“Dad, if you’d called me days ago, I could’ve given you anything you wanted!”
He nodded. “An irony not lost upon me. But things can change in a few days, and they have.”
“What changed?”
“It’s personal.” He fidgeted with the pocket of his robe. “I don’t expect you to understand, but I need another doll. There, I said it. It’s not up for discussion.”
She looked toward the darkened hallway where faceless, Throatginaless Diane still lay in the bathroom. Hazel’s chest squeezed with guilt: she had synthetic blood on her hands. “I killed her? Diane can’t be . . . salvaged?”
“Huh? No, Diane’s fine. I mean I need a second doll. I want two.”
“Oh.” Hazel couldn’t help but think how much this was going to amuse Byron. Should she tell her father he was under observation so he’d filter things, or did it not really matter? He was actually hard to embarrass on most accounts. Only Hazel’s deficiencies seemed to rattle him.
It was easiest, per usual, to just agree. “Of course, two dolls. A twin thing, kind of? Sister wives? I see.”
She didn’t, though. Every day, Hazel was learning there were new feelings to be had. Very advanced, complicated feelings that couldn’t be conveyed through language or physical expression or any form of art.
“You can think I’m being greedy. That’s fine. I don’t have to answer to you or anyone else.”
“I don’t think that.” Through Byron, Hazel had been exposed to people who had limitless funds to throw at their insatiable desires, both sexual and non. So much so that her old definitions of greed had become obsolete. Her new definition prioritized others getting hurt, and this meant that moving into her father’s house when she didn’t know what violent things Byron was going to do or try (and staying, now that she knew her brain was a recording device) were very, very greedy acts. Worse, she was going to continue being greedy in this way a little while longer. She couldn’t help it. She had no idea where else to stay while she gathered the necessary resources to travel, but this new information made the problem a lot different. She wasn’t going to be able to hide from Byron and begin anew. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he’d know.
Byron had made it impossible for her to leave him. The fact that she was no longer physically in his house didn’t matter.
“How much rent do you need a month, Dad?” For the moment, Hazel decided to pretend things were as easy as going out and finding a job, that her husband wouldn’t absolutely have her abducted at whatever place of employment she chose once he tired of waiting for her to come to him.
“Five hundred. That’ll be a decent monthly payment on my second lady.”
“Okay then.” Hazel didn’t see how she was going to make this happen, but she wanted to feign confidence. “I’ll get right to work becoming gainfully employed.” She gave her father a cheerful smile, and he smiled back, but he looked tired, or maybe just really disappointed. “I’ll go hit the pavement right now and see what I can find.”
Which meant she’d go to the bar and pretend to be hitting the pavement.
“Hazel,” he said. His voice was quiet with discouraged resignation. “You’re wearing a towel.” She watched him motor the Rascal into the dark path of the hallway, then disappear.
HAZEL RETURNED TO THE SPOTTED ROSE TO FIND BLACK SMOKE pouring from the front door and emergency personnel wandering in and out. Her heart began racing—had Byron done something to the place? But there was no crime-scene tape across the entrance, and she watched a civilian walk into the flood of dark smog, then another; when neither reemerged after a few minutes, she decided to try going in herself.
Getting on all fours was the only way to manage. The smoke did seem to thin around a foot or so from the ground, so she trench-crawled in the direction of the bar. When her head bumped into the bottom of an empty stool, Hazel felt her way up it and took a seat.
“What’s your poison?” the bartender asked. Hazel opened her eyes but couldn’t see anything so she closed them again.
“Whatever’s strong,” Hazel said. “The air’s a little thick today.”
“Grease fire in the kitchen,” a man next to her replied. She recognized the voice.
“Liver?”
“Hello there.” A hand from behind the bar grabbed Hazel’s fingertips, guided them down to the drink in front of her and placed them firmly around it.
It was nice to hear someone familiar. “How have you been?” Hazel cleared her throat. “So I need to start networking a little, as they say. Do you have the phone number of anyone who might be looking to hire some help?”
“I don’t have a phone,” Liver answered.
