Made for Love Page 21

  Now, though, Hazel felt flooded with a connective warmth. She knew it was mainly the drugs, about to put her to sleep for the last time, but she felt incredibly close to her father, incredibly loved by him in a way that she never had before. Maybe the shared genetics in their flesh were swapping nostalgic stories as she twined herself against him. Maybe his brain hadn’t been sentimental or capable of giving her a warm good-bye, but his skin and bones were.

  It took an incredible amount of effort, but Hazel managed to lift up her head and slip off her eye mask as she spoke, wanting to glimpse her father one last time amidst the new vapors of kinship she was feeling.

  But when she took off her eye mask, she realized she’d been spooning with Diane. There was a thin string of saliva hanging between her bottom lip and the doll’s collarbone; in Hazel’s periphery it glistened and seemed to flicker. Diane’s hair had never been the same after the bathtub incident, but one of its patches seemed a fine nest for Hazel to lay her heavy cheek down upon now. It looked like a hologram of a kinder planet’s sun. Like a brand-new, safe-to-touch form of fire that was invented as a toy for babies. Go ahead and feel, it said. It meant this in every sense of the word. Hazel’s eyes closed and she breathed in and felt lucky, because Diane’s hair smelled like freesia body wash. Which was not a bad last breath to draw at all.

  15

  ON ANY OTHER DAY OF HIS ADULT LIFE, THE GOGOL INTAKE PROCESS would’ve sent Jasper running. He’d compromised his anonymity for the rest of his lifetime just by stepping in the door.

  But he’d come to them with nothing to lose, ready to spend what remained of his life savings of cash. For an extra fee, he’d been able to get the earliest available appointment the following day, and had driven all night to get there. It was a long drive, and a disconcerting one—multiple times Jasper felt he had to be lost. The place was essentially in the middle of a field and guarded like a fort. Upon arrival he was shown to an eerie unmanned vehicle that drove him from the front gate to the actual building.

  Procedures were apparently expensive. Prohibitively so for the average person; many times, the operator explained, fund-raising initiatives and charity walks were organized to fund individuals in average income brackets. What sort of solution was he looking for?

  Not one that would make people line up in droves to run a 5K.

  He assured her it would be financed with his life savings. The appointment operator was hesitant to schedule him when the initial survey revealed he had no physical assets or employment record, but he convinced her he’d be willing to pay the hefty consulting fee upon arrival, and was able to prepay for the procedure in cash.

  The building housing the diagnostic wing looked made of steel-colored ice. Its silver entrance doors were impossibly thin, like two giant razor blades. Walking inside, he tried to shake the feeling that he was about to be sliced in half.

  A woman inside holding a file folder beckoned him. “Mr. Kesper? Right this way.”

  No one had called him by his actual last name since high school. Hearing it formed a knot in his throat. But they wouldn’t schedule the appointment without exhaustive identification confirmations. He’d had to be himself.

  “When I made my appointment,” Jasper began, following behind the woman. “They said something about an imagination team I’d meet with today? To brainstorm solutions to my goals?” His throat was going dry. Had he himself been conned? Gogol sure seemed on the up-and-up; their products were everywhere. But maybe it was getting into bed with some medical quackery to keep the shareholders happy. The commercial sure seemed primed to coax desperate millionaires out of their money prior to death.

  Maybe he’d just fallen into the trap he’d made his former living from: people are eager to believe in the reality of what they want.

  “You’re in excellent hands,” the woman said. Jasper couldn’t see her hands though. She was wearing a tight pair of silver gloves.

  THE DIAGNOSTICS TOOK HOURS; IT FELT LIKE AN ENTIRE DAY HAD passed but Jasper had no real sense of time because there weren’t clocks anywhere. He kept being ushered inside machines that moved around him or above him; he’d get out of one and be led right inside another. He took a few naps. “Why haven’t I gotten hungry yet?” he asked. “Why haven’t I had to use the bathroom?”

  “We gave you some injections,” a woman explained.

  “Like shots? I never felt anything.”

