“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Lev says, finally catching his breath. But as he looks at Connor, he can see that he’s got his own issues. He’s walking with a cane, and even though he’s wearing a sports coat, Lev can see seams on his wrists, along his neckline—and even along his jawline. He suspects there are many more beneath his clothes that Lev can’t see.
“What happened?” Lev asks.
Connor shares a loaded glance with Risa, then says, “Let’s just say I had a gardening accident.”
Lev accepts it without further question, knowing that with Connor sometimes it’s best not to probe. It suddenly occurs to Lev how long it’s been since he, Connor, and Risa have been together—but in a way, it’s the first time, because until today, they were never truly together. When Connor kidnapped him, Lev was a tithe, who ran from both of them the first chance he got. Then, when they met again at the Graveyard, Lev had already detached himself from everyone and everything. He was already a clapper. But now all three of them have come out of their own gardening accidents, and are truly in the same place. Wherever that is.
“Well, the important thing is that you’re here,” Lev says. And then he realizes something. “But . . . why are you here?”
“To see you, of course,” Risa tells him. “Cyrus told me you’d be here.” Then she turns to CyFi. “Hi, Cyrus. Good to see you again.”
“Wait a second,” says Lev. “You two know each other?”
But before Risa can answer, a guitar begins to play, and Lev gasps—almost going into a coughing fit again—because he recognizes the music right away. That’s Wil playing! Lev turns to see Camus Comprix sitting in the center of the circle—one of the few grooms actually wearing a tuxedo. More so than ever, he expresses Wil’s soulful music so perfectly, Lev could swear Wil is really there.
In a moment Una comes down from the main house, flowers and ribbons woven into her long hair and wearing a traditional native gown. She doesn’t smile, but maintains an unreadable expression that speaks of more emotions than can possibly mix.
She enters the circle, and in front of the minister, Cam takes Una’s hand. But when the time comes, it’s someone else, a man with Wil’s voice, who speaks the vows, and Una looks into the eyes of yet another when she says hers. And although she exchanges rings with Cam, when the minister says, “You may now kiss the bride,” that honor goes to someone else entirely. Lev finds his internal compass spinning, and he wonders how something can be so beautiful and so horrible at the same time.
“That’s going to be one crowded wedding bed,” says Connor, and Lev can’t help but laugh, but he quickly settles back toward somber. This commune, this wedding—it’s all collateral damage from unwinding. Even if the impossible happens, and the Unwind Accord is overthrown, they’ll all still be tallying the psychological cost for years to come.
“I wanted to show you this,” Risa tells him as Una and her entourage of grooms lead the way to the main house for a small reception. Risa holds out her right arm to show that there’s a name tattooed on her wrist.
“You too, huh?” It doesn’t surprise him. It’s become the thing to do. Everyone is getting the name of an Unwind inked on their right arms. The idea is that it’s in a place where they will see it every single day. The running gag is that Washington politicians should get them tattooed in their colons.
“Is Bryce Barlow someone you knew?” Lev asks.
Risa looks dolefully at the name on her wrist. “Just like the names on you, he’s a boy I’ll never meet.”
“Did you hear the latest?” Connor asks. “Someone’s proposing they build a memorial out of the old arm of the Statue of Liberty, and engrave it with the names of everyone who’s ever been unwound by the Juvenile Authority.”
Lev shifts Mahpee on his shoulder and smiles at both Connor and Risa, trying to take a mental snapshot of this moment, so he can save it forever. “I hope they do,” he says. “And I’m glad our names won’t be on it.”
77 • Cam
The groom who got the ring moves through the reception, listening to other people’s conversations.
“If Parental Override passes the Senate, I hear the entire Tribal Congress is threatening to secede from the union—not just the Arápache,” says a woman Cam thinks has Wil Tashi’ne’s liver. “That’s dozens of Chancefolk tribes. We could have a second Heartland War on our hands.”
