Helena
It was neither Dr. Oliver nor the nurse who came over to her, but a tall, thin middle-aged man whose resemblance to Tom Oliver would have been stronger had he carried himself with more confidence. He didn't stoop and he didn't shuffle, but Helena couldn't rid herself of the impression that it was how he moved in the world when he wasn't acting as a representative of the renowned Dr. Oliver, late of Mass General and currently the presiding authority in this cramped office, which was in that nether category between budget-conscious and cheap. "I'm the other Oliver who's been looking at your dad's heart" was how he had introduced himself, extending a hand that glided over her palm in instead of clasping it in an obligatory handshake. "Let's go in and hear what the expert has to say."
Willing her anxiously hopeful mask to remain in place, Helena looked at the button-down collar of his shirt. If she didn't, she suspected that he would see the derision – and pity – in her eyes. He had initially put himself on par, or close to it, with his father and then as quickly resumed his subordinate role; clearly he wasn't the expert. "You must mean my father. He's an expert on everything." She finally let her eyes travel up to meet his. Even the most dutiful of daughters could be permitted a moment of levity at her father's expense, and even the most admiring of sons could acknowledge the burden of such a parent, as Ed did by saying, lightly, "Then they'll need to square off for the title."
Dr. Oliver's office wasn't any more spacious, comparatively speaking, than the waiting room. It was larger than a typical office cubicle but not by much. The two visitors' chairs were placed uncomfortably close to the desk, and Ed, having no place to sit, chose to stand by the door. Dr. Oliver was laughing politely at what Helena guessed was one of Artie's so-called witticisms. Sitting next to Artie, she sandwiched his left hand between hers, holding it with a tightness the Olivers would likely mistake for concern. Dr. Oliver smiled at her reassuringly. "We can help your father. I'd like to put him on a different drug regimen and try some new treatments." He lifted his shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug that wasn't in the least self-deprecating. "They're a little off the beaten path, but they've been effective with other patients, and I'm confident they can work for Artie. However, I would need to see you frequently," he looked at Artie, "and that's a commitment I would need you to make before we can go forward."
Artie flexed his hand as a warning sign for Helena to release it. "That won't be a problem. I can travel here as often as necessary. Money's not a problem."
Dr. Oliver's face tightened momentarily, as if Artie's mention of money introduced an annoyance rather than a consideration. "I understand that there may be some inconveniences involved, but our sole concern, Ed's and mine, is not to manage your condition but reverse it. The sacrifice is temporary whereas the benefit . . . ." He let his voice trail off and spread his hands in supplication to the heavens. "I can't say it'll be eternal, but you'll be looking at a much better prognosis."
Helena let a hopeful gasp escape her. She was tempted to clutch Artie's hand again, but the thought that it might be overkill and Artie's sideways look stopped her. "That's far better than what any of his doctors have told us."
"Doctors tend to be conservative, and they're reluctant to try promising but unproven treatments. You can blame it on the ills of a for-profit health care system. I've suffered from it, just as you have." His expression turned gloomy and inward but only briefly. He straightened and his jaw firmed in determination. "But I've learned since then that sometimes only risk delivers reward."
Helena turned an importunate face to Artie. "If this new treatment and drug regimen will keep you here with me longer, I'm willing to chance it. Are you?"
Artie's gaze was frankly curious as it met hers. With a side grin at Dr. Oliver, he said with a laugh, "I never knew she cared so much. If my daughter wants me to hang around longer, who am I to say no?"
"Wonderful," Dr. Oliver said, springing up from his chair in enthusiasm. "Let's you and I go out and confer with the nurse about future appointments. We'll also need to get new prescriptions sent in to your pharmacy." With less grace, Artie pushed himself up from his chair and followed Dr. Oliver out of the office.
Ed had had to flatten himself against the wall to make room for Artie to leave, and he unpeeled himself with a flush of embarrassment. "Obviously my dad and I aren't in this for the money."
"Otherwise you'd have a larger office," Helena supplied dryly. Casting about for a comment or question to keep him talking, she fastened on Dr. Oliver's reference to having also suffered. "Your father seems to take it personally, the failures of our health care system."
Ed squinted at her, unsure how to respond or, raising his hand to his forehead as if to brush away a fly, bothered by the harsh glare of the office's lighting. "My mom died of cancer several years ago. My father was helpless to save her, so, yeah, he has a personal stake in increasing people's options and making those options better." He perched awkwardly on the desk, near his father's chair but not choosing to sit in it. As someone who hadn't disregarded authority so much as she had tried to supplant it – with her own, of course – Helena stifled a huff of impatience. She was no longer that Helena, but the instincts hadn't completely atrophied. She smiled as encouragingly as she could. If she couldn't get him to talk to her unprompted, she wouldn't succeed in establishing a rapport. "He's excited about your father's case. He thinks the options he's developed, ones that his colleagues are afraid to try, will work for your dad."
