The Incrementalists

by Steven Brust

  “That’s—”

  “Let me finish, Ren.”

  “All right.”

  “My point is, now I’m in love with someone who is good. And I like that. Turns out, that isn’t a problem for me.” She pressed me a little closer. “The problem is, I don’t want to fuck it up. I’m scared. I’m more afraid about you, about losing you, then I’ve been—”

  “Phil.”

  I stopped. “Yes?”

  “I adore you. I love you. But, Jesus Christ, sometimes you talk too much.”

  She stood up and reached a hand out. I took it, and she led us into the bedroom.

  Ren

  I deposited Phil at the foot of his bed and went back to close the door. He stood where I’d left him, eyes held to mine like an umbilicus. I leaned against the door and considered whether I was being pigheaded. Maybe I should wait for a better time for our first time? Maybe a night when Phil wasn’t afraid, and I wasn’t half-listening for cops at his door? Maybe after a nice dinner-and-a-movie, rather than dinner-and-a-murder. Yeah, bullshit, Ren.

  I straightened up and pulled my shirt over my head.

  Phil dropped my eyes. “Gha,” he said.

  I walked to him and felt his eyes creep back up to my face, but what he most needed to say there aren’t words for, so I just watched the fragile hollow where the strong cords of his neck and the hard bones of his chest met, not quite hidden in the few slender, curling hairs. I kissed him there, and he raised his chin and let his arms hang at his sides.

  I unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off him, letting the tips of my breasts brush his chest. It hitched up his breathing when I kissed him—his chin and nose—and tasted his lips, like Jimmy’s wine, in thoughtful, elongating mouthfuls.

  I was pushing him. I knew I was. I was egging him to some sort of breaking point, and for a terrible moment I thought it was that other person of whom Oskar had spoken reaching her needles through me. But he put his hands on my hips and pulled away to look into my eyes. And that was her. That was the other. That gesture. I was reaching out, and he was pulling back. Not from me. But because of me.

  I wasn’t going to tell him who he was, but I knew he wasn’t that. He wasn’t someone who sat out games.

  I held his eyes and smiled. “I love you,” I said.

  His smile wobbled.

  He could cry or he could fuck me, I didn’t care. I just wanted whatever it was dammed up in him to break. But fucking would be more fun.

  “I love you,” I said again.

  He closed his eyes.

  Then, because he couldn’t yet pull me against him and hold me like I knew he needed to, or because I could see he was starting to believe it, or because there’s some stupid fairy-tale magic to saying anything three times, I said, “I love you,” and his phone rang. And of course he had to answer it, because jail would be even less fun than crying.

  Phil

  I just never learn: When you’re about to finally get what you’ve been wanting, and when it’s what you need like you’ve rarely needed anything, turn off your fucking phone.

  The caller ID said it was Oskar, who was just exactly the person I least wanted to talk to, but I had no choice. “Yes?” I said, trying to keep my voice normal.

  Oskar said, “We need to know who saw you. I mean, people who know you, between when you entered and left The Palms today.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. Ren’s head was on my shoulder, my right arm around her, and her breasts pressed against my chest. And Oskar expected me to tell him what?

  “All right,” I said. “On the way in, Richard Sanderson and Yehia Awada waved to me. On the way out, I have no idea. Someone said something as I passed the poker room, but I don’t know who.”

  “Crap,” he said.

  “I’m not done. You’ll need the security tapes, or CDs, or whatever they use, which are going to be damn near impossible to get.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “I said damn near.”

  She moved a little, rubbing against me, and I almost squeezed the phone in two.

  “Go on,” said Oskar.

  I reached in front of me and unsnapped Ren’s jeans, then slid my hand down to grab her ass. She made little mewing sounds and pressed against me harder.

  “The guy who can get them for you is Andy Harmon. All of his switches are in the red ceramic jar next to the hand pump in my kitchen. Getting him to give you access, especially now, is going to be major work, but—”

  “You just happened to have his switches?”