“It’ll never happen,” says the taller of CyFi’s fathers. “The president has vowed to veto if it passes.”
Several of the wedding participants—ones who share parts of Wil’s cerebral cortex—bond over connected memories. Cam wonders if they have a grand feeling of Wil’s presence among them. For Cam, with all of the anxiety of the day—slipping a ring on Una’s hand, and her slipping a ring on his—he can’t be sure what he feels. He knows he experiences Wil’s presence every time he plays guitar, though. For him, that’s enough.
He tries to join the meeting of the minds, but as always, the instant he enters the conversation, the whole focus shifts to him.
“I think it’s great what you did, Camus. Can I call you Camus?”
“Those bastards at Proactive Citizenry really had it coming.”
“That awful woman should be locked up for life.”
He politely excuses himself and slips away, listening in on conversations, hoping they don’t see him and shift their conversation to him. Once upon a time, all the attention might have swelled his head, but his head has been swollen and deflated so many times, he’s become immune.
Connor, who’s been eyeing him since the reception began, finally makes an approach, looking a little pained and awkward as he does. “Empathy,” Connor says, then clears his throat. “What I mean to say is that I get it now, and I just wanted you to know.”
Cam has no idea what “it” he gets, until Connor explains his run-in with a little kitchen gadget named UNIS, and his whole dicing/slicing/rewinding experience. And then Connor asks him a question that perhaps no one else would understand. No one but Cam.
Connor grabs his arm, and looks into his eyes. “How do you fill it?” Connor asks. “How do you fill the . . . the space?”
And to Cam’s own amazement, he has an answer. “Bit by bit,” he says, “and not alone.”
Connor holds his arm for a moment more, letting that sink in, then walks away satisfied. In that moment, Cam realizes that he can’t hold on to any of the hatred he had for Connor. Now he can only admire him. All context of their rivalry is gone. He wonders why he ever disliked him at all.
Cam had no idea that The Girl was here. How could he? Even if he saw her from a distance, he’d forget the moment he looked away. She comes to him as he’s picking over the remains of the buffet, which was attacked as if by vultures the moment the ceremony was over.
“I wanted to thank you, Cam, for what you did for us that night in Akron.”
He remembers the night. He remembers Grace and Connor, but—
As soon as Cam turns to her, seeing her point-blank, his brain begins to resonate itself into convulsions. It’s so painful he has to look away. The agony of longing blends with the pain of the nanites doing their accursed job, and he has to hold on to the wall to keep his balance. This is how he knows who she must be.
“Cam, are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he says, making sure to focus on a point on the wall above her shoulder, seeing her only faintly in his peripheral vision. Even then the pain is too great. In the end he has to turn away from her entirely.
“Cam, don’t be this way. . . .”
“No,” he says. “No, you don’t understand. They made me . . . they made me . . .” But even as he tries to explain, his thoughts are scrambled to the point that he’s not sure what he was going to say. He doesn’t even know her name. How can he talk to her if he doesn’t even know her name? So he closes his eyes, sorts the pieces, and tells her what he can, as best as he can.
“You are the reason for everything I did,” he tel
ls her, keeping his eyes closed. “But now I need a new reason.”
Silence for a moment. And then she says, “I understand.” Her voice is so sweet. And so painful.
“But . . . but . . .” He has to get this out, because he knows it’s the only chance he’ll ever get. “But I can still remember what it felt like . . . to love you.”
He feels her give him a kiss on the cheek. And when he opens his eyes, she’s gone, and he wonders why on earth he’s standing by the buffet with his eyes closed.
• • •
The reception barely lasts an hour. The eyes are the first to leave, apparently having seen enough, and the other bits and pieces of Wil Tashi’ne are quick to follow. Through the whole reception, Una has been noticeably absent. Cam finds her sitting on the back steps of the main house alone, her ribboned hair pulled forward in an attempt to hide tears.
He sits beside her. His presence doesn’t chase her away. That’s a good sign.
