Sway With Me Until We Bleed

SWAY WITH ME UNTIL WE BLEED

by K.M. Fajardo

edited by Toria Liao

Content warnings: sexual blackmail, allusions to sexual assault, reference to drug use and overdose

The message hovers above the table, reflected backwards on the surface of their vodka shots. It’s the cheap undercity stuff Richard won’t indulge in anymore. Marcia shouldn’t either, but it works fast and hits hard, and it’s the utility that matters. Top-plate, people pretend to like their liquor. Marcia can’t stand it.

She slouches forward, elbows out, neck drooping over the table like the stem of a wilting flower. Oh, I see—a bell flower, a casting director once told her. Bell. Yeah. That’ll work.

She says, “Read it again.”

Richard’s face is grim. “Marcia,” he sighs.

The only light in the shitty dive is a backup strip of burnt orange snaking across the ceiling. Half the district’s gone dark for the night, courtesy of some enthusiastic teenagers down the street gutting open a power plant for scraps, trying to hotwire a new high into their spines. Hardly an uncommon occurrence. With a few more drinks, Marcia might even call it nostalgic.

“I said—” She hiccups. “Read it again.”

Richard waves his hand through the comm screen. It shimmers like a mirage, then disappears. He folds his arms. “We’ll report it.”

“Like fuck we will.”

“Don’s gotta know a guy.”

“Richard.” She stares at him. I will die before this goes to Don. She doesn’t need to say it.

Richard looks down at the vodka, almost caves, and then doesn’t.

He never does. Instead he pushes his glasses up. They’re real—thick-framed, in a cartoonish way. Behind them, his eyes are like something out of an antique photograph: flat, unmodded more out of preference than any purist sentiment. Some people think it makes him endearing. Or so Marcia has heard. She’s known him too long to find him interesting, but some moments glint when they catch the right light. He’s pragmatic, a bit old-fashioned, with a stern calmness that helped her negotiate contracts and launched her career.

He says, “Are you sure?”

She replies, “What kind of question is that?”

“I’ll ask around, then.” He glances outside. The pavement gleams, a neon mirror from the rain. “I can try and get in contact with that hacking co-op. The ones who did that hit on the sky towers last month? Self-proclaimed moralists. They might, I don’t know, like this sort of job.”

This sort of job. Marcia imagines what the headlines would be. She can already read them on the backs of her eyelids. Something acrid presses against her throat.

She stands up, stool scraping the sticky floor. “Do what you need to,” she says. “Just make it go away.” The ground pinwheels beneath her shoes. Tomorrow’s hangover knocks.

“Marcia,” Richard says, eyes still on the window. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Up, she thinks. Up where?

The undercity has had a ceiling for as long as she can remember. As a child, she used to imagine reaching her arm out and touching it. Tearing it down so she could see the whole sky.

Now she knows better than to put her hopes anywhere. Up, least of all.

•••

Before she was Marcia Harting, wife of the New Americas’ corporate prince Don Harting, she was Marcia Bell. And before she was Marcia Bell, she was nothing at all.

As far as she was concerned, the start of her life wasn’t the illegal clinic in the armpit of the undercity where she was born. It wasn’t the smoking den her parents raised her in before they overdosed in a scrapyard at the edge of the city—forgotten, like all unpretty things were.

Every secret lived somewhere on a sky tower, waiting to be decoded and relit through the burn of a billion comm screens, but Marcia Bell had made quite sure her secrets would be the exception.

The records would show she was born aged nineteen and beautiful—and not a moment before.

•••

The elevator attendant warns her that Don’s entertaining tonight, but she already knows. There’s a line of ritzy cars outside their building and the lobby smells like cigars and perfume.

“Direct to your room, Mrs. Harting?” the attendant asks. He’s well-mannered enough not to drag his eyes down her dreadful attire, though she knows that’s what made him ask in the first place.

“Yes, if you’d please,” she says.

In the bedroom, she presses her ear to the door. Laughter wafts from the kitchen. Don’s voice booms above the rest, offering their best brandy. It’s no casual affair. She recognizes the chatter in fragments—shareholders, board members, perhaps some city council. She descends into her closet, strips quickly, fumbles for the stim-stick she keeps tucked between old shirts and gasps into it until her head stops twirling.

Redressed, she emerges into the penthouse, heels clicking softly against the tiles, and the room rolls off of her in waves. It’s one thing to simply interrupt a party—it’s another thing to be good at it. Her body drifts through the pleasantries until she’s found her way to the kitchen, behind the marble island where Don’s arm is waiting for her.

“Darling, you know the Zengs. Reese and Cassandra.” He gestures at them with his brandy hand. He says it like a joke because it is. Zeng Group may have been last to enter the booming comms market, but they were first to put it under the skin, and in three short years, no one top-plate wore it any other way.

“Mrs. Harting.” Cassandra shifts from one hip to the other. The silver chiffon of her evening gown ripples across her long form like liquid. “You missed all the fun.”

Marcia cradles a champagne glass to occupy her hands. “Nonsense,” she says. “You’ll just have to have more.”

“Marcia’s always busy. You’ll have to forgive her.” Don winks, bright and plasticky like an old Hollywood man. His arm tightens around her waist. “Richard’s good? What’s he got lined up for you these days?”

“I’ll be in Seoul next month,” she reminds him. “For your product launch.”

“See?” says Don. “She keeps the ship sailing while this campaign kicks me in the ass. The new comms launch completely slipped my mind.”