Hazel felt her pulse speed up.
“No phone? Of any kind?” Her voice was nearly cracking with excitement. “So how do people get ahold of you? Your family? Your friends?”
“I’ve succumbed to neither affliction,” he answered.
“What about women?” she asked, admittedly changing her voice to be a little flirtatious. Hazel decided she’d misjudged him. Anyone getting through life without a phone had skills she wanted to acquire. Rare capabilities that attracted the New Hazel.
“I just meet women in this bar. Mainly they use me to help them reach bottom. I’m like a brick they grab onto midair. Sleeping with me helps them admit their lives have become unmanageable. They realize they want and deserve something more, and then their recovery process can begin. I get laid in the meantime. Win-win.”
“Do you have a phone at your job?”
“No.”
She chugged the rest of her drink and wiped her mouth on her arm. “Do you have a job?”
“Yep.” She didn’t know whether it was the alcohol or the lack of oxygen, but Hazel was beginning to feel very drowsy. She started to rest her head on the bar, but fingers found the back of her shirt and pulled upward. “Wouldn’t fall asleep in here if I were you,” Liver said.
“Yeah. Probably smart. So what do you do?” As soon as she asked, an involuntary yawn overtook her. It caused Hazel to inhale a bit too much smoke. She began coughing and continued to do so for about ten minutes.
“Let’s continue the conversation elsewhere,” Liver suggested. Hazel dismounted the stool and crawled toward the dim crack of light she could see. It was hard to crawl and cough at the same time but she managed. When she made it out to the sidewalk, Hazel collapsed in the sunlight, breathing in deep, rapid breaths of clear oxygen.
She looked up to see Liver walking out of the billowing soot. It seemed like he was exiting a time machine that had gone up in a blaze. His clothes were made entirely of leather: hat, vest, pants, boots. He was also wearing a necklace of assorted animal teeth.
“Shall we?” he asked.
SUBSEQUENT CLUES CONFIRMED THAT LIVER WOULD INDEED BE A good mentor for shirking technology, like how all the windows were broken out of his truck. He was a “maverick.”
When they turned off the main road onto a long drive with a sizable ranch house, Hazel began to question whether Liver was as nontraditional as she’d assumed. But they passed the house and continued quite a ways into a wooded area until he drove the pickup into the base of a large tree to park it. A few leaves fell through where the truck’s windshield should’ve been and landed on Hazel’s lap. “We walk the rest of the way,” he explained. Then he took a long rifle out from under the driver’s seat.
“This is still a date, right?” He wasn’t secretly an eccentric acquaintance of Byron’s who was now about to hunt her for sport?
“If that’s what you’re into,” he said.
She wanted to tell him everything: that her worst fears had come true, that her husband had managed to place a surveillance device into her mind, the whole story. But she didn’t want to seem crazy. This was shitty because the truth was crazy, not her. There had been a tagline of a TV show, The truth is out there, that Hazel had initially misinterpreted and felt comforted by. That is for sure! she’d thought, the truth was the mos
t far-out thing possible. Hazel had always felt this—when she learned about periods and sex, when she learned about death, when she learned about the impossible living conditions of the other planets in the solar system and the manufacturing of processed meats. Almost always, the truth was way more bizarre and gross than she would’ve imagined. Then one night she commented on this to a friend and was told, No, dumbass, the show is saying that the truth will be discovered. Like how aliens are real and the U.S. government knows it.
Hazel did not want Liver to discover her truth. But she did want advice. “So if someone were hypothetically able to read your mind, what would you do about it?”
“If someone got inside my head,” Liver answered, “they’d voluntarily show themselves right back out. I guarantee you.”
Eventually they came to his shelter, which looked like a storage shed. Inside there was a wooden pallet on the ground covered with a few animal skins, various repurposed containers filled with water, some two-by-four shelving holding dry goods. Most impressive was Liver’s stockpile of weapons. “Feel free to take your clothes off,” he said. “You won’t offend anyone.” He removed his hat, then his vest. The trunk of his body was a museum of scars. “If you want, we can wrap ourselves up in mosquito netting while we have sex. Avoid bites.”
