Page 105 of Hushed

“You’re making it worse!”

He makes a snorting noise as he loops his tie.

“What was that for?”

“Nothing.”

I cross my arms.

“I was just thinking that, between the two of us, I had you on your back in this room on our first date. And it was only because I pursued you. I planned and executed from start to finish. So yes, one of us in this relationship could reasonably be interpreted as a predator.” He kisses me on the cheek. “It isn’t you. Anyway, whatever they decide, they can’t change it now. So if they have decided against you, then it has cost you nothing to come in with me, and if they decide for you, then my presence cannot alter their decision, regardless of the bitter taste in their mouths about it.” He frowns and straightens my tie. “And I intend to give them a very bitter taste for messing with you.”

“They probably won’t let you enter the room.”

He smiles at me in the mirror. “I’d like to see them stop me.”

I try not to sigh and let him dress me like a doll. He really fretted over what I was going to be wearing today. He ironed it at home, color-coordinated, and went through a dozen different alternatives. I tell him that what I wear doesn’t matter, because, as he said, if they have already filed against me, then showing up without a tie and a three-piece suit will change nothing. “Cute,” he says, brushing off my vest. Then he stops. “I love you, Bastien. No matter what happens, I’ll always have your six.” He steps back and inspects me, and decides that my shoes—which he shined before leaving—will pass muster, and gives me a boyish smile. He extends his hand to me. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

The conference room is warmer than the last one, which I somehow resent more. At least the last one was honest. Levi sits to my left with his hands folded on his table and his spine so straight it doesn’t touch the back of the chair. So this is it. The finding is written. I just haven’t been informed what it is.

Ronald arranges his papers with the focus of a man whose only job is to look like he has more papers. Across the table, Dr. Whitman has the same silver bob, the same nude nails, the same expression of someone who has conducted enough of these to have run out of surprise. And in the corner, the translator, the same one who sat through four hours of my perfect English, is reading something on her Kindle, politely tuning us out. I wish I could do the same.

Chen has been looking at Levi since we sat down. “Before we proceed to findings,” he says, “I want to note for the record that the individual seated to Dr. Saint-Jacques’s left appears to be the same individual visible in news coverage from Rock Creek Park, and that this raises concerns about whether the committee’s findings should be understood in light of—”

“Dr. Chen.” Whitman doesn’t raise her voice. “Your concerns have been noted and have already been included in the permanent record of this proceeding.”

“And are ultra vires,” Levi says.

Whitman looks at him in surprise. “I beg your pardon?” I’m not sure if she didn’t expect him to speak or is now encountering a word she’s not familiar with.

“Please continue,” Levi says.

She looks, briefly, flustered. “As I was saying, your concerns fall outside the remit of this committee’s findings, Dr. Chen.” She turns a page. “If the rest of you are ready to begin?”

Levi flashes me a triumphant look that says, very clearly, She didn’t know what it meant.

Chen’s mouth closes. He opens his folder.

There is the requisite shuffling of papers. Levi puts one hand onto mine to keep me from spiraling. I turn and look at him, but only register the clean profile of him as he stares down the committee.

“Before we begin,” Whitman says, “do you have anything to add to your statement given earlier this year?” She glances at Chen once and then turns to me, and I can see what she’s doing. Chen insisted on it, and she’s the head of this committee, so she’s allowing me some rope to hang myself with to appease him.

I don’t look at him. “I do not,” I say. She nods and turns the page.

“Actually, I do,” I say.

Levi turns his face to me. It is unreadable.

“How dare you?” I say.

The translator stops reading. She just stares at me with her jaw hanging slack.

“Two minutes ago,” I say, “you told Dr. Chen that his concerns fell outside the remit of this committee. But you said in the same breath that they had already been entered into the permanent record. I would like somebody in this room to say out loud what that means.”

Whitman’s pen stops.

I give them a beat before I charge on like a runaway Zamboni on a smooth, clear lake. I can already smell the snow, the silence, the sound of the ice under my skates, and I am full of the same kind of exhilaration and freedom. “It means that whatever you decide in the next ten minutes, you will file that finding alongside a nameless suspicion I was never charged with. Dr. Chen’s theory that I form dependencies with young combat veterans is in that record. It has not been examined. It cannot be examined, because you have just ruled that examining it is beyond your authority. So it will sit there, permanently, in a document with your letterhead on it, and it will never be tested and it can never be disproved.”