I finished my coffee.
“Actually,” I said, “I might drive out to Baton Rouge. I need a few things.” I realized I needed the anonymity of a city that didn’t know me.
Judah turned another page. “Take the card.”
“I have money.”
He looked up again. Held my gaze for one second too long.
“Take the card,” he said.
I took the card.
I had no intention ofusingthe card.
The test was from a Walgreens on Government Street in Baton Rouge where nobody knew my face or his name — well, maybe theyknewhis name — or what Billy’s Jaguar looked like parked in front of Grace Eternal on a Sunday morning.
I bought two.
I sat in the Walgreens parking lot for ten minutes before I went back inside for a third.
The Walgreens bathroom was a single stall with a lock that didn't quite catch and fluorescent lighting that made everything look like a verdict painted in jaundiced yellow.
I'd bought three tests. Different brands. I told myself that was logic — different manufacturers, different sensitivity thresholds. Maybe one manufacturer had put out a faulty batch, maybe thisone had expired while sitting on the shelf, maybe this had been exchanged with one that wasalreadypositive. A lot ofmaybesandthisones.
I took the first one.
Waited.
The instructions said two minutes. I counted to sixty and looked anyway.
Two lines.
I looked at the ceiling. The fluorescent tube had a flicker at one end, a dying thing, an irregular pulse that had probably been reported and ignored for months. I looked at it for a while.
Took the second test.
Waited the full two minutes this time. Counted properly. Stared at the wall where someone had written something in Sharpie that had been partially scrubbed off. I didn't try to read it.
Alright, Idid.It said FUCK GOVERNMENT. A slogan as good as any.
I looked down.
Two lines.
I sat on the edge of the toilet lid and held both tests and looked at them side by side.
The third one was still in the bag at my feet.
I didn't take it.
I already knew.
I'd known on the bathroom floor at two in the morning. I'd known at the breakfast table watching him turn the pages of the paper. I'd known in the Walgreens aisle standing in front of the display for four minutes before I picked anything up. The tests hadn't told me anything. They'd just made it a fact instead of a knowing.
I wrapped them in paper towels and put them in the bottom of my bag under everything else. Can’t tell you why I did it. I just… did.
I unlocked the door that didn't quite catch and walked out through the pharmacy past the woman at the register who didn't look up and out into the September heat of Baton Rouge where the world was doing what it always did — carry on.
