Chapter 24: A Statue Waiting to Find ItselfWe made a quick stop at a rustic truck-top oskirts of some hick town buried in these mountain woods. We were off the main roads now and K had to take on the driving again. I think she preferred it that way; like me, she didn’t like giving over trol to—anything, really, whether AI or human being.

  K iated for some take-out food while I ran to the toilet. We’d been driving for most of the day and I couldn’t keep it in any longer. Let’s just say my first time in a public toilet as a woman wasn’t a great experiend leave it at that. I was damed to give the owner of that fug pce a piey mind about the state of his stalls.

  We were ba the road within fifteen minutes, settling bato a fortable long-distance quiet. My mind drifted back to the ibsp; Now, I khat Asklepios was the son of Apollo and that he was the Greek god of medie and healing and that he’d been trained by this Chiron guy. Surprised? I’m no idiot, okay? I’ll admit, though, that the only reason I khis was because Akiko taught me. She made me read this novel from st tury, The taur, back when we were dating. It retty fug weird.

  See, the thing is, I’m not an idiot. Really. Some corporate psychiatrists ran a battery of tests on me once, back when I was transitioning from those messed-up years after I got off the streets and started my new, hierarchy-climbing adulthood. Psych tests are a joke. Mostly they were fug b. At the end of the whole thing, she seemed fairly vinced I was--what’s the ical term?--a fug genius. Empathy ratings off the chart and high IQ, she reported—not to me, obviously, but after a good fug she let me take a sneak peek at her report.

  Yeah, well, she might’ve been fantasti bed but she was a shit psychiatrist. I’m really not that clever. I’ve just got a good feel for people once I’ve hung out with them long enough, and usually it doesn’t take that long to figure someo. Eventually I was just feeding her what she wao hear. Which isn’t to say I’m stupid or anything. Thing is, I’m a quick learner. I really am. That’s why this dy thing had me freaked, sure, but not as much as it might have. Deep now, I knew I could do it. I didn’t want to--but could. All this chick stuff I didn’t know? It’s sure as hell nothing I enjoyed or wao know, but most of it was stuff I could learn, and quickly to boot. It’s not like slipping on a bra or spping on makeup’s the same as brushing up on rocket sce or something.

  It’s one of the ways I survived my job at IndigoTech, and every career-step that followed. When I knew something big was ing up at work, some presentation or board meeting or bullshit like that, I could head home and just totally slip into this state, yeah, and study like mad all night. I’d be tired as hell the day but could create this total air of petenbsp; But sometimes I’d slip up, rarely at work but more often out in the ‘real world’. I’d say something and the other person would look at me like I was a total freakin’ idiot or something. Being a quick learner is ohing, but you actually need someoo teach you that shit in the first pbsp; Me, I never even finished high school let alone uy, no matter what my CV or bloody profile said.

  So that’s how I knew who goddamn Asklepios was and recite bits of Anglo-Saxory and run off by rote stretches of Shakespeare. It’s all Akiko Takahashi. That, and the love of reading she instilled iuck—it’s been a book a fht for the past twenty years, and my memory’s pretty good for that shit.

  But ask me about a lot of the other crap you’re supposed to pick up in high school or in normal teenage life—stuff like, I dunno, anything about sports, or shared teenage experiences like going to the prom, or ask for an opinion oop films of ’35 and I don’t have a goddamn clue.

  So, looking at that pamphlet in the rapidly fading light, I couldn’t really puzzle out much more about the pbsp; If K thought it was a good pce to y low for awhile until Steele’s attention turned elsewhere, then that was good enough for me despite any misgiving I might have. After all, I trusted her. Even if it meant I had to keep dressing and ag like dy for a few more miserable weeks. I just had this instinctive dislike for hospitals and psych wards and things like that.

  Lost in thought as I was, K’s voie by surprise. “dy?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Aw, K. Do we have to?” Maybe I was tired, maybe I was still feeling a little ky after my visit to the toilet, but I really didn’t feel like being dy at that moment. I hadn’t had to deal with or talk to anyone back at the st stop, but I sure as hell noticed the stares from men across the room. Fug redneck hicks.

  She looked my way. Along the edges of that strong unyielding gaze lurked a soft pleading. “Please?”

