us?”
“I’d never betray her real name to anybody, sir.”
“So we’re back to ‘sir’ now.”
He takes a long drink.
“Go ahead. Call her Abby. Make her a baby.”
His grin hardens until his face looks wind-chapped.
“Baby A —that always sounded to me
like some damn sports drink . . .”
I’m scared, and I think he is, too. Light from the moonlamps is
reflected in Mr. Harkonnen’s eyes, tiny weather vanes spinning in
each black pupil, and returning his stare I am dizzily aware that
our night could go in any number of directions.
“What did your boss tell me? The tall one —who’s that again?”
“Jim. Or Rudy. They’re twins. ‘Tall’ doesn’t narrow it
down.”
“He said you got the highest number of recruits.”
I feel myself darken. “Thanks to my sister. Her story.”
“So that’s the game, huh? You franchise your sister.”
“I don’t want to talk about her here.”
But his eyes gleam, he is taken by this idea.
“Sure. I get it now. You franchise her pain. Dori Edgewater.
Well, it worked, didn’t it?” He grins at me with slack, fish-pale
lips. “She’s famous. Everybody knows her, your sister. Just like
everybody knows my daughter.”
Two hunchbacked men are fighting in the corner with their
barstools lifted over their heads, the chair legs facing outward
like spiny antlers, so that they look like enormous beetles
charging one another; Night World bouncers in their ominous
uniforms arrive to break it up. Jacked electives, reports the
bartender-pharmacist. This altercation happens in the shallows,
near the flaps. At our depth of the speakeasy, nobody so much as
blinks.
I wait for Mr. Harkonnen to accuse me now:
You do what he did
, he’ll add,
to them. You are
just like Donor Y.
Or what else might he say, regarding Dori?
She’s dead. She’s dead. What’s it going to take? Do you want
me to ice a cake with that? Your sister’s dead. Everything you’ve
done, you’ve done for yourself alone.
But Mr. Harkonnen’s focus seems to have rolled inward, onto his
own failures:
“Justine is too damn good for her own good. She has no defenses.
And Abby? Poor kid, I’m sure she’ll take after her mother. Assuming
she makes it out of preschool. You think I can protect either of
them, from what they turned out to be? My wife is a far better
person than I am. That’s why I married her.”
I open my mouth intending to agree with him —to compliment the virtue of Mrs.
Harkonnen.
Then I think I have my own hiccup of insight into Mr.
Harkonnen’s dilemma. He got more goodness than he bargained for,
maybe, when he married her. Some flood he cannot dam or drain or
control. Unfortunately for Felix Harkonnen, the same currents of
goodness that originally drew him to his wife, we at the Corps have
also discovered.
“I’d better shut up,” he says after a while. “Drank too
much.”
But a minute later, he grabs my arm.
“Tell me this,” says Felix, whose first name I’ve yet to say
aloud.
“If your sister —Dori —were alive today, and she were the universal
donor? What would you do, huh? How much would you let them take
from her?”
“If it were me, sir, I promise you, I’d let them —”
“But say it’s not you, in this scenario. Say it’s Dori.”
I don’t answer.
To our left, there is a burst of muted applause; people are
whispering that an orexin-woman is genuinely asleep. Two men have
lifted her up, and with infinite care they are transporting her
through the smoky speakeasy. It’s quite something: the crowd falls
into a silence that pulses with energetic longing, and people move
around her dangling feet with the reverence due a new saint.
Watching even one woman nod off into sleep has changed the tent’s
entire atmosphere. Now the air feels almost musky with group
credulity, the group’s decision to blink an apparition into
reality. Her feet wave at us as she is carried from the tent, her
entire body limp. If you were a
“I’d never betray her real name to anybody, sir.”
“So we’re back to ‘sir’ now.”
He takes a long drink.
“Go ahead. Call her Abby. Make her a baby.”
His grin hardens until his face looks wind-chapped.
“Baby A —that always sounded to me
like some damn sports drink . . .”
I’m scared, and I think he is, too. Light from the moonlamps is
reflected in Mr. Harkonnen’s eyes, tiny weather vanes spinning in
each black pupil, and returning his stare I am dizzily aware that
our night could go in any number of directions.
“What did your boss tell me? The tall one —who’s that again?”
“Jim. Or Rudy. They’re twins. ‘Tall’ doesn’t narrow it
down.”
“He said you got the highest number of recruits.”
I feel myself darken. “Thanks to my sister. Her story.”
“So that’s the game, huh? You franchise your sister.”
“I don’t want to talk about her here.”
But his eyes gleam, he is taken by this idea.
“Sure. I get it now. You franchise her pain. Dori Edgewater.
Well, it worked, didn’t it?” He grins at me with slack, fish-pale
lips. “She’s famous. Everybody knows her, your sister. Just like
everybody knows my daughter.”
Two hunchbacked men are fighting in the corner with their
barstools lifted over their heads, the chair legs facing outward
like spiny antlers, so that they look like enormous beetles
charging one another; Night World bouncers in their ominous
uniforms arrive to break it up. Jacked electives, reports the
bartender-pharmacist. This altercation happens in the shallows,
near the flaps. At our depth of the speakeasy, nobody so much as
blinks.
I wait for Mr. Harkonnen to accuse me now:
You do what he did
, he’ll add,
to them. You are
just like Donor Y.
Or what else might he say, regarding Dori?
She’s dead. She’s dead. What’s it going to take? Do you want
me to ice a cake with that? Your sister’s dead. Everything you’ve
done, you’ve done for yourself alone.
But Mr. Harkonnen’s focus seems to have rolled inward, onto his
own failures:
“Justine is too damn good for her own good. She has no defenses.
And Abby? Poor kid, I’m sure she’ll take after her mother. Assuming
she makes it out of preschool. You think I can protect either of
them, from what they turned out to be? My wife is a far better
person than I am. That’s why I married her.”
I open my mouth intending to agree with him —to compliment the virtue of Mrs.
Harkonnen.
Then I think I have my own hiccup of insight into Mr.
Harkonnen’s dilemma. He got more goodness than he bargained for,
maybe, when he married her. Some flood he cannot dam or drain or
control. Unfortunately for Felix Harkonnen, the same currents of
goodness that originally drew him to his wife, we at the Corps have
also discovered.
“I’d better shut up,” he says after a while. “Drank too
much.”
But a minute later, he grabs my arm.
“Tell me this,” says Felix, whose first name I’ve yet to say
aloud.
“If your sister —Dori —were alive today, and she were the universal
donor? What would you do, huh? How much would you let them take
from her?”
“If it were me, sir, I promise you, I’d let them —”
“But say it’s not you, in this scenario. Say it’s Dori.”
I don’t answer.
To our left, there is a burst of muted applause; people are
whispering that an orexin-woman is genuinely asleep. Two men have
lifted her up, and with infinite care they are transporting her
through the smoky speakeasy. It’s quite something: the crowd falls
into a silence that pulses with energetic longing, and people move
around her dangling feet with the reverence due a new saint.
Watching even one woman nod off into sleep has changed the tent’s
entire atmosphere. Now the air feels almost musky with group
credulity, the group’s decision to blink an apparition into
reality. Her feet wave at us as she is carried from the tent, her
entire body limp. If you were a
Similar Books
