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months."
    Give or take. She had stopped counting the days and hours. It made the time slow to an agonizing crawl.
    The social worker frowned. The red and white horizontal bands on her face twisted as she focused on Nadice's cataract-dull 'skin. The alternating red and white lines were a classic Rudi Gernreich, popular in Africa. "Have you been"—the woman pursed her mouth—"naturalized?"
    A tactful way of inquiring if Nadice had been issued a work authorization permit or officially applied for asylum.
    "Not yet." Nadice picked at a dry burr of skin on her lower lip. "My manager said that they couldn't file the application until the baby was..." Her lip stung. Nadice tasted blood and pressed the burr back into place.
    "I see." The social worker moistened her own lips. "What about the father? Where is he?"
    "Lagos."
    "Is he going to come after you? Cause trouble?"
    "No."
    The social worker's eyes narrowed, skeptical. "You're sure?"
    "Yes."
    Because there was no father. But she couldn't say that, no one would believe her. Sometimes she didn't believe it herself.
    "Is anyone else going to come looking for you?" the social worker said. "Besides domestic security, I mean."
    "I don't think so."
    "No family? Friends?"
    "No," she lied. If Atherton Resorts ever found out about her grandmother, the company would use the old woman to get to Nadice or garnish her for what Nadice still owed on her contract.
    The social worker checked the d-splay on her palm, glanced up. "Anything else I should know about? Medical problems. Drug use. Like that."
    Nadice shook her head. No way the social worker would take her in if she knew Nadice was working as a mule, smuggling illegal ware. Ditto the salesperson at the cinematique. She would never have given Nadice the antitoxin: too high-risk—at least until the ware was delivered and she was clean. And maybe not even then. Nadice couldn't take the chance. It was a gamble, waiting to take the antitoxin, but it was better than not having it at all. Or a safe place to stay.
    "All right." The social worker stood and the d-splay went blank, replaced by her Rudi Gernreich philm. "Try to get some rest. I'll make some calls, see what we can do."
    The crumbling blacktop outside of the window was guarded by netless, doddering basketball hoops. The skeletal remains of a jungle gym, swing set, and slide haunted a sandbox off to the side, the salt-bitten metal little more than cobwebby threads of rust. When she closed her eyes, she could picture the kids that had once played there, laughing and yelling, boiling over with excitement. She could almost imagine herself with them, plugged into a different past, a different life.
    A few hours after the social worker talked to her, she was visited by Sister Giselle. The nun, philmed after a character in an old television program, wore a habit with a goofy cornette. Nadice couldn't recall which program, only that it had been revived a few years back. There were times Nadice wished she could fly like the nun in the sitcom. Have the wind pick her up and never put her down.
    "I don't want to be deported," Nadice told Sister Giselle. "I can't go back." That much, at least, was true.
    The nun sucked on uneven, tea-stained teeth. "I know someone who might be able to help."
    Nadice gripped one of the nun's hands. "Thank you." The bones felt thin and frail under her smooth, unwrinkled 'skin.
    It had been a mistake to let Mateus talk her into smuggling for him. But she had been desperate, willing to do anything. Or almost anything.
    She checked the time. Not quite three. Plenty of time until her six o'clock parley with him.
    _______
    She'd met Mateus in Lagos, a month after he'd been hired by the resort. He seemed nice enough at the time. Polite, respectful. He didn't try to feel her up. Not like some of her shift managers.
    He worked security. She wasn't sure if the philm he wore — something he called H-town crunk, whatever that meant—was part of the job or not. He looked