Penny Dreadful (37 page)

Do you want to talk about it? I said.

About what, she said. About Christian being dead, or last night?

I shoved my hands in my pockets to stop myself from scratching at my skin.

Either, I said.

No. I don’t know.

Across the street a young man with a bullet-shaped head leaned out of a window and yelled at a barking dog. I looked up and down the street for something to focus on, something to talk about that wasn’t dripping with realism.

Eve was an arm’s length away, her hands restless on her knees. Her face pale and sober. She tugged at the hem of her borrowed skirt, as if it wasn’t quite comfortable. I wanted to comfort her but I was too clumsy. And I felt like I was fading, I was blurry and unreliable. I was suffering a transporter malfunction, a pixel error. Every inch of my skin was shimmering. I wanted to take off my shirt and ask her to scratch a maddening itch down the middle of my back but I told myself the itch was not real.

The itch was not real.

I’m sure he deserved it, she said. And I didn’t love him, if that’s what you think.

Empty hands.

No, I said. I don’t think that. But what’s the difference?

I liked having sex with him, she said. Or my character did. But I think that when someone you love dies, you should feel something unbearable. You should feel crushed and lost and you shouldn’t be able to breathe.

The bullet-shaped head came through the window and yelled at the barking dog to shut the fuck up.

And how do you feel, I said.

I need a bath, she said. And I think I have food poisoning.

That’s bad enough.

I can breathe, she said. How do you feel?

Unpleasantly awake. Frustrated, empty. I want to get high.

You were a cop, she said.

Not a very good one, I said. And it was a long time ago. It was an alternate universe.

That Fred, she said. He said Christian was killing cops.

I stared at her. And?

Isn’t that supposed to make you insane?

I shrugged. This isn’t television, right. No one likes their coworkers to get killed and obviously it’s scary when someone shoots a cop because it means they are much crazier than the average crazy person but I never swallowed that Hollywood notion that a cop’s life is worth more to me than a bike messenger’s or a drug dealer’s or a homosexual dogwalker’s. A lot of cops are bitter assholes and they can’t wait to fuck you, to rob you blind and shit on you. And so are a lot of bike messengers. I don’t know any dog walkers but they can’t all be nice people. Meanwhile a lot of drug dealers are just guys who like cartoons and fast food and they have kids and dogs and student loans and they’re basically harmless so the answer must be no, I don’t particularly give a fuck.

No, I said. I don’t give a fuck.

And what about last night? she said.

A bird flashed across the horizon of my brain, a speckled brown blur of words too raw and strange to be spoken aloud.

It was fantastic, I said. It scared the shit out of me.

I don’t think it was real, she said.

Eve was chewing at her lip and the muscles in her throat were killing me. Her nipples were visibly hard and her thighs were long and slim and perfect in those white stockings. I felt like Humbert. I rubbed at my eyes, disgusted. I leaned close enough to kiss her but she turned and my lips brushed her cheek like a brother’s. I am a suicidal romantic, or I was at that moment. I wanted to tell her it’s never real.

Doubt, I said. It’s everywhere, it’s all around us. You can’t see it or smell it but it’s there.

Yeah, she said sourly. Like oxygen.

Do you want to try again? I said.

Eve’s mouth was crooked and sweet, her eyes cloudy. She didn’t have to say anything. I knew the answer was yes, she wanted to. But we wouldn’t.

Here comes a bus, she said.

Yeah. Where’s it going, though?

Dead cops meant nothing to me. I didn’t know them and so they were just names, faces. They were characters in a movie that I wasn’t watching. I was eleven years old when Star Wars came out and I have rarely been more shocked and heartbroken than when Obi-Wan Kenobi was killed but I had the distinct feeling that she wanted to get off the subject so I stood up as the big silver bus approached, rattling and heaving. The brakes moaned with the familiar whispering metallic sigh that echoed too long and always made me think there were people being tortured in the bowels of the thing. It was going downtown, at least. I wondered if I would see that blind guy again, the one that was tormented by his tongue. I fucking hoped not, because he did seem like the sort who rode the bus for days and days without stopping, from one end of the line to another. Eve took my hand and climbed aboard first, then turned to look at me with eyes wrinkled and amused.

No money, she said.

Oh. I forgot about money.

I dug around in Ray Fine’s pockets and came up with a sticky wad of bills. The driver extracted two singles and gravely told me to take a seat. The bus was mostly empty and we found seats near the middle, near the center of gravity. I wanted to tell Eve that I have black-and-white nightmares about buses and I think they have something to do with the movie Metropolis. I have this recurring vision that I will wake up one day to find myself standing in a long line of black-faced men and women in dark, conservative clothes waiting to board an unmarked bus that will take us to hell and when I first pass the driver he seems normal enough but when he turns around his face is a skull with patches of raw skin and empty holes where the eyes should be and when the doors hiss shut I know they will never open again, not until we arrive in the first ring of hell.

I sat beside Eve, our legs touching. I liked the way she pressed her knees together, the way she picked restlessly at the thin stockings she wore under her borrowed skirt. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, either. I wanted a cigarette, of course. Eve took my right hand and held it in her lap, she trapped it there like a nervous kitten and I laughed.