Hazel pointed to his torso. “Did you have an invasive surgery?” It was hard to tell what injuries the scars might be from, or whether or not they were from the same occasion. It was hardly fair that Byron could insert a mind-recording device inside her without a mark. Her father’s appendectomy scar looked like an accidental chain-saw bisection, for example.
“I guess you could say that.” He took a jar of moonshine out from under the wooden pallet, poured some into an empty aluminum can, and extended it to Hazel. The liquid inside looked sheeny and a little prismatic, like tears mixed with gasoline.
“What else could you say?”
Liver shrugged. “Beware of motherfuckers.”
He seemed to sense her hesitation in escalating the intimacy. “Wanna wait till it gets dark?” he asked. She nodded and he held up the moonshine jar in agreement. “Nighttime is the right time.”
“You said you had a job?” Hazel mentioned. She didn’t mean it to sound as accusatory as it did; she just wondered. A little selfishly, she supposed. Whatever career Liver had wasn’t cramping his style. Maybe it was something she could get in on one day, if she ever did get away from Byron.
“I’m a gravesitter,” he said. “I visit graves for people when they go out of town, or when they start having sex again after being widowed and feel guilty. The landscapers at cemeteries arrange the gigs for me. I show up, go to the graves they tell me to, and sit for however long the people paid for, then they take a finder’s cut and give me the rest.”
“Do you talk to the graves?” Hazel went over to the pallet and lay down, choosing to breathe in through her mouth. The animal skin covering had a good memory for odor. Liver stayed seated on the end of the pallet, sipping his liquor.
“No. I could charge more and do stuff like that. Singing, reading poetry. People always want me to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ It’s a visitation, not a dinner show—that’s what I have the landscapers say. If I start agreeing to extras, it will open a whole can of worms.”
Hazel thought about what she might say to bond with Liver. It had been such a long time since she’d tried to get emotionally closer to someone instead of farther away. She didn’t want to fake interest, which was her usual habit. Conversation with Byron had always been easy because he always wanted to talk about himself, and if she listened then it seemed like they were communicating.
Looking around the ceiling, Hazel noted a number of spider colonies. It had been a good while since she’d been around insects or nature in general.
“Did you mention a net?” she asked cheerfully. Liver reached under the bed and shook it out, then brought it down atop the two of them. “Thanks,” she smiled. “You know, if I were hiring you to gravesit someone for me, I think I’d like the fact that you don’t talk. I mean, if I believed that they could hear us. I’d worry you’d start talking and they’d be all, ‘Hey! Where is Hazel? Who is this speaking? May I ask who is speaking, please?’ And sure, you could explain the situation, but they might feel unsettled. If it’s nonverbal, and they’re just like, Someone’s here, then they can imagine it’s whoever they want it to be. Plus it’s kind of more spiritual without talking. Like you’re a monk or someone who’s taken a vow of silence.”
“Talk’s overrated,” he said. Which maybe was a hint, but he’d have to compromise if the night was going to turn out as planned.
“I need to chat with you more to feel comfortable.”
“I figured.” He extended his fuller jar toward her empty jar, proffering a refill, but Hazel had to decline. The earlier shot hadn’t set well. It felt like she’d swallowed a small, sharp-clawed lizard that was scratching around in her belly trying to find an exit.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” she asked. Since Liver wasn’t one for small talk, Hazel supposed they could get straight to soul-searching. “I was married, I technically am still married? To a really bad man. So you’re not going to scare me. Here’s the thing: all of his crimes are done, like, remotely. Through technology and interfaces and scientists. He doesn’t leave his desk. But your hands! They’re dirty and calloused. And looking around your shed, I see you’ve killed a lot of animals then undressed them for meat and parts. Your lean frame holds a great amount of scrappy muscle. I’m guessing you’re somewhat versed in hand-to-hand combat.”
Suddenly it occurred to Hazel that Byron would hear and report anything Liver confessed. Poor Liver would exit his shack to have a pee and be greeted by a SWAT team.