"My mother died when I was child," Helena said softly, "so Dad became father and mother both. I want him around for as long as possible." When she had started out as an agent, she had been able to break into tears whenever the lies she spun on retrievals called for them. Just like she had been able to cry out her pleasure under her mark of the moment when she had been counting, instead, the number of rosettes in the bedroom wallpaper. Then Christina died, and she had become incapable of feeling or expressing anything but anger. Long before she became an outright danger on retrievals, she had become a liability, raging at her partners for the smallest of mistakes and alienating the people willing to assist them on their retrievals with her sarcasm and disdain. Her release from the bronze hadn't miraculously wiped out her difficulties in acting the part when and as necessary, but pretending interest and sympathy, even affection, was easier when she could convince herself that it was necessary for the accomplishment of her goal, which was to feel nothing, to be nothing, her atoms and those of several billion people spreading outward into nothingness. The true weakness of her plan hadn't been its insanity – she had nearly brought it off, after all – but her growing realization that she was no longer pretending, that, somehow, she had started caring again. Not about the billions of people she intended to take with her, but the one person, out of all those unknown billions, whose death she couldn't contemplate. She might do worse than adopt the tactic Myka had used with her, a surprisingly intuitive one for a woman seemingly rule-bound and wedded to detail, and play on the ambivalence about his father that she sensed in Ed. "Your father was lucky. He was able to channel his grief into something positive. I've known others who have been so consumed by it," she smiled sadly at him, "that they've let it cloud their judgment."
If she had been expecting him to twitch or dramatically look away, her ploy failed. He only nodded and blinked at her sympathetically. Maybe he wasn't listening to her at all. Maybe he was calculating how much it would cost to replace the lighting. He wasn't so much perching on his father's desk as crouching a millimeter above it, as if he were anticipating having to spring up as soon as the door opened. She counseled herself to have patience. Sometimes the hooks she set took time to work their way in. A few well-chosen words, a smile, they could reap rewards many times the effort they cost her. But this wasn't 12 and she was no longer the agent who, with Caturanga's not-so-hidden support, could largely dictate how her retrievals were operated. She was restrained by 13's budget (and she had thought 12's regents were tight-fisted) and subject both to Artie's timeline and his whims. He would want the artefact in hand before their return flight at the end of the week, and his refusal to entertain the option of simply ransacking the place, which, she supposed, was more risk aversion than whim, put greater pressure on their ability to manipulate, seduce, frighten, or, laughably, persuade the Olivers into surrendering the artefact.
"After my mom died, there were times when I wondered whether he was going to -." The admission came suddenly, and, in order not to appear too invested in what would follow, Helena reminded herself not to lean forward. She wasn't Elle on cross-examination, almost twitchy with tension and avidity, the surfer girl casualness apparent those times only in the finger-combed waves of her hair. Looking at Ed Oliver like he was a calf that had strayed too far away from its mother would not be encouraging, not with him, anyway. With others that feral hunger had been surprisingly effective . . . . . Only Ed never got a chance to finish his sentence, the office door opened, and his father bounded into the room, success at having gotten yet another patient hopeful for a miracle onto his calendar adding an unnecessary extra bounce to his step. Artie plodded, duck-footed, behind.
Ed hurriedly, gracelessly slid off his father's desk. A leg wobbled as he rose, and he put his hand against the wall to steady himself. Helena caught the muttered "excuse me . . . a klutz" as he straightened and stepped backward to ensure his father could easily get to his desk chair. Ed stood like an extra groomsman at a wedding, ill-at-ease and anxious to be put to work. Not sparing a glance for him, Dr. Oliver advanced toward Helena, extending his hand for a handshake that would both put an end to the appointment and underscore their new partnership. "We've managed to get your father in the calendar for next week, which is wonderful, and we've lined up a couple of appointments for later in the month. We'll do a status check then and see if the new treatment is working as I think it will. If it is, I may need to see him only for a follow-up visit, and wouldn't that be marvelous?" Unlike his son, Dr. Oliver gripped her hand firmly, yet Helena sensed not confidence but a kind of feverishness in the grip. His hand had an old man's dryness but she thought she could feel an underlying heat, as if there were a stoking in his core and the fire was radiating out. He ushered her toward the door and, as she joined Artie, he pumped Artie's hand as well. "Get the prescriptions filled, follow the instructions I gave you, and think positive thoughts. You'll see a change soon, I promise." Before the door closed, she glimpsed Ed's face, unsmiling and too somber for someone who was witnessing yet another success story in the making.
Artie was silent until they left the office. Calling for a ride on his phone, he looked at her over the top of his wire-rims. He would look at Myka and Pete and Steve, even Claudia, the same way, wary and ready to be disappointed, but when he looked at her, Helena always believed he added an extra dash of scorn. The other agents would make mistakes on retrievals, which, in Artie's view, was only to be expected when the likes of him and the younger, uncorrupted version of James MacPherson were dwindling in number, but her? It wasn't a matter of being a lesser agent than the gods who had gone before. She hadn't fucked up the mission, she had perverted it. That was what he would never be able to forgive. "Make any headway with Junior?" he demanded gruffly.
"I'm not sure," she said. "He's not all right with what his father's doing, that much seems obvious, but he may not have the strength to stand up to him."
"How susceptible is he to your charms?" Artie seemed to be making a show of studying his phone.
She could pretend to be outraged, but just as he saw her through a lens that magnified her self-centeredness and her belief in her superiority, she saw him through her own, which, with only a very few, very rare exceptions, identified those who governed (or pretended to govern) Warehouse activities as mendacious, hypocritical, soulless bureaucrats. "Are you trying to pimp me out?"
