by S. L. Grey
Rosen’s crouching in the doorway, adjusting the cuffs of his trousers.
‘Jesus! Did you have to break the fucking door down?’
He looks up, his fedora and tie calmly in place, crisp white shirt, same middle-management suit. ‘There’s no time to kark around, Mr Farrell. You’re in breach, and, if I don’t conclude your contract, I’m in danger of being cited for disregard.’
Lisa is still milling around in the hallway.
‘I said, go to the fucking bedroom!’
There’s a momentary flash of fear on her face, but almost immediately her expression hardens.
‘Please, Lisa?’ I say, far more gently.
Lisa stares at me a while longer, then does as she’s told, slamming the bedroom door behind her. She’s grown some guts; it suits her.
I usher Rosen into the lounge. He looks at the giant print of Katya’s face covering the wall. ‘Primo,’ he says. ‘That’s a fine Donor you had there. They did a good job, didn’t they?’
‘What?’
‘The butchers. The transplant was catalogue.’
It’s true. They did. The surgery was impeccable. But I’m fucked if I’m going to give Rosen the satisfaction. I say nothing. Rosen nods appreciatively at the picture again then sits on the couch and places his briefcase on his lap. That stupid hat, perched at the back of his head, makes him look like someone from an old boy band. Rosen and the Debt Collectors. Ha ha.
‘Tell me, Rosen. What the hell’s going on? You said I’d delivered enough. And what the fuck is June doing back?’ She’s probably right now weaving through the traffic, high on tranks.
‘June?’
‘The woman we took last night to make up the… uh… shortfall.’
Rosen chuckles. ‘Oh that. Rejected. Too old, too toxified. The assessors couldn’t judge that from the mimeograph. There was no viable tissue. Well, something like three pounds. Not worth the butchery. So we brought her back, dressed her, left her in her bed. She wouldn’t have remembered anything. But you’re still short by thirty-six pounds and your time is up. You’re in breach.’
My mind replays a garbled version of the contractual gobbledygook he was spurting last night. ‘But you said if the assessment was cleared I’d have ample time to make up the difference in the event of a shortfall.’ Christ, I’m beginning to sound like them.
‘You did. You had three shifts – approximately twelve upside hours. Now they’re up.’
‘But what about the shortfall insurance I signed up for with Mutual?’
Rosen shrugs. ‘Those are the terms.’
Thirty-six pounds. How the hell will I get thirty-six pounds of viable now? Eduardo? Can’t do it now; it’s the middle of the day, there are too many people around. Noli? She’s definitely near the top of my shit-list, but I don’t have her number, and she’s probably sleeping off a coke binge in some Bulgarian gangster’s penthouse at this hour. I can’t believe I’m thinking like this, but there’s no way I’m getting so close and not finishing this. Thirty-six fucking pounds.
‘So, what now? What do I have to do?’
He beams at me with a slick insurance-salesman smile. ‘We’re not unreasonable, Mr Farrell. We collect the shortfall now and I’ll put latepayment procedures in place.’ The smile falls like a brick. ‘But it has to be now. Concluding this contract in your favour becomes less likely every moment we kark around intercoursing.’
The way he talks, in that bureaucratic singsong, gives me an idea. Clive. Marina’s idiot husband. Nobody will miss that smarmy little prick, always fucking perving at Katya. And that way we can keep it in the family. Nice and neat. ‘Okay, you’re right. Let’s stop messing around. I know someone we can deliver.’
‘Primo. I’ll give you ten moments to get ready. I have some paperwork to complete.’ He clicks open the pale leather briefcase and removes a sheaf of forms and a fountain pen.
On my way out of the room, I stop and turn back. ‘Rosen?’
He looks up, raises his eyebrows enquiringly.
‘Are you sure she won’t remember what happened last night? June, I mean.’ She didn’t appear to know what the fuck happened to her, but memories can come back, can’t they?
‘Remember?’ he says, as if talking to a child. ‘Mr Farrell. Do you think we’d kark around with potential detection? Make ourselves vulnerable to the memories of browns?’
