The Agile Four Read online

  “Because?” Chloe repeated.

  “Yesterday, when I had to leave?” Andrew's eyes jumped around the restaurant as if he had the meth habit. “It was for his funeral.”

  Chloe didn’t reply. She looked down at the table. “Unbelievable.”

  “What?”

  “That’s where you were yesterday? That’s where you ran off to when you were so weird and ominous? You were going to a funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “For your buddy Anton.”

  “Right. Why do you sound like you don’t—”

  “It was ‘Anton,’ right?”

  “Yes. No, sorry. It was—”

  “You don’t know his name?”

  Chloe almost felt sad for him. “Of course I know his name! I just got confused because I also knew an Anton back in school and—”

  “But the funeral was for … Alex, was it?”

  “Yes! No, wait. I mean yes. Alex.”

  “Are you sure, Andrew?”

  “Of course I’m sure!”

  “You don’t sound very sure.”

  “I just got confused. It’s a very hard time for me right now, and—”

  “Because you had to cover for his cocaine habit.”

  “Meth,” Andrew said, taking too much pride in remembering his lie.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this ‘Alex’? Maybe I could’ve helped.”

  “I …” He stopped. “What, you don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I don’t fucking believe you!”

  Chloe stood. Her chair toppled to the floor. Every head turned toward them.

  “Chloe. Let’s go someplace else.”

  “Let’s talk here, Andrew. I want to talk right now.”

  Andrew looked around the restaurant. He squinted and met Chloe’s eyes, his voice near a whisper. “Okay. It wasn’t a funeral. But it wasn’t what you’re thinking, either.”

  “What am I thinking?” Chloe demanded.

  “Let’s go outside.”

  “Without finishing your skewers? What a waste.”

  “People are staring at us.”

  Chloe’s mouth twitched. “That’s because I’m famous. And you’re the lucky guy who gets to fuck me for free.”

  “Come on.” He took her arm. “I know a place.”

  “GET YOUR GODDAMN HANDS OFF ME!”

  He watched her. Understanding percolated. When he spoke again, his tone was different.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.” He was half talking to himself, and for a second, through her rage, Chloe thought he might slap his own face as a reprimand for defying his better judgment. “Look, it’s complicated.”

  “What should you have told me, Andrew?”

  “Not here.”

  “I don’t care if people are watching!” Then, to the cafe full of patrons, Chloe spread her arms. “Who wants to see how this little lovers’ quarrel ends?”

  Couples around the restaurant began to whisper.

  “It’s not that. It’s not just that we’re making a scene. It’s … goddammit, Chloe, just trust me on this.”

  “Oh. Oh, of course. I’ll trust you.”

  He grabbed her wrist and refused to let go, despite Chloe’s thrashing.

  Every eye in the restaurant was on them, some ticking toward the spilled water glass and the chair lying on the floor.

  “Let go of me, Andrew.”

  “Not until you hear me out.”

  “Let go of me!”

  A man wearing a hat and an overcoat stopped a few paces down and faced them. “Everything okay, Miss?”

  “We’re fine,” Andrew said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, buddy.”

  Chloe’s eyes were hard. Her jaw worked. She wasn’t looking for any of this, but wanted new participants in the drama even less. Without moving her eyes from Andrew, she snapped, “I’m fine.” Then she snatched her wrist from his grip and stared daggers through him as they faced off on the city sidewalk.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The man turned and walked away, glancing back once.

  “I wasn’t at a funeral yesterday,” Andrew said.

  “No fucking shit you weren’t.”

  “I was somewhere else. Somewhere I’ll tell you all about if you’ll just come with me, but not here.”

  “Where?”

  “The park. I’ve heard them say nobody can spy on you at certain places in the park because of the patrol bots.”

  “Who’s trying to spy on us?”

  But Andrew’s eyes were already in Oh, shit mode, as if he already feared he’d said too much. If this was a true confession, it wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t said anything about O or Alexa. He’d suggested that someone might be spying and that he wanted to go somewhere they couldn’t. That in itself was damning.

  Chloe’s adrenaline was high, her heart slamming, her vision outright blurring. Rational thought was impossible.

  “Come on,” he said.

  And surprising herself, Chloe agreed.

  She let Andrew lead. He didn’t try to drag her. They moved down to a crosswalk, then jogged past the front of a line of stopped hovers. The park was only two blocks down, and it took maybe five minutes after that before they were sitting on opposite sides of a nondescript table like warring negotiators.

  “I’m not cheating on you,” was the first thing he said.

  “Great.”

  “But that does mean something to me: Cheating. And I think it means something to you. Since we’ve been together … I don’t know. It’s like my whole value system has changed. Who’s sexually exclusive anymore? It’s like waiting until you’re married to kiss was to my great-grandfather’s generation.”

  “You’re so sweet,” Chloe said, her voice full of venom.

  “I haven’t been with anyone else since we got together. I know you have, and I don’t hold it against you even a little. But I want you to know this before I say what I have to say: I’m with you. Only with you, Chloe.”