You’re manic, she said.

The shakes, I said. But no worries.

Yeah.

Eve shrugged and turned to look out the window. I nodded, admiring the harsh line of her jaw. The uneven color of her cheeks. I met her a little over a year ago, when she was nineteen, when she was so unpleasantly sexy it left me stupid and weak.

If you saw her in a grocery store, stalking through the dairy section in jeans and army boots and a T-shirt that said she was tough and fragile and fully capable of fucking you to tears, you would sigh and clutch your belly as if kicked and duck down the frozen foods aisle. Because you would want to follow her, you would want to see what she was buying and you would want to get another good look at her in the odd shadowless supermarket light but you really couldn’t stand it and instead you would buy ice cream that you didn’t need. Eve was a year older now and she didn’t quite paralyze me. Don’t get me wrong. My jaw ached a little yet, looking at her. But I was a year older, too. I was relatively unchanged. I was a year closer to dying of lung cancer. The bus wheezed to a stop but no one got off. There was a tickle along the back of my neck and I looked up. The driver was peering at someone on the sidewalk.

Well, he said. You getting on or not?

There was no answer and the driver moved to shut the doors.

Hold it, chief.

I recognized that voice and could only stare as Jimmy Sky’s round head heaved into view. Moon but not Moon. He stood alongside the driver, swaying slightly as he dug through his pockets and managed to come up with a dollar bill, which he pressed flat against his chest before surrendering. Jimmy was shirtless, barefoot. His belly jutting over the waistband of the white pants.

I glanced at Eve, who didn’t blink.

Money, she said. It’s something you forget about, in the game.

Yeah, I said. I imagine a lot of things are like that.

Jimmy ambled heavily down the aisle, staggering as the bus lurched forward. He caught hold of a safety bar overhead and hung there a moment, panting. I tried to catch his eye but he stared through me.

Your head is screwed on wrong, said Eve. Everything looks strange. The stuff that seems so important to your other self, your daylight self, is just funny. You wonder how you ever believed in anything. But then your character starts to run wild and you get almost homesick for reality.

Jimmy Sky regained his balance and continued down the aisle. His eyes were calm but his breathing was so loud it seemed deafening to me. Wind through dead trees. Moon might have been a giant talking frog and he would have looked just as strange to me. Now he passed without a flicker.

You feel like you’re disappearing, said Eve. Your daylight self is like a little kid who fell down a well. You can hear her voice down there in the dark but it seems faraway and weak and you don’t know how to get her out. You want to throw her a rope but you can’t be bothered or something.

I glanced over my shoulder to see that Jimmy had found a seat in the very last row. He was wedged between two sinewy black men who wore gang colors and had the feral eyes of dogs that kill their own. They were somehow unoffended by Jimmy and I shook my head, thinking, but he must smell like death. How can they tolerate him?

Eve poked me. Are you listening, she said.

My thoughts flailed. I am…yes. What is she like? I said.

Who?

Goo, I said.

She’s a lot like me, said Eve. Only better. Goo has no morals, no inhibitions. She can step outside herself and use her body like it’s a piece of machinery.

How is that better?

Eve shrugged and said, Goo is an Exquisitor.

Which means what, I said. Exactly.

It means that she can extract emotions from people that they don’t realize they possess.

Isn’t that what happened last night?

Eve frowned. Goo isn’t nearly as selfish or paranoid as I am. And she’s still here. She’s not going to just go to sleep and disappear.

Really, I said. That’s…comforting.

Eve breathed into my right ear and I flinched as if bitten.

What about you, she said. Did you have a character in the game?

Oh, yeah. I was a Fred named Ray. For about eight hours, anyway.

What was he like?

Ray? I said. He was a great fucking fool, a fearless idiot. He was a lot like me.

Eve giggled. And what happened to him?

Nothing happened to him. I made fun of his hair and stole his clothes and treated him like dirt and he just fucked off after a while.

I like his clothes, she said.

Aren’t these nice?

You should be doing magic tricks for spare change.

I don’t know any tricks.

Everybody’s dying, she said. Just pick a disease.

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I liked the idea. I resisted the urge to glance back at Jimmy. I couldn’t protect him and I doubted that he wanted me to. I doubted that he knew my name. I let my eyes flutter shut and soon I disappeared and daydreamed. I tried and failed to synchronize my breathing with the seasick rumble and drone of the bus.

Eve squeezed my thigh. Be careful, she said. You don’t want to fall asleep.

Why not?

You might wake up and not know who you are.

Imagine that.

It isn’t funny, she said.

Okay. Tell me about Mingus and Dizzy, I said.

What about them?

Are they really married, for instance?

They’re separated, said Eve. But that’s her real name.

Oh, well. That explains everything.

Today was a big day for them, she said. Those two never step out of character. And why would they want to. Look at them. Mingus and Dizzy are much more fun to be with than Matthew and Dizzy.

This was making my head hurt.

You truly become someone else, she said. You lose your previous self. You amputate it. I know a few gamers who have faked their own deaths and never gone back.