The Companions

by Katie M Flynn

  * * *

  It’s cold enough that I’m breathing clouds when I throw open the van’s doors, startle a jogger off the sidewalk who glares at me before huffing up the hill. I know by the wet cold feeling on my backside that the toilet paper I stuffed into my underwear has been useless. I pull my sweatshirt down for cover as I run into the house.

  I’m tiptoeing into the bathroom when I hear a strange sound that is not the old house settling, not outside seeping in, but here. I freeze, hold my breath, listen. I hear it again, a soft moan like a ghost, take a step in its direction, another, another, resting my cheek on the guest room’s door. I hear it again, Cam or Lilac or them both, and I stay longer, listening, hand pressed to the door, until silence, someone listening back at me—I can sense it as I creep into the bathroom.

  Standing on the lip of the bathtub, I peer at the back of my sweats, soaked through in blood, peel them off, and hop in the shower.

  As I’m wrapping myself up in a towel, there’s a gentle knock.

  “They’ll be a bit big,” Cam says, holding out a pair of pants.

  “How did you—” So embarrassed, I can’t finish the question, swiping the pants from her.

  She slips past me, drops to her knees, and rummages under the sink, handing me a small slippery cup. “You can use mine. I just had my period.”

  “Gross,” I say, thrusting it back at her.

  “Don’t worry. I sanitize it between uses. It’s like new.” She shows me how with embarrassing hand gestures, even stays in the room, back to me, as I slide it into place.

  “What if I can’t get it out?”

  “It’s not as hard as you think.” She places a hand on my arm, and I don’t mean to, but I pull away like reflex. Her smile dissolves and I feel sorry and embarrassed and escape the bathroom, spot Lilac on the couch.

  I approach slowly, something off about her—too still, her eyes with a far-off look, not seeing me even when I’m stooped in front of her face.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I ask Cam.

  “She’s in a meeting.”

  “A meeting?”

  “Kinda like a support group. For companions. The ones who left.”

  “Support for what?” I ask, staring into Lilac’s face, here and gone at the same time.

  “Imagine dying,” Cam says, “waking up in a new body. Serving a stranger.”

  I back away from Lilac, hustle into the kitchen, and swipe a hard-boiled egg from the bowl in the fridge, stuffing it into the pocket of Cam’s too-big jeans.

  * * *

  I can smell pancakes from the van, but I don’t follow Nat into the house. I don’t have to—Cam brings me a plate. She’s smiling again, trying again, but already I’ve learned she’s easy to crumble. She doesn’t know that’s what I’m best at—finding weak spots and jabbing. I used to do it to Bee, taking her precious things when she was irritating me, telling her they were certainly lost, making her cry and cry before I revealed them like a magician—right here, right under your eyes! It was easy to torture Bee, too easy, and I enjoyed it too much.

  I pick up one of the pancakes and tear into it with my teeth.

  “Look what I got.” Cam holds up a set of keys, Nat’s with its little silver horseshoe. She tosses them at me, and I catch them between my hands and stuff them into my pocket. “He’ll spend all morning searching for them, so that means you can come out and we get to punish him. Win-win!”

  I don’t mean to, but I like Cam and I tell her so and she laughs brightly, drawing Lilac out to the van.

  “Who wants to go for a walk?” she asks.

  * * *

  I trail Lilac and Cam as they stroll Cortland, holding hands and lingering outside shop windows. People stare, not because there’s anything wrong—Lilac’s model is advanced enough to fool most folks—but because they’re beautiful. Because they glow. I can see it, their shine, and for the first time I think maybe I want to be beautiful too.

  When we get home, Nat is frantic, rummaging under the couch cushions. “Have you seen my keys?”

  “Nope,” I say and breeze past him, into the kitchen where Cam and I combust in silent laughter.

  It’s not until after dinner that I return them.

  “You’ve had them the whole time?” Nat stares at the keys in his hand, and I can tell he’s about to explode with fury. I’ve done this before, poked until I got him to stand on the cliff-edge of losing it.

