Perennials

Emily puts on lipstick in the bathroom. She puts on the perfume that smells like grapefruit, the green eyeshadow and glitter. She pulls on knee-high leather boots, and the neon-patched Hello Kitty backpack that holds the whole outfit together. Emily is going out tonight.

We met when we were young, before the asteroids hit. Before the Vectors. She hasn’t changed much since then. It’s like living with a teenager. I hate her DJs and she hates my cigarettes. Nobody wins. We just stay out of each other’s way, as much as we’re able. We survive.

She’ll come home tonight with some braindead from the Liquor Lounge and they’ll moan and gasp until Emily finishes and kicks him out. Strangers never stay, not this close to the change. Emily and I have a big day tomorrow.

Sometime before sunrise, we will fall in love.

We’ll make each other coffee. In the afternoon, we’ll plant lilies. At night, we’ll lie together until our legs shake and our toes cramp. We rarely do laundry or spring cleaning. Time is too precious. Ours is a love that burns through sickness and health. For the rest of the month, we avoid each other. That’s what it’s like for couples with Vectors.

My Vector doesn’t mind the mole on Emily’s nose, and hers ignores my bad breath and poor posture. The Vectors don’t listen to trap music, or smoke cigarettes. They don’t do much at all, really, except gaze into each other’s eyes and drool cliches. Long walks. Dinners by candlelight. It’s sickening. I have to live through it all, powerless behind my own eyes.

I hear the front door slam. I put out what’s left of my cigarette, go inside, and get ready for bed. I have a big day coming up.

I can hear Emily and her boytoy from my fold-out cot in the kitchen. The mattress plays a symphony of “Yeahs” and “Ohs” and “Fucks”, increasing in tempo until the rhythm suddenly disappears, drops off entirely to be followed by a coda of whispers. That’s the cue. I check my watch. 2:47AM. Pretty early for the change, but Emily’s Vector usually takes over before mine. That’s always the worst part, seeing her become someone else entirely, someone who loves me, and knowing that soon I’ll be lost in the same way.

The front door slams. I hold in my chuckle. Vectors aren’t transmitted sexually, but all the same, no one wants to sleep with us. Most people are terrified when they find out. What if you become one? What if you lose yourself to some alien parasite every month for the rest of your life? The horror.

Then the bedroom door creaks open softly, and I brace myself.

“Dave?”

“In here.”

She walks in, flips on the light switch. Her makeup is streaked across her face. She’s a raccoon that’s gotten into a box of oil paint. Beneath the rainbow colors on her head and neck, she’s naked, her skin flushed a single uniform pink.

“You haven’t… changed over yet?” She says. She always seems to know, somehow that I haven’t. It doesn’t stop her from asking. My gut wrenches, as if in response to her question. I don’t have long, but I’ll fight it as long as I can.

“Does it ever bother you? Taking over someone else’s body?”

She bites her lip, a tic unique to Emily’s Vector. “Oh, Dave. You know it’s not like that. You’re just ... you’ll be better soon, I promise. You’ll remember what it’s like, and everything will be all right.”

“Leave me alone. Give me my last minutes in peace.” I can already feel the tightening in my stomach, the tingle in my spine, my own Vector responding to Emily’s. “You know I don’t want to talk to you.” She looks away, hurt in a way that Emily never is when we fight or argue.

But I do want to talk to her. If only I could make her understand how terrible it is to lose my identity. No one should need to go through it. Not even Emily, hate her though I might. And then I realize that she’s sitting next to me on the cot, and she’s warm. She’s so warm. She radiates heat right through my blanket.

And in the next moment, I’m Dave instead of David.

Em moans when I bite her ear. First comes the whisper, and then the brush of lips, and then the single sharp nip to set her off. I do it once more for the sake of symmetry, and she gasps and tries to roll off me. I hold her there, whispering again:

“I love you.”

Nothing has ever been truer. Our days, our hours, they’re worth more than platinum. Worth more than perfectly debugged software. Priceless.

Em doesn’t stay awake long. She never does, on the first night. She’s tired from a long night out, and besides, the Other David sleeps all day. I’m full of energy. The moon is full, and our apartment overlooks the Mississippi. I’ve got time to get a run in. Emily stirs only briefly as I rise out of bed, almost invisible in the darkness.

Outside, the air is slick against my skin. The moon hangs heavy over the river, dripping moonbeams into wide puddles on the surface of the water. I cycle my legs between heartbeats, willing them faster and faster until my lungs heave like bellows. No matter how hard I try, I can’t go as fast as I used to.

David takes poor care of our body. He sits and putters about at his computer all day. He reads and codes and watches cat videos. Top ten lists. Clickbait. Empty calories.

