He stood up and rattled his head a few times. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he’d just awaken from his trance. “I—I had to do that.”
“Of—of course you did,” she said, straining desperately not to leap out of her chair and throw her whole body onto his like a sex-crazed koala bear. “I told you,” she said shakily. “I’m … I’m controlling your every move.”
“Why does that not bother me?” Josh remarked. “Eight o’clock, tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes,” Heather replied, using every last ounce of her feminine wiles to appear nonchalant.
Josh flashed her his overpowering grin and then he made his way to the exit without another word.
Heather sat in her seat for a moment, trying to answer one very important question for herself. And finally the answer came to her. The bathroom. That wass a perfectly acceptable place to go jump for joy. She shot up from her seat, hoping she could make it there before she started doing back flips right in front of the milk-and-sugar table.
Memo
From: L
To: J
Provide status report on subject B.
Memo
From: J
To: L
Preparations for subject B are progressing smoothly. Project may take even less time than anticipated.
THE STAIRS. WHY THE HELL HAD ED taken the stairs? Because the elevator in his building was taking too long, that’s why. Every additional minute of waiting had felt like slow murder.
* * *
Amnesia
* * *
Jeez. Brilliant choice of words. He wondered how many more times the word murder would be popping into his head unnecessarily. Probably as often as the images from twenty minutes ago were flashing through his memory. The thick black gun in his face. The ugly, robotic glare of his unexplained executioner. The sight of a man being punctured with bullets as his erupting body was driven to the ground. Get it out of your head, Fargo. Stomp it out.
That could have been Ed’s lifeless body on the street if that cop had shown up five seconds later. The thought of it was weakening his limbs, sapping what little energy he had left. But if he could just haul his ass up those freaking stairs and get back to her, then everything would be okay. He was sure of that. He just wished he hadn’t been quite so traumatized as to think that the stairs would get him to her faster.
Brilliant move. Nothing speedier than climbing the stairs on crutches.
Right now he would have sold his soul to be rid of the crutches. Anything to be able to pump his legs up those steps like it was three years ago. Leaping them in twos and threes, hoisting himself over the railings if he had to. That’s what he needed. He needed whatever it would take to get back into his room and back into his bed with Gaia.
Because that would be the cure: to simply delete the horrific incident and pick up right where they had left off twenty long and painful minutes ago. It would be just like pressing rewind. That was the only way he’d be able to stop his brain from spinning and his heart from reeling.
In fact, he was living it in his head already. It was helping him to drag his shopping bag and his clumsy butt more quickly. He could feel her hair against his cheek and the curves of her back spooned against him. The sunlight pouring through the window, lighting up her face.
Most important, he could hear the last words she’d said to him. The brilliant simplicity of those three words never ceased to amaze. Not to mention the way she’d said them. Totally unencumbered. Totally natural. As if she’d said them a hundred times before. That was where Ed planned to pick things up. Right from the moment that those three perfect words had fallen from Gaia’s lips.
He finally stumbled onto his floor, panting like an exhausted racing hound. Hallelujah. Home sweet home.
The overly painted stairwell door slammed behind him as he bounced his way down the dingy brown carpet to his apartment. He ripped open the front door and made a beeline for his bedroom—just a few yards from replacing the quasi-soothing images in his head with her real flesh and her real eyes, and her warm arms wrapped around his neck.
“Honey, I’m home!” he shouted, dropping the shopping bag in the living room. “How was your day?” he called out, turning into the hallway. “Mine was the usual. You know, waking up with the girl of my dreams, getting shot at by a psycho lunatic…”
Ed cut his comedy routine short when he entered his room. He’d expected Gaia’s arms to be wrapped around him before he’d even stepped over the threshold. He’d expected some tears of relief and an intense, suffocating bear hug that went on for five minutes without a word. He’d at least expected her to play along with his little domestic bliss number.
But what he got… was the back of her head.
Gaia was crouching down on the floor, searching under his bed. He waited awkwardly at the doorway for another beat as she pulled out her shoe and finally turned to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Her tone of voice was almost the exact same as the paramedics had used. Urgent and deeply concerned, but detached and efficient. Professional, even. Ed wasn’t at all sure how to respond. He smiled at Gaia, thinking that perhaps she might be messing with him. But she didn’t crack the slightest smile in response. Nor did she make the slightest move in his direction.
“Uh… yes” he said finally, almost shrugging. “I’m fine.” He sensed she was looking for a direct answer. She didn’t seem to be looking for the touchy-feely response. In fact, she seemed about as far from touchy-feely as a person with a beating heart could be.
“Good,” she said. She stood up and paced the perimeter of his room, peeking into the corners and under the furniture. “I can’t find my other shoe.”
Ed stayed glued to the doorway, following her with his eyes, unsure what to say. Had she been so traumatized by the last twenty minutes that she’d been struck with amnesia and forgotten their morning together? Maybe his recent brush with death had already slipped her mind? “Are… you okay?” he asked cautiously.
“I’d be better if I could find my other shoe,” she replied.
“It’s under the desk,” he said.
