Chapter 24 Symbiosis

Richard carefully lowered the needle on the gramophone. The robust notes of a swinging jazz tune burst forth from the horn and Richard smiled to himself. This was a good tune. He sat down in the armchair and took a big bite of the donut he had brought home for himself after skipping out on work early. His father had been on the warpath about something or the other and Richard figured why not let Rollie and his silver tongue deal with it. He was going to go home and listen to some records. He hadn't listened to music in a long time.

He had thought about getting some reefer, which was easily available, but considering that he no longer got a buzz from alcohol and the tranquilizers from the surgery had burned off pretty quickly he supposed the reefer wouldn't do much. Which was a shame, he always wanted to try it. At least the donuts were still worthwhile.

The following track just wasn't as good, but he couldn't be assed to change it. He couldn't remember what the third track was. I guess I'll find out if it's any good.

He didn't get that chance, however, because just as the second track was fading out the front door barged open. Richard sighed, his private time interrupted, and pulled the needle off the record. He felt bad about his irritation, however, when Lupe appeared at the door to the hallway. She looked mighty distressed and whatever had happened to her was worse than having some alone time disturbed.

"I thought you'd be at work," she eked out, clearly on the verge of tears.

"Lupe, what happened?"

She bit her lip, either overwhelmed or uncertain about what to say.

Richard didn't know what to do exactly so he held out the box of donuts. "Have one?"

She looked at the box of donuts, confused, and then burst into tears. "I'm sorry, I've…" she took a tissue from the table next to the sofa and wiped her nose. "Oh, I've made an awful mess of things, I have, I'm sorry," she rambled in a sorrowful voice.

Donuts weren't going to fix this. "Come on, sit, tell me what's wrong," he said as he sat on the sofa and took her hot and trembling hands. "What have you made a mess of?"

Lupe sat next to him and sighed heavily. "I…are we alone in the house?"

"Yes," he held her hand between his. He wasn't particularly good at comforting people, or at least he hadn't had much practice in the matter, but he was going to try his best. "Just tell me what's wrong and I'll help if I can."

Lupe put the tissue down on her lap and looked into his eyes, searching for the emotional encouragement to continue. "I, I want to be honest with you, I really do, but-" she

"There's nothing either down here or up there I care about more than you. Whatever has happened, it's safe with me." He rubbed her hand. "I promise. It's alright."

Lupe nodded, soothed enough by his reassurance. "I spoke with Helena before she committed the robbery, I didn't know she was going to do that, I didn't, but I know what she was going to do with the money. She was going to try to smuggle herself out of Rapture. We…we both were, or at least that was the plan."

Richard wasn't shocked, but neither was he pleased. Anything that compromised the secrecy of Rapture was forbidden, and even talking about it was grounds for punishment. "You didn't tell the security forces anything about this, did you?" His hands tightened around hers involuntarily, fearful of what they may do to her.

She shook her head. "No, no, I didn't breathe a word, I know what they'd do to me, they'd lock me up and throw away the key."

Richard relaxed somewhat. "Good, so, what's wrong then?"

"I was thinking about it and…they've killed her!" Lupe erupted into tears without further elaboration. He held her to his shoulder while she uncontrollably wept. He was stunned by the sheer intensity of her emotion. He'd never had anyone share with him such a display of naked feelings with him. It was magnificently intimate.

He stroked her hair while processing what it was she said. "You think? So you don't know. Why do you think she's been killed?"

Lupe took several deep breaths. "Because the smugglers make money only because Rapture is a secret. If Rapture is no longer secret they will not make money. And if she comes to them with a lot of cash wouldn't it make the most sense to kill her and take the cash? Otherwise, she would expose their smuggling if they refuse to take her."

Richard couldn't argue with that logic. "That makes sense. I'm sorry, but, yes, that is most likely what happened if you can't find her or she hasn't contacted you." He caressed her back softly. He'd never lost anyone close to him so he couldn't be too specific in his sympathy. "This must be difficult. I am here for you." That sounds right. At least not wrong.