  Her impl tone was ued, yeah? It wasn’t the kind of thing I expected to hear from K. How could I refuse her? I took a deep breath.

  “Yeah, Auntie?” A subtle but very deliberate ge crept over my demeanour, in the way I held myself, rested my hands, crossed my legs and respoo her words. My voice softened. These as were very far from instinctive. After only two days, every movement was still agly pnned and deliberate. In some ways dy still seemed like an unfinished bloarble to me, a statue waiting to find itself. Every time I sunk myself into this half-formed persona I chipped a piece away here; K added to my new past and carved out a detail there; a boy ogled her and I grudgingly refined another curve. Would this work-in-progress ever be plete? The thought both sied and, in some strange way, intrigued me. Who would she be, this dy?

  “No,” she said. “Not Auntie.”

  “Then who?” I asked, arg a thin eyebrow. In gradual steps I slowly shifted into dy: my wrist went just slightly weak and I held my fingers spread a little wider; my legs crossed fortably at the thigh and I rolled my bance marginally towards my hip as I turo face her; I absently fidgeted a little less with the feminine accoutrements spread ay body but toyed with my hair more. Was any of this properly femiruly dy? I was still trying to figure that out.

  “Just me,” she said. “But I would rather talk to dy than David at this moment.”

  Weird, I thought. “O--kay,” I said, creasing my brow in a cute frown. “Why?” I tried to add a lilt to my voice.

  “Because sometimes it is easier to rete to anirl than a man,” K said. “And sometimes a friend is easier than family.”

  Iing, though I couldn’t help but wonder whether the friendship exteo David as well as to dy. I sort of hoped so. Like I’ve said, friendship’s a rare and precious odity.

  My fingers danced along one of the pleats lining the skirt and I watched the py of my pink-glinting nails befng shyly up at K. “Friends?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, for a friend. . . . “I gave a quiod. “What’s up?”

  K hesitated for a long moment and finally she said: “What’s your ho opinion of me, dy?”

  “Ho?”

  She nodded.

  “Ho ho?”

  “Yes, dy. Ho ho.”

  “You’re, ah . . . just a bit scary, you know?”

  The er of her mouth twitched. “Is that all?”

  “Um . . .well, I kinda think you might be a, you know, lesbian? Maybe?”

  K mouth quivered with a barely-suppressed grin. “Does that bother you?”

  I bit my lower lip and gave a quick, wide-eyed nod.

  “How do you think David feels?”

  This was getting really fug weird. “I, ah . . . I don’t think he really cares. He’d fuck—I mean, sleep—eww, you know what I mean! With you. But he’s a guy, isn’t he? They really like that stuff, don’t they?” I wrinkled my nose in mild disgust. “Guys are like, just so gross! They all seem to think we’re one slumber party away from, like, thering each other up in the shower and sharing full-body massages.”

  “They do, do they not?” Almost relutly, her smile grew. “And you, dy? Have you never been at all . . . curious?”

  “Ew!” I excimed. My hands fluttered in front of me in some kind of vague gesture of warding. “No!”

  “Really?”

  I blushed prettily beh my heavy makeup. “Well . . . maybe a little. But only a little!”

  K ughed. “You little minx, you! I bet only a little!”

  I giggled, though it didn’t e easily. Strangely enough, I found that kind of bubbly, girlish ughter one of the hardest parts of pretending to be dy. I just found it really hard to ugh like a girl. It’s something I would have to master, because I figured that she was the kind of girl who ughed easily and holy. It was something to like about dy.

  At the same time, I felt a real surge of happiness at having made K ugh, and something in my rea, in the way I sought her validatio unfortably feminine. I paused for a moment, nearly breaking character. Making a friend ugh was a good thing, right? So why did it suddenly feel s?

  “So you prefer guys, then?”

  I slipped straight bato dy without missing a beat. “Hell, yeah!” I excimed, and then a little less forcefully: “Well, the right guy, anyway.”

  She nodded. “But other than the one ba high school,” she said, “you have never had a really loionship, correct?”

  That one ba . . . ? Bloody hell. Another relut sliver removed from the block of dy. “Uh, no.”

  K smiled regretfully. “I almost envy you, then.”

