Repo Men (25 page)

…
swim with the dogs and the monkeys and the kangaroos…

I took a step into the lobby, the great windows crushed and poked through with stone and brick, my footsteps echoing in the dark, cold cavern. I didn’t need to realign my scanner, but I held it up to get that final ping, and sure enough, it was Melinda’s kidneys coming back to me, the ones Peter had slipped and told me about years and years ago. Without conscious thought, my hands went to the dossier, opening it to the first page, the page I should have looked at way back in my supervisor’s office at the Credit Union.

Melinda Rasmussen. Bold, black, definite. Her maiden name, but I couldn’t convince myself that there were two of them. Certainly not two who knew the song with which we sang our son to sleep.

…
and I want them to a-swim with me…

She didn’t look up as I approached, just kept staring at the ceiling, humming and singing, starting the song over again once the final lines were sung, pausing only for a moment to catch her breath and then launching into the first line again. Like someone had come along and pressed the replay button.

I knelt down by my third ex-wife, snapping my fingers in front of her eyes. Nothing. “Melinda,” I called, my low tones bouncing around the expansive cavern. “Melinda, come out of it.”

Unresponsive. This didn’t seem like the usual dementia I’d seen in nursing-home patients or those with frazzed-out Ghost systems; this was something else entirely. She was caught up in some other place, some other time, and as soon as I came in close enough to see the trickle of red powder lining her lips, I knew Melinda had gotten herself hooked on the Q.

“Melinda,” I said again, this time louder, taking hold of her thin, bony shoulders and shaking hard, her head flopping about on that pipe cleaner of a neck. The drug had sapped up all her fat, soaking whatever energy it could out of her once-robust body. She was a skeleton draped with skin, nothing more, and I was surprised that her kidneys were the only implanted artiforgs. The rest of her body, though natural, must have been failing or already dead.

A few slaps across the face, and she was finally trying to focus in, bringing her vision back from whatever fantasy world she’d been visiting. I could see the pupils contracting as they hit the glow of my scanner screen, and I knew that for the moment, at least, she hadn’t gone away. “Come up,” I said to her. “Melinda, come up.”

Blinking. Coughing. The shoulders shuddering, arms dancing uncontrollably, a full-body tremor that precipitated a mess of vomit deposited on my shoes. I stood back as she fell to the ground, barely supporting herself on her hands and knees, head bent deep beneath her chest. Slivers of red in that vomit, streams of blood shooting through the meager bits of undigested food.

I backed away, letting her sick herself to a state of consciousness. Eventually, her coughs settled down into dry heaves, and soon she was lying back against the rock, sweaty, panting, but alive and in the here and now.

“You don’t look so good,” I said, coming into her line of sight.

Her eyes fluttered up toward my face, falling across my features, taking them in. Somewhere, a recognition center was clicking to life. “Knucklehead?” she asked wearily, a thin grin forming on her lips. Her teeth were stained red, the gums beneath barren of flesh, nerves decayed from the action of the Q.

“Yeah,” I replied, “it’s Knucklehead.” I cleared away some of the rubble and sat down next to her, taking one of her frail hands in mine. It trembled between my palms like a dying bird, fluttering against my skin.

Melinda’s breath came hard, straining out of her lungs. “We were going to the park, Knucklehead. What happened at the park?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. Probably lost in some memory of an ancient excursion, some trip we took years ago. Or her addled mind was making it up, reality and fantasy merging as one. “We loved that park,” I answered. “It’s beautiful there. We can go whenever you want.”

Melinda coughed again and pulled her hand away from mine. She reached into her blouse, down between the breasts that were no longer there, just hanging bags of skin, and pulled out a small, crimson pouch. Before I realized what she was doing, Melinda had her finger stuck in a vial, scooping up a thick wad of Q.

I snatched her hand on the way to her gums and knocked the vile sand from her fingertip, wiping it clean with my shirt. She pulled away for a second, anger flashing across her face, but soon it was gone, forgotten, her short-term memory unable to keep up with current events. “Peter needs to sleep,” she whispered, “Baby needs to sleep.”

I tried to tell her that she was hallucinating, tried to reason that we were inside the remains of the Oceanic Plaza, far from our home in the suburbs in both time and distance. But she was having none of it.

“Sing that song with me, Knucklehead,” she whispered. “Sing the song for Peter.” And like everything else that came out of Melinda, it wasn’t a question.

She opened her mouth, the corners of her lips cracked, coated with dried blood and Q particles, and began to sing. Her voice was still clear, resonant, just as it was all those years ago.

I want to swim in the sea with the bears and the hummingbirds…

On the second go-round, I joined in.

