Ms. Thomas gasped. “Oh, I just can’t believe it. You just never know the torment some people have buried down inside.”
Juanita’s reflex was to be offended by the sympathy the woman appeared to feel toward Harvey, but she suppressed it. It was the reaction most people had when they found out somebody they knew, or thought they knew, was a thug. They’d built up a view of the person in their minds, one that didn’t include cruelty and violence. It was difficult to discard that view, and the new information had to somehow be crudely cobbled on. The other alternative was to throw out the old view completely, and to treat the new view as a separate person, Jekyll and Hyde. Or just Hyde, and Jekyll who never was.
Then, abruptly, she remembered that she was only talking to a computer simulation of a person. The illusion was so perfect that she’d forgotten. Did a DeadRinger think like a person at all? She shivered despite the warm afternoon Sun. But looking at Ms. Thomas’s moist brown eyes, so like her own grandmother’s, it was impossible to treat her any way other than as a person.
Is that what had happened to Harvey? Had he just been assigned to go from grave to grave, inspecting each for proper operation? Had he found himself talking to them the way she was now? All she’d wanted was a little information. All she’d wanted to know was what it was like to talk to a dead person before she had to talk to him. It was only coincidence that she’d found one that knew Harvey. Of course, it was possible that they all knew Harvey here. What would happen if she went down the row of headstones, talking to each Dead Ringer? Would each have their own image of Harvey, all different, all false?
Ms. Thomas stepped toward her. “Is your name Juanita? Harvey used to mention you sometimes when he came by here. He talked about driving you away. Said something about not deserving you. I never understood that till now.”
Juanita suddenly felt uncomfortable. She realized that she was hearing things that didn’t fit her view of Harvey the monster, Harvey the ogre, Harvey the thug, and she didn’t like it. “It’s been nice talking to you, but I really must be going.” Instinctively, she reached out to touch Ms. Thomas’s arm, but her hand went right through, causing the images to swirl like smoke in a draft.
To her amazement, Ms. Thomas giggled. “That tickles, honey. Of course, I can’t really feel it, but it tickles just the same.”
“I’m sorry. I should really go find Harvey.”
Ms. Thomas pointed up the hill. “He’s up at the crest, straight up from the lily pond. Of course I can’t go visit, but he pointed it out one day when he was here, and my daughter came to visit the day they put him down. I watched the service from over here.”
“Thank you, Ms. Thomas. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
She smiled. “Drop by to talk any time.”
Juanita remembered the teenager’s sad little wave, and suddenly felt guilty. “Will you be—OK? I mean, you won’t be lonely or anything?”
She dismissed the notion with her hand, like swatting a not especially annoying fly. “My people come to visit me all the time, and there are plenty of lonely folks who come to the cemeteries just to talk. There’s always some company about. And besides, when there’s nobody here, it’s just like sleeping.” She continued, without a trace of irony in her voice. “That’s something we dead folks do well, sleeping.”
The hill beckoned Juanita, even as part of her screamed to turn back. Part of her was still afraid of Harvey, even though she knew he was dead in his grave. Part of her was afraid to see him, to hear his voice, even though she knew he couldn’t touch her, even if he wanted to. But she could talk to him. Tell him how angry she was, how she felt about him. She could do it, unafraid of repercussions, knowing Harvey could never hurt her again.
The plot was in a lovely location. She could look out past the cemetery, over the forests of dark green pine, and down to the river a few miles east. Harvey had certainly gotten a choice plot for himself. Perhaps he’d used it as a sales tool. Juanita could imagine that, proof to his gullible pigeons that he believed in his product. Of course he could have lied about owning a plot, but that wasn’t the man Harvey was. He could have been caught at that.
That was one thing you could say for Harvey, he never lied unless he thought he could get away with it. He used the truth like a tool, turning it to his advantage, like he’d gained Ms. Thomas’s sympathy over his “lost love.”
But if the location was choice, he seemed to have cut comers elsewhere. The headstone was small and simple, a dwarf in the shade of its more spectacular neighbors. Had he cut corners on the programming too? Juanita wondered just how much of Harvey there would be left to confront. For the first time, she wondered if the DeadRinger would recognize her. They were always programmed to recognize family, but Harvey would have had no reason to think she’d come here. Or would his ego have let him assume otherwise? There was only one way to find out.
The headstone was only a few meters away. She knew that only a step or two would take her within its range of sensitivity and activate the DeadRinger. Only a step or two to see Harvey again.
Those steps seemed both uncomfortably close, and painfully far. It was like standing on the ledge of a tall building and looking down. She took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The air in front of the headstone shimmered, particles swirling upwards as though dust were rising from the grave and reassembling into the man. Juanita felt a certain sense of power, even as he began to take shape, in that she could take a few steps back and return him to dust. It made seeing his familiar face a little easier to take.
He looked just as he had the last time she’d seen him, not a day older. His dark hair was longer, standing high on his head like wind-blown wheat, but the face was the same—the blue eyes, the high cheekbones, the full, sculpted lips, the jaw-line just a little too strong for perfection. It was easy to see how she’d once been attracted to him. Now she could look into those eyes and imagine only anger, hatred, and violence.
Now, he only smiled, gently, warmly, like when they’d first been together. “Juanita! You came! I wondered if you’d come. We have so much to talk about.”
Part of her wanted to call him a bastard, that word that had escaped her lips so many times at the thought of him, but she didn’t. Instead she just stared at him, looking for some trace of the meanness that she had known there, and not finding it. She realized, with some disappointment, that his programming was limited. Despite the smile and fond greeting, he seemed hardly to know her at all.
She tried to think who would have visited him here-, his mother, a doting little woman who lived only an hour or so away in Atlanta, his older brother Carlos who worked for one of the vid networks in the city, and his older sister, Etta, an ice queen who designed thought-pumps for a company in Columbus.
They’d all thought highly of Harvey, in different ways. If that was where he’d learned about himself, he’d certainly gotten an unbalanced view, one that probably didn’t include Juanita. Carlos hadn’t liked her since she’d refused his pass at a Christmas party eight years ago. She and Etta had never gotten along, and Harvey’s mother, though she’d always been friendly, had turned on her like a snake when the marriage went sour. They’d all been glad to be rid of her, and she couldn’t imagine them bringing her up now.
“You don’t even remember me, do you, Harvey?”
The smile faded for just a moment, then returned full strength. “Of course I do. You’re Juanita. We were married.”