Zeffy gives me a disgusted look. “Jesus, you really are a piece of work, aren’t you?”
You’re blowing it, I tell myself. Considering what I have to work with, it isn’t really surprising, but I try to recover.
“No,” I say. “I know the money you’re talking about. It was kind of, uh, Tanya, to be as patient as she’s been. I mean, you’ve been kind,” I add, managing to look away from Zeffy and include the other woman in the conversation. “What I was trying to say was, how much was it that I owe you? I, uh, I’ve forgotten the amount.”
They’re both looking at me strangely—Zeffy’s confusion coloured with irritation, Tanya’s with hurt. The whisper of fear I saw in Tanya’s eyes is growing. She tugs at Zeffy’s sleeve.
“I just want to go,” she says. Her voice is small, as though the words are choking in her throat.
Zeffy nods, but doesn’t look at her. “It was three hundred dollars,” she tells me.
I remember the money I counted in Devlin’s wallet. “I’ve got—I think it was seventy-six dollars.”
“That’ll do—for starters.”
I pull out the wallet and hand over Devlin’s money. “I’m sorry I don’t have the rest of it yet.”
“When will you have it?” Zeffy asks.
“I...” Tell her anything, I think. “In a week?”
“Zeffy, please,” Tanya says.
Zeffy’s features are noticeably warmer when she turns to her friend. “We’re going now,” she says. She stuffs the money in the pocket of her jacket. The coldness returns to her eyes as soon as she looks back at me. “We’ll be back for the rest.”
“In a week,” I repeat.
I feel safe with that time-frame. This is Devlin’s problem, so let him deal with it. I can’t imagine the situation I’m in lasting out the day, little say dragging on for a week. Though I don’t mind having had the chance to meet this Zeffy. I like her spunk, the way she won’t back down, not to the man in the hall earlier and not to me now. I just wish I’d been able to meet her under different circumstances, that I could be myself and not have her so angry with me—or rather, so angry with Devlin. I’m just the one who has to stand in for the jerk.
This is one you owe me, Devlin, I think.
“You’ve got your week,” Zeffy tells me. “Your tab’s now standing at two-hundred-and-twenty-four dollars.”
“Right.”
“We should be charging you interest.”
“Whatever.”
She looks at me as though she’s just come upon a bug, a nightcrawler skittering around the rim of her bathtub, a cockroach that scurried deeper into her bedclothes as she turned back her bed. I want to say something, to explain that I’m not this John Devlin and would never treat anybody the way he’d obviously been treating them, but what can I say that won’t make me sound like a lunatic? So I stand there, accepting her disapproval in silence. Finally, she shakes her head, speaking a volume of censure in that simple movement. Taking Tanya by the arm, she leads her off down the hall.
I watch them go. Not until they’ve turned at the stairwell and are lost from sight do I step back inside the apartment.
Well, I think as I close the door. That went really well, didn’t it?
6 ZEFFY
By the time Zeffy got her down the stairs and outside Johnny’s building, tears were streaming down Tanya’s cheeks and she was shaking so hard that she couldn’t walk on her own. This has got to be the end of it, Zeffy thought as she steered her roommate to a seat on the curb and sat down beside her, arm around her shoulders.
Johnny’d really blown it this time. Blown it big time. She didn’t know what he’d thought he was playing at, acting like he didn’t know them. Just mind games, she guessed. Didn’t have to make any sense, did it? She’d long since given up trying to figure him out, why he was the way he was, why he did the things he did. But maybe now Tanya would finally see what a shit the guy was—understand it with her heart as well as her head. All Zeffy could think was, it was about time. Her only regret was that it had to leave Tanya so tom up to get to this realization.
She’d been there for her roommate during the countless bouts of misery that Johnny had put her through in the past and it had always frustrated her how Tanya couldn’t just put the guy behind her. Love surely was blind, more was the pity. But that frustration had never stopped her from offering what comfort she could. It was no different now, sitting here with Tanya on a Grasso Street curb at five-thirty in the morning.
