by F P Adriani
My hand flew to my face, not too hard because I still had tenderness there—though, thankfully, it wasn’t a broken-jaw induced tenderness. But I was glad Nell had seen me today rather than a few days before—the swelling had lessened since.
I suddenly remembered my bruised, bandaged wrists. And as I spoke now, I whipped my hand back down, hiding both my wrists below the screen. “Nell, I’m fine. Really. So how are you?”
“What do you mean—how am I. I’m worried of course—about you. I haven’t been able to find out shit—”
“Don’t worry—I’ll explain more when I see you again. Right now, I’m kind of all talked-out about all the crap. We’re getting a flight out in three days, so we’ll be back in a week.”
“Oh Pia, I have so much to tell you, especially that the sentence finally came through—Ronin got thirty years!!!”
I had been so consumed by this latest insanity, I’d almost forgotten about the old insanity. “Well, that’s certainly good news,” I said now.
And then Nell explained that, as I’d suspected would happen, Ronin hadn’t gotten a death penalty because he’d pled so readily to the lesser non-conspiracy charge. And now I remembered how during my part of the trial, there had been no talk of the video wherein he confessed, and the prosecutor had warned me beforehand that he probably wouldn’t get life if a plea was made on the deal that the judge wouldn’t allow the video in as evidence to the jury.
The judge must have viewed it before he’d agreed to dismiss it, and I wondered if his having viewed it was why he’d dismissed it. He must have seen that Ronin looked beat up, like he’d been forcibly coerced. All along, I figured that would be a problem at the trial….
I felt the old burning anger inside me: Ronin’s sentence really wasn’t long enough. He could possibly get paroled at some point, and I didn’t even want to think about that.
But I also didn’t want to depress Nell by appearing anything other than pleased. So I smiled as big a smile as I could muster up without feeling like a total fake.
Then Nell said, “I also wanted to tell you that I accepted that job for MSA that I told you about—I hope that’s okay?”
“Of course it is.”
“Oh Pia, Annie’s been making even more noises lately. I think she keeps saying ‘Pee Pee’—for her Aunt Pia!”
“I certainly hope she is,” I said on a smile….
A little later, when I told Tan about the Ronin-news, he said, “Well, that’s one chapter on the book of your past you can close now.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I just hope I can close them all at some point.”
*
For the rest of that day, I remained in the room. Then the next day Tan and I decided to go on one brief, guided tour—brief because Tan insisted I shouldn’t strain myself.
“This is nice,” I told him as we were walking beneath the sunshine along a street toward where the tour would start. “I should almost die more often so you’ll take me out and baby me like this every time.”
“That isn’t funny,” Tan said in a hard voice.
“Well, at this point, dark humor’s the only kind I have left. I feel spent.”
“Will you…” he began, but then his mouth moved wordlessly, as if he didn’t know how to say something.
“Spit it out,” I told him, bracing myself for something bad, which he’d seemed on the verge of saying.
“Well, will you ever tell me more? Like what happened on Earth-Moon the first time?”
I nodded at him, slowly. We were early for when the bus would be picking us up for the tour, so now I walked toward that same park we’d spoken in before we’d left for the Moon.
As I moved, I suddenly remembered Jericho’s words about Martin’s having been shot. But how had Jericho known that? Had someone seen what I’d done? Or maybe Jericho’s sleuthing had led him to some information about the corpse? I didn’t know the answers to all that. I hoped I’d never know, because if I ever did, it would probably mean I was on trial for murder….
I stopped moving in a spot in the park where no one else was around. Tan stepped closer to me and said, “I once asked you how you knew he was dead. I’m still wondering about that.”
“Well, Tan,” I said, “I knew he was dead because I shot a hole in his chest, brought him outside, and kicked him off the far side of the moon.”
“Holy shit,” Tan said, running his hands through his hair. I saw their shake. And I also saw his head turn away from me till I couldn’t see whatever look was probably on his face. But then I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it.
My voice shook when I spoke. “You’re thinking about those skeletons of mine again.”
His head whipped back to me. “Wait a minute—Sanders are strong but not that strong. You can’t just kick someone off there.”
I sighed. “In the mining colonies, there are these tubing and barge systems into space, where excess dust from the mining’s sucked up and taken away from the Moon. I kicked him into that tubing. The dust pumping did the rest.”
He shook his head and his mouth was tight as he turned away from me again.
It was very sunny that day, in the Earth way of sunny, where everything seemed really bright and clear to your eyes. But that meant Tan’s distaste was also really bright and clear—to my eyes.
I felt very depressed now as I spoke. “What the hell would you have done? I don’t see how he didn’t deserve what he got.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “It just troubles me that you were the one who did it. Or maybe a better word is that I can’t fully understand it.”
“If you’d been through what I’d been through, seen all the things I’d seen, you’d understand it.”
He was nodding now. “You’re probably right.” A hard sigh burst from his shaking lips. “I’m sorry: I’m doing it again—sounding too judgmental or something. I just worry a lot, like people can get tricked into things. Like you with the UPG.”
