Unwelcome Bodies

by Jennifer Pelland

  Callie slaps down hard on the connection, and her manager is gone.

  Her brother shuffles in from the sonics, his bathrobe tied loosely at his hips. Despite the green and blue tissue paper she’s put over the windows, Owen looks golden in the diffuse sunlight. He must have gotten all of the beauty that was available in their mother’s womb. She, at thirty, has already been gifted with salt-and-pepper hair, and her skin is so pale that her veins stand out on it like marble. Of course, she might not be so translucent if she didn’t keep bleeding herself.

  “Who was that?” Owen asks.

  Callie wraps her arms around herself and tries to rub some warmth into her body. “Oh, just Jeremy.”

  “You need a new manager. I don’t trust that man. He treats you like a commodity, not an artist.”

  “There aren’t a lot of managers to choose from, and he’s got all the right connections.”

  “There has to be someone else. Tell you what, I’ll do a little digging on the trip back to the university and see who I can come up with, okay?”

  Callie nods, but knows he’ll fail. They do not live in a time that can support much in the way of celebrity, and the number of good agents who can make a living representing them is correspondingly small. “Do you have to go back so soon?” she asks, and tucks cold hands into her armpits. It’s impossible to get warm the first few days after she bleeds.

  He shrugs. “Sorry. Work calls.” He actually looks guilty.

  “Hey, don’t do that,” she says. “No guilt. You’re doing—”

  “—important work. Yes, I know.” He looks down at his bare feet. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out any day now.”

  “Any day now,” she parrots. If only she could believe that. If only they’d gotten far enough to announce a launch date. Then she’d have something concrete to hold onto. Then she’d have a reason to want to live through the next high tide. “I just wish your schedule weren’t so inflexible.”

  He looks back up at her and shrugs. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  “Oh please. If they really wanted to pay you what you’re worth, they’d give you that breeding license you’ve always wanted. You know, you should find someone to settle down with so you can get started as soon as you get the okay.”

  He grimaces, quickly turning it into a fake smile. “Hey, what can you do?” he says. She can tell she’s hit a nerve. Owen has wanted children his whole life. It must be killing him to have made it to thirty without a license. She’s sure he’ll get approved as soon as he finds a partner. He’s educated, employed, and painfully stable.

  “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I shouldn’t—”

  “No, that’s okay.” He shifts his weight, and in a strained voice, says, “You know, you should take your own advice. I know you don’t want kids, but you’d be so much happier if you weren’t alone here so much of the time.”

  She shrugs and shoots him an awkward grin. “Oh, you know me. I’ve never been much for pairing up.”

  “That’s because you’ve never tried. Give it a shot sometime. You just might like it.”

  “Owen, I appreciate the concern, but seriously, I couldn’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Owen, please. Drop it. Okay?”

  “Absolutely not.” He steps forward with an odd intensity to his gaze. “Callie, think about it, maybe you wouldn’t want to kill yourself if you weren’t alone. Maybe you just need someone who loves you.”

  “I thought you loved me,” she snaps.

  He looks wounded. In a small voice, he says, “You know what I mean.”

  She hates seeing him this way. But he brought it on himself. He should know better by now. “Look, if you’re so worried, I could come live with you in Stonybrook.”

  “I told you, it’s almost impossible to get a visitor’s visa, never mind to get approved for residency. If you were a scientist, it would be one thing—”

  “But I’m family, Owen.”

  “I already have—” A strange expression crosses Owen’s face. If Callie didn’t know better, she’d think it was panic.

  It quickly vanishes, and he raises his hands and says, “Forget it. I’m sorry I brought it up.” He turns and pads barefoot behind the partition that gives his guest bed a modicum of privacy, and from the faint shadow he casts, Callie sees him getting dressed. Twin or not, she feels it’s an invasion of privacy to keep watching, so she turns away to face the only other love in her life.

  Callie rubs one thin-boned hand across her face and stares across her apartment to the centerpiece of her decor—the large, claw-footed tub surrounded on three sides by gauzy turquoise curtains. She drifts over, looking down at all the water offerings snug inside their bottles in the smooth porcelain bowl. If she were to pour them all in now, she would have four, maybe five inches of water.

  Not enough.

  She hears the latches snapping shut on her brother’s suitcase and feels a shudder run through her body. He’s right. She’ll never make it alone.

  But she has to try.

  * * * *

  The next full moon comes, and this time she’s in Toronto. Her brother is at her side at all times, leaving her only when she walks alone onstage and becomes Undine for her fans. Callie has written a new song for this concert. She fingers the keys of her mixer, calling up the echoing whale cry that forms the backdrop of the piece. Sea otter chatter fades in, providing the beat, and she layers in the delicate sound of bubbles to add a subtle texture to the sonic wall.

  Only then does she open her mouth and let the floods come pouring out.

  Every cell in her body offers up its water. She can taste the brine of the sea as the words flow out of her, crashing against the wall of fans, and washing back over her like a baptism. The slush of blood in her ears is the rhythm of the lost seas, and she can feel it echoed in every single person in the room. They are creatures of water. It makes up three-quarters of their bodies. Not even the Angry Earth can take that away from them, no matter how badly it wants to punish them for their crimes.