“Was it everything you expected?” he asks her.
“What do you think?” she says bitterly.
“I think you’re a very loyal, and a very stubborn, human being, Mrs. Una Tashi’ne.”
Then he pulls something out of his pocket. “Which reminds me, I have something to show you.” He hands her his Hawaiian driver’s license. She looks at it, unimpressed.
“So you can drive. Big deal.”
“It is a big deal. This is an official ID. After what happened on Molokai, the state legislature passed a special referendum declaring that I am officially a human being. So now I actually exist. At least in Hawaii. The rest of the world isn’t so sure.”
She hands it back to him. “You don’t need a license to prove you exist. I know you exist.”
“Thank you, Una,” he says. “That means a lot to me.” Although he’s not sure if she believes him.
“So what will you do now?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Lots of things. I’ve been asked to play Carnegie Hall, and to be the grand marshal of the Rose Parade.”
“So you’re still the shining star.”
“I guess, but now it’s because of what I’ve done, not because of who I am. There’s a big difference.”
Una considers it. “You’re right, there is.”
“Of course, I don’t have Roberta to organize things for me anymore. Now I have an agent—and she’s almost as scary.”
Una laughs, which makes Cam happy. If he can make her laugh on this strange mournful wedding day, that’s half the battle. He takes a moment to look at the identical rings on their fingers. She sees him looking, and the moment becomes awkward.
“Anyway,” says Cam. “I’m going back to Molokai for a while. It seems no one knows what to do with all those rewinds now that the whole property has been confiscated by the state. They need someone to be their advocate, and to help them integrate themselves, mind and body.”
“You mean they’re just going to leave them there?”
“No one wants to deal with them, no one wants to admit they exist, and the public made a huge outcry when someone suggested they be euthanized.” Cam sighs. “Molokai was once a leper colony. It looks like the island will be holding to its tradition.”
Then Cam pauses. You fill the emptiness bit by bit, he thinks, and not alone. He takes her hand, rolling her ring between his fingers, and when she doesn’t pull away, he says, “I would like it very much if you came back to Molokai with me.”
She takes a long look at him. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I asked?” he says. “Because you want to?”
“I put that ring on your hand. But I didn’t marry the rest of you.”
“I know,” he tells her. “But the rest of me comes with the hand.”
She smirks. “Not if I get my chain saw.”
“Ah,” says Cam. “The good old days.”
Silence falls again, but it’s not as awkward as it was a moment ago.
Una flips her hair back from her face. Her tears from before have almost dried. “What’s it like on Molokai? Hot and muggy? What should I wear?”
“Does that mean you’ll come?” Cam asks, a little too eager.
Instead of answering, she leans forward and kisses him. Then she runs her fingers through his multitextured hair, and with the faintest of smiles, she regards his admittedly irresistible eyes, and she gently whispers, “How I despise you, Camus Comprix.”
Then she kisses him again.
78 • Connor
Once the grooms all leave and the residents of the Tyler Walker Revival Compound return to their business, the dusk is filled with the mild melancholy that follows any grand event.
“It’s Halloween,” CyFi notes, as he, Connor, Risa, and Lev help with cleanup in the main house. “So was today’s wedding the trick, or the treat?”
“The best of both?” Risa suggests. She takes Connor’s hand a little too firmly and he can’t help but flinch from the pain. “Sorry,” she says.
His seams are deep, and although the healing enhancers speed the process, there’s no escaping the aches of being rewound.
Lev shifts his clingy kinkajou from his waist to his back as he approaches Connor. “So what was it like?” Lev asks. No one has dared to ask Connor that question. Lev, however, having been to the edge of his own existence too, is one of the few who have the right to ask.
“Like . . . breathing out and never stopping,” Connor tells him. “While listening to disco.”
“No, not the unwinding,” Lev says. “What was it like to be divided?”
