Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “What parts?” He’s going to raise his right hand to his head . . . He’s excited and confused . . .

  Norwood raised his hand and ran it through his thinning hair. “Many different structures are involved, Mr. Murphy, because the brain is, after all, an integrated whole. But mainly, your sensory input areas are working overtime—sight and sound and touch and smell—sending the signals they receive to places where those signals are processed and interpreted. Do you understand?”

  “No.” Zack hesitated. “But I kind of know what you’re going to do before you do it. And I know what . . . what you think. No, I don’t mean any mind-reading bullshit. I mean . . . fuck, I don’t know. What you feel. Like, right now you’re surprised and not surprised at the same time. You believe me, but you wish I was smarter so I could tell you more. And you don’t want to embarrass me by saying that.”

  It had all just blurted out of him, and immediately Zack wished it hadn’t. You didn’t give away your guts like that, he’d known that since he was ten, so what the hell had all that been . . . Well, it wouldn’t happen again. Give away your guts and you were a sitting target for people to use.

  “Mr. Murphy—”

  “When do I get out of here?”

  Anne said, “Zack, you can’t—”

  “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do!” Anger was the familiar armor, welcome as an unprotected opening on your opponent in the ring. Immediately the regret followed. Anne was not the opponent here. He scowled at Norwood. “When do I go home?”

  Norwood said, “You can leave at the end of the week if there are no complications and if you so choose, but we’re hoping you’ll stay to let us—”

  “Let you study me? I’m no lab rat, doc. No way. Now, you should leave and let me rest. I’m supposed to rest, right?”

  He doesn’t want to go . . . Looking for something to say to convince me . . . Coming up empty. Resolve to try again later. Bye, bye, doc.

  Norwood stood. “Perhaps you should rest. I’ll stop by later, if I may.”

  “Don’t bother,” Zack said.

  But when Norwood had gone, Zack turned to Anne for one more question. “What do they say caused all this?”

  She was staring at him, biting her lip. Scared, interested . . . He was a lab rat to her, too. But also her brother, and she came closer to Zack’s bed and took his hand. His fingers tightened on hers.

  Anne said, “They don’t know. Some weird combination of the CRI action, your recent concussion, and the way the tumor pressed on tissue and maybe altered it before they removed the mass, or maybe released some unknown enzymes. Or maybe your age—at twenty the brain isn’t even done growing. But you’re integrating sensory input more fully than most people. Maybe reading body language and minute facial expressions and tones of voice and processing them into . . . I don’t know, Zack. Everybody does that, but you’re doing it to an unprecedented degree. Maybe.”

  Okay, one more question. “Is it going to last or go away?”

  She spread her hands wide, palms up, and any idiot could have read her. “How should I know? Your consciousness has reached an unknown level of integration. Nobody knows anything about it! Which is why you should let Dr. Norwood and the neurological team—”

  “Thanks,” Zack said, and turned his face to the wall, away from all the sensory-whatever she was putting out.

  The voices started the day he left the hospital.

  They weren’t really voices, just faint, whispery swishings in his head, no louder than a breeze in trees or the hum of hospital machinery, although not as monotonous. Zack found them easy to ignore. He had too much else on his mind.

  For four days, he had resisted being interviewed or tested or anything else by any doctors. Suspicious even of the nurses, he’d objected when they changed his IV, gave him pills to swallow, or even brought him meals. How could he tell what was in the food? He’d seen movies and TV shows with truth drugs and shit like that, and what if the doctors were ordering him stuff the nurses didn’t even understand? He ate as little as he could. The nurses’ exasperation came through in every movement they made. The only one he liked was a dumpy middle-aged woman from whom he picked up complete indifference to him and everyone else. She was just doing her job, and she didn’t need anybody to say “Atta girl” to her. Zack approved.

  Anne said, “At least let a nurse wash you, Zack.”

  “Yeah, you stink to high hell,” Gail said, because of course she was with Anne, horning in. Gail carried her yellow hard hat from whatever construction site she was engineer on this month. Flaunting her job. She’s going to turn her back on me, look out the window, pat Anne’s back, give me the finger behind it . . . Whatever Anne had told her about his “condition,” Gail wasn’t impressed. It didn’t make Zack like her any better.

