Edane had used his keys to get in. Been found out when Cathy woke up. He’d given them the bare details. For once his foster-parents weren’t pressing for more.
The apartment felt nice. Familiar, and even if he wasn’t any good at living life like a normal person, he still had a bedroom.
His old bedroom was still his old bedroom. It still had his bed, but it also had an arts and crafts table and it was where Cathy and Beth kept their bikes, now, instead of in the living room. But he’d found his bed made, waiting for him. It had been comfortable, even if he didn’t feel like he belonged there anymore.
Edane stirred the cornflakes into the milk with his spoon, trying to wet them, trying to stir it all into a steady uniform gruel. It took awhile, like it always did. Gave him too much time to think.
“You know we’re here if you need us.”
He nodded. “Thank you Cathy,” he said quietly.
“We’re sorry if we pushed you into this, with Janine. We just thought you needed a little encouragement…”
He shrugged, slightly. “I needed it.” He picked up his spoon, watching the gruel drip from it. “Like you said. I needed encouraging. And I was really happy with Janine. I really like her.”
Cathy settled back, quiet. Picked up a piece of toast, staring at him. “Were you crying?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. They felt too big. Even if these five rooms were his familiar childhood home, he’d been so short, so small, when he’d arrived. Cathy and Beth had been so much taller. Just his raw size made him feel out of place.
“Yeah.” He palmed at his eyes tiredly. They were dry. But his fur was itchy. Tangled. “I guess I was.”
The two of them shared a look. That perplexing parents-having-a-moment, what-is-our-adopted-child-doing, look.
“He cried when school broke up for summer. You remember that?” Cathy tapped the toast against her lips, blinking at Beth.
“Yeah. I thought he was developing emotionally.” She smiled vaguely. Guiltily, almost, as she looked up at Edane. “That was the only time you cried, before Grandpa Jeff passed. Wasn’t it?”
Edane ducked his head. He’d thought that he wasn’t going to get to go back to school. That he’d never be allowed to have a schedule again, that it was all just over, and every day of his life from then on out would have to be a weekend. Weekends had been really hard until he’d learned how to give himself goals and objectives. He hadn’t known it was possible to give himself orders, until Grandpa Jeff helped him work it out.
“I don’t really understand crying.” He scuffed at his nose with the back of his wrist. “I don’t really understand much of anything.”
“Powerlessness,” Cathy said. “That’s one of the big reasons people cry.” She looked over at Edane, abandoned her toast and lay her hand back on his forearm. “But you’re so smart, baby. So driven. You just don’t see any problems in the world you can’t overcome with a little effort, huh?”
He shrugged a little, thought about it. Thought about his arm, and picked up the spoon. Staring at the bowl as he held it. Steady. Just steady. And as he watched, the harder he tried to keep it steady, the more it started to tremble. Until the tremors were noticeable, and he had to jab the spoon back down into the milky gruel he’d turned his cornflakes into, to keep from having that itchy trembling feeling behind his eyes.
“Relationships aren’t like that,” Beth offered, voice soft. “People have their own things going on. It’s not something you can solve for them, Daney.”
“Yeah I could.” He palmed his eyes, fighting the sensations behind his eyelids. “Like Cathy said, I just have to be someone else. I have to not be me. Then everyone would be happy.”
“Baby…”
He was close to a foot taller than Cathy, now. She still called him baby. He might as well have been that small, physically, to match his stunted emotions. “I just have to be someone who gets what sex is. And someone who wasn’t gengineered so they can call me a cheat. And someone who wasn’t a dog, so nobody could say we were so dirty in the eyes of God that they could blow up little kids to get at us. And someone who knew how to fix all the problems in Tajikistan so they didn’t have to have a revolution, didn’t have to throw mortar bombs at me.”
They were so damn quiet, Cathy and Beth. And his palm over his face was so damn wet.
