Love Minus Eighty (25 page)

Nathan burst out laughing when Lorelei delivered the line—a little too hard, in Veronika’s opinion. But Nathan wasn’t the only person in the bar who reacted to the line. Veronika noticed a slyly dressed man at the bar who smiled and nodded, though he seemed way too far away to have overheard. Maybe he was reacting to something a friend had said remotely, but Veronika didn’t think so. His waxed head, goggles, the total lack of creases on his rolled-up sleeves all screamed
Director
.

As she fed lines to Lorelei, Veronika watched the guy’s
face, watched him subvocalize, watched him watching Lorelei and Nathan. It was him, it was Lorelei’s coach—there was no doubt in Veronika’s mind. She got a shot of his face, ran a search.

Name: Parsons Palmer

Profession: Freelance Director

“Got you,” Veronika said aloud to her dark apartment. She had no idea what good it did her to know who he was, but she felt great satisfaction in having spotted him.

Things were going swimmingly, thanks in no small part to her. Veronika checked the running conversational stats. So far sixty-eight percent of the conversation had been about Lorelei, so Veronika sent,
Ask him to tell you more about himself
.

“So, tell me more about you,” Lorelei said as she swirled a color stick in her absinthe. “I know what you do for a living, and that you live in Wilmington Park.”

Nathan shrugged. “Let’s see. I own a virtual apartment in Second Life.”

“The classic. Very nice.”

“Thank you. I have a dog named Riley, and every Christmas I work as a Santa in Macy’s.”

“You do not.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

Lorelei laughed as if she’d never heard anything so funny. She was coming up with some of her own lines, and they were serviceable, if not brilliant. Better than Veronika would have guessed.

Ask him if he likes to cook.
When you knew everything about the target, this was too easy.

“Do you like to cook?” Lorelei asked.

Nathan leaned forward. “I
love
to cook. What about you?”

Lorelei shook her head. “No.”

Let’s elaborate
, Veronika sent.
Tell him this: “Opening the refrigerator is a humbling and confusing experience for me. My meals are mostly failures. I eat quickly, primarily to dispose of the evidence.”

Lorelei delivered the soliloquy. Veronika half expected Nathan to grow suspicious, to recognize the self-deprecating wit as classic Veronika, but Nathan beamed.

“I wish we hadn’t just eaten,” Nathan said. “Otherwise I’d invite you to my place and cook something for you.”

Veronika saw Parsons subvocalize something before taking a sip of his drink.

“Can’t you cook desserts?” Lorelei asked coyly. Veronika cringed, not because the line Parsons had fed her was a bad one, because she didn’t like where it was leading.

Nathan put his arm around Lorelei. “I make an awesome Lemon Volcano.”

“Ooh. Sounds delicious.”

Parsons looked pleased with himself as Lorelei and Nathan headed for the exit. Veronika signaled to Lorelei that she was going to terminate now.

No! Stay! You’re doing great.

I think you and Parsons can take it from here.

Parsons sat up as if he’d been goosed. Giggling merrily, Veronika cut the connection.

There came a point when Rob’s hands seemed to be moving on their own, plucking components flashing red, components flashing blue, components flashing yellow, green, orange, and black. They came out of vacuum cleaners, home management systems, antique handhelds, and dropped into the correct bins while Rob watched.

She might already be dead. She might be okay. Rob had no way of knowing, no way of finding out until Peter contacted him.

When he told her he loved her, she’d said, “That’s the last thing I expected you to say. An Easter egg in my basket.” An Easter egg was a good thing. Did that mean she loved him? No, “I love you, too” meant she loved him. “An Easter egg in my basket” meant it pleased her to hear him say it. When you’re about to die, Rob imagined there was nothing you’d rather someone say than, “I love you,” regardless of how you feel about him or her. If she was dead and buried, it didn’t
matter if she loved him. Even if she wasn’t, it didn’t matter. Yet he still wondered, and wondered exactly what it was he felt for her, the Winter in the crèche, merged with the Winter in Nathan’s recordings. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, longed to see her, worried about her. That much he knew.

“Rob, brother.” Rob lifted his head. Vince was standing over him. “You going for some kind of record?”

“Just got nothing better to do right now,” Rob muttered.