  When the concert is over, she has collected so much more water from her generous fans.

  She loves them all. They have no idea how much they’re helping her.

  * * * *

  “I have to go back to work. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she says. She holds her wrists out as proof. “See? I made it through a full moon.”

  “That’s because I was there.”

  “And you’ll be back next full moon.”

  “I should be. The timing might be tricky, but I’ll do everything I can to make it.”

  “Good, good.” She looks down at the suitcase, then to his feet. Owen’s shoes are old and badly scuffed. Most people’s shoes are old, as are their clothes. Because there’s no manufacturing, goods are strictly rationed, and recycled whenever possible. All of Callie’s wigs and costumes and paints were made before the earth went dry. They were scavenged from what was left in abandoned stores and houses in the land outside. When the makeup runs out, Undine will need to perform barefaced, if she’s even still alive by then.

  Hopefully, she will have collected enough water before that happens.

  “I wish you could stay here,” she sighs.

  He takes her hands in his. “My work’s important.”

  “I know, but if you could just live here and commute to Stonybrook every day—”

  “But I—” He breaks off, his brows drawn in a tight line. “I mean, seriously, that kind of travel is a luxury. It’s hard enough for me to justify coming to see you as often as I do. If you weren’t alone…” He trails off and looks down at his scuffed shoes.

  “Oh,” Callie says, and drops frozen hands to her sides. “So that’s why you want me to find someone.”

  “It’s not like that. I just…” He looks up at her with his sandy brown eyes. “It’s a lot of responsibility, being your only companion.”

  “But you’re my brother. M
y twin.”

  “Please, Callie,” he begs. “Please. You need friends. I can’t be everything for you.”

  She sniffs wetly, sucking her moisture back into her body, and picks up his bag. “You’ll be late,” she says, and hands it to him.

  “Callie…” He sighs, takes the bag, and holds it limply at his side. “I’ll see you next month.”

  * * * *

  Celebrity doesn’t keep Callie from the work rotations, although it does let her opt out of some of the chores that most other people have to do. She can’t deal with aeroponics duty. Seeing plants growing with so little water makes her weep. She is too weak to handle recycling, and hasn’t had enough schooling to handle the complexities of the water processing plant. The Protectorate has seen fit to remove her from water distribution duties, as it is well-known that fans will hand their rations right back to her, and it is not in the Protectorate’s best interests to have dehydrated citizens on work rotation.

  This week, they have her on wall duty. She begs to get out of it, but they say she’s been granted too many exemptions as it is. So she bites back tears as she straps herself into her hated still suit in the locker room, trying to ignore the stares from her fellow workers.

  Her boss is not amused.

  “I know who you are,” she sneers. “You’re not getting special treatment.”

  “I didn’t ask for any.”

  “And don’t even think about trying.”

  They walk through a series of moisturelocks, and then they are outside, a rain of dust and pebbles bouncing off of their suits, creating a soundtrack of pings and pops. Layered in behind that is the constant hum of the wind farm rotors, endlessly spinning to keep the city alive. It would be musical if Callie didn’t find it so abhorrent.

  Over the suit’s intercom, the boss says, “They tell me you’re not much good for climbing.”

  She hits the reply switch on her arm and says, “I’m not very strong.”

  “You’d be stronger if you didn’t spend so much time whining about things you can’t change.”

  Callie literally bites her tongue.

  The boss waves her toward the nearest wall segment, a block six feet high and twenty feet wide, outlined in well-worn paint, with “A-27” barely visible in the center. There is a ladder leading up to the catwalk for B-27 directly above it, and above that, C-27 and its catwalk, then the roof. “That’s yours,” she says. “Report back when you’re done and I’ll get you started on another segment.”

  The woman walks away, and Callie rests her helmet against the wall, closing her eyes to the nightmare around her, trying to ignore the pings and pops and whirs that fill her ears. The Angry Earthers can’t be right. There has to be an explanation. Otherwise, all the water the rockets bring back will just vanish, and nothing will change.

  “Hey!”

  Callie startles at the bark over her intercom.

  Her boss is staring at her from several yards away, arms crossed. “No swooning. This is work, not a Victorian fainting couch. Now get your ass in gear.”

  “Sorry.”

  As her boss turns away, she leaves the intercom on long enough for Callie to hear her grumble, “Goddamned whiners.”

  “I’m not whining!” Callie snaps. “I’m in pain.”

  She hears a laugh over the intercom, and the woman turns on her heel, raising a small cloud of dust. “Oh, really? And what makes you so special?”

  “Because I can still feel the water. And it hurts.”

  Her boss storms forward. “You have no idea, do you, little girl? You’re just a spoiled brat who has no clue.”

  “I—”

  “I grew up in Gloucester. You know where that is? It’s right on the Atlantic coast. My father was a fisherman. The ocean was my goddamned backyard, and I got to watch it dry up with my own two eyes. From what I hear, you’ve never seen so much as a puddle.”

  Callie’s vision swims with tears, and she reaches a trembling hand out toward the other woman.

