Elvissey (4 page)

New New York would hold a million. Its presentiment
screamed the unstated, that its inhabitants had been retrofitted as well, to assure perfection. In outlanders' minds-in
the Bowl and among the Coasters and down in the vast
Southern delta-New Yorkers underwent a most complete
regooding: they were reimagined as reflections, new Atlan-
teans plucked landward from water; their wet hair so blond
as mine was becoming, their moist eyes so blue as my contacts feigned. We who lived here knew true; our hills' city
provided only new jars for old specimens, who, when
pricked, yet gushed red and not gold-vermilion.

John and I had a fiftieth floor place in a Concourse tower;
twenty other families lived in our building. We sidewalked
ourselves, watching empty trolleys race down the boulevard's gardened aisles, their ads' neon belettering the dark,
the bulbed glow of Dryco's face tracklighting fore and aft,
the sign of its word; everybody heard about the word. Our
driver, deafened, sped into his night, two red lights on behind.

"How long?" I asked, watching his meteors skid out of
sight.

"Week," John said. "He's edged. Let's up ourselves, Iz."

The seven million of old New York could have roomed
here in comfort, high atop the hills. Mooted: in new New
York, those not regooded weren't there anymore.

We lay in our single bed's separate worlds. John's wide white
back lifted high on my left, its crags appearing as an iceberg
around which I could never maneuver in time. He shivered;
mayhap his own coldness chilled too bonedeep. Stroking
him, pulling our comforter around us, I warmed him as I
could.

"Sleepaway," he murmured. "Deepdead shagged, Iz.
Dreamtime calls. Listen."

"Talk to me, John," I said. "Talk."

"Sleepaway, Iz," he repeated. "Places to go, people to be.
Sleepaway."

Rolling off I eyed our ceiling's slate, an unreadable
heaven too close to comfort. We lay separate but equal,
together yet apart, one and divided; I wished he was with me,
fearing he'd never be again. The living room's TVC came on
by itself; it needed rechipping but a workperson essentialled
for that and so we let it play as it wished. From the words I
gathered that a speaker representing one sect of the C of
E-that is to say, the Church of Elvis-was preaching; the
congregants called out for their imagined savior, crying for
him to step from his world into ours.

"E," they chanted, intruding themselves throughout our
space. "Save us, E.-

As I lay there I listened to wind scratching the window;
then I heard the wind drop to the carpet and land on a shoe.
Pressing on the light I soaked our room until all appeared
freefloating within an amber sea. A mouse sought succor
beneath my dressing-table.

"John," I said, shifting him with no greater ease than if I'd
tried pushing a mountain. "The room's wildlifed. Heard
and seen, present and accounted."

"Wildlifed," he replayed. "Two feet or four?"

"We're verminized," I said. "A mouse, undertabled. Go,
do, please-"

"Untouchable, Iz," he said. "It's life."

"It'll breed and bedcrawl," I said. "Cruise it and bruise it,
John. I beg."

The mouse's head appeared, resembling a shoetip; it
froze, seeming fixed by my stare. I didn't move; it did, racing
crossroom, vanishing under our bed. Awakened full I
bounded high, tumbling John floorways.

"Godness, Iz-" His insomnia disrupted, John rose with
clear, if troubled, mind.

"Ex it, John," I said. "It'll warm itself with us."

He stared bedways, considering my question even as I
asked it. "Impossibled, Iz. Even with peewees. Can't
think-"

"A mouse!" I shouted, balancing myself upon our mattress, alerted to sounds of scratch. "Try, John. Show it what
for."

My husband stamped his good foot, rocking the room.
Our intruder darted out, shooting into the quarter-meter's
width between dresser and console. Kneeling, grasping one
of my boots, I tossed it, jamming the heel into the mouse's
only exit. Isolate now, it attempted to scramble up the surrounding smoothness, seeking grip, finding none, sliding
floorways again and again, outsplaying tiny feet no larger
than earrings.