  Ren started kissing my collarbone.

  “Head of security at the place I count on for my sugar spoon? Yes, I just happened to have his switches.”

  “Are you all right, Phil? Your voice—”

  “Jesus, Oskar. I am not all right. But I’ll be much better the instant you hang up.”

  “All right,” he said, and disconnected. I turned off my phone and threw it over my shoulder. I ran my hand along Ren’s scalp, grabbed hold of her hair, and brought her head back and my mouth down on hers.

  Ren

  After that, I didn’t need to push him.

  FOURTEEN

  Love Is Only a Game

  Phil

  I remember the ’60s, which, according to Wavy Gravy, means I wasn’t there. I remember being accosted on Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill by a Buddhist who expressed a desire to know if I wanted to be at peace with myself. I didn’t answer him, and I didn’t think much about it until I was reminded, thirty or forty years later, by a rant on the subject in a trashy sci-fi novel I happened to read. In general, I agree with the author of said trashy sci-fi novel: I don’t want to be at peace with myself. I want to be fighting with myself, struggling, looking for answers; I want to be discontented and busy making my discontentment into something worthwhile. It is our discontent that drives us.

  But, every now and then, after being whipsawed by life, and betrayed by those you love, and smacked down hardest by your own irrationality, well, a bit of peace isn’t all that bad a thing. She moved a little in my arms, shifting closer to me, and her face twitched as she slept. I brushed a hair away from her eye and watched her for a while. Her hand moved, looking for mine. She found it and rested her cheek on it.

  A little later she woke up partway, and pressed back against me, and I wasn’t at peace anymore. But that was all right, too.

  Ren

  There was a funny-colored stream of light coming through the outdated curtains of Phil’s bedroom window; I loved that he had bad curtains. I closed my eyes and wrapped my body around his, feeling the way the relaxation deepened, even from sleep, being closer to him.

  In a hotel room not that far away, four men were probably still working, having worked through the night, fighting to keep Phil out of trouble. I felt bad for them, and indebted to them, but not guilty. Without our night, theirs would have been wasted.

  But all of our nights were well into morning by now, luxury slipping toward decadence. I got up and found the phone Phil had pitched against the wall last night. I turned it back on and put it on the mattress next to him. He opened his eyes.

  “Looks like you’ve got some voice mail,” I said.

  He grunted.

  “I’m going to make coffee,” I told him. “It’s ten.” He caught my wrist and pulled me back to sitting on the bed beside him.

  “Mmpht,” he said.

  I stroked his hair, smoothing it away from his face, running my fingers over his temple. He reached a sleepy hand out for my breast. “But your coffee’s awful,” he said.

  “Then you get up and make it.”

  He was on his feet so suddenly it almost knocked me off the bed. I laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re secretly a morning person.”

  “Have no fear,” he said. “I’ve sprung out of bed, in two thousand years of mornings, exactly never.” He stalked out of the bedroom naked.

  I opened the curtains and found my phone and climbed back under
the light cotton blanket to check my messages and email, thinking that, even after too much and too long, goddamn if love really can’t make everything new.

  Clear morning light filled the room, and my first email was from Jorge proclaiming the salubrious effects and noble history of a good hot water spa. He was scheduling an important call with Liam and me for tomorrow. I opened the first of three nested emails from Jimmy, and the doorbell rang.

  Phil

  I put on some boxers and prepared the words, “You could have bloody called,” with which to assault whoever was on the other side of the door. I opened it, and it was Jimmy.

  “Sorry I didn’t call,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me.”

  “I don’t. Come in. Coffee?”

  He came in. “Phil, why won’t you let me buy you a French press? The coffee is so much—”

  “I’d never use it. I don’t want to spend loving attention on making my coffee perfect; I want to have it there so I can pour it and drink it.”

  He shook his head. “Where is Ren?”

  “In bed. She’s awake, if you need to talk to her.”

  “Maybe in a bit.”

