“He hated work, too,” Karen said. “Some people are just never happy. It’s something I learned, being chief. You bend over backward for some people and they’re like, I wanted raspberry and this is strawberry, or this is 2 percent and I wanted 1 percent, and you’re like, What’s the fucking difference you are one of a hundred residents, can’t you just give me a break and do your work? Children are dying out there.”
“Not anymore,” Jemma said.
“You know what I mean. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. Okay, I can… you’re chief of the whole hospital. It’s a huge job, but you’re doing swell. I mean it, and I know it. Your approval rating is 86 percent.”
“I have an approval rating?” Jemma asked.
Karen laughed. “You’re so funny sometimes.” She called down the bar to the two women sitting at the far end, interrupting their conversation. “Isn’t she doing a great job?” Carla nodded vigorously, and Helena Dufresne held up a single thumb. Karen refilled their cups, and pulled another espresso for herself. “This is the real stuff,” she said, and detailed for Jemma the process by which she and the angel had increased the potency of the beans until they practically trembled, and all the new uses she was finding for fancy coffee, and how she was not certain if she was pulling new uses out of the old thing, or making something entirely new when she experimented with the replicator. “When I ask for anti-wrinkle coffee,” she asked, “is she making it from scratch or just bringing forward a property already inherent in the bean? It’s so hard to tell with her. She can be so squirrely.” She poured out thick coffee in a solid dish and had Jemma soak her cuticles in it.
“Did you enter?” Jemma asked her.
“Of course,” Karen said. “I hope Siri did, too. I asked him but he wouldn’t tell. How about you?”
“It would be gluttony,” Jemma said, putting a hand on her belly.
“There are more kids than adults,” Karen pointed out.
“It would still be weird,” Jemma said. “My fingers are tingling.”
“It’s the natural enzymes,” Karen said. “They’re giving you a manicure.” She leaned forward and said, “Ella Thims. She’s my first choice.”
“A sweet girl.”
“I’ve known her forever. I took care of her every July for three years in a row, and I was there when she came slithering out of her mama. That was some initial exam, let me tell you. Where’s the vagina? Where’s the anus? I thought it was because I was a stupid intern that I couldn’t find them. I visit her every day — we’re practically a family already.” She brought her hands to her heart. “It makes me nervous to talk about it.”
“The coffee probably doesn’t help,” Jemma said.
“Oh, I’m immune,” she said, but everyone who came here knew that she got more chatty and jumpy throughout the day, and that by closing time she stood on the bar proclaiming stomping cheers for her favorite customers.
“Now they’re numb,” Jemma said, taking her fingers out, sure she’d see the ends dissolved down to slender bone.
“That’s the baby,” Karen said, pushing her hand back in. “It’s a thing I never understood. Numb toes I got, if the baby’s sitting on a plexus, but fingers? Something about hCG, but then why does it get worse in the third trimester? I had it too, with Abbie…” She clutched at the back of Jemma’s hand and burst suddenly into tears — they fell, fat and full, onto the highly polished counter and splashed back into Jemma’s flat dish of coffee. “Oh God!” Karen moaned. “What’s wrong with me? This is so stupid. I promised myself I wouldn’t… It’s all fine now, I should really know better. Am I cheating on her, though? That’s the thing… that’s the stupid, stupid, stupid thing. I know better in here — she pounded on her chest — in here I know that none of them belong to us and they pass from one to the other and Abbie is somewhere now, cared for just like I’ll care for Ella but still it feels like a big fat betrayal and I know I’ll tuck Ella in at night and they’ll be out there, Abbie and Carl, just so angry at me because I’m cheating.”
“It’s okay,” Jemma said, hugging Karen back and scattering coffee-drops from her fingers. She meant it in a very generic sense — things are generally okay, more or less, probably, or it’s okay for you to cry and slobber on me — but not as a denial of the fact that the dead judge or that they can be provoked to fury by our unfaithfulness. Who was Jemma to absolve Karen of the fury of her dead husband and child, or to absolve any of them? Even Juan Fraggle’s family was cheating on his dad, knitting and teaching salsa dancing and karate (his sisters were black belts) and just going on, waking every day to something more and more and more like contentment.
The two women at the end of the bar gave up their conversation and came over, Carla just standing to Jemma’s left with her arms folded, but Helena walking behind the counter to take Karen in her big flabby arms. “There,” she said. “You just cry it out, baby. Get it all out so nothing spoils your fun tonight.” Karen went “Ack, Ack, Ack!” shaking and snotting. Helena winked at Jemma over Karen’s shoulder, and Jemma pointed at her watch.
“My class,” she whispered, and the big lady nodded.
“It’s all under control,” she said. “It’s all okay.” Carla leaned an elbow on the bar and trailed a finger in Jemma’s coffee, staring at Jemma’s shoes.
Jemma wasn’t sure what to say, so she just slinked off, head down, walking quickly out of the ER and into the lobby, giving out hardly a wave as she passed onto the ramp and started the climb. She wasn’t really late for her class. “It’s another part of your job,” Dr. Sundae had told her, accosting her after a Council meeting, backing Jemma up against the window, her matronly bosom pressing closer and closer. Jemma could smell her asparagus breath, and their clothes were almost touching when she spoke. “To comfort the afflicted — you’ve already done so much, but scratch any of us and you get an uncontrolled weeper. Look inside, I think you’ll find it — surprise! — the means to comfort us even as you healed them.” Then she had leaned even closer, and put a hand on the window, palm flat against the glass.
“I really have to pee,” Jemma said. It was true, but not what she ought to have said. Don’t tell me what my job is, you scary old bitch — that would have been better. I’m not for you to lecture anymore, you scary old bitch. Or even just, You scary old bitch, whispered in accusation and admiration. She had hurried but not run away from her.
She started waving again after walking the first loop of the spiral with her head down. “Hello, Sylvester. Hello, Ms. Sullivan. Hello, Dr. Sasscock. Hello, Dr. Pudding.” She remembered the sexbot and stopped by the rail to make a note on her little computer. A week after Vivian had commissioned them from the angel almost every adult and half the kids had one of the little devices, as long, wide, and thin as an index card, flat black glass on one side, bright metal on the other. You could write on it with a pen or ask it to record your voice. She was still confusing the icons. Though she meant just to record her voice, two days later when she went over her notes before the next meeting she would see her own puffy, pink face, pictured in such clarity and precision by the in-screen camera that she diagnosed herself with melasma, the toy clanking and whirling behind her and a mysterious beehive hairdo passing through the frame just as she spoke the words: “Sexbot sexbot sexbot.”
“Say it soft and it’s almost like praying,” said John Grampus, sidling up next to her.
“You shouldn’t sneak up,” Jemma said.
“I was trying to get your attention. Distracted by the big day?”
“I just have to push the button.” She started walking again up the ramp. “It’s not such a big day.”