His eyebrows lifted so high that they were almost lost in the equally wiry mass of his hair. "I define 'charm' when it comes to you very loosely. I would rather get closer to a rattlesnake than you, but there's no accounting for taste." With scornful emphasis, he said, "How many more visits would it take?"
His show of derision didn't convince her that she was wrong. Not lessening the implacableness of her glare, she said, "He wants somebody to confide in, but it might take more time than you're willing to give this retrieval."
"You won't know unless you give it a try. Why don't you come out here again tomorrow, tell him how concerned you are, how much you're relying on this new treatment? Then let's decide how much more time we need."
"My acting skills have never been so taxed, pretending to be your loving daughter. You're asking me to keep it up tomorrow, too?"
He grinned evilly at her. "Just think if our cover story was that you were my wife."
"I'd take a knife to you."
"Coming from you, that's not an idle threat." Then they both laughed.
She had a cooking show playing on the TV, something about braising tough cuts of meat. Braising. When they had meat when she was a child, it was nothing but tough cuts, which were then fried to the point of petrifaction or thrown into a pot with a handful of soft turnips and rubbery carrots and stretched out in a stew over the next several meals. After the appointment with Dr. Oliver and Artie's suggestion (so-called) that she "work on" Ed Oliver, she had needed a pint or two, so she had looked up the closest thing to a genuine pub that Boston could offer. O'Malley's was in a still largely Irish, largely working class neighborhood, and she had drunk a Murphy's while she ate shepherd's pie, feeling less British than she did an extra in an American commercial about beer. . . .or cars. Advert, she reminded herself, that was what she would be expected to call it, not commercial. She had brought a can of Murphy's back to the hotel with her, and it was making condensation rings on her nightstand. She had her phone in hand, ready to call Claudia for an update on Ed Oliver. She needed to know something about him, an interest, a pet, an ex-wife.
Susceptible to her charms. Many of my lovers were men. She had been so full of shit, swashbuckling her way through retrievals with 13's team, wearing a wardrobe, her waistcoats and trousers, that she had filched largely from watching episodes of Dr. Who as MacPherson had tirelessly and tiresomely educated his Eliza about the big, bad 21st century. She had presented her years at 12 as a chapter from Tom Jones, a frolic in every sense of the word. When she hadn't been tumbling men and women in her efforts to repossess curiosities, she had been tumbling them for the pleasure of it, and if she could saddle a member of the gentry, metaphorically speaking, and ride him (or her) until he (or she) collapsed from desire, or exhaustion, as the case might be, who was she to say that it wasn't a political act? In reality, sex had been nearly indistinguishable from the other methods she chose to employ in the work. It hadn't been a leap, not even much of a step, from satisfying Merriman with her hand or her mouth to applying the same to the men who could give her and, by extension, the other agents a lead on a curiosity. In fact, it had probably been Merriman who had suggested that she try a form of persuasion that the male agents couldn't or, in a few cases, wouldn't do. You've got a talented tongue, Helen, and not just for speakin'. You could get a man's willy singing "God Save the Queen." It means nothing, girl, and would help us out. Just a few minutes. Close your eyes and pretend it's me. Over time she had become quite proficient, because the better she was, the less time it would take. Caturanga knew and disapproved, but he never once told her not to do it.
On more difficult retrievals, when there had to be relationships established, well, that required more than her mouth or her hand. She had long since stopped pretending that the man over her, under her, or behind her was John Merriman. Most of the time she worked out experiments or equations in her head, remembering at appropriate intervals to moan or shriek, whatever excited him more. On very, very rare occasions, the labor had been pleasurable, but she hadn't truly known what an orgasm was or, more accurately, felt like until she met Judith Comfrey. But their joining had had an incandescence, even a ferocity, about it that had left her with no workable frame of reference, so that when she had had sex with Nate the first time, the awkwardness and fumbling that any other woman would have put under the category of Gets Better with Practice, she had attributed to a shameful degradation of her skills. As if the success of a retrieval had depended on it, when Nate was ready for a second effort, she had taken him into her mouth, and though he had gasped out, "Don't think you have to . . . you don't have . . ." his words had dissolved into groans and then a cry that had imploded in her more powerfully than her own responses. She could still make a man's willy sing. It had been the fundamental pattern of their relationship. When all else had failed between them, she could give him great head.
She more than hoped, she suspected, that the only work her mouth would have to do with Ed Oliver would be to give voice to his doubts and fears. She would need to get him away from the clinic otherwise his father's presence would be too strong. An invitation for coffee or lunch or dinner would have to be finessed, however, as she also suspected that Ed would retreat from anything overt. She could chalk up the skittishness she sensed in him to whatever ethical standards he might have regarding interactions with a patient's family; on the other hand, he was abetting or, at the least, acquiescing in a far worse betrayal – of the care a physician owes his patient. So, how dare this wanker turn down a lunch invitation that was, at this point, completely imaginary?
Helena laughed at herself, took a long swallow of Murphy's, and called Claudia.
