UnSouled

“Happy to oblige,” says Cam, so arrogantly Risa wants to slap him.

“She wasn’t talking to you,” Connor says with such dismissive disdain, Risa wouldn’t mind slapping him, too.

This isn’t how this moment was supposed to be! Over these many months, she had pictured her reunion with Connor a dozen times in a dozen different ways. None of them were so rife with ice-cracking unease. As for Cam, she had thought she’d never see him again, so never entertained the idea of a reunion. Oddly, she finds herself more pleased to see him than she ever expected she would. It steals Connor’s thunder, and a part of her resents both of them for it. They shouldn’t be allowed to muddy each other’s moments. The clouding of her emotions should not be permitted by a sane, compassionate universe. But then, when has life deigned to show her any compassion?

Cam has come out from behind Connor’s eclipsing presence now. They stand there side by side as if waiting for Risa to choose. Suddenly Risa realizes that she has no idea how this is going to play out. She finds that as terrifying as being caught in a parts pirate’s trap.

It’s the girl—that unknown quantity in the room—who comes to her rescue.

“Hiya, I’m Grace,” she says, pushing between Connor and Cam, grabbing Risa’s hand and vigorously shaking it. “You can call me Grace or Gracie—I don’t mind either way—or even Eleanor, ’cause that’s my middle name. It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Ward. Can I call you Risa? I know all about you from my brother, who kind of worshipped you—well, he worshipped Connor more, but you were there too, although you looked different then, but I guess that’s on purpose. Smart to change your eye color. People think it’s the hair, but it’s the eyes that make a person look different.”

“Yes—that’s what the stylist who did it said,” says Risa, a little flustered by Grace’s barrage of enthusiasm.

“So is there stuff for us to eat in that basement down there, ’cause I’m starved?”

It’s only later that Risa realizes how effectively Grace’s rude intrusion completely defused an explosive situation. Almost as if she had planned it that way.

61 • Cam

This changes everything.

The fact that Risa is now smack in the middle of it all forces Cam to have to reevaluate his goal as well as his methods to achieve them. As a fugitive himself, he needed this shaky collaboration with Connor. Survival demanded it, and although in his heart he knows Connor is an enemy, he can only have one enemy at a time, and right now, it’s Proactive Citizenry.

Cam has to admit that from the moment he met Connor, he was as fascinated by him as much as he despised him. The way he showed compassion—even empathy—when Una did not. Connor probably saved his life that day at the sweat lodge. Had the roles been reversed, Cam would not have done the same. It made Connor worthy of study.

The plan, from that moment on, was to get to know Connor—and to use him to help bring down Proactive Citizenry. Then, once Roberta and all of her high-and-mighty cronies have been hobbled, Cam would know Connor well enough to hobble him as well. He must clearly understand the pedestal that Risa has put the Akron AWOL on before he can engineer the pedestal’s collapse, leaving Connor Lassiter as nothing in Risa’s eyes.

But now that Risa is actually here, Cam feels like he’s been reduced to being an ape having to pound his chest before her to win her affections. Is that all it comes down to, then? Primitive mating rituals sublimated to appear civilized? Perhaps—but Cam knows he’s a step forward in human evolution. A composite being. He has faith that his internal community will galvanize to outshine Connor at every turn. But why does it have to be now?

Sonia does not bring them down to the basement with the AWOLs-in-hiding.

“They’ll tear this one apart the second they see him.” She points her thumb at Cam like she’s hitching a ride.

“Talking about someone in the third person is rude,” Cam tells her coolly.

“Really?” says Connor. “When you’re a hundred people, wouldn’t third person be a compliment?”

Cam is fully prepared to snipe back at Connor, but he catches Risa’s gaze and chooses not to. Let her see him as the model of restraint.

Sonia then takes a moment to look at Connor. “You don’t want to be in that basement either with all those ogling eyes. You’ve probably had enough hero worship to last a lifetime.”

“I haven’t,” chimes in Grace, who must feel like a mortal among gods.

“Consider yourself lucky, then,” Sonia tells her. “In these times, the less noticed you are, the better your chances of living long enough to see things change.”

“Well said!” Cam offers, but Sonia only scowls at him.

“Nobody asked you.”

She takes them to the back alley where an old Suburban in need of major washing waits, and she ushers them all into it. Although Cam makes every effort to sit beside Risa, Grace barges her way in right after her in a “ladies first” sort of way and sits beside her. Risa makes eye contact with Cam and gives him a purse-lipped grin as if to say, “Better luck next time.” He can’t read her at all. He doesn’t know whether she’s relieved that Grace is there or disappointed. He glances at Connor, who appears not to care where he sits. Appears. That’s the key word with Connor. He’s extremely good at hiding what goes on in that perplexing space between his ears.

