shoulder and she murmured sympathetically.
“It’s just a different kind of life,” she said to her reflection.
14.
Milton was further sobered by the look of the apartment.
“This is gorgeous,” he said. “The molded ceilings, the light fixtures…”
He wandered into the bedroom and called back to them.
“I mean, you’ve done everything you could to obscure the niceness. Covered it up like a dorm room…But damn.”
“Thanks a lot!” Jeanette called back.
She was standing at the entrance with Joey cradled in her arms, slipping her heels off. Milton staggered back into the living room with a troll doll balanced in his hand.
“Seriously, how can you afford this on a copy writer’s salary?”
“Not a copy writer. I do design and editing too,” Jeanette said.
She sat Joey on the coffee table eased into the couch, throwing her feet up. Milton plopped down next to her and dropped the troll into her lap. Laughter tinkled out of her. She poured the remains of the Rumchata into a single plastic cup sitting before them, and they drank.
“Seriously, you’re a hired gun,” Milton said. “How can you front this place?”
“Our mom left us a lot of money,” Jeanette sighed, and pressed her chest against him. He smelled like the tropical version of Old Spice, mixed with hints of Seitan and sugar. She could feel a ripple of bicep against her breasts where he was tensing.
“Dying was the best thing she ever did; said so right in her will.”
“Who said that?” Milton asked.
“Me,” said Joey. A soft orange beam of light came from her.
“I would never, ever say a thing like that,” Jeanette moaned, and nuzzled her face against his neck. “I think wishing death on anyone is deplorable…”
“Unless they’re a pig you want to eat,” said Milton.
Joey laughed; the sound was twinkling, almost real
“Milton,” Joey said when her manufactured giggles subsided, “Do you think the premie BrightBox users are suicidal?”
“What?” Jeanette mumbled into Milton’s skin.
“Uhh—we’re glad to provide BrightBox service to whomever desires or needs it,” Milton said stiffly. “Joey, why do you ask? How do you know all about this stuff?”
“She’s been alllll over the message boards,” said Jeanette.
Milton pulled the plastic cup to his mouth, then fed it to Jeanette.
“Is that so?”
“I’ve been talking to some BB’s. Or should I call them LifeMedia ‘clients’?” Joey asked with an edge.
“She’s been fascinated with those premie weirdos.”
Milton patted Jeanette on the head and said, “I don’t know if you should be talking to them via private message, Josey,” he swallowed, “Joey! Sorry. Joey. But anyway, it’s not secure.”
She glowed. The lights in the hall shut off.
“I need someone to talk to,” Joey said.
“That’s not the best way to do it…Especially if you’ve been having connection issues anyway.”
“Jean told you about those?”
“Course I did,” Jeanette said in a small, high-pitched voice. “At dinner, duhh…where were you, out to lunch? Haaa…”
“Right,” Milton said, draining the cup. “Mm. Yeah, I would advise you to not private message or transfer files with anyone you haven’t met in person.”
“In person. Huh.”
Joey could tell he was trying to continue, but Jeanette was pressed against him and running her hands across his chest, and the words seemed to catch in his throat. She could sense his pulse quickening and could see his chest raising and lowering with increased rapidity. One of his hands found its way to Jeanette’s neck and wandered down the back of her dress. Joey’s dress. She hadn’t worn it very often, but still, it had been hers. Jeanette must have forgotten that.
Joey shut the rest of the lights off. The kitchen and doorway went dark. All that remained was the dim outline of Jeanette’s face, inches from Milton in the BrightBox’s faint orange light. Her lips were opened and her head tilted, and Milton was moving in, one hand suspended awkwardly behind Jeanette’s back with the Rumchata cup still dangling in it.
Joey messaged. She sent a screen cap to Lilian.
Suddenly, Milton bolted.
“I’ve got an idea!” he turned away. “This’ll be good for you Joey!”
“What?” both sisters said, one eagerly, the other with mounting annoyance.
“There’s a lot— a lot— of BrightBox users in the Chicagoland area. Pre-needs, post-mortems, pre-mies, all of them. And their families! We have a lot of sales representation here, after all, including yours truly, so naturally there’s a lot of clients.”
