Barwick kept her apartment dark and cool. A friend in Arizona often asked why she lived in Chicago, why she put up with those Northern winters, but Sally never understood the question. With layers, it was easy to escape the cold, and snow was only a temporary nuisance, like boxes piled in a hallway. Northern winters were preferable to Southern summers – which were unrelenting and bright and hot. You could hide your worst flaws in the short, cold days of winter, but the Southern heat and sun only exposed your worst features to the world. Even now, as spring intruded, Sally, with drawn shades, made her home a bunker from the early mornings and lengthening afternoons.
She turned on her computer and with a keystroke rejected an offer to enter Shadow World, which she had just started playing in the past week. She had heard about the game from a friend and although it wasn’t exactly a mainstream phenomenon, the alternative press had been raving about its potential. She understood the appeal. Being inside the game was like being in one of her dreams.
Sally opened her word processor and began a letter to Martha Finn.
She told Martha who she really was. What her job was. What she had done. She said she was sorry. That she had accepted the assignment without realizing they would become friends. That once she started the lies – the most necessary tools of her business – it became impossible for her to stop them.
A man is dead now, and I don’t yet know if I have any culpability for his murder, Sally wrote. I once asked that same man about conflicts of interest in our profession. Philly told me, “Lawyers have conflicts of interest, Barwick. Not us. We’re more like priests. The husbands confess to us. The wives confess to us. We hear their worst secrets. Act on their worst impulses.”
You deserved less cynical consideration from me, Martha. You are a good person, far better than me. You have a wonderful son, destined for wonderful things. Even now it is easy for me to imagine him as an older boy, as a man. A man of duty and great responsibility. I have not only betrayed you, my friend, I have betrayed Justin. I will live with that pain all my life.
When my boss returns from his business trip I am quitting. Leaving this job for good. All I have to show for my falsehoods are dead colleagues and lost friends. There must be a better living in honesty, a better way to pursue the truth than through lies.
She printed the letter and signed it, then stuffed it in an envelope, which she addressed and stamped and left on a tiny sideboard that flanked her door. She deleted the original from her hard drive so it could never be edited, never be changed.