“And everywhere I turn there’s one of me who did it better. Or had more luck.” He sniveled at his palm, shaking his head. Eyes still wrenched closed, as if it’d all hold together. “I can try real hard, and I can make so many things happen. But I can’t fix luck. I could have been standing out by the gate, like Esparza, and then I wouldn’t have gotten hit by the mortar. Or I could have had less luck, and just died. But I can’t do anything.
“I could lie to her. I could say I feel the things she wants me to feel.” He snuffled at the wet in his nose. Like choking on half-inhaled water. Looked up at his foster-parents with watery eyes. Unable to see. “But that doesn’t work, does it? So I can’t fix this without being someone else. Janine wants me to be someone else and I’m not lucky enough to be someone else. So what do I do?”
Beth had to stand up to apply the Cathy and Beth maneuver, while Edane was sitting down. She couldn’t do it if they both stood up. He was too big. But if he sat to eat breakfast, she could. She could wrap her arms around his head and hold him to her chest like she was protecting him, however impractical the position was. Cathy hugged Beth from behind, wrapped her arms over Edane’s head too.
“You two know how these things work,” he whimpered. “Tell me what to do.”
“All you can do is cry, Daney. Right now all you can do is cry.”
Useful rule of thumb. If there wasn’t anything else you could do about something, you could cry about it.
So he did.
*
After the match he hadn’t wanted to go back to his mothers, though he’d agreed to visit with them that weekend, and he’d left most of his game gear in the van with Marianna’s blessing.
It had been awhile since Edane had checked into a capsule hotel. Since before he’d left for Tajikistan. There had been one conveniently close to where he’d studied for his combatant licensing. Just the basic qualification, enough to register with the professional private military bodies, enough to meet employment requirements with the hiring agencies. Before Tajikistan, he and a few of his brothers — Sztebnik and Eichardt and all those guys — used to get drunk once in awhile. He didn’t like going home drunk, felt ashamed about it, occasionally slept it off in a capsule. He’d gone on a trip by himself up north once, one of Beth’s odder suggestions. See if he could find himself. He hadn’t, but he’d stayed in a capsule hotel then, too, just because it was the cheapest place to stay, up on the southern fringes of the Mexican border.
The routine hadn’t changed any. Edane paid. The telepresent receptionist on the front room’s screen got the machine to offer Edane’s phone the keycode, but since the encryption software these places used was dodgy as all hell and half malware anyway, Edane pulled one of the tags off his rucksack, cleared the smart paper’s memory, and loaded the key on that. Tag wasn’t connected to his personal accounts, after all. He left, went down the hall.
Every single one of these places was a clone of the others, put together with more uniformity than Edane and his brothers had. Go through the first door on the left, follow the neatly painted lines on the floor and infographics on the walls. Take the hospitality packet provided, in extra large size. Empty pockets into it, including phone and the tag with the keycode. Go into a changing booth, get undressed, pull on the included dressing gown and slippers, stuff the previously worn clothes into the helpful draw-string laundry bag keyed to your capsule. Out of the changing booth, left again, open up both the doors on the booked capsule’s locker. Stuff the laundry bag into the top section, so the hotel staff or bots or whatever could take it for laundry. Lock the rucksack in the bottom section. Take the rest of the hospitality pack to
the showers. Use their shampoo, not enough for Edane’s fur, really, but extra soap was provided. Dry off with the provided stack of towels. Use more towels than allocated, because the bastards only let the hair driers run for thirty seconds. What the hell, being damp didn’t matter too bad. Out, again, left down the hall. Next set of changing rooms, just to get into one of the sets of papery pajamas they provided. Out again, right, down a blissfully white hallway, like a friendly version of the barracks, and to the capsule.
Edane’s was right near the bottom. Just a tube, a little too short for him, but only by a little. Tall enough to sit up in, hunched. He shouldered his way into the capsule niche, barely broad enough for him, palmed the light control in the claustrophobic little capsule’s screen, and twisted around, pulling the roller shutter on the end down.
Sealed away, in a calm uncolored environment. No sharp edges, everything smooth and rounded off.
