In the morning, in the corridor, I meet one hundred and ninety-nine. “Yes,” he says, leaning toward me with an expression of horrid confidentiality, his lips barely parting over his closed teeth, “yes, I told all of them. As you instructed. The escape is set for tonight.”

“Tonight?” I ask frantically and then moderate my voice, “you fool, I didn’t say tonight. I said two nights hence.”

“You seemed in a hurry,” one hundred and ninety-nine says noncommittally and shrugs. “You said we had to leave quickly, and so on. Besides, you know that you shouldn’t trust me with a message you should carry yourself. I was low on the scheme; I can’t get things too well. The important thing is that we’re supposed to do it tonight. I even assigned the groups and everything.”

“You made the assignments?”

“Because of the hurry which you were in. I made up who would go with whom in the small groups and where we were supposed to meet. I know the place you meant; they took us to it a long time ago. It isn’t that far away. It’s only a little walk; we can make it easy.”

“Who’s conducting this plan anyway?” I ask him. “You or me?”

“You are,” one hundred and ninety-nine says, “unless you want me to do it, which I don’t want to. You were the one who asked for help; I wouldn’t have done it on my own. I assigned you to go with Nala, I assumed that the two of you were interested in each other.”

“Impossible,” I say. Two attendants appear at the end of the corridor a long way from us and begin, very casually, to walk through. It is nothing, not even an “inspection tour,” just two attendants taking an informal appraisal of quarters but it is enough to speed one hundred ninety-nine into quick confidences. “Eight o’clock,” he says, “the groups are supposed to meet and move out. We’re to be at the place where we all assemble at a quarter after eight. Be there!” he says, “be there!” with the aspect of a leader and shambles from me quickly, conspicuously carrying a bar of soap in his hand, on his way to the showers. I walk briskly toward the attendants, nod at them, watch them nod back and continue toward therapy.

I wonder if things have somehow been taken out of my hands but decide that one hundred and ninety-nine is probably right and that the important thing is to get the escape under way at whatever cost. I try not to begrudge circumstances because he has become, in a way, the leader. I remind myself that the important thing is that we indeed leave the enclosure as soon as possible because, between the actualities and the dreams, I do not know how much more of it I can take.