Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

I try to remember what it was like when it was just us. The Olds say we slept in the same crib. I was a baby, she climbed in. Hero cried when I fell down. Hero has always been the one who cries.

“How did you know what I was planning?”

“Oh, please, ,” Hero says. “I always know when you’re about to go off the deep end. You go around with this smile on your face, like the whole world is sucking you off. Besides, Darius told me you’d been asking about really bad shit. He likes me, you know. He likes me much better than you.”

“He’s the only one,” I say.

“Fuck you,” Hero says. “Anyway, it’s not like you were the only one with plans for tonight. I’m sick of this place. Sick of these people.”

There is a martial line of shabti on a stone shelf. Our friends. People who would like to be our friends. Rock stars that the Olds used to hang out with, movie stars. Saudi princes who like fat, gloomy girls with money. She picks up a prince, throws it against the wall.

“Fuck Vyvienne and all her unicorns,” Hero says.

She picks up another shabti. “Fuck Yumiko.”

I take Yumiko from her. “I did,” I say. “I give her a three out of five. For enthusiasm.” I drop the shabti on the floor.

“You are so vile, ,” Hero says. “Have you ever been in love? Even once?”

She’s fishing. She knows. Of course she knows.

Why did you sleep with him? Are you in love with him? He’s me. Why aren’t I him? Fuck both of you.

“Fuck our parents,” I say. I pick up an oil lamp and throw it at the shabti on the shelf.

The room gets brighter for a moment, then darker.

“It’s funny,” Hero says. “We used to do everything together. And then we didn’t. And right now, it’s weird. You planning on doing what you were going to do. And me, what I was planning. It’s like we were in each other’s brains again.”

“You went out and bought a biological agent? We should have gone in on it together. Buy two, get one free.”

“No,” Hero says. She looks shy, like she’s afraid I’ll laugh at her.

I wait. Eventually she’ll tell me what she needs to tell me and then I’ll hand over the little metal canister that Nikolay gave me, and she’ll unlock the door to the burial chamber. Then we’ll go back up into the world and that video won’t be the end of the world. It will just be something that people talk about. Something to make the Olds crazy.

“I was going to kill myself,” Hero says. “You know, down here. I was going to come down here after the fireworks, and then I decided that I didn’t want to be alone when I did it.”

Which is just like Hero. Throws a pity party, then realizes she’s forgotten to send out invitations.

“And then I found out what you were up to,” Hero says. “I thought I ought to stop you. I wouldn’t have to be alone. And I would finally live up to my name. I’d save everybody. Even if they never knew it.”

“You were going to kill yourself?” I say. “For real? Like with a gun?”

“Like with this,” Hero says. She reaches into the jeweled box on her belt. There’s a little thing curled up in there, an enameled loop of chain, black and bronze. It uncoils in her hand, becomes a snake.

—

Alicia was the first one to get a Face. I got mine when I was eight. I didn’t really know what was going on. I met all these boys my age, and then the Olds sat down and had a talk with me. They explained what was going on, said that I got to pick which Face I wanted. I picked the one who looked the nicest, the one who looked like he might be fun to hang out with. That’s how stupid I was back then.

Hero couldn’t choose, so I did it for her. Pick her, I said. That’s how strange life is. I picked her out of all the others.

—

Yumiko said she’d already had the conversation with her Face. (We talk to our Faces as little as possible, although sometimes we sleep with each other’s. Forbidden fruit is always freakier. Is that why I did what I did? I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?) Yumiko said her Face agreed to sign a new contract when Yumiko turns eighteen. She doesn’t see any reason to give up having a Face.

—

Nishi is Preeti’s younger sister. They only broke ground on Nishi’s pyramid last summer. Upper management teams from her father’s company came out to lay the first course of stones. A team-building exercise. Usually it’s lifers from the supermax prison out in Pelican Bay. Once they get to work, they mostly look the same, lifers and upper management. It’s hard work. We like to go out and watch.

Every once in a while a consulting archaeologist or an architect will come over and try to make conversation. They think we want context.

They talk about grave goods, about how one day future archaeologists will know what life was like because some rich girls decided they wanted to build their own pyramids.

We think that’s funny.

They like to complain about the climate. Apparently it isn’t ideal. “Of course, they may not be standing give or take a couple of hundred years. Once you factor in geological events. Earthquakes. There’s the geopolitical dimension. There’s grave robbers.”

They go on and on about the cunning of grave robbers.

We get them drunk. We ask them about the curse of the mummies just to see them get worked up. We ask them if they aren’t worried about the Olds. We ask what used to happen to the men who built the pyramids in Egypt. Didn’t they used to disappear? we ask. Just to make sure nobody knew where the good stuff was buried? We say there are one or two members of the consulting team who worked on Alicia’s pyramid that we were friendly with. We mention we haven’t been able to get hold of them in a while, not since the pyramid was finished.

—

They were up on the unfinished outer wall of Nishi’s pyramid. I guess they’d been up there all night. Talking. Making love. Making plans.

They didn’t see me. Invisible, that’s what I am. I had my phone. I filmed them until my phone ran out of memory. There was a unicorn down in the meadow by a pyramid. Alicia’s pyramid. Two impossible things. Three things that shouldn’t exist. Four.

That was when I gave up on becoming someone new, the running, the kale, the whole thing. That was when I gave up on becoming the new me. Somebody already had that job. Somebody already had the only thing I wanted.

—

“Give me the code.” I say it over and over again. I don’t know how long it’s been. Hero’s arm is green and black and all blown up like a party balloon. I tried sucking out the poison. Maybe that did some good. Maybe I didn’t think of it soon enough. My lips are a little tingly. A little numb.

“ ?” Hero says. “I don’t want to die.”

“You aren’t going to die,” I say. “Give me the code. Let me save you.”

“I don’t want them to die,” Hero says. “If I give you the code, you’ll do it. And I’ll die down here by myself.”

“You’re not going to die,” I say. I stroke her cheek. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

After a while she says, “Okay.” Then she tells me the code. Maybe it’s a string of numbers that means something to her. More likely it’s random. I told you she was smarter than me.

I repeat the code back to her and she nods. I’ve covered her up with a shawl, because she’s so cold. I lay her head down on a pillow, brush her hair back.

She says, “You loved her better than you loved me. It isn’t fair. Nobody ever loved me best.”

“What makes you think I loved her?” I say. “You think this was all about love? Really, Hero? This was just me being dumb again. And you, saving the day.”

She closes her eyes. Gives me a horrible, blind smile. I go over to the door and enter the code.