Myka
Of course, when things with Diane were especially tense, she would have an appointment with Abigail. She huddled in her chair, arms wrapped tightly around her chest. God, no, it wasn't defensive, she was freaking freezing in here. Abigail was looking a little pinched herself despite the continual running of the space heater, so this could be a shorter session than previous ones. "This anomaly hunt or retrieval with Diane, I've gotten the impression it didn't go as planned. Shall we talk about it?" Abigail's "shall" was more of a "will," as in "we will talk about it," so there went the hope, always faint at best, that her baring of her soul would be expedited this time. No express checkout for those having fewer than ten items to unburden themselves of.
Myka forced herself to uncross her arms. "They often don't go as planned, but Diane was disappointed that the anomaly she thought she had identified wasn't, and the retrieval . . . we weren't sure at the end if we had gotten all the artefacts." She crossed her legs and clasped her knee to keep from shivering. "Sometimes it happens like that. You're not sure that the artefact you're retrieving is the right one or that it's solely responsible for what's going on." The corner of her mouth pulled down briefly. "You feel like you haven't finished the job. What's worse is that Artie will have Adwin call in the reserves. Secret Service, FBI, Homeland Security, I'm not sure, but they come in, evacuate people from their homes, shut down businesses, cordon off neighborhoods. They'll vacuum up everything, and if that's not enough they'll raze buildings to the ground. This time they're only going to do a forced buyout of a couple's farm." The downward angle of her lips was reversed as Myka quirked them into a sarcastic smile. "The Warriners were lucky."
"You're a perfectionist, so I can see why you might feel retrievals like that are unfinished."
"It's part of the job. I just try not to lose sight of the good parts of what we do."
Abigail leaned over the side of the chair, and the space heater roared into a higher gear. "And Diane, how did she seem to feel about the fact that the anomaly was actually an artefact?"
Her face was turned away, so Myka couldn't see her expression. It was hard to tell anything from the tone of her voice, which was mildly curious, but Myka sensed a trap and tried to step around it. "Initially, she was disappointed, but she's a professional, alternate realities aside, and she knows how to handle a retrieval."
"So, her stories about having worked for her reality's Warehouse, they're borne out by her work with you on the retrieval?" Abigail had righted herself, and she was stretching out her arms, uncurling in the blast of heat from the space heater.
Myka didn't buy her cat-like reveling in the warmth. "I never thought she was lying," she said quietly.
"Sounds like a frustrating trip all around," Abigail observed. "The anomaly that wasn't an anomaly, the retrieval that seemed only half-finished, a partner experiencing a personal disappointment, and you," her voice became softer, "the break-up with Pete was just a few weeks ago." She let her arms drop and relaxed against the back of her chair. "There was a lot going on."
Myka struggled to keep herself from reacting. "Sometimes the retrieval can be an escape."
"And sometimes the retrieval can compound the problem." Abigail let the words hang in the air between them.
Myka would have preferred to sit in silence for the rest of the session, but she had always been the kind of student who continued to raise her hand even when the teacher cast about desperately for someone else to answer. She couldn't help herself sometimes. "Pete calls artefacts the Tide pods of emotion. One's more than a normal person needs for his monthly laundry, and two are a calamity."
Abigail laughed in amused disbelief. "I'm not sure whether to be impressed by his laundry habits or appalled."
"Yeah, well, that's Pete, for you." She barely felt the pressure before she was releasing it, not in a rush of words, but in confused-sounding bursts. "He said things that didn't make sense on one level and yet you understood them on another. We worked . . . in so many ways. Of course we belonged together. Only we didn't. I knew it and didn't want to know it. Then I saw her, and it wasn't magic, I know that, but I saw her, and everything else just fell away."
"By her, you mean Diane?"
Myka couldn't help but glare at Abigail. Who else? Abigail wanted her to open up, and when she did, Abigail asked for clarification as if she were confirming her next salon appointment. Cheri's available for a trim at noon, did I hear that right? Unembarrassed, Abigail said, "Given the history, I wanted to make sure."
"Helena and I have a lot of history . . . but that was never part of it."
Ordinarily when she was miserable, ransacking the Warehouse's archives and scouring the Internet could keep the misery at bay. She had researched a lot of things after Yellowstone – and Boone – Victorian mores, medicine, and childrearing; late nineteenth century British politics and economics; utopian and protest literature. None of it explained Helena, but often the information was interesting in its own right. She had helped Claudia when Artie demanded everything the Warehouse had on Thomas Edison, which had been a manic dive into a sea of distracting, if entertaining, facts, stories, speculation, data, gossip, and analysis, because even limiting their research to Edison's importance to the Warehouse didn't reduce the enormity of the task. While his connection to the Warehouse had ended after 13's construction, that was only if you looked at the contributions he had made during his lifetime. If you considered his impact, it was immeasurable. It was hard to find an artefact in the Warehouse that wasn't related to one of his inventions. Overwhelming, exhausting, a relentless drain on her energy and concentration, nonetheless digesting and then regurgitating everything they had found about Edison had kept her from brooding about Diane.
