by Jill Smith
Imms makes the mistake of looking at B’s face and wishes he hadn’t. The feelings there would take hours to sort through, to piece together. B sits up. He climbs over Imms and stands beside the couch, brushing the dog hair off his sweater.
“Sorry,” Imms says.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, you don’t,” B agrees. “I don’t think you really know at all what it means to be sorry.”
“What’s wrong?”
B rubs his face. “NRCSE’s never gonna fucking let us go. If we move, it’s not gonna be a relocation, it’s gonna be a fucking escape.”
“Maybe that’s okay.”
“What’d Grena tell you, Imms, when you saw her? Did you talk about the fire?”
Imms shakes his head.
“So what? You told her everything was fine?”
“I just…I said…I was okay. Living here. We didn’t talk about the fire.”
“You don’t even understand what we’ve done, do you?”
“We lied.” Imms understands that much. “You said it was the only way.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Now the fire’s Vir’s fault. Vir, the only one of us who gave a fuck about being decent. And Joele, the shithead, is a medal of honor hero. All because I thought I could keep you safe.” B knocks on his own head, which strikes Imms as funny, though he knows better than to laugh. “There’s no captain in here. Just a coward who’d let an innocent woman take the fall for a truly cosmic disaster.”
“It’s okay,” Imms says. “I still love you.”
“Jesus.”
Imms isn’t sure where B’s mind is right now, so he waits.
B clenches his fist at his side. Releases. “I’m probably not the best fucking person you could love.”
The shock and hurt of his words is so great that Imms can’t even think about replying until B is already upstairs. Imms sits on the couch for a long time and thinks about Vir. That’s what’s causing B’s darkness, guilt over the original lie and the lies of omission that followed. Now people think Imms is a hero, that Joele’s death is tragic, and that Vir was a criminal. When really, it’s Imms who is the criminal.
Even if knocking the small fire off the table was an accident, he shouldn’t have been near the lab in the first place. B told him to stay away from the ship. If he had, Joele never would have made the fire. She, Vir, and Gumm would still be alive. And B wouldn’t feel guilty.
“I don’t care,” he says aloud. He’s looking for the spark that flares into anger. He wants to see how high the flame will go. “I don’t care. He shouldn’t have sent me away. I wanted him. I went to the ship because I wanted him.”
He feels something only halfway familiar, but he doesn’t think it’s anger.
Lady pads into the room and jumps up on the couch with him. She licks his face and fingers. “I’m probably not the best fucking person you could love,” he whispers to her.
Chapter Thirty
Imms gets an early Christmas present in the mail from Cena: an invitation to an art show at her school where her drawing of Imms will be displayed.
Cena wouldn’t let Imms see the drawing while she was working. When he was done posing, she said she was going to take it home and do some more work on the shading.
They all go to the art show together—Imms, B, Bridique, Cena, Mary, Don, and Dave. Imms wears a scarf and a thick cap pulled to just above his eyes, but people still notice his skin.
“Cool, the alien!” one child shouts.
Parents corral kids in their arms, stare at Imms in fascination, anger, horror. One mother offers him a tentative smile.
Looking at all the finger paintings and half-scribbled sketches in the room, it is clear that Cena is very gifted for her age. Imms thinks the portrait looks like him—not just the gray skin, but she has captured the broken surfaces of his eyes, the pale line of his mouth.
“Do you like it?” Cena asks. She folds her arms and stares at the drawing, head tilted to one side.
“I love it,” Imms says. “It really looks like me.”
“Thanks. I wanted it to show how you always look sad.”
“I look...?”
“It’s great, sweetie,” Brid says.
Cena watches Imms. “I should have made your nose bigger,” she says softly.
*
The next day B gets a call, which he takes to the bedroom. Imms hears his voice, low and terse, behind the door. When he comes out, he says, “Apparently the school was off limits to you.”
“Why?”
“Beats the hell out of me. The kids were excited to see you, the parents were a little nervous, but everyone survived.”
