The Unborn

by Brian Herbert

  CHAPTER 6

  After making sure that Riggio’s job application process was being handled by the personnel department, Meredith left the office and hurried down the street to lunch. Inside an unusual Italian-Thai restaurant, she found her fellow employee Nicole Sheehan already on her second drink. She had a tendency to enjoy her white wine a little too much.

  “Did you order your meal yet?” Meredith asked.

  “No, I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about our appointment.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” Meredith slipped into the booth across from her and explained that the young man who saved her life had shown up to ask for a job, and she’d introduced him to Johansen.

  A risk manager like herself (but with far less experience), Nicole was around ten years younger. She was a knockout, with large blue eyes, auburn hair cut stylishly short around her ears, and a trim figure. Her eyelashes were bright red, the surgical implants that some modern women were having done. Though Meredith had never gone in for such alterations herself, she thought she might someday, just for fun. But not red. Blue, perhaps. Nicole’s skin was pale and untanned, quite a contrast to Meredith’s. Though Nicole dated regularly, she had not yet found a man with whom she wanted to form a long term relationship.

  Now the two of them were surrounded by the conversational buzz of office workers. It was one of the new mixed ethnic establishments, combining the cuisines of different cultures into exotic recipes. Black-and-white waiterbots rolled from table to table, taking orders and delivering steaming plates of food, their mechanical systems whirring, clicking, and flashing. Overhead, ceiling fans circulated warm summer air. The walls were smooth white plex, the tablecloths red-and-white checkerboards. It always amused Meredith to see serene Buddhist statuettes on shelves, beside the figurines of ancient Roman warriors in battle garb.

  “So,” Nicole said with a smile, “do you still think your rescuer is cute?”

  “Well, he is quite attractive, if you like that type. But I didn’t hire him at the agency; Piers did. I just introduced the two of them, and Riggio impressed him.”

  “Riggio....” Nicole let the name roll across her tongue. “Sounds like the heart-throb love interest in a romance novel. Does he have tight pants and long golden hair, down to his shoulders?”

  Meredith laughed. “Not at all.” She brought out her smart V-phone, made a few entries to call up the agency’s personnel file on Riggio. His image had been just been taken and entered into the data base. He stared back at her with beguiling sea-blue eyes, while making a slight, enigmatic smile, above a firm chin. Riggio’s rugged handsomeness would turn the head of any young woman he passed; Meredith had not overlooked his good looks when she suggested that he might get a job with the agency. But that was not the reason she’d made the suggestion; there were many handsome men. No, there was much more about him that she liked, the way he took action unhesitatingly to save her life, his disarming, shy manner, and his surprising openness in admitting that he was experiencing memory problems.

  “Well, come on,” Nicole said, with a laugh. “Share the new guy with somebody else.”

  Meredith passed the smart phone over to her friend.

  “No long hair,” Nicole said, “but he’s even more good looking than you let on. This is just a facial shot, but I’ll bet he has big bulging muscles.” She stared across the table intently. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Well, he does have a good physique, and is kind of strong, I guess. He did climb up to the track to rescue me.”

  Nicole clasped her hands together and made a classic swooning gesture. “Oh, my hero! Is he going to wear tight clothes to work to show off those sexy biceps?”

  Meredith shook her head in dismay. A waiterbot appeared and took their orders, then rolled away. Nicole kept talking, babbling. Meredith liked her, but Nicole was one of those people who felt the need to constantly fill the air with words. Sometimes Meredith had to be in the mood for her, and this time she was not feeling it. Maybe the food would help. She was hungry.

  Not focusing on what her lunchtime companion continued to say, Meredith smiled at the sight of a nearby diner who had failed to separate the hot Thai peppers from her pasta. The woman’s eyes were watering. She could hardly talk. Sputtering and coughing, she quaffed a big glass of water. A man with her was pointing at dark little slivers of hot red peppers in her food, and was laughing.

  After the woman placed the glass back in a holder on the molded white table, it automatically refilled with water, from the bottom up, before resealing the bottom.

