She stood again at the window, again with tea, in her robe, and watched the rain course down the pane. A shunt whooshed from the distant mall, and the sparking burst lit the face of the tenement opposite. The effigy glared in at her, its spikes looking all the blacker in the flesh made bright—almost luminous—by the stark flash. Then, a ghost, it was gone, and Kohl stepped back from the window, dropped the curtain. Setting aside her tea, she opened her robe and gazed down at her body. Smooth, white, the small neat dent of her navel the only scar, looking like a deep puncture. What had the shadow men done? How much had she been repaired?
Jazz played almost inaudibly. Kohl resumed her tea drinking, wandered back to the bathroom, where the mirror was losing its obscuring mist. Her reflection regarded her. Hair, dyed dark red, in wet tangles...the thick black makeup she favored washed away, making her eyes look stripped, she felt, weak and faded. Why did she like to dye her hair, and paint her lips a dark brown shade? Had her husband liked her that way, found it alluring? All memory of him was gone, but was it possible that the scan, the burning, had left behind clues to their relationship? Might she like a certain film director because her husband had originally introduced her to his work? Might even the jazz she was listening to be from a chip he had bought her? She tried to remember purchasing this one and found that she couldn’t.
A shunt passed and the shade lit up, then went dark again like a closed eyelid.
* * *
“I love the smell in here,” the customer said, a smile in his voice behind Kohl’s back as she prepared him his mocha cappuccino. She set it before him, rang it up. He dumped all his change in the tip cup, as if to impress her. “Quiet night in the mall, huh? Everybody home watching the big game, you think?”
“Big game?” Kohl asked without interest.
“Never mind,” the man chuckled. “That’s how I feel about it, too. Much rather read.” He lifted a bag from the book store a bit further down the main hall. “You like books?”
Kohl pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face, then regretted it, as the man might take it as a gesture of flirtation. “I read on the net,” she replied blandly.
“Aww...you don’t get that smell of paper. You can’t sink down into a bath tub with...”
“I do, sometimes; I have a headset.” But she regretted discussing her private life. Especially referring to any activities that involved her being naked. Thankfully, a new customer had just entered the shop, and was perusing the bags of fresh beans. Kohl prayed for her to hurry up and approach the counter.
“Well,” the young man sighed, taking up his coffee, “time to head home before the game gets over and all the drunks leave the bars, eh? You be careful yourself, tonight.”
“Thanks,” said Kohl. She was careful, leaving the mall every night, waiting for a shunt. She had bought nightvision glasses that looked like regular sunglasses, and carried a small pistol in her shoulder bag.
She watched the man leave, a bit surprised that he had dropped his flirtation without asking her out. Had the new customer made him self-conscious, or had it never been his intent to ask her out? Or even flirt; perhaps he had only meant to be friendly. Whereas a minute ago Kohl had resented his attentions, now she felt a bit disappointed, she was surprised to realize. He had been an attractive man. Intelligent, probably sensitive.
But wouldn’t her husband have been those things, too, if those were qualities that attracted her? And he must have shown a darker side, in time. Maybe he had cheated on her, become a drunk. Beat her. Even raped her. He must have hurt her badly, if she had returned to her doctor and paid him to obliterate all memories of her husband, after first divorcing him, after first removing all photographs and vids of him, after changing her name and moving to a new neighborhood where the nonhuman immigrants did not find her attractive, even with her red hair and brown lips, did not trouble her.
Kohl even felt insulted, hurt, that the man had lost interest in her, or never really had it in the first place. But it was for the best, no doubt.
An hour later, and her shop closed up for the night. She sat on a bench in the main hall reading a magazine. A young woman with her head forced to one side by a huge “orb weaver” tumor stopped to hand her a flyer, which Kohl tossed into a trash zapper beside her after a glance when the woman was far enough away not to see. A group of teenage boys drifted past, eyeing Kohl and making lip-smacking noises. She slid one hand in her shoulder bag as she continued to read, but a security robot came rumbling along, dented and covered in graffiti, and rolled after the boys, urging them onwards. Kohl removed her hand from the now slick grip of her pistol.
Her sister was late, but at last here she was: Terr, so pretty, with her thick black eyebrows and perfectly shaped head shaved down to a mere dark stubble. She kissed Kohl lightly and they began to walk the half closed mall.
“Traitor,” Kohl said, nodding at the coffee cup Terr carried; not her shop’s brand.
“Sorry, couldn’t wait...”
Kohl asked how Terr’s wedding plans were going. Her fiancé seemed like a nice enough man; attractive, sensitive, artistic. Kohl worried about her sister but was afraid to darken her enthusiasm in any way. She just wished her sister had known the man longer.
“How are you doing?” Terr now asked her in turn, as she drove Kohl to a restaurant where they planned to have a late meal and a few drinks.
Kohl stared straight ahead through the windshield at the night city; buildings so black they seemed windowless, like solid obelisks, others lit brightly but no more warmly. One great scalloped Tikkihotto temple was of blue stone and lit with blue floodlights and struck Kohl as particularly lonely-looking. Some local journalists spoke of the exciting blend of cultures in Punktown (they of course preferred its true name, Paxton), the fascinating ethnic melting pot. Kohl felt that the buildings were not a rich diversity but a silent cacophony, disharmonious, so many unalike strangers forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Terr,” she asked in a dull voice, “did you like my husband?”
