Prototype

all the bills here, it makes me something.”

She was right. Although he had yet to decide upon the term.

Twenty-One

These were the most unlikely of missives, and would take serious contemplation to assimilate into his worldview.

Had he believed in any thinking power greater than himself, this could have been a guardian angel come to his aid.

Had he believed in prayer, this might have been an answer.

But Clay believed in neither — so what other than a fluke could it be? He had a Boston postmark and nothing else, an entire city in which to plant his imaginings… who it must be, and why, and how this relayer had come by the information that Adrienne and her backers thought too sensitive to let him in on.

He had at first suspected it to be more of their chicanery: We’ll poke him this way, see how he responds. But it had continued as if according to a deliberate agenda, heedless of his reaction, by someone who might not even have a means of gauging it. Tantalizing rations of information, one envelope per week with something new. First the general overviews, then the pictures. This week, case studies of the five North American Helverson’s subjects known before he had been tagged as number six. Keep this up, before long he would be as informed as Adrienne. Maybe more so.

Maybe that was the plan.

He could face the east, as if toward Mecca, and come close to sensing some distant kindred heart, beating in a stranger’s chest. Who are you and how do you know my name, how do you know my aberration?

And just what does it matter to you?

Whoever it was, this person had touched his life from across the country, and while no name had yet been shared, in a sense he felt a little less alone, and far less dependent on psychotherapy. He had been snipped free from the bureaucratic umbilical cord of a think tank in a desert city into which he had wandered by chance. He didn’t need them anymore.

He had this.

And Clay realized why he could not believe in angels: They were obsolete. What was their job but to bring information, to herald announcements? Now they had been bettered. The messengers of the information age had fiber-optic wings; their chariots, jets filled with sacks of airmail; their trumpet knell from the sky, now the programming of satellites in orbit. The angels had fallen, clipped and shorn.

And if it would have been nice to believe in the comfort of their radiant presence, the welcome rustle of their wings, rather than in the cold hard hum of technology, at least the latter was dependable. It required no more than the touch of a button, and was there whether he believed in it or not.

Go ahead, he directed toward the east, more than a thought, not quite a whisper. You started this, now finish it. You know what I am, and whoever you are, you probably don’t know why I’m this way any better than I do… but can you at least tell me if I can be anything more…?

Or if this is all there is, all there ever will be. All there ever can be.

Save me.

While the anger at a world he had not asked to join — not in this mutant body, at least — often seemed too much, more and more it seemed as if it simply were not enough.

* * *

She came into the apartment the way she had come into his life a few years back — quietly, hesitantly, even sadly, and Clay supposed his first thought was but an echo of an earlier one, maybe even the very first thing he had thought about her: She looks broken.

Footsteps soft and small across the floor — she was walking as if even her legs had been snapped and were not to be trusted. No video camera with her for a change, both arms busy hugging across her front. Erin shed her coat, then sank onto the couch beside him and they were bathed in the news anchor’s chatter from the TV. She remained so still he had to check to make sure she was breathing.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Her hair straggled like yellowed weeds from beneath her hat. “What do I smell like?”

Clay frowned, almost laughed. Finally bent close enough to put his nose to her, where Erin’s slim neck curved into shoulder.

“Soap,” he said. “Shampoo.”

Oh, she seemed to mouth, full lips pale, pressing together. When she looked at him, her face could have been no more naked had she been skinned alive.

“Is that all?”

He tried again and got nothing, nothing more than the city through which she had come, the city and the cold. She smelled of December, but didn’t they all?

“I think so,” he said. “Is there something I missed?”

No answer, just Erin, Erin on a winter’s evening as a chill gripped the attic apartment the way it always did when dusk turned black. Thin veins of frost rimed the windows, and she went to one such web, as if drawn, hypnotized. She looked at the frost as a jumper looks at a ledge; it became her entire world. She scraped a fingertip along the pane, a white crescent of ice thickening beneath her nail.

“Sometimes,” she said without turning, “sometimes I think every man should have a gay experience. Taking… taking the passive role. Just once, as long as he remembers it. Remembers what it’s like to have his body invaded.”

Sinking by the window then, down on her haunches and her head lowered into arms that were already pretzeled about her body; she turned halfway and tumbled back against the wall but barely made a noise, as if she weren’t really there. Posed for too many pictures, maybe, each one slicing away a few more layers of cells — a specimen donor for voyeurs’ fantasies.

When she raised her face, Erin’s eyes were red and her mouth was stretched wide. “What’s wrong with me?” she screamed. “I can’t even cry anymore! I tried for an hour and the tears wouldn’t come and I want them to, I want my tears back!”

He remained on the couch where she had left him, staring from across the living room. This would be how deer feel in headlights, snared by some approaching sensory overload, petrified and about to die for it.

He should go to her — Clay knew it as surely as he knew the scars on the back of his hand. He should touch her if she wanted to be touched, hold her if she wanted to be held, kiss her if she wanted to be kissed. It should be automatic. He shouldn’t even have to think about this, because where did thinking get him? Got him to realizing just how many broken parts he must really have inside, and maybe he’d shattered them all himself over the years, in one fit of rage after another, until nothing was left.

Slit me open, he thought, and would I even feel it then…?

Feel enough to connect them? Or would Erin find nothing more inside than a coagulated mass of scar tissue, so thick it defeated even the knife?

“What happened?”

“Tell me the truth.” She sounded so desperate to hear it. If she could hold onto words, her clenched fists would burst them like watery boils. “Just tell me the truth. Am I ugly? Do you think I’m ugly?”

Shaking his head: “No.” How could she even wonder? Never had he known her to exhibit the slightest insecurity about her looks, even when they were her stock-in-trade. Shedding her clothes came as easily as others found removing their shoes. He had always assumed if there were any doubts, she had locked them deep within, and built walls around the locks, and posted guards to protect the walls. He had thought her impregnable.

As secured as Troy.

“Liar!” she cried, as she curled onto her side on the floor, beneath the window. “Don’t let me down now, you