She gave Tanya a comforting hug, but Tanya only burrowed her face deeper into Zeffy’s shoulder, crying harder, until Zeffy began to grow alarmed. She hadn’t seen Tanya like this in years, not since the nightmare they’d had to live through when Tanya was kicking her habit.
“It’s okay,” she soothed. “I know it hurts, but at least it’s over now. You know where you stand with the jerk.”
Tanya finally lifted her head. Gulping for air, she turned her face toward Zeffy, eyes glistening and puffy, nose red, makeup running in dark streaks down her cheeks.
“That...that wasn’t Johnny...” she managed.
“I know he was acting weird,” Zeffy said, “but—”
Tanya shook her head, the anguish plain. “He didn't even know us!” Zeffy sighed. “No. He acted liked he didn’t know us. There’s a difference. He was just playing some kind of a mind game, that’s all.”
“No...nobody’s that good an actor,” Tanya said.
“What other explanation is there?” Zeffy asked.
Though she could see how Tanya had been taken in. He’d done one hell of a job of it, hadn’t he? She never knew he had it in him. If Johnny could ever learn to channel that kind of talent and energy into something positive, he might actually be able to get somewhere for a change.
She searched in her pockets for a tissue and found a wadded-up Kleenex near the bottom that was still unused. Passing it to Tanya, she waited as Tanya dabbed at her eyes and then used it to blow her nose.
“It...it’s like he’s got amnesia all of a sudden,” Tanya said. “Like he hit his head and he doesn’t know who he is anymore—or at least doesn’t know us.” She got a funny look on her face. “Or like one of those awful movies he likes so much,” Tanya went on. “You know...where the aliens take over your brain and...and pretend to be human?”
Well, at least she was talking, Zeffy thought. Not making any sense, but she was talking.
“Think about what you’re saying,” she said. “That kind of thing isn’t even remotely possible.”
“I know. I guess. But what if—what if it was?”
“Oh please. This is not Invasion of the Johnny Snatchers. It’s just Johnny Devlin being an asshole, end of story.”
“Johnny Snatchers?” Tanya repeated.
Zeffy tried, but she couldn’t stifle the giggle that came when she heard her own words echoed back to her. If only aliens had snatched him, she thought. Tanya gave her a look—half sad, half stem—but Zeffy laughing was contagious. Tanya was soon giggling herself, although there was a slightly hysterical note to her amusement that made Zeffy feel uneasy.
“This is just what he wanted,” she said when she’d gotten her own laughter under control. “To have us sitting here questioning our sanity. Don’t ask me why.”
Tanya nodded, serious again herself. “I guess. But it wasn’t just what he was saying, it was everything. How he moved, the look in his eyes, the way he spoke. I know him way better than you, Zeffy, and this was too good to be acting. Looking at him today it was like Johnny’s not home anymore.”
Zeffy knew what she meant. Johnny’s performance had been uncanny in its attention to detail. But that didn’t change anything. There were things that were possible, and things that weren’t, never mind what some of their friends believed. Like Jilly, who also worked at the café with them. Jilly cheerfully accepted everything from fairies to Elvis sightings—“But what if he’s not dead, Zeffy? What if he really did fake it just to get away from all th
e pressure and bullshit?” She could just imagine Jilly’s excitement when Tanya told her about this. They’d be discussing it all day at the restaurant.
“Except it’s really not possible,” she said to Tanya.
“I know that. It’s just...”
“Just what?” Zeffy asked. Tanya looked so fragile and lost that she wanted to gather her up like a mother would her child and protect her from the travails of the world.
Tanya shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it creeped me out at first, but then I got to thinking, maybe this guy’d like me better. Maybe he’d, you know, treat me better.”
Zeffy’s heart went out to her. “Oh, Tanya. There’s other guys out there for you. Nice guys who’ll treat you decently.”
“I suppose. It’s just, there’s a lot about Johnny that I really like.”
“Well, of course you do.”
