Prototype

started backward, more in surprise than anything; an unaccountable shame, like a slap in the face. When she rubbed a tingling spot at the outer corner of one eye her finger came back with a spot of blood, seeping from a tiny paper cut. It was an awakening — he might really do her harm.

“Calm down, Clay,” speaking firmly, with neither anger nor trembling. “I do realize you’re upset about this… ” On and on, empathetic, soothing. She stooped to gather the stray pages, scanned them quickly, found them to be photocopies of the introductory overviews from each of the prior twelve case studies.

Adrienne looked up and saw him glaring, at last rooted to one spot. Not knowing if it was good or bad.

“Where did these come from?”

“I got them in the mail.”

“And there was nothing else with them?”

He jabbed a finger toward the papers. “You haven’t gotten to it yet.”

She shuffled until she found it. The note posed only more questions; a skimpy cover letter, a single sentence typed near the top of a sheet of plain white paper: In case they haven’t already told you, you’re not alone in the world. There was no signature.

She was at a complete loss to explain this, the sort of thing that might be laughed off as a cruel joke were the information not available to such an exclusive few, all of whom should know better than to tamper with someone with such a vulnerable — and volatile — state of mind.

“Did you bring the envelope this came in?”

“No.” His laboring breath seemed very loud to her; even his lungs sounded stressed. “No return address, if that’s what you’re wondering. The mailing label was typed. It was postmarked from Boston.”

The city in which Helverson’s had been discovered. The name of the lab escaped her at the moment, though she could not believe anyone there would perform such a grossly negligent stunt. People got hurt this way, someone learning too much, too soon.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“I know you’re feeling betrayed,” she said. Trying to imagine such an all-inclusive betrayal: his family, the world, nature itself. And now me. “You may not believe me, but I hope you do. I was about ready to tell you, after another session or two. It wasn’t a question of keeping this a secret from you, Clay. Never that. I was waiting until I felt the time was right — that you’d been stable enough, for long enough, that you could handle the news.” Better than you’re handling it now.

“Good idea!” he screamed. “Great fucking idea, wait and let somebody else do it, everybody knows except me, everybody but the mutant!”

For two months she had watched him wage his battles, those intensely private wars with himself, with his impulses, with fears and memories and truths. She had seen him emerge with victories, draw stalemates, and while he had at times been bested, always, always, she had believed he would in the end win out. Part of it was faith in Clay, the rest faith in her own dedication.

There could be no greater heartbreak, then, than to realize she may have been deluded. He might actually lose, helpless to save himself, she powerless to prevent it.

Clay grabbed one of the round-topped stools sitting at the bar, upended it so that he held it by the ends of two legs.

“They just decide they want to push my buttons' — he brought the stool crashing down against the bar — “see if that fucks me over too' — the stool’s heavy wooden framework cracked apart, and he battered it down again, again — “this is just another experiment' — shrapnel and splinters rained, and the cushioned seat flew in a wobbly arc to slam against the far kitchen wall — “so you go back and tell them it worked! Adrienne!”

As the stool had broken apart, he’d been left with a little less in hand for the next downswing. She had moved neither to stop him nor to flee, for if old theories were correct, property destruction was a safety valve to keep him from committing assault. The bar now scarred, his surrogate Adrienne, perhaps. Or a stand-in for everyone he remembered poking and prodding his body and mind. He will not strike me, he will not strike me, he will not strike me.

He finally stopped, pieces of the stool scattered over ten-foot radius. Clay flung the last flimsy shards to the floor, then turned on her, breath heavy upon her face, furnace-hot and feral, the breath of a lion.

“Give me that,” he said through clenched teeth, and tore the papers from her nerveless fingers.

To the door.

From outside herself, she watched Clay’s stride and her own after him, mentally fumbling in her inimitable way with the proper things to say, out of textbooks and lectures and experience. All had fled; just as well. They would serve her no better than muteness.

“Stay out of my head,” he told her, and didn’t look back.

* * *

She wished for so many things after that afternoon: at first, that Clay would cool down and return a more reasonable man, to resume where their sessions had left off. Later, as the days wore on, she simply wished that he would accept her phone calls.

Sometimes he would answer, and Adrienne took heart that at least he was not sitting home listening to it ring. Once he heard her voice, though, nothing could save the connection. His hang-ups were worrisome things by their very method. No receiver slammed back down in rage, as she might have expected. Instead, she could feel its pause midway between his ear and the cradle, as if he lingered deliberately, and each time she would think, This might be the one, just before he hung up once more, softly, scarcely a click. It was torture; he would know that.

She made irate phone calls to Ferris Mendenhall and Arizona Associated Labs, unsatisfying conversations that got her nowhere. No, no one had okayed a mailing of case overviews to Clay Palmer. They would check into it. Hang in there, be patient, see if he comes around, and if he doesn’t, monitor him via his peer group if possible. A few times she came close to phoning MacNealy Biotech but quelled the urge. Hurling hazy accusations could only make a bigger fool of her than she already felt.

She checked with the others, with Erin and Graham, with Nina and Twitch. Twitch? She felt somehow unentitled to call him that, but didn’t know his real name; perhaps none of them did. And all any of them could tell her was that Clay was making himself scarce from them, as well. Give him time, maybe he would come around; he always had before.

Don’t you care any more than that? she felt like crying into the phone. He told me you were at least there for one another, you covered each other’s backs and cauterized each other’s wounds.

Then it occurred to her: Maybe they were doing exactly that. Maybe their apathetic voices were a shield erected around him, to keep her away.

She made several trips to his apartment, knocking on a door that he never answered. Sometimes silence from within, at times the chatter of televised news, no guarantee he was there but she knew he was, the evidence as indisputable as it was invisible. She could feel his formless and confused hostility radiating through the door: I hate you because I don’t know what else to do.

Denver lay in the grip of deep autumn, winter on its way, but she felt frozen out already, every leafless tree a stark monument to a withdrawal so cold it burned.

Sarah held her through the lengthening nights, and often throughout each day, telling Adrienne, “You weren’t wrong, you did nothing wrong, you got undermined by somebody you could never even have accounted for. Some jerk who wouldn’t even sign his name.”

Until one night, late, very late, the two of them in bed and setting aside books they both were too distracted to concentrate on, Sarah stroked her hair and Adrienne shut her eyes and curled against Sarah’s side. It was safe here, in this warm nook.

“You know,” Sarah said, “that I’d never want to usurp your authority with Clay. But… why don’t I give it a shot?”

Adrienne lay very still, for a time content to listen to the wind moaning around the eaves, the frozen mountain wind. Finally she accepted the inevitable and nodded.

“Okay,” she said, feeling not so much that she was giving up on Clay, as that she was giving him away.