Lust (6 page)

“What the—”

Gaia laughed and snapped the light on. “I guess someone uses this as an office or a classroom or something,” she said. “ ‘Always speak in your inside voice,' ” Gaia said, mocking the poster that hung in front of the room.

“Very helpful. Now how do we get from here to my apartment?”

“The two buildings share an air shaft. We need to get in there and climb up.”

Across the hall, in the interior of the building, another room had a painted-over window. “I'll bet that's where we want to be,” Gaia said. She knocked against it a
few times with her fist. When it wouldn't budge, she stood on a chair and scraped away the layers of paint. Then she wiggled the overpainted hasps until they gave. The window popped open with a creak.

She slid out the window easily and found herself in a gloomy area about the size of a studio apartment, cluttered with decades' worth of garbage. She heard something scuttling around her feet and willed herself not to look down. Jake joined her. They could see blue sky far above, but here, at the bottom of four flights of brick, the sun never shone.

“You had to live on the top floor?” Gaia asked.

“If I'd known, I would have moved into that basement,” he said. “Would have made this a lot easier, I know. And it was pretty nice.”

“Do you know how to rock-climb?”

“I think you know the answer to that. But our shoes are all wrong.”

“I know—I think we have to do this barefoot.”

“Okay, now that's gross.”

“See? I knew you couldn't handle it.”

Jake squinted at Gaia and pulled off his sneakers and socks. Then, without another word, he found a handhold between two loose bricks and began his journey upward.

“I wish we had some rappelling line,” Gaia muttered, then tied her own sneakers around her neck and followed him up.

It took an amazing amount of concentration. Gaia was an expert climber, but finding impressions on a rock wall was a lot easier than dealing with the repetitive bricks and their limited shapes and sizes. It was even slower going for Jake.

“I don't think anyone would have spotted me going into the building,” he said, as he wrestled his way toward the window of his apartment.

“Shows what you know,” Gaia said. She was already up there and was giving the window frame a few exploratory thumps. “These aren't even locked,” she scolded.

“Yeah, well, it's four flights up, over an air shaft,” he pointed out. “How paranoid am I supposed to be?”

“Once again, shows what you know.” Gaia's voice floated out through the open window; she had opened the window noiselessly and slipped inside in the space of a few seconds. Jake shook his head. Amazing.

A rope ladder—Jake recognized it as his family's never-used fire-escape plan—came tumbling down the wall, almost knocking Jake off balance.

“Hey!” he yelled. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“I thought it would be good if you could get up here before the end of the year,” Gaia suggested. “Just use it—you don't have to prove anything to me.”

“I'm not trying to prove anything to you,” he said. “I don't know how to use the rope.”

Gaia's head appeared two stories above him, black against the bright sky and framed in hanks of hair. “Jake, just grab it with one hand. You won't fall.” Her voice was so matter-of-fact, Jake felt she was acting as if she'd ordered the laws of gravity to suspend themselves. Any minute now, she'd lose her patience. Jake's slow climb obviously wasn't cutting the mustard. He was going to have to take the risk.

From now on, he was always going to have to take the risk—at least, for the next few days, if he wanted to keep up.

He let go with his left hand and felt his center of gravity shift. He was going to fall for sure. The lurch in his stomach told him so.

He grabbed a rung of the ladder.

He got it.

And he hung on for dear life.

“Okay, Montone.” He was going to have to be his own cheering section. He tried to do it coolly, under his breath, but he heard it come out in a squeak.

“Jake!” Gaia hissed from above. There was no more time to be nervous. Jake clutched the ladder and swung his body completely onto it, letting go of the safety of his tiny foot- and handholds and making a huge leap of faith. He scrambled up the ladder as quickly as he could.

His apartment was silent. He hadn't lived here that long with his dad, but it was still home, still filled with
stuff that had followed him wherever he'd lived. The rich wool Oriental rug that had been a wedding gift to his parents, the dark wood furniture and the photos of his family. But even in these familiar surroundings, Jake felt like he was trespassing. Why was that?