  “You wouldn’t feel them,” she said. “They’re not exactly like shots.”

  The final scanner required him to lie on his stomach while wearing a helmet that covered his eyes; the machine’s two halves were going to enclose him in a chamber, like an embryo growing in an egg. For how long?

  He didn’t know. Jasper was beginning to worry. He hadn’t said that much about what he wanted yet. How much did these tests cost? What if when they were finished, he didn’t have enough left over for the procedure?

  Then it appeared in his brain, unprompted: an image of a dolphin’s glistening stomach, the sun glinting off its surface, its wet satin finish relaxed against the bar of gritty sand it was beached upon. He felt himself get aroused, a particularly uncomfortable pressure lying facedown in the confines of the egg.

  A montage began to follow, flits of fin and the occasional quick tooth. Desire and the fatigue of the past few days, running on adrenaline and excitement and then adrenaline and heartbreak all seemed to catch up with him at once. Jasper felt the wall of civility he was trying to maintain, flimsy as the fake backing he’d hidden his money behind in his closet, give forth like wet paper; he began to weep. His erection was pushing into the exam table and he was pressing his weight against it now. His tears were building up inside the helmet; he felt himself wanting to draw oxygen at a rate the thick filter of the helmet’s face mask might not support—he could asphyxiate; he could possibly drown in the condensation of sweat and grief. He was either about to black out or die or orgasm, or some combination of these three things. He couldn’t wait for pleasure, or erasure. And erasure was pleasure, given the status quo.

  JASPER WOKE TO THE PEERING EYES OF SEVERAL SCIENTISTS. A large group of observers stood holding tablets, their fingers moving at blurry speeds of documentation. One older woman in a lab coat was chain-smoking. She was visually shorter than everyone else but felt like the tallest person in the room.

  The other scientists were standing behind her as though they were afraid of Jasper. She was the mother duck who would protect them.

  “Did I black out?” Jasper asked. The helmet had been removed; he’d been rolled over onto his back.

  The scientist exhaled and a concentrated amount of smoke blew out into Jasper’s face. “Yes,” she said. “Right after you climaxed.”

  “Oh,” he said. The scientists did not seem scandalized or turned on. In his former life, this might’ve disappointed him. Now all he cared about was advice.

  “Can you fix me?”

  The short scientist exhaled again. Jasper felt his lungs make a small spasm. “My name is Voda,” she said. “Why don’t you come to my office. We’ll talk.” She dropped her cigarette onto the floor and a small robot immediately appeared and ate it.

  Voda took out another cigarette, lit it, and turned. The crowd of scientists parted to make a path for her exit, then all turned and followed her. Jasper sat up—he felt woozy.

  A medical team disrobed Jasper and began washing him. He found he’d lost any sense of care or shame about his body too. He was now a patient. In less than two minutes he was clean and in a fresh hospital gown. Another woman appeared.

  “Mr. Kesper? You can follow me to Voda’s office.”

  He stood and was aware of the air on his buttocks. “Should I get dressed?”

  “Voda would like to see you immediately. This way.”

  In her office, Jasper noted that Voda’s skin looked very processed, as if someone had tried to soak it in chemicals and develop it like photographic film. Her expression was relaxed and pensive. It reminded Jasper o
f the way reptiles in pet stores look when they’re lying on those electric rocks. She lit another cigarette. “I think I can help you,” she said.

  “Great,” Jasper said and nodded. Voda shrugged.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked. “What’s the catch?” He wanted to add, How old are you? He really couldn’t tell. It seemed like maybe she was very old, but was so unconcerned about the passing of time that it didn’t affect her. Her hair was a buoyant nest of tight brown curls whose lushness stood in stark contrast to the condition of her skin; they looked like the edible salad end of a root vegetable.

  Now she smiled though. “The same catch as everything. Loads of risk.”

  Jasper shifted in his chair, trying not to think about his back-opened gown. The brisk temperature in Voda’s office made its chrome seat feel refrigerated. He was excited to hear what she was saying but the surgical feel of the facility had activated some castration paranoia in his brain. He didn’t like the creeping feeling in the back of his mind that his manhood was being iced down prior to amputation.

