“I’m good,” she answered.
Now that he wasn’t playing, Rob could hear the conversation between the recently agitated woman and the guy with the red beard, and understood why the woman had been saying, “I can’t.”
“I’ll slap your ass while you suck me. Would you like that?” the guy was saying.
“Oh yeah. Spank my ass,” the woman answered, her voice thick with embarrassment.
He could tell from Winter’s expression that she heard it too, and felt himself turning red. There was a way to block sounds. It took him three or four precious seconds to figure it out and activate it.
“I brought something else I thought you’d like.” Rob picked up the mirror he’d borrowed from his dad’s barber room, held it over Winter’s face, and slowly tilted it toward the big window at the end of the hall. “Tell me when.”
“Oh. When.” Winter laughed with delight. Her laugh was a beastly croak rather than the musical laugh she probably had when she was alive, but a chill of delight ran up Rob’s spine nonetheless. She admired the green-leaf-and-blue-sky view for nearly thirty seconds before she was satisfied.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” Rob asked.
Winter considered. She had such beautiful, remarkably expressive eyes. The attractiveness-rating services had cheated her out of a half point, at least. It gave him hope that she would eventually be chosen by one of the men who came here.
“Do you believe in an afterlife?” Winter asked.
The question caught him off guard. “I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought.” He didn’t want to say no, because it was probably an important issue for her, but he thought cryogenics had answered the question pretty conclusively. Forty years ago, when Georgio Moldovar became the first dead person to be successfully revived, most religions withdrew to the position that the afterlife, or reincarnation, begins after the body decomposes. Some Christian denominations pointed out that the Bible actually says everyone goes into the ground until Jesus comes back and takes everyone to heaven. Rob figured he’d find out when he was dead.
“I haven’t given it much thought either. I wonder if I should have passed on this second chance at life. Maybe I’m putting myself through this misery when I could be somewhere wonderful.”
“Maybe.” He wasn’t sure what to say to that. It felt wrong to encourage her to change her mind and go into the ground, just because he had a vested interest—that would release him from his promise. And he still held out hope that Winter would be rescued and given a second life, which would be the ideal resolution for both of them. “Do you have any particular religious faith?” Her profile had a blank under religious affiliation.
“I’m kind of a sampler,” Winter laughed. “I used to rotate—I’d go to Jewish services one week, Zen Buddhist the next, Quaker, Catholic Mass, even Raw Life. Each fed my soul in a different way—I didn’t feel obliged to choose one.”
Rob opened his mouth to reply, then noticed the time. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” The dread in her tone told Rob she knew what. “How much longer?”
“Thirty seconds.”
She laughed with a panicked urgency. “I just tried to nod. I can’t feel my body, but I keep reaching for it, you know?”
Rob nodded, feeling guilty that he was able to.
“How about this? I’ll just tell you when I’m nodding, or shaking my head, or punching you.”
“Oh, no,” Rob laughed, “are you planning on punching me often?”
“We’ll see.”
Rob couldn’t help glancing at the timer, though he knew it would only make Winter more aware of what was about to happen. Seven seconds.
“I keep expecting this to get easier, that it will start to feel as if I’m going to sleep. But it doesn’t. Maybe it’s not possible to get used to dying.”
Rob reached out to comfort her, then remembered it was forbidden and drew back. If not for the surveillance, Rob would have reached under the silver cover and taken her hand, cold and stiff as it would have been.
21
Veronika
As she stood on the bottom step outside her apartment building, waiting for an opening in the flow of human traffic gliding by at morning rush hour, Veronika felt simultaneously exhausted and energized. It was the three-month anniversary of the Red Letter Day, as she thought of it, and still, that flurry of events occupied most of her waking thoughts. The man on the bridge, her semi-reconciliation with Jilly, her intimate playacting with Nathan, Rob’s struggle for redemption. She had spent her days cycling from pain to longing to joy to curiosity, riding a merry-go-round of emotion.
She stepped onto the sidewalk, quickly got up to speed with the other pedestrians, a cool morning breeze blowing her hair, which was unsatisfactorily frizzy this morning. She was only half watching the sidewalk, her attention focused for the moment on Nathan. Those hours spent pretending to be his girlfriend had been some of the best of her life. The problem was, now she was back to her normal life. It felt so dreary by comparison. Until now, she’d only been able to fantasize about what it would be like if she and Nathan were together. Now she knew exactly how his strong arm felt wrapped around her waist, saw how people looked at her when they thought Nathan was her boyfriend.
Rationally, she knew this crush on Nathan was absurd. But love wasn’t rational, and there didn’t appear to be any way for her to stop feeling what she felt, or even to tone it down so that it wasn’t so all-consuming. Dwelling on his many flaws—his narcissism being front and center on that list—did nothing to cool her ardor.
Up ahead, a man was standing motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, clogging traffic, forcing people to push past on either side of him. He was a black man, tall and huge. He was glaring at Veronika with lunatic rage.
Although she knew it couldn’t be the man who’d jumped off the bridge, she was certain it was him.
Veronika jolted to a stop, her momentum almost causing her to tumble forward. Heart pounding, she ran a facial match with the recording from the bridge her system had made, sure she must be mistaken.
The match was confirmed. It was him.
The man stepped toward her. He seemed livid, though uneasy with his rage, unsure whether to clench his fists and grit his teeth or leave his hands and mouth open.
“So here I am, alive. Are you happy?”
“Hey, come on,” a passerby growled after bumping into the man.
People passed on either side, brushing against Veronika’s coat. “I don’t understand. You didn’t survive the fall, did you? You couldn’t have.”
The man made a guttural sound of disgust, squeezed his eyes closed, as if the sight of Veronika was just too much for him. He stormed off.
Veronika was relieved to be out from under his angry stare, but couldn’t just let him walk off. She ID’d his fast-retreating form, was surprised to discover he didn’t have a privacy block on his system. His name was Lycan Hill; he worked at a place called Wooster.
Had he survived the jump? Maybe he was wealthy enough to afford complete revivification insurance. If so, why did he kill himself without canceling the insurance first? This was going to torment her.
Veronika took off after him.
“Lycan?” she called when she was right behind him, almost running to keep up with his long, brisk strides.
Lycan turned, again grunted with disgust when he saw it was her.
“Look, I just wanted to help. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”
“All right.” He kept walking.