  She wanted to snap at him, to tell Andrew about all the abstaining she’d done as well — to the death of her career, in all likelihood. But she was too angry to be touched, or to accept his old-fashioned sexual bigotry as flattering and sweet.

  He exhaled. “I haven’t cheated. I haven’t been with anyone else. But I have lied to you.”

  “About Alfred’s funeral.”

  “In part. Yes, that was bullshit. But I told you that for someone else’s benefit. I needed someone else to think I’d given you a reason to explain my strangeness. I went back and forth on whether to tell you that lie at all, but … people were probably watching us. I gambled on telling you the funeral story, but I wouldn’t have let it sit for long, Chloe. I would’ve come clean, even if you’d believed the lie.”

  “Sure you would have.”

  “I would have. It doesn’t matter if you believe me; it’s true. But I wasn’t free to speak my mind at the restaurant, Chloe. I haven’t been for a while now.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Andrew?” She knew full well, but there were facets to this that she didn’t know or understand.

  And she was so very angry.

  “I need you to believe me when I say I love you,” he said.

  “We’ll see.”

  That seemed to hurt him, but he went on anyway. “That’s where this all has to start: with the fact that I love you. Because that’s all that matters in the end. The ends justify the means, right?”

  He tried to smile. It was a mistake, and Chloe just found herself hating him more.

  “You remember the first time I met you. At that sidewalk cafe?”

  “Of course.”

  A pause. “It wasn’t strictly coincidental.” Another pause. “I was sent there to find you.”

  “Who sent you?”

  She knew, but she needed to hear it.

  “Parker Barnes.”

  Chloe closed her eyes. She exhaled slowly
.

  “From O’s board,” Andrew explained from behind her closed eyelids.

  Eyes open. Fighting for calm. “I know who Parker Barnes is.”

  “I was so broke before I met you. Well below the line. I’d had a major Crossbrace article job fall through just two days before. The kill fee on the article was enough to buy me a few of those NuRamen things, no more. I was already behind on my rent and facing eviction. Directorate life, man — living on the edge. But then I got this call, through a resume I’d posted on an acting page. The call was from your bosses at O. They called me in, right to the damn top. Before I knew it, I was talking to Parker Fucking Barnes. And he said he had a job.”

  The pain was exquisite.

  Chloe wanted to writhe in it. To savage herself with unhappiness.

  “What was the job?”

  “You, Chloe. You were the job.”

  “It was all bullshit. Everything you told me and everything you pretended we had.”

  Andrew sighed. Looked away. “At the start, yes. But only at the start.”

  “They were watching us, weren’t they? Just like you were afraid they were watching us back at the restaurant.”

  “Yes. They told me our first meeting would be surveilled as a kind of audition. They have nanobot cameras, smaller than anything I’ve ever seen … and these cameras, you really can't see them.”

  “Makes sense,” Chloe said.

  Andrew’s head cocked. “What does?”

  “They’ve been watching me all my life. It’s all been a lie. Every inch of it.”

  He reached out, tentative. He stopped short of touching her leg, but said, “It was only a lie at first, Chloe. But after I started to fall in love with you, I couldn’t just tell you the truth. I wanted to find the right way to say it — to explain that this started as a job but that what came out of it was real. It hardly mattered; O never gave me room to breathe. They kept calling me in. They wanted me to change my approach in ‘handling’ you. And they threatened me, Chloe. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t tell you. Because they said that they’d put—”

  “Is it good?” Chloe interrupted.

  Andrew’s thick eyebrows drew together. “Is what good?”

  “The video of us fucking. The one they recorded for your ‘audition.’”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “But it exists,” Chloe said. “They recorded us having sex, didn’t they?”

  Andrew looked acutely uncomfortable. Finally, he nodded.

  “Did they show it to you?”

  “Only once.”

  Chloe nodded. “They showed you so you could adjust your technique. Like an athlete reviewing her game footage.”

  “Maybe, but I—”

  “Do you even like classic movies?”

  “What? Yes, of course I—”

  “What about your jokes? Do you write them yourself?”

  “My jokes? Chloe, they didn’t tell me exactly what to—”

  “Did they tell you how to eat my pussy? There are ways I like it best that my bosses could suggest, you know.”

  “That’s—”

  Chloe gave a humorless laugh. “Oh, my God, now I understand. That time you came in and you were all rough and bossing me around. That was like the network giving you notes, wasn’t it? To better appeal to your key demographic?”

  “You have every right to be angry at me. But—”

  “I do?” Chloe said, lifting her head. “Oh, thank goodness. I was worried that maybe I had to stay on-script. But I’ve gotta say, Andrew — it’s refreshing to work with a director and crew who trusts me enough to let me bring some of myself to the part. I think I’ll use this. Embrace the anger. That’s what good cinema is all about, right?”

  Andrew waited for more, but then he must have seen the ice in her eyes. The sub-zero of her soul. The utter lack of understanding or tolerance or middle ground or empathy. He appeared to realize the depth of Chloe’s pain and anger, so quiet now while she waited for his reaction.

  They stared at each other. Chloe felt absurd. How had she ever believed him? How had she loved him? She’d come out from behind her protections, and he’d stabbed her in the back.

