Inhabited - chapter 17 (with images) (Patreon)

The alarm goes off at six. She hits the button before the second tone.

The apartment is chilly. The radiator under the window is silent, the iron pipes cold. She lies on the firm mattress for a minute. Then she sits up and pulls the thick black binder onto her lap.

She has to call in sick.

Teaching doesn’t allow a casual noon walk out of the building. She finds the blank sub plan forms in the back folder and fills them out in the gray light coming through the blinds. Sophomore review session. Textbook chapters. Worksheets in the second drawer of Room 214, the labeled folder. Maren’s natural script is a fast slanted cursive that her hand executes without needing to think about it. The instructions come out neat enough.

She calls the main office at seven. Voicemail, absentee line. Stomach bug. The lie lands in the back of her throat with a small sharp spike of Maren’s professional guilt. Maren does not call in sick.

She gets dressed. Gray wool turtleneck, dark denim that’s stiff at first and then warms. The bra goes on first. Two tries to get the hooks. She adjusts the cups and pulls the turtleneck over her head. A pair of leather boots with a stacked heel.

She changes the pantyliner again before she leaves. The discharge is still clear, still the same. Two more days, maybe, before the window closes.

She leaves at ten.

The PATH train under the river is mostly empty at this hour. She sits with her knees together, the messenger bag against her thigh. The train rattles and sways, fluorescent lights flickering as they shoot through the dark tunnel. In Cara’s body she’d tracked every person who got on, mapped the exits before she’d sat down. Here, a woman nearing forty in sensible clothes on a mid-morning train, the math just doesn’t run the same way. No one looks at her. She doesn’t have to be anywhere in her own head except just here.

L train at Fourteenth. Transfer at Lorimer, then the G. Off at Nassau Avenue.

The air above ground is damp. Sky like a flat white sheet about to tear. The walk to the café is short. She turns off Manhattan Avenue onto the side street and goes up the stairs.

The air in her lungs gets harder to move the closer she gets. She is about to walk into a room wearing Brigid’s estranged wife’s face. There is no way to prepare for what that will do to Brigid. There is no way around it.

She pushes the door open. The bell jingles. The room smells like it always does.

The narrow room. Marble-topped tables along the left wall, the espresso counter and the equipment along the right. The pressed-tin ceiling painted dark green, brighter green once. Brigid is at the last table, her usual spot. Dark structured coat, unbuttoned. A scarf looped loose around her neck. Looking down at a notebook, pen tapping the edge of the paper. Half-empty ceramic mug of black coffee. A crumpled pastry wrapper pushed to the side, something she ate quickly and distracted.

She walks down the length of the room.

Brigid finishes writing a sentence. Raises her head.

The pen slips from her fingers and clatters onto the marble.

Her face goes completely slack. Dark eyes taking in the gray turtleneck, the light brown hair, the familiar slope of the shoulders, and then nothing. Just the face of her wife, walking out of eight months of deliberate absence, standing in the aisle of a café she doesn’t go to. Her mouth opens a small amount. Her hands go down into her lap where Maren can’t see them. Her breathing stops.

She stands there. Lets Brigid have it. Three seconds. Four.

Then the jaw locks. The skin around Brigid’s eyes tightens. She picks the pen back up. Her fingers are shaking. She grips the plastic barrel hard enough to turn her knuckles pale.

“Sit down,“ Brigid says. Barely a whisper.

She pulls out the metal chair. It scrapes loudly against the worn hardwood. She sits.

The marble between them is maybe two feet across. Too close. She catches the scent of Brigid's perfume, citrus over something dry, cedar or sandalwood, and the back of her neck goes hot under the turtleneck collar before she's processed what she's smelling. She puts her hands flat on the marble to keep them from moving.

There’s a warmth where she sits against the chair she wasn’t expecting. A sudden awareness of that part of the body as present, demanding. She becomes very conscious of how she is sitting. She doesn’t shift. Shifting would be worse.

