Seer (27 page)

“There are places in the United States it’s not that safe,” I pointed out. “I have gotten good at avoiding those places.”

But she didn’t take the hint to talk about us, and then she changed the subject. A week later, as we lay in bed, snuggling, I asked her, “Do you think we’ll still be together in five years, Solange?”

“Yes.”

“Ten?”

“Yes.”

“A hundred?”

She laughed. “Who knows? Modern science is advancing at the fastest rate ever. There are futurists who believe we’ll solve the mysteries of aging within twenty-five years, and we’ll have near-immortality after that.”

“For the rich,” I pointed out. “Which, I suppose, applies to you.”

“Oh, I think we could come to an agreement,” she said.

“Ah agreement, do you think?”

“Un huh.”

“Does this agreement involve me tickling you?”

“It might involve me tickling you,” she replied.

I paused, wanting the silly mood to disperse. “Would you want to spend a near eternity with me?”

“If it were possible?” She lifted my chin and kissed me. She took her time, and when her tongue sought entrance, it was readily given. She left me breathless and nearly unable to remember what we’d been talking about. “Yes, Sidney,” she said. “If it were possible to spend a near eternity with you, I would want to.”

Still, it wasn’t a marriage proposal, or an indication we’d be talking about one. I didn’t know how this was supposed to work. Did one of us ask the other? Did we discuss it and go ring shopping together? I’d seen some of the flamboyant marriage proposals on Youtube, but I didn’t think that was our style. I wouldn’t want the pressure of being asked after some big, dramatic scene that almost forced me to agree, even if I would have wanted to.

I realized something. I wanted her to ask me. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Maybe she wanted the same thing. Maybe she didn’t think marriage was important. I thought about it, and I couldn’t fully explain why it was important to me, either. But for some reason, I wanted us wearing rings, and I wanted a ceremony.

And I wanted to be asked, but if she wasn’t going to ask me, I would ask her.

In my determination, I bought us rings. I had them custom made by a jeweler after asking, “What happens if she says ‘no’, or she hates the rings, or she asks me first?”

“I have a twenty-percent restocking fee,” he replied. “You can sell one or both of them back to me for twenty percent less than you paid. This is why I price the set separately. That’s actually generous, as it’s difficult to sell custom rings at full price, but I don’t get that many returns, and I want happy customers.”

He used one of
Solange’s rings for size, and soon I had my rings. “If she wants it resized, that’s part of the service,” the jeweler told me. “Good luck, and congratulations.”

And so, I had a pair of rings nestled together in a display box. And I decided. If she didn’t ask me first, or perhaps indicate she was anti-marriage, then I would wait until New Year’s Eve, and after the kiss and the champagne, I would take her somewhere alone, get down on one knee, and ask her to be my wife.

I wandered the rows of the facility, the vacuum-wrapped bodies filling row after row. I stopped and stared at some of them. There were far more men than women, but here and there was a female face.

Most of them ignored me, their eyes either closed or their expressions vacant, but a few looked directly at me, their eyes following me. I didn’t recognize any of them.
Most of them were still, but upon seeing me, a few struggled weakly, very weakly.

Until I found myself staring into my own face.

I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding. Solange immediately had an arm around me.

“Dream?” she asked. I nodded. “Want to tell me about it?” I shook my head.

It was the first day of September, and the dreams had returned.

* * * *

I was out of sorts in the morning. Solange clearly could tell, and she was practically tiptoeing around me as we I prepared breakfast for us. I looked at her, batting away the tears.

“Oh Sidney,” she said, stepping over to pull me into her arms.

“Take me somewhere this weekend,” I said. “Anywhere. I don’t care where.”

“There’s a lovely Bed and Breakfast in the White Mountains of New England,” she said. “We get our own cottage. We can go biking and hiking.”

“You’ve been dying to teach me French the way you taught Aubree.”

“No,” she said. “I want to teach you French, but Aubree and I had a different relationship than you and I have. Aubree expected to be treated a certain way. You expect to be treated a different way.”

“She wanted you to torment her?”

“She has changed, but she was deeply submissive, and she expected me to always be dominant.”

“Oh,” I said. “No, that would piss me off.”

“So I would teach you, but not the same way. And so, here is your first lesson.” Her voice changed, and she said,
“Je t’aime.”

I smiled. “I know that one. You say it to me sometimes when we’re making love. There’s another one you say a lot, too.”

“Je t’adore.”

“I think I know what that means, if it is a cognate.”