“Nothing better to do? How about
sleep
? I’ve been home, had a meal, got six hours’ sleep after pulling a ten-hour shift, and I come back and you’re still here.”

“I can’t help it if you’re soft,” Rob said, then burst into braying laughter.

Vince shook his head. “Brother, I’m sorry, but I’m calling it. If you don’t punch out and get some sleep, I’m going to Lilly and I’m calling it.”

Rob drummed his fingers on the worktable. There was no way he could sleep. Idle time was the enemy. He needed to keep moving, to stay exhausted.

“Rob, come on.” Vince took him by the arm, led him toward the changing room. “What’s up with you? You doing some serious bugs, or what?”

“No. Just worried about someone.”

Vince led him to his cubicle, knelt and unclamped his boots. “Anyone I know?”

“Nah. A woman I know.”

“I hear you. Want to tell me about it?”

“Another time. I should get home.”

He clapped Rob on the shoulder. “You okay to get there?”

“Sure.”

Vince nodded, headed out to start his shift.

Winter could be dead right now, Rob thought. Or she
could be all right. Leaving his work clothes on, Rob pulled on his shoes and headed home.

He dreamed he was at the bridesicle place, talking to Winter. Three men interrupted them, one moving Rob out of the way while the other two pulled Winter from her crèche. Her hips were twisted so badly one of her buttocks was visible from the front, her pale skin a sickening road map of black stitching. Winter screamed to Rob to help her, her frozen body still paralyzed, but the man holding Rob had a vice grip on his shoulders. They carried Winter just across the narrow hall, where there was a furnace set in the wall, the entire inside of it glowing like a hot ember. The two men tried to push her in, and suddenly Winter could move. She clutched the walls, fighting, pleading, begging Rob to help.

His handheld woke him. Heart racing, groggy, exhausted, he answered it.

“It’s Peter.” Peter sounded… good. As if he had good news.

Rob tamped his hopes, afraid it was his own wishful thinking. “Is she all right? Is she still alive?”

“She’s still in the minus eighty, if that’s what you mean. If the dead needed sleep, she’d be sleep deprived from all of the appointments she’s had.”

Rob’s whooping woke his dad, which was all right, because Rob would have wakened him anyway.

There was a definite spring in Rob’s step as he crossed the atrium. He looked up as he passed under the waterfall, cascading through transparent tubes.

A landslide of dates
. Rob loved the sound of the words Peter had used to describe Winter’s past seventy-two hours.
If the dead needed sleep, she’d be sleep deprived.

Rob now had little doubt Sunali was his anonymous benefactor. It had to be someone who was getting timely updates on Winter’s situation, because nine thousand dollars had ticked into his account while he was talking to Peter. Unless it was Peter himself? No—Rob hadn’t even known Peter when he received the first donation.

His seat rose from the floor as he turned the corner onto Winter’s hall. He drew his lute from its case as her crèche slid from the wall.

As Winter’s eyes snapped into focus, Rob set the lute aside. She looked different, her face more animated, more alive. It
wasn’t her, he realized—it was him. He’d watched so many recordings of her that he knew what she
should
look like, and that was coloring his perception of her—like a system overlay without the system.

“Hey, you,” Winter said.

He was nervous, almost like the first time he’d waked her. He laid his sweaty palms on his thighs. “Hi.” He almost asked, “How are you?” but caught himself.

“Imagine my surprise, when I opened my eyes.”

Rob grinned. “You must be having luck with new visitors?” He wanted to tell her why she was still here, but didn’t know how closely Cryomed monitored visits. He didn’t want to risk tipping them off to the changes in her profile.

“As in, have I gotten lucky? You know the rules about fraternizing here. No necrophilia with the customers.”

“You know what I mean,” Rob laughed.

“Let’s see. I’ve had”—she closed her eyes, muttered to herself—“I’m going to say something like
twenty
visitors.”

Rob leaped to his feet and punched the air, whooping like a drunk fan at a boloball game. His shout echoed through the hall.

A disembodied voice said, “Mr. Mashita, please keep your voice down.”

“Sorry,” Rob said, breathless with excitement and relief.

“Quite all right. I apologize for interrupting your appointment with Miss West.”