I round the bend, crossing under the bridge that used to carry grain before factories and food production dried up in the cities. There’s a couple curled up on the bench. I wonder if they’re Vectors, how long they’ve been in love. It’s a beautiful night to spend out on the river. I’d bother Em about it, but I can’t blame her for being tired. Her body is in even worse shape than David’s.

I don’t slow down or stop running. You don’t get better if you give up.

When I get back home, Em is in the bathroom, leaning back in the tub with her eyes closed. Make-up floats around her in greasy slicks, glitter trapped in soap bubbles. She opens her eyes and smiles at me, her head cocked to the side like a cat listening to a whistle.

“What are you grinning about?”

“How was your run?”

I shrug. “The Other David doesn’t do much to stay fit.”

I strip down and kick my clothes into the corner, sliding into the still-warm bathwater while Em dries her hair in the mirror. I close my eyes and let the chill of my late autumn run sink away. Life is good.

“Does it look like I’ve gained weight?

I don’t bother opening my eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“We need to get a new scale.”

“Oh, come on. Even if you ate every day for two people, you wouldn’t get fat.”

“What?” Emily stomps her foot. “You knew! How did you know?”

I squint my eyes open. She’s waving something at me. “Know what?”

“Dave, I’m pregnant.”

A warmth deeper than any bathwater suffuses me.

Instead of spending the next morning in bed, Em and I go out to the fabric store. It’s late October and we’re picking out costumes before Halloween. We’ve decided that Em will be Dr. Frankenstein and I’ll play her slightly hunched assistant.

After we’ve already gotten what we need, we wander around. Em picks out sheets of chenille and chiffon, several yards of silk and seersucker, all of it in soft pastels.

“What if it’s a boy?” I say, brandishing a roll of flannel. Em rolls her eyes, but doesn’t mock me for being old-fashioned. The flannel goes in the cart.

“Do you think we should move?” Em says on the way back home. “I mean, are there any good schools near us? We should give this baby a good life.” Em went to college, but I wasn’t so lucky. My Other’s life went into disarray after the asteroid hit, and it was only by a lucky mix of libraries and loneliness that he learned to code. That I learned to code. We shared that much, at least.

“We have lots of time before the baby has to go to school, Em.” I try not to think about what might happen when Em and I are sucked back into the nothingness that claims us every month. I try not to think about the Other David, the Other Emily. Outside, maple leaves are turning red. Autumn is burning away the foliage, leaving crisp dry air. I shiver once and try not to think about what might happen to the baby.

I don’t question Emily when she takes the cigarette out of my hand and burns it in three hard drags. I just flip open the pack and offer her another.

“I’m pretty fucked, David.” she says.

“Not much to do now that they’ve registered the pregnancy. We’d just end up serving time if we tried getting rid of the baby. You know how the courts are about Vectors.”

She snorts. “How are we supposed to afford this, do you think? The Vectors can’t afford it on their own. Do you think they’re planning a move? So help me god, if we end up moving again, I’ll kill myself.”

There was a time when the idea of Emily offing herself might have thrilled me with pleasure, but our shared injustice on the issue of the pregnancy offered a cease-fire. I opted for something mildly comforting.

“We’ll figure something out. Even if we can’t abort it, the state still offers adoption programs.”

“Only if we go to court. Who’s going to pay for that?”

Emily finishes her smoke and looks at me expectantly.

“That was the last one.”

She smiles, sweeter than I’ve seen her try for in years. “I’ll go get more if you drag the couch out to the balcony. It’s still warm enough, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh come on. We can both sleep out here tonight. We’ll just smoke and talk and lay together until we fall asleep. Like old times. When we were kids.”

While spending the whole night talking with Emily isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, I can’t turn down a free pack of smokes. I stand up and stretch.

“Ok.”

As I drag the couch out, Emily strips the wax off a bottle of Maker’s Mark.

“Should you be drinking?”

“Not my problem.” She shrugs. “They can make abortions illegal for couples with Vectors all they want, but they can’t stop me from drinking. Might as well just lock me up.”

“They do that, you know. One of the girls I grew up with got a Vector. She went down to the co-op and picked up a couple pounds of pennyroyal. Spent a couple days brewing big pots of tea and the pregnancy cleared right up. Her Vector reported her. She’s still serving her sentence.”

“Well, like I said, it’s not my problem. I’m just enjoying some bourbon.”

I drop another cup of kale into the blender and pulse it with a frozen banana and a handful of blueberries. Em is at the clinic. She set up the appointment as soon as we were back. She’s worried about the baby, and for good reason. I hauled almost twenty empty bottles outside to the curb. It’s out of control. And yet, we’re worried about filing a report. Technically, we’re protected from our Others by law, but it isn’t that simple. Prison holds a lot of consequences for Vectors too, even though we are theoretically allowed to go free when we take over. Problem is, it’s not easy to keep track of who’s who.

