Touch (35 page)

Too long since I slept.

My bodies are rested, and I am not.

We sat in a diner off Lafayette and East Houston Street, and waited.

Coyle waited with coffee.

I waited in an Asian student with bright orange hair, who carried in her purple rucksack books on…

“The medicinal applications of chitin.”

“Really.” An empty sound as Coyle prodded his cup of coffee.

“Good God.” From the bottom of my bag I pulled out a small glass jar. Within it a creature as long as my index finger, fat as my thumb, rattled and bumped, its translucent wings flapping ineffectively against its prison walls. “No matter how old I get, I’m still always surprised by what I find in the bottom of my bag.”

“Do you know anything about the medicinal applications of chitin?” asked Coyle as I returned my belongings to the gloom of the rucksack.

“Frankly, no.”

“Then let’s hope no one asks you too many questions. Ma’am?”

The waitress smiled, and just about restrained herself from doing a little bob as she topped up his coffee cup. “And for you, miss?”

“Do you do pancakes?”

“Sure we do!”

“With syrup?”

“Sweetie, all our pancakes come with syrup.”

“Whatever you’d recommend, please.”

“Sure thing!”

Coyle pressed his hands tighter against the coffee cup. “You’re not diabetic, I take it?”

“I can’t find any evidence that I am, and it feels like I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“Do you eat constantly?”

“I eat when I’m hungry. It simply happens that sometimes I’m hungry several bodies in a row. And I will concede that knowing someone else will top up on salad and exercise when I’m done can induce a certain gluttony. You going to tell me anything about your friend?”

“She works for Aquarius.”

“You’ll forgive me if that doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

“I trust her.”

“That’s fine, but does she trust you? You and your bosses did part in a rather spectacular manner.”

“She trusts me. We spoke. She trusts me. We… have been close, sometimes.”

“Did you tell her about me?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to —”

“No,” fast. Then, “No. I want… this to be clean. Honest.” He thought about it a moment longer. “And if something does happen, if she has… If Aquarius do come, then I may… need you.” The words came out, slow and bitter. “What should I say your name is?”

“What? I suppose… Susie. Call me Susie.”

“OK then.”

The pancakes came, a great pile of them, bacon in between, syrup all over. I tucked in gleefully, running my finger round the edge of the plate to mop up the oozing sauce while Coyle tried not to look too sickened.

Then, as is always the way when meeting strangers, a woman who could have been anyone from anywhere sat down on the padded orange couch opposite us, and she wore long sleeves, long trousers, long gloves, a long silk scarf that was wound across her face and neck, long socks that vanished high up her trouser legs and probably tights underneath, and though it might have been a particularly in-depth sports section that weighed so heavily in the newspaper as she laid it down on the tabletop between us, it was more likely to be a .22 calibre revolver, loaded and ready to fire.

Coyle looked up into the thin strip of veil from which grey eyes stared, smiled and said, “Hi, Pam.”

One of her gloved hands rested beneath the paper, the other pressed against the table’s edge. Eyes flickered from Coyle to me, and back again. “Where did we meet?” she asked. Her accent was pure Manhattan, brisk and hard.

“Chicago, 2004,” he replied. “You were wearing a blue dress.”

“San Francisco, 2008. What did we eat on the night of the op?”

“Japanese. You had sushi, I had teriyaki, and in the morning you had the early flight and didn’t want to wake me to say goodbye.”

“Tell me what you said when I left.”

“I said your husband was a lucky man, and I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“And did you?” she asked, quick and sharp. “Did you tell a soul?”

“No, Pam. I didn’t tell anyone. I am me.”

For a moment her eyes lingered on his face, then slowly turned to me. “Who is this?”

“I’m Susie,” I said. “I’m a friend.”

“I don’t know you.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Pam,” blurted Coyle, “I don’t know what you’ve heard…”

“I heard that you were taken,” she retorted. “An operation went wrong. There’s an alert out on you. They say that you’ve been compromised by Janus.”

“And what do you believe?”

“I believe that you’re you. Don’t think that makes this easy. Phil —”

“I’m Nathan now.”

