Briarpatch by Tim Pratt

by Tim Pratt

  “Yeah,” Bridget said, a little sadly.

  “Yes,” Orville said. “I guess she’s still trying to figure things out.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Geneva said. “I think we can work together, Orville. Would you like to come over to my place?”

  “Tell her nothing would please you more,” Bridget said.

  5

  Geneva’s apartment was a neat one-bedroom with a spacious living room, on the third floor of an apartment building just a block from the café.

  “Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a cushiony white sofa. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door.

  Orville glanced over at Bridget, who was perusing Geneva’s bookshelves. “Um,” he said. “Are you going to be . . . in there . . . with us?”

  She looked around, eyebrow raised. “Do you have an exhibitionist streak, Orville? Do you want me to be in there with you? I can stay out here if you go in the bedroom, if that’s what you want. It’s not far enough away to hurt me.”

  He didn’t know how to answer. The idea of Bridget watching them should have mortified him, but he was also nervous about being away from her.

  “I did watch Geneva work once, with a guy who got off on having another girl in the room, just watching. It was easy money. I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind with you, either, if you think you’d need encouragement, or—”

  “Please come,” Orville said.

  “Will do. Oh, offer to pay her when she comes back out. Better if she doesn’t have to ask.”

  Geneva returned a moment later in a short red silk robe, her hair loose. “So, Orville,” she said.

  “Do you mind, could we settle the, ah, business part, so I’m not thinking about it?”

  “Sure.” She told him the price, a significant percentage of his poker winnings, but about what Bridget had said to expect. He paid her, and she put the money in a little silver box on the coffee table. She curled up on the couch beside him, and he sat still, so nervous he could barely imagine moving. Geneva leaned over and kissed his cheek, putting her hand on his thigh. “You can touch me,” she whispered in his ear. “You can tell me what you want.”

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t possibly. Orville was on the verge of rising and fleeing the apartment.

  Then Bridget whispered in his other ear. “Go ahead, Orville. I want to see you touch her. You deserve it. You deserve some happiness.” There was no breath in his ear from her voice, but the hairs on his neck stood up anyway. “She’ll talk dirty if you want,” Bridget said, “or she’ll be sweet, whatever you like. Touch her. I’ll be with you. I’ll be with you all the time.”

  “Would you like to take your jacket off?” Geneva said, and Orville nodded, shrugging out of it. Geneva knelt on the floor, her body between his legs, and unbuttoned his shirt. He reached out tentatively, caressing her cheek, and she nipped at his fingertip and drew it into her mouth, sucking on it. Then she leaned forward and kissed his chest. Orville trembled.

  “Ask her to take off her robe,” Bridget said. Her voice was strangely breathy, even though she didn’t have breath.

  “I’d—could I—I’d like to see you without the robe.”

  Geneva looked up at him—her face so close to his—and smiled. She stood up. “I didn’t know if you liked lingerie, or what kind, so I hope this is all right. I just wore . . . nothing.” She let the robe fall.

  Orville had never seen a nude woman in the flesh—had always been too afraid to even brave a strip club. He said what he thought: “You’re so beautiful.”

  Geneva smiled, and dimples appeared in her cheeks. “Your turn.” She drew him to his feet. She knelt again, and unbuttoned his pants, pulling them down. She caressed his cock through his boxer shorts. “Is this for me?” she said. “How nice.” She ran her fingernails up his length, and he gasped.

  “Easy now,” Bridget said, sitting on the couch. “Don’t lose control of yourself. Try thinking about the multiplication tables.”

  2 x 2 is 4, he thought. 4 x 4 is 16. 16 x 16 is . . .

  Geneva pulled his boxers down, and conjured a condom from somewhere, ripping it open with her teeth. “Sit,” she said, and he did gratefully, as his legs were shaking. She leaned forward to roll the condom on, then stopped, and touched his upper thigh. “Oh, I like this tattoo. What is it?”

