Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  Will was stunned even though he knew what Eicher had been like. Then he realized something else. “Wait, twenty years ago was nineteen seventy-nine—“

  “Ninety eighty,” Jeannie said in a hollow voice. “It was March.”

  “Nineteen eighty,” Will said. “But Eicher disappeared in the late sixties, just after you and I met. Are you saying you were with him the whole time?”

  “Yes,” she said, pacing again, not making eye contact, “But it wasn’t my choice. He convinced me that he was my real father, that my mother had died when I was a baby and it was just him and me, together against the world. I believed it for a long time even though he never wanted me to have any toys or friends and he was just so cold. When I began to doubt his lies I almost wanted to believe them despite how horrible he was to me. The alternative seemed even worse. I wanted to believe I was conceived just like everyone else, that I wasn’t just something nurtured in a laboratory. An experiment”

  “What made you realize he wasn’t your father?”

  Jeannie let out a harsh laugh. “His cruelty. I must have been a stupid kid. He was mean and cold, all the time and I eventually realized that there was no way he could be my real father and treat me like that. I didn’t even know I was a clone–doesn’t that sound ridiculous?—until I was a teenager. So the answer to your question is yes. I know I was his fourth try. He used to call me Number Four. Vier . . . kleine Zahl vier.” She shuddered as if a chill had filled the room. “He told me he incinerated the others.” Jeannie’s face was pale and she forced a smile. “I guess I should have Made in the U.S.A. tattooed on my ass, huh?”

  Will clenched his fists and said nothing. He didn’t move. He wanted her to get this story out of her system while she was able. If he stopped her these memories might fester in her for years. But it was hard. He had endured torture before, broken fingers, drowning, electrodes to the testicles, beatings, and through it all he had been silent. If he didn’t want to talk no one could make him. This was different. He had to force himself to sit quietly and listen when he wanted to scream and rage and dig Eicher’s moldy bones out of the ground so he could crack them between his teeth and suck out the marrow and shit it back into the bastard’s grave.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Jeannie said. “About me being, well, not quite human. Not as real as you.” She could feel his gaze, moving up the length of her body.

  “Oh, you’re human, all right,” he said. “As for my lack of surprise, let’s just say I put two and two together and got twenty-two.”

  “More like Catch 22,” Jeannie replied. “What about you? Are you a clone, of, you know, Elvis?” She let out a laugh that had an edge of hysteria to it. “Jesus, this sounds like a bad science fiction movie.”

  “Elvis who?” he asked, deadpan. Jeannie gave him a light slap on the arm. That broke the ice, or at least thawed it a little. She sat beside him again. “No I’m not a clone. I’m his twin. I guess my real name is Jesse Garon.”

  Jeannie looked confused. “Didn’t his twin die at birth? Like, in the thirties?”

  Will nodded. “That’s the story. Stern or one of his crew got their hands on me and had me frozen the day I was born. Just part of an experiment. They thawed me out twenty-five years later and here I am.”

  “Twenty-five years,” Jeannie said. “God.”

  Will shrugged.

  She looked at his face. I really want to touch him, she thought. She looked away and said, “For a guy who’s sixty-four, you’re pretty cute. Did Doctor Stern ever tell you where you came from?”

  Will shook his head. “I found out the truth when I got access to some supposedly inaccessible information. When I was in my teens I began to suspect it. Hell, all I had to do was look in a mirror. It must have been the same for you at that age. Once in a while I’d sing along to Elvis on the radio. When I was alone, of course, embarrassed about it and hiding it like I was jerking off. The voice I heard when I sang confirmed it. The joys of adolescence.”

  Jeannie stood again, pacing from wall to wall. “I was thirteen when I realized Eicher had begun looking at me in a way that was . . . wrong. So wrong. I was one of those kids who matured over one summer, like my body exploded or something. As a kid I was kind of scrawny, but once I had boobs and hips and a big ass boys and men started looking at me. I caught Eicher watching me more and more. It was creepy, and sad.