  I tilted my head to one side, absently brushing my bangs away from my eyes. “Really? Why?”

  “No. It is nothing you o yourself with.” She shook her head. “I should not have brought it up.”

  I shrugged. “Why not? It’s just us girls, right?”

  She gnced aside at me. “Just us girls?”

  “Like a slumber party!” I tried angle. “Um, with wheels. And no showers, so I guess I ’t ther you up. Sorry!”

  K chuckled. “You promise to keep this betweewo of us, dy? Girl to girl?”

  I’ve always known that girls are fucked in the head and love mind games, but this was bringing it to a whole new level for me. Still, I was curious where she was bringing this. dy hose dangly clip-on earring brushing her cheek.

  Even with my promise it took some time for her to begin. She kept her eyes forward but I could tell she barely saw the road. A thick tapestry of forest flowed past, a mix of evergreens and trees left bare by the winter cold. I curled my legs up beh me and shifted into a more fortable position in my seat. When K finally spoke her voice seemed to e from far away.

  “Steven and I dated for nearly three years.” She must have anticipated my surprise. “Yes, a man. To quote a mutual acquaintance, dy: Don’t fug presume to know me.” She smiled to soften her words. “I say we were together for three years but fully the sed half of that could hardly be sidered a healthy retionship. I am fairly certain he was cheating on me for most of the final year. And I know I was cheating on him. With men but yes, dy . . . I also cheated on him with other women.”

  I fug k.

  “Everything was great at first,” she said. “Then again, I suppose they always are. Steven and I should not have been dating in the first pbsp; I was his superior, you see. Obviously workpce retionships are frowned upon in my line of work. At the same time, there is a tendency to look the other way when they invariably happen.”

  “He didn’t mind you were his boss?”

  K nodded. “I was ed that he might be. Maill have difficulty with the idea of a woman in a position of authority, especially these days. The workpce has ged for women in the past decade.” She looked aside at me. “Would you not agree?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I answered, allowing some uainty to creep into my voibsp; I figured dy wouldn’t have had much experieh insecure pricks. Or rather she probably had, but rarely from a position of power. dy, she probably liked her men strong and in trol.

  “Steven assured me that he did not care. And for several months life was nearly idyllibsp; It was a very wele ge, I assure you, to e home to someone and to be able to share the difficulties of my work. The world, I discovered, is very couple-orientated. Together, it was like disc a whole new facet of the city: restaurants, bars, clubs geared towards couples. We went shopping in the market together and once we almost bought a cat.” She smiled wistfully. “The sex was fantastic as well.”

  “K!”

  “Well, it was.” She smirked, looking aside at me. “Steven was hung like a horse and knew how to use what nature had given him.” She seemed to sider that for a moment. “I was excellent as well, I would like to think.”

  “Ew! Moving along, please!”

  She chuckled. “In any case, those first six months were wonderful.”

  Anything after ‘six months’ was traveling into territory unknown to me. Persephone for six months—though even that was in fragments, stolen moments i here and there. Akiko for three, Julia for two, if you could call that a “retionship”: bined, my lo retionships came up short of what K was describing. Listening to her describe those first six months left me a little jealous.

  I really was. I mean, I wouldn’t s what I had had with Persephone for anything in the world. But a niormal retionship? God, how nice might that be? Friday evenings on the sofa sharing a bottle of red wine, cuddling close as she kicked up her ag feet following a long day at the office—me, giving her a foot massage as we shared our stories of the day. I’d never really known that. A night out in a club beh fshing lights and poundis, there for the musid the energy and especially for each other, kissing hungrily on the dance floor and tasting sweat and her hot breath . . . . Is that what normal people had?

  Oher hand—I imagi could get really fug b.

  I focused on K’s words, aware I was starting to tingle in pced I didn’t want to aowledge.

  “At the same time work became increasingly . . . difficult,” she said. “Even though we worked for the same federal agency, there were maails of my then-current assigs that I had to keep secret from Steven. Secrets are very destructive to a retionship, dy. Believe me.”

  Yeah, no shit, I thought morosely, while dy offered an affirmative nod.