Well, because he was. He wasn't supposed to be here. He'd come to say good-bye.

“Come on,” Gaia said quietly, like she could tell he was having a moment of strangeness. “Get whatever you need, and let's go.”

Jake gathered some warm clothes, the bare minimum he'd need, and his toothbrush. His dad. It was time to make the call.

He sat down at the dining-room table and picked up the phone. His dad had given him a lot of freedom, so that he wouldn't have to lie. Now he was going to. He dialed the number at his dad's office and had the receptionist put him through.

“Dad, I got a call,” he said. “Remember that tae kwan do competition in Montreal I went to last year? They had a last-minute emergency and they need me to be a judge.”

Jake felt weird lying to his father in front of Gaia. He was revealing a side of himself that wasn't necessarily the most attractive.

“How'd that go?” Gaia asked when he hung up the phone.

Jake looked down for a long moment. He felt
exposed. “Fine,” he finally said. “Let's get out of here. Back out the window, barefoot, right?”

“Right.”

Back out the window, barefoot. That sounded like a recipe for disaster if there ever was one.

It also sounded like Gaia's life in a nutshell.

Ping-Pong

ED FARGO SPOTTED AN ENEMY AGENT
stepping out from behind a column on the subway platform. He raised his gun and shot as fast as he could—but the bullets wouldn't come out fast enough.

“Where's my Glock?” he shrieked. “Oh my God, I can't get to my Glock! What's going on?”

Somehow he fumbled. His fingers wouldn't go where he wanted them to, and he watched helplessly as the enemy agent fired again and again and again. His vision went red, and then he was dead.

“Dude,” Kai said. “You are the worst Xbox player ever.”

“Well, excuse me,” he shot back. “I spent my childhood skateboarding, not getting fat on Nintendo.”

Kai nodded in that way she had, where she kind of ducked her head twice and gave a slow blink. Ed
snapped off the video game and Kai's living room flickered into darkness. The only light came from the neon restaurant sign outside the window. It buzzed a little. Somehow that made the silence a little more oppressive.

“So,” he said. “You play that game a lot?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“It's pretty good.”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“They uh . . . they got a lot of the New York details right. There's nothing weird, like all of a sudden the Brooklyn Bridge goes to Jersey.”

“Yeah, right.” Kai gave a laugh. But she didn't add to the thought. Ed didn't know what he wanted her to say. But
something
would have been nice.

“So.”

“Yeah?”

“What do you want to do?”

Kai shrugged. “I don't know. What do you want to do?”

The dreaded ping-pong question of two bored people. Ed cringed. But he couldn't think of anything. They had seen every movie there was to see. They had done everything adventurous there was to do. There was no activity available to them besides hanging out, and that wasn't going too well.

“We could make out,” Kai suggested.

Ed looked at her. She was adorable. Her shiny, sleek
black hair fell to her shoulders, with two pigtails at her temples held up with Hello Kitty clips. He could see that under her white baby tee and army pants she had a seriously smokin' body. Of course, as a red-blooded American male, he was completely willing to spend his hanging-out time tongue-wrestling with a cute skateboard girl.

“Okay,” he said, and smooched her.

But there was something unelectric about the whole thing. Sure, her lips were soft. Yeah, his body responded to hers as they lay together on the plaid couch. And he liked Kai. This was fun and all, but something was missing from the whole equation.

Kai was great to do stuff with, but the minute there was a lull, Ed had to admit it: There just wasn't much of a spark.

Oh, no.

Heather. Gaia. Tatiana. What did they all have in common? They all drove him crazy with their various insane behaviors. Bitchy, moody, or just plain schizophrenic, each one of them had a serious personality disorder that gave him a constant case of acid reflux.

And now he was addicted to them. He knew it. He was addicted to the frustration. Ed Fargo had completely, utterly lost the ability to be with a regular girl.

He shifted positions so that he was on top of Kai. She moved along with him willingly and opened her
eyes long enough to smile at him between kisses. She ran her hands up under his shirt and he tried to stay in the moment.