  He took his coffee, and I took mine, and we sat on the barstools. He said, “It looks like you’re not going to be arrested.”

  “Good,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “You owe Oskar.”

  “Maybe it’s not too late to be arrested.”

  “Phil—”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  He drank his coffee, and he studied my face, and I knew he could read me pretty well, and he gave a little nod of approval. I was glad he approved. No, I’m not being sarcastic; I really was.

  He cleared his throat and said, “I’m still worried about Celeste.”

  “Who’s Celeste?”

  He glanced at me quickly, his eyes wide, then they narrowed and he said, “That’s not funny.”

  “Sorry. I’m worried too. If she really did trick me into killing Irina, we need to know why, and what—”

  “We don’t think she did.”

  I stopped. “All right. I’m listening.”

  “Matsu seeded the memory, and we all checked it. If you want it, it’s a purple-and-gold lady’s fan just to the right of his north fountain.”

  “Maybe later. What did you learn?”

  “That Celeste was trying to kill you. Actually, she wasn’t aiming at you, she was trying to shoot Matsu, because if she’d gotten him first—”

  “I know.”

  He nodded. “Matsu only got there in time because he was watching for it, and he was watching for it because he noticed that her desk drawer was open. It was a close thing. She was starting to pull the trigger.”

  “Maybe she’d have missed.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But all right. Good. I mean, not good, but I’m glad at least that I didn’t play into her hands. But—”

  “But, yes. Why did she say it? None of us are comfortable with the idea that it just slipped out. She knows you. She knows you better than anyone. She knows you so well—”

  “I get the idea, Jimmy. Jesus.”

  “Sorry. Our current theory is it may have been Irina pushing through, seeing another chance to free herself from Celeste.”

  I let that seep in and nodded. “Not at all impossible.” I sighed. “That reminds me that we have to start looking for a recruit for Irina’s stub.”

  “We talked about that, between talking about what happened and meddling with investigating officers and witnesses.”

  “Busy night. Have any of you slept?”

  “All of us. In shifts.”

  I nodded.

  He said, “We’ve asked Ricardo, Tina and Sally to start looking.”

  “Sally?”

  “Karen’s stub.”

  “Ah, right. They should be fine. Shame about Karen. She had the fire, you know?”

  “I think Sally does too. This should help settle her in.”

  I nodded and we didn’t speak for a while. I refilled my coffee and, at Jimmy’s nod, his. I sat back down again.

  Ren came out. My heart did a flip-flop to see her, though part of me was disappointed that she was dressed. “Good morning,” she said. “I heard voices.”

  “And a delightful good morning to you, charming lady,” said Jimmy. “You look well-laid.”

  She laughed and went into the kitchen and started boiling water. Jimmy can get away with comments like that; I’m not sure how.

  “So the question is,” said Jimmy, “is Celeste now actually gone?”

  “Oh, no,” said Ren, turning around holding an empty mug. “She’s in the Garden.”

  Ren

  Phil looked about to puke. Jimmy looked constipated.

  “You remember Celeste?” Jimmy said the way you’d ask a jumper if he remembered his chute. I’m pretty sure Phil was adding three and two and five and three.

  “Hang on.” Jimmy dialed a number and watched me as he waited for someone to answer. I decided against tea and took the kettle off the stove.

  “Ramon, when did Ren first start forgetting Celeste?”

  Jimmy listened to Ramon, but Phil was watching me. “When did you remember Celeste?” he whispered.

  I came around the bar to him and tried to wrap him in my arms, but he caught my hands. “When?”

  “Oh God, no,” I said, understanding. “No, sweetheart. Not last night. Or this morning when we—”

  Jimmy was watching us, listening intently. “Go on,” he said.

  “I didn’t think about Celeste until I was getting dressed just now,” I said.

  Both men nodded. Jimmy clapped a bracing hand on Phil’s shoulder. “We had thought Ren might be forgetting her during the periods that Celeste shared Irina’s body. When Celeste grazed, Ren remembered her. Irina’s death and Ren’s remembering coincide enough to mostly confirm that.”

