Circuit Of Heaven (29 page)

“It wasn’t so hard. You wanted to tell me. You don’t like Winston Donley very much, do you?”

“That is correct.”

“There’s just one more thing, since you’re still my agent. What’s the name of the club in Baltimore where we’re supposed to play next? Your letter doesn’t say.”

“I only arranged the date in Washington. What letter are you referring to?”

She took the letter out of her bag and showed it to him.

He shrugged as he read it over. “I never wrote this. If you’d like, I could try to locate another band for you. I was told the band would only be available for one week.”

“Who told you that?”

“Rick. My instructions were to deal only with Rick. Between you and me, a rather obnoxious young man. Terribly hard to get ahold of.”

As Justine rode back to D.C., memories kept coming back to her in bits and pieces, like trash washed up on a riverbank: A room with yellow wallpaper and lace curtains. Planting a rosebush. A child wrapped around her leg, another perched on her hip. But these memories went nowhere. She couldn’t connect them to the moment before or the moment after. Why bother? They weren’t hers. Who was
she
anyway? A four-day-old whore cobbled together from a horny teenager, an hysterical woman, and a senile widow. What was it Lila said?—
somebody’s cut-and-paste fantasy
. Even her musical “career,” her precious singing, was a lie, a cover story Nemo would find appealing. The Aimee Mann tunes had been planted in her head because Nemo was a fan. She even looked like her.

Winston had set it up to make his little sister happy—using his influence to persuade Lenny, introducing her to Nemo after the son of a bitch sampled the goods himself. It all made sense. It’d almost worked. If she hadn’t run into Lila and stumbled across the truth, she would’ve let Nemo come inside. She’d had some reservations, but she couldn’t kid herself, she would’ve let him come in. She kept seeing his face when she told him not to, so wounded and heartsick. But that’d be nothing compared to what he was going to look like when she told him what she really was. And she had to tell him. Whatever the hell she was, she still had to live with herself.

She might as well go back to her hotel, wait it out until it was time to go to Nemo’s folks again. She’d get him alone, maybe ask to see the gardens again, and tell him the truth. She imagined confronting his parents, confronting Winston, giving them a dose of her righteous anger. But the thought made her tired. What was the point, really? There was only one thing she wanted in the whole world, and she was about to throw it away. To destroy it. That would take all the resolve she could muster.

There was a man across the aisle. She could see his reflected face in the window, looking at her. She wondered if he knew—whether it showed to everyone but her and Nemo—what she was. She remembered the men at the bar, cheering and whistling—for her singing, she’d thought. Maybe they were just entertained at the spectacle of a singing whore. Or perhaps the man behind her was just looking. That’s what men did, after all. And she might turn and smile at him if she wanted. She met his eyes in the glass, and he quickly looked away. It was her tears streaming down her cheeks into the corners of her mouth, so that she tasted her pain like some brackish marsh, still and hot. It was simply her tears which turned him aside, effortlessly. And for that, at least, she was grateful.

WHEN
SHE
GOT
OFF
THE
TRAIN
,
SHE
COULDN’T
BRING
HERself to go to the room where she and Nemo had made love only yesterday. She couldn’t bring herself to go anywhere they’d been together. She walked the streets without stopping, afraid if she did, she’d fall apart, and she couldn’t let that happen just yet. Not until she’d told Nemo the truth.

It occurred to her that he had almost certainly lied to her. He hadn’t meant to, but he had:
Nothing could change how I feel about you. Nothing
, he said. She’d already forgiven him his lie. We can’t know such things. There’s always something that can’t be forgiven, can’t be changed or taken back. She herself had vowed she’d never make him cry, and now she was going to break his heart, had already done so by her very existence.

She was not aware she had a destination until she reached it. She steadied herself on the brick wall as she descended the stairs and pushed open the door. The tiny bell rang over her head, and she fell to her knees, sobbing like a child, and Mr. Menso took her in his arms. “There, there,” he whispered, and she buried her face in his chest, letting herself fall apart, now that he was here to hold her.