He says it derisively, and something inside me knows that by ‘browns’ he means us. Normal people. Not people from there… where he comes from. Where that hospital is. It’s the first time I admit it to myself: he’s not from here; he’s from somewhere else. That hospital… Lisa and I were somewhere else, and we managed to get home.
‘Are you sure? That’s all I’m asking.’ A lot depends on his answer. I sincerely hope he’s sure.
‘I’m sure, Mr Farrell. Browns are hardwired to forget.’
‘Okay.’ I walk to the bedroom.
Lisa’s sitting on the edge of the bed looking tragic. ‘What have you done, Farrell?’ she asks.
‘What?’
‘I know you’ve done something. And I know it’s got to do with the Wards, with the contract you signed there. I’m not stupid, you know. In that meeting, they were talking about weight and tissue. They want their payment… They want it… in body parts. Is that right? This man. He’s from there, isn’t he?’
Lisa’s the only person in the world who knows what I’ve been through; she’s the only person in the world who can make sense of what’s happening. She’s the only person I don’t have to lie to, and the compulsion to tell her the whole truth is overwhelming. She’ll understand.
I watch her face as I tell her about meeting Rosen at the office, about stunning Eduardo and drawing those lines on him. She keeps fidgeting with her left eye, rubbing at it as if it’s irritating her. She looks so preoccupied I can’t even tell if she’s listening.
‘The lines we drew on him were the same as the ones in those Polaroids of me. So I had to make a decision. I thought if I gave them Glenn it would be enough, but it wasn’t. June made up the weight. Rosen and I delivered them last night.’
‘Where?’
‘At the Highgate Mall.’ I can’t read Lisa’s expression. I couldn’t ever read Katya’s face. ‘Rosen took the car. He said nothing would come back to me.’ Still she doesn’t respond. ‘Do you think I’m an animal? Do you think I’m… evil?’
‘Farrell. We know what they do in there. They were going to cut you up.’ She puts her hand on my thigh. ‘I’m glad they didn’t.’ An electric feeling jolts through me. I’ve been expecting her to break down or something, but she’s so calm about it all. I should be relieved, but her blank acceptance scares me. ‘But how come June came back?’ she asks.
‘That’s the problem. They didn’t want her. So Rosen and I are going to Clive’s office to take him. I wish last night had been the end, but I’ve gone this far…’
‘What if you get caught?’
I consider that. Something about Rosen, the way he never has a doubt, gives me confidence. ‘We won’t.’
‘But poor Clive. He doesn’t deserve that.’
Poor Clive? ‘Fuck’s sake, Lisa. You just said yourself, they’re going to cut me up. It’s me or him. I wish I didn’t have to, but…’
‘What about Marina? What about the baby? You can’t.’
She stands up, walks to the vanity table and stares at herself in the mirror. Christ, not this again.
‘Lisa?’
She doesn’t answer, just runs her fingers over her face.
‘Lisa? Jesus. We haven’t got time for this.’
Now she’s scrubbing her palms over her cheeks, harder and harder. I’m about to shout at her, shake her out of it, when she says something.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Take me.’
‘What?’
‘Take me.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘They can take me instead of June or Clive or
whoever. I can make up the difference.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Lisa. I’m not going to—’
Now she’s opening the bedroom door. ‘Hey, Mister,’ she’s calling down the hall. ‘You can take me.’
I chase after her. ‘No. No, no. Just ignore her, Rosen.’
Lisa stops, looks at me and at Rosen with his papers in neat rectangles on his briefcase. ‘No. Do not ignore me. I know what I’m doing, Farrell. I’m not going to last here.’ She raises her hands to her face and runs her fingers down it, like a blind woman committing a face to memory. ‘This face is melting.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s perfect. You’re perfect. Jesus, Lisa, just stop.’
But she’s got this weird look in her eyes. I turn to Rosen for help. ‘Tell her, Rosen. Tell her what you said about the transplant. It was perfect, wasn’t it?’
‘Primo,’ he says.
