Love Minus Eighty (17 page)

“Oh,
bullshit
,” Trent said.

“What are you doing out here?” the police officer asked Veronika.

Veronika sputtered, then remembered Lycan’s cover story. She pointed at him. “He used to live near here. We were looking for his house.”

The police officer took this in without a word. “All right. All of you”—he gestured toward the locals—“leave the vicinity immediately.” He rotated to face Veronika and Lycan. “You two—”

“This
vicinity
is where we live,” the old guy interrupted.

“Where are you, in Yonkers?” Trent added. “What are you gonna do,
fine
us?”

“What I’m going to do,” the officer said, clearly losing patience, “is tag you with a zombie, send a drone to bring you in, and throw your ass in jail.” He turned back toward Veronika and Lycan. “You two get in your vehicle, and go home.”

“Yes sir. Thank you,” Lycan said. They stepped past Trent and hurried toward the car as the officer stayed with the locals.

“You have some nerve,” the blond woman called after them. “We were nothing but kind to you.”

Veronika felt like complete shit. “I panicked. I shouldn’t have called the police.”

“It was a tough call,” Lycan said. “I have to admit, I was nervous.”

“I feel terrible, though. That woman was right. Beside Trent’s little hissy fit, they were being nothing but kind.”

“Why don’t we get going?” Lycan suggested.

Veronika nodded, started the car, and pulled out. “What if I sent my drone out here tomorrow with some cash for them? Do you think that would be okay?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Lycan said.

Rob felt as if the shoulder of Route 304 were listing side to side as he staggered along. He was so tired. All he wanted was to sleep.

No. He was hungrier than he was tired. In fact he wasn’t sure he could make it all the way home without something to eat. Which meant stopping at the tubes.

He was so tired of this life. Not that it was a life, really. Tired of this existence. At the end of each shift, the voice in the back of his head got louder; early on he’d been able to ignore it, but now it was deafening.

Quit. Run away. Start over where no one knows you, where no one knows what you did.

He could move to Philly, or Pittsburgh, start a new life. What Winter was asking of him was too much. Did she even know how much it cost to visit her? Too much; it was just too much.

Leave in the morning. Philly.

He thought about Winter, who would wonder what happened to him when she was waked for a date. She’d know he let her down. Without his visits, she’d probably be kicked out of the program even more quickly.

In the distance he could see the turnoff for the tubes. He was so hungry. Superfood wasn’t going to do it—he needed fat, something dripping with grease, like burgers or biscuits. Of course that would take money. Rob checked his account on the handheld. He stopped in his tracks.

There was an extra nine thousand dollars in his account.

He brought up the transaction, checked the routing, found nothing but a simple notation:

“Anonymous.”

Chuckling to himself in an exhausted, slightly delirious way that might make a passerby think he was unhinged, Rob resumed walking. Who the hell would give him that kind of money, and do it anonymously? That the amount was exactly what it cost to visit Winter made his benefactor’s intentions clear. Nathan and Veronika had been open about helping, but he doubted they had that kind of money to give away in any case, so it probably wasn’t them. For most of his longtime friends, nine thousand was two or three months’ pay. Sunali? Rob mulled that one. Possibly. Bridesicles were her passion, so it wasn’t inconceivable, especially given Lorelei’s role in this whole mess. In case it was Sunali, Rob would have to start thinking nicer thoughts about her.

In any case, the discovery, and the possibility of visiting Winter, sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through Rob’s veins. He would indeed grab a bite at the tubes, then catch the train to Yonkers. As he headed for the train, he tried Sunali again.

She was still completely blocked; he couldn’t even leave a message. Since Cryomed had been unwilling to answer questions
about the policy on “salvage,” he was running out of options. The thought of having to contact Lorelei and ask for a favor made him cringe.

Winter didn’t comment about Rob forgetting his lute, which made him feel better about forgetting it.

“How long has it been?” she asked.

“Believe it or not, less than three weeks. Some kind soul deposited the fee into my account anonymously. Isn’t that incredible?”

Winter tried to smile, her stiff lips trembling. “Unbelievable. Do you have any idea who it was?”