  “Chloe …”

  “Was I good, Andrew? As far as assignments go, I suppose the task of fucking me was a decent one.”

  “It’s not about that. It was never about that.”

  “What was it about, then?”

  “I needed money. It was just a job.”

  “Exactly. It was just a job.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Chloe?” Andrew exploded. “I’m a Directorate writer and actor! Jobs came up to write copy — any fucking copy; I’m too goddamn poor to be picky — and I took them. Jobs came up to act and I took them if they’d have me; it didn’t matter if I was the star of a Crossbrace serial or an extra in a crowd scene. You don’t know what it’s like to be a Directorate artist. You’re constantly facing a choice between starving and selling out. I sold out to keep myself from starving. So fucking what?”

  “You don’t get to be righteous here, Andrew!”

  “It was a job! How was I supposed to know it would become something else?”

  Chloe stood, her anger drained into something sadder. More resigned.

  “What are you doing?” Andrew asked.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “What does it matter? You’re fired. This job is over.”

  He stood. “Chloe …”

  “I didn’t need anyone to pretend to love me. I’m tired of being someone’s ward. Someone’s subject. Someone’s goddamn science experiment.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m a person, Andrew. I’m just a girl.”

  “Of course you are. But what—”

  “You all treat me like I’m a thing. Shove me here, shove me there. Put me under a microscope. Drop me into a black room that senses my thoughts just to see what happens — and if I almost die, what of it?”

  “If you almost …?” His brows furrowed.

  “Did they tell you everything, Andrew? You’d need character research to play your part, right? Did they tell you why I’m so interesting?”

  “They didn’t tell me anything. Just who you were and where to find you.”

  “When I was ten,” Chloe said. “When I was playing hopscotch outside my friend Carly’s house and that cat ran across our path and I tripped and fell flat, scraping the skin off of both knees, one of my forearms, half my palm. Were they watching me when that happened? Was Carly’s mom in on it? When she smeared my cuts with ointment, did she use a special kind infused with nanobots even back then, so I’d heal without scars?”

  “I have no idea what—”

  “When my mom told me about not mixing love and sex. Did they listen? Did O coach her? Did they coach Brad? Was it just a coincidence, or part of the design: to drive me away from a usual life, and into sex for hire? And why not? O had made prostitution glamourous. Why let that work go to waste when little Chloe thought she might prefer the life of a spa girl?”

  “Look, I have no idea about any of this. Barnes told me that they didn’t know what to think of you. That you were an upstart from one of their spas that they never saw coming.”

  “But that’s just the thing, Andrew. They have seen me coming. They saw me coming when I worked with my partner on Voyos. They probably have eyes in my room, they can even see me when I touch myself. What do you think they saw, Andrew? Do you think there were differences in my orgasms when I fucked clients versus when I thought someone loved me?”

  Andrew took Chloe’s hand. Her skin prickled at his touch.

  “I did love you, Chloe. I do. That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

  Chloe yanked her hand away, then slapped Andrew, hard.

  “Maybe that’s what you think you’re telling me, but what you’re actually telling me is that I was just another job.”

  “Only in
terms of why I did this in the first place. But almost immediately I realized—”

  “Almost?”

  “Well—”

  “That first time, when it felt different and I thought I’d discovered something new? When you charmed me into bed like only a free fuck can? Had you realized before then?”

  “It’s—”

  “What about when we saw those first movies? When we had our picnics? Had you realized before the first time I laid on the couch with my head in your lap, feeling safe and like nothing in the world could ever go wrong?”

  “Chloe, I—”

  “Did you realize by the time I told you there were two people inside me, and how fragile and personal the ‘Real Chloe’ was? Or what about when I started to freak out about O. When I told you all that was bothering me, and you let me feel like you were the one person who might understand?”

  “Of course! I do understand! Chloe …”

  He took her hand again, forcefully this time.

  “Let go of me!”

  “No! Stay here and talk to me about this!”

  “LET GO OF ME, YOU ASSHOLE!”

  “I don’t want to lose you, Chloe!”

  With her free hand, Chloe punched Andrew in the chest. She pulled free, then marched two fast steps forward to slap him again, even harder than the first time.

  And again.

  And again.

  People were staring. Hearing their voices. Hearing the fury of Chloe’s slaps.

  “You don’t want to lose me,” she said as Andrew stared quietly back at her, stunned into paralysis, his cheeks turning crimson.

  “Never,” he said.

  Chloe shook her head. “Then you shouldn’t have done what you did.”

  “I want to make it right.”

  “You can’t make it right. It’s not fixable.”

  “I’ll do anything.”

  “Then go back in time. Go back to before you met me and then stay the fuck out of my life.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I’ve never meant anything more.”

  Andrew looked at her evenly.

  “I did a horrible thing, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

  “Then stop. Stop feeling it.”

  “I love you.”

  “I don’t want your love.”

  “I need you, Chloe.”

  “You don’t deserve me.”

  “I don’t. But that changes nothing. I love you whether you love me back or not.”