“It wouldn’t work to make them physically incapable of fulfilling desires they still had. That would breed unhappiness—discord between the mind and the body. It’s the urge to be unfaithful that gets removed. Why is that bad? They voice a desire for fidelity, so I silence a lesser desire that might get in the way of it. They choose what gets privileged in their brains.”
Jasper hadn’t desired empathy. But if Voda had “privileged” it for him, didn’t that mean it had to have already been there? The tiniest pilot light? It was easier to accept the fate of having to begin doing right by others if it felt like it was actually coming from him. Even a really small part of him that he would’ve formerly ignored every time.
There was a knock on the door and Jasper fell out of bed in his rush to answer; he half-crawled and half-ran because surely Voda had changed her mind about him leaving. Maybe she’d even performed surgery on herself (could neurosurgeons do that, he wondered, the way tattoo artists could?) and now loved and desired him in the same way that he ached for her—they could be a force of altruism together, an unlikely union devoted to the good of all humanity!
But the woman standing at the door was not at all Voda. She was much taller, and wearing a plastic rabbit mask. “Hello,” she said. She held a small device in front of her lips that changed her voice to make it sound like a chipmunk’s and was carrying a refrigerated lunch pail. “May I come in?”
“I guess,” he said. “This isn’t my house.”
She entered and took a seat on the sofa. Jasper could tell that if she were to take the mask off, she’d be very attractive. She had that confident movement, that specific ease of being in the world. “You don’t know me,” she said.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” he answered. “What’s with the mask?”
“Voda and I are close,” she replied. “Colleagues, confidantes. What she did to you is messed up, in my opinion. That’s nothing I haven’t said to her face, by the way. And now she’s making you leave.”
“Oh,” Jasper said, scratching his leg. “You’re like the person who comes with a box and makes sure I get my things from my desk without making a scene. If I worked here and had a desk and possessions, I mean. I don’t. Let me grab my car keys and flip-flops.”
“No, wait. I have a proposal for you.” The rabbit woman opened the cooler and held up a syringe. “Voda told me you’re burdened with a swollen conscience. You’re driven to be a do-gooder now, right? I know how you can begin. It’s very risky. I feel that to adequately repent for past wrongs, to do it in a way that matters, you have to put your life in danger. Do you feel that way?”
“Well,” Jasper said. If she wanted him to be on board with whatever she was offering, she could’ve chosen a dolphin mask instead of a bunny one.
“There’s someone who really needs help. The same way Voda played with your brain, they played with hers, only much, much worse. There’s a chip in her head.” She wiggled the syringe. “This will deactivate it. You’ll get to do something heroic.”
She pushed the lunch pail toward Jasper. “And I’ll give you back all the money you paid for your operation, plus some bonus money. You’ll have cash to begin repairing your past crimes. If we’re going to help her, we need to hurry, though. Emotionally she’s not hanging in so well. Here, have a look.”
Jasper opened the file and began sifting through pictures. “You mentioned my life would be at risk? Why do you want to help her?”
“Because what they’ve done to her is barbaric? What they’ll do to you, if it doesn’t work or you get caught, is barbaric too. That’s true. But you’ll be rescuing another person—you’ll go, in just one day, from not deserving to live to deserving to live more than a huge majority of other people do. Plus her husband needs to move on. Specifically, with me. Rage leads him to action, so if she can escape from him he’ll be irate and open to coupling sooner than if she dies and he feels he has to publicly mourn. But long-term I’m all about moving things to a more humane-ish place. I have a lot of big plans for the future.”
Jasper looked down at the photo of the woman, who did indeed look very sad. A specific sort of sad that a shower could possibly improve on one level, at least in terms of its most basic outward expression.
“My parents,” Jasper blurted out suddenly. “Can you find out if they’re still alive?”
17
THE RABBIT WOMAN WAS GOING TO SEND A NOTE TO HIS MOTHER and father, both of whom, she researched and confirmed, were still living. The messages were cryptic, but he hoped they’d still be nice to receive. Now that he felt bad about his cons and understood what a terrible feeling that was, he worried that his mother and father were wracked with similar regret in terms of their parenting or lack of a relationship with him. He’d never had an adult relationship with his mother to miss, and it had seemed that his father’s idea of them spending time together was always for Jasper to listen to his father whine about his most-recent heartbreak. So Jasper didn’t long for that either. He didn’t want to be close to them, but he also didn’t want them to feel sad over him or wish they’d done things differently. The letter said, For reasons that are complex but not negative, your son is unable to contact you. But he’d like to ask you to think fond thoughts of him out in the world, and know that he loves you and does the same. It was more true than not? He wanted them to be happy. He loved them in the sense that he cared about their well-being and wished they’d all liked one another more. It felt good to send something that would hopefully be a comfort.
He left Voda a note also, by the door in the casita. I love you, it said. You forced me to but still.
He loved her and he knew he’d never see her again, which felt agonizing—he realized now that this was how the cons who’d loved him had felt when he left. Only even worse because he had their money.
The high sun was strong and now he was driving down the road not to move to a new city or steal or maim anyone’s ability to trust others, but to try to save someone. And if he succeeded, he had duffle bags of money in his car that he’d do his best to return to as many of his past cons as he could find, ringing their doorbells and leaving unmarked packages filled with cash on the porch. He was embarking on a tour of goodwill.
If he made it past this first stop.
The rabbit woman said that from what she’d watched of Hazel’s downloads, the trailer’s back sliding-glass door was the best entry point if no one answered the front. But it looked like there were several people in the bed inside, a few of them very attractive women. Did he have the right house?
He knocked again, more fervently. Why weren’t they waking up? He was wearing a fake parcel delivery service uniform, holding the lunch pail cooler containing the shot. With all the people inside on the bed, it seemed like a setup for a bad adult film.
“Hello?” Jasper slid the glass door open and stepped inside. He felt bad waking people up, but this was pretty important.
“Huh?” Jasper said. Was this a joke?