“I’m glad we went.” Imms goes back to his book.
“Me, too. Except NRCSE’s gonna add that to the list of reasons I’m an unfit handler.”
Imms looks at the pine swags on the mantle, the red velvet bows. As promised, Bridique came over last week while B was at work, and she and Imms made it look like Christmas fucking exploded. Packages sit under a small tree, mostly from B to Bridique and Mary “I don’t know where they come from,” Brid said. “It’s like Great Whites mating—no one’s ever actually seen him shop.” Imms’s gift to Mary and a tiny box from Imms to Bridique—a necklace with a lion pendant are also under the tree. His vase for B is still at the Potter’s Wheel. It is almost done; it just needs another coat of glaze. He and Brid are going back tomorrow to finish. There is nothing from B to Imms, but Bridique assures him this is because B has gotten him something way too awesome to go under a tree.
“I don’t want to live anywhere but here. I don’t want to move.” He knows it’s true as he says it. It’s not just that he doesn’t want to live in a lab. He doesn’t want to leave this house. This town. Mary and Brid.
He looks at B and thinks he sees something collapse. But B nods. “Okay.”
“I don’t mean never,” Imms says. “Just not now.”
“That’s fine.” B picks pine needles out of the carpet.
“Will Brid ever get Cena back?”
B throws the needles in the trash. “I don’t know. Cena’s father wants to keep Brid away from her.”
“Is Don helping Brid get her back?”
“Who told you that?”
“Dave.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with Don and my sister. I don’t care to.”
Imms gets up and goes to the kitchen to make scrambled eggs. B usually compliments Imms when he cooks, says something about how this is the best human skill Imms could have learned, and how he’ll have to keep Imms around a while. Imms hopes he’ll say something now. He wants to do something nice for B. Scrambled eggs taste like puke, but B likes them, and Imms can swallow them without chewing.
Imms takes the eggs out of the fridge.
B walks in. “Eggs?”
“For you.”
“I’m going to work for a couple of hours,” B says. “So you can make something you like. Or I’ll give you money and you can go get something with Brid.”
Imms puts the egg carton back in the fridge. He sees a long day alone and bored, and that frightens him. He wishes he and Brid were going back to the Potter’s Wheel today.
“Stay out of trouble. I’ll be back around eleven, and we can do anything you want—park, movie, you name it.”
He shuts the door. Lady whines.
Imms could call Dave, but he doesn’t feel like video games. He doesn’t feel like lunch with Brid, or books, or movies. He curls up on the couch and tries to enjoy being alone with the smell of the Christmas tree. Somewhere on the street he hears carolers. He sits up. Turns on the TV.
“—caused quite a stir last night when it showed up at Plainview Elementary’s art show,” says Elise Fischer, Imms’s favorite local news anchor. “The Silver was accompanied by the captain of the Silver Planet mission and the captain’s family. We turn now to Planetary Integration specialist Veronica Stuart. Veronica, tell us, should the Silver have
been allowed to attend the art show?”
“Well, Elise, the interesting thing about last night was how positively children reacted to the Silver’s presence. There were no tears, no screams of terror.” Both women laugh. “The only ones who looked worried were parents. And that may not have as much to do with the Silver’s presence as with the rules posed by our government: Do not approach the Silver, do not talk to the Silver. Don’t come within x number of feet—”
“The Silver was recently spotted Christmas shopping at the mall, am I right?”
“Yes, I did hear that.”
“So how do these rules apply to store employees? They’re paid to provide customer service. That means greeting the customer, handing the customer change, making contact. How do the rules apply to those who might be interacting with the Silver in a professional capacity?”
“Well, I think that’s a different story. The government is trying to prevent people from harassing the Silver and its handler. At the same time, the National Research Center for Space Exploration, which oversees Imms’s integration into Earth life, has announced that it wants to observe the creature in more public interactions. So I think we’re going to see more of Imms in places like the mall.”
“Schools?”
“Given the lack of incident last night, I see no reason why Imms should be banned from community events like the art show.”