Lupe pulled away from him, eyes red with tears streaking down her face. "Don't you see? This is my fault! I should have realized this sooner but I was blinded by what I wanted that I didn't see the truth! It's the same as…as…" she sniffled and wiped her nose with the tissue. "It's the same as how I ended up down here. I couldn't see the truth right in front of me, that I was a mediocre artist at best and not that I was being oppressed by the system! And because I lie to myself and I pretend, Helena died!"

"Oh, darling, that's not true at all," Richard rushed to assuage her. Gosh, she's real torn up about this. He was surprised to see how much it pained him to see her so upset. Ah, this must be that love thing people sing about in songs and write about in poems. "She also didn't see it, and she must have thought a lot more about it than you have if she robbed someone to get it. And I've seen you're drawings, you're better than mediocre. You can draw hands pretty well, that's hard, most people can't do that."

Lupe didn't seem to take much comfort from his compliment. "But it's so obvious now. Why couldn't I see it? Why is it only now that I realize it?"

"I don't know," he honestly answered. "That's just how it is. But just because it makes sense doesn't mean that it's necessarily true. There are often many possible solutions to a problem. Maybe she realized it as well after the robbery and is hiding."

Lupe nodded sadly. "She's still going to be in a lot of trouble though."

As long as I am handing out hope like candy I may as well give her fistfuls of it. "Or she may not have even done the robbery to begin with. We don't know. But until they find a body we can't bury her just yet."

"Right," Lupe mumbled. "I bet the security force would have me identify her body too. If they do, will you come with me? I couldn't do it alone."

Richard supposed that they'd just dump her body into a crab trap, but that was much too gruesome to say to his sweet and wounded little dove. "Of course." He put his hand on her leg and much to his surprise got a fair amount of half-dried much on it.

"Oh, that, I need to change," Lupe said as she stood up. "Please come with me, I don't want to be alone right now."

Richard leaped up to accompany her. "Lupe, I don't think it's a great idea for you to be poking around for her anymore," he said as they walked down the hallway to her room.

"Way ahead of you. I reckon I'm going to stay put here in the Adranos for a while." She seemed nervous again. "I have something else to tell you. It's not about…Helena." Her voice was choked on her friend's name. Lupe pushed open the door to her room.

"Go on," Richard gently urged.

Lupe undid the clasps on her skirt and unzipped it. "I have a confession to make. I overheard one of the doctors in the Medical Pavilion the night I came to visit you there. The German lady."

"Tannenbaum," Richard supplied the name, wondering what this had to do with her muddy skirt.

"Yes, yes that's it, I remember now." She dropped the skirt, but not in the seductive way she usually did around Richard. This was all business. "She was on the phone with someone and she was talking about you. She called you Subject Lambda, like the Greek letter, I thought that was strange. Scary, a little, like something a mad scientist would do."

Richard was also put off by this. "What did she say about me?"

"That your sperm didn't work. She said in a science-y way, I don't remember the exact way she said it though. But, you were pretty freaked out about the surgery, and I didn't want to be the one who told you, so I thought it would be better coming from a doctor, not me." Lupe sighed and picked out a clean dark green skirt from her closet. "I'm sorry sweetest, I should have told you."

Richard shrugged. He wasn't exactly happy that she had kept this from him, but at least she had steered him towards a doctor. "I ended up getting that letter from the doctor that Dorothy intercepted, so all's well that ends well. Did Tannenbaum say anything else?"

Lupe stepped into the skirt and pulled it up. "Yes, that you didn't make enough ADAM and that they were going to have to use children to make it for some science-y reason."

Richard's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, what?"

"That's what she said that night. Whoever she was talking to wants ADAM for commercial reasons. Probably because it fixed you up so well."

