Circuit Of Heaven (35 page)

She was looking daggers at him, but he was pretending not to notice. “Should it?”

“This place isn’t really in D.C. It’s in Dallas, or used to be. Sometimes I take liberties. It’s one of the few advantages of my job.”

“Playing God?”

He nodded at the justine of her dig. “Hardly, my dear. God laughs at us. We take ourselves too seriously. No, I’m Sysop. System Operator. I wrote it, and I run it—or try to—but you don’t want to hear my problems. You want to know what in the hell I’m doing creating you in the first place. Is that a fair assessment?”

“Yes.”

A waitress came up to the table. Her nametag said
Katie
. She was cute and perky, from another time. She set two coffees in front of them and left them alone.

Mr. Menso smiled after her. “Katie knew us. We always sat at this table, ordered coffee, and talked.” Mr. Menso poured cream into his coffee and stirred. “Angelina used to call me up and ask me to meet her here in the afternoon. I knew that meant there was trouble in her love life. I’d take off work, come down here, and console her. She’d insist on picking up the check. As we were leaving I’d suggest an outing to cheer her up, a picnic by the lake, a drive in the country, and she’d always say yes, and we’d have a great time. And that would go on for a week or two until she met another guy, usually shortly after I’d proposed again. Then I wouldn’t hear from her until she’d call me up after a few weeks or months, and ask me to meet her here.” He quit stirring and set the spoon on the table. “We did that for over seventeen years.

“Sometimes she had special favors to ask. Money, of course. I also helped her find lawyers and doctors. Fate introduced her to Ward, however. Winston came a month early at three o’clock in the morning. The doctor I’d found her was fishing in Vermont, so she got the resident on duty. She never called me after she met Wade. She sent me an invitation to the wedding, but I didn’t go.”

She studied him, so sweet and innocent looking, playing on her sympathies. So sorry. No sympathy to spare. Her voice was hard and cold. “So when did you fuck her?” She tapped her forehead. “Nobody up there seems to remember that minor detail. Elizabeth said you were her father. What was it—a swan? a shower of gold? Or maybe it was an immaculate conception?”

That stung. The smarmy little smile was gone. His face drooped like an old dog’s. Good. She wanted him to suffer.

He spoke quietly, a confession with as much nostalgia as much nostalgia as guilt. “She’d been married a little over a year, just moved into her new home, in a new town, with her new husband. I’d gotten a couple of postcards from the honeymoon in Mazatlán. I called one evening and said I was passing through, asked if I could stop by. She was all excited, happy to hear from me, and she said to pick up a bottle of wine, and we’d talk about old times.”

He pursed his lips. “Of course, I was lying. I wasn’t passing through. I flew to Richmond because I knew her husband was at a conference in New York.

“I’d never seen her looking so beautiful, so happy. She showed me the whole house. Her son Winston, six months older than her marriage, was fast asleep in his bed. I watched her tuck him in.

“We had the wine, and talked about old times, and after I’d had a little too much to drink, it hit me that she’d forgotten I was in love with her, that she seemed to think because she was finally in love, mine would just evaporate. It’d been a while since I’d told her. She preferred it that way. We were good friends, she insisted.”

He sighed. “But I broke down, made a fool of myself, almost forty years old, hopelessly in love with her for twenty years. She took me in her arms and made love to me. Just the once. I knew at the time it would be. Just the once.”

Justine stared at him across the table, a harmless little man with a tale of woe. Hell, she almost wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him now. “Look, I’m sorry your sweetheart never loved you. I’m sorry for all of it. But why me, now? Am I her replacement? Are you setting me up with Nemo, so you can fucking
console
me again?” Justine was practically shouting, but no one in the place turned to look. They weren’t real. None of it was real. “You set this whole thing up. You got Winston to do the dirty work, but I was your little project from the beginning. Why?”