  “I’m going out,” he says, refusing to meet my eyes. That’s how he punishes me, pretending I’m not there. “I’ll be back late, so you should sleep on the couch.”

  I slump into a seat at the kitchen table where I draw a giant cat curled around a tiny house. I draw myself in its window.

  * * *

  The couch is lumpy and too soft and it takes me forever to fall asleep. I wake often, staring into the room that is too big, too open, too many windows. I nearly scream when I blink awake and see Lilac seated at the doctor’s screen, watching me.

  “Wanna go downtown?” she asks.

  We take Muni with the early commuters, light traffic, seats for everyone, a lull falling over the train, over all of us.

  The escalator takes us up to Market Street, bustling even at seven. I make the mistake of following the lines of the towers all the way to the clouds, which spin above me, the circling I8s, until I’m dizzy.

  Weaving between those towers, the smell is familiar, baked bread and coffee, the reek of old trash and fresh urine, the chemical scents of hair spray and perfume and cologne as the commuters hustle past us with their to-go mugs, always midsentence.

  Lilac lingers in front of one of the towers, its great gray gate. “You ever been in one?”

  “I used to come downtown for the doctor’s packages, but I never got past the parking garage.” I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like in there, air-locked, secure in your own apartment, your own bed.

  “I only ever saw Dahlia’s apartment,” Lilac says, scanning the side of the tower. “This is her building. Was. I don’t know if she lives here anymore.”

  “Let’s find out! What was her apartment number?”

  “Don’t,” she says, then she tells me the number, then she repeats, “Don’t. This is a bad idea.”

  Buzz!

  “Gabe,” she practically shouts.

  A woman answers: “Yes?” And Lilac goes silent.

  “Is Dahlia there?” I ask.

  There’s a long pause, a thinking pause. Nat says sometimes you have to interrupt those kinds of pauses, other times you have to let em ride.

  “Who is this?” the woman asks.

  “Who’s this?” I ask back.

  “I’m Dahlia’s mother.”

  Let’s go, Lilac mouths at me, and I give her a good jab of the elbow.

  “This is Eloise,” I say, borrowing the name from one of Bee’s favorite books, about a little girl who lives in a fancy New York hotel, whose wealthy parents seem never to be around, so Eloise adventures and gets into mischief. Seems like a tower kid. “I used to live on the eighty-eighth floor? I knew Dahlia.”

  The woman says, “I can see you, you know. You’re way too young to be a friend of Dahlia’s. Is this some scam? I can call the—”

  “Because I died,” I say, improvising, winking at Lilac, who is cringing as if she’s eaten something especially sour. “I’m one of those companions.”

  Long pause, then the woman’s voice so low I hardly hear her. “Dahlia took a mentorship in Seattle years ago. Hasn’t been home since. Don’t come back here.” There’s a fizzle like static, then silence.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Lilac says. She pushes me, hard. I hit the building’s gate, sliding to the ground, the air gone out of me. I want to call, where are you going? But I can’t catch my breath and she’s gone, disappeared into the thickening commuter crowd. I think of Anne, who’s gone into hiding and is desperate for Peter’s attention with nowhere to go to be sad. Most of all I miss the outdoors and having a pl
ace where I can be alone for as long as I want! I remember that I know this city, sift down an alley. I eat samples of breakfast rolls at the mall’s food court. Bum a cigarette from a bike messenger to see if he’ll give it to me—he does!—and slide it behind my ear. Pull up my hood and curl my shoulders inward and poof, I’m invisible. I haven’t felt this way in a long time, how easy it is to become street trash, to be the nothing that everyone avoids.

  * * *

  By the time I make it back to the doctor’s, it’s after dark. The air tastes like rain—I can always taste it before it comes. Nat is at the door, eyes wild with how mad he is. “Where have you been?”

  Cam right behind him. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” I push past them both, Lilac stiff on the couch, hands pressed between her knees.