Gaia turned to his desk and grabbed her shoe. “Thanks,” she said.
She brought both her shoes back to his bed and sat on the edge as she struggled to pull each one on. Ed stared at her in this most bizarre and unexpected silence, watching her tie her shoes.
“Are you… going somewhere?” he asked.
“Yeah, I really have to go,” she said.
What? What the hell was she talking about? What was the game here? Ed didn’t get it. Or maybe he just didn’t know how to play?
“Go where?” he asked.
“Out”
The one-word response felt like a sharp elbow to the face. Silence was just about the only thing Ed could come up with in response. He began to rack his brain, trying to understand what on earth had happened to her since he’d last seen her in the window. “Gaia…”
“Yeah,” she said, sifting through a pile of clothes in the corner of the room.
“Gaia, what are you doing?”
“I’m looking for my jacket,” she said.
“No, I mean, what are you doing?” He stepped closer to her.
Her body swiped against his as she escaped eye contact and searched the other side of the room. “I just told you. I’m looking for my jacket.”
Ed gave in to another bout of silence as he studied every movement of her body, from her rushed, shaky gestures up to her cold, darting eyes. Okay, whatever this was, he could talk her back to earth, he was sure of it. Seeing him almost get shot must have induced some kind of post-traumatic shock or something, and he just needed to bring her back to that room. Because even though this cold and brittle girl might look like Gaia, it was obvious that the real Gaia had exited the building and left some monotone robot in her place.
“Maybe I should introduce myself,” he said, stepping toward her with his hand extended for a shake. “I’m Ed. Ed Fargo. Your best fri
end. The guy you had sex with last night?”
“Ed, please,” she mumbled, stepping away from him again.
“Ah, wait,” Ed continued, “perhaps you know me as the guy who was almost murdered downstairs. Does that ring a bell?”
“That’s not funny,” she snapped, shooting him a vicious glance. “There’s nothing funny about that.” The look in her eyes cut painfully to the center of Ed’s chest. She was right. It wasn’t funny. But at least she’d shown an actual emotion for a second. Though one second later she was ice-cold again. A complete stranger wearing Gaia’s skin.
She stopped in the middle of the room, slapped her hands on her hips, and let out a frustrated sigh as her eyes scanned the room. “Where is my goddamn jacket?” she asked with a groan.
“It’s on the goddamn door,” he said, stepping behind the door and ripping the jacket off the hook. He held it up for her at the doorway.
“Thank you,” she shot back, stepping closer to him and nabbing the jacket from his hands.
“You’re welcome,” he muttered pointlessly, still trying to cut through her dense mental smoke screen.
“I’ll check in with you later, okay? To see how you’re doing” She crammed her arms through the sleeves and made a move for the hall, but Ed planted himself in the center of his doorway, blatantly cutting off her escape route and leaving their faces much closer together.
“Can you stop this now, whatever this is?” Ed begged. “Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”
Gaia stared at him blankly. “I just told you, I have to go.”
Ed waited, hoping there might be more. But there wasn’t. He searched her eyes more deeply. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Okay, fine,” he conceded, trying the play-along-with-psycho-Gaia technique. “Then tell me why you’re leaving.”
“Because I have to,” she said, turning her eyes away.
“But why?”
“What are you, four years old?” She groaned. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Jesus Christ!” Ed hollered. “I just got freaking shot at, Gaia. Do you think maybe you owe me a little more than this? Do you think after last night you might have a little more to offer than your old-school cold-and-pissy routine?”
Gaia’s head dropped straight down toward the floor, every hair on her beautiful head hanging over her face. “Don’t yell at me, Ed,” she insisted. Was she insisting or pleading? Ed couldn’t even tell. Especially without seeing her face. Her voice sounded so tight, like she was forcing every sound out from her tonsils. “Just let me go, okay?” she asked quietly.
Ed tried to tip her chin up to look in her eyes, but she backed away from his touch and crossed her arms—the clearest piece of body language in the world. Translation: Don’t touch me.
“Gaia,” he sighed to the side of her face. “Twenty minutes ago, we were… What am I saying, you were there. Weren’t you there? I was coming back here to make you pancakes. And on the way I had one of the worst experiences of my life since my accident. So that’s best experience in my life, followed by worst experience. Either way… I don’t see how you could possibly leave this room right now.”
“I’m sorry,” she uttered in that same strained voice. He could see her jaw clenching again and again under her skin.
“Don’t be sorry, just tell me what changed. I don’t get it.”
“Nothing changed, I just have to go—”
“No,” Ed moaned, slamming his hand against the frame of his door. “The truth, I mean. Tell me the real reason you’re leaving.”
“That is the real—”
“Spoken honesty” he interrupted, grabbing her shoulders and trying to get a lock on her eyes. “We were working on spoken honesty, remember? Tell me the truth, Gaia. The truth. It can’t be that hard.”
“Okay, fine!” she snapped, batting his hands off her shoulders. “The truth is… I just feel…” Her eyes were darting from corner to corner of his room—the ceiling, the floor, her hands, anywhere but his eyes. “I just feel… weird about… what happened, and I think… maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do.” She barely had enough breath to finish her sentence.