  “I didn’t think doctors smoked,” Jasper said. Beneath Voda’s desk, a pack of cigarette-butt-eating robots roved around her ankles, in wait like toy dogs. The only thing hanging on the wall was a vintage calendar bearing a photo of a nude man.

  “Your case is of particular interest to me for several reasons, Jasper. What you’re wanting—and don’t worry, our diagnostics are thorough. You were vague on the phone with the consult operator but we’ve filled in the holes. So to speak.”

  The way her eyes moved over him seemed like she was checking him out, but maybe it was a science thing. Jasper didn’t know what to think. “So you can cure me?” he asked.

  “I don’t like the term ‘cure.’ It limits solutions to pure reversal. What’s going on in your brain right now would be tricky to undo, because we can’t be certain about how or why this happened to you.”

  “I got attacked by a dolphin that tried to . . . I don’t know, mate with me,” Jasper blurted out, his voice rising in volume. This was not his fault. Yes, after meeting Tiny especially, a small part of his brain had worried that the entire scenario was some sort of punishment for his years of conning women, maybe even one self-imposed by his own conscience. But he remembered that day on the beach, prior to the attack. He’d been happy, not guilt stricken.

  “The thing bit me—” Jasper started.

  Voda interrupted. “We can’t know causality, Jasper. Maybe there is some bacterial explanation for what happened. Maybe that dolphin had a mutant virus. There’s a bacteria that sometimes presents itself in cat feces, for example. It causes mice to be drawn toward cats. Infected mice will actually seek out a cat and present themselves for killing. We could spend decades and millions of dollars chasing down the reason why you’re feeling this way, and still not find any concrete answers. What I’m proposing, my solution, is a reconfiguration. We’ll work with your current desires instead of against them. Afterward, you’ll be able to get aroused and have sex with a human female.”

  She dropped her cigarette to the floor. Jasper felt his gown pull forward, away from his body for a moment in the instantaneous frenzy of the robot vacuuming that followed.

  “You’re an awful person, Jasper. ‘Awful’ isn’t a very professional term, but it’s an accurate one. I’m sure you’re aware you’re a narcissist. Did you know you’re also a bit of a sociopath? I’d like to show you something.”

  On the chrome wall to their left, a projection appeared. The images came from a microscopic wand held by another scientist. Jasper noticed she was holding the projection pen between her first and second fingers like a cigarette.

  “That’s your brain. See the highlighted portions?” Other images tiled across the wall, stacking above and below Jasper’s scan. “For comparison, these are the brain scans of other sociopaths, some of them violent serial killers. See the similarities? Though you’re not aggressively violent, you have the strong capability of hurting people and feeling no suffering or empathy after doing so.”

  Fair enough, Jasper thought. What did she want him to say? Oops?

  “But that’s not why you’re here today of course. That’s not what you want fixed. You want to be able to have sex with women again. So let’s do it.”

  Jasper nodded. Was he missing something? If he was, did it matter?

  “I’m glad you’re on board,” Voda continued. “What I’m going to say next I don’t disclose out of any sense of personal ethics or obligation. I think you’re a wretched man. In this world where so many good people unfairly suffer, you might not deserve to live. I’m telling you this because it’s easier to not have you confused or attempting to ask questions after the procedure when you might very well be mentally compromised.”

  “Mentally compromised?” His thrill at the thought of getting his old life back had made him as erect as he could currently get without a dolphin being involved. It was a sensation he’d come to think of as hot-water-bottle penis—warmth and volume only. Jasper uncrossed his legs, pressed his swollen member against the refrigerated seat. “Like, slow?”

  “Neural damage and death are both significant possibilities, yes.”

  Jasper nodded. “I know some people are able to live without sex. Unattractive people and monks or priests or whatever, but I don’t get that. It was my whole life. I want to try to get my life back. Do I have enough money for the procedure?”

