and was cheerfully matter-of-fact about her own promiscuity. Her manner had shocked and intimidated Hannah at first, but over time she’d come to appreciate Gabrielle’s confidence and self-possession, how utterly comfortable she was in her own skin. Of everyone Hannah knew, Gabrielle was the only person she felt she could approach with this.
The next time she went to the shop for a fitting, Hannah asked Gabrielle if she would meet her for a coffee after work. They’d never socialized before, and the other girl appraised her with unconcealed surprise and curiosity.
“Sure,” Gabrielle said finally, “but let’s make it a drink.”
They’d met at a bar a few blocks away. Gabrielle ordered a beer, Hannah a ginger ale. Her hand shook as she picked up her glass, and she set it back down again. What if Gabrielle decided to turn her in to the police? What if she told their employer? Hannah couldn’t risk it. She was trying to think of a pretext for her invitation when Gabrielle said, “You in trouble?”
“Not me,” Hannah said. “A friend of mine.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Hannah didn’t answer. She couldn’t speak the words.
Gabrielle looked at the ginger ale, then back at Hannah. “This friend of yours knocked up?”
Hannah nodded, her heart in her mouth.
“And?” Gabrielle said. Watchful, waiting.
“She, she doesn’t want to have it.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“I thought you might … know somebody who could help her.”
“And I thought that kind of thing was against your religion.”
“My friend can’t have this baby, Gabrielle. She can’t.” Hannah’s voice broke on the word.
Gabrielle considered her for a long moment. “I might know somebody,” she said. “If she’s sure. She has to be really sure.”
“She is.” And Hannah was, at that moment, completely, agonizingly sure. She couldn’t bring this baby into this situation, this world she and Aidan lived in. She started to cry.
Gabrielle reached across the table and squeezed Hannah’s hand. “It’s gonna be okay.”
There were several somebodies, actually, each a small exercise in terror for Hannah, but eventually she spoke to a woman who gave her an address, careful instructions on what to do when she got there and the name of the man who would do it, Raphael. It was obviously a pseudonym, and Hannah was jarred by its dissonance. Why would an abortionist name himself after the archangel of healing? When she asked whether Raphael was a real doctor, the woman hung up.
The appointment was at seven in the evening in North Dallas. Hannah took the train to Royal Lane, then a bus to the apartment complex, and arrived early. She stood frozen in the parking lot, staring in dread at the door to number 122. The news vids were full of horror stories about women who’d been raped and robbed by charlatans posing as doctors; women who’d bled to death or died of infection, who’d been anesthetized and had their organs stolen. For the first time, Hannah wondered how much of that was true and how much was fiction disseminated by the state as a deterrent.
The windows of number 122 were dark, but the apartment next to it was lit from within. Hannah couldn’t see the occupants, but she could hear them through the open window, a man, a woman and several children. They were having supper. She heard the clink of their glasses, the scrape of their silverware against their plates. The children started to quarrel, their voices rising, and the woman scolded them tiredly. The bickering continued unabated until the man boomed, “That’s enough!” There was a brief silence, and then the conversation resumed. The ordinariness of this domestic scene was what made Hannah cross the lot in the end. This she knew she could never have, not with Aidan.
She entered the apartment without knocking and shut the door behind her, leaving it unlocked as she’d been instructed. “Hello?” she whispered. There was no answer. It was pitch black inside and stiflingly hot, but she’d been warned not to open a window or turn on the lights.
“Is anyone there?” No response. Maybe he wasn’t coming, she thought, half hopeful and half despairing. She waited in the airless dark for long, anxious minutes, feeling the sweat gradually soak her blouse. She was turning to leave when the door opened and a large man slipped inside, closing it behind him too quickly for Hannah to get a look at his face. The loud crack of the deadbolt sent a surge of alarm through her. She made a wild movement toward the door and felt a hand grip her arm.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said softly. “I’m Raphael. I’m not going to hurt you.”
It was an old man’s voice, weary and kind, and the sound of it reassured her. He let go of her arm, and she heard him move across the room toward the window. A sliver of light from outside appeared as he opened the curtain and peered out at the parking lot. He stood at the window for quite a while, watching. Finally he shut the curtain and said, “Come this way.”
A beam of light appeared, and she followed it through the living room, down a short hallway and into a bedroom. She hesitated on the threshold.
“Come in,” Raphael said. “It’s all right.” Hannah entered the room and heard him close the door behind her. “Lights on,” he said.
Raphael, she saw then, didn’t look like a Raphael. He was overweight and unimposing, with stooped shoulders and an air of absentminded dishevelment. She guessed him to be in his mid-sixties. His wide, fleshy face was red-cheeked and curiously flat, and his eyes were round and hooded. Tufts of frizzled gray hair poked out from either side of an otherwise bald head. He reminded Hannah of pictures she’d seen of owls.
He held out his hand, and she shook it automatically. Just as if, she thought, they were meeting after church. Wonderful sermon, wasn’t it, Hannah? Oh yes, Raphael, very inspiring.
The room was empty except for two folding chairs, a large table and an ancient-looking box fan, which sputtered to life when Raphael turned it on. Heavy black fabric covered the one window. Hannah stood uncertainly while he opened a duffel bag on the floor, removed a bed sheet from it and spread it on the table. It was patterned incongruously with colorful cartoon dinosaurs. They jogged her back to her ninth birthday, when her parents had taken her to the Creation Museum in Waco. There’d been an exhibit depicting dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden and another showing how Noah had fit them onto the ark along with the giraffes, penguins, cows and so forth. Hannah had asked why the Tyrannosaurus rexes hadn’t eaten the other animals, or Adam and Eve, or Noah and his family.
“Well,” said her mother, “before Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, there was no death, and humans and animals were all vegetarians.”
“But Noah lived after the fall,” Hannah pointed out.
Her mother looked at her father. “He was a smart guy,” her father said. “He only took baby dinosaurs on the ark.”
“Duh,” Becca said, giving Hannah’s arm a hard pinch. “Everybody knows that.”
Becca was Hannah’s barometer for her parents’ displeasure; the pinch meant she was on dangerous ground. Still, it didn’t add up, and she hated it when things didn’t add up. “But how come—”