Ed leaned in to try and see her eyes again. “You’re lying,” he said.
“No,” she croaked. “No, I’m not.” Her head fell perpendicular with the floor again. “I’m just… not sure I feel… that way about you, and… and I think that what we did… was a mistake.”
“This is bullshit,” Ed said with a resentful giggle. “You’re talking crap, and I know it. Where’d you get this speech? Dawson’s Creek or something?”
There was no way. There was just no way she was telling the truth. He’d seen her face that morning. He’d heard her words. It had been the perfect moment. Two completely content people who’d finally found each other for real. Two people who wanted pancakes. There was no way he was going to let her rip their perfect night to pieces just so it would match the rest of her life. No way. If what she was saying was true, then why were tears beginning to fall from her supposedly uncaring eyes?
“It’s not bullshit,” she growled as a tear streamed down her cheek. “It was the wrong thing to do, Ed. That’s it. That’s all of it. We did it and it was a mistake, and now I want to leave.”
“I just don’t—”
“I don’t give a shit if you believe me or not!” she shouted. “And if I’d known you’d be such an arrogant asshole about it, I would have just snuck out while you were gone. Now, can you please just let me go?”
She shoved Ed out of her way, shot right past him, and ran for the door. She had the front door slammed shut within three seconds. And that was that.
But… what was what? What the hell had just happened? Everything coming out of her mouth had sounded so false, but her anger was so unquestionably real.
What if she was telling the truth? Was that possible? Ed felt a sudden painful gnawing in his stomach as he stared at his quite suddenly empty room. If that was the case, if she’d actually meant all the god-awful things she’d just said to him…
Then Ed had just suffered two attempted murders in the last twenty minutes. And Gaia had been far more successful than the hideous man in the black suede coat.
Official Letter of Resignation and Surrender
To whom it may concern (including such parties as my uncle, my father, the Fates, God, and Satan),
I’m sure it will please all the aforementioned parties to know that I, Gaia Moore, do hereby officially resign and surrender to your bullshit. I know I’ve made the same mistake time and time again, but I want it made abundantly clear that I will no longer make that mistake. You win. You will no longer need to torture me or my loved ones in order to remind me that I am not entitled to a relationship or a remotely happy or normal existence. Because your message has been received. Loud and clear.
* * *
GAIA
* * *
In case the above statement is not clear enough in and of itself, here is a more detailed list of activities and emotions I promise never to engage in again.
I, Gaia Moore, swear to never again:
Fall in love;
Wish for a boyfriend or a family;
Become too close to anyone (as that would result in their death or disappearance, as it did for my mother, father, Ella, Mary, and Sam);
Continue any kind of relationship with Ed Fargo; or
Be hopeful or optimistic in any way.
In exchange for these guarantees, I ask one thing and one thing only. That you do not harm Ed Fargo in any way, shape, or form. That he is permitted to pursue a normal life of his own completely free of the Curse of Gaia Moore, as I will refer to it from now on. I’ll never know for sure if that ugly bastard with the gun was actually sent to kill Ed or just to send me a warning, but it really doesn’t matter. I’ll never know for sure which one of you sent him (uncle, father, Fates, God, Satan?), though I’m pretty sure that I can narrow it
down to two possibilities (as in the two despicable humans in that list), and that really doesn’t matter, either. All that matters is that Ed has suffered enough undue torture in his life, including the very poorly executed pack of lies I was just forced to yell in his face, thus obliterating one of the greatest mornings of my life. I have now left him alone (as per your barely cloaked demands), so you have to do the same. You have to leave him alone. You have taken Sam, and that is enough.
I would also like to put down here for the record-not that it will matter to you, but just so the truth exists somewhere other than inside my head—that I am completely in love with Ed Fargo and know in my heart that what we did last night was not a mistake, even though you’ve so kindly reminded me that my getting too close to anyone is a mistake. I do not think I will ever love anyone in quite the same way that I love Ed, especially given the fact that you have already taken Sam Moon away from me. And I am more than happy to resign myself to a permanent state of misery if it will guarantee that Ed has a chance at a normal, happy life. (I’m quite sure he will get over me in no time, as who in their right mind would not?) In fact, the moment I left Ed’s room, I immediately began the “permanent state of misery” plan, and you’ll be glad to know I’ve only stopped crying long enough to write up this agreement. Then, I promise you, I’ll go right back to crying. That or beat the shit out of some asshole on the street (I hope you’ll still allow me that one minimal pleasure in life).
I would also like to state for the record that if you do not hold up your side of the bargain, if Ed is harmed in some way even after I’ve broken my own heart in a trillion pieces by avoiding him, then I will find you and I will kill you. That also is guaranteed (assuming you’re one of the two people I think you are).
So let’s hope we have a deal here so that I can move on with my miserable, pathetic life, Ed has a chance at happiness, and you can all go to hell (with the exception, of course, of you, Satan, for obvious reasons).
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