So saying, little Senyavin smiled a delightful smile, grabbed two fingers of my hand with her fist and shook it goodbye. I stood in silence and watched her as she skipped brightly away.
That was what I believe to be my first meeting with the entity known as Galileo.
It was not my last.
Chapter 42
On the train to Berlin Coyle stood in silence, eyes half-closed as he digested my words. “You’re older than you seem.”
I shrugged. “I move with the times. My skin, my clothes, my body. I own an MP3 player, I have a piercing in my tongue. I choose to have piercings, tattoos, cosmetic surgery; I choose to be who I am, and a lot of the time I choose to be young. Youthful flesh induces a youthful character, since the physical pains and social responsibilities that temper a nature don’t usually affect a twenty-two-year-old with a penchant for punk. I like it that way; it suits my inclination.”
“What were you, originally?” he asked. “In… your body, your first body, I mean. Man, woman–what were you?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
“What do you think?”
“I thought man. It seemed… I don’t know what it seemed, perhaps it was something assumed, what we always assume.”
“And now?”
“Women were beaten to death in dark alleys as well as men,” he replied. “What’s your name?”
“Kepler will do just fine, as Coyle works for you.”
“You have no preference–for either sex, I mean?”
“I have a preference for good teeth and strong bones,” I replied. “I have a preference for clear skin and, I must admit it, I have something of a weakness for red hair, when I find it, and it’s real. Say what you will for the nineteenth century, at least you weren’t being continually wrong-footed by convincing dye jobs.”
“You’re a snob.”
“I’ve been enough people to recognise when they’re trying too hard to be something they’re not. I can help you,” I added. “If Galileo wore you, used you–if he’s your target–I can help you.”
“How would you do that?”
“You have something else?” He didn’t answer. “Who are you working for?”
Silence.
“Do you believe what they told you about Frankfurt? Do you believe they were trying to make a vaccine?”
Silence.
“Josephine was a host of convenience. We made a deal because she needed the cash and I wanted a change. My involvement need not equate to your employer’s destruction, but I need–I would like–you to give me some reason, some tiny shadow of a doubt as to why, when I find them, and find them I shall, I do not destroy them all.”
Our gazes locked. I had looked into Coyle’s eyes in the bathroom mirror for days, and all I had seen in them had been contempt. “They try their best,” he said. “The best that can be done.”
A scowl pulled at my lips–too pretty, too happy with the prospect of motherhood, assuming my body had noticed its fate, to be so distorted. “Not good enough,” I said, grabbed him by the hand and switched.
Chapter 43
I lie awake on the sleeper train, and remember…
Marilyn Monroe.
What a bloody stupid idea that had been.
On a hot autumn evening in suburban LA I slipped into Louis Quinn, aspiring actor, model, full-time waiter, and, balancing a tray of champagne on my fingertips, went to visit the stars.
The house was a mansion, and the mansion–as with every building in LA–had a swimming pool. She was reclined beside it, champagne in one hand, hair unkempt and laughter shrill. They say that the camera adds five pounds to anyone it films. It is no more than we do to ourselves already, judging every fold of flesh as if it were a newborn monster. I have worn slim, beautiful creatures, stood naked before a mirror and suddenly seen that I am fat, or wrinkly, or somehow less than what I seemed to be when I beheld myself through the eyes of a stranger.
Marilyn Monroe was, to my mind, more beautiful off the screen than on it, for even with her chubby belly and bulbous chin, she dressed herself to the pleasure of her own eye, and that gave more satisfaction than any costumier could have achieved.
Except perhaps tonight. It seemed to me, looking at her spotted pants and loosely tied bikini, that someone had dressed for the character of Marilyn, rather than the woman she should have been, and it made her ugly.
I laid my tray down and slipped from my waiter into the producer queuing for her attention, and as the waiter staggered bewildered behind me I leaned down to whisper into Marilyn’s ear:
“Aurangzeb.”
Her features crinkled as if she’d bitten a sour plum. She rolled her head round slowly, fixed me with a glower and hissed, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Might we have a word in private?”
“I’m with my friends!”
“Yes, you are. We should talk.”
“Fine.” She scowled, grabbing a towel and slinging it around her midriff. “It was getting dull here anyway.”
She led the way to the end of the garden, where green hedges had been trimmed into the shape of a squashed-nose cat, a dog with his paws raised, an umbrella in a cocktail glass and other such offences against topiary. When secluded behind the nearest of these, she rounded on me and snapped, “What?”
“It’s been five days,” I said. “In and out, we agreed–two days at most.”
“Jesus!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in a parody of frustration. “What the fuck is wrong with you? These people love me. They think I’m great–better than the real Marilyn. People have been asking what I’ve been taking, whether I’m seeing someone, I’m so much calmer than I was, so much more… you know… more!” She flapped, unable to find the words. “I just had John Huston beg me to do another film, said I’d be perfect.”
“And that’s delightful. But what do you plan on doing when they put you in front of a camera and you can’t act?”
“This is Hollywood! People will see the picture because I’m in it, not because of what I’m doing.”
“It’s not that I’m averse to you destroying a career, if it comes to it, but sooner or later people will talk, people are talking, and I will not be responsible for creating the single noisiest scandal that has ever affected our kind. If Marilyn Monroe loses a week of her memory, that’s OK. That’s practically par for the course in this town. If she loses six months, or a year, or five years, and wakes up at the end of that in some B-movie with her knickers on her head because that’s all you were capable of pulling, then we have a problem and I will not go down as the estate agent who brokered that. So I’m telling you now–get out. Find a different body.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” Aurangzeb had worked hard on that pout. “I’m here now. I’m doing it. I can make this work.”
I stood back a pace. “That your final answer?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Her lips parted in surprise, then opened in a shriek of laughter. “That it? That all you gotta say to me?”
“That’s it,” I replied. “I’m going to find the waiter I walked in here in–he had nice hands–and get out. Might go somewhere chilly. Canada, perhaps. Alaska. See the Northern Lights.”
“Jesus, you are the lamest thing ever!”
“Sure. I’m lame. I’ve had the loud life and now I like the quiet. I’ve also spiked your champagne.”
The laughter forming on her breath froze, diminished, shrank. Her face twisted through a kaleidoscope of emotion, none pleasant. “You’re lying,” she blurted. “You wouldn’t dare.”