It took Mr. Menso the better part of an hour to get her up off the floor and into a chair, to quiet her sobs and hear her story in fits and starts between the bouts of uncontrollable tears. He was patient and kind, hovering over her like an old nurse. But the more she talked the more bitter she became. Why was she wasting his time anyway? What could anybody do for her now? She was going to tell Nemo, and that would be that. She was a pack of lies, a trick, a whore. The farmer’s daughter come to life for one cruel joke, and then forgotten. Who the hell should care?

“Stop it,” Mr. Menso snapped, thumping his cane on the floor. She sat in stunned silence. “I’ve heard enough.” He leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “Is that who I’m talking to? A pack of lies?” He snorted in disgust. “You’re real, Justine. Is your pain real enough? Your broken heart? You’re more real than half the people walking around in here, believe me.” He looked out the high window as if he could see them trudging past, leading their meaningless lives.

He turned back to her, looked her up and down as if she were on an auction block. “So what is it you lack? A body?” He rapped his forehead with his cane. “In spite of all appearances, Justine, no one in here has a body. A soul? You’re ready to put your life on the line rather than lie to the man you love, and you’re going to sit there and tell me you don’t have a soul?” He leaned in close, his voice low and intense, the old-man quaver gone. “Everybody in here’s immortal, Justine. But let me tell you a little secret: most of them don’t have a goddamn thing to live for. You
do
, and you want me to feel sorry for you? Love is a gift from God. Even when it seems like a curse, you don’t throw it away. You don’t give up on it. You don’t say,
No thank you, God, it’s not working out
. You fight for it. Otherwise you’re nothing.” He thumped his cane on the floor, punctuating his words.

She jumped with each thud of his cane. It was that as much as his words that brought her up short, made her see herself through his eyes. She wiped her eyes with her palms, pushed her hair back from her face. “How can I fight for it?”

“The last time you were here, you asked me to do you a favor, and I’ve done it. I’ve found someone who’s coming in. You can download yourself. You can go to him.”

He couldn’t be serious. “You don’t understand, Mr. Menso. Nemo won’t want to have anything to do with me—in here or out there.”

“But if he would, you’d still be willing to do it? You haven’t lost your nerve?”

“I’d do it this instant if I thought it would make any difference.”

“So your love’s so strong you’d die for him, but his is so puny, he can’t forgive you for being what you are—is that what you’re telling me?”

She shook her head. Why was he badgering her like this? “No. He loves Justine. Justine doesn’t even exist. I’m a Construct.”

“So what? His best friend is a Construct, why not his lover?”

The idea startled her. She recoiled from it even as she wanted to seize hold of it. She knew what he was doing. He was trying to give her hope, but she was afraid to hope. It would only make things worse in the end. “This is different,” she said.

He sighed. “Why don’t you let
him
decide that? Justine doesn’t even exist, remember? Maybe she shouldn’t be making all the decisions. Maybe, if given half a chance, he will love you anyway. Trust me, love can be funny that way. The boy’s not an idiot. He knew you weren’t just the girl next door before this. Did Romeo stop loving Juliet when he discovered she was a Capulet?”

Justine bowed her head in the face of her worst fear. Her tears came back and streamed down her face. “I’m afraid he will.”

Mr. Menso put his arms around her. “Of course you are, my dear. That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said this evening. He’s probably terrified himself about now—terrified of losing you. Think about him—mad with love for you, wondering why you’ve run away, just as he was about to pledge his life to you. Go to him with some faith. Tell him the truth, and he may surprise you. Your only crime, after all, is to love him.”

MR.
MENSO
ACCOMPANIED
HER
UP TO
THE
STREET
AND
told her to get some rest and not despair, that he would help her, whatever she decided to do. She hugged him hard, thankful for such a dear friend. “God be with you!” he called after her. The phrase kept running through her mind as she walked beneath the trees and the towering buildings, the sky the color of heaven in Lenny’s painting. She struggled to convince herself that it would be as Mr. Menso said, and Nemo’s love would be strong enough to overcome even this. But most of the time, she imagined his rage, his sense of betrayal. She’d been created to trick him. Even if she could persuade him that she was completely innocent, he’d still leave her and never come back. The deceit that was supposed to lure him into the Bin would keep him out for the rest of his life. She’d never see him again.