  Cam says, “Lilac wants to tell you something.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lilac says as if she’s practiced it. “For pushing you. Running off like that. I’ll do better,” she promises.

  “Okay,” I tell her. Normally I like holding on to my grudges, but I’d seen it, how scared she was; I’d not stopped even when she begged me.

  Cam herds me into the kitchen where she warms up leftover pancakes and gushes about their plans for the night. “Lilac’s friend, from group? He’s in town. I can’t wait to meet him!”

  When I’ve devoured my food, she jogs off to the bedroom to get ready and I head to the bathroom for a shower, startling Lilac away from the mirror.

  “Sorry,” I tell her and back out of the room.

  “No,” Lilac says, “it’s okay. Come here, shut the door.”

  I do and she leans forward, into the light, parting her hair with her hands. “How bad is it?”

  “How bad is what?” I say, but I see it right away and it’s bad, like bad bad, the gash on the crown of her head, all the way down to the metal. I suck in air and step away. “What happened?”

  “I—I’m not sure. I was walking the Embarcadero. The sun was out, and I was feeling it, warm all over. Then the pain. My head. I was on the ground.” She stares at herself in the mirror. “He called me unnatural. Said I’ve got no right to exist. If a jogger hadn’t stopped him, I’m sure the guy would’ve killed me.”

  “In broad daylight?” I ask, my hands shaking. I’ve never been good with gore. When Bee fell down those Golden Gate Park steps, I’d gone cold and dizzy at the sight of the blood pooling in her hands, had to look away the whole long walk to the Haight Street clinic.

  “How did he know?” she asks. “That I’m—”

  “Nat says it’s in the way you move, even steps, kinda clumsy.” She stares down at her shoes and I want to make her feel better, am searching for the words. “You look human to me.”

  Lilac examines her hands, waves them in front of her face. “How could he hate me so much?”

  “You need to show the doctor,” I tell her.

  “Please don’t say anything. I’ll have Diana look at it tomorrow. Promise.” She situates a red sock hat on her head and pats me on the shoulder, not gently, and I don’t get the chance to stop her. Cam’s already called a car and they are goodbyes and gone.

  * * *

  That night it pours. I lie awake, listening as the rain pings off the van’s metal roof, one of my favorite sounds, the kind that locks out everything else. Nat’s snoring does the trick too. I pretend to hate it, but I don’t know how to sleep without his nasal chain saw. I try to listen for Lilac, to stay up, but it’s first light when I blink awake.

  The doctor’s on the couch with a man I don’t know, or maybe I do, hands folded at his knees, hair a weird shade of silver.

  “Gabe, say hello to Lilac’s friend Jakob,” the doctor encourages.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Hello,” he says.

  The doctor watches me with those smiling eyes I hate, like she’s told a joke I don’t get. “You don’t recognize him?”

  “Stop,” he says playfully.

  “He’s a famous actor gracing us with his presence,” the doctor says.

  Jakob is small and fine-boned, not what I’d expect of an actor. On occasion Nat’s taken me to see a movie, but never the kind I want, with shoot-em-ups and sound effects that churn your guts. Nat likes to go on and on about cinematography, about silence—why would you listen for silence?

  “Don’t know your movies,” I say, which is the truth, even if I know him still, from what? The flicker of strange faces on the screen at a diner, in a mat where our dirties turn and turn, those window ads we pass in the more populated towns.

  “That’s okay,” he says, “wasn’t me, not—” His voice is washed out by the screams coming from the guest room.

  Cam on the bed, fussing over Lilac who’s not moving, eyes open to the ceiling. I glance away at an old abandoned web in the high corner, collecting dust, anywhere but at her.

  When Cam finds it, the gash on Lilac’s head, she screams again.

  * * *

  “I want to talk to her,” Cam says, pacing the living room, cupping the small silver box to her chest, Lilac, what’s left of her.

  The doctor sits at her screen. A few keystrokes, and Lilac’s voice—or something like it—comes over the screen. “What happened?”

