform his thin lips, not to indicate that he is satisfied, but as if in acknowledgment of the algebraic understanding that he can see dawning in her eyes, as if to say “and so x=y, you have it now, ja?”  He offers her a glass of water, which he has been pouring now, on and off, the whole time she has been here (which is how long anyway?), but which never seems to fill the glass more than halfway…is it some kind of trick?

Neena takes the (finally) proffered glass without thinking, thirsty in spite of the cold, yet she would have taken it even if she weren't thirsty, if for no other reason than to complete the gesture of the offer, that seeming to be the only thing it is possible to do, so subtly tyrannical is the entire exchange, like all such exchanges with all such men as the one who sits across from her now.  

Still, holding the glass, or rather, the paper cup, for it suddenly seems to us more suitable that it were a paper cup, under her chin, the tremor of her right hand, fingers slightly numb from cold, causes the surface of the water to tremble in sympathy, or mockery, of her cold terror. Neena pauses before taking the obligatory sip, fearing, not poison this time, or even truth serum, but something else even more horrible, though what could be more horrible than poison or truth serum, she doesn't know.

"Go ahead," the man says, almost jovially, "it is only…"

His attention is momentarily caught again by that damnably curious button. Actually, it’s an identical button on the other cuff! At length, he shrugs once more, looks up as if slightly distracted, and contrives an expression to indicate that he is recalling where he previously left off. He finishes the sentence tentatively, "…water?"

He starts to light a cigarette, another all-but-obligatory prop which Neena had expected to make its appearance at a point long before this one. She finds herself wishing that he would just go ahead and smoke, it would be a relief somehow if he did, but just then he suddenly stops the whole production, puts the cigarette and lighter back into his jacket pocket. He looks down briefly at the button on his cuff again, shrugs, frowns "perplexedly," and then looks up at Neena, but this time as if to say, "so now what?"

Neena, meanwhile, if just to be doing something, if only to break this horrible nightmare stasis (and wake up, perhaps?), has taken a sip from the paper cup. The water, which tastes vaguely of old photographs in which dead relatives pose, seems to be only water, after all. She is not comforted, however. Instead, she is wondering again, in spite of herself, how she came to be here in the first place (fruitless speculations, we don’t have to tell you). Was she taken from her bed in the dead of night or brazenly kidnapped off the street? Had she been raped in an alley or van after a brief, seemingly impromptu flirtation in a bar or bookstore?

She is thinking that, perhaps, she did something impulsive while under the influence of alcohol, or a semi-legal narcotic, and although this is not her normal pattern of behavior, far from her standard social M.O, it is, at the same time, not categorically impossible, not entirely out of character (of her shadow character). As human beings, we are vortices of unpredictability; there is always a first time for anything. The parallel idea that she was the innocent victim of some kind of freak accident or medical emergency, that she was struck down in the street by a delivery truck or suffered a seizure, is never far from her mind, either; in fact, it occurs to her repeatedly, almost obsessively.           

Also it almost certainly must have occurred to Neena that it is all-too-possible that she has been arrested for some arcane reason or other, either that a mistake has been made in targeting her for arrest, or that she really has done something illegal of which she is entirely unaware (the breaking of some quietly passed law solely intended to allow the authorities to arrest whomever they want whenever they want without the inconvenient obstacle of such considerations as “civil rights” [haha], ignorance, of course, being no excuse for ignorance of the law, etc.).

Perhaps, the man, once again starting (and failing) to light a cigarette, understands all-too-well the nature of her basic innocence and this understanding accounts for his generally casual, even friendly, if still strictly appropriately official behavior—a behavior that might, almost, be mistaken to indicate that they are both caught, more or less, in the same unavoidable situation, and what can they do, but try to make the best of it while it lasts (hopefully not too much longer; short of forever, in any case). They need only clear up a few mandatory points and afterwards she will be free to go on her merry way, and la-dee-da.

So Neena muses. A question slowly drifts across her consciousness, as insubstantial as a form already vanishing, suggested by the smoke exhaled from the cigarette she anticipates but that the man is still not smoking. It is a question that she doesn’t ask, never asks, never even thinks of asking, after asking, futilely, so many times before.

"Did I do something wrong?"

The man, who has just finished a gesture as if to say, "That's it, I've done with this button for good," looks up, suddenly, as if Neena has indeed inquired aloud about a possible inadvertent transgression, (and, perhaps, she may have in spite of herself and all the blather we blathered just a moment ago), or as if he has read her mind (and perhaps he has), or as if, even more likely, he understands that it’s simply the most natural thought to occur to anyone in Neena’s position at this juncture of her interrogation, the man having conducted such interviews as this one thousands of times before--and for the exact same reasons, which is to say no reason at all.

There is no smile on his thin lips and no expression on his narrow expressionless face and there is no cigarette between his fingers. He doesn't seem to be looking at her at all, nor has he been, it occurs to Neena, from the beginning of this interview, which is only a euphemism that they use for what is transpiring between them, whatever the hell it is that is transpiring between them, if anything at all can properly be said to be transpiring between them.  

It is still very cold in the room and the water in the cup that Neena is holding is also very cold, but it no longer tastes of the photographs of long-dead relatives stiffly posed but like her own hands as she wets her lips from the water cupped from the wheel-ruts beside which she kneels, crows wheeling overhead. She drinks while waiting for the man to say what he always says at this juncture:

"But, as you and I well know, that is not the question that truly concerns us here, now is it?"