“I was coming to that,” he said. He motioned to Katie, and she filled his cup. Justine hadn’t touched hers. “I loved Angelina most of my life. When she died, I went a little crazy. I couldn’t stand the thought that she didn’t have to die. I think I still secretly believed that
someday
she’d learn to love me. When the Bin went online, all the data from every system in the world was uploaded. I scoured every database, looking for any recording of her. I found two, neither one very good. Even though it was the more primitive, Steve the porn peddler’s was the more complete.”

“That first dream I had.”

“Yes. He recorded her, made a porno virtual out of her. I found the raw data stored away for years. That’s why you remember the time at St. Catherine’s with such clarity. He picked up all that, but back then he would’ve thought it was just background noise. The medical monitors when she gave birth to Winston weren’t designed to capture memories, but some bled through. It didn’t exactly capture her at her best. The third one, I arranged myself, setting up a research project at what was left of the local university. It’s amazing what money can do. The Mental History Project, they called it. They uploaded a hundred holdouts over sixty, all so I could get one. But she was still Angelina.”

He swallowed hard and looked around the restaurant, his eyes brimming with tears. How many times had he sat here—waiting for her to come through that door, hoping things might finally be different? He dabbed at his eyes with a napkin and sighed. “But there wasn’t enough, you see. The usual integration program wouldn’t hold her together for more than a few seconds. The three moments in her life—those three women—couldn’t even perceive each other to be the same woman. Theoretically, nothing could be done.” He smiled ironically. “And I should know—I wrote the theory. But as I said before, I went a little crazy. So I spent the next twenty years writing Justine, writing you.”

He looked at her like a proud father. “She chose the name Justine, by the way. I’d only known her for a few months. She’d broken up with David, I think his name was. One evening she was drunk and whimsical, and suggested we tell each other our secret names, the ones we’d choose for ourselves if we could shed the ones we were stuck with. She detested Angelina as too precious, and I hated Newman as the dweebiest name ever given. She said she wanted to be Justine.”

“What was your secret name?” she asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew.

He looked down at the table, turned his napkin with his index finger as he spoke. “I told her I didn’t have one. And she said that I must, and that she would discover it. She liked anagrams, and she made half a dozen out of my name on the back of a napkin like this one. I chose Warren G. Menso. I still have the napkin, the upload anyway. She called me Mr. Menso after that, said it was the masculine form of Mensa. She used to tease me about being a genius. She said only a genius or an idiot would be so devoted to her.” He looked up from the napkin and smiled sadly. “I tried to make you what she always wanted to be—all the dreams she confided to Mr. Menso.”

And no one else, until now.
We’ve got a lot of faith in you
, Angelina said, and now Justine understood what she meant. She took a sip from her coffee. It was lukewarm, but she drank it anyway, fighting back sympathy. “So why didn’t you make me for yourself?”

“That was the idea to begin with—though I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I knew all along that wouldn’t be right. She never loved me out there; she wouldn’t willingly love me in here. I could’ve planted such a suggestion, transformed my appearance into something stunning, but I couldn’t do that to her. She trusted me.”

“But you
could
plant the suggestion that she fall in love with her grandson.”

He shook his head. “But I didn’t. I gave you a sketchy history for the last six weeks and a basic knowledge of the Bin. I planted suggestions to lead you to my shop, and then to
Romeo and Juliet
—a nostalgic bit of self-indulgence, I confess. But everything else you’ve both done on your own.”

“That first morning. That was you in my room, wasn’t it? Talking to Winston?”

His face clouded over with anger. “Yes. I was furious. I’m so sorry for what he did. I never should’ve given him that much responsibility. I told him to implant a memory of your meeting, and he took it upon himself to subject you to that ludicrous sex. I wanted to boil him in oil.”

Justine smiled at his rage. “That would be fine by me. I’m just glad to hear it wasn’t real. You know, when I confessed to Nemo that I’d slept with his slimy uncle, it didn’t even faze him. I thought, I’ve confessed my worst, and he still loves me. I had no idea.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t told him what you are?”

“Of course not. Once I knew, I had to.” Once I knew, she thought, and something clicked. “But you knew that. You sent Lila to tell me what I was, didn’t you?”

“Yes. You needed to know the truth, but if we gave it to you all at once, there was a high risk of insanity.”