Besides, it might be too late.

The Other Emily has been drinking an awful lot. The damage might already be done.

Just before midnight, my phone rings from the bathroom, rattling on the porcelain.

“Em?”

There’s a long silence, and then: “I did it. I filed a report.”

“Oh.”

“She took it too far, Dave. This is the only way for us to keep the baby safe.”

“I know. I’m just … it doesn’t seem like the best timing. The Others are about to take over. I’m worried about what Emily will do. You know how she can get.”

“That’s why I’m not home. I already turned myself in. They’ll make sure that nothing happens.”

“Where are you?”

“It’s better if you don’t know. There’s no telling what the Other David might do. I’ll be back in three weeks, though, I swear it. We’re going to have this baby, and it’s going to be goddamned healthy if I have to die making it happen.”

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“I love you, Dave.”

I drain my smoothie and walk out to the recycling. One of the bourbon bottles has a couple fingers in the bottom, and I pour it in my empty glass. I hear booze delays the transition. I wish we never had to let the Others back in at all.

The sun is out, the snow is melting, and the bathroom is mercifully free of vomiting sounds. Emily’s imprisonment has made me a free man for five months now. In fact, if the pregnancy goes awry, it’s quite possible I’ll never have to see Emily again.

Freedom, for the first time in almost a decade. And yet, something isn’t quite right. I feel something gnawing at the edge of my consciousness, some sort of nagging anxiety or concern. I walk out to the balcony and smother it with a cigarette. It’s not enough.

Instead, I put on my Vector’s running clothes and race down along the Mississippi. I’m in better shape than I thought, despite the cigarettes, and I make it almost all the way downtown before collapsing on a bench and catching my breath.

My phone vibrates as I admire the ice drifting along the river.

“Hello?”

“David Delacroix?” The woman’s voice is rushed, like I’m the first name on a long list.

“That’d be me.”

“We’re calling today about your child, sir. Is …” the voice trails off and I hear a muffled conversation on the other end of the phone. “Sir, pardon me for asking, but are you the original David Delacroix or his Vector?”

“I’m a human being. If that’s what you mean.”

“Er, yes. All right. You may want to sit down, Mister Delacroix.” The person on the other end clears her throat. “Your partner Emily passed away at nine am this morning.”

“What? How?”

“She’d been hoarding some of her prescriptions. She took them all at once today, after breakfast.”

“Aren’t you supposed to prevent that sort of thing from happening?”

She clears her throat again. “We’re still not sure how she managed to keep them secret. But that’s not the end of it. Your wife passed, but we managed to save the child.”

I said nothing.

“Mister Delacroix? Hello?”

“Yeah. What does all this mean for me?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do I need to do?”

There’s more muffled conversation on the phone, and then: “You need to perform a positive identification on Emily Delacroix’s body, as well as take custody of your newborn.”

Oh. Right. The kid. I’d figure that out, I guessed. Couldn’t be worse than living with Emily. “I’ll be right along. Just let me run home and shower.”

“Goodbye.” The voice on the other side sounds disgusted. Probably just tired of having to call people.

At the hospital, I confirm Emily’s identity, and pick up the kid, a boy.

Back home, I wrap him in flannel and hold him on the couch while I watch TV. Looking down at the wrinkly little bugger, I can’t help but feel good. He’s more proof of my fresh start. A perfectly Vector-less human being.

I’m a father.

Part of me is dead. Killed by a self-destructive child, a psychopath with no empathy or concern for the lives of those with whom she shared a body. Part of me is dead, and there’s no way to get her back. We’ll never plant flowers again.

Part of me is dead, but she left something behind.

Eli.

Eli, we named our son, my Other and I. He’s not as bad, now that Emily is gone. Somehow Em’s death brought us closer together. Team David. Team Delacroix. It never occurred to me that he might hate Em’s Other as much as I did.

But we both love Eli, and that would make Em happy, I think. She’d want me to take care of him. She’d want both of us to take care of him.

Em lives on in him, and in me, and somehow in my Other too. She lives on in the lilies that we planted over the years, and the crease on her side of the mattress. She lives on in the smell of grapefruit and cigarettes.

Part of me is dead, but she isn’t gone. She’s still in the lilies out front, and in Eli’s chiffon pajamas. She’s still in the flannel sheets. She lives on in my memory. She lives on in the way she brought my Other and I together.

I can’t see her from here, but she isn’t gone.

Daniel Rosen writes speculative fiction and swing jazz in Minnesota, smack dab in the middle of North America. In between various fictions, he spends his time sprawled lazily with two cats and a lady. You can find him on twitter @animalfur, or at his website: http://rosen659.wixsite.com/avantgardens