  “I’ll shower when I get home this afternoon.”

  Anne frowned. “You can’t, not without—”

  “I checked myself out.”

  “Against medical advice?” On the last word her voice scaled upward like she’d been goosed. Zack held his temper. She meant good, and even bossy and a pain in the ass, she was his sister. Christ, she’d practically raised him after their parents bought it. He had a sudden memory, sharp and sweet as a lemon drop on the tongue, of walking with Anne to some candy store, his small hand in hers, her head bent protectively toward him. “The only person you’ve ever loved, and only on your terms,” Gail had once said to him. Screw that. Gail should keep her nose out of Zack’s business.

  “They’re doing the paperwork now. Annie, I’m fine. Really. That shit they gave me made all the brain swelling go down. I’m fine and I’m going home.”

  But not before he had two more visitors, neither of whom he wanted to see.

  Jerry, at least, had no idea of Zack’s “condition of integrated consciousness” and wouldn’t have cared if he did. Huge, shambling, a former heavyweight gone to fat, Jerry’s tattoos had expanded with his fat until the naked girl on his forearm looked as bloated as he did. Nothing in Jerry’s life had quite worked: not the brief boxing career, not the even briefer mob involvement that earned him five-to-ten in federal prison, not the seedy gym, always on the verge of going under, where Jerry trained and matched boxers who were never going anywhere bigger. For the past six months, ever since Zack had started fighting for Jerry on Saturday nights, he had thought: I’m not going to end up like you. He just hadn’t known how to avoid it.

  Until now.

  “So, champ, how you doing?” Jerry called all his fighters “champ.” None of them ever were. Jerry stared at the side of Zack’s head, shaved around the bandages.

  “Going home.”

  “Yeah? When you coming back to the gym?”

  “Real soon,” Zack said, glad that Anne wasn’t there. Jerry said nothing. He’s got more to say, something he needs to ask but doesn’t want to, he’s going to scratch his head first . . . .

  Jerry scratched his head, his flabby arm coming up like a hydraulic lift. “Champ, I hate to ask this, but I got a problem. Week from Saturday, Bobby Marks was on the slate to fight Tom Cawkins. Not at the gym—at a real venue. Magnolia Gardens. But Bobby, stupid kid, got himself nabbed for possession, won’t be out in time. Cawkins’s manager’s trying to pull him out of the fight ’cause ever since Cawkins beat C. P. James, manager thinks he’s bigger shit than he’ll ever really be. I don’t have a fighter to put against him week from Saturday, contract’s void and I gotta C&R.”

  Cancel and Refund—the bogeyman that chased Jerry every struggling accounting period. Zack knew that Jerry needed every scheduled fight to make expenses, even though the fights were mostly lame and the customers, neighborhood punks and old guys who remembered better, only filled half the seats. Jerry especially needed this fight; he’d hoped it might move his gym up a notch. Personally, Zack doubted it.

  Jerry went on, looking everywhere but at Zack’s bandages. “So—you think you’ll be well enough to be slotted in? Bandages off and all?”<
br />
  Zack said, “Sure. Why not?”

  Jerry blinked. He’s really afraid I’ll get hurt . . . why, the sentimental fat old bastard! He’s going to go all sappy . . .

  “Look, champ, I don’t want you to do nothing that’ll interfere with getting better. You’re a good kid even if you are so mouthy. You want to wait to fight, we’ll wait. I can get DeShawn, maybe, though he—”

  “I’ll do it,” Zack said, and watched Jerry go through a complicated series of emotions during which Jerry kept a poker face.

  “Well, if you’re sure, then good. Prize money ain’t great, but—”

  “I said I’ll do it.”

  Jerry knew when a deal was closed. A rare smile quirked his lips, drowned in his usual anticipation of the worst, and propelled him shambling out the door.

  Zack poked gently at the bandages on his head and stared at the ceiling.

  His last, most unwelcome visitor was Jasmine.