  “On my sixteenth birthday he bought me a kitten. Then he got drunk, raped me, and killed the kitten. The assaults became a feature, a regular thing. He considered me his creation. His property. He was able to beat me into submission and rape me without doing any lasting or noticeable physical harm. He was a doctor, after all. He’d slap me around, force himself on me, and then do a complete physical to make sure he hadn’t done any serious damage to his property. This went on . . . even after he discovered I was pregnant.”

  Will said nothing. He’d always carried his weird childhood around like some kind of mental armor as if the shit he had suffered, the beatings and the mind games, had made him tougher and somehow better than anyone else. Even though he would never admit it there were times when he almost luxuriated in feeling sorry for himself. The underdog. The antihero. No more. That part of him was dead now. He thought he was strong, a real tough guy. He couldn’t believe that Jeannie had been through all of this and could still function.

  “Home was always a prison,” Jeannie said. She seemed unaware that she had stopped pacing and was standing in one corner as if she were being punished, or punishing herself. “But once I was pregnant he built a room for me in his basement. A cage, really. When the baby finally came . . . it was a little girl . . . he said, ‘Now I have two of you.’ I thought that meant he would one day do to her what he had been doing to me. I couldn’t allow that. I just couldn’t. I decided then that he had to die. Either him or us. My baby and I would be better off dead than living the way I had lived. If we all died together it wouldn’t really matter. I even tried to kill her myself, the moment she was in my hands.” Jeannie let out a little laugh and sniffed. “I couldn’t. But I did manage to kill Eicher. And get away.”

  “The baby?” Will asked gently. She was crying when she looked over her shoulder; shy, sad, so lovely that it hurt to look at her.

  “I gave her up. I left her at a hospital and got out of the city. The next day I bought all the L.A. papers and saw an article about her, just a few paragraphs. It said she was healthy and would probably be adopted since her story was going to run on T.V. After that I sort of just wandered across California, up and down the coast. I worked odd jobs, and sometimes even picked up a little cash doing Marilyn impressions, but that felt too icky. I thought my old life was dead and gone. Until you showed up at the diner.”

  “I thought they were after me,” Will said. “I didn’t realize they were after both of us. The Compound considers us by-products of dangerous and unethical research. They want us disposed of, after they find out what makes us tick, of course.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Jeannie sounded hesitant. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. Will didn’t have to be a shrink to see that she was putting distance between them. “At the diner, and on the road.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “You killed.”

  Will gave a single nod. It didn’t mean much to him, but it seemed pretty important to Jeannie so he made it a grave, serious nod.

  “You murdered people, and didn’t seem to give it a second thought.”

  “I prefer killed.”

  Jeannie cocked and eyebrow, gave him a glare. “What’s the difference?”

  “When I was on the Compound’s payroll, I did commit murder. I took my time and arranged a nice neat accident or I found a comfy spot, selected my target, and that was it. Murder. What happened at the diner was killing. It was them or us. In war you kill. In self-defense you kill. As far as I’m concerned its only murder when there’s no opposing force.

  “Try telling that to a judge.”
r />   “Find me an honest one and I will.”

  “But you killed so . . . so casually. As if you were swatting bugs.”

  Will chuckled. “I was.”

  “How could you end a life and not give it a second thought?”

  “Hey, you just admitted you killed Eicher.”

  “I know. And I’ve thought about it a lot over the years.”

  “I never think of my kills. What’s done is done and can’t be—”

  “Stop joking about it! When you were like that, killing those people, you scared me. You seemed cold, capable of anything. I was terrified sitting next to you.”

  Will shrugged. “I think you’re crediting them with too much reason to live. The kind of assholes I plugged, they kill and hurt and threaten for a living. They would never have contributed any good to society, which is not a reason for killing, but if the total effect of their lives on the rest of the world was just a bunch of negatives, who cares?”

  “Everyone has a right to life,” Jeannie said, knowing her words sounded weak. “Everyone has some good in them.”

