I left him in the café. I had the Registry send out a car for me. It was hard not to reflect on how much trouble I’d had trying to get a flask when I’d desperately needed it, while just a thirty second call this morning netted me my very own chauffeur.
We took the Holland Tunnel, presently arriving at the holding center outside Newark—a big old warehouse with the windows all bricked up. The staff had changed since I was last there, which was a relief. I filled in forms. I typed, into official files, my own “account of the retrieval,” required for legal reasons, since we’d suffered a fatality. My fingerprints were scanned. I handed in the flask. I’d drained a fair amount of power, as it turned out. I wondered, if I’d started sooner, whether I could actually have saved her. But I’d never know.
The same car swept me back to my apartment. The driver talked the whole way, asking about London and the Royal Family, as if he thought I knew them personally (his wife was just the biggest fan, he said), and I would zone out, then ask him to repeat himself, and this jerky, broken dialogue was probably the only thing that kept me conscious. By the time he’d let me out and I’d negotiated the foyer, the elevator, and my own front door, the apartment had acquired a near-hallucinatory brilliance, the windows blazing with a light both crystalline and dream-like. If you’d told me I’d been taken up to Mars and that it looked a lot like Jersey City, which was just across the water, I’d have probably said, “Fine,” and toddled off to bed.
Which, around 2:00 p.m., I finally got chance to do, suffering a broken, fitful sleep for the next fifteen hours or so.
What followed should have been a joy: a whole day in New York, and only one appointment left to keep. But all I wanted was to leave.
I strolled round town, just killing time, avoiding anywhere I’d been with Melody Duchess. I ate lunch in a bagel place, ordered lox and cream cheese, then found myself on Christopher, idling. It was all a little straighter than it used to be, but you could still buy a dildo and a set of leather chaps, and a perm for your dog, if you wanted such things. Though not all in the same shop.
Three o’clock, I had a debriefing in a rented office up on 22nd. The last tenants still had their names up on the door. They’d called themselves “Financial Therapists,” and by the look of it they’d also left their furnishings. I passed through the waiting room with its soft chairs and softly murmuring TV into an inner office with a desk, computer, and a framed picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was even more impersonal than my apartment.
Helen Ramirez, the sole worker here, was young and in a suit. She didn’t smile when I walked in. She didn’t ask me to sit down, so I sat myself. She didn’t offer me a coffee, so I gestured to the Keurig.
“Please, go ahead,” she said, staring at the screen in front of her.
When I sat again, she folded her hands upon the desk between us. They were very small hands, the nails perfectly manicured, hands that had been moisturized frequently and kept out of the cold.
She said, “Good health?”
“What?”
“You’re in good health?”
It wasn’t a greeting.
“I suppose so. Far as I know.”
“No injuries? Cuts, bruises? Strains? Heart problems, respiratory? No,” she drew a breath, “back problems?”
“Why would I have back problems?”
“A lot of people claim for back problems. The cause of back pain, as you know, is often undetectable. We only have the person’s word they have a problem.” She smiled, not warmly. “It’s a very common claim.”
I said, “No back pain.”
She tapped a key upon her keyboard.
“And you won’t be seeking counseling or other forms of mental health care? Or requesting leave on grounds related to the recent incident?”
“No! I thought this was a debrief, not—”
“First things first, Mr. Copeland. Now, sign the form, please.”
She printed off a sheet of paper. In each category she had typed an N. Apparently I was in perfect health, without so much as an ingrown toenail.
I read it, signed it, passed it back to her.
“Good,” she said. “At least we won’t have any more expense from this one.” She leaned back in her chair. She wasn’t really looking at me. It struck me she was much less comfortable with her role than she’d have liked me to believe, and it struck me, too, that people in that state can be a problem. As now, when she said, “Disappointing,” in a long, drawn out, meditative kind of way.
“Oh, I agree.”
“We’d hoped for better.”
“I wasn’t really chuffed myself.”
She pretended to read the screen. “I see you tried a retrieval on the target item. After considerable delay. And there were . . . side effects. I’ll tell you now, the company’s not pleased at all.”
“Right.”
As distinct from the rest of us, I thought, who are over the fucking moo.
But I was sensible for once, and said nothing.
Now, finally, she looked at me. Straight at me. Dark eyes that might, in better circumstances, have been pretty.