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

“A new scarf!” I hold it up. It’s beautiful, gleaming yellow silk with brocade serpents. I try on an expression of overwhelming gratitude. Until now, I haven’t had a chance to use it. “Snakes.”

“That’s your birth year,” you say.

“You remembered,” I say. “This is wonderful. Thank you so much.”

“Put it on,” you tell me.

“In a little while.”

“Come on, baby. Don’t be shy,” you say. You couch your demand in humor and a smile. “Go ahead.”

I try to think of an excuse not to. A scar on my neck. A skin condition. It’s cold. None of them will work.

Your baby saves me. She starts screaming in the bedroom, and neither your wife nor her mother can calm her down. Your wife soon starts crying, too, and your mother-in-law starts shouting at her.

“I think maybe you should get in there and say hello,” I tell you.

You groan, but you comply.

I dash to the lavatory. Quickly, I unwind the counterfeit Liu Viuttor scarf from around my neck. It sticks to Thomas’s flesh like a bandage. I peel it off slowly but the damage is done. The skin of Thomas Majors’s neck has gone ragged, like moth-eaten cloth. I wrap the new scarf around it snugly. Then I unwrap it. The damage is still there. Somehow, I thought this new totem would fix me.

I tie my new scarf around Thomas’s neck and return to the living room.

To spare your wife further agitation, her mother banishes the baby from the bedroom. You carry her out with you. She’s a fat little thing, all lumpy pink pajamas and chubby cheeks gone red from crying. When she sees me, she quiets herself and stares. She’s had limited experience of the world, but even she knows that this creature before her is different.

“She’s never seen a foreigner before,” you say with a smile. “Do you want to hold her?”

You thrust her into my arms before I can resist. She does not cry anymore, just looks at me with big, dark eyes. Her little body is warm and surprisingly heavy.

“Chinese babies like to stare at handsome faces,” you say.

I smile at her. She doesn’t smile back. She hasn’t learned yet that she’s supposed to. Everything about her is unpracticed and new and utterly authentic. I find it unnerving.

“You made this,” I said. “You made a person. A real person.”

“Yeah,” you say, probably filing my remark under foreigners say strange things . “Do you think you’ll have children?” you ask me.

“Probably not,” I say.

Your daughter clutches at my new scarf.

A few days later, we take the bullet train back to Beijing together. You nap most of the way with your head on my shoulder. When you wake up, you tell me, “You should sleep more. You look tired.”

“So do you,” I reply.

“I have a baby,” you say. “You don’t.”

The only reply I have for him is a nervous Colin Firth smile. Underneath it, I am panicking.

“You look a little gray. Maybe it’s the air,” you say. “Do you use a mask?”

“Of course,” I say.

“You need to drink more water,” you tell me. I know by now that nagging is an expression of love in China, but the advice still irritates me. It’s useless.

Our train plunges deeper and deeper into miasma as we approach the city. The sky darkens even as the sun rises. It’s late autumn and the coal plants are blazing in preparation for winter.

Maybe it is the air. Maybe it’s bad enough to affect even me. Maybe the new skin wasn’t ready when I put it on. Maybe it’s just the standard decay that conquers every Westerner who spends too much time in China. Whatever the reason, Thomas Majors is beginning to come apart.

We don air filters as we leave the train station. Outside, we pass people in suits, women in brightly colored minidresses, children in school uniforms, all covering their faces. Those of us who can afford it wear enormous, clunky breathing masks. Those who can’t, or who don’t understand the risk, wear thin surgical masks made of paper, or little cloth masks with cartoon characters on them, or they just tie bandanas around their mouths and noses. A short, stocky man squats on the pavement, removing his mask every so often to suck on a cigarette.

We take separate taxis. I don’t go home, though. I visit a beauty shop, pharmacy, and apothecary, and I buy every skincare product I can find. Expensive moisturizer from France. A mud-mask treatment from Korea. Cocoa butter from South America. Jade rollers. Pearl powder. Caterpillar fungus. Back in my apartment, I slather them on Thomas Majors to see if they will make him tight and bright again. They don’t.

The skin is looser, thinner, and when that happens the center cannot hold. I feel around for muscles that have slipped out of place, joints that have shifted, limbs trying to lengthen or widen. I have not lost my shape just yet, but I know it is only a matter of time.

I unravel the scarf you gave me and look again. The skin underneath is even worse. There’s an open gash along it that threatens to creep even wider. I can see bits of myself through it, brackish and horrible. Sewing it shut won’t do anything; the flesh is too fragile. So I tape it up and wrap the scarf around it even tighter. Silk is strong. Silk will hold it, at least for a while.

I make phone calls to forgers, to chemists, to printers, to tanners, to all the sorts of people who can help me make someone new. This time, at least, I have money to spend and privacy in which to work. I can do it right. I can make somebody who will last longer and fit better and maybe won’t come apart again.

The smog provides a convenient excuse for my absence over the next few weeks. It traps most of us in our homes with our air purifiers. But at times a strong wind comes to blow it away, at least for a while, and there you are again inviting me out to KTV bars and business lunches and badminton. I can’t go. I want to go, but Thomas Majors is fragile and thin, liable to split apart at any moment. His hair is coming out. His gums are getting soft. Speaking is difficult; I feel the gash in Thomas’s throat grow wider and wider under the scarf.

I cite my health as a reason not to renew my contract, but you refuse to accept it. You won’t let Thomas Majors go. I remind you of my unnamed medical condition. I tell you that I’ve been to dozens of doctors and even some traditional Chinese healers. I promise to see another specialist.

I promise I’ll keep in touch. I promise I’ll come back again once I’m better.

Then I sequester myself in my apartment. I don’t know what my next form will be. I’d like to build myself another Thomas Majors, one that will last forever, but I feel my body pulling in different directions. It wants to shift in a dozen different ways, all of them horrible: too squat, or insect-thin, or with limbs at angles that don’t make sense in human physiology.

My human costume is slipping off me too quickly. I don’t go outside anymore. I only wait for the men to come with the documents and the materials. There’s a knock at the door. It’s you.

I know I shouldn’t open it, but I also know that you can hear me moving around in my apartment, and that you’ll be hurt if I don’t let you in, and even though I don’t want you to see me as I am, I still want to see you. I adjust Thomas’s face and throw a heavy robe on over the blue suit.

The expression of horror in your eyes is remarkable. I memorize it to use in a future incarnation.

“ Ni shenti bu hao ,” you say, in that blunt Chinese way. Your body is not good. You take off your breathing mask and come inside.

“Thanks,” I say.

You try to give me a hug.

“Don’t,” I say. “I could be contagious.” The truth is I’m terrified you might feel me moving around underneath Thomas Majors, or you’ll squeeze tight enough to leave a dent.