Page 5 of The Delivery

Derek bites back a grin, gives a flirtatious single shoulder shrug.

Alexa turns to Rebecca, hands clasping her hand on the table, the kind of girlfriend-y clasp Rebecca never sees deployed outside of movies. “Do you want to know? Do you really want to know?”

Rebecca says, “Sure,” because there is no other answer to give.

The waiter returns, his tray brimming with drinks, and a conspiratorial hush falls over the table. Whatever the de Grasses have to share is not for just anyone’s ears.

Derek and Alexa study each other dramatically. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“Of course,” Alexa breathes. “They need it.” And then reassuringly: “We needed it too.”

Derek takes out his wallet contraption, a stubby metal rectangle with buttons. Only Derek would have a mechanized wallet, likely something exotically Kickstarted by some life hack engineer in Bengaluru. He pushes a button and a titanium business card pops free of the wallet as if from a toaster, a cheap magician’s trick.

“This,” he says grandly, “this is our plus-one.”

He displays the card.

It says: N0RM LLC.

There is a website, an email, a 1-800 number.

“Started by a South African technocrat.” Derek’s teeth are very shiny. So is his hair. He is handsome, too handsome to be attractive, strong of jaw, sculpted from marble. “A no-shit genius. I met him in Sun Valley, one of those thought-leader summits.”

“Very exclusive,” Alexa says. “The company’s clientele, I mean. Not the Sun Valley borefest.”

Rebecca takes the card, fingers the corner, testing it like the tip of a blade.

“Turn it over,” Derek says.

Stamped on the back: YOU’RE IN CHARGE.

“We got in on the beta stage,” Derek says. “It’s extremely limited availability, but we’re allowed to pass on the offer to one other party.”

Mark asks, “What is it?”

“It’s a dream,” Derek says. “No—a fantasy.”

“Like . . .” Alexa contemplates, front teeth pinching a collagen-stung lower lip, crystalline green eyes tugged upward, a perfect selfie pose. “The ultimate retail therapy.”

Rebecca sets the card down on the table with a metallic click. “Perhaps some more specificity.”

Instantly she regrets the irritation she’s let leak into her tone, but the de Grasses do not take notice, at last a benefit of their self-centeredness.

Derek swirls his scotch, allows a theatrical pause. “What if you could have something that knows everything about you, everything you want, and could get it for you? While staying totally under your control?”

Alexa’s voice is seductive and slightly crass: “Let’s just say it’s designed for your gratification. It’ll see to everything you really want. In your darkest heart of hearts.” She rests a scarlet fingernail on the card, slides it across to Mark, and then leans close to Rebecca, her breath tasting of alcohol and perhaps a bygone cigarette. “This? This will change everything.”

Rebecca closes her eyes. Feels a phantom pulse of pain in her lower abdomen, across her back. Sees the crimson handprint she left when she gripped the side of the bathtub. Thinks about school drop-offs, visits with the nurse, the occupational therapist, the psychiatrist for Maddy. Feels the sorrow like lead in her bone marrow, the grief she drags through her days. She is much too young to feel so exhausted, so leached of optimism.

More than anything she feels stuck, her wheels churning in ever-deepening ruts. No one ever taught her this, how torpor can be more oppressive than grief, a lead apron that pins you down, makes you want to quit struggling and just give up. And she hates to admit—hates to admit— that dealing with Maddy and her special needs takes so much out of her. Is the apple sauce too chunky? Are the lights too bright in the bank lobby? Are her stuffties out of order on the shelf? She’s just one kid, one sweet, lovely kid, and yet at the end of most days, Rebecca’s nervous system feels shorted out from hypervigilance.

She doesn’t like to see herself as desperate and yet here she is, barely treading water for herself and her little family, and here Derek and Alexa are, too, tossing her a lifeline. She thinks about the allure of control and the promise of change, gift horses and mouths, beggars and choosers. A thunderstorm of metaphors for the bare, naked fact that she would give anything—anything—just to feel different.

When she opens her eyes, Mark is looking at her, his gaze shiny with interest. He gives a hint of a one-shoulder shrug.

Rebecca picks up the card again.

And says, “Tell me more.”