  “Did you hear me?” Nicole asked.

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind. It wasn’t important anyway.” She handed the phone back.

  Meredith socialized with Nicole on occasion, but felt they didn’t have enough in common to be really close friends. It wasn’t that Meredith was black and Nicole white. That had nothing to do with it. After all, Meredith had married a white man and had a child by him. Meredith thought about the tumultuous conclusion of her marriage to Zack. She’d blamed him for the tragic death of their son Travis, for driving their car through a dangerous neighborhood, trying to take a shortcut. A bullet had passed through the door, hitting the boy in the head and killing him instantly. Meredith had been in the car, too, and had objected to the route they’d taken, but not strongly enough, she’d admitted to herself later—something she’d never told him. She should not have allowed Zack to take that route, even if they were running late for a birthday party they were taking Travis to.

  Since that horrific day, there had been endless arguing between them, and finger pointing. She didn’t like to think about the terrible loss, and what led up to it. Even so, despite being divorced from Zack, she still cared about him, and thought often of the good times they’d had together, including backpacking and rock-climbing trips.

  The waiterbot placed a plate of Eurasian pasta and a glass of red wine in front her, and delivered a salad to Nicole, with another glass of white wine. Meredith’s stomach was upset by the memory of their child. At first she pushed her wine away, but then she took a long sip of it and tried to think about something else, anything else.

  Mostly the two women worked together and shared breaks and occasional lunches, such as the one today. Meredith’s ex-husband, Zack, had introduced Nicole to his close friend, Jack Davillo, an art history buff, and they’d lived together for a while before Nicole ended the relationship.

  With her butter knife, Meredith sliced a sliver of Thai hot pepper into little pieces and mixed it into her pasta. She, like the unidentified woman at the next table, had learned the hard way to be cautious of these peppers.

  “I can’t wait to get back to work,” Nicole said. “I’ll do everything to get that hunk to notice me,” Nicole said. “Short of disrobing in front of him.”

  Meredith laughed. “At least not in the office, right?”

  “Why don’t you give him a whirl? Who knows, it could work out.”

  “I’m too old for him.” Besides that, Meredith knew that Piers Johansen discouraged office romances in his agency, but did not absolutely prohibit them—saying they were only OK if they did not interfere with work efficiency.

  “You look younger,” Nicole said. “You look my age.”

  Meredith smiled. She’d been hearing comments about her youthful appearance for years, and they pleased her. Maybe something in the Creole pigmentation of her deep golden brown skin protected her from the drying, aging effects of the sun.

  “Are you still working on your novel?” Nicole asked. “The one where you promised to make me the heroine?”

  “I never promised you anything like that.”

  “Are you working on the book?”

  “Yes and no. It might only be a novelette, actually. I don’t want to try something too big and waste a lot of time doing the wrong things. I’m still trying to get the story going, but so far you’re not in it.” She grinned. “And if you were, you definit
ely would not be the heroine.”

  Nicole pouted, then grinned.

  For the last three years, Meredith had been trying to write. She’d attended creative writing classes in the evening at the local community college, had joined a writing group, and had read books about the creative process. But the actual writing effort was not an easy step, not even after all the preparation she’d done. It was hard, frustrating work, and a lonely endeavor. She didn’t like what she’d put together so far, the opening scenes of a Victorian murder mystery. She wanted it to have a good plot, but she also wanted to layer in social messages about women’s rights, and women searching for their identities in a male-dominated world.

  Carefully, Meredith separated her lunch into two approximately equal portions on the bluepene plate, resolving to eat only one of them and take the other home. She felt fat today, although people were always telling her how slender she looked. Before entering the restaurant she had secretly swallowed a proteo pill to suppress her appetite, a habit she hadn’t revealed to anyone. She wasn’t bulimic or anorexic or anything of that nature, but did worry incessantly about her figure. Each morning and evening she weighed herself on a professional doctor’s scale in her master bathroom. This morning, she had been half a pound heavy.