“It is,” she said. “Now you say them.”

I grinned at her. “You just want me to tell you I love and adore you.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

And so I did. In return, she kissed me. “I want you to practice those.”

“Does my accent hurt your ears?”

“We’ll worry about your accent later,” she said. She smiled. Then she began speaking slowly and carefully to me, in French, and I knew my lessons had begun in earnest.

It was Wednesday. We left Thursday evening and spent the weekend in the mountains, exactly as she said we would. She didn’t address a single word of English to me the entire trip. Instead, she spoke slowly and carefully in French the entire time.

It was beautiful, and I could listen to her for hours.

Some of it was simple conversation, and I grew accustomed to the sound of the words. I realized that was as important as anything else.

At other times, she might hold something up, and she would say a word, then wait for me to repeat it.
The first time she did it, I asked her, “Are you going to torment me if I pronounce it wrong?” She shook her head. “Are you going to quiz me later?” That earned me a nod. “Are you going to torment me if I forget?” She shook her head again.

Then she waved the apple. “
Une pomme,” she said.

I repeated it. She pronounced it again and I repeated again. I was sure my accent was terrible.

She held up a second apple. “Deux pommes.”

And so, I learned the words for some of the foods we ate, and for most of my body parts. That was a particularly enjoyable lesson, as she first got me entirely naked, laid me out on the bed, and then began stroking a body part, saying the word several times until I repeated it.

She did torment me a little during that lesson. She would stroke or kiss me, and I was to say the word. If I got it right, she rewarded me with more strokes and kisses, but if I used the wrong word, she bit the part I had named instead.

I loved it, anyway.

Luckily, because of my German, I already understood the idea of words having gender and how to conjugate a verb. Unfortunately, German is not one of the Romance languages, and so my knowledge of German was otherwise little help learning French. However, French nouns are either masculine or feminine; there is no neutral gender like there is in German, reducing some of the complexity of the language.

We had a lovely weekend, and I enjoyed my language
lessons as well. At one point, when I was feeling particularly dense, I asked Solange, “Aren’t you going to get frustrated?”

She answered simply, “Non.”

Blessedly, the dreams left me alone, but they returned with a vengeance once we returned.

* * * *

I followed Solange, first as a bird, following her car as she drove from her home. I was surprised when she pulled into a farm yard, coming to a stop at the entrance to the barn. There was a pause, and the barn doors slid open. My view swooped down into the barn as she pulled in and parked. The doors closed automatically.

Solange got out of the car. I saw few details of the barn, but my view shifted, and I was Solange. She stepped to the back of the barn, and there was what I presumed was a utility room in the back corner. There was a touchpad next to the door. Solange removed a card key from her purse, swiped it through the card reader,
then punched an eight-digit code into the touchpad. A moment later, a green light lit, and there was a buzzing sound. Solange opened the wooden door beside the touchpad, and I saw it was much thicker than I would have expected.

But instead of a room, there was a shining metal door, the door to an elevator. Solange waited, and after several seconds, the door slid open.

She turned around, and there was the typical elevator control panel, but there were only two buttons. The top button was labeled, “Heaven”, and the lower button was labeled, “Hell”. Solange pushed the lower button. The elevator doors closed, and we began to descend.

The dream ended, and I woke up.

I lay on my side in the dark. I felt a cat near my feet and Solange at my back, our bottoms pressed together.

“Solange?” I whispered. There was no answer. I wanted her to hold me, but not enough to wake her, so I rolled around myself and pressed against her body.
“Je t’aime,” I whispered.

The dream repeated two days later, but this time, Aubree was with her.

Three days later, the dream lasted much longer. Aubree and Solange were both there, and in the dream, I followed them as they stepped out of the elevator. They entered into a cavernous room. Directly in front of us was a clear walkway. To the right was a wall with doorways appearing periodically. To the left were the rows of bodies hanging inside their plastic cocoons.

Solange and Aubree ignored the bodies. Instead, they walked forward
past two of the doors, stopping at a third. Solange used her card key again and entered her code, and then the two stepped into a storage room. The walls were lined with shelves, and there were crates on the shelves. In the center of the room was a table with two more crates waiting.

The two talked, but their words didn’t register.

Solange stepped up to the table and opened one of the boxes. She pulled out what looked like a bottle of beer, but it was corked like a wine bottle. Aubree handed her a corkscrew, and Solange easily opened the bottle. Then Aubree presented two glass tumblers.  Solange divided the blood red contents of the bottle between the two glasses, sliding one back to Aubree.