  “Are you going to try and tell me Eicher had a gentle side? You creamed him.”

  “That was different,” Jeannie said, her face darkening with anger.

  Will thought she would look awfully intimidating when in a temper. Few things unsettled him as much as a beautiful woman enraged. It was scary and hot at the same time. And he didn’t want to piss her off any further, but now she was making distinctions that implied I’m an angel and you aren’t. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes. He was threatening my baby. I told you that.”

  He looked her in the eye and said, “And you shouldn’t feel bad or guilty about killing Eicher. You did the world a big favor.”

  For a moment the energetic brightness faded from his eyes and he had the dead-eyed look he’d had in the diner when he’d been threatening the woman he questioned. It made a chill go up her back, but just as quickly that look was gone and Will was back again.

  “When I did it I had no choice.” Jeannie said. “But now I think it was an insane thing to do. I read a lot of books about Marilyn after I found out what I was. She was sad and talented and kind of crazy. Sometimes I worry about going crazy like she did and ending up locked away somewhere. It happened to her and I’m afraid it’ll happen to me.”

  Will said nothing.

  Jeannie was pacing the cell again. “Are you ever afraid of ending up like your brother? They say identical twins are almost like the same person. I’ve done a lot of reading on twins too. Because of my own situation, you know?”

  Will shook his head. “No. I may look like E.A. but I’m not into his kind of music, I’ve never used drugs and I don’t eat meat. He thought a moment and said, “I’ve never been a big fan of Jesus either. Then again, maybe Elvis should have been worried about ending up like me. I heard that when he got his first guitar—”

  Jeannie smiled, just a little one, when Will said gih-tar.

  “—what he actually wanted was a rifle. Or a bicycle. His momma insisted on the guitar. Smart woman. I like the road, and I like guns, and look where I ended up.”

  Jeannie sat beside him again and quietly asked, “Do you ever wish you had been able to meet him? Just once?”

  “Oh sure,” Will said with a vigorous nod. “When we were younger. Maybe I could have straightened him out. The problem with Marilyn and Elvis was not so much that they were both looking for someone to love, but that they needed some good friends who would be honest with them and tell them how badly they were fucking up their lives.”

  “Sometimes I wish I could have met Marilyn. Then at other times I’m glad I couldn’t have. It’s so weird. I don’t know if I should think of her as my mother, my sister, or my twin. It’s like a meal, you know? Marilyn was the first serving. I’m just seconds. But inside, I’m afraid that maybe she’s me and I’m her.”

  Will shook his head. “No. You’re you. There’s only one you and she’s right here beside me. I’ve seen most of Marilyn’s movies, and pictures of her everywhere, and they never did anything for me. She was pretty in a glossy Hollywood way, but that was it. When I look at you though, it’s like looking at a sunset.”

  Jeannie made a face and shook her head. “No. That’s just—

  “It’s true. I find myself watching you because I’m convinced that you’ll never again look as beautiful as you do at this moment. Your skin will never look as touchable. Your eyes will never catch the light quite the same way, creating a color I’ve never seen before and will never see again. I like your voice. I like the way you express your thoughts. I . . . I just like you. A lot.”

  For a moment Jeannie saw the boy Will had been, his face as earnest then as it was now. I like you. A lot. It was such a boy thing to say that it made her laugh softly, not laughing at Will, but laughing because she felt better than she had a moment ago.

  “No one’s ever spoken to me like that before,” she said.

  “No one has ever gotten to me like you have, Jeannie.”

  She leaned toward him, just a little, but her hands were clenched tightly in her lap. “I like you too, but I can’t . . . I’m afraid that I’m like her, and I’m afraid that men, all men, not just Eicher, are attracted to me because I’ve got her face and, you know, her ass. I’ve read lots of books about her. I like the same food. I like the same perfume and I had to force myself to wear something different. I’m scared all the time like she was, but sometimes I have these urges to just do something that will shock the shit out of people. I’m shy, but sometimes I feel almost supernaturally powerful when I see the effect I have on men. But Marilyn went crazy. She was crazy and scared and alone. And I’m her clone. She was more than my mother. She was me. I’m just a big piece of her and that means that one day I’ll just go mad too.”

