Love Minus Eighty (20 page)

A moment later, a text message came from Rob:

Thank you! My anonymous benefactor also made another generous contribution!

Awesome!
she shot back. Generous. Rob must mean he’d received another nine thousand, so he’d be able to visit right away. That was good, given the uncertainty about how long she would be there.

She shivered, imagining what it must be like to be in Winter’s place, aware that you’re dead, helpless to do anything about it. Why were so many people paying through the nose for the privilege of occupying one of those coffins? Why was
she
paying through the nose for freezing insurance?

“I think I’m going to cancel my freezing insurance,” she said.

Nathan smiled at her like she was joking. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. How long is your contract for?”

“A thousand years, I think. I just increased it. How about you?”

“Twelve hundred.”

“See, you’re all set.”

“But what’s the point? Who would possibly revive us?”

“No one,” Nathan laughed. “If you can’t afford twenty or thirty million to revive yourself, why would some relative pay it a hundred years from now?”

Veronika swatted Nathan’s shoulder. “Exactly my point. That’s why I’m canceling my insurance. I might as well use the money now, while I’m alive.”

Nathan sighed. “You really don’t understand the true purpose of freezing insurance?”

“The true purpose?”

Nathan looked around, like he was checking to make sure no one could overhear, studiously ignored the seven or eight screens hovering in the backseat. “It’s about coping with our fear of death.”

“Oh, really?”

Nathan nodded as he pulled into the parking stacks across the street from Venus de Milo’s. She suddenly wondered why they always went here, of all the restaurants in High Town.

“Think about it,” Nathan said as they got out. “If you’re frozen when you die, there’s only a minuscule chance you’ll ever be revived, but there is
some
chance.” He held his thumb and forefinger close together. “That tiny millimeter of chance takes the edge off our fear of death. As the lights are going out, you don’t know for sure it’s the end, so it’s not as terrifying.”

Veronika nodded tentatively.

“Picture yourself as a corpse in a coffin, buried in the ground, decomposing.”

She didn’t want to picture herself as a corpse in a coffin. If she did, there was less chance she’d cancel her freezing insurance. “So you’re saying people break their backs, some working two jobs, so they can afford a hundred and fifty thousand a year in insurance, all to cope with the existential terror of nonexistence.”

Nathan considered. “I wouldn’t use all of those jewel-encrusted NYU-grad-school words, but yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“That’s what having kids is for. Plus they’re a heck of a lot cheaper, and give you pleasure while you’re alive.”

Nathan made a sour face.

Rob played “The Boy in the Gap” until Winter’s eyes clicked into focus, then he set the lute aside. He would not cry, would not do anything that might tip Winter off that in a few weeks they would bury her. The first time he’d come to this place, he’d carried a secret, and hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell it, though she had to know. Now he carried a different secret. This one he needed to keep from her.

“How long has it been?” Winter asked in that terrible graveyard voice that so contradicted her lovely, gentle face.

“Only two weeks. Our anonymous benefactor came through again. And how about this: I contacted Nathan, and he helped out a ton. He went around and got his friends to help as well.”

“Head shake. Who would have thought Nathan had this hidden fund-raising talent. He just needed to find the right charity.” There was bitterness in her tone.

“He’s still never paid you another visit?”

“Head shake again,” Winter said without a hint of mirth.

“I’m sorry to hear it. Have you had any other visitors?” He tried to sound nonchalant.

“Head shake yet again, combined with a heavy sigh. Other than you, I’ve only had three visitors the entire time I’ve been here. None of them visited more than once. Shrug. Tough crowd.”

A man in a white full-body system sauntered by. They waited for him to pass out of earshot.

“So tell Nathan to keep those donations rolling in. You’re all I’ve got.” Her voice got very low, a gargling whisper. “If you stopped coming, I would cease to exist.”