She has been sitting across from Brigid in body after body. Has relied on her. Has tracked the sharp intelligence in her eyes, the severe line of her jaw when she was thinking, the way Brigid's hands move when she's putting facts in order on a page. As Nadia, the body had given a small unmistakable opinion about Brigid that Nadia had had to keep off her face. A heat at the back of the neck. A small involuntary opening somewhere lower. Nadia had pretended it wasn't happening.

She watches Brigid's lips purse. The shadow of her collarbone above the scarf, where the skin disappears into the dark wool. The way the hair at the nape of her neck has come slightly loose and curls against the collar. Her hands on the marble, the long fingers, a small ink mark on the side of one knuckle from the pen.

The body is already keyed up from the morning, a low constant. Sitting two feet from Brigid is making it not low. The heat at her chest goes up another degree under the turtleneck, the wool suddenly too warm. The pulse-point at the base of her throat where Brigid's perfume hit her is moving fast enough that she can feel it. There's a tightening in the abdomen that has nothing to do with anxiety. The chair under her is no longer something she is sitting on neutrally. The seam of the slacks against the inseam, a small adjustment in how she's holding her thighs, none of it is helping.

Maren's hands have a clear opinion about where they would like to go if they were allowed. They would like to be on the marble, an inch from Brigid's. They would like to be on the side of Brigid's neck, where the scarf is loose. They would like to be in Brigid's hair.

She keeps them on the table. Flat. Visible. She presses the pads of her fingers harder into the marble than she needs to.

She should not be having this response. Not across the table from Brigid grieving, not at noon in a Greenpoint café.

She is having it anyway.

Brigid stares at the gray turtleneck. At Maren’s hands on the marble. At the thin silver ring on the right index finger. Everywhere except the eyes.

“You couldn’t have warned me?“ Her voice is shaking.

“I couldn’t use the phone. The text would have come from her.“

Brigid lets out a harsh breath. Looks out the window at the gray street. The muscles in her neck are corded. At the base of her throat a pulse beats, faintly visible.

“Of all the people,“ Brigid says to the window. “All the bodies in this city.“

“I know.“

Brigid turns back. The furious mask mostly in place now, the cracks visible.

“Is she in there?“

“I think she’s asleep. Pushed down. Same as the others.“

Brigid nods. One jerky mechanical motion. She reaches for the coffee mug, sees that her hand is still trembling, and leaves it on the marble. Pulls the notebook closer instead.

"Fine. We work." Forcing the words. "What do we have?"

She opens her mouth to answer. Brigid is already looking at the notebook, pen uncapped, jaw reset. But then Brigid looks up again. The professional mask is on. What's under it comes through anyway.

"Is the apartment — " Brigid stops. Starts again, lower. "Is she comfortable"

"Yes."

Brigid nods once. Writes something. The pen moving for a second before she registers she hasn't opened to a new page yet. She caps the pen. Opens to a new page.

"What do we have?"

"Sarah Lin. She named a contact, called in a favor. I got a meeting."

“With who?“

“A woman named Elise Han. Mid-senior communications director at NovaSphere.“

“When?“

“Two o’clock today. Manhattan. Their offices in Hudson Yards.“

She does the math. It’s eleven-fifteen now. There’s time.

Brigid is looking at her phone. Frowns. Reads something. The frown deepens.

“My editor,“ she says. Quiet, more to herself. “There’s a court ruling at one. They want me physically in Brooklyn Heights for a comment from the plaintiff’s attorney. It’s a story I’ve been on for six months.“ She closes her eyes for a second. “Of course it’s today.“

“Reschedule Elise.“

“I can’t. She agreed to this slot a week ago. If I push it she’ll find a reason to cancel and not reschedule. The window closes.“

The marble is cold under her hands. She is already running the angles. The cover is clean. A translator researching a piece on virtual linguistics. Maren’s profile actually fits the cover better than Brigid’s would - a high school history teacher writing a sidelines piece feels less aggressive than a working journalist.

“I’ll go.“

Brigid looks up. “What?“

“I’ll go. The cover holds. They don’t know your face from a pitch over email. They definitely don’t know mine.“

“You are not Maren.“

“I have her face, her voice, her résumé, and a story to tell. The cover holds for an hour. I just need to feel the room.“

Brigid is quiet. Looking at her. Then at the marble. Then at her again.