  She didn’t even make it through the half portion, and only had one more sip of wine. She never felt good when she thought about her dead baby.

  CHAPTER 7

  In the Wallingford district of Seattle, Riggio finished shaving with the straight razor, rinsed it in the sink, and patted on the after-shave lotion—articles from the toiletries bag he’d found in the car.

  This was a large room with a kitchenette and private bath. Meredith told him the room was available to rent, and introduced him to the landlady, an elderly black woman named Mrs. Doris Monroe. Meredith only lived a few blocks away, and had known the old woman since childhood, when they were neighbors.

  He went to the largest window of his room, which looked out toward the street and a ballfield on the other side, where men were playing softball. One team wore red-and-black tee-shirts with black caps. They were batting, and a big tough-looking guy with a beer-belly stood at the plate, waving his bat menacingly at the pitcher. It was fast-pitch softball, and underarm pitches were whizzing in from the mound.

  Riggio had been in Seattle for a couple of weeks now. The mysterious injury to his left shoulder still hurt at times, off and on, and not very much. The scratches on his arms had healed and he only saw faint red marks where they had been.

  Mrs. Monroe had taken an immediate liking to Riggio, and hadn’t inquired about his references. He felt the same about her, and hadn’t found it necessary to admit to her that he’d lost his memory. There’d been few questions from her, so maybe Meredith had already told her. Basically the old woman showed him a room on the main floor of her house, told him what the rent was, and asked if he wanted to take it. It was one of two rooms she rented out, with the other one occupied by a professor at the college, a man she rarely saw because he worked such long hours.

  She’d chuckled when telling him that, saying she had long suspected he was fooling around with his female students. It was an odd comment.

  Riggio also had a car to use now—Mrs. Monroe’s imported sedan—he just had to drive her wherever she wanted to go around the city, and he could use it. She had her own license, but at her age didn’t feel safe driving anymore, and said she was going to let it lapse. The situation was perfect for Riggio, because with his questionable identification and fear of going to authorities with his story of a murder scene, he could get around the city on his own without having to buy a car, as long as Mrs. Monroe didn’t need to be driven somewhere. If he was stopped, he had that Florida driver’s license—and had to hope it didn’t raise red flags if a cop checked on it.

  Mrs. Monroe smoked too much and was a talkative old lady. While riding in the passenger seat of the car she liked to tell him about her younger years, when she grew up in a poor black family in the deep south. She’d been in her Seattle house for more than fifty years, having inherited it from a woman she’d worked for as a cleaning woman. She still had hints of a southern drawl that came and went.

  She didn’t trust banks, so she kept a lot of money around the house, hiding it all over the place. Trusting him easily, she’d revealed this to him, though not where she kept it, and he hadn’t asked. Even so, Riggio had found one of the hiding places in a linen closet by accident, when he was looking for a towel and wash cloths. The money was not very well hidden there, so he imagined the rest of it would be easy to find, too. If he were dishonest, which he was not.

  He also liked her.

  Riggio heard cheering and shouting, and when he looked back at the game across the street the beer-bellied ballplayer was standing on third base. He led off the bag a few steps, toward home plate.

  Riggio turned and went out into the hallway, heading for the bathroom. Mrs. Monroe was taking a nap on the couch in the living room. She must have just fallen asleep, because a cigarette in the ashtray beside here was still smoking. A black Labrador retriever lay on the carpet near her.

  As Riggio walked by, the dog watched him, and its ears lifted a little. He’d tried to pet the animal earlier but it had pulled away, and seemed skittish around him. Mrs. Monroe said the dog was that way with all strangers.

  “Juju will get used to you,” she said. She told him to put his hand out for the creature to smell, and he did so, but that didn’t help. The animal pulled away, wouldn’t come anywhere near Riggio.

