Eavesdropping onlookers chortled. Neethan lowered his voice, somewhat panicked. “Seriously, bro, I need to figure out what kind of real I am.”
A rumble of conversation passed through the floating assemblage. Woo-jin caught pieces of it. Supposedly the messiah was near. “The king! The king! He has arrived!” Perplexed grins and bursts of laughter all around. A waft of combo hash-crack smoke. “In Central Park? Dude, I am so there.” Someone, an actress maybe, wearing little more than a shoe, opened a high window and squeezed out to drift moonward in the night. Others followed, cackling, anxious for their chance to witness the messiah’s return. Eventually the exodus left Woo-jin and Neethan alone, floating on the ceiling, while someone snored inside the chandelier.
“The messiah, huh?” Neethan sighed. “I was supposed to abort that son of a bitch.”
Eventually they floated to the floor. Woo-jin walked in a circle to shake out his legs as gravity reasserted itself. Neethan tossed cubes into a glass and poured something brownish on top of them.
“Maybe you’ll find your people,” Woo-jin said.
“I’m not a person, I’m a character. And I am fabulously famous and sexy and wealthy,” Neethan said almost sadly, then killed his drink.
“How should I get home to Seattle?”
“Easy. Just catch the Q from Fifty-ninth.”
That night Woo-jin said good-bye to New York Alki, hopping on a subway just before it left the platform. Here and there folks crammed words into crossword puzzles or slept listening to iPods. After a time Woo-jin closed his eyes and let his head rock back and forth as it rested against the glass. Later, a sense of motionlessness woke him. He clambered out of the train into a deep darkness that confusingly revealed streets and houses. He headed toward the rivery car sounds and found himself on Aurora, Seattle’s avenue of hookers, gun shops, and moving-van companies, then veered south as day broke over his left shoulder, the purple serration of the Cascades rising beyond the repaired and repellent city. Most of these neighborhoods were abandoned but here and there a house suggested the presence of a family sleeping inside, with mowed lawns and new shingles, vehicles glossy with dew parked out front. Aurora turned into 99 and Woo-jin dipped beneath the city and when he came out of the tunnel it was morning with seagull cries and the salty, creosote stench of the waterfront. After this brief view of the sound the roadway dipped under the dome and Woo-jin trudged through artificially lit Pioneer Square, stopped to buy a cookie, passed the stadiums, came out on the other side of the dome onto Fourth Avenue, and crossed Lucile into Georgetown.
He expected the trailer to still be gone but there it was, parked in the spot that had recently been a patch of littery dirt. He stood numb from walking and blinked in the dust. After a moment the door creaked open, revealing a statuesque woman in a glittery silver bikini.
Patsy spoke. “Woo-jin! Where the heck have you been? Why are you wearing that stupid suit? Take a look at what they did to me! Oh my God, Woo-jin, they made me not a pharmer anymore! Check this body out! Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about! They took off the penises and tissues and everything! Oh, my God I’m so hungry! Don’t you tell me you didn’t bring me leftovers to eat! Don’t just stand there grinning like an idiot, Woo-jin Kan. Feed me! Feed me!
Towels, water, rubbing alcohol, blood, gauze. Abby dressed Rocco’s wounds in the bathroom of the apartment, tossing saturated clothes and absorbent materials into the tub. He murmured codes into the pocket transmitter then slept wrapped in a comforter on the couch while the Bionet went to work rebuilding tissues. Abby stood over him, watching him sleep, knowing that if she was going to kill him, it would have to be now.
Midway through the bread at their favorite Meatpacking District wine bar, Sylvie told Rocco about a manuscript she’d just accepted.
“I missed you,” Rocco said.
Sylvie wanted to say she missed him, too, but that wouldn’t have been entirely true. Part of her—most of her—didn’t even know who the hell he was. Some guy plowing his fingers through cheek stubble, considering the Malbecs. Who was he again? Oh, right, he was Rocco. She knew him? Yes, everything about him looked familiar. She anticipated the eyelid flutter thing he did when he laughed. A script of possible behaviors whirred away somewhere cranial, and thinking about how or why she knew him seemed to disrupt it.
“I’m Sylvie Yarrow now.”
“You’re Sylvie Yarrow.”
“I’m Sylvie Yarrow?”
“You’re Sylvie Yarrow.”
They ordered the Australian pinot noir pimped by the sommelier. The candle guttered, sending up a foul feather of smoke.
“If I’m Sylvie Yarrow, who are you?”
“I’m Rocco. Your boyfriend, remember?”
“But—”
“What is it?”
“My boyfriend is Bertrand.”
“You were with Bertrand but you broke up. Now you’re with me.”
“I think there’s something wrong with me. I don’t feel like myself.”
“Who do you feel like?”
“I feel like I’m between two someones. And where are we?”
“At the wine bar—”
“I know that, but more generally. We’re in the city, right?”
“Have some wine,” Rocco said.
“Seriously. This is Manhattan?”
“That’s correct.”
“The air doesn’t smell right to me.”
“You had nightmares last night. You kept moaning in your sleep. What were they about?”
“Who are you supposed to be?”
“I’m your boyfriend. Rocco. The nightmares. Tell me.”
Sylvie quaffed red. “I was in a morgue. There was a coroner. He kept pulling out slabs. On every one of them was the same woman. Dozens of identical corpses.”
“Sylvie?”
“I feel weird about you calling me that.”
“All I’ve ever wanted for you is a happy life. Out of all the lives in New York City I reviewed, this one was the happiest. So I made arrangements to assign you this life.”
“What do you mean ‘assign’?”
“The world you’ve known isn’t the world you’re actually living in. Your name is Sylvie Yarrow and you’re an editor at a publishing house. You live in the twenty-first century. You have an extraordinarily rich and rewarding life. Go deeper into this self. Relax your ego. Drift into this welcoming new person.”
“I can’t remember my real name.” Sylvie squinted. “It’s like a painful tip-of-the-tongue feeling.”
“Can’t you see what kind of heaven this is? All of it re-created just for you. You’re free to live in this place as it was at the height of its glory.”
The salads came.
“That looks good,” Rocco said. “What kind did you order again?”
“Arugula Gorgonzola something something.”
Rocco, his voice low, said, “Take this life. It’s yours. All the memories, the belongings. How many people have this kind of opportunity? How many people would die to trade lives with someone happier?”
“I’m Sylvie Yarrow.”
“You’re Sylvie Yarrow.”
How arduous this process was, turning one person into another. Way way more complicated than manipulating some douchebag’s actions via the Bionet. DJing was all about making another person succumb to your will. This kind of work, on the other hand, was like translating a book from one language into another, except instead of languages one translated entire personalities, and instead of words one worked with white matter flickering in gray matter. Rocco didn’t entirely understand the personalities, so it was a little like coding in real time