"My spit," he realized slowly and then picked up pace as his brain started to piece it all together. "That's why there were so interested in getting me to spit. The slug must somehow induce people to – oh my gosh, it's ADAM itself, not a side effect, that's why my eyes glow and my fluid glows! That's what they want, but it must not be pure enough or something for them. I make it, or rather, the slug inside me makes it, and it comes out of me in everything!"

Lupe sat down on her bed. "You kissed me that night on my cheek where I had a cut and the next morning it was healed. You and that slug work together."

"Symbiotic," he said, almost to himself. He could have sworn he felt the slug turn in him at that realization as if it was agreeing with him. That's right, it seemed to communicate to him. I take care of you and you take care of me. We are in this together now.

Richard sat down next to Lupe on her little wobbly bed. "Who was she on the phone with?"

Lupe shook her head. "I don't remember if she said a name, I'm sorry." Her voice had grown quiet.

"What's all this to do with a muddy skirt anyway?" Richard asked.

Lupe didn't immediately respond. She reached out and touched his hand. "Before I didn't want to see what was in front of me so I didn't. I can't put my head in the sand and convince myself I didn't see what I saw or hear what I heard."

"Tell me," he whispered, suddenly fearful.

"She, Tenenbaum, she has a laboratory in Epimetheus Park. I stumbled across it and I saw the most awful things outside in the trash. Horribly transformed fish and lobsters, with awful stinking tumors and too many fins and…oh Richard, everything was all wrong on them! I've never seen anything so wrong, just wrong, they were a thousand times worse than any sideshow pig in a jar of formaldehyde. Nature didn't make these monsters, she did, and…"" Lupe's voice wavered. "She made them with ADAM, with the same thing inside you!"

"What? How do you know this?" Richard took a glance at himself in the small mirror on the wall to make sure he hadn't been hideously mutated in the past hour or so. Still fine.

"I spoke to her, I said I was there to get a package, I went inside, I saw her sea slugs and experiments and asked some questions and…" Lupe trailed off and started to cry again.

He grabbed her shoulders with much more force than he meant. "What exactly did she say Lupe? What were her exact words? Stop crying and think, what did she say?"

Lupe stared back at him with big watery brown eyes full to brim with uncertainty and fear. "She said that the subjects don't change, they only become different versions of themselves. Maybe better, but probably worse."

"But I'm better," Richard protested, not to her but solely for his own benefit. "I'm better than I was, my experiment worked. It's alright darling, it's fine, it's-"

"She said she doesn't know everything that the slugs can do," Lupe interrupted him. "But…" she trailed off and thought back tears.

"Spit it out!" Richard impatiently pushed her. This slow drip was killing him.

"If the stimulant is removed the subject dies, its body can no longer support itself with the stimulant, that's what she said," Lupe relayed in a shaky voice. "That's the ADAM, isn't it? So if you lose your ADAM, you die. So if the slug dies…"

"I die," Richard finished for her.

Lupe nodded, tears freely flowing from her eyes now. One of the public announcements that played on the speakers while waiting for the train sprung to Richard's mind unbidden. Any leak is a bad leak. Report any unexplained water promptly to the Central Council.

Richard felt numb. Lupe's crying no longer reached him. He was set adrift in his own private ocean. What madness it would be to die from this. Would be. Was. This is what was going to kill him. What madness it was going to be to die from this. All he had wanted was his body back. I was supposed to die in the war. This is just all a correction.

Oh do knock it off, came the new voice that had been there since the surgery. Perhaps this slug really could talk to him. Or maybe just the ADAM woke up parts of him long dormant. You didn't die then, you didn't die now. Tenenbaum herself said she doesn't know all that the slugs can do. You could slip and die in the bath tomorrow too. Feeling low isn't going to help anyone. This place is a viper's nest. You love Lupe, don't you? Then do something about it.

Richard snapped back into reality. "I don't suppose you happen to know how long undiscovered abnormal sea slugs live, do you? No? Neither do I. I suspect I will find out eventually though," he darkly jested.