“You ask about virtual linguistics. Cross-cultural avatar embodiment. Anything that lets you steer toward the developer forums without naming them. See if she flinches.“

“She won’t tell me anything. She’s comms.“

“I don’t need her to tell us anything directly. I just need to know if they’re guarding the door.“

“Got it.“

“I’ll text you after my thing in the Heights. If you finish first, text me when you’re out.“

Brigid finally meets her eyes. It is a mistake. The eye contact burns through both of them. Brigid looks away immediately.

“I mapped the access protocols from Ruth’s terminal,“ she says, keeping her voice level, giving Brigid nothing but data. “Token refresh cycle. Vulnerability in the secondary port routing. If we get an old admin credential, we can spoof the handshake and bypass the directory.“

Brigid writes this down. Block letters, jagged.

“We still need the credential.“

“I know.“

They’ve traded the information. The espresso machine hisses. A barista calls out an order for an oat milk latte.

Brigid is looking at the silver ring on Maren’s index finger.

“Is she seeing anyone?“ The voice stripped of everything now. Just hollow.

She looks down at her hands. Doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know the shape of the fracture.

“I helped her move the boxes,“ Brigid says, mostly to herself. “Eight months ago.“

“They’re still in the corner,“ she says. “Still taped.“

Brigid closes her eyes. A small involuntary flinch.

“Don’t do that.“

“Do what.“

“Don’t use her voice to be gentle with me.“

She goes quiet.

Brigid opens her eyes. Closes the notebook. Slides the pen into the spiral binding.

"Two o'clock. Hudson Yards. Building C. Reception desk, ask for Elise Han. The cover is a piece on cross-cultural avatar embodiment for an academic quarterly. The name on the appointment is Suzanne Cross. I used a Gmail. Don't use Maren's name anywhere in that building."

“Got it.“

Brigid stands. Doesn’t wrap the scarf tighter. Turns and walks toward the door and goes out into the cold gray afternoon.

She stays at the table. Touches the handle of Brigid’s coffee mug. The ceramic is lukewarm. She sits there for another five minutes watching people come in and stamp their feet and wait for their orders and leave. Nobody looks at her.

The NovaSphere office is on the thirty-eighth floor of a glass building that has nothing to say about itself. Reception is a long pale stone counter. A young man in a charcoal turtleneck checks her in and gives her a visitor badge. Suzanne Cross, Guest. She clips it to the lapel of the wool coat and sits in a low gray chair facing the windows.

The Hudson is a dull silver line. Jersey beyond it. Somewhere over there, the apartment with three taped boxes in the corner.

A few minutes later a woman comes around the corner of the elevator bank. Mid-forties, short dark hair, dark blazer, low heels, no jewelry. Her face is a professional surface - a smile already arranged before she reaches across the chair to shake Maren’s hand. The smile does not reach her eyes. The eyes are working.

“Suzanne. Elise Han. Thanks for coming up.“

“Thanks for the time.“

Elise leads her down a glass corridor to a small conference room. Frosted walls, a round white table, two black chairs, a carafe of water. They sit. Elise folds her hands on the table and waits.

“So,“ Maren says. “The piece is on cross-cultural avatar embodiment. How non-Western users adapt to default avatar configurations that were designed against Western anthropometric data. Whether calibration shifts when the baseline assumptions are off.“

“Mm.“ Elise nods. The smile holds. “We do work with localization teams in seven markets.“

“I’m interested in calibration drift in long sessions. What happens when a user is in a body or an avatar that doesn’t match their physiological baseline. Whether the platform compensates over time, whether users compensate, whether anyone has measured it.“

A small thing happens in Elise’s eyes. The pupils don’t dilate. The face does not change. But the eyes are not the same eyes they were a sentence ago. They are not looking at her. They are looking at her, which is different.