“And I was thinking,” Tanya went on. “What if he’s, you know, sick or something? What if he’s got one of those multiple personality disorders, where he’s got like all these different people living inside him? They’d still be like him, wouldn’t they, except some of them’d be nicer.”
“And some could be worse.”
“Well, not necessarily.”
Zeffy sighed. “You know what you’re doing, don’t you? You’re making excuses for him again.”
There was that look in Tanya’s eyes again, frail and lost, the hurt so plain it broke your heart.
“Look,” Zeffy said. She took Tanya’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I don’t want to live your life for you, but don’t you think you deserve a bit of happiness by now? You know you’re never going to find it with Johnny—you’ve told me that yourself a hundred times. If you don’t want to take my advice, then take your own. How many times haven’t you told me that you’d just like to forget him and get on with your life?”
Tanya nodded. “Lots, I guess.”
“So screw Johnny and do it this time.”
“You really hate him, don’t you?”
A small smile touched Zeffy’s lips. “Hate’s such an all-encompassing kind of a word. And it makes it sound as though he has a lot more impact on my life than he does. Let’s just say I wish we’d never met him.”
The smile Tanya gave her in return was smaller and sadder.
“I guess that’s something we can both agree on,” she said.
Zeffy gave her hand another squeeze, then stood up, helping Tanya to her feet. They both ignored the apartment behind them, the lights all still shining in the windows.
“You think you’ll be able to go to work?” Zeffy asked.
“Oh god.” Tanya dabbed at her eyes with the small ball that the tissue had become. “I must look awful.”
“We’ll sneak you in the back and you can fix yourself up in the washroom. No one’s going to know.”
“I suppose.”
Tanya studied the wadded tissue, then stuck it in her pocket. From another pocket she took out a package of cigarettes.
“Tanya,” Zeffy began, thinking, That’s not going to help.
Tanya paused as she was about to light up. Her gaze met Zeffy’s and Zeffy could see the pain still darkening her roommate’s eyes.
“Never mind,” Zeffy said. “Come on, let’s go.”
She stole a glance at Johnny’s apartment as they started off down the block, heading for the subway station at Perry Street. There was no one at the window. She wasn’t sure how she was going to manage it, but she made a silent promise to herself that she was never going to let Johnny hurt Tanya again.
7 MAX
The encounter with Zeffy and Tanya upsets me more than I think it did at first. I’d been ready, once I’d given them a chance to go their own way, to set off for my own place and deal with whatever was waiting for me there. But after taking a look out the living-room window and seeing the two of them sitting down there on the curb, Zeffy with her arm around Tanya, comforting the dark-haired girl as she wept, all I can do is slump down on Devlin’s uncomfortable couch instead. I stare blankly at the poster for some science-fiction movie on the wall across from me. I can’t tell what the movie’s called because the text is all in Italian, but it has something to do with a robot and a woman with enormous breasts.
Really, the poster barely registers. I have more immediate concerns than Johnny Devlin’s lack of taste. What if there’s no way to reverse whatever’s happened to me? What if this is my life now: a borrowed body, the depressing tatters of somebody else’s life—somebody I’m sure I won’t like if I ever get the chance to meet him. What if there’s no going back to who I am? What if I’m trapped like this forever?
I try to contain it, but the fear keeps returning to me. It’s like a wild dog circling its prey, a constant threat. The panic I’ve been successfully suppressing cruises in its wake, waiting for its own opportunity to strike.
I’ve never had anyone look at me the way those women did. The disgust in Zeffy’s eyes, the hurt in Tanya’s. Lord knows I’m not perfect, but I’ve lived a mild kind of life to date, without a whole lot of emotional upheaval. I have only one great passion and that’s my work. I have no vices. I have no strong political or religious beliefs, I’m not given to causes, and I’ve always treated people the way I’d want them to treat me. Decently, with a little distance. It means I have far more acquaintances than I have real friends. But it also means that I don’t have any enemies either—at least none of whom I’m aware. The strongest emotion aimed in my general direction has been a kind of greedy lust, and that’s for the instruments I make, not for me.