Being the last one in, Cam tries to sit shotgun, but Sonia won’t allow it. “There’s less of a chance you’ll be seen in the back, since those windows are darker. And besides, your ‘multicultural’ face is too damn distracting for an old woman trying to drive a large vehicle.” So the shotgun seat is left empty, and Cam ends up sitting in the back with Connor.

“So where are we going?” Connor asks.

Risa turns around to answer and offers him a grin. “You’ll see.”

Cam can’t tell if it’s the exact same grin she offered him a moment before, or if there’s more warmth to it. He can’t stand not knowing. The frustration of it makes his seams begin to itch. He knows it’s all in his mind, but the crawling of his seams feels very real. The unspoken, undefined relationship between Risa and Connor is maddening.

Sonia drives with the practiced caution of the elderly, yet still manages to hit every bump and pothole in the road and issues forth curses that could make a longshoreman blush. Five minutes later, she pulls into the driveway of a modest two-story home.

“Did you warn her?” Risa asks as they come to a stop.

Sonia puts the car in park with a decisive thrust. “I don’t warn,” Sonia says. “I act, and people deal.”

Cam idly wonders if Roberta will be like this if she lives long enough to be that old. It gives him an unexpected and unwanted shiver.

Once out of the Suburban, Sonia quickly leads them to a side gate, where a shih tzu has already begun barking and shows no sign of ceasing anytime soon. “We live in a backdoor world,” Sonia tells them, “so move your collective asses before the neighbors get nosy.” Sonia opens the gate, ignoring the dog, which tries to nip at everyone’s heels at once, in futile defense of its territory.

“One of these days,” says Sonia, as she leads them to the backyard, “I’ll punt that fool dog into Central Time.” And off of Grace’s concerned look, Risa assures her that Sonia doesn’t mean it.

With a high wooden fence around the perimeter of the yard, the back door is much less conspicuous than the front. Sonia raps loudly, and then raps again, not patient enough to wait for it to be answered. Finally a woman comes to the door. She seems to be in her midforties and is holding a toddler wearing a Minnie Mouse dress. A stork-job, Cam figures. Middle-aged people always seem to get babies dropped on their doorsteps these days.

“Oh good Lord. What now?” the beleaguered woman asks.

Then Connor gasps. “Didi?” he says, looking at the toddler.

Although the little girl regards him without a hint of recognition, the woman holding her appears both pleased and taken aback at the same time by the sight of Connor. “I changed her name to Dierdre.”

“Well, I still call her Didi,” says Risa. “You remember Hannah, don’t you, Connor?” Risa says, clearly a prompt to save him the embarrassment of not remembering the woman’s name.

When the woman looks at Cam, her face blanches, and Cam can’t resist saying, “Trick or treat,” although Halloween is months away.

Hannah puts Dierdre down and tells her to run inside and play, which she is more than happy to do, and the shih tzu, still unable to stop itself from barking, follows her just far enough to guard the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room.

“You’re full of surprises, Sonia,” Hannah says, her eyes still locked on Cam. Then she herds them all in before they draw unwanted neighborhood attention. Cam finds the house a little too warm, but maybe it’s just in contrast to the chill of the overcast day.

“I spend my days helping Sonia,” Risa says, “but Hannah’s been kind enough to let me spend my nights here for the past few weeks.” Now that they’re safely inside, she introduces the rest of them to her, saving Cam for last, rather self-consciously calling him “the one and only Camus Comprix.”

“Are you ADR?” Cam asks as he shakes Hannah’s hand.

She eyes him with the same suspicion that everyone does. Everyone who isn’t starstruck, that is. “No. I was never a part of the Anti-Divisional Resistance. I’m just a concerned citizen.” Then she turns to Sonia. “We should talk. Alone.”

Hannah pulls Sonia into another room. She spares a glance back at them and says, “Risa, keep an eye on Dierdre. The rest of you, make yourselves comfortable,” then adds, “But not too comfortable.”

Risa, now their temporary hostess, escorts them into a living room filled with the primary-colored detritus of preschool toys strewn haphazardly on the floor. Dierdre ignores the visitors, content to throw plastic blocks in the direction of the dog, who retrieves them, no longer interested in territorial defense.

The room has many clocks. Hannah must be a collector. They all show different times, as none of them are wound or plugged in. Well, almost none. There’s one clock ticking, but Cam can’t figure out where the sound is coming from. How appropriate, he thinks, that the house of an AWOL sympathizer is all about the importance of time, yet the timepieces are all at odds with one another.

Risa draws the curtains as they settle into their new holding pattern until Sonia and Hannah’s summit meeting can bring about a decision as to what to do with them. “So,” says Risa with an absolute awkwardness that is completely unlike her, “here we are.”

“And here be dragons,” Cam says, he himself not even knowing exactly why he says it or what it means. All he knows is that in some odd way, it’s true. He knows that Risa is still trying to process his and Connor’s presence here. She doesn’t even ask how they’ve come to be together, which tells Cam that she’s so far from dealing with it, she doesn’t even want to know.