Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (14 page)

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” I evaded his scrutiny. Along the path that led behind the rehabilitation hospital to the lighthouse, the tattooed orderly leaned on the railing. Watching us?

I turned back.

Roddy studied me, appeared to deliberate. “Then dinner?” He handed me his business card.

“What?”

“Dinner. It’s the least I can do.”

“I’ve got a busy day.” I stood and walked away. In my hand, his business card and Sam in the cedar box, rigid. But it was the sun that preoccupied me, anchored on my cheek where Roddy’s finger left an imprint.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Entering the lab I measured my steps, quietly, defensively. I held the door, sensed stillness, a hushed conversation, and with it, fatigue and the urge to walk right out.

I heard Elizabeth, around the corner behind a set of cages.
Whispering like Harold on the phone
. A low tremor began in my chest.

“She may be a problem, maybe she’s not. We can handle her.”

The main door slipped out of my hand, clicked shut. The conversation stopped. For a static eternity it felt like the electron cloud prepared to rupture. Elizabeth and Ruchika emerged from behind the cages, headed in different directions. Elizabeth barely made eye contact and moved to the other lab. Just as well.

Ruchika sauntered after me, but it was uneasy and false, releasing censorious particles in my head even before our eyes met. She was a young East Indian woman in her mid-twenties, younger than both Elizabeth and me, with a frenzied nest of russet hair and guarded eyes. “Did Warring call you in this morning?”

It was exactly this kind of disingenuous nonsense that marked her from our very first meeting. “Well, if you talked to Elizabeth, you know she did.” I rested my hands on my hips.

“What did she ask you?”

“Probably the same things she asked you.”

“Which were?”

“If I’ve noticed anything . . .”

“Anything . . .?” Ruchika poked fingers into her unkempt bramble.

“Like drugs or alcohol or anything.”

She squinted, indignant. “I don’t do those things.”

“I didn’t say that you did.”

“
I
haven’t noticed anything. I don’t know what the problem is.” She pressed against the counter waiting for me to respond, her lab coat improperly buttoned.
So Ruchika
.

“I just do my job.” I started to turn away from her.

“Yes, but you have bigger plans.”

Elizabeth had been flapping her mouth. “Yes, I do. So what?” A rush of enmity welled up, surprised me.

“This job’s important to me. I worked hard. My family expects me . . .” She let despair escape. “I can’t go back.”

I could’ve slapped her. She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t go back. “You’ve got the most seniority. You’ll be fine.” I collected my ELN and pulled my lab coat off the hook. “The whole thing will probably blow over.”

“Yeah, probably. I guess.” Ruchika hesitated, as if she’d ask something more, but all that came out was an unenthusiastic “Thanks.”

Suddenly she was an unworthy opponent.
And
when had she become an adversary?
We headed to our respective stations.

***

Elizabeth avoided me most of the evening, which suited me fine, allowing me to concentrate on the unequivocal tasks, though the legions of rodents now seemed less comrades in research than marginalized flotsam. We’re all connected, I reminded myself. Think of what Sam taught you.

Around eleven o’clock I snuck into the small computer closet where we housed the server and connected to the database with my ELN. I wasn’t about to breach security with my laptop. I copied my normative facial data to a disc —it was after all not classified— then translated the data into 3D male and female images using the company software. My plan in motion.

“Eunis!” Ruchika was almost upon me, startling me. But I’d frightened her too. “What’re you doing?”

The disc went discreetly into my lab coat. “Just re-checking last week’s results off the server. Looking for anomalies in my reports.” Did she catch me? I tried to look sanguine.

“Oh. Just your reports?”

“Do I look like a cop? Yes, just
my
reports. And you?”

She rotated around the small room, alighted on a charger; snatched it off the shelf. “Left my charger. My head must’ve been somewhere else.”

We both forced smiles and almost tripped over each other leaving.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

The whole process had taken me less than twenty minutes, and as far as I could tell no rules had been broken nor any trail for detection left. Except for Ruchika. If she went to Warring what would she say? How would I respond?

I was relieved when the shift was over, but as I hung up my lab coat Elizabeth approached me.

“Yes?” I did my best to exude a chill.

“I’m sorry, really,” she said.

“About what?” I pulled on my overcoat.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re sorry for what?”

“My drinking. The bottle. I don’t remember, you know . . . “ She waved a hand at my bruised face. “We were having such a good time. Are you okay?”

“Yes. You and Roddy can stop worrying.”

“
Roddy
?”

“Yes.”
That wasn’t very smart.

“You mean Jerrod? What does he have to do with this?”

“I just thought, since he was there . . .”

“I’m sure he’s moved on. He’s very pragmatic about my drinking, about most things.”

“Okay, well, then I accept your apology. Let’s move on too.”

“Would you have dinner with us on Christmas?”

Warmth rose in my chest. I
wanted
to excuse her actions. But Elizabeth had left more than marks on my face. She’d left new doubt. Plus I had work to do, with Zoe set to meet me the following evening . . . too important. “You know what, no thanks.”

“Please, it’s Christmas.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I walked away.

On the way home, surrounded by holiday lights and pagan wishful thinking, I dissected other myths surrounding me, like marriage, family, friends, happiness. I’d make my own. I’d always made the most progress on my own. I should’ve been used to it by then.

Christmas Eve day I spent keeping surfaces in focus: reviewing the research and my notes on beauty, preparing the questions, and cleaning the already spotless apartment. I avoided calling Elizabeth back. I avoided Sam’s coffin, relegated to a corner in the kitchen, though Sam was beginning to reek.

***

Even in Times Square Christmas Eve had shadows. It was just past 7:30 PM, and if I’d read Zoe’s directions correctly my destination was an alley around the block from the coffee shop where we’d met, about halfway down. I spotted an unlikely entrance, seedy, that triggered more edginess.