Lisa sits down next to him. ‘I want you to take me to pay off Farrell’s debt. Okay?’
‘It’s irregular, but not unprecedented.’ He gathers the papers, clicks open the briefcase and rifles inside it. ‘You’ll just need a brown, uh, upsider’s voluntary consent form and a transfer of indebtedness addendum… Ah, here we go.’ He closes the briefcase, lays the forms out on it and hovers the pen above them. ‘If you’re confident?’
‘Lisa!’
Lisa takes the pen. ‘What do I need to…’
‘Oh, just name here, sign in the green boxes, initial at the bottom of each page. I’ll fill out the rest.’
I try to grab the pen from her hand but Rosen restrains me with his clawed fingers, crushing my hand. ‘Mr Farrell. The Client is a willing signatory of sound mind, and I cannot notarise the contract if there has been coercion or interference in any form.’ He grinds my bones together until I let go.
I yank my hand back. ‘Jesus, Lisa. Don’t do it. I thought we had a future together. We were making plans.’
‘You’re sweet, Farrell,’ she says. ‘A really nice guy.’
She signs the forms.
‘Congratulations, Mr Farrell. I believe that will release you from your contract. In late-payment situations like these, we perform viability assessments on site. Would you like to accompany me’ – he consults the form – ‘Ms Cassavetes?’
‘Why not?’ Lisa says. She glances around the flat as if she’s doublechecking for any personal items she might have left behind. As if it’s a hotel room and she’s just been here on holiday. She faces me, and she looks happy, lighter, less worried than I’ve ever seen her. ‘I don’t belong here,’ she says to me as she walks out with Rosen.
I stand in the hallway and watch them leave. I close the door and turn. I’m confronted by hundreds of little shards, a mosaic of my pallid face staring back at me.
Chapter 28
LISA
‘Client Cassavetes!’ Nomsa is waiting right outside the lift, a clipboard slotted under her arm. ‘How wonderful to see you again.’
‘You too,’ I find myself saying. That unreal feeling I had while talking to June is back; I’m so numb, in fact, that I honestly don’t care what happens to me now.
It must be the shock, I suppose, but I remember hardly anything about the drive to New Hope. I dimly recall Rosen pulling up outside the casualty entrance, helping me out of the car like an old-fashioned suitor and leading me past a blur of faces in the waiting area. He deposited me in the lift, tipped his hat to me and then the doors shut me in.
And here I am. Back in the Wards.
Nomsa places a hand on my back and gently propels me along the passageway, my feet moving robotically. I recognise the sickly red, yellow and green pattern on the carpet, the gold lettering of the Modification Ward sign and the soft, hotel-style lighting. The last time I was here I was running through this corridor, fuelled by panic, desperate to get out.
But I’m not panicking now.
Nomsa stops outside one of the doors lining the corridor, opens it and steps back to allow me to enter first. ‘We thought you would prefer to be in here,’ she says. ‘So that you feel perfectly at home.’
Either the rooms are identically furnished or I’m back in the same place I woke up in after the face-swap operation. It’s all familiar: the watercolour of the homely farmhouse on the wall, the floral bedspread, the pale-pink carpeting. The television lurks in the corner, but even the sight of that doesn’t faze me.
But I don’t understand what I’m doing here. Why haven’t they just taken me straight to the Terminal Ward? For… recycling, or whatever. And how did Nomsa know I was coming back here? I don’t remember Rosen calling anyone on the drive to the hospital.
I turn to face her. ‘When are you going to do it?’
‘Don’t let that concern you,’ she says soothingly. ‘Now, why don’t you settle into bed and rest? I’ll get a drone to bring you some refreshments.’ She checks her clipboard. ‘We’ve updated the list of your dietary requirements and preferences.’
‘Please. I need to know. How long?’
‘It won’t be much longer now.’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘Of course not, Client Cassavetes. You won’t feel a thing.’ She laughs. ‘We’re not monsters!’ With a flash of her professional smile she leaves the room.
I numbly strip off Katya’s kimono. There’s a hospital gown draped on the edge of the bed and I slip it on. I drift over to the bed, pull back the covers and climb in.