I flashed him ironic eyes. “I think that by now the Jericho situation should have shown you there was no tricking going on. The two of them were the real sick deal.”
“But you didn’t know Jericho then and what he’d do later. How could you be sure what they told you about Martin was true?”
Not for the first time, I wondered if Tan was bothered by all this because he was also a man I’d slept with, and some part of him was mistrustful toward me now, as if he was thinking: how much did I need to see before I sold a guy I’d been involved with out—or snuffed the guy out? This was why I’d buried so much of my involvement with Martin, even inside my own mind; Tan’s reaction today was why I hated that he had to find out even an iota of it all.
“Tan, I just know,” I said to him now. “When the job came up, I did my own research. I saw something…a tape on the black market. I must have had a bad feeling about what I was doing all along because I always tried to verify everything on my own before I worked a job.” My eyes moved to his. “Like I’ve told you, I’ve seen so much terrible stuff. The two brothers aren’t the only horrible situations.”
I lowered my voice again, standing closer to him. I kept my eyes away from his, staring off at a group of short fat trees with limbs that touched each other, as if for support. “Things look black and white from the outside, but sometimes you do things for others. Like the time a kid could have been minus a mother if it wasn’t for me. I didn’t do this job alone. I was undercover. There were two more with me. We were only supposed to get information. But then they disappeared. I found them bound up, naked, bloody and badly beaten up, and about to be executed by a bullet to the head. Instead, I gave the guy a bullet to his head. When I untied them, they each took my gun and shot him too. I like to think we all three killed him. I never asked what he did to them while they were gone for two days, but it was clear that it was something horrible. It broke them. Neither of them was the same after that.”
I dared a look at Tan’s eyes and found that they had been on me; his lips were
slightly open. And then he said, “I wish you’d always tell me everything.”
“How many times have we been over this? You know I can’t tell you everything. It’s something you’ve just got to accept. Like I’ve said to you: even normal people in normal relationships don’t tell each other everything.”
“I’ve always wanted the other kind of relationship: the one most people don’t have.”
“Maybe someday you’ll have it,” I said. “We’ll have it,” I added.
“Who was it you saved? Can you tell me that…was it Molotov?”
“Yes,” I said fast, and I began walking again. “Let’s go on the tour. Let’s forget all this now. I want to see the Earth more; I want you to see the Earth more.”
“You know, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to look up old family members.”
I turned to him, watched his somber profile, which was tilted down at the ground. “You never even indicated you wanted to,” I said now.
He shrugged. “Didn’t think of it till this moment…. Eh, I don’t even know them, so I’d probably feel too uncomfortable seeing them anyway. I’m just a bit curious is all, about where I came from.”
“Aren’t we all,” I said. “I’m sure there will be other times, other opportunities to come back.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
*
We were finally on the tour bus as it moved over roads, some of them back roads that hadn’t been used much in a long time.
In the distance beyond the Domesticated edge, birds and bigger land animals moved as if they didn’t notice us watching, because they probably didn’t notice. They were too busy trying to survive in what should have always been their normal way: within their own sphere, without human interference—though that interference would always be there if only indirectly in some areas, especially in places that had been so destroyed they’d probably never recover enough to support much life. They were denuded, with hardpan polluted soils. Big swathes of acreage—effectively gone from the biosphere.
The bus passed near one of those and the driver narrated some of the issues the place was now experiencing; he said both an above-ground and below-ground clean-up were still going on, just like with that river Tan and I had seen on the day we’d arrived.
But, unfortunately, not enough progress could be made in this ruined spot, so this particular environmental overhaul was due to be abandoned soon.
At this point in the tour, gloom seemed to coat the faces in the bus, or at least it coated my vision. I felt tears in my eyes; then I felt them slip down and over my mouth. Quickly I wiped there, but Tan must have seen; his arm wrapped around my back, pulling me closer till my head lay pressed against his shoulder. I hoped we’d leave this place and pass through something more positive soon….
We did, about fifteen minutes later: a spot right on the border between the Domesticated and Wild. We all had a sort of picnic there; we munched on food while standing outside the bus.
And the warm Earth-Sun dancing on my hair made me feel a bit better, like maybe, somehow, there would be better days ahead for not only me but for the Earth too.
*
Late the next morning Tan said he wanted to go out and get some more video of his one last look around and of Lanie. He asked me to come with him, but I wasn’t up to it; the days had finally caught up with me, and my limbs just did not want to move at even close to normal speed.
After he left, I ordered a sandwich from room service; then once I’d eaten it, I lazed around on the couch in the room and began to doze….
A knock on the room’s outer door woke me. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and sighing.
“Hang on a second!” I called. I thought of my case and gun lying near the head of the bed, but then I decided against walking that far.
Half a bottle of tart fruit juice sat on the coffee table in front of me, and now, hoping the tartness would wake me more, I took a quick sip from the bottle, before slowly walking to the door.
I looked out the viewer hole, feeling a surprised jolt to see James standing there.