He was tempted to mention Sunali, but didn’t want to eat up precious time explaining who she was and how Rob knew her. “Not really. I don’t know many people with that kind of money.”

“Well, if you find out, tell them thanks for me.”

“I will.”

“For a second I thought it might be Nathan, my ex, but then I remembered he doesn’t even know you.”

“Yeah, probably not him.” Rob felt unsure whether he should tell Winter he and Nathan were now friends. She might think it was weird that Rob had sought out her ex, even if it was only to try to convince him to visit her.

“I guess Nathan isn’t coming back,” Winter said.

“He hasn’t visited again,” Rob said, half statement, half question. The topic gave him an opening. He tried to sound casual. “So, have you had other visitors?” He swallowed, hoping his nervousness, his eagerness to hear the answer, didn’t show.

“A few. Two dates.” She grunted. “Dates. What a strange word for it.” She studied Rob’s face for a moment. “They’re
not like your visits, though. I have to let the client lead the conversation. I have to act all warm and peppy and fake. This is the only time I have to think, to talk about what
I
want to talk about.”

Rob suspected Winter was worried he might visit less often if he thought others were visiting. Maybe she even sensed that he was having moments of weakness, when he thought of abandoning her altogether. He promised himself he would never give in to that weakness. “Well, I’m glad my visits help, because I have no plans to stop.”

She seemed to relax. “I appreciate that.”

A few seconds ticked by; Rob was distracted trying to decide whether two visitors, plus his visits, was enough.

“You know, I don’t know anything about you,” Winter said. “Where do you live?”

“With my dad.” He didn’t add that it was a new arrangement.

“You must get along with him okay?”

“I do. He’s a barber, out in the suburbs.”

“How far out?”

“Not too far. New City.” Of course the name of the town itself wasn’t the issue; asking how far out someone lived was a way to gauge how poor they were.

It felt like a frivolous waste of time, to be talking about himself, but it made sense that Winter wanted to learn more about him. He was a complete stranger. “Mom died ten years ago. Dad has a simulation of her running all day long. All day.” Rob shook his head. “It’s like her ghost, wandering the halls, sitting at the table with us, eating invisible food.”

“That’s beautiful, in an unsettling way. He must have loved her so much. How did she die, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Cervical cancer.”

“Head nod. I’m sorry.”

There was no need for Rob to elaborate. She’d died of a curable disease. Winter would know they did the usual desperate things people do to try to raise money when a loved one gets a curable terminal illness. Both Rob and his dad had worked second jobs, they’d appealed to friends and relatives, posted a donation site on the web, sold everything of value. By the time his mom died, they’d raised close to fifty thousand dollars. They were seven hundred thousand short.

“Your profile said both your parents are gone?” Rob asked.

“In the ground. Dad in a construction accident. Mom died in her sleep.”

Rob nodded. Autopsies cost money.

“Although it’s more complicated than that makes it sound. My mom was married seven times, if you count the four times she married my father.”

Rob winced. “Sounds like a rough childhood.”

“Shrug,” Winter said. “Not as bad as some. How much time?” Winter asked.

“Two minutes.”

“Can you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

“One of the men who visited said I would be a costly bride, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Can you tell me what injuries I have?”

Rob felt like he’d been socked in the stomach. He still remembered the first few items on the list, the ones he reached before he had to stop. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“I do.”

He tried to think of some way to say no, to run out the clock, but he could think of no polite way to do that.

Reluctantly, he read off the profile set in the screen on
the wall. “Severed spine between the third and fourth lumbar. Crushed kidney. Crushed liver.” Winter’s eyes got huge, her mouth an O of surprise. Rob took a breath, tried to run through the rest of the long list as quickly as possible. “Forty percent of large intestine gone. Shattered pelvis, broken left femur, broken left knee, shattered—”

“
Stop
,” she shouted. “Oh my God.” Her eyes darted left and right. “I have to get out of here—”

“It’s all right,” Rob said. But it wasn’t all right, it was the exact opposite of all right.

“I can’t—” Her eyes went blank, her face slack. Air hissed between lifeless blue lips.