“OK, Nathan,” she went on in the same breath. “You’ve been compromised twice in as many weeks. There are orders.”

“And are you obeying them now? Are you going to do your job?”

“I… don’t know. I read the files you sent from Berlin.”

“Did you tell anyone?” he asked, eyes rising fast, and this was news to me too.

“No.”

“And?”

“And I can see different ways of looking at it.”

“Marigare shot me; he had
orders
to shoot me.”

Beneath the veil a flicker of her eyebrows. Surprise, perhaps disbelief. “Why?”

“We were bringing in a suspect, a possible ghost. Marigare decided the witness was compromised. We were supposed to…” he rolled the words slowly around his mouth, like the taste of aniseed that won’t wash away “… eliminate the threat. We took the body down to the river, and it said Galileo.”

“OK. Then?”

“Then Marigare shot me. ‘Just following orders’ and he shot me. In Berlin Kepler showed me the file and they lied to me, to
us
, Pam. They lied about what went down in Frankfurt, they lied about the hosts, they lied about Galileo, Kepler said —”

“Kepler lies.”

“You’ve seen the Galileo file too. Do you believe it? You’re the only one I trusted with it – what did you see?”

“You killed Marigare.” Her voice was high, cutting through words she didn’t want to hear.

“I… Yes. He shot me. He looked right at me and knew my name and shot me, Pam.”

Again her eyes flickered to me, quiet in my corner, then back to Coyle. “Say I believe you – how did you survive?”

The long breath Coyle exhaled was perhaps more expressive than any words. The gun beneath the newspaper turned my way. I wrapped my hands tight around my coffee mug. “Kepler,” I said. “You call me Kepler.”

An intake of breath. Her head rocked back, her arm jerked, the gun now turned firmly towards me, the muzzle sticking out a little from the newspaper. She didn’t speak, too many words at once for any to be spoken out loud, so Coyle spoke instead, low and urgent: “She…
it’s
no threat to us. It came here of its own accord.”

“If you know my name,” I added, “you’ll know that I have Aquarius’ computer records at my disposal, stolen from Berlin. I could have brought down Aquarius already, without ‘Phil’, without risking my neck. I’m here for Galileo – nothing more.”

“You’re working with
this
?” she hissed at Coyle.

“I would have died. She…
it
…” he spat the word, forcing the recollection of my being on to his lips “… it helped me survive. It hates Galileo and has done me no harm…”

“It tore Berlin to pieces.”

“It saved my life.”

“It’s worn you,” she hissed. “It’s violated you. Christ, do you even know what it’s done to you? Do you know what it’s made you do?”

“I haven’t —” I began, and she shrieked, shut up, shut up, loud enough for heads to turn, for Coyle to flinch, for her to shudder and force her voice down, her head down, a worm-like blue vein rising hot in the thin space between her eyes and her veil.

“Pam,” Coyle’s voice, soothing, “you disobeyed orders meeting me here. You read the Galileo file. I know you have. I know you understand. I know you know about… You understand what it is. What Galileo is. What he means to me. Now, perhaps you go through with your orders, perhaps you shoot me down, shoot this… girl in front of all these people. Or perhaps you have a team outside, ready to pick us up when we leave. I don’t know. But whatever you decide, believe this: Galileo is inside
us
. Aquarius ran a trial in Frankfurt and he took it, corrupted it, used it. I… killed a woman. No. That’s not even right. I murdered her. I murdered a woman on the steps of Taksim station because of Galileo’s lies. He’s been eating us up from the inside out, playing us. But… I did it. It was me. Kill me, don’t kill me, but whatever you decide, I need you to stop Galileo.”

She said nothing. Coyle reached out slowly across the table, rested his palm on top of her gloved hand and left it there. He left it there, and nothing changed, and she was crying without crying, refusing to let us see.

“Go,” she whispered.

“If you want us to —”

“Go! Get out, go!”

“The sponsor —”

“Just go!” she snarled, and Coyle jerked his hand away, nodded once and, without another word, climbed to his feet. I followed, gathering up my rucksack in my skinny arms and scampering after him as he strode to the door.

