The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Adney made herself laugh. “Get out of here,” she said, because somebody had to reject the offer, and Teek wasn’t.

  The man turned to Teek. Teek’s frown sharpened.

  They both had outside hookups, sometimes. It was within the rules they’d fashioned for themselves. And Teek had been with boys. Since they’d started dating, even. Not his favorite thing. One of his friends, usually, drunk and pushy and pleading. Teek was good-natured like that. Eager to make someone happy, if he could.

  There were no rules for this.

  How had he known they needed the money? But of course they did. They were Americans. Americans were either obscenely rich or super poor, and they were obviously not the former.

  “One hour . . . doing what?” Teek asked.

  The man put both hands on the table. They were big, coarse. Hairy. The sight of them thrilled her, as if she was the one he wanted to grab hold of. “We’re not children here. I don’t think I need to spell it out. I’ll respect your boundaries, of course, but I’m not paying you to talk.”

  “Can we have some time to think about it?” Teek asked.

  “You cannot,” the man said, and this, too, was thrilling to Adney, and the thrill unsettled her. She imagined the most degrading of demands being issued to her in that same imperious, commanding tone. But of course it wasn’t her he’d be degrading.

  Teek looked at her, pretty eyes wide, like, What the fuck, this is so bizarre, but also like, What do we do?

  A giddy tremor shivered through her. He’s waiting for me to say Yes or No, she realized. This is up to me.

  It would mean eating dinner at all the restaurants they’d had to pass by the last five nights. Moving from the precarious cliffside hostel outside of town, high up the unlit hill, and into one of the grand old hotels in town. Going on to Venice. Being able to afford delivery, all semester long, when school started back up. Making a dent in that mountain of loan debt.

  They came so easily, the cold equations of pimping her boyfriend.

  “Do it if you want to do it,” she said, and he frowned, but she could see the excitement in his eyes. Or at least that’s what she told herself she could see.

  “Why the fuck not,” Teek said.

  The man handed her a stack. “That’s half. I’ll give him the other half when he’s finished.”

  He was handsome, she saw, for the first time. Sharp chin; well-kept beard. Eloquent eyebrows. The slightest shabbiness around the edges, overall, like he, too, came from a fallen place.

  “Bye,” Teek said, grinning. He stood, then stooped to kiss her.

  “You’re sure this is okay?” she asked.

  “Of course!” he said, showing teeth. This was him, the eager boyish thing she’d fallen for—but it was also not him, or not the him she’d known. Another facet revealed: the fact that he’d sell himself. Like when she learned he smoked. She liked it, she thought. She hoped.

  “Be careful,” she said, and then they were gone.

  The woman behind the bar smiled at her. She knows, Adney thought. She saw it all in our faces. But she knew that was illogical. If they had been in America, the woman would have come over, filled her coffee cup, but they weren’t, so Adney had to get up to fetch another espresso.

  A long, narrow mirror stretched along the back wall. Brand new, with beveled edges. Adney imagined an ancient one before it, broken in a brawl or tiny non-newsworthy earthquake. She watched their reflections, the old woman’s and hers—two broad noses, one Roman and one pure New York—two survivors of shattered empires. One gone two thousand years, the other so recently most people hadn’t noticed it yet. About the same height. Would her black hair go gray as spectacularly as this woman’s had? Easy to imagine them as avatars of each other, or this woman with deft arthritic hands as a future version of herself.

  Back at her table, she tried and failed several times to lose herself in the book she’d brought, but it was proving impossible to think of anything other than what was happening upstairs. Would the man want to fuck Teek, or would he want Teek to fuck him? Would it be vanilla, or very very not?

  More worrisome was wondering how Teek would be, when he came downstairs. Would this push him back into one of his glum, silent blue periods? Or would he return buoyed up, excited, energized in a way that sex with her had not been able to do for him lately? And which would be worse?