"Send it up the flagpole and fly it, John," I screamed.
"John, please, I beg, I don't want to have to-"

"Can't think. Can't. No-" he began to say; leaning forward, his sentence pending, clutching himself stomachways,
he balled inward as if to keep his innards from gnawing
themselves free. A medication side-effect was tenfolded gastric output at mere notion of violent response; if the notion
prolonged, even sans action, he'd be eaten away so physically from within as I had been emotionally.

"Living must live," he said, replaying his new-learned
lessons. "Live with purpose. Must live. Must-"

'John" I cried, aware of what necessaried, were we to
know peace. Something in the mouse kept it living against
every odd; I'd hoped it would keel, but it didn't. John's white
face drew deathshade as his blood streamed inward, seeking
release.

"Iz," he said, sinking his teeth lipways, reddening them, "I
can't. Can't, can't, can't-"

"I'll settle," I said, climbing down, smoothing his damp hair. He attempted to go blank, eyeshutting, surely constructing in mindeye images of sunshine and meadows and
all else neverseen, that he could recover enough to lie at rest
without hemorrhage. I hated him so for my having to do
what essentialled; pushed deeperdown my own rage with the
ease experience brings. I was never so good at hurting as was
John. "Rest, angel. I'll settle."

In my bedside drawer were scissors; my choice of weapon
was no less impromptu than any guard's. I trod gentlefooted to where the mouse flung itself against the walls
within which it was bottled. I clenched; lifted my scissors.
Bringing them down, I realized I'd grasped them widdershins, as if to safely present them to another, who might then
with ease stab me with my own gift. Feeling the points sharp
within my hand, closing my eyes, imagining myself as a child
again, I struck the mouse with the rounded handles; hit it
repeatedly, allowing myself sight enough only to certify my
strikes, that I didn't overdraw another's pain overlong, regardless of my own.

Done, then: the mouse lay fetuscurled upon the darkened
carpet as if sleeping, its nostrils crimsoned. Cringing from
sight of my handiwork, feeling no satisfaction of artistic
accomplishment, I saw John rub his face sweatless against
our sheets; wondered for whom I felt sorriest, feeling possessed with numbness I hadn't remembered I could so easily
summon.

"It's doornailed," I said. My eyes were wet as the mouse's
nose, as our sheets, as John's hair. "Angel?"

"Sorry," he said. "Forgive."

"No," I said. "Forgive me." No response. IfJohn cried, his
tears streamed unseen within. Standing, feeling my own
head light of blood, I tore open two dusty condoms taken
from the drawer and rolled them over my fingers; grasped
the mouse's tail and ran with it to the bathroom, to jet it
down the toilet. I watched the pink water swirl away; washed
and rewashed and rewashed my hands, feeling as Lady M herself. Then I returned to our room, bedding again beside
my husband. He lay wide-eyed; some nights, lately, he only
halfslept, thrashing through undreamt dreams, recalling
none at morningside.

"I've done unforgivables," I said. "I have."

"You weren't trained for such, even streetways-"

"No, John. With you, I mean."

"Nada," he said; I stared at his back. "Guilt undeserved
scars spirit and soul, Iz. Never know guilt sans reason."

"You do constant," I said.

"Sans reason, said."

"You're lying, not truthing," I said; sighed. "Saming, not
changing." I fit myself anew into my spot alongside him,
touching his skin; he couldn't stop shaking, and I wondered
if this was a hitherto undetected side-effect. "Better or
worse, John. Love. You slay me."

"Never!" he shouted, rising as if to slap me down. "Never.
Disallowed."

"Not literal, John. Misinterpreted. I'll demetaform-"

"Never hurt," he said. "Not you," he added. "No one," he
sighed. "None."

"You're abandoning you, John," I said. "And me. Without fault of yours-"

"With fault."

"No. Oh, John, it hurts-"

"Mutualities," he whispered, "best unsaid."

"Least said soonest known."

"Over there," he said. "Difference will become us again as
it did. I know it'll be so, over there."

"So hoped," I said. Pressing closer, I felt him warm: again
glimpsed the shimmers, our bright reflections, the heatshine
above the highway; imagined for an instant that Godness
might indulge our prayers. He shifted, as if to face me;
suddenly reached downward, his face wrinkling as if at once
he showed a hundred years, each unwanted.

