That might be a semi-witty comeback. I’m prepared to accept it as such because I don’t think I could ever have a relationship with a guy who has no sense of humor.
Relationship?
Back up there, girl.
Back right up against that… Okay, no. I’m now arguing with myself. Chiding myself. I’m in charge here, right? I shouldn’t even be thinking about him as anything other than a very interesting experiment. He’s my A-plus science project.
Some rational part of my brain points out that this—this person, this creation, whatever Adam is—is a walking crime. Real or unreal, living or fabricated, it doesn’t matter. Adam shouldn’t be here. Someone breathed life into him and sent him out into the world, and that was wrong.
But try as I might, I can’t stand here two feet away from him and not react. I don’t think there’s a person of any gender, or no gender, for that matter, who could stand here and not react to him.
He is a work of art.
If I do say so myself.
“Okay,” I say, mostly just to have something to say, because otherwise I’m just looking him up and down and up and down and it’s impolite to stare. “What did my mother tell you to do once you found me?”
“She wants me to ask you to come back.”
“That’s it? No excuses or explanations? Just ‘come back’? She didn’t say anything else?”
“She said some things which I don’t believe she wanted me to say to you. They were more in the nature of observations.”
Poor guy, he seems to think I’d leave that alone. “Observations?”
“Statements.”
I tilt my head quizzically. He starts to do the same, then stops himself. I inhibited his willingness to be influenced. I gave him that individualistic streak.
“Do you remember any of those statements? Her statements?”
“Yes. They were among the first things I ever heard.”
“Please tell me.”
“Okay.” He frowns slightly with the effort of recall. “She’s a headstrong little bitch, okay, well, so am I, she got that from me. She doesn’t think she owes me anything, she doesn’t think I gave her anything, it was always about her father. Well, too bad, honey, because he’s dead and I’m all that’s left. And now she’s off with Solo, that snake in the grass, I should have known better. I did, didn’t I? I knew I had to keep them separated and then like an idiot I let them meet. I will destroy that little monster, I swear, after all I’ve done for him, taking him in when his backstabbing, criminal parents… and who does Evening think cost her her father?”
I hold up my hand. “What?”
“Do you want me to repeat it? I probably missed a few words. I don’t have a photographic memory. But you know that already.”
“What did she say next?”
“That was it. She seemed agitated—”
“She’s more or less always agitated,” I interrupt.
“But then she stopped herself and said, ‘You don’t need to know any of that. And don’t tell Evening any of it.’”
“Then why did you tell me?”
He smiles. He hasn’t done that before. I gave him really good teeth. Perfect teeth. But I didn’t design that smile, not exactly. That smile, that’s some alchemy, some kind of magic interaction of, I don’t know, but oh yes. Shiver. And warmth. And a general all-over-body feeling like I really want to cut the distance between us and it’s suddenly very difficult to focus on my outrage.
I have to shake my head, hard, and replay his last statement to find my place again. “Why did you tell me if my mother said not to?”
“I’m not a machine, Evening. I’m a man. And you made me to be free. You did that, right?”
“Yes. Yes.” I made him to be free? No responsibility there. Yes, I made him to be free. I wonder what else I made him to be.
That day in the lab with Aislin comes back to me in high-definition imagery. Aislin ogling, me pretending to be so much more puritanical than I really am, because that’s part of my relationship with Aislin.
I see him now in memory. I see the eyeballs floating, disconnected. They look much better in his head. I see the chest I designed, the stomach I created. I picture all the choices I made.
It’s disturbing.
He’s here and real and beautiful and I made him beautiful. And this is why Solo would destroy my mother? Is this boy, this man, is his existence really some kind of a crime?
In what mad, unholy universe could this work of art—
My phone chimes. I hear it, but I don’t really care much. Then I realize its chimed before. Several times.
“Excuse me,” I say. For some reason, I feel I have to be formal with Adam. I don’t know what the rules are. I’ve never stood around chatting with my own amazingly attractive creation before.
I fumble for my phone, my fingers not finding it in my purse. I don’t want to—almost can’t—take my eyes off him. I apologize again for shifting my line of sight. How dare I not gaze upon you in wonder? How dare I look down at the rat’s nest that is my purse?
I find the phone. It’s a message.
To my shame, I hesitate. I think,
But somehow, from some depth of my soul, the better side of me asserts itself and tells me I have to go.
I’ll ask him to come with me.
No. No, wait, who created whom, here? I didn’t create this person just to turn into the same diffident, critical, shy girl I usually am. I’m in charge in this relationship.
Right? I ask myself. Right?
“Adam,” I say. “Come with me.”
– 36 –
She is not quite what I expected. Visually, yes. Visually I know that Evening is the very epitome of young, female beauty. I know this as surely as I know anything. I have been given this truth.
But she does not quite sound as I expected her to.
She does not act precisely as I expected her to act.
I’d learned that she was headstrong, difficult, naive, very smart, very talented, with all the potential in the world.
That phrase is in my head: all the potential in the world.
That girl has all the potential in the world. She could be anything. She can do anything she wants. Anything! But she is frittering her life away hanging out with that drug addict slut loser friend of hers.
Having now spoken with Evening, I agree that she is intelligent. I don’t know if she has all the potential in the world.
A thought occurs to me. “This person we are going to rescue. Is it your drug addict slut loser friend?”
We have been running down the pier toward the Embarcadero. Evening stops.
“What?” Her eyes narrow. “Where did you get that idea?” Before I can answer she interrupts with a slashing hand gesture. “Never mind. I can guess.”
We run some more. We reach a trolley just as it pulls to a stop. We leap aboard, then wait impatiently for
