We Won't Feel a Thing (5 page)

“That’s awful,” said Riley.

David shrugged. Rachel admired his manner; he seemed to have a studiously cultivated lack of self-pity. She moved her chair two inches closer to him. “You said you could help us?”

“Of course.” David nodded. “DERT is a menace, as you’ve seen. Fortunately for the world, my collective and I have devoted the whole of our enormous brainpower to the science of destroying Gary Gannon and everything he stands for.”

He reached for a basket of literature and handed them two glossy pamphlets, white with silver lettering and a blue tidal-wave logo. Rachel heard Riley draw a quick breath. She opened the pamphlet and scanned a random paragraph for typos and infractions, but with the exception of two sentence fragments clearly meant for dramatic effect, she found no flaws.

“WAVES. Washing Away Vexations by Engineering the Senses.” David gestured to Rachel’s pamphlet. “I’m sorry; it’s a terrible acronym. We brainstormed at a beach house and it stuck.”

“What is it?” said Rachel.

“The anti-DERT. The product of fourteen years of groundbreaking research by my small, dedicated collective of sensible young luminaries. The efficient, clean solution to washing away unwanted emotions, in six easy steps.”

“We don’t have much money,” said Rachel.

“We’re not about
money
.” David looked offended. “We’re about helping those who need us most. Payment plans are flexible.”

Riley flicked Rachel’s thigh under the table. She knew what he was thinking. The last time they had indulged someone with a basket of literature, they’d been added to the mailing list of a moving-van company and still received grammatically suspect emails on the first and twenty-third of every month. But David A. Kerning was different; she could tell. He had intelligent eyebrows and he looked as if he’d rather die than send a promotional email, let alone one that said
Viola!
instead of
Voila!

“What’s your trouble, then? I couldn’t hear much over those infernal drums. Wait, wait, I’m usually good at this.” He cocked his head and squinted at Rachel. “You’re an angry one, clearly. You default to a seething frustration when the world disappoints you, which is six times a day on average. And you—” He pressed his lips together and scanned Riley’s face. “Anxiety. You try to disguise it with jokes, but that’s your bugbear. Oh, don’t look so impressed. I’m no wizard; whatever rotten little secrets Gannon forced out of you brought your emotional defects directly to the surface. Well, count yourselves lucky: our Anger and Anxiety modules have had proven success in more than thirty-eight—”

“We’re in love with each other,” said Rachel.

The hint of pink in David’s cheeks drained away.

“Those other things are true too,” she said. “But the love is the primary problem.”

“I see,” he said.

“We’re not
related
or anything,” Riley said, blushing. “She only lives with us because—”

“It’s none of his business,” Rachel said. She turned back to David. “By September first, he needs to be in California and I need to be in New York, but we can’t because we’re currently two halves of one weird person, and we need to be wholes.” Her fist tightened around the brochure. “What do you think?”

David stroked his lower lip. “Give me a moment, will you?” he said. “I have to consider this carefully.”

He turned his chair away and bowed his head. A breeze wafted over them, and Rachel could still hear the faint thrum of bongos and Gary Gannon’s evangelical bellowing from deep inside the building. She shivered. She wasn’t used to problems she couldn’t solve on her own. For a long moment David A. Kerning’s shoulders trembled, and she thought she and Riley had made a scientist cry in addition to spoiling their own lives. But then he faced them again with the same untroubled expression, his blue eyes clear and dry.

“Here is the issue,” he said. “I’ve been working personally on the Forbidden Love module; it’s been a pet project of mine for the past seven years. I’m sorry to report that early prototypes had, ah,
negative
results.”

“What happened?” said Rachel.

“Never mind that. The difficulty, obviously, is in banishing emotions that are
pleasant
but unwanted. When a bothersome emotion carries certain rewards—lust, the thrill of illicit fantasy—it’s much, much harder to cleanly extract.”

“That makes sense.” Rachel leaned closer to David.

“I’ve been hard at work with my subcommittee: conducting new research, commissioning new equipment. We’ve made some very promising breakthroughs, but I have to confess…” David sighed. “The new prototype is still not suitably tested.”

Riley nudged Rachel. “We should get back,” he whispered. “They’re probably wondering—”

“Shh.” Rachel swallowed hard. “What if we volunteered to test it for you?”

