by Seuzz
Vincent thought his heart was about to crack. But with one
last effort, he and Tito lofted the improvised body bag and its contents into
the dumpster, where it landed with a resounding boom. "Jesus, that was one
heavy mofo. You gonna tell me now how you managed to piss him off?"
"I didn't," Tito said, and bent over to rest his
hands on his knees as he gasped for breath. "He's my retirement
package."
"Say what?"
"Yeah." Tito straightened up. Even in the early
morning dark, in an unlit alley, Vincent could see the streaks of sweat on
Tito's face. "That's my new face in there. My permanent one. His data
file's waiting for me back at -- "
"That fuckin' ni -- ?
Tito." Vincent seized the hair at the top of his friend's head.
"You're brown, but you ain't brown enough to pass for one of my peeps."
Tito slapped him away. "You don't listen closely, do
you? I told you that sculpting into another race is hard. I didn't say it was impossible.
That kind of radical sculpt is for one-time shots only, like final sculpts."
Tito panted a couple of times. "So you understand what I'm saying,
right?"
"That you got a bad result on your last test. I'm
sorry, man."
"Don't be." Tito jerked his chin at the rusted-out
dumpster. "I've been jonesing after that mofo's girl for a coupla years
now, been hoping for a positive test so I could retire into her bed."
"Jesus. But now my question is, if this is Company
business, why didn't you get a disposal team to handle this job? Why'd you call
me out when I'm supposed to be on vacation?"
"Are you pissed at me?"
"No. I just want to know -- "
"But Ryan was pissed when you left to meet me, wasn't
he? Oh, I bet he was, I bet he went into a sulk the minute you -- "
"Oh, fuck you, that isn't any of your business."
"I know it's not my business, I'm just saying. Christ,
Vincent, I know he's adorable, but you spoil him, and you know it. I bet
everyone he sleeps with spoils him."
"No, it's not a reference to that. I'll drop it,
shouldn't have even raised it in the first place because you don't want to hear
anything about -- "
"We're talking about you, asshole! Why'd you drag me outta my bed the first night I had
with my boy in five months when you coulda had a disposal unit taking care of
this shit?"
"Because my mofo in there is on a disposal unit, okay? I can't ask his friends to dispose of one
of their own."
Vincent's eyes widened. "The fuck? The Company asked
you -- or let you -- ice one of their own?"
"The Company doesn't know about this, Vincent."
Tito grabbed his friend and pulled him close. "And your problem is you
only see or think about three steps in front of you when you should be looking six
or nine steps ahead. I know you heard what I said. I'm getting myself sculpted
so I can step into that mofo's life." He banged the side of the dumpster.
"But that's not Company policy. Official Company policy, I told you a long
time ago, is that you get to exit as a composite, a fake, a new person, like
DeShawn. You can't steal someone's life, which is what I'm doing."
"You can't anyway," Vincent retorted.
"They're going to find that body bag and open it and when they see who's
in it -- "
Tito drew a small clicker from his pocket. He pressed a
button, and from inside the dumpster came a sound like a water balloon
bursting. "Standard disposal tool. Bag's lined with explosive bladders
containing industrial-strength acids. No one's going to look too close at
what's in that bag when they open it up because there's hardly going to be
anything left of it. I've been studying for my new job."
Vincent shivered at Tito's ghoulish smile. "Okay, so
why are you doing this? His girl's that hot?"
"Hot enough. But the reason I'm doing it isn't because she's
hot or because my test came back bad. It's because Leda Jane and Patrick did
not exactly retire voluntarily."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that, officially, Company policy is to hand out
a pension and a new composite identity. In actuality, I found out thanks to
some lucky snooping, Company policy is to sideline and liquidate assets once
they reach their expiration date. I haven't hit mine yet, actually -- my test
was negative -- but I'm getting a little long in the tooth, plasticity-wise, and
I'm not waiting around for them to make the first move."
Vincent could only listen in horrified silence as Tito
continued.
"Luckily, about a year ago I did a huge-ass favor for
one of the techies, and now I'm cashing it in from her. We're meeting for an
after-hours sculpt in -- " Tito glanced at his watch. "About ninety
minutes. That mofo we just dumped ain't gonna disappear, you see, but I am.
Cute, huh? And I wanted you in on the job so I could tell you where to find me
when it got to be your turn to exit stage left. This is only between us, Vincent,
but I'm holding the same door open for you. You've got at least a year, I'd
bet, before you start to lose it, and you can collect some fat Company checks
in the meantime, and I'm telling you that you should." He slapped Vincent
lightly on the cheek. "Just don't wait too long before looking up Trevon
on Team D."
* * * * *
Vincent lay curled up on the sofa under a throw rug.
Usually, on chilly nights like this, he used Ryan as a hot water bottle. Ryan
burned hot for some reason. But tonight, being banished to the sofa, Vincent
had to use an actual hot water bottle.
Banished to the sofa.
Vincent thought that was a old sitcom joke about white suburban married couples
who were still dragging the 1950s behind them. But Ryan had gone and done it,
banishing him to the sofa for having the temerity to suggest --
As though it were not just an impossibility, but a cruelty
to even suggest --
That they might want to move to another city and a new set
of identities.
Vincent closed his eyes and pushed out the memory of Ryan's
anguished cries. The gist was that he had friends here, had always had friends
here, and he'd die if he had to cut himself off from them. They were all he
had, actually, since Vincent was never home, and to tell him that he had to
abandon them for the sake of someone -- Vincent -- who was more and more just a
stranger when he wasn't just a sequence of strangers barging into his house
once every couple of weeks -- Well, that was just too much.
Vincent wanted to yell back, but he saw Ryan's point too
clearly. He was becoming a stranger, if he wasn't one already.
It was horribly ironic. Everything Vincent had done, he'd
done for Ryan. He'd given him so much, and he had so much more he wanted to
give. There was only thing he hadn't been able to give Ryan, and that was
himself on account of the demands his job.
So he'd given Ryan a bigger and nicer home (along with a
service that came in once a week to scrub the house top to bottom so Ryan
didn't even have to pick up after himself). He'd given him club memberships and
paid for vacations not always to places where he (Vincent) could meet up with
him. He'd bought Ryan three more sports cars since he banged up the original
Z4, and when Ryan made noises about getting a little surgery done -- just the
tiniest bit of preventative maintenance to beat back the ravages of his
twenty-seventh birthday -- Vincent had paid for that too.
Still, in the loneliness of the dark living room, Vincent
couldn't help feeling more than a little sorry for himself. His whole life he'd
been frantically trying to take care of people. As a child he'd tried to take
care of a drunken mother; as a teen, he'd nearly broken himself working for a
gangster; in between times he'd exhausted himself just keeping his own self
alive. And for ten years now he'd been cutting his humanity away -- physically
and morally -- for the sake of Ryan's smiles.
He was beginning to wish someone would come along to take
care of him for a change.
* * * * *
"Another negative result," said the head
physician. "You are a remarkable specimen, Mr. Bowdoin. You've beaten the
previous record for longevity. Part of me wants to put you on a slab and see
what makes you so special." He laughed.
Vincent laughed too, but when he got back to his cubicle he placed
a call to Team D, and asked for Trevon.
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