After a half hour of song and incoherent babbling, it all came to a head. She was weak, she was tired, and she didn’t seem to understand why I’d come. “You’ve got to have some money,” I pleaded with her. “Tell me where to find it, and we can make this right.”

But all she could do was talk about the Q. How to get it, where to get it, what it cost. Every few minutes, she’d reach for another vial; whatever toll it had taken on her mind had not dampened her ability to find the hidden stashes on her own body. I knocked away dose after dose, trying to keep her with me and in the moment.

“Melinda,” I said sternly, not worrying anymore that the echo of my loud voice would bring down the roof, “you have to pay back the Union. If you can’t find the money, I—they…Is there someone I can call? Someone who has money?”

She opened her lips to speak, and I pulled in closer. “Call my husband,” she whispered.

“Your husband?” I hadn’t spoken to Peter for a few months, but I was sure he would have mentioned a new development like this.

“My husband,” she repeated, and then gave my name.

Just like that, it all broke. A flood of reason spilling over the dam I’d erected, and I knew instantly that Melinda was lost somewhere and was never coming back. All of the money earmarked to pay off her artiforgs had been spent on Q, her bills and mortgage as well, most likely. It had eaten her pocketbook, it had eaten her investments, it had eaten her savings, and, when there was nothing else and still the Q was not sated, it had gone after her brain. Melinda, my fiscally responsible, morally upright, thoughtful and kind and beautiful Melinda, had left the building.

And I still had a job to do.

I let go of her hand, kissed her forehead gently, and pulled out a canister of ether.

I don’t remember the actual extraction; for that, I’m thankful. Maybe some of the residual Q worked its way onto my gums, maybe my mind is walling it off good and tight, making it easier on me, but my memory of that half hour tapers off as soon as I stick the ether tube into her mouth and turn the knob, and doesn’t click back on again until I find myself crawling back down the corridor, pack and kidneys in tow.

I do remember going back for her, realizing that it wasn’t right to let her body rot inside that heap of rubble, where no one but the other bums would ever find it. Grasping her body beneath the arms, dragging her backward, out of the west tower lobby, into that dark passageway. Pulling her through halls and passageways, squirming along on my back, trying to stay in control, making wrong turns, my eyes blinded by salty liquid, by what must have been sweat, bumping into dead ends and having to back up, hauling Melinda around and about for another go at finding the exit.

It was hours of that, but somehow, I found my way out, and somehow, I was able to drag her body up and into the cold night air. The area was still deserted, and it was perfectly still and quiet as I hefted her up and over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, her arms draped over my chest, dangling down to my stomach, looking to all the world like I was just transporting my drunk girlfriend home for the night. She’d had one too many and was feeling no pain.

We sat in the car, me and Melinda, or whatever it was Melinda had become, for a long time. Hours, I’m sure, though I can’t really remember. After some time, I drove to a local Snack Shack, mostly because it was the first place I saw, but partially because I was unnaturally thirsty. I couldn’t do this with a dry throat. I went inside, bought a 64-ounce soda, and sucked it down in a few hard, fast gulps. Before I could stop myself, I grabbed the nearest pay phone and dialed.

Peter’s roommate said he was out at the student union. I gave him the number of the phone, told him it was urgent, and asked him to have my son call me back.

Two hours passed, and I waited by the phone, Melinda propped in the passenger seat of my car five feet away. No one paid any attention to her. I watched people come and go, finding myself commenting to my ex-wife as we waited.

At some point, the phone rang. I reached out to answer, knowing I would much rather have been far, far away.

“Peter,” I said, “it’s Dad.”

“Hey,” he said, and I could hear the good cheer in his voice. It made me want to hang up the phone, to tell him I only called to say hi, to run to that pit of rubble and put Melinda’s kidneys back inside, stitch her up, and call everything off. “I got my grades today—guess what I got in chemistry?”

I guessed an A, and I was right. The rest of his grades were A’s, too, except for a C in modern English lit, because, as he put it, “the professor said my midterm essay had a male-centric point of view. I mean, come on, Dad, what am I supposed to do about that? Get an artiforg vulva? I should probably drop the course, but—”

“I found Mom, Peter. She’s dead.” I let it out just like that, like ripping off a Band-Aid, hoping it would be so quick he’d brush by it and continue telling me about his schoolwork.

Silence on the other end of the line, dead space. I tried to fill it. “She’s…it’s going to be all right, now,” I said, trying to remember what consolation was supposed to sound like. “Better place and all that.”

Nothing. He was there; I could hear the breathing, the sobbing, his throat closing up, choking off his voice. “Where…where is she?” he asked.

“Here in town,” I said.

“Where?” he repeated. “I want to see her.”

“That’s not a good—”

“Where?” He had his mother’s tone, asking questions that were really statements, forcing you to answer just to keep up the flow of conversation.