  “Okay,” Phil said, but his hand still wasn’t steady when he picked up his mug again.

  I thought this was not the time to ask about the “mostly.”

  Jimmy’s eyes searched me. “How do you know she’s in the Garden, Ren?”

  “I just do,” seemed like a poor answer, so I tried working backwards. “I heard you knock,” I told Jimmy. “So I got out of bed to get dressed.” Any coyness around my activities the previous night seemed futile at this point. “And I saw Phil’s robe on the back of the door. It’s such a great robe, and I thought about putting it on, which reminded me of something I’d wondered the first morning I woke up in Phil’s bed after he’d staked me.”

  Jimmy’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Not like that,” Phil said. “Flaming spike. In the forehead.” It made me almost giddy to see the dimple uncloaking. “Every bit as life-changing as the other,” he said. “Much less fun.”

  Jimmy laughed outright and I curtsied.

  “Go on, Ren,” Jimmy said.

  I walked back into the kitchen to forage for breakfast. “When I wore Phil’s robe the first time, I wondered if Incrementalists could squirrel away stuff, favorite clothes, keepsakes, photos, that kind of thing for themselves and their Seconds to create some sort of continuity between bodies. That morning I wondered whether Celeste had saved anything for me. This morning, I knew she hadn’t.”

  “How did you know?” Jimmy asked.

  “I remembered being her, and I knew I hadn’t.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Jimmy let out a breath so profound I didn’t know how he stayed on his stool. Phil, on the other hand, was alert as a prairie dog on his. “You think Celeste’s memories have just gone back to the Garden like a normal stub?” he asked Jimmy. “And Ren has them now?”

  “Ren, do you have Celeste’s memories?”

  “I think so.”

  “So maybe we’re just picking up where we left off?” Phil said. “With Ren integrating memories from Celeste’s stub and from the Garden.”

  “Maybe,” Jimmy said. “Let’s go have you sit on the s
ofa and get comfortable for a bit, Ren. See what happens if you try to remember some more.”

  “But I just found oatmeal,” I said, holding up a paperboard canister of a red-cheeked religious radical.

  “Ren, I will take us for something glorious in an hour, but we’ll all enjoy peace of mind and better digestion if we know Celeste is truly back where she belongs,” Jimmy said, and stood, and we all heard his stomach register a loud and lengthy disagreement.

  “You’re hungry,” Phil observed.

  “Yes.” Jimmy sat back down, chastened. “Oatmeal would be lovely,” he said.

  So I put the kettle back on and found cinnamon and brown sugar in the pantry, both unopened, and a box of raisins. Say what you want about Irina, but she knew how to lay in provisions against a siege. Phil and Jimmy sat on stools, Jimmy quizzing me on what I remembered, Phil mostly just watching, but when Jimmy misremembered Celeste’s middle name, Phil corrected him.

  “Are Celeste’s personal, life memories different from what you remember in general?” Jimmy asked as the water started to boil.

  “They have more emotion to them,” I said. “And more images. They don’t bubble up to the surface of my mind, the way the others do, but the bottom keeps getting farther away.”

  Jimmy nodded. “That all sounds right,” he said.

  Phil came in and got the coffeepot to top us all off, and kissed me as he walked by.

  “What was her social security number?” Jimmy asked.

  I told him, and put the three bowls of oatmeal on the breakfast bar.

  He sniffed his happily. “How many children did she have?”

  “None,” I said, and opened the fridge to look for milk. The oatmeal was too hot to eat and I was hungry too. “But she was close to her nieces and nephew, and then their kids, and they thought of her as another grandmother.”

  “What did they call her?” Phil asked, smiling.

  I pronounced the silly word gravely. “Except one,” I said, remembering as I shut the fridge door. “There was one little girl who wouldn’t say it, and called her Great-auntie Cece instead.”