Lupe was visibly perturbed by his humor. "Richard, I-" she was struggling to speak as she was stifled by sobs. "I can't bear to lose you too!"

Now that he (or his symbiotic partner rather) had pulled him back into the realm of the living he felt it all so keenly. It was like Lupe was a part of him now, and he could sense her fear and her sadness and her sorrow and it hurt. Her worry and fear were his pains as well, and a surprising discovery that was. Love isn't just the desire to screw, he was discovering. This was the least arousing situation he had been in short of nearly bleeding to death in the mud.

This sudden rush of love overtook his fear of death. It was exhilarating. Suddenly the right words to say to her appeared in his mind in shining golden letters. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him. "I might die tomorrow. But I think I have just as much of an equal chance of living a few more years. At least. Maybe I'll outlive everyone in this tub. I don't know. But I do know one thing. I love you Lupe, and I'm sick and tired of acting like I don't. I want to be with you properly, not this nonsense fiction we're acting out. If my days are numbered I'm not going to spend any more of them playing up social decorum. First thing tomorrow morning I'm going to look for a place for us to live together. If that's what you want, I mean."

Lupe eagerly nodded. "Yes! I do, I do want that, but, but the divorce, and, oh, your wife would literally kill me."

"She thinks I'm going to kill you with my radioactive sperm, remember? She won't get her hands dirty if she doesn't have to. But don't worry about her. Let me worry about her. Let me worry about everything for us. You have enough on your mind. I just want you to be happy Lupe, I want you to feel safe and loved and cherished because you are."

He'd known her for about a month. He was still sane enough to recognize that he was rushing things. But the hell with it. He was in love. He might croak at any second. He had found someone who was just secretly outrageous as him in the hay. The hell with all of it.

Lupe smiled weakly at him. "Richard, I don't know what to say. I don't. I'm afraid if I try it won't be everything you want or everything you deserve."

He stroked the side of her face. "I want to hear what you think."

"I like you, Richard, I like being around you and being near you and talking to you and, oh golly, I really do like it when we screw. I want to be with you in a proper way too. But I don't know if I love you. I don't know if I can love anyone down here, I don't know if this is a place for love. But then again, maybe I don't know what love feels like. Maybe I'm staring it in the face and I don't know it," Lupe kissed his cheek and sighed.

He kissed her back. "That's enough for me. As long as you want to go forward with me I'm happy." I just heard that I might buy the farm at any moment and I'm happy? Love's a heck of a drug.

She put her hand on his leg, right where his wounds used to be but now was healthy flesh, and gave a tentative squeeze. "Are you sure this is safe?" Her tone was hushed as if they were being spied on.

No. He had no idea what was going to happen. He wasn't sure he had enough money or how Dorothy was going to react or what he was going to do about the rent on this apartment or…Richard exhaled slowly, momentarily overwhelmed by what he was committing to. "I'll figure it out."

She gave another squeeze. "We'll figure it out. I'll stay by your side no matter what. Even if we both end up working as whores."

"Keep this under your hat for now, at least for a few days until I can get some money moved around. But I promise things are going to change."

They sat in tense silence for a few minutes, each contemplating the future ahead of them. Richard had been a contented coward in wanting to maintain the status quo, he now realized. Was I just going to let her live in this little room for, well, how long? Years? He was grateful something had come and knocked him off his chicken's perch.

It was also surreal to think that he wouldn't be married to Dorothy anymore. Or, more accurately, living with Dorothy anymore. The marriage situation remained to be sorted out, but he had lived with her for basically his entire adult life. A more sentimental man would perhaps feel a lingering sadness, but all he felt was relief. Relief and maybe a little bit of frustration at himself that he had waited this long to do it.

Tomorrow night was the grand opening of the casino. It would probably be the last time that he and Dorothy appeared in public together. One last time. He could do one last time.