  She took a cigarette out of the pack he’d left on the table. Held it up in the woman’s direction; she shrugged. Adney lit it, sucked in smoke, held it in her mouth. Did not inhale. Blew it out in a slow, narrow billow.

  An hour passed fast. Or maybe it wasn’t that long at all. Maybe they finished far sooner. Teek came down alone, back pocket bulging. Walking with no discernible limp or other evidence of trauma. Smiling.

  “Hey,” she said when he lowered his face to her. She flinched, afraid of what his lips might taste like, and that made him laugh, and then he kissed her, and they tasted like nothing.

  Teek smiled quizzically, possibly noticing she’d smoked. “Shall we go on to the church?” he asked.

  He left a lot of money on the table and winked at the woman on their way out. For the first time, Adney noticed how she frowned at him.

  Cold wind came off the water. Late afternoon by then. Dark clouds piling up over the ocean. He took her hand and they walked into the ancient, tattered city.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Sure am,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

  “How . . . was it?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Did he—did you—”

  “Cool if we don’t talk about it right now?” Teek asked. “I mean, I get it, you have the right to know everything that went down and I’ll totally tell you, just, not right now?”

  “Of course,” she said, and leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder. Something about it was off, though. Their heads did not fit together the way they normally did. His posture seemed somehow poorer.

  “You’re okay, though, right? Really okay?”

  “Super okay.” He kissed the top of her head.

  Women watched them go, from several stories up. Clothes shook on laundry lines. Streets split, narrowed, became tunnels, opened up again. She wondered if she’d be able to tell whether the disputed Caravaggio was real or not. And whether it would be good, even if it wasn’t real.

  But the church was closed, in contradiction of the clearly posted hours, and with no sign to say why.

  “Shit,” she said, and sat down on a stone square that once helped men up onto horses. Already a smell of garlic frying in olive oil was filling the air. Dinnertime was close, and so was darkness. They’d have to climb up the steep road to the south, get their stuff from the hostel, come back to find a hotel. Her feet hurt from thinking about it.

  “You’re so beautiful when you’re sad,” he said, uncapping his camera. The compliment was uncharacteristic. Her face showed it, and she heard the shutter snap.

  “I’m a world-famous photographer,” he said, smiling, squatting. “And you’re a supermodel who suddenly became a recluse at the height of her fame. This is your first shoot in two years.”

  A wide, warm smile shivered through her, but smiling would not have been in keeping with the character she’d been given. She forced herself to purse her lips. Pout. “How could I pass up the chance to work with you? In spite of your reputation. What’s the shoot?”

  “Cigarette ad,” he said, tossing his pack to her.

  The game was welcome, but it, too, was uncharacteristic. She shook one loose, held it in her fingers, extended her arm in front of her as elegantly as she could. Arched her back artfully. Shutter snaps came in quick succession and she moved her body slightly after each one. Curled a finger, cocked a smile. Raised an eyebrow. Flicked a foot.

  It was like sex, a little. The way it warmed her up. When was the last time he’d made her feel that way, outside of bed? At a party, she recalled. At the end of the semester. He’d beckoned her ove
r, told a semicircle of his friends about her print-making. Fake posters for fake seventies bands.

  Where had it come from, this energy, this excitement? The ability to take pictures, when he hadn’t in so long? What had that guy done to him?

  Adney should have been grateful, but she wasn’t. In a slow unfurling, the tiny hairs along her spine stood up.

  “There’s a crocodile,” he said.

  “For the shoot,” she said, good at this game. “Brilliant. Must have been costly.”

  He waved his hand. “The client is filthy rich with lung-cancer money. Let them pay to make our dreams real. To bring our brilliant art into the world.”

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  “Out on the breakwater,” he said.

  “Really,” she said, scared, excited. They headed back down the way they had come.

  “Stop,” he said, at a barrow overflowing with lemons, and had her pose there. Clasping one with both hands. Sfusato—the oversized Amalfi Coast lemons that local farmers had created over the course of centuries, breeding together local bitter oranges with tiny inedible lemons from Arab traders. The trees grew everywhere in the stone city and the high hills around it. Stalls sold soaps, candy, pastries, and pasta infused with lemon essence.