  “The stress of those assigs began to creep into my personal life as well. When I was single, I could release that tension in private without fear of hurting ahere were—methods, often rather expensive ohat helped. Living with Steven, I found myself unsure how to cope with my stress. I couldn’t share it with him and by then we were all but living together and I found it difficult to find the privacy I o deal with the pressure.”

  “What did you do?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I kept it bottled up.”

  “What happened?”

  K sighed. “I broke down. That night remains very vivid in my mind, dy. I remember walking into the apartment and sitting at the edge of the bed. I was still dressed from work and holding my briefcase. A colleague had died that day and their death and sacrifice had to remai and the injustice of it, the—responsibility—I felt….”

  She sighed. “My firearm led close to my chest beh my vest and for a brief moment I sidered pulling it on myself.”

  I stared at her in shobsp; “You—?”

  “Only for a moment.” She shook her head. “But even to pte such a thing . . . that moment of weakness was devastating. I colpsed into tears. I do not cry often or easily, dy. But at that moment I felt lower than ever before or since.

  “It was a very strange moment for me. Even as I crumbled within, I felt almost as if I could observe myself from outside. I saw myself in tears a nothing but disgust. I berated myself to no effebsp; I called myself weak and a coward. A colpse was not something I could afford at that time. If I failed at my job more people could die. No, people would die and that was simply intolerable. It was that simple. Yet somehow I failed to respoo my own orders, and sat there in tears.”

  “K, I’m . . . sorry,” I said. I reached out a tentative, f hand and lightly gripped her shoulder. It struck me that as David the gesture would have seemed effeminate or worse, insincere, a first step towards exploiting her sadness.

  She gave my hand a quick squeeze. “Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “Looking back, I suppose it was iable. Sometimes I regret that I was not stronger, more capable. However, I alshat I had taken on too much, too quickly.” She shrugged. “I like to think I have learned from my mistakes.”

  “So what happened with Steven?” I asked.

  Her smile was brittle. “When he fouer that night, he had no idea how to deal with my breakdown. In fact, other than a few half-hearted attempts, he did nearly nothing at all. For the first time in two weeks he slept at his oartment that night.”

  “He left you like that?” My shock was genuine, being equal parts dy and David. dy, I’m sure, empathized with K and was horrified at the thought of bei alone in that state. I felt nothing but disgust for the kind of asshole who could abandon a friend and partner like that.

  Like, sure, I’ve ofte some bit my wake and she’s been in tears. If we’ve met up less than a half-dozen times and she’s already deg her love to me and is somehow shocked that I’ve decided to move on. . . that’s her problem, not mine. I feel nothing but s for people who ihemselves so quickly into someohey’ve just met. And to be clear: that disappoi, that sense of betrayal when I leave? That’s on them. I never promised anything to anyone: not to Julia, not to Akiko, not to any womaween then and now.

  Or to put it another way: I made all my promises to Persephone. And when I failed to keep those promises—when I couldn’t save her—when she was murdered—I learhen, to never promise anything to a woman, because ohing I’m not is a liar and it’s all but impossible to guarantee you’ll be there for someone when they really need you. And isn’t that what a retionship is all about: being there when you’re needed?

  But for all that, eve’s not serious, I still cared, you know? And when I do care for someohat means something. Women like Akiko, I never promised them anything serious, but they more than just lovers: they were friends. Nothing could have pulled me away from them in time of need. Nothing.

  K nodded. “Yes, he did. That night was one of the worst of my life. Truthfully I remember very little of it. Certainly I did . Somehow I mao crawl into bed. I missed work the day. I cursed myself the whole time but could n myself to answer my phone or to leave my bed. My memory of that time extends only to brief fshes in which I crawled from bed to bathroom and babsp; That was where Steven found me wheuro my apartment ohird night.

  “I still had en,” she tinued. “I was still wearing the same clothes as well. I was weak and fused and still g and that was the state he found me in.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He took charge,” K said in a very matter-of-fact way. “With the efficy of a drill sergeant. He ordered me out of bed and when I ignored him he spped me.” She stopped my outcry with a raised hand. “He violently pulled me from the bed and forced me into the shower and then he made me eat. At every step he trolled my as and told me what to do and punished me physically whenever I began to slip bato that passive, mindless state.

