But when 3 pulled away from him to regard him with shining eyes, 2 grinned back at her, his nightmare having dissipated. “Thanks for rescuing me last night, sweetie,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Apparently, rescuing me.”
“I’m not letting them take you away from me,” 3 told him firmly. “You and me are sticking together, right?”
He pulled her against him again, his arousal returning as he ran his hand up and down her back. He wondered if they could get away with some quick lovemaking before 6 returned. His hand slipped under the top of her white hospital scrubs, to rub the smooth bare plain of her lower back, as if he were trying to gently wipe away the Mobius strip tattooed there.
Looking over her shoulder at her exposed back, and the blue ink punched into the taut brown skin under his palm, 2 frowned and drew back from her, shifted his body behind hers to pull apart the hem of her top and the waistband of her pants. A tattooed caption under the figure 8 Mobius strip, in flowery script, read: LIFE’S NO STORYBOOK. It wasn’t the meaning of the words that confounded him, but he simply couldn’t recall having noticed this part of the tattoo when they had made love in this room. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall her body bearing any tattoos at all. Had the rest of her body so distracted him? He decided to make a joke of it while calling the tattoo to her attention. “Nothing personal, honey, but aren’t you a little old for this silly tattoo? I mean, you’re still as cute as a button, but you being a mom and all…”
3 twisted around and slapped his arm. “You think I’m so ancient? I’m only twenty-eight years old, you know!”
“Twenty-eight,” he echoed.
“Yes! I told you that.” She cocked her head at him. “Honey, are you okay? You know I don’t have any kids, either.”
“No daughter… no stepson…”
“No! No nothing! Of course not!” 3 gave him an exaggerated pout of feigned hurt and jealousy. “I think you must be thinking of someone else.”
5 had awakened early, opening her eyes to find herself confronting the graffiti wall as if she had been staring at it through her closed lids while she had been sleeping. Viewed sideways like this, some of its designs seemed to take on more meaning for her, if only in a subliminal manner, and yet still remained just a notch away from locking into conscious interpretation. She sat up, stretched, emerged from her warm chrysalis.
While showering she watched the graffiti-covered wall avidly, but with more curiosity than nervousness this time. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred, and she dressed and moved out into the banquet hall. Its commanding windows were apportioned into blank white squares. She found four envelopes containing their pills in the bucket, buried under four paper lunch sacks of breakfast. After filling her plastic tumbler with water, she seated herself alone at the table, swallowed each of her pills, then started on her breakfast of apple, banana, and cereal bar with raspberry filling.
She glared at 6’s empty chair directly facing her, conscious of 2 and 3’s empty chairs to her left. She couldn’t believe they were willing to sacrifice that money. Sacrifice everything. They were putting her own involvement and investment in this research at risk. Their changed attitude only made her all the more resolved to her own commitment.
As she chewed a crisp mouthful of apple, she allowed her gaze to slide aimlessly along the surface of the table toward its far end. There, someone had set down a length of old copper pipe, blotched green with verdigris, about three feet long and with a ninety degree elbow at one end.
And folded on the table about halfway between the pipe and herself, 5 noted a pair of eyeglasses that someone had also left behind. Curious, she rose from her chair and picked them up, unfolded them. They had narrow lenses set in modern-looking white frames with the name of the designer, Roberto Cavalli, printed on the inside of one arm.
5 contemplated the eyeglasses for several protracted seconds in which she did not move, nor even blink. At length, she said aloud, “I was wondering where these went to.” And then she raised the eyeglasses to her face and slipped them on.
When her meal was finished, 5 drifted back to the female dormitory, standing framed in the threshold and gazing upon the black and white graffiti. Right away she grinned, and her heart tripped into a faster rhythm. Right away everything seemed to come together for her at last, like a film of a jigsaw puzzle exploding into thousands of pieces, but played in reverse. It was the lenses of her eyeglasses, she was convinced, restoring her sight after it had been compromised up until now.
Rapturously, she crossed the room, raising both arms as she did so. When she was close enough she lay her hands flat upon the glossily-painted surface of the wall.
A subtle but steady vibration — or was that an electrical current? — trembled up both her arms. Coursed through her veins, shepherding her corpuscles along, and humming along her nerves, plucking at them like the strings of a harp.
She was wet between the legs. Her grin was so broad it hurt her bunched cheeks. Tears of joy ran freely from her eyes, and she moved in closer, hugged the wall as if crucified to it, arms spread wide, chest and the side of her face pressed hard against it.
There was a sense of communion. Communion with an otherness, but through that somehow a communion with herself. Like a lover, her quivering lips almost brushing the wall as she spoke, she whispered, “You needed that I worked for a pharmaceutical company. That was one of the things you needed from me. You must have needed things from all of us, to become…” Oh, to be needed, to be essential even in part. Seth had never really needed her… she saw that now.
She felt as if, for the first time in her life, she had truly come home. Truly found herself. She had never known until now how much her life had always been one gaping wound, as if from birth she had been a walking autopsied corpse with its chest spread wide and red and nearly empty. But now, she was only a few steps away from becoming fully healed, at last.
6 had lost interest in 3, no longer felt competitive with 2; the big guy was welcome to her. 6 couldn’t reconcile what 5 had said she’d seen in the shower with what he himself had seen when he and 3 had been alone together that one time, and so it was less of a headache (and his head did ache when he tried to sort it out) to just drop the whole matter. He had a young girlfriend, Ana, a Dominican like himself and just as diminutive and cute as 3, waiting for him on the outside anyway.
Remembering Ana now made him also recall Dr. Onsay, whose dark complexion had caused him to wonder about the researcher’s nationality. Maybe not fully Dominican; a mix perhaps. But there had been the barest tease of accent, and only 6 — when the doctor had introduced himself and given his name — had guessed correctly that name’s proper spelling. Spanish being his native language, 6 had known immediately that the doctor’s name should be spelled Once.
6 had now wandered downstairs to the former base camp, and leaned his head into the female dormitory. “Hello? Hey.” No answer, so he stepped all the way inside to find two empty sleeping bags: 5’s, and the one 3 had forsaken last night. After a suspicious glance at the wall mural, he went on to look in the laundry area, then stood outside both the female shower room and the female restroom, again calling out for 5. Still no answer. He continued on to the banquet hall.