“We apologize for cutting your time short,” a disembodied woman’s voice said. “You had twenty-one seconds left. We’ve reimbursed the prorated amount. You’re welcome to visit Miss West again at your convenience.”

“Thank you,” Rob said, not knowing what else to say. He rose on wobbly legs, feeling suddenly tired beyond words. He had no idea how he would make it home, let alone to work in seven hours.

Rob’s handheld woke him at five a.m. for work. Even as he struggled toward consciousness, he was accosted by images of Winter, terrified, pleading to get out.

He had to find a way to get her out of there. Dragging himself out of bed, Rob pulled on the same flannel pants and shirt he’d worn the day before. At the recycling center, no one noticed any one particular foul odor.

In the Business Room, his dad was giving a haircut to an ancient guy in weathered frankenboots. The man had no arms. In all likelihood he was, like Rob’s own long-dead grandparents, one of the ten-percenters. That must have been some time to be alive, when ten percent of the children born were deformed, and grew up to be a very angry generation indeed when the cause of their suffering was discovered to be a food additive—a chemical that coagulated ice cream so it could more easily be eaten off a stick without melting.
Through the mirror, the old guy saw Rob standing in the doorway. He nodded, and Rob nodded back.

After a night of little sleep, he was beyond tired; he was in that wired, headachy zone that was becoming so familiar, between the long hours of work and the relentless anguish.

He stepped into the kitchen and tried to contact Sunali again.

Blocked. What could she be doing? From what Rob could remember, she’d been pretty active with her system, especially for someone who’d stepped into a strange, unfamiliar future after being dead for ninety years.

When Lorelei had first explained that Sunali was both her stepmother and her great-grandmother, Rob thought she was bullshitting in order to draw more eyes. But no, she wasn’t.

Lorelei. If he wanted to get in touch with Sunali, it seemed to be Lorelei or nothing, didn’t it? Cursing silently, Rob opened a screen into a place he was sure he would never visit again.

He found himself swimming among fifty other screens, all of them watching Lorelei brush her hair. For most people, it was polite to ping for permission to open a screen, but not Lorelei; she was open to the public most any time of the day or night.

She must have been carrying on a dozen conversations at once, her speech was jumpy and mostly incoherent. Rob pinged her to get her attention.

Her eyes opened wide with surprise. “Rob?” She slid from her stool, turned and searched for him. “It’s so good to see you. How
are
you?”

“Hi.” It made him twitchy to speak to her. He’d almost stopped thinking of her as a real person; in his mind she was
fixed in time, still dropping his life from her window. “Look, I’m here because I need your help. I have to speak to your mother, and she’s completely blocked.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s with my grandfather.” She gave
grandfather
the same inflection most people give to words like
dysentery
and
pedophile
. “He’s dying again.”

It took Rob a moment to digest this. “You can’t mean Kilo. Do you have another grandfather?”

Lorelei laughed. “No, just the one.”

“But—” Rob stammered, flabbergasted.
But Kilo left your mother to rot on ice for ninety years, when the cost of reviving her would have been minuscule to him.
The only reason she was alive was because Lorelei’s father made a grand parting fuck-you to the Van Kampen family by using money from his divorce settlement to revive her. Sunali was probably the only bridesicle ever revived out of spite.

“Yeah, I know. Stepmom says even the biggest asshole in the world shouldn’t die alone.” She threw back her head and shook her hair, an all-too-familiar gesture. “Although I don’t know, you might have a different opinion on who’s the world’s biggest asshole.”

Rob didn’t take the bait. He did want to understand why Lorelei had done what she’d done—he was desperate to understand—but right now he needed to talk to Sunali. At the same time, he had to be polite, because he needed this favor. “How many times has he died now? Five or six?”

“This will be number eight. He died six weeks ago.” She put her hands on her narrow hips and started pacing. “The old fucker is going to squeeze every possible second out of his life. In the end they’ll be reviving him so he can live five more minutes, then one, then ten more seconds.” She shook her head
and laughed, though clearly she found none of this amusing. “He’s close to a hundred and twenty. Can you believe that? His telomeres are totally played out, but he won’t let go.”