  “Tattoo?” Bridget said. “You never struck me as the tattoo type.” She leaned forward, the top of her head nearly touching Geneva’s, and the sight of the two women so close together was enough to make Orville moan slightly. “It looks like a bridge, Orville, a little arched footbridge.”

  “It’s a bridge,” Orville said, trying to keep his voice calm. He’d known this was a new body—the tastes, the smells, the unbroken legs. But a tattoo . . . that was something more. It suggested more than another body; it suggested another life, a life he might have had, one that allowed for the possibility of tattoos.

  Geneva leaned forward and kissed the tattoo, and Orville gasped—who knew that part of his body could be so sensitive?

  She rolled the condom onto him deftly, then closed her hand around his cock. He moaned again, rather less softly.

  Geneva took him into her mouth.

  Orville sat, his mouth open, his whole body faintly trembling. I almost killed myself, he thought. I almost killed myself without ever feeling this.

  He looked at Bridget, who sat beside him on the couch. She smiled at him beneficently, maybe even proudly. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “Look at the beautiful woman going down on you. And when you fuck her, ask if you can take her from behind. She told me that’s her favourite. And, anyway, I’d like to watch.” She grinned, a wicked grin, a grin that made her seem entirely alive.

  12 x 4 is 48, Orville thought.

  6

  “You’re sweet,” Geneva said later, and patted his cheek. “You can come back sometime if you want. And tell Bridget to call me.”

  “I wish,” Bridget murmured from the office chair across from the bed.

  Orville nodded. “I’d like that. I had a nice time.” He stole a glance at Bridget. When Geneva had led him into the bedroom, Bridget had followed, watching them with hungry eyes. Watching Geneva, yes, but also watching Orville, and her gaze had excited him, almost too much. Orville didn’t think he was an exhibitionist. Having anyone watch him wouldn’t do. But somehow, because it was Bridget . . .

  There was a nude woman beside him in bed, for the first time in Orville’s life. And yet, his eyes didn’t linger on her skin. His gaze kept shifting to Bridget in the corner, still in her red coat, and even so, he found her more alluring than the naked woman at his side.

  “Do you want to shower or something before you go?” Geneva said, rising and putting on a fuzzy blue robe far more modest and comfortable-looking than the short silk one she’d worn earlier.

  “Uh, no, no,” Orville said, and gathered his own clothes together. The room smelled of sweat and something else—sex, he supposed. Oh, the smells—her hair, her wetness on his fingers, the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. He wondered what Bridget smelled like. As a ghost, she was as odourless as Orville’s whole world had been before he swapped bodies. If Bridget hadn’t died, Orville would never have met her, but now he would never know her alive. Longing swept through him. Even dead, she’d done so much for him, given him ice cream and winning at cards and sex and a new body with a tattoo . . . and the willingness to live his life. This was better than being dead. In its sensual physicality, he even thought this was better than the light of the other world he’d glimpsed as he fell from the bridge.

  Once he was dressed, Geneva walked him to the door. “You’ve got my cell,” she said. “I guess the number Bridget gave you? But for this sort of thing, here’s a better number.” She passed him a business card, and he mumbled thanks, try
ing to decide if having a prostitute’s card meant he was pathetic or worldly. He decided it didn’t matter. He’d had a good night.

  Geneva shut the door, leaving him alone in the hall and at a loss for a moment, until Bridget stepped into his vision. “Well, Orville, was it good for you?”

  “Very.” He set off down the hall, toward the elevator. “It was amazing.”

  “You looked like you were having a fine time.” She seemed sad.

  “Are you okay?” A stupid question, in any fundamental sense, but he already trusted her to know what he meant.

  She sighed. “I guess it’s true that sex is mental. I mean, I’ve always liked watching, Darrin and I were like a gender-stereotype-reversal that way, he can take or leave porn, but I love it, and I like watching couples too. Seeing you and Geneva was nice. I always thought she was beautiful, and it was hot the way you kept looking over at me—”

  Orville blushed, and at the same time, felt aroused.

