the end of my smoke. I give it a twitch and it falls. 'I still can't get over the rejoo part. '
Inexplicably, she laughs. Brightens even. 'Why? Because I'm not so in love with myself that I just want to live forever and ever?'
'What were you going to do? Keep it in the house until—'
'Her,' she interrupts suddenly. 'Keep her in the house. She is a girl and her name is Melanie. '
At her name, the kid looks over at me. She sees my hat on the table and grabs it. Then climbs down off her mother's lap and carries it over to me. She holds it out to me, arms fully extended, an offering. I try to take it but she pulls the hat away.
'She wants to put it on your head. '
I look at the lady, confused. She's smiling slightly, sadly. 'It's a game she plays. She likes to put hats on my head. '
I look at the girl again. She's getting antsy, holding the hat. She makes little grunts of meaning at me and waves the hat invitingly. I lean down. The girl puts the hat on my head, and beams. I sit up and set it more firmly.
'You're smiling,' she says.
I look up at her. 'She's cute. '
'You like her, don't you?'
I look at the girl again, thinking. 'Can't say. I've never really looked at them before. '
'Liar. '
My cigarette is dead. I stub it out on the kitchen table. She watches me do it, frowning, pissed off that I'm messing up her messy table, maybe, but then she seems to remember the gun. And I do, too. A chill runs up my spine. For a moment, when I leaned down to the girl, I'd forgotten about it. I could be dead, right now. Funny how we forget and remember and forget these things. Both of us. Me and the lady. One minute we're having a conversation, the next we're waiting for the killing to start.
This lady seems like she would have been a nice date. She's got spunk. You can tell that. It almost comes out before she remembers the gun. You can watch it flicker back and forth. She's one person, then another person: alive, thinking, remembering, then bang, she's sitting in a kitchen full of crusty dishes, coffee rings on her countertop and a cop with a hand cannon sitting at the kitchen table.
I spark up another cigarette. 'Don't you miss the rejoo?'
She looks down at her daughter, holds out her arms. 'No. Not a bit. ' the girl climbs back onto her mother's lap.
I let the smoke curl out of my mouth. 'But there's no way you were going to get away with this. It's insane. You have to drop off of rejoo; you have to find a sperm donor who's willing to drop off, too, so two people kill themselves for a kid; you've got to birth the kid alone, and then you've got to keep it hidden, and then you'd eventually need an ID card so you could get it started on rejoo, because nobody's going to dose an undocumented patient, and you've got to know that none of this would ever work. But here you are. '
She scowls at me. 'I could have done it. '
'You didn't. '
Bang. She's back in the kitchen again. She slumps in her chair, holding the kid. 'So why don't you just hurry up and do it?'
I shrug. 'I was just curious about what you breeders are thinking. '
She looks at me, hard. Angry. 'You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking we need something new. I've been alive for one hundred and eighteen years and I'm thinking that it's not just about me. I'm thinking I want a baby and I want to see what she sees today when she wakes up and what she'll find and see that I've never seen before because that's new. Finally, something new. I love seeing things through her little eyes and not through dead eyes like yours. '
'I don't have dead eyes. '
'Look in the mirror. You've all got dead eyes. '
'I'm a hundred and fifty and I feel just as good as I did the day I went on. '
'I'll bet you can't even remember. No one remembers. ' Her eyes are on the gun again, but they come up off it to look at me. 'But I do. Now. And it's better this way. A thousand times better than living forever. '
I make a face. 'Live through your kid and all that?'
'You wouldn't understand. None of you would. '
I look away. I don't know why. I'm the one with the gun. I'm running everything, but she's looking at me, and something gets tight inside me when she says that. If I was imaginative, I'd say it was some little bit of old primal monkey trying to drag itself out of the muck and make itself heard. Some bit of the critter we were before. I look at the kid — the girl — and she's looking back at me. I wonder if they all do the trick with the hat, or if this one's special somehow. If they all like to put hats on their killers' heads. She smiles at me and ducks her head back under her mother's arm. The woman's got her eyes on my gun.
'You want to shoot me?' I ask.
Her eyes come up. 'No. '
I smile slightly. 'Come on. Be honest. '
Her eyes narrow. 'I'd blow your head off if I could. '
Suddenly I'm tired. I don't care anymore. I'm sick of the dirty kitchen and the dark rooms and the smell of dirty makeshift diapers. I give the Grange a push, shove it closer to her. 'Go ahead. You going to kill an old life so you can save one that isn't even going to last? I'm going to live forever, and that little girl won't last longer than seventy years even if she's lucky — which she won't be — and you're practically already dead. But you want to waste my life?' I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. Possibility seethes around me. 'Give it a shot. '
'What do you mean?'
'I'm giving you your shot. You want to try for it? this is your chance. ' I shove the Grange a little closer, baiting her. I'm tingling all over. My head feels light, almost dizzy. Adrenaline rushes through me. I push the Grange even closer to her, suddenly not even sure if I'll fight her for the gun, or if I'll just let her have it. 'this is your chance. '
She doesn't give a warning.
She flings herself across the table. Her kid flies out of her arms. Her fingers touch the gun at the same time as I yank it out of reach. She lunges again, clawing across the table. I jump back, knocking over my chair. I step out of range. She stretches toward the gun, fingers wide and grasping, desperate still, even though she knows she's already lost. I point the gun at her.
She stares at me, then puts her head down on the table and sobs.
The girl is crying too. She sits bawling on the floor, her little face screwed up and red, crying along with her mother who's given everything in that one run at my gun: all her hopes and years of hidden dedication, all her need to protect her progeny, everything. And now she lies sprawled on a dirty table and cries while her daughter howls from the floor. The girl keeps screaming and screaming.
I sight the Grange on the girl. She's exposed, now. She's squalling and holding her hands out to her mother, but she doesn't get up. She just holds out her hands, waiting to be picked up and held by a lady who doesn't have anything left to give. She doesn't notice me or the gun.
One quick shot and she's gone, paint hole in the forehead and brains on the wall just like spaghetti and the crying's over and all that's left is gunpowder burn and cleanup calls.
But I don't fire.
Instead, I holster my Grange and walk out the door, leaving them to their crying and their grime and their lives.
It's raining again, outside. Thick ropes of water spout off the eaves and spatter the ground. All around me the jungle seethes with the chatter of monkeys. I pull up my collar and resettle my hat. Behind me, I can barely hear the crying anymore.
Maybe they'll make it. Anything is possible. Maybe the kid will make it to eighteen, get some black market rejoo and live to be a hundred and fifty. More likely, in six months, or a year, or two years, or ten, a cop will bust down the door and pop the kid. But it won't be me.
I run for my cruiser, splashing through mud and vines and wet. And for the first time in a long time, the rain feels new.
