Love Minus Eighty (3 page)

“
Adiós
, photos age seven to twelve.
Sayônara. Tot Siens. Da svidaniya
.” She opened her fingers and the clip dropped toward the roofs of Low Town.

She transferred something to her right hand, from a stack in her left, held it up to examine it. “Early recordings: original compositions.”

Rob howled in fury as she extended her arm, the disk dangling loosely between her fingers. Some of this stuff he had backed up, but a lot of it…

Rob’s eyes flew open as a woman came off the curb, and he realized he’d taken the turn too wide. He slammed the brake, jerked the steering pads.

The woman, her arms raised defensively, disappeared under his Scamp. He felt the thud right into his teeth. The vehicle bucked violently once, then again, throwing Rob partially into the passenger seat as the air emptied from his lungs in a long, involuntary scream. The Scamp rolled on until it collided with a light post. Then everything was still, except for the feed from Lorelei’s bedroom.

Although he’d lost all interest in what Lorelei was doing, his left eye remained there.

“
Arrivederci. Paalam na po.
” Lorelei let another bit of Rob’s life slip from between her fingers.

Rob disconnected the feed. Lorelei winked out.

He wanted to remain just as he was—his head and shoulders crammed toward the floor on the passenger side, one leg twisted between the seat backs, the other stretched across the driver’s seat. He wanted to stay there forever, frozen, never to move forward in time.

The mournful wail of an ambulance rose in the distance. Rob straightened himself into the driver’s seat. He should get out, but he didn’t want to see the woman.

So he sat there, his breath coming in quick gasps, telling himself he had to move, had to check on the woman, try to stop the bleeding if there was bleeding, give her mouth-to-mouth if she wasn’t breathing, pull off his jacket and bunch it under her head. Act like a human being.

Outside, screens were popping up by the hundreds as word spread and virtual rubberneckers rushed to see. Two people ran past looking alarmed, shouting. Rob opened his mouth to tell the door to open. Nothing came out but a moan.

Veronika took a break from feeding her client witty words to impress a guy who was totally wrong for her, and watched Nathan work. She liked to watch Nathan. Since he was sitting right across from her, Veronika hoped it didn’t appear as if she looked at him an inordinate amount of the time, though Nathan certainly didn’t look at her as much as she looked at him. So maybe she shouldn’t spend so much time looking at him.

Instead she surveyed the Donut Hole Caffeine Emporium, which was busy for a weekday afternoon, its cup-clutching clientele swirling around tables sprouting here and there like mushrooms, talking, working their systems, all of it silent because Veronika had muted everything. She and Nathan were at their usual table—fifth level, on the edge of the hole that ran right down the middle of the shop and gave it its name.

She looked back at Nathan. She loved how he worked his system, loved his vocal style, and the way he always seemed
to have three days of stubble on some parts of his face, and only one on others. She also loved how his jaw and chin were chiseled and masculine, but his nose and dark, smoky eyes were soft and pretty in an almost feminine way.

Nathan wasn’t his usual high-energy, talkative self today. He seemed almost morose, which was supposed to be Veronika’s role. She took a sip of her almond bean brew. It was getting cold.

Work this into the convo
, she subvocalized to her client.
“Sometimes I’m baffled by how you can be so deep and so shallow at the same time.”
Her client, Sylvie, barraged her with frowny-faces. Sylvie liked this guy and was hoping they’d escalate to Romantic Interaction Face-to-Face soon, and because of that she was getting tight, in danger of blowing it.

I’m telling you, you need to neg this guy a little if you want to keep his interest. Romance 101, Sylvie!

My friend Suk thinks it’s a mistake.

Does Suk have a master’s degree in Interpersonal Relationships from NYU?
Veronika shot back. She didn’t like playing the degree card, because this job was so much about instinct, but the comment got her hackles up.

After a pause, Sylvie sent back,
Give me something else. Something
nice
!

“Oh for God’s sake,” Veronika said aloud. “This bird needs to get out of my nest and flap her own damned wings. Too much longer and it’s going to be
so
obvious she had a coach when they finally meet in person.”