The only way Connor can see Lev anymore is to look right into his eyes. Otherwise all he sees are the names inked on his face. What he sees in those eyes is longing. A need to know so intense that Connor can’t look away.
“Did you go into the light?” Lev asks. “Did you see the face of God?”
“I think you have to get through the door before you see that,” Connor tells him. “Being divided is kind of like being storked on the welcome mat.”
Lev considers it and nods. “Interesting. I believe the door would have opened if the master of the house knew you were there to stay.”
Connor smiles. “It’s good to believe that.”
“What do you believe?” he asks.
As much as Connor wants to avoid the question, he wants to give Lev an answer that’s true. “I believe I’m here,” Connor tells him. “I’m here even though after what happened, I shouldn’t be. There’s got to be something to that, but right now I’m not going to unwind my brain again wondering what that something is. Let me think of water for a while before I have to think about it turning into wine, okay?”
He thinks Lev might smile at that, but he doesn’t. “Fair enough,” he says.
The kinkajou—a literal monkey on his back—now peers out from behind Lev with wide innocent eyes, but clings with claws that can kill. It reminds Connor that as much as Lev has changed, he’ll always carry the wide-eyed tithe somewhere within him. As well as the clapper.
• • •
Una and Cam escort Lev back to the Rez before leaving for Molokai. Out in the front yard before they go, Risa hugs Lev so tightly, she actually lifts him off the ground. Then suddenly she gasps, and apologizes, realizing she might have hurt him. But instead Lev is smiling. He smiles so rarely that when he does, it holds such joy that Connor can feel it from five feet away. He hugs Lev a little more gently.
“This way you won’t blow up, and I won’t fall apart,” Connor says. He finds his eyes welling up, and sees a tear on Lev’s cheek roll over Justin Levitz, to Marla Mendoza, to Cedric Beck, and off his chin.
“Thank you for saving me, Lev,” Connor says, barely able to get it out. Maybe he’ll fall apart after all.
“You saved me first.”
Connor shakes his head. “I used you as a human shield.”
“You could have let me go once you got to the woods, but you didn’t,” Lev points out. “Because you didn’t want me to go back. You didn’t
want me to be tithed.”
Connor can’t argue with that. He might have grabbed Lev out of desperation, but he held on to him out of compassion, although he really didn’t know it at the time.
“Do you still have the scar from where I bit you?” Lev asks.
Connor looks to his right forearm. Of course the bite mark isn’t there. “Sorry, the scar went with the arm.” But he notices for the first time that the shark’s teeth are almost exactly where the scar from Lev’s bite would have been.
The kinkajou, apparently wanting some attention climbs from Lev’s hip to his shoulder, and starts pulling at Lev’s ear. He seems impatient for Lev to get on with his day. To get on with his life.
“Take care of him,” Connor says.
“I will,” Lev answers.
“I was talking to the monkey.”
And Lev smiles, big and broad.
• • •
At the insistence of CyFi, Connor and Risa stay the night. The day has been hard on Connor’s healing body, and as he lies in bed, Risa gently rubs all his wounds with a special healing ointment that Cam gave them before he left.
“An early Christmas gift,” he said. “My second-favorite Proactive Citizenry product.”
Connor had been dense enough to ask him what his first favorite was.
“Me, of course,” Cam had answered.
The ointment is soothing. Warming. But it’s not just the ointment; it’s the touch of Risa’s hands.
“Remember back at the Graveyard, when I would massage your legs?”
“It was the best part of my day,” Risa says.
“Mine too.”
With all his wounds gently massaged, he rolls to face her. She kisses him, he takes her into his arms, and his embrace holds not the slightest bit of hesitation. Whatever else is wrong with the world dissolves into down pillows and fine linen sheets, and he finds that Risa fills that space left within him from being pulled apart and put back together.
Connor stays awake late into the night with Risa in his arms, wishing he could unwind time, so he could experience this night from every possible angle—not just passing through the moment, but living in it.
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