Winter crossed her eyes for a second, mocking the voice’s ultrapolite tone. “Evidently there are some… ahem… additions to my profile? Would you know anything about that?”

Rob lifted a finger, let it hover close to his lips while giving Winter a pointed look.

Winter changed the topic seamlessly. “I don’t want to get
my hopes too high, though. Visitors don’t necessarily mean I’m getting revived any time soon.”

It did mean she wasn’t going into the ground any time soon, though. Rob wondered how much time they’d bought. It had to be months, at least.

“One of my visitors has been back
three times
, though,” Winter went on. “So that’s promising.”

“
Really.
” Rob had the strangest feeling—a crawling, jangling sensation that felt like jealousy. Winter had a boyfriend, and he was jealous. He laughed out loud at the absurdity of that.

“What?”

“Nothing. Tell me about the guy. Nice guy?”

She made a face. “Old guy. Eighty, at least.” She scrunched her eyes closed for a second. “Dirty old guy. Wanted me to talk dirty to him.”

“
Dirty
old guy. Great.” Evidently there were a lot of them skulking around this place. “So what did you do?”

“Are you kidding? I was filthy. Absolutely filthy. I was afraid I was going to give him a stroke.”

Rob tried to contain his laughter before he got another warning to keep his voice down, as Winter added, “Naughty, naughty stuff.”

“What’s his name?”

“Redmond. Red.”

“Good old Red.”

“Good old Red,” she whispered, almost to herself. “He’s a smarmy know-it-all, but he has the means to revive me, if he decides to.”

“How do you know?”

“He showed me his account balance. You’ve never seen a number with so many digits.”

Rob glanced at the timer. He’d grown adept at judging how much time was passing, would have known he had about a minute left even if he hadn’t looked.

“Anyway, thanks.” She kept her voice matter-of-fact, but Rob knew it was meant to be heartfelt.

“It’s the least I could do.”

“The least you could do was run me over and go on with your life.”

He was so grateful he hadn’t, so thankful to his father for discovering that Winter was in this place. If she got out, they could be friends. They could take walks, have coffee. There would be no timer racing eagerly toward zero.

He checked the timer. “Twenty seconds.”

Winter looked disappointed, but maybe not terrified. Maybe she was getting used to dying. Rob didn’t want to ask.

“You’ll keep visiting, won’t you?” Winter asked.

Rob laughed. “I’d come every day if I could.”

“Good.” She closed her eyes, as if Rob had tucked her in and she was going to sleep. “Then I’m not afraid.”

On the way out, Rob mulled over his reaction to Winter’s “dates.” Had that really been jealousy? Falling in love with Winter would be pointless and masochistic, and more than a little weird. He reminded himself of his reaction to Nathan’s recordings, of seeing Winter out in the world, warts and all. Sure, seeing those flaws surprised him. But on balance, seeing her alive, laughing, walking fast, destroying buildings, made her even more endearing. More real. If that Winter in the recordings cut her finger, she bled.

When he thought he would never see her again, the words that had burst from the deepest part of him had been “I love
you.” Had that been nothing but an outpouring of grief and sadness?

Whatever it was, it was out there, dangling between him and Winter. When he said it, he thought he’d never see Winter again, so he hadn’t considered the ramifications. It had just come out.

Even though he’d just seen her, he couldn’t wait to see her again. What if his anonymous benefactor didn’t send more money soon? It would be months before he could raise enough to see her from his pay alone. He couldn’t stand the thought of waiting that long.

The lobby smelled like wildflowers carried on a spring breeze. The scent made his chest tight, made him long for Winter. Though to be fair, the smell was engineered to make people feel that way.

He left the lobby, stepped through the exit into sunlight and the more mundane smell of Yonkers. Where he was walking was dominated by the smell of sausage, wafting from the IHOP across the busy street. The tightness was still there, and he was still thinking about Winter.

Rob stopped walking. He turned, propped a foot on a bench and looked up at the Cryogenic Dating Center, a shining bronze monolith with colorful piping resembling strips of stained glass. He closed his eyes, took a deep, slow breath. Time to get real. Winter was dead, and if through some miracle she ever stopped being dead, she’d be married. What he was feeling was absurd, and pointless.