Ed Oliver was no match for Diane. Ed Oliver was no match for the earwig that Abigail had implanted in her brain, Given your history, I wanted to make sure. Even Claudia's last-minute plea for help, "H.G.'s going to be calling and asking for this tonight, and I've done shit about it," wasn't enough to drive her into such an information-gathering frenzy that she could block all else from her mind. It was all there, needling her, mocking her, sneering at her as Myka dutifully hared down every unpromising tangent. Who was Ed Oliver? An apparently divorced, apparently childless medical technician who had no recent social media postings or interactions. He supported liberal causes, had started (but not finished) the Appalachian Trail, and, at least not publicly, never expressed any abiding interest in Thomas Edison. However, if his profile on a dating site she had visited was honest, he liked women with an offbeat sense of humor and wasn't scared off by emotional baggage. Maybe when the retrieval was over, he and Helena could start a long-distance relationship. He seemed more suited to her than Nate had been. Myka was willing to admit that, possibly, her disappointment and wounded vanity had unfairly colored her view of Nate, but he had struck her as essentially humorless and lacking in imagination. You needed humor and empathy, and a lot of other things as well, to take on Helena. How had Pete described their relationship on the ride back to Univille? "It's like if that Supreme Court dude and Lindsey Lohan shacked up together."
"Scalia."
"No."
"Thomas."
"No."
"Alito."
"No."
"Roberts."
"No."
"Kennedy?"
"No, the other one."
It wasn't an entirely on-target analogy, but, as things nearly always did with him, it made sense. Myka wondered how long it would be before she could think about Pete without wincing. She glanced at her iPad. It was almost midnight in Boston. Helena hadn't forgotten, and she wasn't asleep. The old Myka would have held on for another hour, but the new Myka, the Myka she was now, anyway, was going to give it up and go to bed. She turned off the lamp on the end table. The overhead light had never done much to penetrate the library's shadows. She and Helena were alike in that way, finding gloomy, shadowy caves of rooms more comforting than eerie. Claudia said the library creeped her out, but then she wasn't much of a reader. Steve preferred the brighter rooms, too, claiming that it was easier to be negative in a poorly lit room. Pete had never spent time in the library because it didn't have a TV. The sofa was comfortable, and you could be reasonably assured of privacy. If only she had had the courage, she could have bedded both Wellses in here, not at the same time, but there had been moments with each of them . . . and if she had, maybe the uncertainty and the misery would be gone.
Her phone had to buzz at that moment, Helena sensing, even thousands of miles away, that she was thinking about her. Helena had always been good at capitalizing on that. "Got your text that you had information for me," Helena said without preamble.
"Some, not much. He's an average guy in a world filled with billions of them," Myka said dryly.
"Not that average if he has an artefact."
Helena listened silently as Myka explained what she had found, uttering only one old-fashioned harrumph at the mention of the dating site profile. "What does that mean?" Myka asked.
"Good to know that he's straight and single. Makes it easier."
"You can't convince me that Artie's told you to seduce him. He can push the line sometimes, but that one he's never even gotten close to."
"Potato, potahto," Helena said wearily. "You can take the old girl out of 12, but you can't take 12 out of the old girl. Hard to look simperingly at a man who's willing to cheat on his wife, or at least it was when I was a young fool about romance. Thankfully, I grew out of it instead of doing something unwise, such as marrying a perfectly decent man. Like most things, I made a game of it. Over time it was less of a chore trying to bang a man who preferred the waiter at our table than the man who wanted to get into my knickers. Gave me an opportunity to practice my powers of invention . . . in a social sphere."
"Helena, don't." Myka paused before asking uncertainly, "Have you been drinking?"
"Just tired, just bored." A hint of malice entered her voice. "Speaking of romance, I've heard that you and my double have hit a rough patch. Even the skim milk version of me, darling, presents challenges."
"You've been hitting the mini-bar. We'll talk tomorrow." Myka moved her thumb over to end the call.
"No, no, no. I'm being a bitch for no reason. That's not true, I do have cause for unhappiness. Arthur wants to bring a swift end to this retrieval, keep us on budget and all, and yet he's refusing to simply take the damn thing. We know where it is. Yet I'm supposed to charm Ed Oliver into surrendering it. 'Charm' for me has ever meant only one thing, and quite frankly, I'm willing to do it, if I don't have to spend a minute longer here." Helena bit off a sigh. "Run through the interests he listed on his dating profile again, please."
"Hike, golf, cook, take romantic walks on the beach, typical 'what would a woman look for' kind of stuff."
Helena laughed sardonically. "A 56-year-old woman."
"She'd still be less than half your age," Myka teased.
"Did he say what he likes to read?"
"Not in the profile. But in an old Facebook post, he recommended some books on World War II and biographies of Eisenhower and," Myka picked up the notebook next to her and squinted at it "Benjamin Franklin." She either needed to get new glasses or stop handwriting her notes. She added mock sorrowfully, "No H.G. Wells that I could find."
"Only the early works are worth reading," Helena said dismissively. "The book recommendations are interesting, thank you." After a silence that Myka didn't feel was uncomfortable, Helena said, "I'm sorry about what I said earlier, about you and Diane. It's none of my business."