Nathan chuckled sympathetically, breaking the chuckle into two parts as he wove it around the subvocalized conversation he was having with one of his own clients. Nathan’s vocal style was a variation on La Lune—very jazzy, very sexy.

“I hate working in real time,” Veronika said, while feeding
Sylvie a few flirtatious lines. “When you’re having a live screen conversation, you’re implicitly claiming all of your material is original. At that point using a coach is cheating.”

“It’s all cheating,” Nathan said. “Getting us to create their profiles in the first place is cheating.”

“It’s cheating, but it’s not
dishonest
cheating. It’s like nudging other people’s systems so you look ten pounds lighter and an inch taller to them. Everybody does it.”

Nathan didn’t take the bait. Definitely not himself; normally he couldn’t resist a good argument.

“You okay? You seem a little down.”

Nathan sighed heavily. “I thought I was masking it. Guess not.” He took a sip of coffee. “I’m not ready to talk about it. I need to work through it first. Unpack it.”

“Oh. Okay. I understand.” This was going to bother her now. She knew herself. She’d spend half the night running through scenarios of what it might be.

“So how are you?” Nathan asked, lacing his hands behind his head and stretching. “Been on any hot face-to-faces?”

Veronika felt herself flush. “Yeah. A different bronco every night last week.”

Nathan sighed a little tune. “Get out there. See some men.”

Veronika didn’t bother to respond. Nathan knew she wasn’t dating, and she didn’t want to hear yet again how weird it was for a dating coach to be so starkly single. Yes, it was pathetic. Yes, if her clients ever found out, they’d dump her immediately. And yes, it had been almost five years since Sander smashed her heart, way past time to climb back on that old horse. She was sick of hearing it. There was enough stress and disappointment in her life as it stood. Working behind the scenes for someone else was like a fluid puzzle, but a face-to-face, sitting across from a man, live, was a different story. Her wit abandoned her.
The deep, relentless melancholy that was her default condition was as evident on her face as a fist-size pimple.

Nathan’s fingers flicked the air, probably tweaking a profile for one of his clients. “Maybe you should hire a coach.” It was an old joke between them.

Veronika’s cup chirped, indicating her seat-time was up. She checked the time, decided she had plenty, and let the cup chirp down until it defaulted to a refill and automatically debited her account.

“How about you? Any new prospects?” She watched his face. She was fishing, hoping to get a clue to what was bothering him. “What am I saying? You’ve always got new prospects lined up; it’s like a conga line.” Nothing—not even a smile.

Nathan shrugged, shook his head. “I’m taking a break for a while, too.”

Veronika studied his face. “You can’t still be getting over that teacher, can you? It’s been, like, two days.”

Nathan covered his mouth with both hands and looked down at his coffee. Veronika canted her head, studying his face. He looked close to tears.

He cleared his throat, raised his head to look at Veronika. “She died. Winter died.”

“Oh my God.” She’d only met Winter a couple of times, but still, the words knocked her back. “What
happened
?”

“She was hit by a Scamp.” He cleared his throat again, trying to steady his voice. “She was out jogging. Two nights ago.”

A sonorous pseudovoice whispered in her ear that her brew was ready for pickup. She ignored it. “Oh, God, Nathan. I’m so sorry.”

“We’d only been seeing each other for three months, but she took it pretty hard. She said it surprised her; she thought things were going well.” He pinched the bridge of his nose,
right where tears were threatening to break loose. “So now I’m thinking, she went out jogging to feel better. Because I made her feel bad.”

Veronika scooted her chair, wrapped her arms around Nathan, feeling slightly guilty at how much she was enjoying the hug, the feel of his muscular shoulders. Finally, Nathan let go and straightened up, nodding that he was okay.

“I’ll be right back,” Veronika said, and went off to pick up her drink.

When she returned, Nathan was back to work. “This guy rejected the entire profile I wrote for him. Says it’s not him at all. Of course it’s not you, asshole, that’s why you might actually get a few hits.” He sighed heavily, fixed Veronika with his smoky-brown eyes. “Do you ever wonder if this job makes it harder to fall in love? I mean, it forces us to approach things so objectively: attractiveness ratings, desire to procreate, BMI, cognitive patterning, IQ, emotional stability quotient. Sometimes I think I’ve lost the ability to sit across from someone and just
know
what I feel. That I feel something, or I feel nothing.”