David tilted his head. “You’d—consider that?”

“Exxxx-cuse us,” said Riley.

He pulled Rachel aside, by the corn statue.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“I thought I’d try to save us. Unless you have objections?”

“He said
not suitably tested
.”

“And
promising breakthroughs.”

“I think he’s nuts.”

“I think he’s smart. He’s a real
scientist
, Ri. With cold hard data. And user testimonials.” Opening the WAVES brochure, Rachel tapped a panel of pie charts and a glowing endorsement from Nina P. of Brunswick, Ohio. “Plus he…has a nice face.”

“Rach.” Riley tilted his head. “Do you
like
this weirdo?”

Rachel studied Riley. He was jealous, she realized, like he must have been that night she went to Chad Armstrong’s wretched Valentine dance and came home to find Riley sketching a gorgeous naked girl from a mystery photo clipped to his desk. She now recognized this as a silly secret bit of retribution, and her stomach burned with pleasure, then shame.
We are in danger,
she verified.
We need scientific intervention.

“Do you have a better plan?” she said.

“No,” Riley admitted.

“We can’t waste time.” She tried to look him in the eye and bounced her gaze away fast. “We have to get rid of this
now
. Before it wrecks us.”

“What if that wrecks us first?” He gestured to the WAVES van.

Rachel marched back to David. “What’s the best-case scenario?”

“WAVES washes away the troublesome part, the romantic love.” He spoke with brazen confidence, scratching his neck. “Leaving in its wake a healthy and moderate platonic friendship.”

“So we’ll be able to separate?”

“Naturally.”

“Without feeling all smashed up?”

“That’s the idea.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?” said Riley.

“Side effects are, ah…” David straightened his brochures. “Too variable to predict.”

“Could we die?”

“Certainly not! This isn’t a circus act.”

“But it could be dangerous,” said Riley. “Right?”

“Every guinea pig accepts a degree of risk.” David stared into Rachel’s eyes. “That’s why they must be
exceptionally
brave.”

Rachel held his gaze. Reckless optimism seized her, like the time she dove into Beechwood Lake after a silver ID bracelet Riley had dropped. She’d powered her way to the bottom, believing she could do the impossible, and there it was—glinting through the murk, a dead branch holding it out for her to grasp.

“We’ll do it.” Rachel glanced at Riley. She had her battle face on. “If you agree…?”

Riley looked at his shoes. He was no match for her battle face. “Fine.”

“Oh, marvelous.” David clapped his hands. “I’ll assign you Steps One through Four, and—”

“What about Five and Six?” said Rachel.

“Oh, no no. Those are off limits. Much too drastic for your purposes.
The most powerful love interventions known to humankind.
Highly effective in studies, but severely distasteful.”

“But what if—”

“One through Four would be
fine
.” Riley elbowed Rachel.

“Excellent!” David tapped his tablet. “Enter your address here; I’ll deliver the equipment tomorrow. You’ll report to me after each step—oh, and here.” He produced a folder of WAVES paperwork. “You’ll sign here and attach your safety deposit. Here’s the consent form. And most important, our standard confidentiality agreement.” He rapped it with a stern finger. “We select our clients strategically. Frankly, if word spread to the general public about what we’ve been able to accomplish, it would cause a media storm we’re unequipped to manage. And if this module fell into the wrong hands—one of those ghastly conversion camps, or a—”

“Total discretion.” Rachel pattered their address into David’s tablet. “You can trust us.”

“I’m glad. I have standard boilerplate about how unpleasant we can make your lives if you’re not discreet, but it sounds so boorish, I’d really rather not.”

Behind them, the clock in the tower clanged six o’clock. Deep inside the building, an outbreak of bongos signaled a DERT intermission. Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn would soon be calling out for them, stalking the grounds in their ruined ponchos.

Rachel held out a hand.

“It was good to meet you,” she said.

“The good fortune is mutual.” David shook her hand. “Expect me tomorrow afternoon. And here—”

He reached under the table, produced a clear umbrella stamped with the WAVES logo, and passed it to them.

“What’s this for?” said Riley.

David peered up at the clear blue sky. His eyes tracked two black birds that rose and plummeted, wing to wing.