But that was the problem, part of it, at any rate, it was Helena's business, and Abigail's, and Artie's, and Irene's. Myka knew that a relationship with Diane would change her relationship with everyone at the Warehouse. Romance? Hell, it was part science experiment, part science fiction fantasy, part disaster recovery planning. She and Diane would either be banished to some as-yet-unknown chamber deep in the Warehouse or they would subject to constant surveillance. Cameras in the bedroom? Not funny at all when you worked for the Warehouse. "It was a stressful retrieval," she said in nonanswer. Changing the subject, she said, "Don't let Artie's timeline affect the retrieval. He'll back off if you explain why it'll take more time."
"I think I'd rather sleep with Ed Oliver than have a prolonged discussion with Arthur." In a clear signal that she was ready to end the call, Helena said, "I've kept you up long enough."
"How many times, Helena?" Myka was embarrassed to realize she had asked a question she had had often in her thoughts since learning of the circumstances of Christina's conception.
"I'm sorry, what?" Helena didn't sound confused. She sounded wary.
"How many times did you have sex with someone because Caturanga or a regent told you to, for the good of the Warehouse?"
"I did many things for 'the good of the Warehouse' that I wouldn't now; prostituting myself was, I have to say, not the worst of them. Don't trouble yourself about it, Myka. They're long dead, Caturanga, the regents, my fellow agents, and the sins they committed are long dead, too." She laughed, and though Myka recognized in it traces of the scorching bitterness that Helena's laughter had sometimes held when she first came to 13, it was softer and, oddly, forgiving. "It was a rare that a woman of my time appreciated herself as a sexual being and rarer still that a man could appreciate her desires without exploiting them or making her ashamed of them. I was no different. My first lover did far more harm to me on that score than any poor sod I enticed into bed because he had information about an artefact."
Myka looked down at her hand and unclenched her fingers; her nails had made crescent-shaped impressions in her palm. "If nothing else, I hope the 21st century has undone some of that damage."
"Are you asking me if Nate and Elle liberated my desires and made me whole?" Helena's laughter changed again, becoming impish. "Not all of my liaisons in the first half of my life were drudgery, although if I'm perfectly honest, one of the most erotic experiences I've had since I've returned to the world has been at your hands, Myka. So to speak, of course."
Helena couldn't see that she was blushing, but she would know.
"I knew it wouldn't be difficult to outwit your partner or turn his head, but you were the unknown quantity. Were you by the book, a plodder, your eyes only on advancing, or did you have some spark in you? Where was your fire, Agent Bering? And then I felt it, when we met again at Tamalpais. I can't deny the all too regrettable truth that when a woman has me at her mercy it's arousing."
"It was only temporary," Myka said.
"But memorable." Helena hesitated. "For me." With the same gentleness, she said, "Goodnight, Myka."
Myka put her phone on the end table and hung her head over the back of the sofa. Memorable for her, too. There had been that instant after she had pushed Helena against the wall and the dark eyes had stared up at her daring her to do more when she hadn't known what she would do. It had been vertiginous looking into those eyes and seeing reflected back at her everything she was capable of, good and bad. Myka had never had a moment like that before or since, and she was thankful for it. Thankful, yes, but it didn't come without a pang.
Helena
Three o'clock and she had yet to fall asleep. She set her alarm forward to eight. She wasn't thinking so much as she was remembering, but not sustained as in a narrative, more in flashes, like slides in an old-fashioned slide projector. Which was, by the way, an artefact stored safely on a shelf in the Warehouse. Nasty thing, if the slides weren't inserted in the proper order, it disarranged time. A gang of thieves had used it to freeze a Monday morning for a couple of hours so they could steal the inventory of several jewelry stores. Unfortunately she and Myka had been "whammied" by it and lost a day and a half in their pursuit. They had eventually found the thieves in a rented house in the suburbs, most of them gibbering at each other and a few in corners with their faces turned to the walls, crying. A rather fast-acting side effect was that the artefact would disarrange your memory, leaving you helpless to recall the simplest thing, where you were, what you last said, what your name was.
Myka pressing her into the wall, angry and a little heady that she had caught her. Elle kissing her at sunset on Venice Beach, a more recent memory than the one of Tamalpais but already far more faded. Judith, before they had become lovers, flirting with her, "Being demure doesn't become you, Miss Wells." She hadn't known it was flirting then. A provocation, certainly, because Judith Comfrey liked being provoking, but no more than that because Mrs. Comfrey flirted with her male admirers, she didn't flirt with the female help. Judith, after they had become lovers, desire making her vulnerable and triumphant both, her skirts hiked above her hips, her voice still teasing but catching with urgency, "Stop inspecting me like a specimen and fuck me, Helena." Ladies never admitted vulgarities, never admitted that they knew what they meant, never came with cries and laughter as Judith did, never came.
She hadn't been inspecting, she had been marveling, at the smooth, unblemished expanse of Judith's skin, which, descending from the soft ridge of her hips into the gently swelling plain of her abdomen, ended in a delta of wiry dark blond hair. It was as if Judith's skin defined the course of her own desire, leading Helena to what she craved most, a refuge fissured and riven, capable of defeating any attempt to secure purchase but, of its own volition, capable, it seemed, of swallowing her whole. There had been other bodies under her hands and mouth, revelatory of many secrets had she cared to learn them, but she was fired by only one purpose, and once the voices in those bodies had gasped or shouted or whispered what she needed to hear, she was finished, and she would rise and dress herself with the same efficiency that she dressed of a morning, her mind already fixed on more important matters. Yet here with Judith, whether in a bed, on a rug, or struggling to remain on a jouncing carriage bench, she could literally suck every secret from her and still not know her. It was maddening and exhilarating in equal measure.
