What other horrors might she see if she rolled over? Maybe this onetime lover next to her, asleep, but then her mother’s very awake ghost lying right next to him, pissed off and ready to talk about it. Are you kidding me with this casual promiscuity? Her mother wasn’t from New Jersey, but Hazel could see her ghost picking up the accent; it would be a personality fit. Are you doing this because you’re desperate to get pregnant? I know I told you once that I wanted a grandchild under any circumstances, but I’ve reconsidered. Certainly you will never turn your own life around, but I don’t even think you’re capable of being a neutral vessel. Even if the baby were whisked away from you at birth, the gravity of your curse would be inescapable. It’s not fair to irreversibly doom the young. Her father, luckily, would never haunt. He’d feel it to be weak somehow. An afterlife form of whining.
Hazel shook her head in horror and felt a hand on her arm. It was warm, human, far better than the cold pinch of her mother’s ghost. Maybe it was Jasper, his face contrite, explaining that he had indeed tried to be good but just wasn’t; Gogol had caught up with him and it was either he go down or she did, and since he was more attractive, more fun and charming, he felt he had more of a right to life, plus Byron was her enraged ex after all, not his, and then Jasper would pull out a syringe and stick an anti-antidote into her arm and the chip would turn back on and she’d be back to square one.
But it was just the anonymous man, just a squeeze. He got up and left without speaking or saying good-bye. She’d asked for this, but when it happened she felt disappointed. She supposed there was no way to avoid disappointment.
But she didn’t feel disappointed overall. She’d just had a pleasant experience. Did that mean that something bad was about to happen? Didn’t pleasure always come with a shadow?
For a few weeks afterward she thought of trying the service again, maybe this time getting a room elsewhere for the night as a precaution. Then on her walk to work, she saw the sign.
Across the street from the diner, in the same plaza as the pizza restaurant, a Gogol store was coming.
It was probably a coincidence?
But what if it wasn’t? Was the man from the hookup service somehow connected to Gogol?
Hazel walked up to the storefront’s glass, which she knew would have been replaced—it was a spec for all Gogol stores to have windows made with a finish that couldn’t be smudged or scratched; when you breathed on it, your breath did not show up. Most disconcerting of all was that it didn’t reflect. There was no way to impose your physical human experience on it. Someone could throw a bucket of blood at it (Hazel had actually seen this demonstrated in the lab) and every drop would bounce right off like a miniature red tennis ball. “Incredible!” Hazel had exclaimed to Byron when he’d showed her. She’d acted interested and awed. “It can’t be destroyed?” “It can,” he’d answered. “But not with items passing consumers will have.” This had given Hazel a fantasy of getting one such item, she had no idea what—a diamond drill bit?—putting on a blue wig and going to deface one of the stores, pulling off the disguise at a critical moment and yelling into the security camera: I hate Byron and I hate Gogol; I am miserable and I want people to know. If you get close enough to him that you can hear his breathing and you really listen, you will find it has a sharp tinkling sound to it, the sound of like really small toenail clippings being scattered over the top of a sheet of ice, rodent nail clippings probably. Anyone who makes that sound when they inhale is a bad person. But then she would’ve looked crazy, and Byron would’ve been awarded some sort of psychiatric guardianship over her, and she never would’ve left The Hub again.
She couldn’t trust that a store opening so close to her job was a coincidence. And she shouldn’t have let a stranger come to her hotel room.
Hazel worked her shift like normal, but that evening found Ms. Cheese behind her desk in the office, listening to an AM talk-radio show and soaking her feet in a large bucket that had once held chicken gravy. The show’s host was interviewing a woman who’d had a near-death experience and claimed to have temporarily gone to heaven. “There are a lot of TVs up there,” the woman said. “Almost everywhere you look there’s a TV, and they float in the air alongside you wherever you go. That’s one thing I’m looking forward to now about dying. In heaven I’ll be able to watch my stories while I stroll down to the bus stop. I’m pretty sure I saw one or two bus stops there. What takes getting used to in heaven is that no one talks; they sing everything. Even the voices on the TV sing. At first it seems like a little much. I thought, ‘This could start to get on my nerves.’ But everyone’s voice was pretty decent. After a while it seemed normal. When I came out of the coma, everyone talking was what sounded strange. My husband and I only sing when we’re at home now. I’ve come to prefer that. It’s hard for me to talk to you like this right now, in fact. Talking feels like forcing a smile.”
The office didn’t have a door, so Hazel knocked on the wall. Ms. Cheese slid her glasses down and looked up with skepticism. “Shit,” she said.
“Yeah. I have to leave town,” Hazel said. “I’m sorry for the short notice. This has been a great job.”
“I am sorry to hear that. You weren’t that bright or industrious but you sure didn’t have anywhere else to be. I’ll miss your sulking face reminding me of all I have to be thankful for. I hope you win your soul back in a bet or something. Let me give you some cash for what you’ve worked this week, adjusted for the very short notice of you quitting. Do you have any resources? Do you want to take one of those big bags of rice with you? Are you strong enough to carry it?”
Hazel accepted the cash and the rice. Maybe she could figure out a way to duct-tape it to her torso and it could be dual purpose: If someone from Gogol came to get her in the middle of the night, it could serve as a makeshift bulletproof vest. Though it would probably just slow the bullet down enough that it would take longer for her to die, and be a lot more painful. But if they were apprehending her and taking her to another location to kill her, maybe she could reach up under her shirt and slit the bag open and a trail of rice would be left, should anyone try to find her. But there was no one who would.
She left and began to walk, taking the long way home. After a few minutes, she noticed that a man talking on a device was walking behind her. From what she could see in her periphery, his suit wasn’t made of Gogol-issued fabric, but he wasn’t giving her much space.
Hazel turned down an unnecessary street. The man followed. Her heart began to race.
“Yeah,” she heard him say into his device. “Yes. Byron Gogol.”
There was a puddle on the ground that she glanced into to eyeball his height. He was tall and muscular. But for Jasper’s sake, for what he risked and did, she felt she had to give it everything she had.
Hazel whipped around with the bag of rice and hit the man on the side of the face. His device went flying and hit the ground with a loud crack. She took off running.
She heard him yell out twice as she sprinted off—first for his face, and then for his phone.
But as she passed a large electronics store, she saw that photos of Byron were flashing all over the multiple television screens.
Had something happened?
Something had happened. He would not be looking for Hazel anymore.
23