Wetware

by Craig Nova

  “Who’s that?” said Blaine.

  “Just a friend,” she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  May 2, 2029, evening

  BRIGGS HEARD the upward, steady, insistent clicking as someone came up the stairs of his apartment building. The footfalls had a cadence, and he imagined the shape of the stairs from the side, the Z of the steps as they went up to a landing, then switched back again, up to the next landing: the sound suggested this shape, a tap, tap, tap, tap, then a shuffle, and the tapping began again. Briggs thought of those times when he had come home in the afternoon, when the beveled glass doors had filled the hall with flecks of spectral light. He tried to remember what it had reminded him of. An old dance hall. The weight of a woman’s hair across his face, the movement of hips under a sequined dress, the smell of cigarettes and champagne, all of it leaving him with a sense of yearning. Then the tapping started again, and almost immediately someone starting pounding on his door, not with a closed fist, but with an open hand. He tried for an instant to remember the tug of a woman’s hand’s on his shoulder, or the pleasant drag of her on his chest and shoulders as she reached up, her eyes closed, to kiss him. He was amazed that he could take comfort in such a notion, but he did, and he sat there, clinging to it for a moment. Surely they had come for him.

  He opened the door.

  “Briggs,” said Kay. She looked right at him. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “But where?” he said.

  “Not here,” she said. “It can’t be safe here, can it? Come on.”

  She was wearing her raincoat over a blouse and a pair of jeans. Both of her hands were in her pockets. Her hair had been brushed, and she was wearing lipstick and athletic shoes.

  “Are you going to listen to me?” she said, stepping forward. She walked across the threshold, her eyes on his. She reached up to give him a moist, warm kiss. Then she took his arm and gave him a tug, at first gentle and even a little seductive, as though drawing him to her.

  “I’ll get my coat,” he said.

  She didn’t like this, but she nodded.

  “Be quick about it,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. “What’s the rush?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said.

  He took his coat from the hook behind the door and put it on. Then they went down the stairs, going around, the tapping sound doubled now. At the landing downstairs, she stopped and looked one way and then another, and they went out into the street. She hesitated there, but it was quiet. At the end of the block he saw the warm, yellow light of the apartments where families lived. The light from these apartments, particularly at night, had always left him with an odd sense of gravitation, as though if he could just get into the light, his desire for warmth or the touch of another human being or, better yet, a sense of being understood by someone else would be realized, although at the same time this ache was made all the stronger by the notion of the impossibility of doing more than just looking.

  “Where’s Jack?” said Briggs.

  “Jack,” she said. “Ah, Jack.”

  She shook her head and then looked down at the ground. Then she seemed to snap out of it, squared her shoulders, put her head up.

  “Jack’s dead,” she said.

  “Is he?” said Briggs.

  She reached over and took Briggs’s hand. Then she put an arm around his, walking next to him.

  “I feel cold,” she said.

  “What about Jack?” he said.

  She looked down again.

  “What’s to tell?” she said. “I did what I was supposed to do. Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

  “Kay,” he said.

  “Kay, Kay,” she said. “Kay, what? Kay, tell me you didn’t do it? Kay, tell me we can start over? Kay, tell me you love me? Kay, what? Kay, have we all got what we wanted from you now?”

  She looked up at him now, her eyes looking from one of his to the other. Then she jerked his arm.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “You know I care about you,” he said.

  “Well, I care about you, too,” she said. “I’ll tell you another thing. You don’t have to worry about Krupp. You hear me? I did that for you. He stepped out of his building, and I got Jack to do him, and then I got rid of Jack. By the book. You know what he tried to do?”

  “Who?” said Briggs.

  “Krupp,” said Kay.

  “He probably tried to offer you something, money, something,” said Briggs.

  “That’s right,” she said. “That’s absolutely right.”

  She jerked his arm.

  “Well, it didn’t work,” she said.

  She trembled under her coat.

  “Like I said,” she said, “I’m cold. We’ve got to get off of the street for a while.”

