It made Hazel feel better to know they sold replacement Throatginas. She wasn’t the world’s first Throatgina wrecker.
But instead of feeling relief when he cut the throat off, her arm started hurting worse—the extreme pressure had been anesthetizing it somehow. “Hold your shirt in the front,” he said. “Wow, is it soiled! I’ll cut it off so you don’t have to move your arm. Then you’ll need to dunk yourself in the tub a few times. When all the mess is off you, just wrap yourself in a towel and go wait on the couch. It won’t hurt to show a little skin in front of Tony. He’s a straight shooter. I like that kid. He’s married, but being his mistress would be an upgrade from your last husband in terms of the personality factor I think. If he hits on you in any way, reciprocate immediately. Full force. I’ll mention to him that you’re newly single and don’t have strong opinions. Maybe he’s looking for something fun on the side.” Her father then took a towel off the shelf and placed it over the top of Diane’s open head cavity to preserve her dignity.
“Let me explain,” Hazel started. Per usual, the truth would not suffice. “I’d just put Diane into bed and was bent over her, pulling up the covers, when I thought I heard something fall down her throat.”
Her father’s eyebrows rose with skepticism but Hazel soldiered on. “I figured maybe it was an earring . . . so I reached inside to check and it felt like my fingertips brushed up against something, but they pushed it down farther. So I reached in more . . .”
Hazel bent forward to pantomime, forgetting he’d just cut her shirt open in the back. It fell to the floor, waterlogged, at which point she and her father were both surprised to see an avalanche of prescription pill bottles spill forward. She’d apparently shoved several of them into each cup of her brassiere before losing consciousness—once she felt the pills’ euphoria, she must’ve been struck with the urge to stockpile. Suddenly curious, Hazel tried to surreptitiously shift her weight from one butt cheek to the other, and lo and behold, she’d stashed some in her underwear too.
Now probably wasn’t the time to float theories about her ex-husband having placed a microchip in her brain.
“Clean yourself up nice for Tony,” her father said, his voice shaking a little. He put his arm around Diane; they were a unified team now, just like he’d been with her mother. Even though Diane was naked, with a towel over her head, there was something solemn about the mood she was radiating, something very look what you’ve done to your father-ish.
TONY WORE NOVELTY SCRUBS PRINTED WITH A FLESH DESIGN OF A muscled bodybuilder in a Speedo. Hazel’s father wanted to know where he could purchase an identical pair.
“My female clients love ’em,” Tony said and smiled.
“She fell in the bathtub,” her father began to explain, offering up a handy excuse for both Hazel’s injury and her attire, but Tony was ready to get down to business. He cracked his knuckles, and then his neck.
“This will only take a second. Just breathe in and I’m gonna count to three, then breathe out. One. Two.”
On “two” Hazel felt a searing jolt of pain and noticed her eyes rolling skyward, then woke to a view of Tony’s nostrils, a tiny flashlight moving back and forth across her pupils.
“There you are. Good as new. If you feel any complications, go right to the ER and tell them you popped it back in yourself. Technically you should get a follow-up X-ray. If you’re the sort to make a mountain out of a molehill.” With that, Tony turned to leave. Hazel’s father jumped onto his Rascal, sidesaddle, like a trick rider, and motored after him, but wheeled back a few moments later looking forlorn. “You’re not his type, he told me. I’m guessing by that he means you’re too old. Don’t worry, we’ll think of something. Listen, Hazel—”
Her arm was sore but she could wiggle her fingers. She had to do the thing she’d sworn not to do, call Byron and forfeit a battle to win the war. The blackout in the bathtub was definitely a trick he’d pulled, though she wasn’t sure how he’d done it or even what had transpired. She needed to get to the bottom of it. “Hold that thought, Dad,” she said.
How he’d pulled off getting her to hallucinate that way she wasn’t sure, but Hazel felt confident Byron just wanted her to think he’d put a chip into her brain. First she ran to the bathroom and did a full head and face exam for scars. She didn’t see any. Maybe he’d sent some nanobot into her father’s house that had deployed an aerosol hallucinogen. Maybe he’d lowered a powerful electromagnet down over her head through the bathroom light fixture. Who knows how he did it? His goal was likely for her to feel scared enough to go talk to him about it, enough to agree to get in a car and return to The Hub. He probably figured that once he got her back on his turf he could either woo or frighten her into staying. What she had to do was make Byron see that no matter how impressive the technological magic tricks he was pranking her with were, they were useless: Hazel wouldn’t be changing her mind.
She went out to the safe and entered their anniversary date and tried not to be impressed by the way it opened, several pieces rising and clicking, moving into place like shifting puzzle parts against the quiet pops and hisses of microhydraulics.
The phone inside the safe was already ringing. She answered.
“It won’t work, Byron. Whatever bad-taste trick you just pulled didn’t leave me riddled with fear, and it certainly didn’t make me want to talk to you.”
There was a click, a brief pause. Of course he hadn’t been waiting on the other end of the phone. Now that she’d picked up, he was being hailed.
“Hazel,” he finally said. “So nice to hear from you. Thank you for answering my call.”
10
“HOW DID THE DOWNLOAD FIND YOU?” BYRON ASKED.
Hazel scoffed. “Is that what you want me to think happened? That you downloaded information from my brain? I’ll admit, you made me wonder. I even checked for a scar. But there is no chip, is there? There’s just you wanting to make me believe something. Let’s part ways and call it a day.”
“I never thought I’d see you in a bathtub with a sex doll. Admit it, Hazel: after all this time we can still surprise each other.”
She felt a trapdoor of despair open wide at the bottom of her stomach, her insides slipping from their normal shelves and falling into one central pileup below her navel. No, Hazel tried to convince herself, Byron was lying. But lies could help her figure out the truth. The bathroom didn’t have windows, but he’d seen inside.
“You put cameras in my father’s house?”
“Your mind is the camera, Hazel.”
“Bullshit.”