  He was out of bed, dressed in his own clothes again, a little headachy but upright. Five more minutes and he could have escaped. He should have known better—you couldn’t outrun women. Anne, Jazzy, even fucking Gail. And a part of him was glad to see Jazzy, or at least might have been glad if she hadn’t looked mad enough to chew his head off.

  “Why did you tell the nurses to not let me in? Huh, Zack? Why?”

  “Didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Like I’m not upset now?”

  Damn, she looked good. She had on the tight jeans he liked and a low-cut top with some sort of creamy ruffles that shimmered against her chocolate breasts. Body like a porn star, big dark eyes, seventeen years old and no slut. She kept her nights for Zack, her days for finishing high school (more than he had done), and next year’s eye on a training school in medical technology. Jazzy had plans. She didn’t want a baby daddy and a welfare check, she wanted a job and an apartment she could pay for herself. Zack had been afraid since they started hanging out together that she also wanted him in that future apartment, tethered and leashed. So he’d tried a few other hookups, but nobody else had Jazzy’s pull on him.

  Also—and this was the surprising thing—they had fun together even out of bed. They went to movies, laughed, took walks together just to walk, not to get someplace. She was funny and she got him, got who he was. He liked her. But even so—

  “Look, Jazzy, I didn’t want you here because I didn’t want any big scene. Bad enough I got Anne wringing her hands over me. She works here, so I was stuck. But I just wanted to rest and get better and go home. Is that so hard to understand, huh? Is it?”

  “Don’t get all huffy with me, Zack Murphy. Don’t you dare. I know you needed rest. I wouldn’t have made a scene.”

  She was telling the truth. Zack felt it from her. But, given the scene she’d made when they were last together (“Who was that slutty girl? When are you going to give up fighting and get your shit together? You need a real job and a real future!”), he’d been sure that she would keep it up in the hospital. But clearly he’d been wrong. Concern for him poured off her—Zack could see it, feel it, almost taste it.

  He hated it. It was a rope, tying him down.

  “I gotta go, Jazzy. Anthony’s picking me up.”

  “I can drive you home.”

  “I already called Anthony.”

  Anger, held in check. Concern that he was all right. The gentleness he’d glimpsed once or twice underneath her fierceness; each time he’d hated that gentleness. Another rope. She was going to cross the floor, hug him gently . . .

  He brushed past her. “Call you later, baby, okay?” In the hallway, he regretted his rudeness—how many people did he actually like? Fewer than corners in a boxing ring. Nonetheless, he strode as quickly as his aching head would allow to get to the elevator, to the outside, to the welcome indifference of Anthony, one of his two roommates in the apartment filled with beer and sagging couches and pizza boxes and freedom from women.

  Zack, the voices said. Zack . . .

  No, they didn’t. Lying awake three days before his fight with Cawkins, Zack knew perfectly well that the voices were the thrumming of the music coming through the thin walls of the apartment. The breeze from the open window, wafting the faint scent of garbage cans in the alley. That ringing in your ears that everybody got sometimes. They weren’t even voices, they were all in his imagination, and he damn well better stifle it and get some sleep. But it was only midnight, and he wasn’t anywhere near sleepy.

  “You leaving the party so early?” Anthony had said. But the truth was, Zack had been leaving early all the time. Leaving parties at night, leaving Pizza Hut at dinner, even leaving the goddamn 7-Eleven before he found the Cheerios on the shelves. Too many people, all flinging emotions at him in the way their bodies moved, the way their mouths worked, the tones of their voices. I’m scared, I’m so happy, I’m disgusted, I’m starting something that might not work, I’m going to talk to that guy over there or boost that nail polish or give that bum a dollar or find somebody to fight with or brush against that babe’s tits or buy these roses even though I can’t afford it . . . Stop!

  But they never did. All the information about everybody just kept coming, and Zack didn’t even know how he knew any of it.

  He had to get it under control. Now.

  Heaving himself up from his mattress on the floor, Zack put his clothes back on. Outside, the non-voices seemed even more persistent, like the sweet spring night gave them more to work with. Well, screw that. Zack was having enough trouble with live people without dealing with imaginary ones.