Stop thinking about them
, he ordered himself.
You're making out with a cute girl. Who cares about them? Who cares about Gaia, especially? You are making out, Fargo. Come on!

“Come on,” Kai said, sitting up. “We can go in my room. My parents won't be home for hours.”

Ed followed her into her room, decorated with standard-issue posters of Green Day and System of a Down.

“What's up?” Kai asked him. “You nervous?”

“No, it's cool,” he said.

“Cool.” She stripped off her top and sat on her bed. “Come on, then.”

He followed her over to the bed, smiling reassuringly, but he felt like a jerk. This was the most uninspired he'd ever been. What they were doing felt mechanical, cold. All it did was remind him how great it had been with Gaia. He kissed Kai one last time, closing his eyes and trying to enjoy it, but it was no use. He sat up.

“Oh, man,” Kai said. “Now what?”

“I just remembered, my mom needs me at home,” he said. “I'm supposed to . . . do something.”

“Ed, what's wrong?” Kai sat up. “Is something bothering you? Is it me?”

“No! No, it's most definitely not you. It's one
hundred percent me,” Ed insisted. He shook his head. “You're perfect. You're awesome, you're a great girl. I just forgot about this thing. My mom really needs me at home.”

Kai peered up at him as though she wasn't sure whether she should believe him. She seemed a little hurt. But she didn't hit him with a stormy accusation, which was a relief. It was also a little strange.

“Well, okay,” she said, pulling her shirt back on. “I guess I'll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Right!” he said. “Tomorrow. Yes.” Ed got up and grabbed his skateboard. “I'm really sorry I've got to go like this. That was really, you know . . .”

“Yeah! Totally!” Kai nodded. “Come on, I'll walk you out.”

Ed kissed Kai and left her apartment. The fact that she hadn't started a big argument about his having to leave so unexpectedly—it sort of threw him. He wondered if she was supposed to get more upset. Or maybe she was just normal, and he was too screwed up to know the difference? That was what he was really worried about. What if his sense of normal had been warped by his history of nutty girlfriends?

He looked up and saw the lights of a plane shooting slowly across the sky. Gaia leapt into his consciousness again, for about the fortieth time that night. Maybe because that plane was a mile away, like she always was. Maybe it was the blinking of its lights, switching on
and off like her feelings for him. Or maybe she'd been on his mind already, and anything he looked at was going to make him think of her.

Oh, man. When was he going to get Gaia Moore out of his system?

So
Gaia's in my system, like a virus. She moves around inside me, popping up when I least expect her. And she's not showing any signs of leaving on her own.

I wonder how you get rid of something like this? I wonder how I'm supposed to track down all the little Gaia-modules among my platelets and obliterate them? Maybe I should just envision the process as a video game. Every time she pops up, I'll blast her out of me. It'll be like Whack-a-Mole.

No, that's too New Agey. I think I need some medical intervention. I need a doctor to find some Gaia antibodies. Some kind of serum that'll flush her out of my system.

Or maybe I should just go sit in a hot sauna and sweat her out of me. Maybe a high fever would burn her out. Maybe, with enough coffee, I could pee her out.

I don't know, though. If it were that easy, I guess hotels and spas would offer Love-Cleansing Weekends, where they'd give you a
high colonic and you'd leave with no lingering love whatsoever. If it were that easy, people wouldn't write songs and poems and novels about their lost loves. If it were that easy . . . I'd be making out with Kai right now.

I think I'll have the Gaia virus for a long time. I'm just going to have to learn to live with it and all the accompanying symptoms: memories popping into my head at inopportune moments, lack of interest in other girls, the burning curiosity about what she's doing and who she's doing it with. I have to treat Gaia like a long-lasting but manageable disease. Like a heart murmur. Like arthritis. Like diabetes.

That's it. I've got Gaiabetes. Hah.

The thing is, there's only one person who would think that was funny. Only one person on the planet I could share that joke with. And you know who that is.