Veneer (58 page)

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Are you doing that?”

“Doing what?” He didn’t like the alarm in her voice.

“I thought I saw something out there.”

“All I see is you,” said Deron.

Rosalia replied in a distant voice, “How does she look?”

“Beautiful. But in my version, your hair is down.”

“You have some kind of fascination with hair.” She slipped back into describing herself. “I’m taking out the tie, I mean, she’s taking out the tie and letting her hair fall to her shoulders. She’s whipping it around like they do in movies.”

It was the twist of her neck, he realized, that was putting pressure on her voice box that in turn, made her voice sound different.

“What’s she doing now?” he asked.

“Looking outside. She doesn’t understand what she sees.”

“I see you and a window.” The desire to see her had changed to a full-blown need. As she had tried to say, she wouldn’t have been there if she didn’t love him. No matter what she did, he was compelled to reciprocate.

In the new world he had created in his mind, he smiled at the image of a naked Rosalia standing against a sunset. He reveled in the detail and thought about how proud she would have been to see him reconcile so well.

“What else do you see?”

Deron brought up the lights to find more to talk about. “It’s a small room. The far wall is empty, but there’s a frame where a picture should be.” He turned his head to explore his imagination. “I see the door you closed. There are people walking by. I can see them in the little window.”

“What about the girl?”

“She’s gorgeous.”

“Describe her.” There was urgency in Rosalia’s voice.

“She’s leaning against the window. Her skin looks soft—”

The texture shifted unnaturally. Rosalia’s long legs suddenly looked like fabric. As hard as he tried to push the detail away, it kept coming back and even expanded. The next moment, she was wearing jeans. Deron looked to her chest but her breasts had disappeared under a blue t-shirt. Then her hair morphed into a ponytail, as did the shadows that seemed to be overwhelming everything. He tried to get a handle on his imagination, but it was no longer listening to him.

It turned her around, made her look at him with such joy on her face that it broke his heart. He thought it might be his subconscious screwing with him, the dormant creativity inside him that only came out when he was messed up.

“Deron...”

It was when Rosalia spoke that recognition set in. Somehow, her lips moved right along with the pronunciation of his name. Not even on his best day could he have reconciled something so complex. She put her hand to her mouth—another command he hadn’t sent.

Deron grasped for some clue that would show her to be nothing more than his imagination, but found none. He could see again, but he couldn’t believe it. Believing it would have made the impossible real.

Rosalia ran the short distance to his side. “You can see me!”

“In my mind, yeah.”

“No,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. “For real!”

Deron looked at the far wall, at the picture of a clipper ship navigating rough seas. “If this was real, there wouldn’t be a veneer.”

Rosalia touched her face; new color rippled over her skin. She hurried back to the window and put her palms against the glass. “You have to see it!”

He
was
seeing it; the veneer climbed Rosalia like a billion little vines all joining together to cover her from head to toe. Only when it was over did he chance a look around the room. Then he understood why she was so excited.

The veneer was back.

“I knew it,” said Rosalia, shaking her head. “Last night, when the whole city turned white, that was you, wasn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“And today, the whole city was gray.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said, even though he still questioned his ability to reconcile all of Easton at the same time.

Rosalia turned and faced him. “Do you hear that?”

She was right; the voices in the halls had calmed down. Beyond the hospital, Deron could no longer hear the people in the streets.

“You...”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but Deron understood. He had brought the veneer back. He had saved the city. As the solution to and cause of the original problem, it was a hollow victory.

“Now we can start over, right?”

Rosalia approached the bed and put a hand on his chest. Her eyes darted to the nearby bullet wound. “If you want to.”

He didn’t waste any time before saying, “I do.”

She kissed him and held her lips against his for a long time.

When she finally withdrew, Deron said, “I knew you weren’t taking off your clothes.”

Rosalia let the reddening of her cheeks trickle to the surface. “If that’s what it takes for you to get better, I’ll never wear clothes again.”

He smiled at her, let his imagination churn out the possibilities.

“You don’t believe me?”

Deron shook his head.

“From now on, whenever it’s just me and you, I’ll be naked.”

He looked over her face; she truly believed her own words. But if she went through with it, they wouldn’t really be starting over. Their night together in his dad’s apartment would always be with them. And if either recalled that memory, it would always end with Deron sitting alone on the edge of the bed.

There was no starting over, but they could continue. Their relationship had survived two trips to the hospital, a city-wide disaster, and the meddling of agents. What else could there possibly be?