  People spilled out from the bars and clubs on Belmont Street. Zack leaned against a lamp post, lit one of the twenty or so cigarettes he allowed himself every month, and pretended to be absorbed in it while a couple walked past, holding hands and talking softly.

  He loves her, she doesn’t love him, she wants out and he doesn’t know it yet . . . How do I know?

  Forget that. It didn’t matter how. Concentrate on not seeing them, not noticing all the “sensory information” that Anne said he was getting and “integrating.” Concentrate . . . .

  It didn’t work. Zack was aware of everything the couple didn’t know they were telling him, until they turned the corner and disappeared.

  He tried next with three high school kids who got off a bus and peered into a bar where, of course, they knew they wouldn’t be allowed in. Anger, envy, thinking that if only they could get in they’d show up everybody there but not even believing it themselves, horny as hell . . . The redhead is going say something full of bullshit . . .

  The redhead said, “Couldn’t I just give that babe there a thick foot of happiness!” His buddies jeered.

  Zack tried to both see and not see them. He didn’t turn his back, but he concentrated on his cigarette: how it felt, smelled, looked as the ash lengthened and fell to the sidewalk. The boys walked past him, arguing. Concentrate on the cigarette . . . .

  The information about the boys was still there, but now it felt more like rap playing in the house next door. You could hear it, but you could also sort of block it out. The cigarette mattered, the information from the boys didn’t.

  He practiced for a few more hours, sitting in the corner of a bar. He didn’t always succeed; sometimes the only way he could break the overwhelming flow of information was to close his eyes. Even then, it seemed like he could smell attitudes around him. But as the night wore on, he got better at it.

  The next day, better still.

  He could control it.

  The day before the fight, Friday, Jazzy showed up in his bedroom before Zack was even out of bed.

  “How’d you get in?” Zack said, sitting up woozily on his mattress and glancing at the glowing red numbers on the clock sitting on the floor. 12:00. Midnight? No, noon.

  “Anthony or Lou didn’t lock the door,” Jazzy said. Zack had nailed a blanket over the window and light from the living room silhouetted her. He couldn’t see her face. He didn’t need to.

&nb
sp; “Why . . . why aren’t you in school?”

  “Because this is more important.”

  Alarm bells sounded in Zack’s head. When Jasmine thought something was more important than school, it meant trouble.

  She put her hands on her hips. “I’m only going to ask you once, Zack, and I want an honest answer. Are you done with me? Are we over?”

  Were they? Peering at her, Zack didn’t want them to be over. On the other hand, he’d been avoiding her for days. Quick phone calls full of bogus excuses: doctor’s appointment for my head, Anne’s got a situation I got to see to, Jerry’s got a situation, Anthony’s got a situation, I need to rest, baby, I’m just so tired since the operation—

  She was serious. He got that from every line in her back-lit body: a whole lot of inner conflict, but she was dead serious. If he said it was over, this time it would be. He could be free.

  She looked so damn good. And when they had good times, they were really good times. The sweet way she’d looked at him that time he’d bought her those earrings for no holiday or birthday, just because the earrings reminded him of her . . . .

  But he could be free.

  “We’re not over,” he said slowly, wondering if he meant it, “but I need some time. Some space.”

  “Some space I’m not in.” Now her arms were crossed across her chest, which he knew she was going to do before she did it.

  “Jazzy . . .” All at once he felt tears prickle his eyes. What the fuck! He hadn’t cried since the last time his father beat him, when Zack was nine, just before the bastard died. Zack blinked hard to dash away the tears. He didn’t want Jazzy to see.

  Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But all at once she was kneeling beside him on the mattress, and then he was kissing her, and then clothes were coming off and she was the one with tears on her face and . . . .

  He felt her. Not just near him, taking him in, like normally in sex. No, he knew what she was going to move before she moved it, knew what she wanted without her whispering anything, knew when his touch wasn’t getting it done and when he was exactly in the right place, doing the right thing, for how long she wanted it done. It was like he was her as well as himself, and when he exploded, right after she did, he cried out, something he never did.