And Again (19 page)

“You love curry.”

“Loved, Sam.” I rustle the plastic bag in my hands pointedly.

“You can at least try it, Hannah. I’m getting a little sick of pasta and peanut butter sandwiches.”

“I never said you had to eat what I do.”

Sam sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck with tense fingers. “Did you do any painting while you were there?”

“A little,” I repeat. I don’t want to talk about this, not yet, not while it’s still fresh. Not in a kitchen with so many sharp objects around.

“And how did that go?”

“Really well, actually,” I say, yanking open the fridge and grabbing a container of cold pasta from earlier in the week. I pop the lid off and dig in with a fork, leaning against the counter. “Another couple weeks and I’ll be able to steal that Daley Center show away from Penny.”

Sam is calm as he opens the cabinet above him, handing me a plate. “You knew this was going to take time.” I hate the way he says it, telling me all of the things I’m supposed to know. You know I had the flu. You know the doctors wouldn’t let me see you. You know. You know. I set the plate down too hard on the counter and it breaks with a bright, sharp sound. A couple of pieces skitter along the counter.

“Goddamn it, Hannah,” he says, dropping the spoon he’d been using to stir the curry and clattering a lid onto the pan.

“I’ve got it,” I say, trying to preclude his interference by grabbing up the pieces myself. But a sharp edge presses into my palm with such light precision that my skin opens, and suddenly my hand is cupping a map of blood as it spreads through the lines of my
palm. The pain is sort of staggering, catching me off guard. I’d forgotten physical pain, in these days since the hospital. It strikes me how delicate this body is, with its new skin and its clumsiness and all of its nerve endings turned up to full volume. Like a child. Something vulnerable, something that must be protected.

Then Sam’s got me by the wrist, pulling me over to the sink, turning on the tap full-blast and sticking my hand underneath it. The map of blood is blown away by that gust of water. The pain reaches its way up my arm. He turns off the tap and crushes a dish towel into my hand.

“I know,” he says, and then pauses, as if collecting his thoughts. “I know this hasn’t been easy. Fuck, it’s been an absolute nightmare. But I want things back the way they were, and I know you want that too. We just have to find a way to get there.”

I think of the lines in my palm. It’s a different map now. And I think of all the territory we would have to retrace to get to where we were. I think of David, and Connie, and Linda. I think of waking in the hospital and finding Sam gone.
I’m a pioneer,
I want to say. My eyes will always be on the horizon, charging forward and making a home wherever I land. Pioneers don’t go back.

“Burt,” I say into the webcam on my laptop. “How the hell are you?” The blurry, hangdog face of Burt Leeland moves closer to his own camera, filling up more of the window on my screen. I hate seeing the little image of myself nested in the bottom corner, looking even less like me than all of the mirrors. Of all the conference calls I’ve done since the transfer, S&J’s CEO is the first person to warrant a camera on my end.

“Worse than you, looks like. You look like they shaved ten years off your life.”

“It’s all this clean living,” I reply. “Beth won’t even let me have a celebratory cigar.”

“I’m glad to hear this . . . treatment has done you such good,” Burt replies. I’ve always liked him, this humble billionaire. Both because he is so unlike the insufferable power-players that permeate the private sector and because he’s savvy enough to use his affability to his full advantage. He’s a snake, like the rest of us. But he’s the snake you want to play a round of golf with, and he tips his caddies better than anyone I know.

“It’s miraculous.” I clear my throat. “Listen, Burt. When everything was happening so quickly, when I first got diagnosed, I’m not sure if I ever properly thanked you.”

“Your wife sent us a basket of things. Caviar. Good wine. Tickets to the opera. My wife appreciated it a great deal.”

“I’m glad. Beth has always been better than me at those sorts of things. I would be sitting around, wondering what to get for the billionaire who has everything.”

Burt sits back in his chair, his hands folding over the round bulb of his paunch. “That’s the thing. There is something I can’t get for myself. And it certainly isn’t opera tickets.”

My foot begins tapping, as if of its own accord. Maybe I don’t have full control over this body yet; I’d banished all outward signs of nervousness from my old body years ago. “I expected there might be something,” I reply.

“Listen, David. I’m tremendously glad that everything worked out for you, and that I was able to play some small part in your recovery, I really am.” He taps his fingers on his stomach, but I know it’s not nervousness. This man doesn’t fear anyone, certainly not me. It’s a show, a physical tick to make him appear weaker than he is. To soften the blow.

“I appreciate that.” I keep an eye on my reflection in the little window at the bottom of my screen. The trick to these sorts of exchanges is to appear as unfazed by them as you’d like to be. It’s the sort of thing that takes practice, but luckily the one thing that the transfer hasn’t stripped from me is my poker face.

“The thing is, I’m going to need the FDA to vote against it. The whole program. It can’t be approved, not this time.”

“SUBlife?” Sweat seeps into my shirt, one of my best shirts.

“S&J’s pharmaceutical branch is three months away from developing our own drug for, whatever it is you call it, when they move the memories over. The drug they gave you so the memories would implant in the new body. If ours gets approved, it’ll be worth more than the rest of S&J combined. But if the FDA approves the procedure as it stands now, well, there won’t be any use for our drug, now will there?”