“Jesus, Kohl!” Terr said. “Jesus!”
“What?”
“Are you trying to get us in an accident?” Terr composed herself, sat up straighter at the controls. “You know I can’t talk about him. You asked me to never talk about him...or the other thing! You paid a lot to have that work done. Why would you even want to know?”
“I don’t know, I just...it bothers me...sometimes.”
“It bothered you when you knew; that’s why you wanted to forget. First the rape, then him. You were hurting, so you wanted to take away the hurt. You’re gettng your life back now, so don’t walk backwards.”
“I’m just curious, sometimes. How can I not be? Does he still live in town? Has he ever asked you where I am? Did he hurt me...physically?”
“Shut up, Kohl. I’m just honoring what you made me promise before, so shut up.”
“Just one thing, Terr. Please. Did he hurt me? Physically?”
Terr said nothing; wagged her head.
“Please, Terr. Just that one thing.”
“No. Not physically. All right? Happy? Not physically.”
“How, then? Why would I leave him? Or did he leave me? Maybe he wasn’t bad to me, but good to me, huh? Maybe that’s why I wanted to forget him...because I loved him so much...”
“It doesn’t matter either way. It doesn’t matter if I liked him or not, if he’s alive or he’s dead. You wanted this, and I gave my word, and that’s that. Move along. You were purged clean, you have a fresh start. You should concentrate on getting your old job back or suing those bastards and forget about the rape and your marriage.”
“I was married two years, and dated him before that. Three years gone. I remember work, in that time, but not him. I remember the dental work I had in that time, but not him. It’s just...strange, Terr.”
“I’m sure it is. But not as strange as being raped.”
Kohl was quiet again for a few moments. Then: “Sometimes I try to re
member. I think a song will remind me, or a smell, or...”
“That’s not possible. It won’t come, so don’t wait for it. Memories physically alter the brain. Your brain was physically altered to erase all that. You will never remember, okay? It’s as gone as if it never happened...like it should be. It’s the closest we can come to going back in time and making things so they never were. I’d like to go back and touch up a few painful memories myself, sometime when I have the money. Not Dad altogether, but just the times he teased me; he could be really sadistic, the way he teased. And some stuff from school; that too.” Terr nodded, her intense face underlit by the vehicle’s dash displays. “It’s a good thing to forget. Life hurts too much.”
“I know,” Kohl conceded softly. “It’s just...it feels funny to have...holes like that. Three years. Even...even the rape. It’s something important that happened to me...”
Terr glared over at her sister. “It’s a horrible thing that happened to you! You learned nothing from it, gained nothing from it, you don’t need it, so forget it, you hear me? You forget it!”
“It’s a hole. It feels more scary, sometimes, not knowing how bad it was! Sometimes I imagine one nightmare and sometimes another. My husband, too. I try to fill in the hole and it scares me!”
“The doctor can only do so much. The rest is up to you. You aren’t trying hard enough. You have to move on, and don’t look back. You know, Dad used to tease you a lot, too. Probably damaged your self esteem. You should go back and have that stuff cleaned out, too. That might help. You know?”
“It wouldn’t be a real memory of Dad! It would be a censored version!”
“It would be the way he should have been,” Terr muttered.
“I remember when we were kids, you and me got in a fight and you started strangling me with your hands until I couldn’t breathe, and I got really scared. Maybe I should get that erased, too, huh?”
“We were just kids!” Terr snapped. “But if it still bothers you, hey, by all means do so.”
“I wouldn’t have anything much left,” Kohl murmured. “We waste so much time sleeping. It feels like losing so much more time...”
“Bad time. You don’t need it. It’s better this way. How can it not be?”
Kohl watched the moon lower over the spires and monuments of the city’s jagged silhouette. It was a three-quarter moon, and looked to Kohl as if someone had taken a big bite out of it.
* * *
Kohl had originally moved here at the end of last year’s flaying season, and now she could tell with relief that this year’s time of slaughter was nearly finished. It was a few months early, but she guessed that the Antse year was shorter. The gutters stopped running with blood, and the effigies were not replaced; were left to fall into ruin and wither and mummify in the hot sun.
She was more willing to walk in the neighborhood now, and one Sunday in the early evening made a trip to a corner market. On her way back to her apartment, she paused at the front of a building. She had stopped here before.
It was an old, crumbling brick structure, native Choom, predating colonization. But there was a fossil in its brick that was not an ancient one. It was the mummified figure of an Earth man; a teleportation accident had fused the poor soul half into the gray brick. There was a painted arrow above his head, like a marking made on the street to indicate where a water pipe awaited repair, as if such were needed to point him out. The half of him that showed had never been claimed or removed, however. His clothing was mostly torn or worn away, and his one hand was gone, probably taken by young pranksters like whoever had spray-painted genitals where his own had withered.
His whole right side from crown to foot was lost in the wall. Half of his head absorbed into the brick so that only a skull socket and half a lipless grimace remained. A few strands of gray hair stirred in the languid summer air.