  Her boss slaps it away. “You disgust me. You’ve made a career out of wallowing in misery over something you can’t possibly miss, when people like me who have every right to be basket cases are doing just fine. If I can adjust, then I don’t know what the hell your problem is.” She looks Callie up and down, then says, “Now get to work.”

  The boss stands and watches until Callie blinks her eyes dry enough to see the gauges on her meter and begins scanning for tiny vapor breaches in her section of the wall. She finds one, outlines it in chalk, then scans for more.

  When the lunch break comes, Callie is too upset to eat. She cannot look at her boss without struggling to hold back tears. This woman knew the oceans. Her family made its livelihood on the oceans. She watched the oceans disappear.

  Callie barely makes it through the rest of her shift.

  When it is over, she races home and stares at her tub, at the collection of water bottles, and tries to imagine yet again what it would be like to have all that water touching her body. How can her brother expect her to seek out companionship when the only lover she’s ever wanted is lying right here in front of her?

  She picks up one of the bottles and feels how fragile the plastic is in her bony grasp. The water in the cells of her palm screams out to the water trapped behind the plastic, swelling up toward it in its own rude tide. What would it feel like to splash a tiny amount on her skin? She can spare one bottle, can’t she?

  But she pries her fingers open and forces herself to drop it into the tub again. Every tiny bit counts. Every drop is precious.

  She sinks to the floor and starts shaking. To be so close to all this water and not be able to touch it, to let it wash over her like the floods that once scoured the earth, carving the land with its infinite patience and slow hand… She can’t take it any longer.

  But it’s too soon. Too soon. She has to wait until she has enough.

  Maybe she can stay with her brother until the concert. He’ll help her hang on. She should have enough water once it’s over. She can get Jeremy to help her cut through the immigration red tape if it’s as difficult as Owen says it is. She links to the Stonybrook hub and looks up visiting information so she can forward it to her manager.

  Hmm. They must have changed the rules since her brother last checked them, because it looks like it’ll be no trouble at all for her to get a two-week visa, so long as she brings her own water with her.

  Callie switches on the linkup and calls Owen to tell him the good news.

  A woman’s face fills the screen, broad and tan. “Yes?”

  Callie double-checks the IP. “I was expecting Owen,” she says.

  “He’s on volunteer rotation right now. Is this his sister?”

  “Yes, but who are you?”

  The woman blinks and cocks her head to the side. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He’s my brother. He tells me everything.”

  The woman’s expression darkens, and her full lips twist up into a tight knot. “He told me he was finally going to come clean with you on his last visit. I wouldn’t have picked up the link otherwise.”

  Callie leans forward, betrayal boiling through her veins. “Look, you’d better tell me who you are, or I’m going to tell the authorities that someone has broken into my brother’s apartment.”

  “I’m Marina. His wife. Your sister-in-law.”

  Callie’s entire body goes numb, and she falls back into her chair, unable to summon up the will to move. “Wife,” she whispers.

  Marina leans back and runs a hand over her swollen belly. “The babies are due in a few weeks. Apparently, twins run in the family. I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”

  Callie’s insides twist into complicated knots. “He never…he never…”

  “I didn’t want him to hide this, but he said it would kill you to know that you were alone when he wasn’t. So he kept it from you. I don’t know what good he thought that would do, but I suppose it’s a twin thing.” She gazes down at her b
elly with a ghost of a smile. “I guess I should get used to it.”

  “You’re lying,” Callie says, and finds the strength to rise to her feet. “You’re lying. My brother would never hide anything from me. He’d never keep a secret like this.”

  Marina raises one eyebrow. “Well obviously, he did.”

  Callie doesn’t want to hear anymore. She slams the connection shut, blocks her brother’s IP, and calls Jeremy. “I want to play a concert tonight. Here, in Albany. For free.”

  “Done,” he says.

  And it’s Undine’s best show ever. The music rips from her, tearing her vocal chords in its mad attempt to escape into the world. There is blood flecking her lips before long. New songs spring unbidden from the deepest wells of her soul and drench the audience to the bone. She combines sounds from the mixer at random, creating a cacophony of noise that her voice slices through with the precision of a cutter drilling for the deepest veins. They will talk about this concert for years, and not just because of what’s to come afterwards.

  When she’s done, she finally has enough water for her bath.

  Callie can’t get back to the apartment fast enough. Should she warm the water? No, then she’d lose some as steam. She needs every drop, every precious drop. With surprisingly steady hands, Callie pours each bottle into the claw-footed tub. When she is done, there is over a foot of water waiting for her.

  She’d hoped for more, but she can’t wait any longer.

  Callie peels off her clothes, and dips her toe in.

  The freezing water laps at her skin, and she shivers.

  Bit by bit, she lowers herself into the frigid pool, her skin breaking into furious goose bumps. But she doesn’t care. She is lost, adrift, caressed in ways that she had never dreamed possible. So this is what it’s like to be swaddled in the very stuff of the womb. She is completely surrounded, touched from all sides, tickled, smoothed.

  Loved.

  Tears pour down Callie’s face, her own water becoming part of the bath.

  She hears a hammering at the door. “Callie? Callie! Let me in!”