Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

“Oh, Naomi…” She doesn’t drink. She barely touched her champagne at our contracting ceremony. I kneel, but stay out of reach. “Naomi, what happened to you?”

Now she tilts her chin up. Tear tracks shine on her pale, perfect face. “This guy, he was nice to me. He listened. He said he’d drive me home, and I left. I guess I forgot about Maria and Gwen, because they gave it to me good at work the next day, even though I was hung over.”

“Naomi,” I say, “what aren’t you telling me?”

She buries her face in her hands and starts to sob, and I can’t help it anymore; I go to her, put my arm around her shoulders, and let her cry against me. “Naomi, I don’t care what it was. I’m not mad. I just… I have to know!”

She’s muffled, but I still understand her. “I told him I wanted to test, but he said he was clean, and he already had his hand under my dress and I didn’t push it. God, Scott, I didn’t make him do it! And now look at me!”

I grab her shoulders suddenly, and she stares at me, shocked. “I am, Naomi,” I say. “This isn’t the end of the world. We just… we need to get you treated. Use barriers. We… we can…”

But I can’t finish. I break down. We kneel together on the kitchen floor, and we cry.

Naomi and I both call out sick from work on Wednesday and I take her to our PHR. He does more extensive testing and it turns out the markers are left over from where her body fought the virus to a standstill. “Your vaccine,” he tells us, sitting on a stool in the exam room. “It protected you from the effects of the disease, just like it’s supposed to. You’ll be fine, Naomi, but drug-resistant HIV is still dangerous to others.”

“Wh… what does that mean?” She’s holding my hand; I feel her pulse racing. “I… what about Scott? My kids?”

He shakes his head slightly. “You’ll never be able to donate blood or tissue, and if you ever cut yourself, you need to make sure no one touches the blood, just in case. We’ll need to give Cher and Bobby extra boosters, but they should be all right.”

Naomi sighs, relieved, but there’s something missing. I stare at the man until he gets up and leans against the counter. “I’m sorry, Scott. We can protect your kids, because they share your wife’s DNA, but the two of you aren’t blood relations.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“You can’t have unprotected sex with Naomi. If you do, you’re likely to contract the disease yourself.”

I blink slowly, then nod. HIV was beaten for a few years, back in the tens, but it came back, overcame the treatments and the vaccines. Scientists managed to stave it off and create a new vaccine about thirty years ago, but while I was in college it mutated, and the new version is tougher than ever.

How could Naomi let herself catch this?

I turn to her, anger hot in the pit of my stomach, but then I see her face, her tears, her absolute misery, and it melts away. I just got her back, and now she needs me more than ever.

At first, we manage. After the initial shock wears off, everything is perfect. We manage to avoid arguments for a couple of months just by staying out of each other’s way. But that’s not a perfect solution, and half a year later we’re at each other’s throats again, same as always, and Cher and Bobby are in their rooms to escape my shouting and Naomi’s deadly quiet words.

It’s not the first time I wonder if I made a mistake in reuniting with Naomi, but it’s the first time I say it out loud. “I should’ve left you then,” I snarl, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “I should’ve told you to get the hell out of my house.”

“Maybe so,” she says, barely audible, just like every other time we fight. “But you’d be a mess.”

“Oh, screw you!”

“Maybe,” she says again. “But I know you, Scott. And I know me. We can’t live without each other, so let’s just get over this…” She falters, and I fight the urge to finish her sentence — something that would fuel the fire even more. “Damn it, Scott, what the hell were we even fighting about?”

I turn away without a word and walk quietly down the hall to our bedroom. The door closes behind me. I want to scream, to kick something, to go back out there and remind Naomi, in explicit detail, exactly what she said that set this off.

But I don’t. I just stand there in the center of the room, eyes closed, forcing myself to calm down. This has to stop.

Naomi comes in an hour later, touching the lock control as she does. “The kids are okay,” she tells me as she undresses. I’m already in bed, comm in hand, reading. “Bobby’s fine, but Cher…” She takes a deep breath. “Scott, Cher was bawling. She was afraid we’d separate again.” I open my mouth, but she holds up a hand. “I told her it wouldn’t happen, no matter what, and I put her to bed, but you’re going to have to talk to her.”

“I will,” I promise.

Naomi’s pulls her nightgown over her head and slides into bed beside me. “Scott,” she says, “we have to stop this. It’s not healthy.”

I put the reader on my nightstand and turn to her. “I know, Naomi. I really do. But…” Oh, hell, I have to tell her. “Naomi, you push every single one of my buttons. You drive me crazy. You piss me off at every turn, and it’s all I can do to scream at you instead of going off and breaking something.”

“So why do you stay?” Her eyes shine. “We don’t have a contract anymore; you can leave whenever you like.”

“Because I love you!” I reach for Naomi, and my hand finds her thigh. I sound plaintive, pleading with her to understand. “I love you, and I want us to be together!”

Naomi smiles. I move my hand to her cheek; her face is as soft as ever. “I love you too, Scott.” She holds me by the wrist, kisses my palm. I feel tears on my fingers. “I never said it before,” she says, “but I’m sorry.”

I shake my head. “It happened. It’s in the past.” I move closer to her, my lips nearly touching hers. “Be with me, Naomi. Now. Forever.”

She nods and kisses me. When we separate, her cheeks are pink, her lips parted. She reaches for the barriers on the bedside table, but I grab her arm. “No.”

“Scott, you know what the PHR said—”

“I don’t care anymore.” I nudge her legs apart with my knee. “I want you, Naomi.” I’m close enough now to feel her heat. “All of you. No matter what.”

She wrenches out of my grip and pushes at my chest. “I can’t let you, Scott. I can’t infect you!”

I take her wrists in my hands; her pulse is bird-quick under my thumbs. “I love you, Naomi.” She tries to protest, but I kiss her and, after a few seconds, she stops fighting. I have to prove to Naomi that I want her, and only her, for the rest of my life. I don’t care about the disease anymore. I can live with it, but I can’t live without Naomi. I’ve tried, but the grass isn’t any greener on that side.

After the kiss, Naomi doesn’t try to stop me again. Her back arches, just like always, but a tear trails down the side of her face. She doesn’t have to tell me why she’s crying.

And I don’t have to ask.

“Greener” is another story that Sheila Williams of Asimov’s requested a rewrite on — though in this case it was specifically for one sex scene that didn’t need to be quite as explicit as I made it. The editors also replaced Tom Brady Football with Ben Brady Football , and I’m not sure why. I don’t remember much of the writing process, except that I do know I finished it without any major hiccups — which, for a procrastinator like me, is quite an accomplishment.