The Body Human by Nancy Kress Page A

blew against my leg.
    I said harshly, “You won’t last at school another six months if you take it all this hard. You’ll burn out. You’ll leave.”
    Her gaze didn’t waver. “Oh no, I won’t. And don’t talk to me in that tone of voice.”
    “Six months,” I said, and turned away. A cop came out of the building carrying a wailing Darryl. And the lie u tenant came over to me, wanting to know whatever it was I thought I knew about Jeff Connors’s connections.
     
    It was midnight before I got home. After the precinct house there’d been a clinic, with the claw marks on my face disinfected and a tetanus shot and a blood test and phot o graphs for the assault charges. After that, I looked for Bucky.
    He wasn’t at his apartment, or at his mother’s apar t ment. The weekend security guard at Kelvin Pharmace u ticals said he’d been on duty since four p.m. and Dr. R o mano hadn’t signed in to his lab. That was the entire list of places I knew to look. Bucky’s current life was unknown to me. I didn’t even know Tommy’s last name.
    I dragged myself through my apartment, pulling off my jacket. The light on the answering machine blinked.
    My mind—or the Camineur —made some connections. Even before I pressed the MESSAGE button, I think I knew.
    “Gene, this is Tom Fletcher. You don’t know me…we’ve never met.…” A deeper voice than I’d e x pected but ragged, spiky. “I got your message on Vince Romano’s machine. About the J-24. Vince…” The voice caught, went on. “Vince is in the hospital. I’m calling from there. St. Clare’s, it’s on Ninth at Fifty-first. Third floor. Just before he…said to tell you…”
    I couldn’t make out the words in the rest of the message.
    I sat there in the dark for a few minutes. Then I pulled my jacket back on and caught a cab to St. Clare’s. I didn’t think I could drive.
    The desk attendant waved me through. He thought I was just visiting Margie, even at this hour. It had happened before. But not lately.
    Bucky lay on the bed, a sheet pulled up to his chin but not yet over his face. His eyes were open. Suddenly I didn’t want to know what the sheet was covering—how he’d done it, what route he’d chosen, how long it had taken. All the dreary algebra of death. If train A leaves the station at a steady fifty miles per hour .…There were no marks on Bucky’s face. He was smiling.
    And then I saw he was still breathing. Bucky, the ever inept, had failed a second time.
    Tommy stood in a corner, as if he couldn’t get it t o gether enough to sit down. Tall and handsome, he had dark well-cut hair and the kind of fresh complexion that comes with youth and exercise. He looked about fifteen years younger than Bucky. When had they taken the J-24 t o gether? Lydia Smith and Giacomo della Francesca had killed themselves within hours of each other. So had Rose Kaplan and Samuel Fetterolf . How much did Tommy know?
    He held out his hand. His voice was husky. “You’re Gene.”
    “I’m Gene.”
    “Tom Fletcher. Vince and I are—”
    “I know,” I said, and stared down at Bucky’s smiling face, and wondered how I was going to tell this boy that he, too, was about to try to kill himself for chemically induced love.
    I flashed on Bucky and me sitting beside the rain-streaked alley window of the Greek diner. What are you waiting for, Bucky, your prince to come?
    Yes . And, Have you ever thought what it would be like to be really merged—to know him, to be him?
    “Tom,” I said. “There’s something we have to discuss.”
    “Discuss?” His voice had grown even huskier.
    “About Bucky. Vince. You and Vince.”
    “What?”
    I looked down at Bucky’s smiling face.
    “Not here. Come with me to the waiting room.”
    It was deserted at that hour, a forlorn alcove of scratched furniture, discarded magazines, too-harsh fluorescent lights. We sat facing each other on red plastic chairs.
    I said abruptly, “Do you know what J-24 is?”
    His eyes grew