The two of them drank. Aubree didn’t quite make a face, but she frowned.

“I know,” Solange said. “It’s better fresh.”

“I can still taste the drugs.”

“It’s better than it was,” Solange said. “And it’s better than the alternative. The council is very interested in what we’re doing here.” They drank again. “Can you taste the preservative?”

“Is that what that is?”

“The aftertaste,” Solange said.

“The report said we get a six-week shelf life now.”

Solange nodded and pointed to the second case. “Those are aged. We’ll try one next, then we’ll ship the rest.”

They finished their glasses. Aubree opened the second case, removed a bottle, and divided the contents.

“It’s not any better aged,” Aubree declared.

“No, but it’s not any worse, either. And it’s life.”

“It’s better fresh,” Aubree said, repeating Solange’s words. “Have you bitten the little programmer yet?” I would have gasped at her words, if I could.

“No,” Solange said. “It’s been close a few times. She smells so intoxicating. And is Dolores’ neck unmarred?”

“Of course it is,” Aubree said. “You know the only time I see her are when you and Sidney invite us both. Besides, Sidney insists she’s straight.”

“You could seduce a gay priest,” Solange said, “and make him think it was his idea besides.”

“Leave Dolores alone!” I wanted to scream.

“In fact,” Solange added, “I seem to recall you did just that.”

“Yeah, but he tasted worse than this.” Aubree nodded to her glass. “If Dolores wants to date, she’s going to have to follow Sidney’s lead.”

“I don’t think Dolores is the type to ask first, Aubree.”

“Well, I like her,” Aubree said, “But this life is a little too intense if she isn’t sure she knows what she wants. Now Sidney… that one knows what she wants, Solange. When are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know. She’s hinting about marriage.”

“And? Are you going to ask her?”

“How can I ask her when she doesn’t know about this?” Solange held up the glass. “Forever is a long time.”

“You can trust her, Solange. Tell her.”

“I don’t know,” Solange said slowly. “She’s keeping something from me.”

“It is exceedingly unlikely any of her secrets are as big as yours,” Aubree said. “Don’t be a hypocrite.”

“Trouble is coming.”

“Changing the topic?”

“She’s a seer. We could use her help.”

“All the more reason to bind her to you.”

“She needs to know about this.” Solange indicated her glass.

“And how about that?” Aubree hooked her thumb over her shoulder.

“No. That she definitely does not need to know about.”

“Tell her, Solange.”

“I’m afraid.”

* * * *

The dream faded. When I woke, I was alone, just me and
two cats. Solange’s side of the bed was cold.

* * * *

“Tell me a secret,” I said to Solange while cooking dinner two evenings later. “Your deepest, darkest secret.”

“I don’t have any deep, dark secrets.”

“Everyone has secrets,” I told her.

“Not me,” she said.

I turned to her, putting down the knife I was holding. “You don’t, hmm? I bet you do.”

“Oh? What secrets do you think I have?”

“I’m not sure, but I bet if I throw out ideas, you’ll admit to some of them.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” She was sitting on one of the stools on the other side of the kitchen island. She had her computer with her and had been working while keeping me company. She closed it and set it aside before turning back to me. “You propose a game?”

“Sure,” I said. “If I guess any, will you admit to them?”

“I might,” she said.

“This game would be more fun if you agree to be a little more forthcoming,” I said.

“You might ask about secrets that aren’t mine.”

“I’m not talking about client secrets. I’m talking about your personal secrets, Solange.”

“But if I haven’t told you about them by now, there must be a reason.”

“Ah ha!” I said. “So you admit you have them!”

She frowned. “I admit no such thing. I was speaking hypothetically.”

“You’re a lawyer,” I pointed out, “and you have a history of speaking very carefully.”

“I was distracted.”

“Uh huh.” I paused. “You know, you can tell me anything, Solange.”

“Like you tell me about your dreams?” she threw back.

“I don’t talk to you about my dreams because they’re disturbing, and I don’t want to linger over them.”

“Is that the entire reason?”

“And because they’re crazy, sometimes. They don’t make sense.”

“So? That’s the nature of dreams. You should tell me anyway. Maybe they’ll make sense to me.”

“I think we should go back to talking about your secrets, not my screwed up dreams. I think I should get ten guesses, and if I get any right, or close to right, you be honest about them.”

“No.”

I stared at her. “What?”

“I’ll give you ten guesses, but I don’t promise to tell you if you get any right.”