And then, when she’d outlived her usefulness, ruined Winston’s plans, she’d be disposed of. At least she’d learned the truth before Nemo had come into the Bin. He would’ve certainly hated her then, hated her forever. This way, at least, she could stop the deceit, and though he couldn’t love her, he wouldn’t hate her. Let them wipe me clean without a trace, she thought. Someday, Nemo will know how much I loved him, and remember his own love.

She cut through a garden path, past beds of pansies and gladiolas and hyacinth.
God be with you
. The phrase kept coming back, prodding her memory. It was Sarah’s letters, she remembered. She always ended them that way. And with the memory of those letters, a chain of memories flashed through her mind, and she remembered Sarah’s death. She was one of the fifty-seven clergy who, when the Pope ordered the Church into the Bin, martyred themselves, setting fire to themselves on the steps of St. Peter’s. Sarah had written Justine the day before she did it, May 1, 2055. Justine closed her eyes, and she could picture Sarah’s tiny, precise script. A packet of letters tied up with green yarn.

Justine struggled to remember more, but her memory just stopped, like a road at a washed-out bridge. All that was left was the pain of losing Sarah in another life, and her terror of losing Nemo in this one. She put her fists to her temples and sank to her knees, wishing she could rip the thoughts out of her head and throw them in the dirt. “God be with me,” she whispered. The scent of hyacinth filled her nostrils.

BACK
AT
HER
HOTEL
,
JUSTINE
CHANGED
CLOTHES
AND
LAY
on her bed fully dressed, staring at the ceiling, waiting until it was time to go to Front Royal, to Nemo’s parents’ house, to tell Nemo the truth. She saw them swimming in the river, lying on the bank, the sand on their bodies glistening in the sun. He’d loved her then, she was sure of it. She clung to that certainty. If only that love could survive the truth, she’d gladly go to him, grow old together, die. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she let sleep come. Surely, she had nothing further to fear from her dreams.

“Justine!” a voice called to her, the old woman in her dream. Justine was standing in the hallway of the woman’s house. A square of light from the front door lay upon the wood floor. Sasha sprawled in the middle of it. “Justine!” the old woman called again. She sounded cheerful and excited. Justine followed the sound of her voice and found her seated in the living room on a sofa draped with an Indian blanket. Ishmael was stretched out on the coffee table, and Timothy was curled up in her lap. Her wrinkled face broke into a radiant smile at the sight of Justine. “I’m so glad you’ve come, Justine! Won’t you have some coffee with me? I love coffee in the afternoons.”

“I’d love to,” Justine said, but when she looked around, there was no sign of coffee or cups. “Is it in the kitchen?” she asked.

The old woman furrowed her brow, absentmindedly scratching Timothy’s head, as she tried to remember. “Could you make it, Justine? I sometimes forget how. I wrote it all down on a little card, but I mislaid the card.”

“Sure.” Justine felt at home in this house; it was familiar and comfortable. As she walked down the hall to the kitchen, she could hear the sound of water running, the click and clatter of metal on metal. Standing at the sink, assembling an ancient percolater, was Angelina. She tossed back her hair and looked over her shoulder at Justine. “Hi,” she said, laughing. “I’ve got it. Might as well make myself useful.” She opened a canister and started measuring out the coffee, counting to herself.

Justine studied her face, her large eyes and high cheekbones. She was incredibly beautiful. Justine thought of the angels on her birthday cake so long ago, Sarah touching her cheek.
You are a little angel
, she said. Angelina put the top on the percolator and plugged it in.

“Am I you?” Justine asked Angelina.

Angelina laughed, tossing back her hair again. It was a young laugh, giddy, almost childlike. “God, no,” she said. “You’re much more together than I ever was.” She watched the water gurgle up into the top of the percolator, smiling at her handiwork. “I wasn’t bad or anything. I just did a lot of stupid stuff. There’s just a lot I didn’t know. I was always going for the wrong guy, ‘cause they
were
the wrong guy. You know what I mean? Like, I never would’ve gone for Nemo. Too intense, too serious. He would’ve scared me big time.” She laughed and hugged herself. “But now it feels wonderful, like coming out of the cold water into the sun.” She looked at Justine with her large, innocent eyes. “I like it a here, Justine. I like it a lot. Everything’ll be okay. You’ll see. We’ve got a lot of faith in you.”