“With me,” I told him. “At the Snack Shack.” Then, figuring I would have to tell him about it all sometime, I gave him the address and directions and the number of a few mortuaries I knew off the top of my head, and promised I’d stay with her until he arrived.

That morning, as the sun rose over the Snack Shack, was the last time I saw my son. He hit me, slammed away with his fists, whacking me on the head, in my body, trying to bring me down. Alternating between hugging his mother’s corpse and coming at me again, resisting my attempts to grab him, hold him, try to calm him. But he was a whirlwind of fury and futility, beating at my chest like he did when he was six and didn’t want to go to bed.

“Peter,” I said, trying to evade the blows, “Peter, it’s for the best—”

“You—you could have—could have helped her,” he cried. “You could have done something.”

“I couldn’t,” I swore, truthfully. “She was addicted, she was past due. I don’t have any money, I don’t have—”

“You have clout.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I don’t. I’m a hired scalpel, that’s all. They don’t listen to me, they don’t care about me, they just need me to do a job. So I do it. I just do my job.”

He stopped then, mid-breath, catching himself from throwing another punch. He stooped into the car, bent over his mother and lifted her up, struggling under her lightweight frame. But once up, he held here there, high, proud, smoothing back her limp brown hair with one hand as he straightened out her blouse with the other.

“You’re always doing your job,” he said. “And that’s always been the problem.”

On the way home, I stopped off at a pond where Melinda and I used to visit when we were both alive. I liked the sound of the ducks beating their wings; she liked the sounds of sex amongst the reeds. It worked out fine for the both of us.

I stood on a small footbridge overlooking the still, blue-green water, and dropped both her kidneys into the pond. They immediately sunk to the bottom, disappearing from view. Melinda might not get to keep what she couldn’t pay for, but I’d be damned if the Union was going to chalk this one up as a win.

B
onnie was quiet after I finished telling my story, and I let her sit and think. She leaned back against a pile of generic heart replacements, her eyes closed. I didn’t know if she was planning on running out of the warehouse or if she was just formulating the right words to tell me how low I’d sunk, but I sat there and waited for it. Watched her lips part, the tongue come out and wet them with artificial saliva, disappear back into her mouth.

In time, she sat upright again. “Afterward…? You didn’t take any more jobs?”

She wanted me to go on with the tale. I was glad to oblige, relieved to be momentarily free of reprisal. “I tried, I guess. Lied about Melinda, said I couldn’t find her, and Frank kept handing the clients down to me, but as soon as I left the office, my finger would start shaking. Once I got in my car, the hand would get going, and soon it was my whole body. By the time I got to the client’s house, I was a walking earthquake, vibrating up and down my spine. No way I could go inside. As soon as I drove away, got off the block, it got better, smoothed out, and I could move and breathe and talk again. Whiskey helped. For that first month, I ended up taking the jobs and outsourcing them to Jake or another Bio-Repo, just to cover up my problem, but I wasn’t getting much of a commission that way. Ten percent, tops, for the finder’s fee. I wasn’t making ends meet.

“The final straw came when I decided I was going to go through with a repo, just to get me over the hump. Shrink talk, right? Carol’s therapist would have loved it. If I could get through one simple repossession, I figured, the rest would fall into place and the shakes would stop. It was an easy case, a factory owner who’d been known for mistreating his workers all throughout his professional life, and I guessed it wouldn’t be too hard to repo a liver from a guy brimming over with evil.

“Got to his workshop around four, and by four fifteen, I’d only made it up to the door. My pack was rumbling around on my shoulders, the ether canisters slamming into each other, and I was barely able to hold the scanner in place long enough to get a good ping. By four thirty, I’d managed to bore a hole in the window for the ether tube, and by five—thirty minutes longer than it ever took me before—I was standing over the client, ready to do what I had always, always done.

“I didn’t black out until I dug in with my scalpel, but by then, it was much too late.”

They threw me a going-away party. Jake and Frank and the rest of the crew gathered around, lit candles, and gave me artiforg credits to put toward my Jarvik or, should I ever need it, another implantation. If any more grand mals came my way, it was a likely scenario. “Better than a watch,” I joked.

Jake took me out for drinks afterward, hauling me down to the same bar where we’d first gotten a glimpse of that Union employment flyer. It hadn’t changed a wink in the intervening years, except for the owner and bartender. The old man had been replaced by his son, who didn’t know us or care about our makeshift reunion. He still overcharged and watered down the drinks.

“You need anything?” Jake asked.

“I’m all right,” I lied. “I’ve got investments.”

“Sure,” he nodded. “Don’t we all.” Bio-Repo men are not known to be fiscally shrewd. “If you ever do need anything, you give me a call. Day or night.” And he gave me a card. Just like that, I was on his
give a call
list. I’d known his number by heart for ten years, and there he was handing me a business card.