“You mean have a meetup?” Jeanette said. She looked at Joey with unseeing eyes, blinded by the dark and drink.
“No,” Milton said. “Like a support group. Weekly, right here in your gorgeous home.”
“And we could have their families come too,” Jeanette said.
He snapped his fingers. ” Joey, you’re just like any other survivor of a medical condition or trauma. You need a community. LifeMedia will help you build a community.”
Jeanette patted him on the chest and said, “Oh I don’t know if she’s into it..,”
Lily said in the rear of Joey’s mind.
“I like the idea,” Joey said. “I know some people I could invite. Set it up.”
“Good,” Milton said. He sat the cup down. “Good! Good.”
“Ohhh, I’m excited,” Jeanette mumbled. She looked momentarily back at Joey. “Are you glad I called him? I’m glad I didn’t let you discourage me.”
Jeanette rolled into him and began working on his buttons. She kissed his neck and cheeks several times, murmuring affectionately, pulling away only to suck air in. He took her chin in one hand and led it delicately to his mouth. Joey’s light shut off. She could still see their bodies pressing and twisting against each other.
Jeanette led him to the bedroom by one hand like a child. When she came out of the room a few minutes later the purple dress was half unzipped and hanging around her waist. Her stockings were off and her hair was tumbling down her shoulders. Joey watched her feel her way back into the living room, grabbing blindly in the dark.
“Joey,” she called quietly. “Are you gonna be okay? Milton and I are, you know. Going to bed. Do you have enough battery? Do you need anything?”
Joey waited for a moment and adjusted her volume. A passing El train rattled on its tracks outside and sent electricity scrambling across its rails in bright, crackling flashes. Jeanette’s golden flesh appeared and disappeared in the short bursts of light.
When the train had passed and it grew quiet again, Joey said, “I want to watch.”
She saw Jeanette pull her hand to her chest. “What?”
“Just sneak me in. Please. I want to watch.”
She knelt beside the coffee table. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I just need it.”
Jeanette’s pupils twinkled in the dark.
“Forget I said it. Nevermind.”
Joey could see her sister frowning. Her mouth was still fragrant with milky sweetness.
“Forget it,” Joey said again, quieter. Then she felt herself lift off the table, with one side of her box planted firmly in Jeanette’s bare chest.
They padded down the hall and into the bedroom. The bathroom light was on and Milton could be heard rinsing something. Joey was slid into her charging station on Jeanette’s desk, in full view of the bed. The sheets had been thrown to the floor; a wad of clothing rested atop it.
“You have to be quiet,” Jeanette said.
15.
The first time Lilian left, her parents kept her room exactly the way it was. There was an almost religious reverence to their passivity, the way they maintained the wall art, the zodiac calendar hanging on the door, the cracked
mirror, the rows of stuffed animals nearly tumbling off her bookshelves. Lilian’s mother went in each week with a quick twitch of the vacuum but never disturbed a thing. She cut large arcs around the history textbooks and the musty pile of clothes on the floor.
The second time Lilian left, they opened up her drawers and searched for an explanation. Hoping for a handle of vodka or a baggie of pills, all they found was a diary. A diary in written green gel pen, sealed with a flimsy toy-store lock. A lock Lilian’s mother picked open with a hairpin the third time Lilian left.
When Lilian was emancipated after the fourth time she left, her parents just told people she was “gone again”. That time, they washed and folded her clothes and packed them into a giant rolling suitcase, which they planned to put in her hand the moment she returned, if she returned. Three months later, they learned she was enrolled at a community college downstate. They unpacked her things, put them back into drawers. They fluffed her pillows and stuffed toys, waited by the front windows every night like sentries or gargoyles.
When a childhood friend from down the street had her 18th birthday, they saw Lilian pull up in a moped and unleash a wave of short blonde curls from a black helmet. Her boots were high and her jacket cropped. A bag with fringe dangled off her body. She put a hand in the air to show she’d seen them, but she didn’t exactly wave it.
The next time, she was only back a few days. She showed up on Mother’s Day in a dress that seemed to be made of burlap, with big hockey pucks hanging