He pulled the pillow up from the neatly folded stack of blankets in the corner, wedged it behind his head, and sat braced against the wall, legs stretched out, ears perked, just listening.
The capsule was quiet.
Still early in the evening. Not too many customers, yet. Residents, people staying a week or more, had a different section. The loudest thing he could hear was the faint pulse of blood in his ear, pressed against the capsule’s plasticky roof.
The capsule’s scratched screen went dark after awhile, and his shoulders began to ache, especially the right one. He only really paid attention to it when settling down, dragging the pillow under his head, body turned slightly to the left, legs curled up to keep his feet from pressing into the shutter. The ache drifted out of his right shoulder. Edane thought about it, carefully twisting his right arm around in a slight curl. Prodding at his shoulder, everywhere from the line of scars down. There were numb spots. There would probably be numb spots for a long time. But the biggest of them felt smaller.
He could now clearly feel an ache when he was uncomfortable. That was good progress.
Edane held up his right hand, fingers spread. Staring at the burn across the backs of his fingers, still wondering where they’d come from, in the life his arm had led before being transplanted. When it’d been Siegelbach’s arm. He braced his left elbow against the capsule wall, wrist twisted so he could keep one eye on his wristwatch, the seconds passing by, and waited with his hand in the air.
Counted past five, and six, and seven. Thirty whole seconds for his hand to start shivering, after aching under the thumping pressure of the LAMW’s recoil all day. Thirty seconds to tremble, when once, after surgery, when he’d just started to get movement back, his fingertips had trembled all the time.
He held his hand to his chest, hugging it close, tight, to keep it still. The way Janine did, sometimes, holding it steady against her stomach.
He fumbled the hospitality pack back up from the corner he’d dumped it in, and put his things up on the tiny recessed shelf. Keys, phone, wallet.
Waited. Just in case.
He stared at the black gap between the shelf and the capsule’s wall, cracked open under strain. Maybe somebody had yanked on it, trying to sit up.
He kept waiting, but his phone didn’t bleep at him. No call. No message. He picked it up and unfolded the phone so the screen was at its largest, checked the day’s play highlights for all of twelve seconds before shutting it all off, rolling properly onto his side, and he opened the messenger program to stare at Janine’s, Good luck with your game today, which he’d missed that morning because he’d already handed his phone in at the judge’s stand by the time she’d sent it.
He had to wipe his eyes dry after a minute.
He thumbed in, Okay to call you? I want to talk. Getting that sent off made his thumb tremble, but that didn’t have anything to do with his transplant problems.
The phone went back up onto the little shelf, and he lifted his shirt. Felt along his ribs on his right side. Checking for numb spots, even though there hadn’t been any for months where the skin grafts from Siegelbach had gone in, where there had once been more scars than flesh. Started massaging his arm the way one of the hospital nurses had taught him, and how he’d taught Janine, which wasn’t as good as the nerve stimulators, but was good for his arm all the same.
When the phone rang, Edane felt a pang of resentment. He wasn’t ready to talk. He’d wanted to throw text messages back and forth, prepare himself. Think through what he was going to say. Instead he was scrabbling at his phone with crampy fingers, looking at it long enough to check the caller icon and answer it on speaker.
“Hi, Sweetie.” Janine’s voice was thick, rough-edged.
“Hi,” he whispered, curling up, tail swept to his leg. Almost fetal, phone lain on the mattress, just beside his face.
Silence. Quiet, comfortable silence, tainted by all the discomforts between them.
“So what’s up?”
The light in the capsule, bright and white, felt invasive rather than comforting. Like the surgery table and hospital wards, rather than bright sunlight, or the fluorescent burn of the lights in the barracks when he’d been a child. He shut his eyes against it, curled up all the tighter. “Thought we should talk.”
“Yeah,” she said, voice soft and delicate. “We probably should.”
“What do you want me to do?”
She hesitated. “I want to know more about what you want, Edane.”
He thought about it, but not for very long. “I want to apologize. For what I said.”
“It’s okay.”