  It was Saturday now, and he had the weekend off. His job as a receptionist had been going fairly well. He was well liked by the staff, and Piers Johansen said if he kept doing good work he would be considered for promotion. One employee made him uneasy, though, Nicole Sheehan. She kept flirting, not bothering to conceal her attraction for him. Trying to keep to himself, he didn’t intend to ask her out, didn’t want anything from her.

  She probably thought he was gay, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t ready for a relationship yet, needed time to sort out his thoughts and try to recover his memories. If he was going to have a relationship with anyone, it would be with Meredith, not Nicole. But that seemed an impossibility to him, too. Riggio didn’t know who he was, didn’t know where he’d come from or where he was going. He couldn’t expect any woman to join him on such a shaky and unpredictable journey.

  He got in the car alone and backed out of a long driveway. Some of the plants on either side were crushed, from old Mrs. Monroe veering one way or the other before she gave up driving. She’d seen the signs of her own decline, and said gardeners were going to come in and do some work—and it wouldn’t be wasted now that she wasn’t backing out of the driveway any longer. She’d said it with a twinkle in her eyes.

  Riggio drove to the nearest market and shopped for his own groceries. Like the other roomer, he had cooking privileges in Mrs. Monroe’s large kitchen. He found that he wasn’t much of a cook, so he just purchased cereal, fruit, sandwich fixings, and packaged meals, which he kept in the refrigerator spaces she assigned to him.

  That evening he found himself dozing off in his room when he was trying to read a book, so he turned off the lights and went to bed early. He hadn’t been sleeping well since arriving in Seattle, hoped this would do him some good.

  He didn’t take sleeping pills, would rather do without medications of any kind. This night, as usual now, he was restless, and would drift off, only to awaken in less than an hour. The cycle repeated itself throughout the night, and sometimes he just laid there, unable to go to sleep.

  Now, finally, he drifted off.

  He dreamed that he was dressed like a woman and standing in front of a full-length mirror, looking at himself—but in the face a female version of Riggio gazed back at him coldly. It was more than clothing. She was softer than he was, with feminine curves and longer black hair than his own, with less of a wave. The sea-blue eyes were slightly larger than his own, accented b
y makeup, and the mouth and chin were a little different. But it was unmistakably him, or a variation of him.

  He felt a strong need to escape from the strange dream, but found himself frozen in place. Finally the image in the mirror flickered, went out of focus, and became a different woman, entirely naked this time—a redhead, and then a blonde, and then another with auburn hair... and finally back to the brunette, who was now herself nude. This time she bore a fiendish smile.

  Startled and terrified, Riggio awoke. He knew he was awake, because in low light he identified the familiar contours of the rented room, aided by illumination from a street lamp outside. He heard a low, menacing growl by the bed.

  He snapped his fingers. The room lights went on, and he saw Mrs. Monroe’s black Labrador only inches away, growling and baring its sharp teeth. Its eyes were feral. Juju appeared ready to lunge and tear him apart.

  Riggio grabbed his book off the nightstand, and hurled it at the dog’s snout, making a direct hit. The animal yipped and whined in pain, then turned and ran out into the hallway. He closed the door, locked it. Tomorrow morning, he would have a talk with the landlady about her dog. It didn’t seem to like him at all. He paid his rent, and shouldn’t feel threatened in his own room. Even so, he hoped he had not injured the creature.

  Riggio also closed the window, and barricaded the door with a chair.

  After such a strange event, he slept surprisingly well. At daybreak he lay there staring up at the ceiling, before swinging out of bed. He didn’t feel too bad.

  He opened the door warily, looked in both directions down the hallway. No sign of Juju, so he slipped on a robe and headed for the bathroom.

  But before getting there he heard screams outside. Riggio noticed the front door wide open, and went out into the front yard. Old Mrs. Monroe was out there, kneeling on the lawn and sobbing over her dog, which lay motionless on the ground.

  Riggio hurried to her. The dog had bled from its side. It was very dead, and appeared to have been stabbed repeatedly with something sharp. The snout where Riggio had struck the animal with the book appeared to be uninjured. This gave him some sense of relief, but not much.