“Lila works for you?”

“She’s a friend.”

“What other ‘friends’ do you have?”

“Freddie and John.”

So he’d been hovering over her the whole time. She supposed that should make her angry, but if he’d created her angry just dumped her into the Bin completely on her own, that would’ve made her angry, too. If what she was really pissed about was his creating her at all, there was a simple enough solution for that.

“What about Rick and Ian—are they more friends of yours?”

“They’re not my friends, Justine. They’re my enemies. They believe I’m Satan himself. Nothing would make them happier than to destroy me if they could.”

“Why would they be interested in me?”

“They’re not. It’s Nemo who interests them. Because he’s my grandson. They make a habit of snooping around my life. Up to now they’ve been more an annoyance than anything else. Just don’t let on you suspect them.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that. I told Rick off tonight. I thought he was working for you. I wanted to tell you off, but you weren’t there.”

Mr. Menso smiled. “You are a good deal like Angelina.”

“Why was Lenny supposed to deal with Rick, then?”

“So that Rick’s boss would be kept well informed and have the illusion he was in control.”

She remembered Nemo asking her about the underground. “Is his boss’s name Gabriel?”

“Yes.”

“He approached Nemo.”

“I know. I anticipated that move.”

“But what do you get out of this? What did you want to happen?”

“I had hopes that you two would love each other, and that Nemo would come inside.”

She couldn’t believe he was so matter-of-fact about it. “Good Lord, were you forgetting I’m his grandmother?”

Menso smiled and shook his head. “No, you’re not. You must know it yourself by now. You are very much alike, like a mother and daughter, I suppose. But you’re not her. Can you honestly say to me, ‘I’m Angelina’?”

She started to argue with him, but there was no point. He was right, for all the good it did her. She stared at the tabletop. She’d hoped there’d be some way out of this mess, but it was a dead end. “Okay. I’m not her. So what? Do you honestly think I can convince Nemo of that?”

He leaned forward, laid his hands on hers. “Listen to me, Justine. He’s angry and he’s frightened. But above all, he loves you. If he could be equally sure of your love, nothing else would matter to him.”

“And how am I going to convince him of that? I can’t even see him.”

He lowered his gaze to their hands. His voice trembled as he spoke. “By going to him, as you planned. Not even Nemo could question such a sacrifice. I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, I assure you. I didn’t work for twenty years so that you could go back out there and die again. But I’ve arranged the download you asked me to. You can still do it, if you want. If you’d like to meet her first, I can arrange that, too.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Her?”

He looked into her eyes. She remembered those great, sad eyes. “Elaine. The woman whose body you’d live in outside.”

“But why would you do this?”

He shook his head. “Because I’m hoping—unless he’s a complete fool—that he won’t let you do it. And because you asked. That’s why I’ve done lots of things. I wanted you to be happy. That’s what I’ve always wanted.”

What do you do with something like that—all that love and you can’t give it back
? She squeezed his hands. “Maybe that’s just not in your power, Mr. Menso.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “No. I would say it most definitely is not.”

There were stained glass windows, high in the walls—stylized landscapes of mountains, trees, and rivers, fat yellow wedges of sunshine fanning out across the sky. Hardly the stations of the cross, but nice. She had no actual memories of the place, but she remembered how it made her feel. It was a refuge from the chaos she made of her life. She felt safe here. She looked across the table where Newman had sat and sat and sat. He was the one who’d made it safe for her. Never judging.

Nemo had been like his namesake, his grandfather, never judging. Until now. He’d judged her. Not what she’d done, but what she was, her very identity. How could she atone for that? Hadn’t he loved her for just that?
You can’t come to me, so I’m coming to you
, he’d said. Now it was the other way around. He couldn’t come here, not now. But she could go to him. She could die for him. If he didn’t love her anymore, she wanted to die.

“Mr. Menso, you knew her better than anyone. What would Angelina decide, do you think? Would she download herself?”

He thought about it for a long time, and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, my dear.”

Justine rose from the table. “We’ll let you know,” she said. “Tomorrow, Angelina and I will let you know.”