Page 22 of The Echo Wife
When I tapped on her window, she didn’t startle. Her face didn’t snap from blank distance into focus, the way it would have if she’d been far off somewhere, lost. She simply lowered one hand to her seat belt buckle, gently guided the band of the belt over her shoulder and out of the way.
I opened her door. She stepped out of the car with easy grace, smoothed her skirt, and looked at me with placid, patient eyes. Waiting to be told what to do, where to go. Waiting for permission.
I swallowed a gout of irrational fury at her. Martine couldn’t help her programming; she’d been designed for this. She’d been made to wait for permission. It was there in every smooth hesitation. The way she watched for me to drink before taking a sip of her own drink, the way she stood in doorways until I made eye contact with her and nodded before she would enter a room. The way she sat in the passenger seat, belt buckled, until she knew for sure that I wanted her to get out of the car.
I remembered walking into the living room to find her sitting on the couch in her pajamas, listening for my footfalls.
I shook my head. It wasn’t her fault that she was like this. It wasn’t her fault that this was what Nathan had wanted. I couldn’t hold it against her, no matter how frustrating it was. I couldn’t hold it against her any more than I could resent a bulldog for breathing heavily.
She was made this way, and the only thing for me to do was deal with her until I could get her out of the way.
She followed me through the empty halls of the lab building, her kitten heels quiet on the industrial carpeting. I tried to see the building through her eyes, but it was too familiar to me. I couldn’t distance myself from the way this place felt like mine.
Martine flinched at thebeepthat sounded when I swiped my card across the matte-black scanner outside the door to my lab. Normally I would have reflexively rolled my eyes at her twitchiness, but this time I had only barely managed to repress a flinch of my own. Thatbeepseemed much too loud, much too sudden. I couldn’t imagine how I’d managed to hear it every day for so many years without realizing how disruptive a sound it was. I had an impulse to ask the building manager to have it silenced, the same way I’d asked Seyed to felt the clipboards—but of course, the lab was soundproofed. That beep was only audible to people outside the airlock, and there was no way for me to explain why I would want to be able to enter my own lab unnoticed by other people in the building.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “No one’s here.”
“You’re sure?” she asked, her shoulders tight.
“I’m sure,” I hissed. “There are no night shifts in this wing, and I’m the only one with after-hours access to my lab. We’re alone.”
“You’re really sure?” she asked again as I opened the outer door of the airlock.
I fought the urge to grab her by the wrist and yank her in behind me. “I’m absolutely certain,” I said, keeping my voice soft inthe hope that my volume would convey some illusion of patience. “Please trust me.”
She stepped into the airlock behind me. I warned her about the positive-pressure ventilation, the blast of air she should expect to encounter. I told her that it was to reduce the risk of particulates and contaminants that might enter the lab space. I explained the risk of spores and seeds. I was talking fast and low, delivering a continuous stream of information, more information than she could possibly want.
It was a nervous habit, teaching by reflex, one I’d picked up the instant I’d hired my first lab assistant after Nathan stopped working with me. I didn’t have a partner to talk to, so I wound up talking to my assistant, walking her through my process whenever she was observing my work. Describing my actions and reasoning had come naturally to me, and I found myself falling easily into a rhythm of action and explanation.
My heartbeat slowed as I talked. The sense of fear that had crept into me in the hall ebbed. As long as I was teaching Martine about her environment, I was the one who knew what was going on. I was trustworthy. I was in control.
She stood patiently, listening to me talk, and waited as the cycle began. The air lifted tendrils of blond hair away from her face. She blinked rapidly several times, but didn’t close her eyes. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her over the sound of the air cycle.
“What did you say?” I leaned close, a few strands of my own hair falling into my face.
“I said, are you absolutelysurethat we arecompletelyalone?”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes, Martine, for God’s sake,” I said, not bothering to temper my voice this time. The air cycle finished in the middle of my sentence, and the words “for God’s sake” echoed in the airlock, unnaturally loud. Martine’s brow furrowed for an instant, but she didn’t say anything further. Her lips tightened. I wondered if this was what Martine looked like when she was angry.
I told myself that it didn’t matter. Martine didn’t have a rightto be angry at me. I hadn’t meant to shout, and even if Ihadmeant to shout, this was her mess. It was her mess, and I was cleaning it up. What she was asking of me—the risk I was assuming on her behalf—was immense.
I had a right to shout.
And besides any of that, I’d told her so many times not to worry. I’d told her so many times that we were alone. I’d told her, and she just wasn’tlistening.
In that moment, I felt an animal kind of impatience, like there was a rope around my neck I’d have to chew through to get free.I’ll make her listen,that impatience whispered, and I tried hard to ignore that whisper, even though it felt terribly, terribly right. I hoped she wouldn’t ask again whether or not we were alone, because I didn’t know how loud the whisper would grow if she persisted.
I tried to ignore it. I told myself that it didn’t matter, and I opened the inner door of the airlock and stepped past Martine into the lab. I threw a hand out, reaching for the light switch by instinct.
Behind me, I heard Martine close the airlock door. The latch clicked gently in the same instant that the light switch did. The fluorescents flickered to life, illuminating my lab.
Tungsten lab tables. Tall, insulated tanks filled with amnio and specimens in various stages of development. The autopsy table, the gutters extra-deep to accommodate potential tissue liquefaction. My enormous fume hood. Whiteboards.
Cupboards, their doors hanging open, their contents disheveled. A box of scalpels on the floor, blades scattered across the linoleum alongside a few loose pipettes.
Bags of synthetic amnio, clutched in the arms of a short man in a black ski mask.
I let my hand fall away from the light switch and looked at the man holding my supplies. He stood, frozen, and stared back at me.