Those two little words hit him like shrapnel, and he couldn’t help but curl up, knees against the capsule box’s wall. “I don’t think it is.”
“Oh, well.” He could hear the smile in her voice. Tight. “It’s probably true, anyway. Everybody only knows what you got made for because it’s so obvious, Sweetie. Nobody put a label on you, nobody put a label on me. I probably got made for that, even if I don’t like thinking about it.”
“Probably not,” he said, carefully. Soothingly. “You’re so smart, you know? You know how everything works. People and culture and stuff.”
“No I don’t!” She wheezed laughter at him. “I don’t understand how you work.”
“Yeah, but that’s because I don’t work very well.”
“Nah.” Her voice went all soft again. “You’re just different.”
“Different’s bad, normally.”
“Yeah, well. You still think you’re supposed to conform to standards, y’know? Run so many miles in so many minutes, carry so much weight. But that’s not how life works, Sweetie.”
Edane cracked open his eyes, slowly uncurling his right hand, gazing into his palm. “It’s supposed to be,” he whispered.
“That’s how you feel about it, yeah. But we’re all different. Even in our production runs. I mean. Like you said, you’re not Stolnik.”
“I yelled it at you, Janine.” He offered it up, a fresh wound, ready for the salt.
But Janine didn’t want to rub salt in his wounds. “Being different’s hard for you, Sweetie. You don’t want to be different, I think. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he murmured, waiting for his hand to start trembling, as he held it steady.
“The thing with your arm, that must have been so awful for you. I mean, getting hurt and all, yeah, but. Suddenly you weren’t like everyone else, you know?”
“Yeah.” He closed his left hand over his right, and pushed them both down between his knees, so he didn’t have to stare at them. Didn’t have to wait for the tremor; that would come around by itself. “I know.”
“And the only thing that really makes you happy about it is, well. It’s not about you making progress, is it? It’s about you getting back what you lost. Becoming more like what you were.”
“Probably,” he murmured. “It’s getting better. I wanted to tell you. Here and there, where I hold my breath, if I don’t have to strain my arm too much, it’s like it was. I don’t tremble at all, for a little. Who
le half minute at a time.”
“That’s great, Sweetie.” Her voice almost held a smile. Almost.
“It’s almost like it used to be.” He stopped a second, thinking. “Like I didn’t get hurt. Yeah, you’re right. Like I’m not different. Like I’m how I should be.”
She thought about that, then asked, “How should you be?”
He didn’t immediately have an answer. But there was one question that drove him. “How do you want me to be?”
Janine was silent for a long while. That was okay, he didn’t mind listening, carefully, for the slight sound of her breath. “I have a question, first.”
“Okay.”
“What is it you like about me? Why, why do you stay around me, why does what I want matter so much to you?”
He struggled to find a reason. To pick one out of the possible things she wanted to hear. But in the ache in his chest, there was something he knew sounded stupid. He said it anyway, eyes wrenched shut. “I like doing your laundry for you.”
She made a squeaking sound. A crying sort of sound. “Laundry?”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“You moved in with me so you could do my laundry?”
“Kinda.”
“It’s okay, Sweetie,” she said, voice shaking. “I can do my own laundry.”
“I know,” he whispered. Wishing she’d just. Just understand. “But you do mine too. And you smile at me, and, I smile at you.” He gnawed at his lip, rolling over in the capsule’s confines, batting his shoulder against the wall. “It’s important to me. I don’t know how. We have a routine. We’re more efficient together.”
“More efficient.” She laughed, not quite bitterly, through her tears.
“Yeah.”
“Is that what you like about us? More efficient?”
“Yeah. I like it a lot.”
“God. I’m the least efficient woman in the world, Sweetie.”
“No you’re not. And you’re always so happy when everything works out. You do something and I help you, and that makes me happy, ‘cuz I got everything right for once and you smile at me and I knew it and I didn’t need anyone to yell it at me or write me a report card, I just knew ‘cuz you smiled all the time.”
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