  They went up the gray steps of an art museum, which was in a building with columns that supported a large marble triangle, like the front of a temple or a court. It had heavy brass-and-glass doors, through which they saw the lobby, filled with white, brightly lighted marble. The doors, which must have weighed a thousand pounds, swung open with a metallic sigh of their hinges, and Kay and Briggs stepped into the main room. The lush silence of the paintings swept over them.

  “That’s it,” said Kay, pointing into another room. “There.”

  They sat down on a bench in front of a piece of marble sculpture in which Leda and a swan embraced. Leda’s leg was thrown over the swan’s back, her lips at the swan’s bill, her eyes closed. One of her hands was draped over the bird’s neck. The entire portrayal was of lust frozen in marble. The swan’s head was beneath Leda’s lips, tilted upward, at once demanding and supplicant. Kay got up and ran her fingers over Leda’s neck and shoulders, across the muscled calf, the carefully done hair. She spread her fingers over Leda’s stomach, feeling the cool touch of marble skin and muscles. Briggs sat on the bench, and when Kay touched the swan, he saw that one of her hands was bloodstained. She looked at him and then back again.

  She touched the swan, her hand on the swan’s neck. She caressed it, running her fingers up to the beak, the eyes, the slight opening in the bill. She tapped her finger against the marble, the tip-tip-tip coming as a kind of impatience.

  “Didn’t you ever think I was going to get angry?” she said to Briggs without looking at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I kept thinking it would be later, some other time.”

  “Well, the time has come,” she said. “And what do you have to say to me, now that I am angry?”

  “Kay,” he said.

  “Kay, Kay, Kay,” she said. “What makes you think I want to hear you say that?”

  She looked at the shape of Leda’s thighs and arm, at the swan’s bill, at Leda’s obvious shudder.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Oh, darling, do you?”

  Reassured by Leda’s muscled sides, she tapped the marble with a fingernail, and then leaned her cheek close to the marble, running it along the beak. The stains on her fingers made the marble seem very pale.

  “Here,” she said. “Take my hand. Are you ashamed to touch me?”

  “No,” he said.

  He took her hand.

  “Oh, darling,” she said. Then she pulled him up. “I’m the only one left now. And you know what? I’m not finished with you. I’m really not.”

  They went through the room, which smelled of plaster and old marble, and then out the heavy door, Kay leading the way. Outside, where it was dark, Kay jerked his arm, grabbed the front of his coat, and then reached up and gave him a hard, hot kiss, the heat of which left him instinctively reaching up for his mouth, and as he did so he felt the pistol in her pocket as it swung against him. She watched his eyes as he felt it, and then she took it out and used it to tap against the center of his chest. She took his arm again and they started walking, although their gait was erratic, since she jerked him and said, “Come on, come on, you bastard, you son of a bitch, you sweet darling, my love . . . ” Sh
e shivered as she pulled him against her, then shoved him in front of her.

  “Where are we going?” he said.

  “You’ll see, my darling,” she said.

  They went down the street, passing the signs in Russian and Bulgarian, the old bookstores with the windows boarded up, and stopped in front of Stone’s building. She had the key, and after she had unlocked the door, she shoved it open and it banged against the inside wall, a little puff of plaster dust rising from the hole the doorknob made in the wall. The two of them climbed the stairs, Kay shoving him with the muzzle of the pistol, and then stopping, taking his hand with an exquisite tenderness that only lasted for a moment and seemed to make her angry again. At the door to the practice room, she took out another key and shoved this door open, too. They went in and she slammed the door. The boom reverberated through the upstairs practice rooms. She took off her coat and threw it on the floor.

  The piano bench was in front of the window, and she sat on it and pushed him to a chair just opposite her. Beyond her, through the window, he saw some buildings and above them the moon in the night sky.

  “Don’t you dare say anything,” said Kay.

  “Why not?” said Briggs. “I have some things to say.”

  “What did I tell you?” said Kay.

  “I want what’s best,” said Briggs. “You know that.”