So this is it.
Do people on death row feel like this? Numb, empty, almost accepting of their fate? I stare into the watercolour painting, at the pointless curtains and windowless wall. This room could be the last thing I ever see. In a way, it’s a relief.
The first time I tried to ‘check out’ (as Sharon calls it), I was in my bedroom, staring at a poster of Agyness Deyn, popping the saved-up Diazepam into my mouth, trying to pretend they were Jelly Tots. Part of me knew that I’d be found before the pills could do their work, but I swallowed them anyway. The second time, I locked myself in the bathroom with an old-fashioned disposable razor, the kind they only sell in corner shops with bars on the windows, and sat on the edge of the bath staring down at my wrists. I didn’t get far. I stopped the second the blade drew the first pearl of blood.
This time there won’t be any Diazepam or razor blades or fathers to rush me to Margate Private Hospital. Will they score black marks all over my body like in those Polaroids before they do it? Or will they just get on with it? I hope they anaesthetise me in here before taking me to the Terminal Ward. I don’t want those bland functional corridors with their stainless steel doors to be the last thing I see. I don’t want the stink of cleaning fluid and death to be the last thing I smell.
But better me than Farrell. He has a life to live. I don’t. I run my hand over the left side of my face, fingers automatically searching for flaws.
And this time, I can’t find one. Even my left eye feels perfect.
Maybe you’re cured. How ironic would that be?
I wonder what Farrell’s doing now, if he’s missing me. If he’s grateful, regretful, depressed, or if he’s simply overwhelmed with relief. But the numbness is still there and when I try to call up his face all I get is a blurry image, a bland melding of Bradley Cooper’s and Robert Pattinson’s features.
It’s pointless to think about Dad and Sharon. They’re better off without me. No more hospital and psychiatrist bills, no more embarrassment, no more worrying and endless, wearying ‘It’s all in your head’ lectures.
For a while I stare into the flat black eye of the television. My distorted reflection doesn’t bother me now.
The door bangs open, and a dumpy orderly pushes a trolley into the room. She’s bent right over the trolley and I can’t see her face, but there’s something familiar about her wiry halo of grey hair.
‘Hello, doll,’ she says.
Oh God. The voice is muffled but I recognise it immediately. ‘Gertie?’
She looks up at me.
&nbs
p; What have they done to her? The skin on her face is as shiny and featureless as that of a mannequin, the lips are pink and pouting and the eyes are slotted into almond-shaped lids. It’s a varnished doll’s face. If I hadn’t heard her voice I would never have recognised her. But it is her – I know it’s her – and something flickers into life inside me.
‘Gertie! It’s me!’
‘Do I know you, doll?’
‘Of course! It’s Lisa, remember?’
She frowns, tilts her head to the side and places her chin in her hand like a parody of someone thinking hard about something. ‘Lisa? Sorry, doll. Don’t know any Lisas.’
‘But you must! We were both in the same ward in New Hope. Our beds were next to each other.’
‘New Hope? I don’t need any hope, doll. All hoped up here!’
‘Yes! I even met your daughter…’ I scrabble for her name. ‘Kyra.’
A brief spark flares in her eyes, but then she blinks and it dies. She shrugs. ‘I’ve probably just got one of those faces,’ she says.
It’s no good. She really doesn’t remember me.
Well you do have a new look, Lisa.
It’s more than that. They’ve done something to her.
Of course they’ve done something to her. That’s what they do here, isn’t it?
‘Gertie? What did they do to you?’
‘Do to me, doll?’
‘Your face…’
‘Oh, this!’ She fumbles under her chin, pinches the skin and pulls. The shiny covering lifts, revealing grey sagging skin beneath. It’s a mask! And not one of those hi-tech surgical masks either, just a slightly more sophisticated kids’ mask like the kind you can buy in novelty stores. ‘They let me choose any face I wanted.’ She pats it back into place, but one side of it doesn’t stick properly and curls up like old paper. ‘Induction gift.’
‘What are you doing here, Gertie?’