“Coyle…” I murmured, but he shook his head, so I closed my mouth, and followed, and said nothing at all.

We moved hotel.

I had borrowed a few too many bodies from our present abode to feel safe.

Coyle watched the news.

I paced up and down, and when noon came and noon went, I said, “I’m late for class.”

“Then go to class,” he replied, eyes not moving from the TV screen.

“I don’t care about medical insects.”

“Then find something you care about, Kepler, and do that.”

I scowled and marched out of the hotel room, bag bouncing on my back.

I rode the Subway.

The insect in the jar in the bottom of my bag was growing feebler, rattling limply against the glass. I unscrewed the lid a little, let some air in, then did it up tight again. Laying the jar on the floor beside me, I reached out for the nearest passenger and, uncaring of who they were or how they seemed,

jumped.

I am beautiful, and I shop for beautiful things that will make me more so.

I am tourist, camera on my back, beige loafers on my feet, standing in the gallery of the Natural History Museum, staring up at the mighty monsters who died before me.

I am chubby businesswoman eating chocolate cake that she would probably shun and I adore.

I am schoolgirl, sitting with my legs folded beneath me in the library, reading of times gone by, tales told. And when my mother calls, I run to her side and hold her tight and she says, “Now then, what’s this? What’s the matter?” and she takes my head in her hands and presses her arms across my back and loves me, almost as much as I love her.

I am spotty student who sells T-shirts in the museum shop.

I am taxi driver who has stopped for a smoke.

I let myself get waved down by a stranger who asks to go to Union Station.

In the mirror I look at a puffy-faced man out of breath who doesn’t want to talk and hasn’t much to say, but hell, the sun is setting and this is New York City so I say, “Going home, sir?”

“No.”

“Leaving town?”

“Yes.”

“Business trip?”

“No.”

“Personal?”

“Yes.”

And there ends the conversation.

He doesn’t tip me as I let him out.

I am…

someone, whoever, when the hooker picks me up.

I am quite drunk, hunched over my

another

whisky at the bar of an authentic Irish pub, made authentic, one can only assume, by the uncomfortable stools in the form of a three-leafed clover and the silent misery of the drunks.

She says, you want to go somewhere private?

I look into a face of blue veins and white lines, and say, sure. Why not.

Give me your hand.

Coyle doesn’t seem to have moved when I return to the hotel. He glances up as I enter the room and doesn’t bother to ask my name, so I don’t bother to give it, walking straight into the bathroom.

I take off my shoes.

The high backs are biting against my ankles, and as I run my hands up and down the insides of my calves I feel the roughness of the skin and rifle through my bag until I find the medication that had to be there – a cocktail of prescription meds carefully cut in half to make them go that little bit further, a week’s supply now become two because this body, with its twenty-two dollars and no credit card, can only afford one week more of meds.

I take two of the half-pills at once, stare into a painted face whose make-up cannot disguise the illness.

I am someone not long for this world.

I remember Janus-who-was-Marcel.

Osako Kuyeshi in a hospital gown.

I get cysts.

And I lost my memory.

Seems to me you have the vision, not the commitment.

Not long for this world suits me fine.

In the bedroom Coyle doesn’t turn his face away from the TV as he says, “I called Pam.”

“What’d she say?”

“She’s arranged a meeting with the sponsor. Says he’s very interested.”

“Are you sure?”

“I heard the words.”

“Are you sure it isn’t a trap?”

“No.”

“You two were lovers?”

“Yes.”

“Was it sex, or was it her?”

“Both. It ended a long time ago.”

I sat down on the bed, flexing out the ache in the soles of my feet. “Do you love her?”

“You say ‘love’ too easily, Kepler.”

“No, not really – please don’t call me that. The idea that love has to be a blazing romantic thing of monogamous stability is innately ludicrous. You loved your parents, perhaps, because they were the warmth you could flee to. You loved your first childhood crush with a passion that made your lips tingle, your flesh grow light in their presence. You loved your wife with the steadiness of an ocean against the shore; your lover with the blaze of a shooting star, your best friend with the confidence of a mountain. Love is a many-splendoured thing, as the old song says. So, Pam, do you love her?”