“Thank you so much Veronica. We have to take a break. Coming up: are the growth hormones given to chickens—”
Imms turns to cartoons. Cartoons are funny, colorful. Cartoons don’t call him “it.” Cartoons don’t even know he exists. Except that’s not true. This episode centers around the main character getting a pet Silver for Christmas. Imms turns off the TV. He is everywhere on Earth, and he is nowhere. He is in human thoughts, on their TV screens, in their conversations. He is in one small house. What is the point of coming to a new world, if you are assigned only a corner of it?
He stands up. He makes scrambled eggs even though B is not here. He chews them. They wobble and come apart in his mouth and are not so bad.
*
B tried to ignore Imms’s face when he told him he wasn’t going to the Christmas Eve light show.
“Not really my thing,” he’d said. “But you’ll have fun with Mary and Brid.”
He knows Imms wants them to spend Christmas Eve together, and they will. He just needs Imms out of the house for a few hours so he can set up.
He whistles as he rolls the fifty-gallon barrel into the bathroom. What he’s whistling isn’t quite a Christmas carol, but it has a bit of a “Jingle Bells” flavor. He pulls the barrel upright. What he’s done will get him fired, probably worse, if anyone at NRCSE finds out, but it will be worth it. One of the perks of being a hero and surviving a tragedy is that people don’t ask a lot of questions when they see you somewhere you’re not really supposed to be.
He spends over an hour getting everything ready. Then he sits on the couch, intending to read until Imms gets back. He can’t concentrate. He goes to the tree to investigate a slender rectangular package to him from Imms. It is surprisingly heavy and rustles when he shakes it. Whatever’s inside must be packed in plastic. He smiles, trying to imagine Imms and Brid Christmas shopping together. He’s glad that Brid has taken such an interest in Imms, and that Imms isn’t put off by Brid’s…Brid-ness. He remembers how much Brid hated Matty at first. How nervous he’s always been, introducing friends and boyfriends to Brid.
Mary calls when they are leaving the light show. Anywhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour, depending on traffic. B turns out the lights, so that only the tree and the pine-swagged electric lantern on the mantle glow. He puts Lady in her kennel. He goes into the bathroom and checks one more time that everything is perfect. He waits.
Imms comes in, excited. “B, you missed a fucking Santa that could twirl a Christmas light lasso….Why are you in the dark?”
“Spend too much time with my sister and your mouth’ll rot.” B pats the couch. “It’s mood lighting. Sit down.”
Imms does. “Mood lighting?”
“I know we’re doing presents tomorrow at Mom’s. But I’d really like to give you my gift tonight. There’s, um, a couple parts to it.”
B watches Imms’s face carefully. Imms looks surprised, then pleased. “Okay. Should I give you mine, too?”
“Only if you want to. Mine needs to be just between the two of us.” B kisses him. “I don’t want you to think about, or worry about anything tonight, okay? Just let me—give.”
“Okay,” Imms says softly.
“Take off your clothes and lie down,” B says.
Music is playing. Not Christmas music, not classical. Both seemed wrong for this. B opted instead for an instrumental album Brid gave him years ago by some Bulgarian string group she was into. “It sounds like what would happen if someone took all the fierceness out of the world, but left all the strangeness,” she’d said. This is B’s first time listening to it, and Brid’s right.
B watches Imms remove the last of his clothing, then moves so Imms can stretch out on the couch.
“Facedown,” B says.
No candles. B would have liked candles, but no fire. Not for Imms. The lantern light is close enough. B takes a moment to study what’s in front of him. Imms’s face is buried in the cushion. B takes in Imms’s long neck, his slender shoulders, the vertebrae outlined under shimmering skin. His spine looks like a dinosaur tail. B’s gaze lingers in that lovely hollow at its base, then follows both legs at the same time, like standing at a fork in a road and seeing two futures.
Imms’s skin is slightly dappled in places but has no moles, no freckles or pimples, no hair. Imms’s heart approaches B lazily like an old happy dog. B puts a hand out and touches Imms’s side where it glows.