"What hurts, John?" I asked. "What-?"

"Leg-!"

Asiding our damp sheets, he flailed and pounded his knee
with his fist, reslotting his joint. Since the ninth operation
the implants never quite took, and rarely responded as desired, however much he concentrated when guiding their
action. Guards, heretofore, forever required refitting; artificialities had merits but permanence was not among
them. John's add-on leg would suffice several months to a
year sans problems: then fluid dried, the marrow-channels
bubbled, the cables knotted; down to the clinic he'd hobble,
knowing well inevitable obsolescence's inescapable pain. He
stilled anew, pillowing his head, gasping for breath.

"Are you AO?" I asked. He nodded. "I love you. I'm
sorry."

"For loving?"

"Sometimes," I said.

His lips downturned, as if they'd been pinned. "Known,"
he said. "Understood. I love, too. Overmuch contained
within. Overmuch to bear."

"Overmuch inexpressible?"

He nodded. "Spillage unavoidable, sometimes. Hurt to
avoid hurt, unavoidable," he said. "Ergo, implode within.
Better, because safer."

We'd had a friend in the trade; after graduation she was
implanted with finger-razors which, commanded, sprang
from undernail that with them she might lunge and slash.
One afternoon while she was grating cheese for dinner they
unexpectedly emerged, freezing in extremis. At her operative time, years before, such gear was bonegrafted direct;
only through amputation could she have been loosed of her
superfluous knives. Still, Dryco found her retainable for special use; in time such acts as turning doorknobs again came
naturally to her. Upon regooding's instilling she foresaw her
unavoidable obsolescence; the edict passed, and a week
passed, and then one night she lay full-uniformed in her
tub; resting there for a time, she must have made motions as if to adjust her collar. John once loved her, before our meet;
I never jealoused. Love was love, however manifest.

"John-"

"It'll remake us. I'll exemplarize, and protect sans harm.
The change'll come, over there," he said. I clasped his shimmer, fearing-his words notwithstanding-he was lost to us
both, if not till endtime, at least for our present. Curling
inward, feeling mouse-size, small and dark and bottled
within smooth walls, I stared out into a wide white world.
"Peace yourself meantime with dreams, Iz. Sleepaway."

Once sex netted us tight, giving life, renewing our souls as
Godness so hoped; our love was Godness. Now I fancied that
John thought if we were to swive he'd only shoot into me
unneeded poison, embodying me overmuch with a readjusted virus. He shivered: I rubbed his stomach, felt his
muscles and the curls of his hair, and held his penis in my
hand. He never told me how he'd lost the tip.

The TVC switched on again. "E," the desparate called
throughout our rooms; their pleas rebounded soft against
my ears as I lay there, unswived, unsaved. "Return to us.
Cleanse. Renew. We beg."

E would return to them, if and when we found his double
in the shadow world; if our mission accomplished, and we
stole that world's E away, bringing him into ours where he
was so wanted, Dryco would present him returned anew, its
soothing gift for its regooded world. Some at Dryco
wanted-needed, in truth-E more than any of his believers
ever had.

I wanted John so much; I couldn't say how much I still
needed him. Avoiding my eyes, he looked elsewhere now.
One suicidal stares at death to see who'll soonest blink. Too
soon, morningshade eked through our bamboo curtains,
and so I ascended. Mayhap, heavenbound, my husband
could ride me.

"New always overcomes old," Judy said, sounding the words
as if to convince not me, but herself. Judy, I called her; that
was her name, and that was how I'd known her. Most of
Dryco were familiared with her chosen pseudonym; as befit
corporate etiquette, none save Mister O'Malley officially
called her anything other than Madam. "New throttles old
groundward, sighs and shudders, and tramps a remapped
path. Nature's way, irregardless of old's needs." She drew in
air as if each breath stung her throat; with pencil-thin fingers she smoothed her hair's gray cap. "John'll readjust or
he won't, Iz. If he doesn't, you will."