Элинор Арнасон - The Very Best of the Best - 35 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction

You grab me by the scarf again and pull me closer to you. I shut my eyes. I don’t want you to see them at this distance; you might find something wrong in them. But that’s not what you’re looking for.

Then you kiss me, a clumsy, drunk kiss. You cling to me like one of Harlow’s monkeys to a cloth mother.

I can’t remember the last time I was kissed.

I vaguely remember engaging in the act of coitus in some previous incarnation. It did not go well.

The mechanics of sexuality, of blood redistributing itself and tissue contracting and flesh reddening and appendages hardening and fluids secreting, are marvelously difficult to imitate with any verisimilitude.

This is the climax of every story. In romance novels, the lovers kiss in the rain, and it’s all over. In fairy tales, the kiss breaks the spell: the princess awakens, the frog becomes a man. But that doesn’t happen, not now, not the last time I was kissed, and not the next time I will be kissed.

But I enjoy it all the same. Your body is warm and right and real: self-heating skin, hair that grows in on its own, a mouth that lubricates itself.

I study your body and memorize it for future reference. At the moment there is little I can learn and so much that I want to know. I wish I could taste you.

You remove yourself from my lips and drunkenly smear your mouth against my cheek, my jaw, what little of my neck is not covered by the scarf. You press your nose against me and try vainly to smell Thomas Majors under the cologne I have chosen for him. You rest your head on my arm for a moment. I stroke your hair—not because it seems appropriate, but because I want to.

Then you close your eyes. They stay closed. Soon I hear the slow, loud breathing of a man asleep.

That’s as far as it goes between you and Thomas Majors.

My arms don’t fall asleep so I can let you use Thomas Majors as your pillow for as long as you like. I watch your eyelashes flutter as you fall into REM sleep. I wonder what you’re dreaming about. I press my fingers against your neck to feel your pulse.

Without waking you, I move my head down and lay it upon your chest. I shut my eyes. I listen to your heartbeat and the slow rhythm of your breath. Your stomach gurgles. The sounds are at once recognizably natural and alien to me, like deep-sea creatures. I find them endlessly fascinating.

I try very hard to fall asleep, but I have no idea how to go about it. Still, I wait, and I imitate your breathing and hope that I’ll begin to lose track of each individual thump of your heart, and that I’ll slip out of consciousness and maybe even dream, and that I’ll wake up next to you.

Hours pass this way. The light through the window turns pale gray as the sun rises in Beijing’s smoggy sky. You roll over to face the shade and lie still again.

I slip from the bed and head to the bathroom, where I examine myself. I look very much the same as I did the day before.

I take the elevator down to the dining room. It’s 8:36 a.m. Breakfast time. I serve myself from the buffet, selecting the sort of things I think a Westerner is supposed to eat at breakfast: bread, mostly, with coffee, tea, and a glass of milk. I sit alone at a little table with this meal before me and let its steam warm my face. I wait for the aroma to awaken a sense of hunger in me. It doesn’t.

I eat it anyway so as not to cause suspicion. I can’t taste any of it, as usual.

You’re still asleep when I get back. It has only been about five hours since you flopped onto my bed. In the bathroom, I empty Thomas Majors’s stomach and turn on the shower. Even though the door is locked, I do not remove the yellow scarf. I tape a plastic bag around it to keep it dry.

The grime of last night’s drinking and duck neck slides off, along with a few hairs I’ll have to replace later.

The water hits me with a muffled impact. I don’t feel wet. Thomas’s skin keeps me dry like a raincoat. It isn’t my flesh.

I wonder if the state you invoke in me can accurately be called love. I know only that I am happier in your presence than out of it, and that I care desperately what you think of me. If that is love, then I suppose it can be said that I love you, with all the shapeless mass I have instead of a heart.

I don’t believe that you love me, but I know that you love Thomas Majors, and that’s close enough.

I’ve heard stories like this, hundreds of them, in languages I’ve long forgotten. The ending is always the same. Galatea’s form softens and turns to flesh. The Velveteen Rabbit sprouts fur and whiskers. But I am still myself, whatever that is, and my puppet Thomas Majors has not become a real boy.

I don’t know what I am, but at least now I know something I am not: I am not a creature of fairy tales.

Your cell phone wakes you a little after 10 a.m. It’s your wife. I’m dressed by then in a navy-blue suit and working on my cell phone in one of the easy chairs. You finish the conversation before you’re quite conscious.

“Do you remember last night?” I ask.

You scratch your head. “No,” you groan.

“Do you have a hangover?” I ask.

I take your miserable grunt as a yes.

Your daughter is born seven months later. You leave Beijing for a while to tend to your wife. After a few weeks of your unbearable absence, a student invites me to dinner with her family. “I can’t,” I tell her. “I’m taking a trip this weekend.”

“Are you going to see your giiiirlfriend ?” she asks in a singsong voice. She’s in high school, too busy from fifteen-hour school days seven days a week to have a boyfriend of her own, but she has immense interest in the love lives of her more attractive teachers.

“No,” I tell her. The expats know that Thomas Majors is gay but his students and colleagues do not. “I’m going to visit my boss, Mr. Liu. I can have dinner with you next week.”

I take the bullet train to Shenzhen. As the countryside blurs past my window, I notice that Thomas’s fingernails have become brittle. It’s too soon. I blame the cold, dry air of Beijing and resolve to buy a bottle of clear nail polish and apply it at the first opportunity.

You’re not home when I come to your door. Your mother-in-law thanks me for the gift I have brought (a canister of imported milk powder), invites me in, and explains that you’re on a shopping trip in Hong Kong and will be back soon. In the meantime, I sit in the living room and sip warm water.

Your wife isn’t finished with her post-partum month of confinement. She does not invite me to her room. It’s probably because she’s in pajamas and hasn’t washed her hair, or she’s simply tired, but the suspicion that she knows something unsavory about me crawls on my back.

There’s a dog in the apartment, a shaggy little thing that doesn’t go up to my knee. It doesn’t quite know what to make of me. It barks and skitters around in circles. It can smell me—not Thomas, but me —and it knows that something is slightly off.

But dogs are not terribly bright. I sneak to the kitchen, find a piece of bacon, and put it in my pocket. The dog likes me well enough after that.

You return home that afternoon, laden with bags. You weren’t expecting me, but you’re happy to see me.

“I bought something for you,” you tell me. “A gift.”

“You didn’t have to,” I insist.

“I already had to buy gifts for my whole extended family,” you say, “so one more doesn’t matter. Here.”

You pull a small box out of a suitcase.

“Can I open it?” I ask.

You nod.

I peel off the tape. The paper does not tear at all as I remove it. The box shimmers. I open it and can’t help but cry out.