  “Not really. But given the circumstances, I’ll cut you a deal. Your brain has a lot more value to me than the cash in those bags.” Voda stood and dropped her cigarette. A surgical team entered with a wheelchair and began to help Jasper get into it.

  “Um,” Jasper said. “We’re doing it right now?” A worker approached him, pointed a small gun at his arm, and fired.

  “No time like the present, Jasper,” Voda called after him as they wheeled him away. “Maybe we’ll see you on the other side.”

  THE BLINDING, OMNIPRESENT LIGHT WORRIED JASPER—IT WASN’T heaven because that was not his idea of heaven, his face and eyes feeling trained upon with interrogation-level spotlights. It did correlate pretty tightly with his concept of hell though.

  So did the thought of the atmosphere’s oxygen being replaced with cigarette smoke.

  Jasper coughed and reached up to feel his head for bandages. Was he still on the operating table? He felt strapped down.

  A firefly glowed in the distance, came closer, clarified into the ember of Voda’s cigarette. Had she been smoking during the surgery? That couldn’t be okay? Jasper was pretty sure.

  “Truth time,” Voda said. Jasper tried to clear his throat. What would he have to confess? Would a microphone be involved? “We’re ready to see if it works. To do that, we could have you bring yourself to climax and tell us your initial thoughts—if you think you’d be able to sleep with a woman and duplicate the feelings and visuals you start having, et cetera. We could also bring someone in for you to try it out with, an impartial third party. But I’m interested in your partner’s experience as well. Would you be opposed to trying it out right now, with me? It may strike you as irregular, but it’s practical. We’re both already directly involved.”

  Voda’s hair moved in front of the light for a moment.

  “With people watching?” he asked. As if in response, the lights seemed to further brighten and blind him.

  “Would you care? I prefer it that way.”

  Well, Jasper thought. Probably not. What mattered was whether the surgery worked. Had it been surgery? Did he need to recover? “Will you be smoking?”

  “I’m willing to do without. You’re restrained, and it might be easiest for you to remain so; if it’s all right I’ll take things from here in terms of the physical exertion. May I begin? Is that okay?”

  “Please,” Jasper nodded. “I want to try it out. Let’s go.” He closed his eyes and waited, smelling the air cleared of smoke.

  Was a different smell beginning to hit his fa
ce now? It seemed the vague promise of saltwater, the mackerel odor of a full treat bucket at the Oceanarium. He let out a gasp when he felt it, unmistakable—a rubbery bottlenose seemed to graze across his thigh.

  In his mind, Jasper found himself lying poolside by Bella’s tank. She was rising up out of the water, hovering over the top of him and moving closer, so close he could almost feel the cold surface of her skin—she was joining him; it was happening. Jasper felt a wind of relief begin to blow through him in puffs that seemed to correspond to thrusting. When he came it felt like the two of them had rolled into the pool—he had the sense of falling, a large amount of water around him draining somehow. Was someone emptying the tank? His eyes opened just for a moment and he saw a glimpse of Voda, though seemingly far away, or behind a thick lens made of several panes of glass. Her head was thrown back; she was astride him and her body was rising and falling with laughter—she seemed to be orgasming as well?

  He closed his eyes again, hoping to get Bella back for a few more seconds, but her aquatic show had just finished. Everyone in the stands was clapping, rising, gathering up their things and readying to leave.

  Jasper opened his eyes but the sound of applause didn’t fade. It was growing steadily louder. Around him on all sides, the surgical crew was clapping. He was vaguely aware of Voda dismounting him, buttoning up her white coat. “There are several ways in which I have now earned a cigarette. I’d say it worked, Jasper. I’d say we did it. Would you agree?”

  Only now was he aware of feeling winded, of his racing pulse. He could see a medical pit crew coming over to work on him, tugging free various restraints on his numb limbs. “It felt like I was fucking a dolphin,” he whispered. The words left his mouth so quietly they seemed unspoken. But Voda heard.

  “It did. My team will help you get dressed, show you to a room where we’ll have a little reception. Come eat. We’ll give you something to help your appetite return.”