  “I warned you,” said Kay. “Didn’t I warn you? What’s talk? What’s that? Just a bunch of words.”

  She unzipped her jeans, pulled them down, pushed them around her ankles, and, in a moment of fury, started to unlace her shoes, but then ripped them off and threw them against the wall. She pulled her feet out of the legs of the jeans and kicked them away, standing in the sheer underwear she had bought, her legs white in the light that came in from the window. She unbuttoned her blouse with both hands, still holding the pistol, and when this became too exasperating, she ripped the blouse. In the moment, which Briggs saw with an unnatural clarity, the white buttons described an arc through the air. They hit the floor with a click. Briggs said, “Kay, Kay . . . ”

  Her hands reached out for him, grabbed his hair, pulled him against her chest, and as she did, the pistol making a hard tap against his skull, she said, “Darling, oh, my darling . . . ” She let him feel the soft heave of her breast, the powdery touch of her skin, pushed him into the warm and sweaty perfume of her underarms. She brushed her breasts across his face, her flesh flattening against his cheek, his brow, his nose. Then she shoved him away and brought the pistol up and put the barrel against his head.

  “Kay,” he said.

  “I warned you. Didn’t I warn you?” she said.

  She looked into his eyes, her pupils like black marble under a film of moisture. She took the pistol from his head and swung it up to her own, the muzzle passing his face, then she swung it back and put it against his brow. She hummed a snatch of music, something that she had always wanted to write, but which only came to her now. Then she sang, “When you wake, you shall have, hush-a-bye don’t you cry, blacks and bays, dapples and grays, coach and six white horses . . . ”

  “Kay,” he said.

  “Have you ever thought about the children we will never have?” she said. “Would it help if we gave them names? What shall we call them? Give me a name for the boy we never had . . . ”

  “Kay,” he said.

  “Kay, what?” she said. “Well?”

  “I’ve thought about the children we’ll never have,” he said.

  She put her head against his and gently tapped the hard bones of her skull against his.

  “Oh, me, too. At night I wake and hear them mewling, but it’s just a phantom, just some sound that comes from my imagination. Ah,” she said, moving the pistol back toward her temple, where she tapped it, thinking it over, watching him. She leaned forward and kissed him with that sudden, impulsive hot and wet touch, lingering against him.

  “Come here. Right now. I want you to kiss me. I want you to tell me you would die for me. That you would do anything, anything, that you would do what I have done for you . . . ”

  She leaned over him, dragging a firm nipple across his beard. She kissed his closed eyes, pushed his head downward to her stomach, the navel seeming small and cool, the threads of her underwear against his cheekbones, the insides of her legs smooth.

  “You still want me, even now?” she said. “Hold out your hand. Let me see the fingers . . . ”

  He held out his fingers. They were trembling. She kept her eyes on his.

  “Is that desire or fear?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t tell. All I know is that I love you.”

  She pushed her underwear down and stepped out of it, and then leaned close, a light brush of hair on his cheek as she pulled him against her lower belly.

  “I am going to miss ordinary things, like waking up in the morning and finding you there. Your warmth next to me under the sheets. I wanted to have coffee together and talk about the weather. A dream. A little gossip about the neighbors. Don’t you think I wanted that?”

  “I wanted it too,” he said.

  “But don’t you see?” she said. “We’re never going to get that. Never. Do you know what ‘never’ means?” She put the pistol against his head now. “Do you want to find out?”

  She took his head with both hands now and pulled it against her, saying, “Oh, forgive me.”

  He reached up and put his hands into the small of her back and then pulled her down onto the bench beside him. She put her head against his shoulder, but even so she bounced the pistol up and down.

  Stone came in, wearing a silk dressing gown, his breathing harsh, loud, his shape round there in the light from the hall. He came in and stood by the piano, the door still open. The pistol seemed enormous in her hand as it lay there on her thigh. His eyes went from it to the segments of muscle along Kay’s stomach, the definition of her rib cage, her chest and neck, the bones in her shoulders, his glance betraying the frank, intimate impulse that he hadn’t felt for years. But the shock of it, the heat on his face, the sudden rush of interest, only made him more disoriented and uncertain.

