Longevity

“Understood,” Livvy said.

They’d reached the curtained and ironwork-covered door, and Chris’ voice was still exceptionally calm as he called through it. “Marcy, it’s Chris, and my partner, Livvy. We’re just outside the door. Can we come in? We need to understand what’s happened.”

He paused. There was no response.

“No hurry. Take your time and think about it if you need to. When you’re ready, just open the door so that we know it’s okay to come in. We’ll wait right here.”

Another minute passed. The weeping seemed to have stopped.

“Marcy…,” Chris began, when the door swung open.

With all of the window coverings engaged and most the lights off, the room was dark and Livvy found it more than a little claustrophobic. At the unlit end of the room opposite the door they just entered she could see several shadowy forms on the sofa, one slumped over at an awkward angle at one end and the other, slighter form, huddled against the arm rest at the opposite end. Neither was moving, although the slighter form had moved forward reflexively when they came in.

The woman with the gun, Marcy, was clutching a decorative pillow and sitting in an armchair. There was some dimmed light emanating from an antique crystal chandelier over a small dining set at their end of the room. It was bright enough to reveal half of Marcy’s face and the gun still in her grip, lying in her lap, but not much else. Like the slight form on the sofa, she was tiny. Livvy wasn’t all that tall herself, but with Marcy the impression of fragility was paramount, from the ponytail of fine blonde curls cascading down her back, the one visible pale blue eye swollen and reddened, and the smooth cheek glistening with salt tracks. Livvy thought she must look a lot like the 21 year- old Chris first met over 50 years ago. Including, probably, the tear stains.

“Marcy, I’m just going to bring some chairs over, so we can sit and listen,” Chris said quietly, closing the front door and slowly bringing two of the dining chairs over and placing them about a meter in front of her.

Sitting there, they were positioned so that their faces were illuminated by the dining room light. They kept their hands in their laps.

“Thank you for coming,” Marcy said. Her voice was hoarse. “You helped me before, do you remember? It was so long ago, but I remember as though it were yesterday. You explained that if I got that stupid enhancement reversed I wouldn’t get into any trouble with the law, even a fine. Even though it was unlicensed, and I should have known better. You were so nice about it, and Jack was so upset, because we were barely affording the resets at that point, and the reversal could have cost so much more. I had listened to them when they advertised, they guaranteed, that it would make me more attractive. So stupid. I did it for Jack, as a surprise. Everything I did was for Jack.”

She started sobbing again, almost crooning and rocking back and forth, hugging the tear-stained pillow with her free arm.

“Marcy, what happened here?” Chris asked. His voice was still very calm. Marcy started talking again, at first looking at him, but after the first sentence she began directing everything at Livvy.

“I loved him so much. You know how it is. He said he didn’t want children. He said I was all he needed, and why should we give up 50 years of allotment, 50 years of life, just to have a child, a child that would leave us after 20 years or so and have their own life? He said he just wanted to spend a lifetime with me. He said we’d have our 200^th birthdays together. So we didn’t have children. Instead, we saved for the resets, so we could stay young for each other.

“But in the end, he didn’t really care that the resets kept me young. He didn’t want me at all. He wanted someone new. Which made it all a lie. All those years gone, and all the time a lie. And now I’ve shot him, and I can’t reverse that, can I? So stupid.”

Livvy swallowed. “No,” she said, and waited.

“I can’t bring him back and let him go his own way, and I can’t take back all those years with the lie.”

She rocked and hugged the pillow and wept.

“So sorry. What have I done? What have I done?”

“Marcy,” Livvy said gently when the fresh outburst of sobs had quieted a little, “sometimes all we can do is try not to make it any worse. Sometimes… some days, it’s too late to do anything else, but we can still do that. In my experience, if we can just do that, something comes along later that shows us how to go on. Can you do that now? Just let it go and not make it worse?”

“I’ve run out of tears. I feel so ugly and old. You’re beautiful. Are you married?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“But I bet you’ve been in love.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you haven’t, or you’d know. You must be very young. Here, take this away, before I do something stupid again.” Marcy lifted the gun, holding it with only her thumb and index finger as though she wanted to avoid touching it, and held it out to Livvy. It almost slid from her grip from its own weight. Livvy caught it just in time.

“So stupid. I’m sorry about all this trouble. Chris, thank you for coming,” Marcy said, turning back to Chris for a moment. “And you, young lady, will you walk out with me, please? No one will look at me with you next to me.”

“Sure. Are you ready?”

“Yes. Now. Now,” she said, standing up and starting to move. “I can’t bear this house of lies. And I’ve already caused so much trouble, for so many people.

“We spent our lives just wrapped up in each other, or so I thought, but it was just a lie. We should have had children. That would have been someone new, wouldn’t it?” she looked at Livvy questioningly, but didn’t wait for an answer. To Livvy it was as though Marcy knew that as long as she kept talking, she wouldn’t be crying, or thinking about what was behind them on the sofa.

“Maybe Jack would have been happier with children, even though he didn’t believe it. I should have just gone ahead, and let him see how it would be with a child.” At the door, Marcy looked back, letting her eyes slide passed the sofa until they reached Chris, who was standing very still and watching her.

“Chris, thank you. I’m sorry I bothered you again. So much trouble. Whydid they bring so many people? You helped me before. Jack was so angry, do you remember? I think you even told me to think about leaving, but I didn’t listen. Thank you for trying.

“Thank you, too, dear. If I had had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be just like you. What’s your name? Did you say it already? I’m sorry I forgot. I’ll want to know, later.”

“I’m Olivia. Livvy.”

“That’s lovely. You are perfectly lovely. I’m ready to go out, now. I’m sorry for all the trouble. I know I’ve been such a bother to everyone. Wasted everyone’s time.”

“It’s all right. We understood. Here, we’ll go together,” Livvy said when they got to the door and Marcy hesitated. Livvy crooked her arm and offered it so that Marcy could put a hand on it as though she were an elderly person who needed help to walk, and they left the house together.

*****

Later, in the car when they were back on the glassene and Livvy had had a chance to put some time between herself and all of that pain, she asked Chris about the Pheromone Fiasco and what he had done for Marcy at that time.

“Strange things, pheromones, and you know at that time there was still so much that was poorly understood, even by the experts, although there sure were a lot of molebiol practitioners trying to sell chem-enhancements and riding the wave of fads with their own variations. Some of the so-called pheromone enhancements that women, and a few men, paid good money for did nothing for them except attract insects.”

Livvy choked.

“Yes, well you wouldn’t have laughed at the time, Hutchins.”

“I don’t know. Give me some credit,” Livvy said.

“Anyway, some of them had other unpredictable effects, especially on certain men. Idiosyncratic effects,