“The sync layer is designed to handle a wide range of physiological inputs,“ Elise says. “We don’t see meaningful drift in normal use.“

“I read that the calibration mismatch flag was a documented limitation in the early developer environments.“

“That was three years ago. Closed environment, internal beta.“

“Right.“ She makes a small note in the leather notebook she brought. The pen is steady. “I’d read in some developer forums - one in particular, kind of an underground space - that extreme emotional stress can cause users to experience something different. A stuttering at full sync depth. Something the platform handles by suppressing the warning rather than fixing the layer.“

Elise does not move. She is composed like someone who has been instructed in how to hold a face for forty minutes.

“I’m not familiar with the forum you’re referring to.“

“It moves around. Hard to find now.“

“I see.“

The pause is too long.

Elise’s eyes are moving across the table without quite landing. The polite, composed not-recognition of someone who has been told what to do with a face she doesn’t have a file on yet, but who has been given enough to know there’s a file.

“What I can tell you,“ Elise says, “is that NovaSphere has a robust safety-and-research pipeline. We publish quarterly. The last white paper on calibration is on the developer site. Anything beyond that is going to be outside what I can speak to.“

“Of course.“ She sets the pen down. “I appreciate you taking the time.“

“My pleasure. Send me the piece when it runs.“

The smile is back, fully arranged. Elise stands. Walks her back down the glass corridor, makes one polite question about where she teaches, listens to the answer with the same composed surface, takes her badge at the desk.

The elevator. The ground floor. The cold air of the plaza.

She gets on the train at Hudson Yards. The car is mostly empty. She sits with the bag in her lap and lets the body settle. The lower back ache has come back, a low established hum she can’t ignore now.

The trip back to Hoboken is rattling metal and fluorescent light and a seat near the door she doesn’t need to sit near anymore but sits near anyway.

She gets back to the apartment at three-thirty. Three taped boxes in the corner. She takes off her boots and hangs up the coat. Pours a glass of tap water and drinks it at the counter, looking at the blank wall. Below the fridge, she notices now, there’s a calendar from last year still attached with tape. November and December visible. Some dates marked in red ink - school breaks, she thinks - and one date in the middle of November with a small star drawn next to it. She doesn’t know what that was for.

Four o’clock. Five. She sits on the sofa for most of it, doing nothing. Brigid does not text again.

At six she goes to the bedroom and takes off the gray turtleneck and the stiff denim. Finds a pair of soft sweatpants and a faded college t-shirt. Reaches behind her back for the bra hooks. The band comes loose. Everything that had been held all day isn’t. She stands there for a second just breathing. The thin cotton of the t-shirt warming where her breasts settle under it. The faint pressure-lines the wire left in her skin will take a while to fade. She pulls the t-shirt down and leaves the bra on the dresser.

Ros is coming at seven.

She sits on the gray sofa in the half-dark, the cheap floor lamp making a weak circle on the floorboards. She doesn’t know what she is going to do with Ros. She has surface tension and the mild guilt Maren carries for not being more present. She has the ovulatory warmth still running faintly in her body, low and diffuse, not helping anything.

At six-forty-five, a knock.

She stands up. Walks to the door, turns the deadbolt.

Ros is in the hallway holding two brown paper bags. A large cream sweater and dark jeans, dark hair pulled up in a messy clip. She is smiling. A warm, open expression that expects to be met halfway.

“Hey,“ Ros says, stepping inside before the door is fully open.

She sets the bags on the small dining table. Turns around. Steps directly into Maren’s space.

Ros’s hands go to Maren’s waist. They slide under the hem of the faded t-shirt, fingers cool against the bare skin of her lower back. Then Ros leans in and kisses her on the mouth.

Her mouth opens before she decides anything.

Heat all at once, somewhere south of her stomach and at the back of her scalp at the same time, before she’s registered anything localized at all. Ros tastes like mint and the cold from outside. Her hands are cool and the cool moves up under the t-shirt and some part of Maren’s skin meets that and moves toward it. Her nipples go hard. There’s a warmth lower down she can’t be sure is the ovulation or the kiss. 

She breaks it. Steps back. Has to.

She pats Ros’s shoulder, a rigid awkward thing to do, and hates herself for it immediately.