Helena's hand crept beneath the waistband of her sleep pants. More than a century later, the thought of Judith could still make her wet. How pathetic was it that, after being released from the bronze, she had had to teach herself again how to masturbate? Never to memories of Judith because the memories she started with weren't the ones at the end, which were of Judith as she had last seen her, and no one should see another human being as she had seen Judith that early morning. But her climaxes weren't as intense if she thought about other lovers, real or imagined, and tonight, just to get to sleep, she would take the risk and indulge herself. They had first made love in one of her makeshift laboratories, which, no matter how often she cleaned it, always looked grimy. There had been an old sofa she had brought in to sleep on, and in its tangle of blankets that smelled of mildew and chemicals and horses, Judith had resumed the lessons that John Merriman had begun with her but had never been able to finish. Helena had recognized his limitations, in every arena, long before he had left the Warehouse on disability pay. That afternoon in the Warehouse had promised Helena there was little, when it came to intimacy, that Judith wasn't already a skilled practitioner of and, of that little, nothing she wasn't willing to learn. It wasn't a matter of mechanics. What Helena knew outstripped Judith's knowledge, but she was a novice when it came to experiencing how her desire could heighten her and her partner's sensations. While there had been much about Judith she hadn't understood until it was too late to take action, to save her or to stop her, she had never doubted the attraction between them. The fears and jealousies that had marred their relationship left undisturbed the universal law that when one of them was present, the other was the catalyst that would start the reaction.
Helena pictured it as it had been that afternoon, the two of them almost tumbling off the sofa in their eagerness to touch each other. She heard her breath, harsh and rapid, as she thrust her fingers into her vagina, and then the memory changed. She was against a wall, Judith pinning her, roughly and with more power than Helena was aware she had. Judith's free hand was tearing at the buttons of her trousers and then slipping in through the fly, searching, seeking. Helena squirmed, not against the restraint because it excited her, but to provide Judith easier access. It was awkward, this, being fucked against a wall, especially by a woman, but Helena was aroused to a pitch she couldn't remember feeling before. Judith smiled, the smile oddly lop-sided for her, but Helena felt herself almost lifting her lip in a responsive snarl. This wasn't fucking, this was rutting, and she had never wanted Judith inside her more than she did now. Judith was close to coming, too, her breath coming in grunts, and Helena had the stray thought that Judith would have a hard time explaining why she smelled like sex when she joined the other agents outside.
Helena grabbed at the thought. Judith had never worn jeans, there were no agents outside the laboratory. She looked into the eyes that alternately bored into hers and closed in concentration, in rhythm with the movements of her hand; they were green like Judith's but not gold-green, they were more flecked, more hazel-colored. "Myka," she said wonderingly before her climax hit her hard, her back arching before she collapsed into the mattress's wallow. Helena wheezed out a surprised chuckle, too grateful for the lassitude and the sleep it invited to be dismayed. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that if she would have guessed that Myka could evoke this response in her, she would have made far better use of their time together.
She hit her the snooze on her phone twice before she got of bed, not refreshed not with . . . four and a half hours of sleep, but she had the tasks she needed to accomplish, task rather, firmly set in her mind. She found Artie hunched over coffee and a copy of USA Today. At her cool hello, he growled something unintelligible but clearly unflattering in return. She waited in line behind some obvious business travelers to spoon scrambled eggs and two sausage links on her plate. The nineteenth century didn't haven't much to commend it these days but forcing yourself to indulge in a hearty breakfast when you felt like shit was a tradition she tried to honor. You couldn't always count on your next meal. A good mug of tea was also a tradition she liked to honor, no matter the state of her head, but as her choice was between a generic black tea and an herbal tea, she opted for coffee, well dosed with sugar and cream.
Artie reluctantly looked up from his newspaper. "We haven't got much time left here."
"Only because of your absurdly arbitrary timeline." She sawed at one of the sausage links. "Are you any closer to finding out how the Olivers found the artefact?"
"About as close as you are, apparently, to charming the truth out of Ed Oliver."
"I'm about to make a run at him, so don't count me out yet. Just because I haven't chosen to work my powers of magnetic attraction on you doesn't mean I don't have them." She skeptically observed her eggs and sausage. "I could do with a decent pot of beans and a nice chutney about now."
Artie theatrically held the back of his hand to his mouth, miming a surge of nausea. "If that's your opening gambit, it needs work."
Helena slipped into an American accent. "Don't worry, Dad. I'll keep my foreignness at bay." At Artie's grimace, she added in her normal voice, "There have been times and places, dear Arthur, when the promise of a decent meal would have been the only aphrodisiac required."
He took off his glasses and polished them with a napkin. "You've been living in the 21st century for, what, going on six years? Yet you still act like you're on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum."
"The better part of my life was in the nineteenth century." She was intrigued by his comment, not offended. He almost sounded like he cared.