A spell is in place; a feast is before B. A world unknown is waiting for Imms. B guides Imms into that world, massaging the nape of his neck, working his way down, going slower, deeper into the tissue. He imagines he is taking Imms apart, very tenderly, peering between Imms’s joints, unscrewing appendages and pouring himself into the holes. He feels Imms surrender, go completely slack. He nips the top of one thigh. Imms tenses and whimpers. B smiles. A reminder that the unknown world might not all be gentle.
Finally, he rolls Imms over. Imms’s eyes are wide, asleep, confused. B crawls on top of him and kisses him. He makes it the kind of kiss you float on, dream in, the world knocks and you don’t answer. Imms matches it perfectly.
“Come on,” B whispers, holding out his hand.
B leads Imms into the bathroom. Watches him take in the tub of silver water and the champagne flutes filled with apple cider on the tub’s ledge. B has pulled a standing lamp in to replace candles and wrapped a garland around it—messy, imperfect, but the best B could do. At the lamp’s base is a Tupperware container enclosing a single wrapped package. “I didn’t want it to get wet. You can open it at the end of the night.”
Imms can’t stop staring at the water in the tub. “Where did you get this?”
“I stole it,” B says, kissing the back of Imms’s neck. “Don’t tell anybody.”
They get in together. The water is cold, nothing B could do about that. Imms doesn’t seem to notice, but B grimaces as he sinks into the opaque water. The two of them in the tub is a tight fit, and B thinks maybe their combined body heat will make it tolerable.
This water smells strange, almost sweet. Their conversation winds down until Imms rests with his head against B’s chest, no sound except their slow, overlapping breaths and the occasional plinks of the water as their bodies shift.
“You’re half asleep,” B murmurs. “Let’s get out and go to bed. You still have to open your gift.”
B stands and helps Imms up. Silver droplets fall from them. B is almost envious of the way Imms glistens. The water does nothing to B’s own skin. They step from the tub, and B wraps Imms in a towel. Then B leans down to unplug the drain.
“No!�
� Imms says. “Leave it.”
“Overnight?”
“Forever.”
B laughs. “We can’t keep using the same bathwater.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s dirty.” B reaches for the plug once more.
“No! Put it somewhere else. However you brought it here, put it back and keep it.”
“I’m not going to keep a fifty-gallon barrel of used bathwater in my house.”
Imms pulls B’s wrist. “Please.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” B hates the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, because they aren’t true. He understands exactly why Imms wants to keep the water, and the reason is not silly at all. But the water has a very different effect on B than it has on Imms. It reminds him of months of cold darkness, of loneliness, of not being human. It reminds him of tearing Silver skin just to watch blood flow. To Imms, the water is something to cling to. A sad souvenir of home. B has tolerated it, appreciated the joy it brings Imms. Now he wants it gone.
He pulls the plug. The silver water is sucked down the drain with a gurgling noise.
Imms plows into him, grabbing the arm that holds the plug. For an instant, B is too startled to respond. He twists his arm out of Imms’s grip, and puts his other hand out to keep Imms back. Imms lunges forward again. “Put it back, B. I mean it.”
“Are you pissed at me?” B asks.
“Yes I’m pissed at you! I’m so pissed. You can’t do this. You can’t!” He pounds B’s shoulder with a fist, not hard enough to hurt, but B feels the emotion behind the action. “If you don’t give me that right now I will bury you.”
B almost smiles at what are undoubtedly Bridique’s words coming out of Imms’s mouth. But he is too disconcerted, almost frightened by Imms’s genuine anger. He half wants to continue the argument, up the ante, just to see what Imms will do. But he can’t do that, especially not on what’s supposed to be a perfect night. “Easy, easy, easy,” he says, holding up both hands.
Imms snatches the plug and kneels over the edge of the tub, shoving it in place as the water swirls around his wrists. He remains on his knees for a moment, hands in the water, breathing hard.