  “Magnificent,” he said, when she kissed it.

  And that was when the thought came, bursting fully formed in her brain.

  Preposterous. Irrational. But certain. The hairs standing on end all over her body said so.

  This isn’t Teek.

  “Yessss,” he said, at the way her face suddenly became something else. Thinking her horror wasn’t hers; was the character’s.

  I’ve never heard him use the word magnificent in all our time together.

  “Brilliant,” said the boy with the camera as she stared past its lens and into the familiar green flecks of his hazel eyes.

  They swapped bodies. That man pulled Teek out of his skin as easily as Teek shucked that oyster from its shell. Slid himself in. Young again; alive and energetic and beautiful.

  It was easy, telling herself to stop being stupid. Things like that couldn’t happen. She smiled, and he stepped forward.

  “Goose bumps,” he said, taking an extreme close-up of her shoulder.

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  “Crocodiles hate the cold,” he said.

  She succeeded in suppressing a shiver when he took her hand. Was his grip different? Tighter? Gentler?

  They stopped for pictures along the way. She posed with ancient statues, steep staircase streets. She watched the water wrinkle in the distance. But she couldn’t shake the thought now that it had entered her head. She laughed out loud at the absurdity of her certainty. But the certainty did not disappear when she laughed at it.

  He didn’t buy Teek’s body for an hour with that money. He bought it for forever.

  “Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling. “It was at that party, at the Chinese embassy in Moscow. Surrounded by despots and billionaire bureaucrat profiteers, and all their beautiful kept women and boys. Panthers in giant gilded birdcages. You still remember that?”

  No, she wanted to say, not in the game. But she stopped herself. I’ll be free of this ridiculous suspicion soon enough. And I’ll realize I’m stuck with the same Teek as ever, and I’d rather have the world-famous fictional photographer than the glum nonfiction one I’ve been with for most of the trip.

  He was performing, that was all. Putting on an act for her. One he was eerily good at. A skill set she’d never known about. Maybe neither had he. Maybe he could be a movie star. Roll with it, Adney. But the closer they got to the water the colder the wind became, and it stoked the fire of her fear.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked. “For the crocodile.”

  “You’ll be sprawled across its back,” he said. “Luxuriant. Regal. An empress.”

  “Like Avedon,” she said, citing his favorite photographer. Trying to prompt a response from the Teek that she knew. “The famous photo, with the elephants. Dovima, arms out, bent, upraised, like the queen of the night.”

  “He’s overrated.”

  They passed the restaurant, built into the side of the wall that had protected the city from sixteenth-century pirates. No sign of the man. Storm clouds bigger, closer. The woman was mopping. She waved to Adney.

  They reached the breakwater way too soon. Waves high and loud against the rocks. His shutter snapped on her look of apprehension.

  “Where’s the crocodile?” she asked, stalling for time.

  “Ugh,” he said. “It’s a whole thing, you would not believe. We spent seven thousand dollars on it, and my idiot assistant was unprepared for how hard it pulled. Yanked the leash right out of his hands. Escaped into the sea.”

  “Oh no,” she said, sad for the imaginary crocodile. “It’s so cold. It’ll die for sure.”

  “Maybe,” the photographer said. “But it might be glitchy from radiation or GMOs or something. Maybe it’ll be very well suited to the cold Tyrrhenian Sea. Grow to immense size by snapping up sunbathing tourists. Be the scourge of the Amalfi Coast.”

  She nodded, then gestured commandingly to the breakwater. Grinning—nervously—the photographer obeyed. Stepped onto the rocks.

  When he had gone a short way out, she followed. It was slippery; she had to kick off her shoes. She aimed them into the sea.

  “You won’t need those again?” he asked.

  “I’ll buy more.”