  Cam is at the desk. “Lilac?”

  From the screen, Lilac says, “Who the hell are you?”

  “It’s me,” Cam says, eyes on me and scared. “It’s Cam.”

  Lilac shouts, “Diana! I want the doctor.”

  Jakob crosses the room and dims the screen with a stab of the finger, Cam on him immediately. “What’re you doing?”

  He holds her by the wrists, speaks calmly into her face. “After that head wound, you’re lucky she’s in there at all.”

  Cam is tugging, trying to pull free, falling to her knees. “What, what’s happened to her?”

  Jakob lets her loose. “The companion brain is easily upset. Sometimes when we’re damaged, we lose memories.”

  “How do you know that?” the doctor asks.

  “Because I’ve seen it happen,” Jakob says. “It’s probably happened to me. I had my security programming wiped a few weeks ago.”

  “You can do that?” The doctor is practically giddy with her new discovery, already forgetting Lilac.

  “Sure, if you don’t mind parting with some memories. Our minds don’t respond well to manipulation.”

  “Well, put them back,” Cam pleads.

  “I can’t. No one can.”

  I expect Cam to hit him, to rage, but she only sits there, hands limp in her lap, and I slink out of the room.

  * * *

  I’m tucked into my sleeping bag, facing the metal siding, Nat lying on his mat on the floor.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say, “promise not to be mad.” And I tell him, what I knew, what I didn’t do or say. The guilt, I fold under it.

  “The rain,” he says.

  I nod. My fault—I know it. “I should’ve said something.”

  “Don’t—” he starts, stops, like he’s sifting for the right words. “You’re a smart girl, you know that? I see it better here, with other people around. Like I’m seeing you new.”

  “Why would someone do that to her?”

  Long pause, the thinking kind. “This isn’t the first time. Some people don’t like companions, they’re afraid of them.”

  I see it, Lilac’s face when I screened that woman in the tower, her fear, how it sent her running, and it’s happening, I’m crying, and Nat sits on the edge of the bed, patting my head, stroking my hair. I don’t shrug him off or squirm like normal. Instead I tell him I’m sorry.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  So many reasons, but mostly because it’s him, only him, the one who stayed. I can’t say it, Please don’t leave me, and the tears, they come hard. Nat pulls me into his lap. His beard smells like syrup and him, and he shushes me in the ear like Mam used to quiet baby Bee, something I remember only now as I hear the sound and he holds me in h
is lap, and I’m so close to him, have we ever been so close? I don’t mean to but I kiss him on the cheek. He’s warm, and I kiss him again, this time on the corner of his mouth. He takes me by the arms. “What are you doing?”

  I don’t know what I’m doing and he knows it and shifts me out of his lap.

  “Just a kid,” he says.

  “I am not,” I nearly shout. But I’m tired of saying it, tired of waiting till some magic day when he’ll take me seriously.

  He sucks in air, ready to deliver one of his speeches as if loving me is beside the point.

  “Don’t,” I tell him, and turn toward the wall.

  * * *

  I wake before Nat and find the doctor making tea at the stove, Cam seated at the table, Lilac’s brain like a centerpiece.

  “Is she—okay?” I ask.

  Cam runs fingers along her scalp. “It’s gone. Every memory she made in that body, the last four years, me.” Her voice is oddly even. Has she slept? “And Diana doesn’t have any contacts at Metis anymore. I don’t know how to get her a body.”

  I blow on my tea, watch the steam spread and disappear. “We could steal one from the back of a van.”

  “Oh, Gabe.” The doctor swats my hand with her cloth napkin. “It’s not as easy as that anymore.”

  Jakob wanders into the kitchen and drops into the conversation as if he’s been listening. “I know a place where we can get one. In LA, San Fernando Valley, to be exact. You could come along,” he says to Cam.

  “What’s in LA?” the doctor asks him.

  “Greta,” he says, “my life.” He catches me watching him and smiles a crooked smile. “It’s not really safe out there for me on my own. I could use a human companion.”