She thought of Liver. Holding him hadn’t exactly been the same as cuddling—it had been pleasant, but he was cold-blooded in a different way from Byron, and rubbery. Their snuggles were more akin to two hard-boiled eggs rubbing up against each other as they pickled together in a jar.
Now, though, Hazel felt flooded with a connective warmth. She knew it was mainly the drugs, about to put her to sleep for the last time, but she felt incredibly close to her father, incredibly loved by him in a way that she never had before. Maybe the shared genetics in their flesh were swapping nostalgic stories as she twined herself against him. Maybe his brain hadn’t been sentimental or capable of giving her a warm good-bye, but his skin and bones were.
It took an incredible amount of effort, but Hazel managed to lift up her head and slip off her eye mask as she spoke, wanting to glimpse her father one last time amidst the new vapors of kinship she was feeling.
But when she took off her eye mask, she realized she’d been spooning with Diane. There was a thin string of saliva hanging between her bottom lip and the doll’s collarbone; in Hazel’s periphery it glistened and seemed to flicker. Diane’s hair had never been the same after the bathtub incident, but one of its patches seemed a fine nest for Hazel to lay her heavy cheek down upon now. It looked like a hologram of a kinder planet’s sun. Like a brand-new, safe-to-touch form of fire that was invented as a toy for babies. Go ahead and feel, it said. It meant this in every sense of the word. Hazel’s eyes closed and she breathed in and felt lucky, because Diane’s hair smelled like freesia body wash. Which was not a bad last breath to draw at all.
15
ON ANY OTHER DAY OF HIS ADULT LIFE, THE GOGOL INTAKE PROCESS would’ve sent Jasper running. He’d compromised his anonymity for the rest of his lifetime just by stepping in the door.
But he’d come to them with nothing to lose, ready to spend what remained of his life savings of cash. For an extra fee, he’d been able to get the earliest available appointment the following day, and had driven all night to get there. It was a long drive, and a disconcerting one—multiple times Jasper felt he had to be lost. The place was essentially in the middle of a field and guarded like a fort. Upon arrival he was shown to an eerie unmanned vehicle that drove him from the front gate to the actual building.
Procedures were apparently expensive. Prohibitively so for the average person; many times, the operator explained, fund-raising initiatives and charity walks were organized to fund individuals in average income brackets. What sort of solution was he looking for?
Not one that would make people line up in droves to run a 5K.
He assured her it would be financed with his life savings. The appointment operator was hesitant to schedule him when the initial survey revealed he had no physical assets or employment record, but he convinced her he’d be willing to pay the hefty consulting fee upon arrival, and was able to prepay for the procedure in cash.
The building housing the diagnostic wing looked made of steel-colored ice. Its silver entrance doors were impossibly thin, like two giant razor blades. Walking inside, he tried to shake the feeling that he was about to be sliced in half.
A woman inside holding a file folder beckoned him. “Mr. Kesper? Right this way.”
No one had called him by his actual last name since high school. Hearing it formed a knot in his throat. But they wouldn’t schedule the appointment without exhaustive identification confirmations. He’d had to be himself.
“When I made my appointment,” Jasper began, following behind the woman. “They said something about an imagination team I’d meet with today? To brainstorm solutions to my goals?” His throat was going dry. Had he himself been conned? Gogol sure seemed on the up-and-up; their products were everywhere. But maybe it was getting into bed with some medical quackery to keep the shareholders happy. The commercial sure seemed primed to coax desperate millionaires out of their money prior to death.
Maybe he’d just fallen into the trap he’d made his former living from: people are eager to believe in the reality of what they want.
“You’re in excellent hands,” the woman said. Jasper couldn’t see her hands though. She was wearing a tight pair of silver gloves.
THE DIAGNOSTICS TOOK HOURS; IT FELT LIKE AN ENTIRE DAY HAD passed but Jasper had no real sense of time because there weren’t clocks anywhere. He kept being ushered inside machines that moved around him or above him; he’d get out of one and be led right inside another. He took a few naps. “Why haven’t I gotten hungry yet?” he asked. “Why haven’t I had to use the bathroom?”
“We gave you some injections,” a woman explained.
“Like shots? I never felt anything.”
“You wouldn’t feel them,” she said. “They’re not exactly like shots.”
The final scanner required him to lie on his stomach while wearing a helmet that covered his eyes; the machine’s two halves were going to enclose him in a chamber, like an embryo growing in an egg. For how long?
He didn’t know. Jasper was beginning to worry. He hadn’t said that much about what he wanted yet. How much did these tests cost? What if when they were finished, he didn’t have enough left over for the procedure?
Then it appeared in his brain, unprompted: an image of a dolphin’s glistening stomach, the sun glinting off its surface, its wet satin finish relaxed against the bar of gritty sand it was beached upon. He felt himself get aroused, a particularly uncomfortable pressure lying facedown in the confines of the egg.
A montage began to follow, flits of fin and the occasional quick tooth. Desire and the fatigue of the past few days, running on adrenaline and excitement and then adrenaline and heartbreak all seemed to catch up with him at once. Jasper felt the wall of civility he was trying to maintain, flimsy as the fake backing he’d hidden his money behind in his closet, give forth like wet paper; he began to weep. His erection was pushing into the exam table and he was pressing his weight against it now. His tears were building up inside the helmet; he felt himself wanting to draw oxygen at a rate the thick filter of the helmet’s face mask might not support—he could asphyxiate; he could possibly drown in the condensation of sweat and grief. He was either about to black out or die or orgasm, or some combination of these three things. He couldn’t wait for pleasure, or erasure. And erasure was pleasure, given the status quo.
JASPER WOKE TO THE PEERING EYES OF SEVERAL SCIENTISTS. A large group of observers stood holding tablets, their fingers moving at blurry speeds of documentation. One older woman in a lab coat was chain-smoking. She was visually shorter than everyone else but felt like the tallest person in the room.
The other scientists were standing behind her as though they were afraid of Jasper. She was the mother duck who would protect them.
“Did I black out?” Jasper asked. The helmet had been removed; he’d been rolled over onto his back.