A single light bulb at the far end of the alley silhouetted garbage stacked high above me along each wall. Grit drifted through the shaft of light, which charted a small, otherworldly pathway. If I was careful I could navigate without touching the discarded waste. The smell, even encased in the large plastic bags, cloyed at my throat and made me gag. Those mounds had been forgotten for a long time.

Time was running out. Even as I moved through the fetid trench it occurred to me that the filth and smell were the least of my worries. I could be mugged, or worse, I could fail.

I didn’t see her. She’d said halfway down, look for stairs into a basement. I wasn’t early; numerous Times Square clocks had dispelled that. The solitary bulb was a warning, but I’d already burned what was behind me, so I moved forward till I saw the steps. Zoe ascended from the shadows wearing a dark green jacket.

“You made it!” I couldn’t have been tighter inside, breezier out.

She wasn’t. “Eunis, I’ve been thinking . . .”

“Zoe, please.”

“It’s just that I . . . we could be in a lot of trouble. Security’s tight.”

“First off, you said it’s light tonight; skeleton crews.”

“It is.”

“We’ll be in and out in an hour, we’ll be gone before it’s even monitored, and I’ll have the only record.” I held up the disc.

She was dour.

My heart quickened. “I’ve set up blind phone numbers. Untraceable. You thought it was a grand psychological experiment.”

“It is.”

“So?” Out on the street dark bodies passed left and right. “This is a chance to do really exciting research. With some luck, to change things.”

“Luck.”

“No one gets hurt, there’s nothing illegal.”

“Except that
I’m
giving you access to a proprietary four-story high billboard, in Times Square. Let’s not kid ourselves.”

“Replacing Kate Upton for sixty minutes. She’ll be back up doing her stuff before they miss her.” I gave Zoe a moment. “You’re not even scheduled tonight. You said the board’s on remote.”

“But if they ever find out . . .”

There was still a little of Harold’s money in the bank. “I’ll pay you.”

Her face shifted, almost indecipherable.

“What’s a semester’s tuition? Three thousand? That’s more than they’ll pay you in a couple months, right?”

“With fees, more like five thousand. But I don’t know . . .”

That would effectively finish me off. But time was slipping away.  “I’ll pay you eight thousand, cash. It’s all I’ve got.”

“How do I know you’ll pay?”

“Because if you lead the cops to me, I’ll lose my job and any hope of getting a doctorate. An education in genetics will be gone. You’ll lose your job; I’ll lose my life. Look at me, what else can I do looking like this? Please.”

“You could market your story. Isn’t that the way? Your fifteen minutes of fame, with me as your expendable?”

“What do you think they’d do with me? Pay me a little, then turn me into a sideshow freak?”

Her eyes were down, distant, not really seeing the pavement.

“Zoe.” I knew I’d almost lost her. “What would your life have been like if what I’m proposing had been possible for your folks?”

Her one good eye met mine, a well of disappointment. With barely a nod we descended the steps through a non-descript metal door, into a narrow, scarcely lit basement hallway with a strangling steamy odor and large sewage pipes running along each concrete wall. An old building.

“Careful,” she said as we ducked under a pipe and, farther down, over a series of tattered ventilation ducts. Bodies —rodent and human— could’ve been secreted away there. The air, claustrophobic like a tomb. Atoms on alert.

We turned left and went down another five or six concrete steps till we came to an unmarked door sheathed in dented metal. Zoe pulled her keys, then wavered. Water rushed to my ears. No time to measure. “It’d be easier to hack the system remotely,” I whispered. “No one would even know this is here.”

“I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“Yes you do.” I signaled for her to unlock the door. She took a deep breath and held it, like she was going to dive. She opened it.

I stared into a tiny server room, like the one at the lab except that it was much, much older, with more servers.

“This is just for that one billboard?”

“Give me the disc.” Her voice harried, constricted. She fumbled with the disk and, hand shaking, inserted it into the drive and checked her watch. “7:46 PM. You have thirty minutes.”

“Hey! We agreed an hour.”

“You want your disc back?” Panic twitched around her mouth.

“Okay. Go!”

She pushed PLAY, and the tiny monitor dissolved from Kate Upton’s micro bathing suit and ample flesh to a split screen with my normative male and female heads. I could almost hear men in Times Square moaning at their loss, but no, it was deep water amassing around me.
Stay focused
.

My normative faces had skins so perfectly pigmented they could be Caucasian, African-American or Hispanic. My headline:

“You choose the most beautiful”

Each male and female head animated every eight seconds through the four choices, then repeated itself:

• Blonde hair/blue eyes
  
• Blonde hair/green eyes
  
• Dark brown hair/blue eyes
  
• Dark brown hair/green eyes
  

A series of numbers —one set for male voters and another for female— scrolled along the bottom, with instructions to text only once. Zoe alternately watched the monitor and a series of digital numbers and lights on the server panel. “This is live on Times Square now?” I could hardly believe my good fortune or the pressure.

“Yes.” Tense as ever, chewing her fingernail.

As I stood there wishing I could be on the street watching, Zoe suddenly said, “You know what, get out of here. If security shows up, I can say I was in the square and detected a problem, so I came here. Just get out!”

“What?”

“I’ll destroy the disc as soon as I’m out of here. Get out!”

“Are you sure?”

“Bring the cash to the coffee shop on the twenty-sixth at noon. Don’t mess with me.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t screw me, I’ve done my part. Now get out of here!”

As quickly as I could steer through the hurdles of the passageway, I was out the door, up the steps, and out of the alleyway into the lights. Coming up for air, I ran to the other end of the block. And there it was: magnificent, sixty feet high, my images, my research, and a crowd of people watching and texting.