Rob swallowed, trying to push back the emotion welling up. If she only knew. Looking at her lying there, as lucid and alert as anyone walking the streets outside, it seemed impossible that they could simply drag her out and let her body—. He pushed those thoughts away. “I would never stop visiting you.” Rob stroked the oiled wood of his lute, an excuse to look away, to seek refuge from the intensity of her gaze. “I look forward to seeing you. I mean—” Again, he choked up, took a few deep breaths to get himself under control. “There’s no one in the world I’d rather spend time with. If I stopped coming, I’d miss you.” The words surprised him, but they were true, he realized. He prayed she didn’t pick up the subtext behind his words. He was grateful for the opportunity to say these things, to tell her that he cared for her, before it was too late.

“I’d miss you, too,” Winter said. “More than I want to admit.”

A few precious seconds ticked off the clock as they sat with their words hanging in the air between them.

“Tell me about that day,” Winter said.

Rob wanted to ask, “What day?” to pretend that day wasn’t always right there, playing in a loop over all of his other thoughts and memories. “What do you want to know?”

“Just, I don’t know, where you were coming from, where you were going.” She must have sensed his reluctance, because she added, “It’s not about blame, Rob. It happened. When you’ve got time, look up the Zen parable of the rowboat. That’s how I think about it now. In my best moments, anyway. But it’s still my death. I want to understand it.”

Rob told her about his breakup with Lorelei, how she had been airmailing his past out her window. He tried not to sound like he was trying to shift the blame, but the temptation was strong. He wanted Winter’s last thoughts of him, if he couldn’t manage one last trip after this, to be good ones.

Winter was making a choking sound that Rob now recognized as laughter. “What?” he asked, smiling. “What’s funny?”

“Both of us had just gone through breakups, and we were all set to pull out the sad songs and marinate our broken hearts in alcohol. As it turned out, neither of us had the opportunity to do much pining.”

Rob grimaced. “The guaranteed cure for heartbreak: find pain that’s much, much worse.” He glanced at the timer, knowing he wasn’t going to like what he saw. Six seconds. five, four, three…

He reached out and brushed her cheek. “Good-bye.”

Outside, Rob looked up the Zen parable about the rowboat on his handheld.

A monk is rowing on a lake. Another boater, listening to loud music and not watching where he’s going, is heading straight for the monk’s boat. The monk shouts and curses,
finally has to lean over the side and deflect the other boat to avoid a collision.

Later, the monk notices an empty boat trailing a broken mooring line, pushed along by a stiff wind. The empty boat is heading straight for the monk’s boat. Serene and smiling, the monk leans over and gently deflects the empty boat.

Rob wondered if the monk would have been so serene if the empty boat had been a loose cargo ship that cut his rowboat in half and drowned him. It impressed him that Winter could, during her best moments.

“Rob. Wait up.”

Rob turned, and immediately recognized Peter, head down, hurrying to catch up.

“Let’s walk a little,” Peter said, pressing Rob’s shoulder.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Rob asked as they walked along Ashburton Avenue.

“I didn’t. I set up a facial-recognition protocol, and it alerted me.”

That would be expensive. Rob wondered what was so important. Peter just went on walking, saying nothing.

“So are you coming from work?” Rob asked.

“Yes. But I don’t work at the dating center, I work in the main facility.” Peter looked up at the towering, shining wall of the dating facility as Rob waited for him to say whatever he’d come to say. “My late wife is in there.”

That explained a lot. Rob tried to imagine knowing your wife was in there, going on “dates” with rich men. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rob said. “It must be incredibly painful.”

Peter nodded. “My twelve-year-old daughter, Emma, was nine when her mom died. But her mom is gone and not gone; it’s possible she’ll be back, maybe sharing joint custody of Emma, and Emma’s aware of that.” At the corner
they turned left, toward the river. “I visited her once, but I couldn’t stand to see her go through that awful fear, paralyzed, desperate.” He shook his head, as if trying to banish the memory. “I tried to convince her to leave the program, go back to the main facility, but she wouldn’t. It’s hard to give up that chance for a second life, when the alternative is oblivion. It’s cruel, reviving someone and forcing them to make that choice.”

Rob didn’t know what to say. “Sorry to hear it. That’s why you’re helping Bridesicle Watch.”

“I want to see the program shut down. I want Marlene, and all the rest of them, to rest in peace. Maybe it’s wrong, since it’s not what Marlene wants.” He took out a pack of gum, offered a piece to Rob, who refused, then popped a piece into his mouth. “All this to say, it may seem like I’m bringing you bad news, but maybe it’s really not.”