  “Yes, of course I could have stopped him at any times. He was a strong and well-built man, but not a very skilled fighter. And I hated every sp and punch, every pind shake and rough grab that bruised me. Yet for some reason I could n myself to resist him. He utting me back together but in the way that he wanted, and the pieces were not fitting together correctly.”

  Outside the car the world tio blur past, now barren and bsted farmnd carved out of a ndscape of wild and thiing woods. The sun was very low and burned brightly e as it touched the horizon. I saw this as a backdrop to K’s stainst which her features, atteo the road, were highlighted. What she was telling me seemed impossible; I could not recile the woman she described with the sexy, strong person sat o me.

  “The thing is,” she tinued, “because of him I was able to return to work. I survived that first day, and the , and the week after that. But not on my own. I became pletely dependant on him. Even after several months, by which point I felt strong and fit once again. To everyone else at work I was bay old self. What they did not see was what happened when I returned home.”

  She stopped for several minutes. K seemed lost in thought. When I had asked her about her serious retionships earlier that day, I thought I was just sing some pyful banter. The st thing I actually expected was an ho admission of this nature. At the same time part of me remained suspicious. I wasn’t fug proud of that warning voi the bay head, but still couldn’t help but wonder: why the hell is she telling me all this? She was setting herself up for disappoi if she expected an equivalent response. Like, I had equally harrowing stories to share—but had no iion of doing so.

  “Our retionship had ged in a fual way,” K eventually tinued. “Though I was still the boss at work, he had definitely bee the dominant part home. The details I do not feel like sharing. Suffice it to say that for nearly a year I felt stantly humiliated, sied and debased. Steven had me do and ad speak in ways that I am still ashamed to remember. He took me to secret pces I would never choose to visit. It almost seemed that the stronger I became in my outside life, the weaker I became at home. Sometimes I wonder if I was able to cope with the tension at work because of that. Certainly, the stress that broke me in the first pce did not lessen; if anything it grew worse. Yet stripped of all responsibility and trol at home, I somehow returo wake every m strong and capable.”

  “That . . . that seems kinda fuck . . . uh, messed up, K.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps it was. The situation could not endure, of course. Steven began to demand more. Even as he spoke of marriage, and with me securely beh his thumb, it increasingly became apparent that he had begun to cheat on me as well. Eventually he made a mistake.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He made the mistake of allowing our publid private spheres to meet. I became aware of whispers and smirks and jokes that ended wheered the room. The woman I was at work was forced to front the woman I had bee at home. She was not impressed. I was not impressed. Yet I was still incapable of ending the retionship. His hold was that great over me. I still craved the discipline and trol at home despite the near stant disgust it left me feeling. I suppose this was when I began to cheat on him as well. Of the whole experiehis is perhaps the part I regret the most. I began to do to others what Steven was doing to me. Though o the degree I ehe way I treated the boys and girls I met at that time was deplorable.

  “And finally, Steveoo far. He used his trol over me to try and advance his position at the agency.”

  I nodded. “It didn’t work?”

  Her smile turned bitter. “No, he got what he wahough it wasn’t what he expected. What he never realized, even after all that time, was that the woman he domi home was a very different person from the agent he k work. To her there was little he could do. Despite everything that happened over the previous year, he never promised my work; I never shared anything that could not be shared, never hi or divulged as.

  He requested a field pt for which he was grossly under-qualified. The position seemed simple enough but the petition for the job was fierd it seemed to offer quick advahrough the ranks. Steven wanted me to push his application through; he wahe job.”

  “You told him to go fuck himself?”

  K looked at me. Her eyes were angry and her lips cruel. “No, David. I gave him the job.”

  “Why?”

  “What Steven was unaware of was that the pt was far more dangerous than its description. I however was fully informed as to the risks io the job. The agency was subtly looking for a very specific type of individual for a very difficult role and used the petition to veil the true i of the recruitment process. I khat for a man of Steven’s skill the assig was essentially suicide. I warned him to avoid the job. He insisted I give it to him. His attitude at home grew even worse, more forceful, more demanding. heless, professionally speaking it was my responsibility to ensure only qualified agents were moved forward.”

  K took a deep breath. When she spoke her voice was even aone, cold. “I gave him the job anyway.

  “I was free of Steven within the month.”