  With my supermodel money.

  With the money I got from whoring you out.

  With the money I got from selling my boyfriend’s body to a monster.

  She stared into his eyes. He stared back. His expression softened. He smiled the slightest of smiles. It was trusting, wholesome. Innocent. Eager to please. Almost exactly like Teek’s.

  She lit a cigarette. Inhaled. Breathed smoke out into the darkening day. Waves soaked her. Soaked him. He held his camera up to keep it safe when the spray surged into them, then lowered it to keep taking pictures.

  She finished her cigarette. Lit another one. A wave put it out and she tucked it behind her ear.

  “Beautiful,” he said, and her certainty faltered. The gentleness in his voice, the reverence—that was Teek, the Teek she only ever heard in bed.

  Or was she hearing what she wanted to hear? Constructing a narrative where she was not a monster? Not an accomplice to an unfathomable crime. She saw the two of them on the beach for the next week. Clasping hands on the plane ride home. She saw the next semester, and all the ones after that. Life beyond college. The two of them, together, and she forever wondering whether it was really him in there.

  Lightning struck, a long purple crack opening in the eggshell of the sky. So close, the thunder arrived almost immediately after.

  “Teek,” she gasped, fear forcing her out of character.

  “Who’s Teek?”

  He’s upstairs, she thought. Gasping on the floor of a strange hotel room, trapped in a dying body. He’s trying to call for help. I’m his only hope. And I’m out here with this monster, trying to tell myself I’m crazy.

  “You’re ludicrous!” she shouted, to him, but to herself not to him. He laughed, and so did she. There was that warmth again, in their laughing together.

  Lights trembled, down the coast. Other cities, full of other lives. She turned to face them. Three-quarter profile; cigarette behind the ear aimed at the camera. Mouth open slightly in apprehension, maybe exhilaration.

  That’s the one, she thought, when she heard him (whoever he is) take the picture.

  And soon we’ll be back in the hotel room. And bright fluorescent lights will whisk all this stupidity out of my head. We’ll make love and I’ll know for sure that it’s him. In the morning, we’ll post these pictures. Add captions in the voices of our supermodel and superstar photographer.

  But would sex truly answer her question? They were s
till new enough to have surprises up their sleeves, to try a new trick from time to time that might delight or disappoint. If he behaved differently, could she be certain?

  Well, even if it doesn’t convince me, in the morning the game will be over. I can quiz him, and he won’t have a fictional photographer to hide behind. I’ll find out if it’s really Teek.

  And what would she do if it wasn’t? Or if she still wasn’t sure?

  Thunder rumbled, an impenetrable answer.

  “You’re magnificent,” the photographer said, lowering the camera. Again, their eyes locked. Something conspiratorial kindled. Love meant walking beside someone you would never truly know.

  Her mom would have a fit when the pictures were posted, seeing her out on the breakwater with those waves crashing all around her. My helpless innocent girl. And her friends would all wonder how drunk she’d had to get to go out there. Strangers would comment on how her wet shirt clung to her.

  They’ll all see someone different, she thought, but none of those women will be me.

  Empty Box

  by Allison Mulvihill

  Harry was three and a half miles into a seven-mile run when the message came. It vibrated on his watch and showed on his set as a steady blue blink at the corner of his vision.

  CHECK THIS OUT, Eliza had sent, as if he hadn’t been ignoring her for two days. As if she hadn’t started it. The attached impish smile tingled through his skull, the data packet triggering his own emotions in neurological sympathy as her words played out in his mind.

  So they were talking again. Either that or they were sending viruses to each other. There was always a fine line between the two, with Eliza. The link she’d enclosed was a suspiciously abbreviated address full of characters a cat might have typed.

  THIS ISN’T GOING TO CHANGE MY OVERLAY TO THE UNION JACK AGAIN, IS IT? He tried to attach his emotions, but there wasn’t a preset for “the frustration born of seeing the world through the UK’s goddamn flag for a week.”