Rob stopped short, looked at Peter, waiting, his heart pounding slow and hard. He thought he knew, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it.

“I had someone check your friend’s account. She’s being removed Tuesday.”

“
Tuesday?
” He didn’t mean it to sound like an accusation, but it did. “
Tuesday?
”

“I thought you might want to say good-bye.”

Rob turned away from Peter, trying to digest this. He’d known Winter didn’t have much time, but not knowing the exact date had allowed him to assume she still had two or three weeks, enough time for a miracle.

“You said she had three weeks, and that was less than two weeks ago.”

Peter put a hand on Rob’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure I said two or three.”

Four days. He had four days. Rob turned to face Peter. “There has to be something I can do.”

Peter closed his eyes. “Raise twenty or thirty thou, get a few high-net-worth individuals to visit her, you
might
push the date back a month.” He squeezed Rob’s shoulder, almost hard enough that it hurt. “You did everything you could. Let her go.” Not waiting for an answer, he walked off.

Lycan was smiling, actually smiling when Veronika waved her door open.

“So where are we headed?” Veronika asked, reaching for her jacket.

“That’s top secret.” Lycan canted his head. “Almost literally.”

Veronika’s system signaled an incoming voice-only call, which meant a call from Rob, since she didn’t know anyone else who owned a prehistoric handheld. She answered as they headed toward the door, but as soon as she heard Rob’s voice, she stopped. Something was very wrong. She opened a screen on the street corner in Yonkers, where Rob was leaning against a building, then pinged Nathan, and Nathan opened one as well.

“My source at Cryomed contacted me,” Rob said. “She has four days. They’re going to bury her in four days.” He seemed barely able to stand; his breath was coming in thin
whoops, his whole face shaking. Veronika couldn’t imagine how hard this must be on him. She wished there was something she could do. In a screen, she couldn’t even hug him.

“This is too serious to handle by screen in public,” Nathan said. “Rob, I’ll swing by and pick you up. We’ll meet over at Vee’s place.”

Twenty minutes later they were at Veronika’s door, Nathan’s hand on Rob’s slumped shoulder. Nathan nodded grimly to Veronika, greeted Lycan with a handshake as Rob sat down hard on a capsule seat, as if his legs were finally giving out.

Nathan sat beside him. “Our boy here says we can delay the inevitable by a week or so if Winter has some visitors,” Nathan said. “I’m sending out appeals to friends and family, along with kicking in everything I can afford.”

Veronika noticed that Lycan had moved near the kitchen, was hovering at the periphery of the room, as if he didn’t want to intrude. “Lycan, you’re welcome to join us.”

Lycan nodded, took a seat beside Veronika.

“I can come up with three thousand,” Veronika said. She looked at Lycan. “Can you help at all?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll give three.”

“Peter said she’d have more time if the men had higher income profiles, instead of just me,” Rob said, clearly trying to control the tremor in his voice.

“Well,” Veronika said, looking at Lycan, “we have a man here with a decent income profile. How about it, Lycan?”

Lycan looked mortified. “I’m happy to contribute, but I’m not going into that place. I’m sorry.”

Surprised, Veronika said, “But you’d be helping Rob and Winter.”

“I know. I just can’t go in there. It’s complicated.” Lycan wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t look at any of them.

“What’s complicated about it?” Veronika asked. “You go in, you chat with Winter for five minutes, you leave.”

Lycan stared at his hands. “I just don’t want to.”

Though Lycan had just agreed to contribute money, Veronika couldn’t help feeling angry. It was a life they were talking about. Maybe this was why Lycan had no friends, because he didn’t know what it meant to
be
a friend.

“Rob, if I could make a suggestion?” Nathan said. He clasped his hands, leaned forward. “I care about Winter, but buying her an extra week in the freezer doesn’t do anyone much good. Use all the money we can raise to visit her yourself. Let her spend her final minutes with someone she knows and likes.” He bit his lower lip, shook his head. “Then let her go. I hate to say it, but I think we’re beat.”