"Jesus, this sucks," I tell Angus when the kid’s zapped out. "Sweet Parting my ass." We check out the money shot. Will that cute smile trigger Ma into having some long dark nights of the soul concerning the shit way she treated her? More likely she’ll say to herself and everyone, I did everything I could for her as a mother, she passed away knowing she was loved, just look at my adorable happy girl.
Medicine man puts his hand on my arm. "It’s a tough job, no question." He’s got a hint of stubble, I like that. And you can tell he works out. "Some gum?" He fishes in his pocket, pulls out – woah. Like, about seven varieties. Including a brand-new one I never seen before.
"Gingko Berry? You’re kidding me. Gotta give that a go." I unwrap it and chew. "Mmm, weird."
"New things are always weird the first time."
"Make me laugh, Angus. I need cheering up. You got any more jokes?"
He thinks. "How did Captain Hook die?"
"Go on."
"He scratched his ass with the wrong hand."
I crack up again. Hysterically, if I’m honest. He puts his hand on my arm, firmer this time. He’s strong, his skin’s warm. I look at his wrist. I could never resist a hairy wrist.
"How about a drink this evening, Kylie? I think you’ve earned one."
The gingko berry’s growing on me. "As in, a date?"
"As in."
Hey. Hey. "You betcha."
"Good. You got a favourite bar, Kylie?"
I smile. "I have."
I write down my address and hand him the piece of paper.
He reads it, takes in what it’s telling him, smiles back at me big and slow, then he glances around to check if anyone’s there before kissing me long and hard, right there in the ICU cubicle. It’s so good I swallow my gum. Finally he pulls away and looks me deep in the eyes. "So, what would you wish for if you were hooked up to the Angel right now?" he murmurs.
I laugh. "Well you know the answer to that one, Angus van der Kamp. You ain’t dumb."
He cocks an eyebrow. "Let me hear it from you."
I lean forward, whisper in his ear: "OK. I’d wish for someone hot to give me the fuck of my life."
And it was the fuck of my life. Out of this world. Unbelievable. Life-changing. I’m still pulsing from it, high on my first ever set of multiple orgasms. Twenty-seven, since you ask. And no, I wouldn’t have believed it either. We’re on my bed with the fan turning above us, the noise of the lake in the distance, outboard motors and cat-calls and music. He’s not one of those guys falls asleep right after which is good, cuz sex wakes me right up, gets my brain going. We’ve got through half a bottle of Southern Comfort, handing the bottle to and fro and sharing cigarettes.
"So now the fairy godmother has granted your sex wish, do you have any more?" he wants to know. I blow out smoke.
"Yeah. I do. I been thinking about that kid today, Jessie-May. And yesterday’s, the primitive. Can’t shake them off. I want to know what the Angel’s really for."
He takes a swig of Southern Comfort, toys with a strand of my hair. "We’re not supposed to discuss it with anyone outside of Threshold." He grins. "Bad girl."
"Come on, it’s not some federal secret. Anyway I need to, it makes me feel so helpless." I still got this mean little rage going, about the whole Sweet Parting deal. "We might as well use a stun-gun on them and just get it over with, instead of horsing around in their hippocampuses, jinxing their dumbass psyches, stirring up stuff best left buried. I’m not the only operator thinks that. Consensus is, it’s asking the wrong questions. Bad programming. Bad priorities. The ethical side to this, it’s way over our pay-grade. We’re technicians. We didn’t sign up for this. We’re talking inbuilt systematic incompetence. Something as important as this? You don’t let Cal-Tech Aspie nerds design it. You bring in expert psychologists, right? I mean that kid today, Jessie-May. For what it’s worth, d’you know what I think she really wanted? A decent Ma, is what. That woman in the store, that was her shitbag Ma, turned nice, offering her ice-cream. But does Jessie-May ask for a hug, does the good version of Ma offer her one? No, cuz the Angel’s a dumbass. It’s thinking commercially because those are its values. So it gets her to the brink but the woman selling ice cream doesn’t turn into the kid’s mother, like it should, so there’s no closure. Trigger-image recognition failure or whatever. Or it’s a language issue, maybe change the tense of the verb or something? I’m no linguistic cognoscenti but my thought is, instead of asking what flavour ice cream, it should just go, what do you want most in the world?"
"I hear you, Kylie." He hands me the bottle and I take a big swig.
"So you plug me up to the Angel and here’s what I say: I say I wanna give Threshold Care Systems a piece of my mind, ask them what they’re really up to, cuz you can bet they’ve got a hidden agenda."
He rolls over and props himself on his elbow. "Hmm. Wonder how that would go."
I look him in the eye. "I’d say to the host, whoever it was, I’d like to get to the bottom of this shit."
He nods. "And the host’d go, let me guess. It’d go, Don’t you already know the answer to that, Kylie?"
I bang the pillow. "Yeah, exactly. The client always has the answer buried within his own mind, and blah blah. So I’d say, Well the big business slash the Pentagon slash Silicon Valley has to be behind it somehow, right?"
"Hmm. The military-industrial complex?"
"Something like it. I don’t know."
He nods. "And the host says?"
"He or she – probably a he in my case – says right, Kylie. Got it in one. And I’m like, I knew it. I mean you have to ask yourself, as an Angel operator, who are the real clients, cuz there’s no advantage I can see, in them – whoever they are – finding out what someone’s last wish is, and making their passing a thing of ease. Cuz giving a bleach-swallower an ass-crack tattoo, or Jessie-May a peanut butter ice-cream, or her drunk grandaddy his dream screwdriver kit isn’t something you spend a billion dollars on. They’re so low down the food chain they’re like, amoeba. They’d want a machine that gets to find out, you know… big thoughts. Secrets maybe. Famous people. Presidents and shit, what they regret, what they never told anyone, what they dreamed about achieving that they never said aloud. People whose minds are worth exploring. That’s what I’d use it for, if I was them."
"Hmmm." He lies back on the pillow, his arms tucked behind his head in a way that shows off his world-class chest. "You know, Kylie, I have a hunch you’re right."
"I know I am."
"Well say you are. And say I’m being the host here," he says.
"Shoot."
"Would what you’ve just articulated answer your question about the system’s purpose? Its raison d’etre?"
Raison d’etre. Primitive. He has a way with words. I have a think. "Yeah. I guess it would." He hands me the cigarette and I take a deep drag and another swig of bourbon, and let the two sets of chemicals do their combined work. "I guess it… does." Something’s sinking in. "Medicine Man?"
"Yeah?"
"I’m not sure how to bring this up, but… I said I wanted the fuck of my life and I got it."
He grins. "At your service."
"So I’m starting to wonder, are we entering a different… register here?"
He grins. "Hmm. What do you think?"
"I don’t know."
"You’re smart, Kylie. That’s what I love about you. Your imagination’s bigger than you think. Just look at today. You won! You answered your own questions about Threshold and its agenda, and on top of that, you had some spectacular orgasms. Maybe Sweet Parting’s more sophisticated and generous than you give it credit for."