Deron laughed to himself. He had drifted away in thought, but his eyes returned to Rosalia’s. She was still looking at him expectantly, maybe hoping he would balk at her offer to spend their time together nude. It wasn’t that he expected her to do it forever; even once would be something to look forward to. It was just a matter of finding something beyond her veneered flesh to hope for. Something more than boyfriend and girlfriend. Something more than sex.

As he stared into her eyes, he couldn’t imagine what those things might be.

Deron cleared his throat and replied, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

When Memo got to the end of the report, he scrolled back up to the top and read it again. And again. After the fifth time, he tossed the palette onto his desk and watched as it slid dangerously close to the edge. Not that it would have mattered. Destroying the palette wouldn’t change the fact that the impossible had happened, had been witnessed by more people than he could silence cleanly. For the briefest of moments, he considered the idea that it was all a joke, that someone higher up the chain was jerking his.

A level five event—that’s what they were calling it upstairs.

Memo turned in his chair and looked out over the Sonora skyline. There had only been three level five events in his lifetime. The most recent had come at the hands of a young boy with a malfunctioning Guardian chip. To have another one so soon suggested a problem with the system, something in hardware or software that was breaking down. Or was there just a problem with the supply to Easton?

Two troublemakers from the same city. Not very likely.

Without looking back, Memo reached for his desk and reconciled a portal. When a chime rang out in the room, he said, “Get your ass in here.”

A few minutes later, he heard the door open and close behind him.

“You wanted to see me, boss?”

“Have a seat,” said Memo. “There’s something on my palette you need to see.”

“What am I looking at?”

“Scroll to the end. Take a look at the eyewitness veneers.”

A stunted laugh echoed in the office. “Nice try, Memo.”

Memo smiled to himself. The apprentice was becoming more like the master every day.

“It’s real,” he said. “It’s a level five event.”

“Bullshit. There hasn’t been one of those since...”

“Deron Bishop,” said Memo. He flashed on the football field and Deron’s body motionless and bloodied in the mud.

“Fucking Deron.”

Memo turned to find a dispassionate veneer on Russo’s face. His control over his emotions had improved steadily over the years, or at least, he had finally learned proper control over his mask.

“Is he our prime suspect?” asked Russo.

“A person of interest,” said Memo. “But I’m not convinced.”

“Who else could it be? He’s the only sheep we know of that can reconcile remotely.”

Memo shrugged. “If he even
can
anymore. His file at Easton General says they flashed his chip.” He considered the lapse for a moment. “I thought that would have taken care of it.”

“It should have,” said Russo, examining the palette again. “He’s gotten a lot better at reconciliation. I don’t think even I could do a portal on this scale.”

“I don’t buy it.” Memo touched the desk and brought up the pictures from the report. Easton appeared under his hand; at the horizon, the image flipped, showed the streets and buildings hanging from the sky.

“I only know of two people that could reconcile this kind of detail,” said Russo. “And I killed one of them.”

“And the other?”

Russo looked at the wall and reconciled an image of Rosalia in the halls at Easton Central.

“And there’s the tricky part,” said Memo, standing and walking to the wall. He reconciled a similar image of Deron standing in front of a bus. “Two people gifted in different ways. One is a modern Da Vinci; the other doesn’t require physical contact. So either Deron has learned to reconcile like his girlfriend or...”

Russo’s mouth went slack. This time, a hint of anger rippled through his veneer. “That son of a cock,” he said, slamming his fist into his open palm. “He taught her how to reconcile remotely. How is that even possible?”

“Fuck,” said Memo, wiping out the wall and replacing it with the mirrored Easton. “How the hell is
this
even possible?”

Russo considered the question, but said nothing.

Memo returned to his desk and sat down. “It’s spreading, Russo. It’s not supposed to be spreading, but it is. If he can teach her, they can teach others. And so on until the entire city is in chaos.”

“Again.”

“What was that?” asked Memo.

Russo cleared his throat. “Until the city is in chaos
again
.”

“We’re not gonna let that happen.”

“So what do we do?”

Memo turned to the window. In the distance, he could almost make out the border walls of Sonora. Somewhere beyond the dip of the horizon was Easton.

“We stop the infection at the source,” he replied.

“You mean, we go back to Easton?”

Memo nodded.

“For Deron and Rosalia?”

Again, he nodded. Memo watched carefully for a reaction on Russo’s veneer. “You think you can handle that?”

Russo looked away for a moment. “Do I really get to kill him this time?”

“That’ll be up to you,” said Memo.

“I’ll take care of it,” replied Russo, patting the bulge under his right arm.

“Then pack your shit. We leave for Easton tonight.”

you are not your veneer

Daniel Verastiqui

May 15, 2011