Adam logged off the kiosk. Auster had warned him not to become obsessed—and the man was the closest thing to a friend that he had right now. If everyone in the industry really staved in the skulls of everyone who’d crossed them, there’d be no one left to run the place.
He called a car and headed home.
9.
Under protest, at Adam’s request, Sandra spread the three sturdy boxes out on the floor, and opened them up to reveal the foam, straps, and recesses within. They reminded Adam of the utility trunks that the old man’s crews had used for stowing their gear.
“Don’t freak out on me,” she pleaded.
“I won’t,” Adam promised. “I just want a clear picture in my mind of what’s about to happen.”
“Really? I don’t even let my dentist show me his planning videos.”
“I trust you to do a better job than any dentist.”
“You’re too kind.” She gestured at the trunks like a proud magician, bowing her head for applause.
Adam said, “Now you have no choice, El Dissecto: You’ve got to take a picture for me once it’s done.”
“I hope your Spanish is better than you’re making it sound.”
“I was aiming for vaudevillian, not voseo.” Adam had some memories of the old man being prepared for surgery, but he wasn’t sure that it was possible to rid them of survivor’s hindsight and understand exactly how afraid he’d been that he might never wake up.
Sandra glanced at her watch. “No more clowning around. You need to undress and lie down on the bed, then repeat the code phrase aloud, four times. I’ll wait outside.”
Adam didn’t care if she saw him naked while he was still conscious, but it might have made her uncomfortable. “Okay.” Once she left, he stopped stalling; he removed his clothes quickly, and began the chant.
“Red lentils, yellow lentils. Red lentils, yellow lentils. Red lentils, yellow lentils.” He glanced past the row of cases to Sandra’s toolbox; he’d seen inside it before, and there were no cleavers, machetes, or chainsaws. Just magnetic screwdrivers that could loosen bolts within him without even penetrating his skin. He lay back and stared at the ceiling. “Red lentils, yellow lentils.”
The ceiling stayed white but sprouted new shadows, a ventilation grille, and a light fitting, while the texture of the bedspread beneath his skin went from silken to beaded. Adam turned his head; the same clothes he’d removed were folded neatly beside him. He dressed quickly, walked over to the connecting door between the suites, and knocked.
Sandra opened the door. She’d changed her clothes since he’d last seen her, and she looked exhausted. His watch showed 11:20 p.m. local time, 9:20 back home.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m still in here,” he said, pointing to his skull.
She smiled. “Okay, Adam.”
“Thank you for doing this,” he added.
“Are you kidding? They’re paying me all kinds of allowances and overtime, and it’s not even that long a flight. Feel free to come back here as often as you like.”
He hesitated. “You didn’t take the photo, did you?”
Sandra was unapologetic. “No. It could have gotten me sacked, and not all of the company’s rules are stupid.”
“Okay. I’ll let you sleep. See you in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
Adam lay awake for an hour before he could bring himself to mutter his code word for the milder form of sleep. If he’d wished, Loadstone could have given him a passable simulation of the whole journey—albeit with a lot of cheating to mask the time it took to shuffle him back and forth between their servers and his body. But the airlines didn’t recognize any kind of safe “flight mode” for his kind of machine, even when he was in pieces and locked inside three separate boxes. The way he’d experienced it was the most honest choice: a jump-cut, and thirteen hours lost to the gaps.
In the morning, Sandra had arranged to join an organized tour of the sights of San Salvador. Her employer’s insurance company was more concerned about her safety than Adam’s, and in any case it would have been awkward for both of them to have her following him around with her toolbox.
“Just keep the license on you,” she warned him before she left. “I had to fill out more forms to get it than I would to clear a drone’s flight path twice around the world, so if you lose it I’m not coming to rescue you from the scrapyard.”
“Who’s going to put me there?” Adam spread his arms and stared down at his body. “Are you calling me a Ken doll?” He raised one forearm to his face and examined it critically, but the skin around his elbow wrinkled with perfect verisimilitude.
“No, but you talk like a foreigner, and you don’t have a passport. So just … stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The old man had only visited the city once, and with Carlos leading him from nightspot to childhood haunt to some cousin’s apartment like a ricocheting bullet, he’d made no attempt to navigate for himself. But Adam had been disappointed when he’d learned that Beatriz was now living in an entirely different part of town; there’d be no cues along the way, no hooks to bring back other memories of the time.
Colonia Layco was half an hour’s drive from the hotel. There were more autonomous cars on the street than Adam remembered, but enough electric scooters interspersed among them to keep the traffic from mimicking L.A.’s spookily synchronized throbbing.
The car dropped him off outside a newish apartment block. Adam entered the antechamber in the lobby and found the intercom.
“Beatriz, this is Adam.”
“Welcome! Come on up!”
He pushed through the swing doors and took the stairs, ascending four flights; it wouldn’t make him any fitter, but old habits died hard. When Beatriz opened the door of her apartment he was prepared for her to flinch, but she just stepped out and embraced him. Maybe the sight