  “—with her not even knowing I was there. So without really thinking about it I reached down to touch myself, and . . . nothing.” She waved her hand as Orville pressed the call button for the elevator. “I couldn’t even feel myself. I read once about this neurological disorder that destroys your sense of where your arms and legs and hands are? It’s like that for me when I try to touch myself. I can affect things in the world, push them around a little, but it’s clumsy, like trying to play piano while wearing oven mitts. There’s no pressure, no friction. I thought not being able to eat was the worst.” Orville got into the elevator, grateful it was empty, and Bridget followed. “But losing my body? It’s so much more than just never having a hot fudge sundae again. Once, in the briarpatch, Ismael and I ran into this thing, all floating and ragged at the edges, whispering and grabbing at vines and branches, but it couldn’t get a grip on anything. Ismael said he didn’t know what it was, just that he’d seen them before, and they were harmless, but I wonder if maybe it was something like me, someone who left their body, got lost, and went crazy.” She looked at Orville now and said “I don’t want that to happen to me, Orville.”

  “What can we do?” he asked. “We”—as simple as that. They were in this together, not by the necessary association of haunter and haunted, but by his choice. She’d shown him life was worth living. He couldn’t give Bridget her life back, but he could pledge himself to help, however possible.

  “We have to find Ismael. I can’t go where you don’t, so I need you. Ismael met you, and his aura of fatalism or whatever caught hold in you, so it wouldn’t surprise him too much if you tracked him down, asked him for guidance, you know? I think he’d open the door and let you in. He might be able to see me—he’s spent so long in the briarpatch, he’s attuned to witnessing the weird. If not, you can be my translator, and tell him what I say. I’ll make him tell me what happens next, since he failed me. He’ll tell me where to go from here. And in the meantime, Orville . . . keep looking at me. Keep paying attention to me. I think that will help hold me together.”

  The elevator opened on the ground floor, and Orville exited. “What if Ismael won’t help you?”

  “Where can he run?” Bridget said, with a touch of her earlier zest. “You’ve seen the light, Orville. You’ve gone into the briarpatch and brought a new body—a new life—out of it. You can see the paths, if you look, and if he flees, we can follow. He’ll help me. He knows what a pain in the ass I can be if I don’t get my way.”

  Orville was glad to hear her sounding resolute—being sad and vague couldn’t be good for her cohesion, either. “When do we go?”

  “Tomorrow. You need to sleep, after the day you’ve had.”

  They left the building and went down the sidewalk to a bus stop bench. Orville sat down. The night was crisp and clear, and he was profoundly satisfied and tired. “Thank you for tonight, Bridget.”

  She paused in her pacing to flash him a grin, and her smile was somehow wired directly into his heart; he’d never felt as important as he did when she looked at him. “Any time, Mr. Troll.” After a moment she stopped in her pacing. “Say, what time is it?”

  Orville looked instinctively at his wrist, but he had no watch, having lost it in the jump from the bridge or the aftermath at the hospital. “Um, I saw the clock at Geneva’s, it was about nine thirty when we left, so maybe almost ten o’clock now?”

  Bridget frowned, a vertical worry line appearing between her eyebrows. “You’re shitting me. It’s got to be later than that.”

  Orville shrugged. “We jumped in the morning. I’m not sure what time I woke up, but it couldn’t have been too much later. We went through . . . that other place, the briarpatch . . . and back home, and then played poker. It was just getting dark when we left the card club. It’s been a long day, and I don’t mind going home.”

  Bridget chewed her lip. Not that she actually had a lip, really, but old habits were probably hard to shake. “Would you mind maybe making one more little stop? Something’s been bothering me.”

  Orville nodded, not even needing to hear what she wanted, happy to do anything for her. He wasn’t as tired as he should have been. Swapping bodies halfway through the day probably had a rejuvenating effect. “Where to? As long as we can get there by bus. It can be hard to get a cab over here.”

  “Over near Lake Merritt. Close to the high school.”

  Orville knew the neighbourhood. “I go to the movies over there sometimes, in that nice old theatre. Probably faster to take the train, though. There’s a BART station a couple of blocks back.”