Kohl reached out and lightly touched his shoulder as if to comfort him in his solitary, silent anguish. Then, self-consciously, she looked around her, and there was an Antse male watching her from a window in the brick building itself, his face so close and his deeply recessed eyes so fixed on her that she started. Whether he was merely curious or found a cruel amusement in observing her sentimentality, she couldn’t tell from the apparition’s skeletal face aswirl in green and black. But he withdrew immediately upon being spotted, as if embarrassed himself, and despite their being of such radically different races, his furtive actions led Kohl to wonder if he might even have been surreptitiously admiring her.
Disturbed by this thought, she hurried on toward her apartment before it could grow dark.
* * *
“Hello again,” the good-looking young man said, leaning on the counter. Had he lurked outside the shop until he saw that no one else was inside? “How about a mocha cappuccino, extra large?”
Kohl smiled faintly and turned her back on him. Reluctantly.
This was the third time this month he had come in here. The second time, she had been secretly gratified to see him again. But then, after they had chatted briefly and he had left, doubts had begun to surface. Even fears.
What if he knew her from before her treatments? What, in short, if this were her husband, who had succeeded in seeking her out, tracking her down? Her husband, who had somehow learned that she would not recognize him? Her husband, who was finding a perverse satisfaction in courting his ex-wife again, as if for the first time, who wanted to show her that she could not escape him as easily as that...
Her eyes flicked to her shoulder bag, resting on the back counter. Her pistol was in there. If he tried to come around the counter...
Placing the coffee before him, Kohl asked, “So what are we going to read now?”
“A collection of short stories by a twentieth century writer, Yukio Mishima.” The man showed her the book. “He committed suicide by ritual disembowelment.”
“Yuck,” Kohl chuckled nervously, accepting his money. “Well, enjoy it.”
“You should read him...he’s great.” The ritual dumping of change into her tip cup. “Well, see you next time, huh?”
“Right. Bye.”
Kohl watched him leave. And that evening she closed up the shop fifteen minutes early, rushed down to the book shop, and bought a volume of the Mishima stories. She brought it home that night to read, beginning on the shunt ride. There might be some clues in it, even that he meant for her to catch. Something that might indicate his true identity, his true intentions.
Whether he was her husband. Whether he was one of the rapists, even, from the parking lot...
* * *
“Yes...I remember that,” Kohl said to the vidphone, her right hand absently riffling the pages of the Mishima collection. “Dr. Rudy did inform me of the option to have the memories recorded in case I changed my mind...at an extra cost. But I didn’t think I’d ever want that, at the time, and I wanted to save some money, and so...”
“So you opted not to have those patterns recorded,” said Dr. Rudy’s receptionist, her face turned from the screen as she examined another monitor.
“Right,” Kohl said. “But I was hoping...I wondered if maybe he records these things anyway, and saves them for a while after the procedure in case someone changes their mind.” Kohl tried to joke, “Or wants their mind changed back.”
“No, that isn’t Dr Rudy’s system, I’m sorry. And even if it were, it has been over a year now since your first session. But no —” the woman swivelled back to face Kohl “— I gave it a look anyway and I don’t see any indication that he ever made a recording of what you had removed. I’m sorry.”
Kohl smiled, shrugged. “That’s okay...I didn’t really think he would have. I was just wondering. Thanks anyway.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
“It’s not important. Thanks again.” Kohl tapped a key, and a screen saver replaced the woman’s face.
Kohl more consciously thumbed through the Mishima book now. One story, “Patriotism”, detailed in agon
izing, loving detail the double suicide—called shinju—of a Japanese military officer and his wife. Particularly the man’s disembowelment; Kohl could almost imagine that Mishima had penned it while cutting his own belly open, writing down his observations. Picturing the slicing, the bleeding made her so light-headed as she read the story that she had to set the book down for a few moments to calm her breathing.
What might the young man be suggesting to her, through this book? Was he indeed her husband, obsessed with her, having tracked her down at last...and now suggesting that they perform this most devoted of romantic acts together? Die united in the ritual of shinju?
Kohl lifted her gaze again to the vidphone’s mindless swirlings of color. How carefully had that receptionist really checked? Should she try to talk to Dr. Rudy himself?
What if Rudy had kept the recording for his own purposes? His own entertainment? Even now, might he be watching Kohl and her husband on their wedding night, through Kohl’s eyes?
Might he be watching her rape in the parking lot, finding excitement in it?
The concept so horrified her that she was startled. But men were like that, weren’t they? In polls they freely admitted they would rape if they thought they could get away with it. That it was their foremost sexual fantasy. Men hungered, men consumed. She thought again of the staring Antse in the window, his face the face of all men, stripped of the deceitful flesh, the facade of civilization, leaving only the gaping eyes and Death’s head grin.
The night fell. Kohl played music. She made tea. She went to the window.
Tomorrow she would return to work. And she would bring her gun, as she always did...though lately she had taken to carrying it in her dress pocket, rather than her shoulder bag. And if the young man came in again, she would point the gun at him and demand that he reveal his identity.
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