When I opened the door, he walked in saying, “I came to say goodbye.”
I nodded at him and closed the door; then I moved further into the room to finally sit back on the couch.
“Where’s Tan?” he asked me then.
“Out.”
“Oh. I was hoping to say goodbye to him too.” He sounded a bit disappointed, and I wondered if this were all an act. Everything that happened next kind of confirmed my wondering….
“I’m sure you were,” I said, my voice very dry.
I watched him move over to the room’s wide window, watched him pull the curtain aside more to let the Sun stream in. It fell onto his face, making his profile glow. Briefly, he closed his eyes. “I mean it. You’d have to be blind not to see you’re good together. I think you deserve that.” His hand dropped the curtain. But he remained staring out the window. “You know what my life’s been like for years and years?”
“Work. Your life is work.”
He nodded fast, glancing at me. “True. But I do have a bit of free time. For a while I spent it running around from one woman to the next, even one a week at one point. I could never find one like the woman I was trying to replace.”
Uh-oh.
I shifted on the couch. Then I said fast, “Don’t do this.”
He seemed to fall silent, lost in his own world, before he said, “You think I don’t hate what happened to your parents, huh? Well, I do hate it. I’ve tried to make things work for you—to smooth them over, give you a better, more cooperative image in front of any…bad elements.”
I heard something in his words, and then I made the mental connection, my eyes widening, my back sitting up straighter. “It was you—you told the news about me helping Diamond.” I should have known all along that Hu hadn’t done that. Why would she have? There would be nothing in the telling for her, and she hadn’t been in the business of helping me, no matter our brief past alliance.
James’s nod was slow now, the blue eyes he turned on me knowing. Then the knowing look faded and disgust replaced it. Slowly, he shook his head, apparently at himself. “And it seems that very thing put you in danger. Maybe he saw you that way—because of that. You said he told you about a newsfeed….”
“Forget that. It’s over. You didn’t know. And it’s my fault: I started a new life using an old name. And I didn’t keep a low-enough profile in the new. I’ve behaved stupidly.”
“We’re only human,” James said. “Even if some of us humans come from Diamond.” His eyes fell right on me again. “You once said I have no heart. Do you still think that?”
“Well…maybe you’ve got a heart-seed sprouting in there now.”
He laughed, and it was something he really should have done more often: he looked younger when he laughed.
His noisemaking finally died down and his gaze turned pensive. “I think one of the secretaries at work has been eyeing me. Do you remember her—Anita? Short, black hair?”
“Yeah, I remember her. She helped me and Tan with the glasses.”
“Well, what do you think—would a woman go for me, especially at work? I’m a little leery of approaching her. The one time I tried the ‘office-romance’ bit, it didn’t exactly work out.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. You need to find someone you have more in common with. That just wasn’t me.”
“I know,” he said, surprising me again because I’d expected him to say the opposite. “But,” he added now, “a person doesn’t always go for the sensible partner.”
He was right. I just really, really wished he hadn’t been talking about me. I had enough complication in my life right now, thanks!
I had been looking down at the floor. But now I heard his sigh, his long sigh. “Well, this is it then—goodbye. I know I’ve bumped you out, like you wanted. But I’ll be honest: I can’t promise I won’t ask you to do another job.”
“And I can’t promis
e I’ll always refuse doing another job.” I shook my head—at myself. “Christ, I am so fucked up.”
James laughed again, looking younger again. Then he sobered up fast, and his eyes darkened. “I have something else to tell you: in the Moon-place where J was staying, I found a naked picture of you.”
My stunned mouth fell open, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. This was something I didn’t remember at all…. “What?” I finally croaked through the confused fog in my brain.
“You heard me. But don’t worry: I destroyed it right away. I figured you wouldn’t want Tan to see it especially.”
His eyes remained on me in a strangely focused way, and I wondered if the picture somehow showed what I hadn’t told him or anyone else about that night with Jericho and Martin….
But I didn’t want to give away anything more to James, so I didn’t indicate any worry over the photograph (at least verbally…). Instead, I asked, “How do I know you didn’t keep it for yourself?”
“Who says I don’t have one already?” He was right. He did have one—one I knew about but had since forgotten about until this moment. I wondered what to think about that now; I wondered if I should demand the picture back. But, if having it made him feel better because that was all he had left of me, then I didn’t see any real harm in his keeping it.
There was a rather lengthy silence; then he finally moved closer to me. “Say, listen, Pia: would Tan approve if I kiss you?”
Uh-oh again.
I almost shot off the couch. …But his face looked really sad, and it was the kind of not-skin-deep sad look a person couldn’t really fake, even as good a fake as James was.
So I said to him now, “Whether I’d approve is the more important thing.”
“Well, would you? …Do you?”
I didn’t respond. But I must have approved to a certain degree because his mouth came down toward me then and I didn’t pull back. I didn’t return the kiss either, except his mouth was open and mine automatically opened slightly too…but then it was over fast, and he was moving away from me.