"Yes, was, Helena." He put his glasses back on, adjusting the fit of the temple pieces over his ears. "Except that's not really true. You spent the better part of your life in the bronze because you couldn't accept that the past is the past. Against all that's holy, you were given a second chance and then, when you messed it up, Myka gave you a third one." He leaned forward over the table, but his intensity was the insistence of someone trying to impart a moral. He did mean well, in his own blundering way. "Embrace it." Then with an awkward lurch he pushed himself away from the table. "I've got a lead on a collector of medical 'antiquities,' or so he advertises himself. Maybe we'll both luck out today." With only a hint of mockery, he said, "All things are possible in our work."
When Helena entered the nonexistent vestibule of Tom Oliver's office, she saw only one person in the waiting room, an older woman who was flicking through a magazine with the well-practiced patience of someone who spent a good deal of time waiting to see a doctor. The nurse behind the intake counter recognized her. "Dr. Oliver has a full schedule today, but if it's urgent, I'll see if he can step out for a few minutes."
Helena resisted pointedly turning her head to look at the all but empty waiting area. "It's Ed I'm hoping to see."
"He's going to be in and out today. Do you want to leave a message for him?"
All things are possible when you're a Warehouse agent, but never the one thing you need. Helena's law. "Will you please tell him I stopped in to see him and give him my number?" She scrawled it on the pad of paper the nurse offered her.
She was almost to the door, calling for another Uber, when it opened and Ed Oliver all but stumbled into her. Apologizing, he stepped backward, and Helena noticed that he was more slumped than he had been the day before. It wasn't hard to imagine him completely bowed by the end of the day, like a plant deprived of light. When had Ed stopped trying to escape from his father's shadow and resigned himself to whatever life he could have within it? Hers was a weak sun in comparison, but she beamed as a bright a smile as she could at him. "I came here looking for you," Helena said.
The smile he returned to her was more puzzled than pleased. "I'll try to answer whatever questions you have, but if they're about your dad's treatment, then my father is the one you should really talk to."
"It's not about his treatment per se, it's . . ." She looked up at him pleadingly. "Could we step outside for a minute?"
He rezipped his jacket and held the door open for her. She walked down the sidewalk, Ed following just behind her. She noticed that he was limping, his left foot dragging behind him, and she abruptly stopped in front of the adjacent retail space, an H&R Block office. Death and taxes, irony in concrete form, although she supposed Tom Oliver wouldn't see it that way. He thought he was saving his patients.
Ed was looking at her expectantly, although one eye was beginning to blink in defense against the harsh December light. "Your dad's in good hands." The closing eye began to blink more rapidly. The sun wasn't particularly strong but the air seemed filled with particulates, tiny, diamond-white, diamond-hard flecks of silica that refracted the light into shards.
The bleakness of the day, of this strip mall entered into her, giving her a chill as much emotional as it was physical. Maybe she had it to thank for lending her words a brittleness that she otherwise wouldn't have been able to manufacture. "I know, but you understand, he's all I have. No husband, no child, and the few friends I have, scattered about, living their own lives. I have to be sure that your father's treatment will work."
He winced and cupped his hand around his blinking eye. "Tom Oliver is a renowned oncologist, a brilliant doctor. Kings and presidents have been among his patients. There's no one better to help your father."
Tom probably would have liked his praises sung rather than spoken as if his son were reading them off a teleprompter, but Ed was all but swaying on his feet. "Ed," Helena lightly put her hand on his arm, "are you all right?"
He looked down at her hand and then looked at her, smiling faintly, "I always get headaches this time of year, but I should be getting back in."
"Of course," she hesitated. With a diffident flick of her hair, she said haltingly, "I know it's an imposition on your time . . . but could we talk more? Over lunch or a coffee, perhaps?" Biting her lip would be too much, but an awkward retreat might be just as effective. "I'm sorry, what am I thinking? I'll make an appointment. I don't want you to think –"
"I'll be happy to meet with you over a coffee. Having conversations like this can be difficult, and a warmer, more informal setting can make them easier. I don't have time today, but if you're available tomorrow, around noon, there's a decent little coffee shop at the end of the mall." He turned and pointed past his father's office. "My father and I want to make sure that you and your father are completely confident that this is the right next step."
"Thank you, that sounds wonderful." She stepped closer to him, placing her hand on his arm again. He hadn't appeared to mind it before. "I know of your father's reputation, but you seem so down to earth, so understanding. I feel that I could open up and tell you everything." She laughed softly and let her hand drop. "Now I've scared you. I don't mean to. I think if you can tell me a few more times that 'Everything's going to be fine,' I'll be all right."
"Whatever you need. I'm here to help you."
She nodded, gratefully she hoped. She thought his voice might have lowered, as if he were imitating doctors he had heard on TV or maybe only the one doctor whom he heard day and night. It didn't matter. He had agreed to meet with her and meet with her away from his father's office. Not far away but away. She knew that he might be no less inhibited in the absence of any tangible presence of the renowned Dr. Oliver, but she would make do with what she had. She waved at him as he started his slow, limping return. Dr. Kim believed that, under the right conditions, Ed would confess the truth about his father's "cure." Helena didn't know what the right conditions for Ed would be, and she didn't have the time to figure them out. She had an hour, maybe a little more if she were especially charming, to convince him to betray his father, and she had only sustainably sourced coffee and her powers of persuasion to assist her.