“Hey,“ she says. Breath coming a little fast. Voice thin.

Ros looks at her. The smile fades a fraction. “You okay? You look completely wrecked. Were the sophomores that bad?“

“Just a long day.“ She swallows. “I actually called out sick. Headache.“

“Oh, Maren.“ Ros’s face shifts into immediate concern. Genuine, unguarded. “You should have told me. I would have brought soup.“

“Thai is fine. It smells good.“

They open the bags in the kitchen. She doesn’t know where Maren keeps the forks, guesses a drawer and gets it right, the metal clattering. She doesn’t know if they eat at the table or the sofa. She takes her container to the sofa. Ros follows, folding her legs underneath her, sitting close enough that their knees almost touch.

Ros talks about her day. Something about an architectural firm and a logo the client keeps changing. She listens, nodding, trying to let the heat that spiked with the kiss settle back down. It doesn’t.

Ros is trying hard. Filling the silence, offering up pieces of her day, touching Maren’s knee when she laughs. Underneath the heat that keeps reasserting itself, the emotional reality surfaces: she doesn't know what she wants from Ros, and Maren doesn't either. Maren's grief about Brigid is still the largest thing in this apartment. Ros’s constant attentive warmth, the way she leans her shoulder against Maren’s arm, feels like someone pressing on a bruise and calling it a hug.

She sets her half-eaten container on the coffee table. “I’m sorry. I’m just really out of it tonight.“

Ros stops eating. Sets her own container down. Creates a few inches of space between them on the sofa. “It’s okay. You don’t have to entertain me.“

The phone is on the edge of the coffee table.

The screen lights up.

Brigid: Does she know anything?

The phone buzzes against the wood.

Ros looks down at the table.

The screen stays lit for ten seconds. Long enough. Ros reads the name. Reads the message.

The air goes out of the room.

Ros looks up at Maren's face. The warm anxious concern is gone. She has the face of someone who already knew, and was just waiting for the proof.

“Brigid,“ Ros says. The name sounds like ash.

“It’s not what you think.“ Blunt, useless.

“Does she know anything,“ Ros repeats, reading it slowly. Back to Maren’s face. “Are you talking to her about me?“

“No. God, no. It has nothing to do with you.“

“Then who is ‘she’?“

She opens her mouth. She has nothing. She can’t explain Elise at NovaSphere. She can’t explain the developer forums or the conference room on the thirty-eighth floor.

She sits in silence.

Ros lets out a breath. The sound of someone who has stopped trying.

“I knew it,“ Ros says. She stands.

“Ros, please. You’re misunderstanding the text.“

“Am I.“ Ros turns around. Her eyes are bright but she isn’t crying. She is incredibly, terribly sad. “You’ve been a ghost all night. Sitting right next to me and a thousand miles away. And your wife is asking you something about another woman.“

“We aren’t talking about us.“

“It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about, Maren.“ Ros picks up her coat from the dining chair. “It matters that you’re talking to her. And that you’re looking at me like I’m a stranger who walked into your house.“

“I don’t know how to fix this right now,“ she says.

“You don’t have to.“

Ros puts her coat on. Doesn’t pack up the leftover Thai. Doesn’t ask for her keys. Walks to the door.

She stops with her hand on the deadbolt.

“I tried,“ Ros says quietly, looking at the doorframe. “I really tried to give you the space you needed.“

She turns the lock. Opens the door and walks out. The door clicks shut.

The apartment goes back to silence.

She stays on the sofa. The noodles growing cold in the cardboard box. The floor lamp buzzes faintly.

She picks up the phone. Types a reply to Brigid.

She knew enough to stonewall. They’re watching the door.

Brigid: OK. Confirmed. I burned the Suzanne Cross address. I’ll start on the credential angle tomorrow.

She sets the phone back down.

She couldn't perform the warmth Ros needed. She let the investigation bleed into Maren's living room. She has to wake up tomorrow and put the gray trousers back on and stand in front of twenty-eight teenagers and look like nothing happened.

She leans her head back against the sofa and closes her eyes. The lower back throbs quietly in the dark.