“Sir, what you’re asking is completely beyond my reach,” I say, but he waves a dismissive hand.

“I know you have a guy at the FDA. Richard something-or-other. You two went to college together, pledged the same fraternity. You got him his job.”

“Rick Preston.” My voice sounds hollow. I try to remember
what I told Jackson about not selling the farm, about not giving everything over to this man. I never considered it would be something like this.

“Right. So what I need you to do is to put a call in to this guy and assure him, in that way you do so well, that your committee will eviscerate the FDA’s budget if SUBlife passes. Blame your religion if you need to. I don’t care. Just kill it.”

“If I do what you’re asking . . . It will be years before SUBlife can go back up for approval. All of it, the whole pilot program, all of it will have to be done again, at huge expense. This could irreparably damage the program, sir.” I think of Hannah. Of Linda and Connie. None of them could have waited years. Neither could I.

Burt Leeland leans forward in his chair, his hands flat on the desk in front of him.

“Son, as I understand it, you’re only sitting there breathing because of me. But if that’s not enough to motivate you to return a hell of a favor, well, I’m sure your chief of staff has informed you that human cloning wouldn’t poll very well in your district. Seems you have a bunch of religious fanatics voting for you, who are apt to vote for someone else if they catch wind of your . . . status.”

And in that moment, there is nothing to be done. I think of my career, of the impossible prospect of going up against a man as powerful as this. And I know that if there is any of the redeemed man left in me, the good man, the one who could have changed, my next words will kill him stone dead.

“Of course,” I say into the camera, with the most sincere look of admiration I can muster. “It’s not a problem, sir.” I can see myself in the little nested window on the bottom of my screen, and for a moment I look exactly like my son.

Even though I’m late to Thursday’s meeting, I shouldn’t be surprised to find David out front, smoking a cigarette. At first I’m appalled that he would flout the rules so openly, that he would risk cancer in his new body after it had already taken root in his old one. But then I remember, it’s David. And David does what he wants.

“You could get kicked out of the program for that, you know,” I say. He glances up and smiles. It makes me glad, foolishly glad, that he’s so happy to see me.

“I have some friends in very high places,” he replies. “I’m not worried.” I consider for a moment if I should hurry inside to where Connie and Linda are surely waiting, but too much of me wants to remain with David, who doesn’t care if he’s late. As if I’m inoculated against any blame if I’m with him.

“You’re one of those guys, aren’t you?” I ask, leaning against the brick wall beside him, enjoying its rough familiarity on the skin of my arms, as I always enjoy sensations that have not changed for me since the transfer.

“What guys?”

“The ones who could get away with anything,” I reply. “And took it for granted. Like they didn’t know that the world wasn’t engineered to revolve around them.”

“I’d wager a girl who looks like you could get away with quite a bit of trouble.”

I shrug, feeling the first pulse of a blush swarm up my neck. I motion for the cigarette, all the while wondering what it is about this man that brings out everything foolish in me. This man, who
believes in all the things I abhor, whom I don’t even particularly like. He shakes his head, holding the cigarette a little farther away from me.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “Do I really have to give you, of all people, an antismoking lecture?”

“I can’t paint,” I say. “Reckless things, remember?”

“Since the transfer?” he asks, and I nod.

“It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not my hands, I can hold a paintbrush. It’s something else. Something didn’t transfer over.”

“Fuck,” he says, handing over the cigarette. I take it and inhale, and the sizzling heat of it floats into my limbs. I feel a little dizzy, though I’m not sure if it’s the sudden onslaught of nicotine, or if it’s the fact that I haven’t slept since I visited my studio, or if it’s David. I hand it back to him.

“Good as you remember?” he asks.

“Nothing is as good as I remember,” I reply. He nods, but he looks away. I wonder if I’ve admitted something I shouldn’t have, a truth that all of us have been trying to avoid.

“You know, my handwriting is different since I had to relearn it,” David says, finally. “Maybe it’s like that with your painting, maybe it was some mixture of muscle memory and years of practice that made you paint the way you used to.”

I hold out both of my hands, palms up, considering the lines on them. The cut from the broken plate is a thin pink seam along my pale skin. I wonder if it will leave a scar. My first scar.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about those articles you read where people get lung or heart transplants and take on personality traits of their donors. You know, how they might crave a food they never liked before, or suddenly get the urge to listen to a specific type of music? It makes me wonder if it isn’t just about the parts of our brain that store memory. I wonder how much of what made me a painter lived in that body, and not just in my head.”

“Like maybe if someone got your heart, they would be able to paint the way you used to?” he asks. He reaches forward, brushing a
curl of hair off my face. It feels like crossing a line, when he touches me. He’s still holding the cigarette between his fingers. Flecks of white ash fall into my hair. I think of Sam, then, how difficult it is for us to look at each other now.

“I think maybe they would be able to do a lot of things that I can’t anymore.”

His apartment is dark when we arrive, even though it’s not quite evening. All of the shades are drawn. It’s like we’re underground, and the sun is somewhere far away. It only adds to my feeling of disorientation, this inability to judge time or direction. Even in the dimness I can see the money in this place, the same way you can spot an expensive suit. My eyes are drawn to the walls, where huge black and white photos hang in heavy frames.