  Bridget hesitated. “About the trains . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I guess it’ll be okay, as long as we’re careful about which train we get on.”

  Orville stood and started down the sidewalk, past the closed shops and the teenage punk panhandlers. He didn’t much care if people here saw him talking to himself. Around here, you had to start screaming and bothering passers-by to make much of an impression, and even then, people would just walk in a wider arc around you. “I haven’t owned a car since I was 17 and rear-ended somebody. Couldn’t afford the repairs or the insurance, really. I do mass-transit a lot. Don’t worry, I know which train to take.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Bridget said. “You’ll see. Once you’ve been to the briarpatch, once you’ve had your eyes opened, you see things differently. Down underground, where the trains run . . . it can get a little freaky. Ismael doesn’t even know where all the special trains run down there.”

  Orville wanted to ask what she meant by “special trains,” but then she gasped and grabbed his arm (still so strange, her habit of acting as if she had a body, and the lack of pressure from her touch). “Look,” she said, lifting her chin, and Orville turned his eyes skyward.

  A bridge filled the far quadrant of the sky, a graceful arcing structure with no visible supports, the colour of the moon, more shining with its own light than reflecting. It was beautiful, and Orville suspected it was extremely large and very far away. He couldn’t see where it began, or where it ended, just a segment of its length rising from behind the buildings on the left and disappearing beyond the buildings on the right.

  “It appears, sometimes,” Bridget said. “Ismael thinks it might be important, but he’s never been able to reach it, or even come close, though he’s chased it dozens of times, he says. It comes and goes like a rainbow.”

  “Where do you think it leads?” Orville asked, his own voice hushed, more out of respect for Bridget’s reverence than because of his own awe.

  “I’m not sure it leads anywhere. I think it might be a destination all on its own.”

  For some reason Orville doubted that, and he wondered if Bridget truly believed it. Bridges only existed to take you from one place to another, right?

  “Funny how everything in the whole world, as far as I know, is under that
bridge,” she said. “You know what kinds of things traditionally live under bridges. Monsters.”

  “And homeless people and runaways. They’re not monsters, usually.”

  Bridget nodded, still gazing up at the moon-coloured bridge. “But don’t you wonder where our true home is? What we’ve run away from? Ismael thinks that bridge leads to the better world, where the light never fades or comes in slantwise.”

  Orville actually thought light was prettiest when it came in at a slant, passing through clouds, the rays clear in the hazy air, or limning trees in gold with late-afternoon sun. But he knew Bridget had a religion of sorts that sought a purer light. “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to think so, because then it’s just cruel, seeing the bridge, but being unable to reach it, to go to that place. The briarpatch is hard, and strange, but I don’t think it’s cruel, I don’t think there’s any intention behind it at all.”

  “Ah,” Orville said. He didn’t know much about these matters. His one visit to the briarpatch had been miraculous and terrifying by turns.

  The bridge shimmered and faded from view, and Bridget let out a long sigh. “Guess we’d better go. We’ve got our own world to navigate.”

  They went down the long escalator into the train station, and Orville used a little of his cash to buy a ticket. They passed through the gates—Bridget jumped it, easy and graceful, and he wondered again if she would be able to pass through solid objects if she gave up on the idea of having a body. How much of her current form was just habit? Down another escalator, to the platform . . . and now Orville understood what Bridget meant about train stations being strange, now that he had eyes to see.

  This station normally had a single platform in the centre, with some benches and a perpetually-broken elevator to the upper level, and train tracks on both sides, one with trains bound for San Francisco, one with trains bound for other points in the East Bay. Orville stood on that platform now . . . but there were other platforms, beyond the tracks, on both sides. The walls were missing—at least to Orville’s eyes—and this subterranean space was vast and shadowy now. On both sides, platforms stretched as far as he could see, not connected visibly, tracks between them, so it seemed that in order to reach any one you would have to clamber down onto the tracks and climb up onto a platform on the other side.