  She leaned into Will. He put an arm around her and she hugged him, her grip more of a desperate clutch than a hug.

  Will thought on it a moment and then shook his head. “You aren’t like her.” She didn’t say anything. What, did she think he was humoring her? He put a hand under her chin and raised her face to his. God, those eyes.

  “Listen to me. You aren’t like her. You started out with the same materials, but ever since the moment you were born you’ve been a different person. You haven’t lived one single moment that she did, and all of the things you’ve experienced, good and bad, have made you a different person. You are Jeannie Norman, not Marilyn Monroe. You can dye your hair again. Get a nose job. Study auto mechanics or medicine or the Kama Sutra. Change your name. Pierce your nose or nipples or whatever. You are and will be anything you choose. You’ve been that since the beginning. Every second of your life, every heartbeat, every breath has been different from hers. You’re you. And I’ve fallen in love with you, not her. Hell, I think I fell in love with you before I ever heard of Marilyn Monroe, when we were kids. I fell in love with the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, someone who tried to make me feel better because she cared about a complete stranger.”

  Now it was Will’s turn to be afraid, afraid that he just freaked her out, came on too strong, went too far.

  “Do you . . . really love me?”

  “Yeah. Remember what I said? I’m the love of your life.”

  “I think I love you too,” she said, speaking slowly. “It’s funny. Even as I say those words I can feel my love growing inside me. You’re the first person who has ever loved me for me alone, and not for the color of my hair or the way I walk.”

  “It’s a damn sexy walk, though,” he said with a grin.

  “And when you hold me, it’s the only time in my life I’ve ever felt safe.”

  “You’re the only thing I’ve wanted to hold on to for a very long time.”

  Jeannie stood up and looked down at Will. She’d come to a decision and wanted to act on it before she chickened out. It was like something out of a bad movie, but if she was going to die, if the people who ran the Compound were going to make her
disappear, there was one more thing she wanted to do in life. She wanted to be loved, and she wanted to be purged of her old pains and fears. And she couldn’t tell Will she had the undeniable feeling that after tonight, everything would be different.

  There was a darkness looming ahead.

  “When Eicher was . . . doing what he did, it hurt, Will. It hurt so much, and sometimes I can still feel it and I want that hurt to go away. Will you help me?”

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” Will said. For once he was completely in the dark. He had no idea what Jeannie needed but desperately wanted to help her.

  She reached for the top button of her uniform and gave him a nervous smile that made his stomach flip. Oh my, he thought. He’d had plenty of sex, but it was usually paid for and never really satisfying, so he’d nearly given up on it. There was of course the weekly wank, but that was just to relieve congestion, on a par with blowing his nose. He hadn’t slept with anyone for a while now.

  “There are cameras.” He said. “They’ll be able to see us even if we turn out the lights.”

  “I don’t care what they see tonight,” she said, holding her head high. Be brave, she thought. We could be dead tomorrow.

  He watched as Jeannie unbuttoned her uniform and let it slide to the floor. Her bra was lacy but not racy. Pretty, but sensible. Her panties were Jockey. Simple and comfortable. The way she filled her underwear fascinated him. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her socks, and sat beside him. His ghosts were curiously silent when they should have been singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

  “I’m nervous,” she said. She looked scared. “Those times with Eicher, they were the only times.”

  “It’s okay.” Will said. Jeannie trembled, and it nearly broke his heart even as part of him wanted her so bad he could taste it. He clasped his hands because his fingers were shaking. Jesus. I’m only gonna fuck. What’s the big deal? He hadn’t felt this unnerved in a long time. “If I do anything too fast, or hurt you, I’ll stop. Don’t do anything you don’t want to.”