I’ve never been given to brooding either, but right now I find it frighteningly easy to let the depression I’m slipping into simply take me away. Because really, what’s the point in struggling? What’s happened to me is without precedent—at least in real life. I’m not sure about fiction because I don’t read much of it, but the premise has shown up in movies. Daughters inadvertently switching places with their mothers. Fathers with their sons. And then there was that film where the old man stole a young woman’s life away when he kissed her on her wedding day. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but I think Meg Ryan was in it.
I give Devlin’s videos a sour look. He’d probably know.
In movies, everything’s resolved so easily: setup, an hour or so of struggle, ups and downs, a few jokes, a few tears, and then the quick wrap-up just before the credits run. Everything back to normal. But real life doesn’t work the way Hollywood depicts it. Most people’s lives aren’t made up of stories with easily perceived beginnings and endings. Most people have to just muddle through as best they can, coming in somewhere in the middle, leaving before the outcome’s known, half the time not even aware that they’re in a story.
And in real life, people don’t wake up in somebody else’s body either.
I sit up suddenly when I realize what I’m doing. I’m giving up without a struggle. I’ve never been a quitter and the easy way I’ve let myself fall into that kind of thinking is disturbing. I hold a hand up before my eyes. They’re still unfamiliar. I still can’t relate to their being attached to his body.
But when the switch was made, what else did I step into? Just Devlin’s body and the baggage of his life, or pieces of who Devlin is as well? Does the physical mind follow certain patterns that hold even when someone else is using them? If Devlin is given to quick depressions does it follow that now I will, too? And what about these hands—narrow, long fingers, lots of flexibility, but soft, unfamiliar with physical work. Can I still build instruments with them, can I still play guitar, or is that something I have to teach them how to do all over again?
When I feel myself sinking back into depression, I force myself to stand up and get moving. I take a last look around the apartment, then head for the front door. Just before I step out into the hall, I pat my jacket pocket the way I always do when I leave my own apartment. There’s no jingle of keys.
Wouldn’t that be perfect? I think. To lock myself out.
Because while it’s true that I’d just as soon never see this apartment again, I have to be realistic. It might be all I have to return to. Given the choice, I’d prefer to sleep here than to make do with the sidewalk or a bus shelter.
I remember seeing a set of keys on the night table where I found the wallet and change. Returning to the bedroom, I pick them up, then pause for a moment. I haven’t looked in the night-table drawer yet. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I open the drawer and find it a jumbled mess, mostly stuffed with stacks of loose papers and envelopes. I sort through them, laying each one on the bed beside me after I’ve glanced at it. Unpaid utility bills. Credit-card statements, the cards charged to the max. A bankbook with a balance of twelve dollars and forty-five cents. A pink slip. I study the latter more closely. Devlin had been working as a salesman in a computer store up until two weeks ago when he’d been fired.
What a loser, I think as I add the pink slip to the rest of the litter of Devlin’s life I’ve already taken from the drawer. It really doesn’t add up to much. When I put what this tells me about Devlin together with the reaction I got from Zeffy and Tanya earlier, I realize that, unlike me, Devlin doesn’t have much of a life to return to. I wonder if Devlin ever thought about that. Probably not—but that makes me stop to consider my own life, how easily it can be summed up. I have to ask myself, am I really much better?
What do I have except for my work? Not much. If I was to disappear—or if Devlin was to leave the city in my body—who’d miss me? People depending on me for instrument repairs or advice. My waiting list for guitars. The woman whose mandolin I’m working on at the moment. And that’s about it.
I shake my head. Don’t think about it, I tell myself. It’s just the depression talking. Only I’m not so sure.
I stuff the papers all back into the drawer. I’m about to shut it when I notice the edge of a small address book sticking up in one corner. I take it out and leaf through the pages. You could say this much for Devlin, I think as I look for the names of the women who’d come by earlier. At least the man has neat handwriting.
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