Dumbfounded, I took it, thanked him. We drank in silence. There wasn’t much to say, us two. We’d been through school, through the war together, the training program; he’d been part of my life for nearly all my life, and though I knew that, while on the surface, we were still as close as we would ever be, something had fundamentally changed between us.

“Well,” he burped after our second, wordless beer together, “I’ve got clients to get to.”

“Gas, grab, and go,” I said, trying to sound chipper.

Jake laughed, a little sadly I like to think, and slapped me on the back. We pressed thumbs and hugged, friends who knew it would be a long time before we saw each other again, and he threw some bills on the counter and walked out of the bar.

I still have his business card in my pocket.

Another day gone, the typing regimen slowed to a crawl. The Underwood doesn’t react well in the midst of all this high technology. Ashamed, perhaps, of its hammer and ink, clicking and clacking. And the tight confines that were once so comforting to me have become stifling. Cramped.

Bonnie and I have fallen into a comfortable pattern, an easy way of living our attempt at life. We talk, we eat, we drink, we make love. Late at night, after everything is closed up and the automatic timer turns out the warehouse lights, I lie down on our shelf with my head pressed against her abdomen, and I fall asleep to the tune of her artiforgs whooshing and clicking in beautiful, sonorous symphony.

Tomorrow, we are going back to see the Outsider; by now, Asbury should have found another place for us to hole up. After that, we’ve decided, it will be up to us to find a way out of the city, out of the country if possible. Airport personnel won’t be looking for us unless the Union’s initiated one of their biweekly hunts for the Big Hundred, and we should be able to make it safe and sound if we can get our hands on a scanning jammer and some forged documents. Asbury can help on that end, I’m sure; Outsiders have friends in all the darker walks of life.

And then, we’re off. To…I don’t know. South America? Myanmar? Does it matter?

They talk about an island somewhere in the South Seas that hasn’t found the modern age yet, a primitive land where they still practice open-heart surgery and put people on gargantuan dialysis machines. If it is true, we’ll find it soon enough. Change our names, our faces, settle down, start a family, run a shop selling trinkets to tourists on the beach. Live hard until the rest of us dies, happy and whole.

I know full well that this is the kind of thinking that gets you killed. Then on with it, already, I say. On with it.

Wendy and I had dreams, once upon a healthier time. We had hopes and aspirations, and despite my age, plans for children of our own. Peter was nearly grown by the year I married my fifth ex-wife, and it was time to bring some more rug rats into the fold.

We met at a funeral, just after the casket was lowered into the ground. I was there as the dead man’s former employee; Wendy was there as his daughter. Her father had been my boss’s boss at the Union, and though Wendy and I had never met, I’d heard stories of her youth, beauty, and brains countless times from the old man.

I was going left, she was going right, and we collided beneath an overgrown banyan tree, dripping with moisture from that morning’s rain. I apologized, she apologized, and we ended up sipping coffee and eating Danish together at the gathering afterward before either of us realized our relationship to the deceased.

She treated Peter like a special gift, a beautiful young man whom she could shower with love and affection, and it hurt her almost as bad as it hurt me when he stopped coming around, stopped calling, stopped having any contact with his father. It wasn’t much longer after then that I went on the run, signing my divorce papers from within the confines of the same seedy Midwestern motel in which I’d found the Flying Moellering Brothers. It was comfortable for some reason, fitting, and I hunkered down there for a week before leaving to search out new digs.

I could call Wendy now, I suppose, and she’d take me back. She’d hole me up, if I asked, penalties notwithstanding. And when they came to take my heart away, she’d throw herself in front of the Bio-Repo man’s scalpel in order to save my life. She’d sacrifice herself for me, and I don’t think I could do the same for her. I don’t think I could do the same for any of them.

They all sacrificed for me, in a way:

I see it now, a bit of a smudge on what had once been a clear picture of my ex-wives. I’d had it all figured out, had all five of them drawn so nicely in long, broad caricature, and now this realization has come along and filled in the lines for me, forcing me to see color in a world that used to be so perfectly black-and-white. The more I think about it, the sleepier I get. I should stop thinking. I should stop typing.

We’ve moved. Too tired to explain. Bonnie is alive. I am, too. For now, this is enough. It’s more than I could hope for.

Two hours from now, I expect to be dead. This will be a voluntary decision on my part, a decision made after a long day’s thought, and one which I will embrace willingly. This will not involve anyone else, and should go a long way toward righting what has been wrong. Two hours from now, I will walk into the Credit Union offices, approach my best and oldest friend Jake Freivald, and bare my chest for his talented scalpel. What happens after that is none of my business.