  “What is this?” said Stone. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Kay looked up at him and said, “And you.”

  “What about me?” said Stone.

  “All you can hear is music, but you can’t feel anything any other way. All you know is technique. Not the person playing it. And what do I think of that?”

  “Kay,” he said. “Please.”

  “Please what?” she said. “Please pretend that you felt something you didn’t? That you cared for me as much as what I played?”

  “My little one,” he said.

  “Shhhh,” said Kay. “Quiet. I’m giving you good advice. Just be quiet.”

  “Kay,” said Briggs, “let’s go home, to my place. Let’s talk things over.”

  “Did you say ‘home,’?” she said. “Home? Home?” She looked around with disbelief. “We haven’t got a home.”

  “Kay,” Briggs said.

  “Can’t you see?” she said. “We’re never going to have a home.”

  “I—” he said.

  “You what?” she said. She stood up, right next to him, her hip against his face. “No. Shhhh. There’s nothing more to say.” she said. She looked around and said, “Ah, well,” and then put the pistol to her head. Briggs felt the jerky shock in her hip, and when she fell away, the night sky was visible beyond where she had stood. He saw the moon, the ridges of mountains there, the Sea of Tranquillity, the debris that had come from endless impact, and as the sound filled the room, as Stone stood back, his face blank now, as though in the midst of the first instant of a practical joke, the moon appeared to undergo a transformation, the shadows becoming more distinct, darker, like a black stain on a sheet.

  CHAPTER 13

  May 3, dawn

  BRIGGS’S EARS were still ringing when he stood on the bridge that connected the two parts of
town. The air was cold, but even so he waited in the middle of the bridge, feeling the rumble of the cars that went by as he leaned over the metal railing and looked at the water. The air here was damp, and everything about it suggested the promise of night. It was hard to say just how the temperature, the breeze, and the dampness combined to make him uneasy, but the effect of them was nevertheless to leave him feeling vulnerable and exposed. He tried to recall the touch of Kay’s breath, her voice, her glance, but it only added to his sense of the breeze as being cold. He turned away, pulling up his collar, but even so he kept looking at the surface of the river, as though he could, by effort, by concentration bring back the sense of warmth he had had on the Ponte Garibaldi. Now the surface of the river, dark and streaked, left him with the certainty that he was alone. He stood up and started walking, trying to remember that tangerine glow that came off the walls in Rome, and the emotional certainty it suggested, but it was useless. What he saw was the road, the dark cars crossing the bridge. He put his hands in his pockets and started walking, ears ringing, looking up to the sky, but it was cloudy and smoky, and after a while he simply went on walking. The fever seemed to be diminishing, and as it slipped away, as the points of the chill became less distinct, he found that his relief was indistinguishable from a sense of loss. He walked across the bridge to get away from the sound of the water as it broke against the pilings below.

  At home, the clock said, “Well, no use crying over spilt milk.” She waited for a moment. “And there’s something else. I hear they’ve taken your name down from the walls. How about them apples? It never rains but it pours.”

  CHAPTER 14

  October 1, 2029

  BRIGGS SAT in his office, which was down the hall from the one he used to have. It was much better, on the corner, with windows on two sides. Much better than when he had been a contract worker. The light was soothing. When he looked out through the walls of the glass cubicle, he noticed that while people wore white shirts, they were letting their hair grow again. Not so many red shoes.

  He had been hired again after Phillips came to see him about a problem, a new disease that had been showing up in the less reputable parts of town, in flophouses and cheap hotels, among prostitutes and hustlers. It started like the flu, but soon the linings of the eyes, the mouth, the lips, and other intimate places started to turn black and itch. Phillips had come up to Briggs’s apartment and described the condition, and Briggs had said, “Yeah. I’ve been watching the medical reports.”