“It’s going to rain.”

***

The downpour came two hours later, when they were all back in the white house on Donnybrook Lane. It came with no warning; clouds smothered the sky, and rain scoured the windowpanes as if the house were juddering through a car wash.

Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn had greeted Rachel and Riley’s excuse for escaping DERT (cupcake-induced nausea) with unexpected indifference. Having chattered the whole way home about
this exciting new era
while mud dried and cracked on their clothes and faces, the senior Woodlawns locked themselves in the first-floor master bedroom and commenced a dense and mysterious talk.

With no dinner on the horizon, Rachel and Riley fled upstairs to their kingdom. They prepared a feast, as they did on many nights when a scorched turkey loaf and a parental standoff chased them early from the table. They made two of the best recipes they’d invented: Molten Comfort Mac & Cheese with Pretzel-and-Bacon-Bit Topping and a side of Basil-Apple Cornbread. In the safety of concentration, they cooked with the secret tools they had bought at Jonah’s Junque with money from Rachel’s proofreading and their library jobs—the hot plate under Riley’s desk, the dented mini-fridge in the closet, the Girlybake Oven and tub of cooking supplies under Rachel’s bed. Rachel scraped neat piles of smoked cheddar and parmesan. Riley made napkin swans and crushed the pretzels with his chipping hammer. Sniffles the poodle watched them from his perch on the desk, his glass eyes reflecting their movements in miniature.

When it was done, they spread their least romantic tablecloth (beige with beige stripes) on the kingdom floor, beside their throw-pillow nest. They arranged the mac and cheese in clay pottery bowls and popped the cornbreads out of the Girlybake pans. They set Bob and Athena beside them, like they always did, and sat a sensible four feet apart.

It wasn’t far enough.

Riley’s head teemed with new Rachel-thoughts—how her thin upper lip was shaped like an archer’s bow, how she’d grown into her angular face and now looked like the cleverest girl in a vintage beach photo. Rachel itched to touch Riley’s weirdest parts, his callused fingers and knobby knees and his one rogue curl that would never behave. Even their shabby sleepwear—Riley’s palm-tree boxers, Rachel’s skull-and-crossbones capris—felt vaguely pornographic as the dark romantic rain lashed their windowpanes.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Riley.

“Okay.”

“How long have you loved me That Way?”

Rachel calculated on sweaty fingers. “Three and a half years, technically, but I didn’t admit it to myself until mid-February of this year.” She sighed. “How about you?”

“Same.”

“I had it under control. Just like, a harmless fantasy here and there.”

“Me too.” He knifed his cornbread in half. “So…what kind of fantasy?”

“Ri.”

“Sorry.” Riley eyed the WAVES brochure on the floor. Dread snaked through him again. “Look, are you sure we can’t just—keep our feelings?”

Rachel shook her head. “They’re out in the open now. If we keep them, we’ll only act on them.”

“What if we did? We could do summer in New York, winter in California—”

“That wouldn’t work.” Rachel stabbed her mac and cheese. “Logistical nightmare.”

“I’m used to nightmares.”

“One of us would have to sacrifice.”

“I love sacrifices.”

“What if your parents found out?”

Riley looked away, reddening. “What if?”

“They would literally never get over it,” said Rachel, “and I am not a person who uses
literally
in the figurative sense.”

Riley poked his cornbread. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

“So we’re committed to WAVES?”

“Committed,” he said with a quiver, “but scared.”

“Don’t be. We’ve got this.”

“What do you think the side effects are?”

“Purple spots. Heartburn. Genital itch.”

Riley flicked a crumb at her.

“Can we tell a story, to take our minds off it?” he said. “A Bob and Athena.”

She slid a pasta tube on each tine of her fork. “Always.”

Riley invented a silly caper: a shifty scavenger fish, a stolen mirror. Rachel embellished, making the fish a flunky for an undersea drug cartel headed by two hammerheads and a sturgeon, all of whom Bob and Athena dispatched in a fight scene that was gory even by Rachel’s standards. They sailed the story together, steering hard into the happy ending all Bob and Athena stories had. But all they thought of was the question mark over their own ending, and all they heard was the mermaid clock between them, ticking them closer and closer to Step One.