“Actually, never mind,” Hazel corrected herself. “That’s the thing with me: don’t tell me anything you don’t want the whole world to know. Not because I personally can’t keep a secret. It’s more my brain. Long story.”
They sat in silence for a while, the light in the shed becoming darker, Liver occasionally making burps that smelled like butane.
Hazel thought about all the different reasons people have sex that don’t necessarily have anything to do with physical pleasure. There were reproduction, money, influence, apology, revenge. She wasn’t turned on, but she did want to sleep with Liver. For one, it would scandalize and upset Byron. For two, Liver was hugely different from Byron, and nothing seemed more appealing to Hazel than commingling with Byron’s opposite. For three, Hazel hoped she might absorb some of his self-reliance. If there was one person in the world who could make someone better at chopping things down with an ax just by having sex with him, this was the guy.
“I think I’m ready,” she said.
It wasn’t horrible, and that was an improvement from the last sex Hazel had experienced with Byron (“instead of telling me what you like, let me monitor your arousal levels via digital-pulse readout”).
Liver had a lot of smells that seemed automotive in nature, so being on her back beneath him, Hazel thought about the flat rolling carts mechanics lie down on to slide beneath cars, and the sex became a little fun the way it might be fun to roll out from below a vehicle and then roll back under again, and again. The texture of his scars was fun to touch as well, like different land features on a raised-relief globe. His body was a new world, and it was possible for Hazel to be alone there: no satellites orbited its atmosphere, no fiber-optic cables ran beneath its soil. It didn’t leave her mind that soon Byron would be seeing them together through his crystal ball of data, but for the next few hours what she’d done was truly her secret, and she relished it.
AFTERWARD, WITH HER BODY DRAPED ACROSS LIVER, HAZEL REMEMBERED one college summer when she and her friend Becca had gone to an outdoor music festival. They’d stayed up all night taking Ecstasy then slept the morning away in her parents’ station wagon, parked in front of a supermarket. It was a Saturday so the shopping plaza was busy, and occ
asionally they’d wake for a moment to see young kids peering in at them through the windows, sometimes knocking on them or distorting their lips on the glass like catfish—she and Becca were too out of it to even care. They were just a sedated exhibit at the human zoo: Collegiate Recreational Drug Users, and they’d let the gawkers come and go with no concern. One adult male did knock and yell to ask if they were okay, Y’all aren’t dead, right? I saw you in here at the beginning of my shift eight hours ago. Wiggle a toe for me so I don’t have nightmares about your corpses baking in this hot car all day? but when the two of them opened their eyes his smile made it clear that he was hitting on them so her friend Becca put her foot up on the window and right over his face. She had impressively big feet, and because the festival was outdoors and they’d been walking around barefoot, her toes were feral looking and caked with mud, and when she lifted her foot back off the window the man had gone.
They were hot and sticky and nothing seemed real. They’d gotten terribly lost driving home from the festival and had stumbled on a sad alligator zoo where a shirtless man wrestled an alligator in a cage every hour on the hour, and they decided to stay and watch because their hangover was making surreal things seem normal and normal things, like traffic and driving on the highway, feel incomprehensible and scary.
The wrestler and the reptile had a type of intimacy. When he got to where he was lying on top of it, his belly against its back and his hands wrapped around its jaw, it was clear he was actually whispering to it. In that moment part of Hazel had wished, in a way, to be that poor alligator, in a different context, despite not finding the man attractive. She wanted to be held and whispered to with the weight of another person pressed down across the length of her body.
Sex with Liver was like this. There was a sense of getting to be closer to a wild creature than most people ever get to be, of the danger being reduced for a moment because the creature was restrained. Not by physical force but by booze and sex. Though because of all the scars, Liver’s skin did feel a little reptilian, a little like something a designer purse might be made from. His left nipple was basically missing. There was an indentation that Hazel’s fingers naturally went toward and swept inside, and the absence there lowered them just a few centimeters closer to his beating heart.
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