Veronika didn’t feel that way at all, but she didn’t think Nathan was looking for input. He was working through what happened with Winter, and just needed to talk it out.

“I don’t know. Maybe what I’m really afraid of is if I ever settle into something stable, I’ll lose my edge as a coach. That if I’m not out there myself, I’ll lose interest in the whole dance.” He looked at Veronika, as if remembering she was there. “Do you ever worry about that?”

Veronika sipped her brew; it scalded the tip of her tongue, just the way she liked it. “I already hate this job. Being less miserable in my personal life isn’t going to make me more miserable at work.” She looked out the window, down through an oval light-filtering hole just outside that offered her a crescent-shaped
glimpse of Lemieux Bridge spanning the Hudson, crowded on both sides by the black roofs of Undertown.

“Do you follow
Spill Your Secrets
?” she asked.

Nathan shook his head.

“It’s an anonymous voice-only feed. People post their darkest secrets. A few weeks ago someone posted that they were planning to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Nathan frowned. “Wait. You’re not saying it was you.”

“No,
of course not
.” The comment stung like he’d smacked her. “Do I really seem suicidal to you?” Sometimes she struggled to gauge how she came across to others. Dark and brooding? Fair enough. But did she come across as a neurotic mess who might one day have her toes jutting over the crossbeam of a bridge, looking down at the brown water hundreds of feet below? “And why would I fly to San Francisco to jump off a bridge? People jump off Lemieux Bridge all the time.” Veronika looked it up. Three a week, on average, since suicide was decriminalized and the steel nets were taken down.

“Sorry. What were you going to say?”

“What I was going to say was, someone organized an event, and almost a million people from all over the world converged over the bridge, and shouted ‘Don’t jump.’ ”

“Did she jump?” Nathan asked.

“The jumper hadn’t specified a time, so he probably wasn’t on the bridge. The thing was, they were doing something
meaningful
. I was there. I was one of those million screens and it was…” She choked up, couldn’t go on for a moment. “It felt meaningful.” She pulled the napkin from under her drink, feeling dumb for crying over this after what Nathan had just confided. “Nothing in my life feels meaningful.”

Nathan nodded slowly, as if he really wanted to get what she was trying to say, while he subvocalized to a client.

“I know, I know,” Veronika said, shaking her head. “Veronika is feeling empty, her life a vast wasteland of ennui and coffee shops. As usual.” She flipped the napkin onto the table like failed confetti.

Now Nathan’s cup began to chirp. He checked the time. “I’d better get going. I’m sorry to leave in the middle of this. Maybe I can pop in on you later?”

“No, go.” She waved him away. “I feel like an idiot for kidnapping the conversation and making it about me, after what happened to Winter. Leaving now would be showing mercy.”

“No, really, I was relieved to move off that topic. Maybe you should join in on more of those sorts of events, like the bridge one.”

“I was thinking instead of working from home, or from coffee shops, I would work from a bench on Lemieux Bridge.” It sounded dumb, now that she was saying it out loud. “Then if someone comes to jump, I can talk them out of it. Save a life.” She shrugged. “That would be meaningful.”

“It would also be cold. It’s January.” Nathan leaned over and kissed her cheek, then headed for the door. Veronika watched him go.

She stayed awhile longer, since she’d already paid for the seat, and thought about the bridge.

On the eighth day after the accident, Rob got dressed. He pulled on his socks at the edge of the bed, whispering, “
Kwa heri. Odabo. Ha det.
” He stood up shakily, got his left foot through the pant leg on the second try as he went on reciting. “
Do pobachennya. Ajo. An lot soleil.
”

The last was West Indian Creole. When he wasn’t sleeping, Rob memorized ways to say
good-bye
. He’d found memorizing a good way to narrow his attention so he wouldn’t think about things. Thinking was the enemy. He now knew how to say
good-bye
in many languages. Lorelei’s performance at the window had given him the idea, though Lorelei hadn’t memorized her
good-bye
s—she’d been reading off a feed with one eye. Just as he’d been watching her with one eye when he ran over Winter West.