“No. Once. Yes. If bodies are… in a specific time, a specific place. Yes. In my way.”

“When’s the meet?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“OK.”

I tucked my knees up to my chin, let my head rest back against the wall. Coyle’s eyes finally turned to me, looked me up and down. “Hooker?”

I hummed confirmation.

“You look… pale.”

“Dying.” At this his head turned fully, eyebrows raised. “Not immediately,” I added. “I’ve got medication in my bag for a dozen things, but I’ve cut the pills in half to make them go further. This is a good body.”

“You’re OK being in a dying body?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“Not you. Not your rules.”

“I take my example from Janus. He… Funny, I always thought of him as a she, always thought he was… softer than the skin he wore. He dressed himself in a body barely on the edge of life when he died. When he knew he was going to die. It was still murder in that he forced a man to hold his consciousness while you put a bullet into his head. It was still butchery. But we must die someone, somewhere. And yet we lack the courage to slip into the wrinkled hand of the old woman on the ventilator or kiss goodbye on the cheek of he whose heart is fluttering in death. Janus tried before, but never quite managed to go through with it. Unlike most, we have a choice in this regard.”

“Are you planning on dying?”

“I plan on living until the moment I have no options left. But this is perhaps an unhealthy conversation before a day of entrapment and potential demise. How’s your shoulder?”

“I’m not going to play tennis any time soon.”

I ran my fingers through my straw-dyed hair, felt the crackle of broken ends and dying roots, licked my lips and nodded at nothing much in particular. “It is going to be a trap, you know.”

“I don’t know that. I don’t know anything any more.”

“The orders to kill you, to kill me, to kill Josephine – they all had to come from the top. If this sponsor is at the top, then either he’s been worn by Galileo, is being worn by Galileo or is in contact with someone being worn by Galileo – whatever. Galileo knows we’re coming. It’ll be waiting. Maybe not in the sponsor, maybe not in anyone we know, but it’ll be there.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

I shrugged. “If we don’t take this chance now, I doubt we’ll get another. I just don’t want it to be a big surprise.”

“And if Galileo is the sponsor? Will you kill him?” he asked.

“Will you?”

“I don’t know. I thought I would. I thought that, whoever Galileo was, whoever he wore, I’d kill him. If one man, or woman, died so that Galileo was dead, that seemed… an acceptable price. Now… I don’t know what I’ll do, if the moment comes.”

I didn’t answer. He pulled himself up higher, resting on his elbows, studying me. “When did you last sleep?”

“Sleep? This body sleeps during the day, I think.”

“Not the body. You. When did you last sleep?”

“I… Not for a while.”

“You should sleep.”

“Will you…” The words stopped dead on my lips. I licked them again, cheap make-up beneath my tongue. “Will you be there when I wake?”

“Where else would I be?”

I sleep.

Attempt to sleep.

Coyle turns the lights down, the TV off, lies on his back on the top of the bed beside me.

I try to remember: when was the last time someone watched me, without my watching them?

I want to curl up against him.

If I were a child

or someone with a slighter frame

auburn-haired, perhaps, with delicate wrists

I’d curl up against his side and he’d hold me.

If I was somebody else.

I sleep with my clothes on, ready to run, ready to jump.

Listen to his breathing, as he is listening to mine.

A truck grumbling outside the window, a long way down.

Police siren distant in the night.

Rise and fall of another’s chest.

There are words on the tip of my tongue.

I roll over, and he’s awake by my side, eyes open, watching me.

I know at once that he doesn’t find my body attractive, and indeed, in conventional terms, it isn’t glamorous.

Nor am I at home in it.

I do not yet know how to be beautiful in this body.

I reach out instinctively for his hand, and hesitate.

He doesn’t pull it away, watching me still.

My fingers are a centimetre from his.

I just want to touch.

Not jump, just touch.

Just feel another’s pulse beneath my own.

He’s waiting.

I’ve seen the look on his face before, but cannot now remember if it was his face that wore it, or mine.

I roll over, turning my back.

And I must sleep, for it is daytime, and the man whose name is not Nathan Coyle is still there.