A few hours later, I had a new decoration for my apartment: a shiny chrome tube that stood against one wall, with a big window showing John’s face. John’s expression looked sardonic from some angles, mournful from others. He stood in the corner of my bedroom, casting a blue glow in the middle of the night. I got used to his presence there, only to have it startle me anew when I’d just gotten out of the shower or sat scratching myself in bed. I got used to explaining John to the lovers I brought home, but also to going to other people’s places instead. Once a month, I trimmed John’s beard and fingernails. When I went away on vacation, I got a friend to come in once a day and check on John, whose bio monitors never hinted at trouble. I compared him sometimes to the cadaver I dissected at school—inanimate but intimate. Except John had a world of potential the cadaver lacked.
As promised, I talked to John every day when I was around. I told him about my day, about my fears and minutiae—including things I never could have shared with an alert John. In the sleep-deprived miasma of residency, I lost track of when John was actually present. I saw him staring over my shoulder as I treated patients. I muttered to his specter in the break room where I bunked on call. His unweary watchfulness followed me everywhere. I sometimes forgot his name, after a thirty-six hour shift, but not his face.
Residency ended. I slept for a week and went to the beach for another week. I got a pedicure and read trashy novels. I caught up with old girlfriends. After a month the cryo lab started calling to ask when would I come in for John’s renaissance, to be followed a couple of weeks later by my entombment. I didn’t call back. Guilt started to jab at me.
“It’s not that I prefer him this way,” I confided to Maisie. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I can’t remember the old John well enough any more. But once I wake John, I’ll have to take my turn. And now I’m not so sure I want to do that any more.” Maisie gently pointed out that John was a person who deserved to get on with his life, and in any case I could discuss the options with John once he could speak for himself.
I stared into John’s eyes as he came back to the world. I wanted his first sight to be my adoration. I did my hair and makeup, tried to look as much as the old Willa as possible. A smile developed on John’s face. Finally he said, “I need to pee.”
The doctors warned me John might be groggy or disoriented for a while. But an hour after he left that tube, he was focused. He sparked with energy. We went to dinner and he wolfed two entrées. “I had amazing dreams, full of flying shapes and voices,” he said. “They’re fading already, but I remember I had no body in them.” He fucked me three times that night, then got up and paced.
I’d forgotten how much fun John could be, like a mad scientist in the world’s biggest Radio Shack. He made me laugh and orgasm, and his scattered ideas kept me fascinated. It was only after a few hyperactive days that I started to worry.
“I feel fine.” His new beard twitched. “I’ve had plenty of rest. Now I want to have fun.” He went out clubbing, first with me, then without once it was clear I couldn’t keep up. He’d get home at three in the morning, sleep a few hours, then be up before me. I’d awaken to a mug of coffee held under my nose.
After a week, I worried a side effect of the freezing process had left John amped for good. If so, he figured it would wear off, but in any case he had another explanation. “We’re different ages now. I’m in my early twenties, you’re thirtyish. Those are different life stages. Remember how much you went out, how much wildness you burned off, when you were my age. That’s how I still am.”
I doubted I’d ever raced around as madly as John was doing. But it was clear we ran at different speeds. I started to avoid him.
Before I brought up the question of my freezing, I knew what John’s answer would be. I could do what I wanted, he couldn’t hold me to my side of the deal, but our relationship was over if I stayed awake. As we were now, we operated too differently to last together. “I can move anywhere now,” I pointed out. “I have much more flexibility. I can even work part time as a locum tenens, a substitute doctor.”
John gently said that wasn’t the point.
“I watched you sleep last night,” he told me. “You looked stunning. I imagine you haunting my rooms with loveliness. A flower always in bloom.”
Talking about it made me tired anyway. I felt half in suspension after a while, as the same arguments went around and around.
“I can’t believe you’re giving me an ultimatum,” I said.
“I can’t believe you’re trying to back out of our deal,” John said.
That’s as close as we got to fighting. We both had too much dignity to squall over something like this, or else we were both ashamed.
Finally, John seemed to realize he needed to woo me all over again. He slowed down. We drove to the beach and ate caviar naked with the waves foaming over our ankles. John looked into my eyes and pled the case for a love spanning decades. “We’ve come too far to give up, what we have is too precious.”
I sat in the bathtub and reminded herself that I had planned this role reversal, it wasn’t John turning the tables on me to be mean.
“I guess you’ll mellow out by the time I wake up,” I mused to John.
“I’ll be easy-going by then. And it goes by in no time. It feels now as though I barely closed my eyes.” He talked of awakening me with a kiss, like Sleeping Beauty.
John and I started to feel comfortable together again, once he slowed a little and I relaxed around him. I eased into our old rapport, trading jokes and kisses for hours. I remembered why we had wanted to do this in the first place. “You’re the love of my life,” I told John. “I never want to lose my faith that love defeats all obstacles, trumps all other cards.” We spent a whole day in bed, making love and talking about our future together.
Then we went back to the cryo lab together. I lay down on the sliding table and stared up at the nicotine-scarred ceiling.
“Hey.” John smiled down at me. I could tell he was fighting the urge to look around the room and focus on five things at once. He held one of my hands and Maisie held the other. (She didn’t work there anymore, but had come back for this.)
Then they let go of my hands as I rolled into the tube’s darkness and my mind filled with patterns. I remember a thousand years of stripes and plaids drifting past my eyes, an endless Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. John hadn’t prepared me for how boring it would be. My mind didn’t form a single complete thought during my time away from time. Instead I remember idea fragments and half-links of metonymic chains. I was used to living in my head most of the time, so it was like seeing my home burned down, fragments of possessions here and there.
John had promised the next clear image I saw would be his face looking down as I awoke. Instead I woke to Maisie, looking tired but not much older. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “John’s not here.”
I tried to form questions, but instead nonsense poured out.
“It’s only been three years or so,” Maisie said. “We lost touch with John and got worried. We went to his last known address and found an eviction notice on the door, spoiled food in the fridge… and you.”
Spoiled food. And me.
“I shudder to think what would have happened if his electricity had got cut off with you still in suspension,” Maisie added. “Catastrophic shutdown.”
Maisie daubed at my face with a tissue. I thought maybe they had applied some kind of fluid to my face to help the revival process. Then I realized I must be crying. I still felt as though everything was happening a long distance away.
“I’m sorry, maybe I should have waited to tell you the truth,” Maisie said. “But I knew you’d have questions when you woke and he wasn’t here.”