The Trouble with Women

Overlapping

I HAVEN'T BEEN sleeping well since all this implant business started bubbling up, but my sleeplessness has reached critical levels now. My mind ping-pongs between revulsion and a sort of bemusement. This is what you get, whispers a voice that could be mine or might belong to a blood-spattered woman in a Starbucks parking lot.

There's a hidden groundswell of chatter online. I stay up all night chasing down threads on obscure channels. Reading forums. Going down rabbit holes. When I come across a video story on a local feminist conspiracy channel claiming an anonymous tip-off, I message Becks in a panic, sure she's being scooped. She doesn't seem surprised or overly worried. Someone obviously wants word to get out, she says. They're turning on the gas and waiting for me to light the match.

We'd left Faustina's apartment just as evening was dusting the shoulders of the university neighbourhood. Grand old houses with elegant bones loom like sentries, deep-set enough into their wide lots that you can't tell they've been chopped up into rooming houses and fraternity buildings. As we made our way down to the main street, a solitary child zoomed up and down the road on an electric scooter - friendless. I thought how there would once have been gangs of neighbourhood kids out playing until dusk. Now, with birth rates so purposely low, it must make for a lonely childhood.

Becks hadn't said much as we walked. I wanted to talk about what we'd just heard, but she seemed like she had something else on her mind. Unwilling to engage in my horror.

When we'd parted—her, home to Roger and, I supposed, the shared project of the baby they were planning; me to the oppressive silence of my apartment to idle through what remained of the weekend—she'd had a slightly wild look about her. Her eyes were jumping around like they couldn't settle, her mouth pinching and grimacing, working through some thought she wasn't ready to share. I'd hugged her goodbye and she clung to me momentarily. Her lips whispered against my cheekbone.

What if the real story isn't 'what'?

I couldn't parse her meaning but was happy to stand there in the warmth of her heady perfume as long as she needed me to.

Dolly, what if it's who?

She broke our embrace and turned to seek out Roger, whose familiar black Lexus was idling on the other side of the intersection, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. There were more women out than usual in the growing darkness, I noticed. Feeling safety in numbers, I'd walked the rest of the way home.

BY SUNDAY, SLEEP still hadn't come. My brain busily tried to reconcile the monster I knew by heart with this new species: one with a pretty face and slim hands. What concerned me most was this blurring of archetypes. The mental locker where I kept the ugly feelings felt, suddenly, pointless. Like I'd been guarding some essential understanding of the world that no longer mattered. It made me dizzy with fear. It kept me up all night and into the next day.

Eventually, I was so desperate for sleep that I put away a half-bottle of scotch and one more sleeping pill than was strictly necessary. The sleep it bought me was muddy — up to the knees in sucking swamp water — but at least it was sleep.

At last, I'm awoken by MYA vibrating lustily on the side table. I thrust her into my ear.

Julian's voice ricochets painfully around my desiccated head.

"Dolly, where are you? Sasha says you haven't checked in."

Fuck. I look at the clock properly and realize it's noon. Monday. I clear my throat and half sit up.

"Slept in. I have to drop in on my new family after hours tonight, though, so I'll make up the hours. I'll let Sasha know. Sorry."

My head flops back against the headboard, and I close my eyes against the slow spin of the room. Ugh. I have quite a hangover.

"I'll tell her," he says, his voice soft and comforting in my ear. "You sick?"

"I'm okay," I lie. "Hey, how's Missy? Is she still safe at her sisters?"

I hear him scratch at his neck, something he does when he's worried. The physical sound generated by his body reverberates through his MYA, across the unseen digital ocean and into my own. It strikes me suddenly as unsettling -- as if through this sharing of sound, we risk becoming each other. Overlapping somehow in the waves.

"I call her every night, but all she wants to talk about is the Porsche. Has the guy seen it yet, has he come looking for her."

"Has he?" I ask.

"Oh yeah. I told him to get lost. The police came around Friday night, too, wanting to interview her. I said Missy's been unwell, and I didn't know where she was. Figured if I can delay them talking to her, that's better."

The room has stopped its slow carouseling, and I find I can open my eyes again without danger. I rub them blearily with both hands and fluid squelches behind them. I wonder if Julian can feel the sound of my eyes in his eyes.

"You know what was weird," he continues. "They asked me how old Missy is. That's a strange question, isn't it?"

Not if you know what I know, I think. But this proves that they do. Or at least they're putting it together. I make a non-committal noise and hurry him off the call. I make it to the toilet just in time to throw up.