Wetware (34 page)
CHAPTER 16
0ctober 2029
BRIGGS OFTEN came home and heard Gloria taking a bath. The apartment was scented with the soap she used, and as she sat in the tub she let hot water trickle in to keep the temperature constant. She sat in the early-fall light that came in the window, her belly seeming to float in the soapy foam like a firm island. When she heard the door open, she said, “Briggs. Don’t you want to see? Look.”
The water made a plash as she moved, trying to get comfortable, or when the baby kicked. He stood in the doorway.
“Briggs?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
The light made her skin seem not pale so much as white and glowing, and under the soap her growing nipples were the color of dark cherries.
“Will you wash my back?” she said.
“Sure,” he said.
“Don’t be shy,” she said.
“I’m not shy,” he said.
“Yes, you are,” she said. “You can look at me. I want you to look at me. See? That way we’re in it together. Not a lot, but a little bit.”
He picked up the soap and ran it across her back, going over the muscles there, up the crease in the middle of her neck, down to the water, where her skin disappeared into the damp and shiny swelling of her hips.
“Hmmm,” she said. “That’s good. You’d think that after this, I wouldn’t be interested in sex at all, but I think about it all the time.”
She stood up, the water rushing over her white skin in sheets, and as she dripped he handed her a towel. He dried her back, too, helped her out of the tub. She stretched out on the bed and he rubbed her stomach and legs, her breasts with oil. He did it slowly, watching the light from the window fall across her skin. In the slick warmth of the oil he had the sensation of not being able to tell where she ended and where he began. Then he put on her shoes for her, kneeling in front of her bare legs and stomach.
On the bulletin board in the kitchen was a list of basic food groups. He wanted to make something good, since the best part of the day was when they put food on the table in the small kitchen and she ate with good appetite. They talked about how much weight she had gained, how much exercise she was getting, how she was sleeping. She didn’t sleep very well.
She often went to bed early, and then Briggs sat down in the living room to do chores he had brought home from work. He set up a problem and started going through it, although from time to time he heard her moan or cry out, and then he went to stand at the foot of the bed until she slept quietly again. Still, there were times when he felt her come up behind him. She asked how he was doing and started to rub his back. He closed his eyes and felt her affection for him in the touch of her hands. And then the certainty of her pregnancy had a soothing effect. It was something he could concentrate on. She squirmed against him when she rubbed his back.
“Is that better?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”
“You know,” she said. “I didn’t really care about Jack. I was just looking to have a little excitement. That’s all there was to it.”
He helped her into bed again and sat there while she fell asleep. At these moments he felt how much the apartment was improved by having her here, or, to be more precise, how much he had been improved by having her here. And when he looked up from his work and tried to say why this was the case, he supposed that one of the reasons was her frankness. He depended on it. He missed her when he was at work. He brought flowers home and she was delighted by them. She rubbed petals on the skin behind her ears and asked him to smell the fragrance.
One night, when he had been working for a while and she had been sleeping, she woke up and came into the living room.
“Hey, Briggs,” she said. “Have you got a minute?”
“Sure,” he said. “What’s the trouble?”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Briggs.
She shrugged.
“It’s not like a thing I am worrying about,” she said. “Like about having the baby. It’s not that kind of scared. It’s a more general kind. Like when you’re afraid of the dark. You don’t know why you’re scared, or what you’re scared of, you just are.”
“It will be all right,” he said.
“That’s easy to say,” she said. “Do me a favor, will you? Lie down with me until I fall asleep.”
She got back into bed, and he lay down behind her. The walls glowed with a soft luminescence from the light outside. She took one of his hands and slipped it under the covers, under her breast, so that he could feel the heat. It was like touching a hot water bottle. She whispered, “Have you ever felt anything like that?”
“No,” he said. He closed his eyes.
“Get under the covers, will you?” she said. “I’m scared.”
He got under the covers and she took his hand again.
“Feel that?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“Open your shirt, will you?” she said. “Take off your pants. Don’t you ever get lonely?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
“Just sometimes?” she said.
He took off his clothes and lay next to her under the sheet. She turned toward him, the smooth heat pushing against his skin.
“Oh,” he said.
“That’s better,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” said Briggs.
“I don’t want to be scared,” she said.
“Me neither,” he said.
“You don’t have to be,” she said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said.
“When I first came to see you, you looked scared. Were you?”
I still am,
he thought.
“Yes,” he said.
“About what?” she said.
“You think one thing is going to happen, but then it turns out another way.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Oh, I guess it’s the kind of thing any pregnant woman worries about. She worries about having a monster. Or she worries about deformities. I guess I worry about things like that.”
“But you have to get over that, don’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “You do. You really do.”
She put her head against his, the strands of her hair tickling his face.
“Tell me,” she said. “Do you think we can work things out?”
“I hope so,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it?” She turned to face him. “And we don’t have to worry about monsters. Do we?”
“No,” he said. “No monsters.”
Craig Nova
WETWARE
Craig Nova is the author of nine novels. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Vermont.
ALSO BY CRAIG NOVA
Turkey Hash
The Geek
Incandescence
The Good Son
The Congressman’s Daughter
Tornado Alley
Trombone
The Book of Dreams
The Universal Donor
Brook Trout and the Writing Life
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, APRIL 2003
Copyright © 2002 by Craig Nova
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon
are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Shaye
Areheart/Crown edition as follows:
Nova, Craig.
Wetware: a novel / by Craig Nova
1. Genetic engineering—Fiction. 2. Human genetics—Fiction.
3. Androids—Fiction I. Title
PS3564.O86 W48 2001
813’.54—dc21
2001049043
eISBN: 978-0-307-43015-1
v3.0