“You got nothing to campaign for,” says Reese. “City loves you.”

“Me or Marcia?” Don chuckles into his brandy. “It’s not true, anyway. Polls are all over the place. These sky tower hacks have us leaking oil. Knocked the whole campaign off-course.”

“What was the last one? Construction worker deaths on your lunar colony housing project?” Reese shakes his head. “PR can make quick work of that.”

Cassandra’s eyes glint like the gems on her dress. Her irises are fashionably modded—in a style that was gauche two years ago but is now tastefully avant-garde. They flare in an array of warm shades, shifting with her mood and interest.

“Worker deaths? Honey, that’s already old news. It’s the Happy Sleep trouble that’s gotten the kids up in arms these days,” she says. “You know, all those performers getting blackmailed and ruined by an outburst of fabricated sessions. Surely you’ve seen the headlines.” Her eyes shine acid pink. “I hear they can even edit old footage. It’s quite fascinating. Some retired performer was crying about it in an interview the other week. You’d think she’d know the risks though, wouldn’t you say? Hazards of show biz and all that.”

In the living room, someone’s date twirls dizzily past the fireplace. Her skirt is a plume of pastel tulle. She settles onto the bench of the grand piano, runs her fingers down the keys, and launches into a show tune everyone knows. Marcia thinks she looks twenty-something, and not the fake kind. Not like Marcia or Don or the Zengs who buy their age down every five years at the doctor’s office. The youth in this woman’s face is real and effortless, giving her whole self away.

Marcia sways, then steadies herself. “Headlines? I don’t really…” She turns her eyes up at Don. “What’s this about, Donnie?”

“It’s an undercity mess, don’t worry. Those unlicensed cesspools down there are sorry excuses for Happy Sleep lounges. They don’t have a single locked door on their code.” A sneer cracks open his elegant face and before he recomposes himself, Marcia catches a glimpse of that distinctly expensive disdain. “That’s what happens when you steal our sessions with sub-par tech. Shit gets tampered with.” He slams his glass down onto the counter. “And they make it sound like it’s our fault.”

Reese nods sagely. “Just wait until the city has something new to be angry about, Don. People like being angry. Makes them feel good inside.” The men share a laugh. “I do hear these fake sessions are quite well-made, though. They lift a performer’s facial data, stick it on whatever visual they like, then create these entire sessions a performer never actually recorded! Impressive, isn’t it?”

“Impressive, sure, but the piracy cuts into our profit.” Don shrugs. “Maybe we wait a few years, see how the tech progresses and if it’s worth investing in ourselves.”

The piano crescendos to a finish and the young woman stands, bowing demurely. The room applauds. Marcia joins in, just a beat late, hands shaking, but of course no one notices. Performance is the same thing as survival, after all—knowing the right moments to draw attention to herself and the right moments to hide. 

Don lights an old-fashioned cigar. The men excuse themselves to his study and then Marcia is alone with Cassandra, who’s holding a gold stim-stick in one hand. She takes a drag of it, smiling at Marcia oddly.

“My first husband,” she says, “was a big fan of Marcia Bell.”

Marcia sets down her champagne without drinking it. She pours out two tall glasses of water. “Was he?” she says absently, plucking a lime from the fruit bowl. She flutters around the kitchen, digging through three drawers to find a knife.

“The biggest.” Cassandra laughs. “See, he would jack into session loops all day long—literally! Five, six, ten hours straight, he spent under. One night, I showed up to the lounge just to drag that fucker out of there and I could hardly get him to resurface. When he did, he was so starry-eyed and cranky—oh, don’t tell Reese this. He’ll call me crazy.”

Marcia grabs a cutting board from a fourth drawer. Carefully, she pierces the flesh of the lime.

“His favourite one of yours was this beach series you did—what was it again?” asks Cassandra. “Beaches Around the World?”

“Bell & Beaches.”

Cassandra claps her hands. “Bell & Beaches! That’s the one! Oh, he was obsessed with those. All the oceanside sunsets and warm sand and swimming. He actually couldn’t swim for shit. Real water scared him like a baby.” She perches the stim-stick on the corner of her mouth, staring out into the bustling living room. “With you, though, in those fake oceans,” she says, “he could… he could swim for miles.”

Marcia’s hand freezes around her knife. She coughs. “Well… if I were to pick a favourite, I enjoyed my hiking series.” She tries for a smile. Cassandra glances at her sharply, as if she’d forgotten Marcia was there. “The scenery was modeled after real parks from decades ago.”

Cassandra’s stim starts to settle in. Her eyes are cloudy, her voice dazed. “You know, I’ve watched a few famous Bell sessions myself.”

“Really?” Marcia halves, then quarters the lime.

“Of course! Who hasn’t? Lounge reservations used to fill up so quickly every time a new session of yours was released. Naturally, I got curious. Ah! Listen, listen,” she says, off the tail-end of a giggle. She touches Marcia’s arm and leans in close. Marcia looks up from her knife and cutting board and listens. Cassandra’s irises melt into a muted red—playful.

“Your birthday is the eighth of March. You hate sweet things,” says Cassandra. Marcia blinks, watching Cassandra’s glossed lips move. “You like sunbathing and nature conservatories and sleeping with your windows open. What else? Oh! Your favourite colour is orange.”

Marcia’s breath rises up into her throat and sticks there. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

“Haha! I remember watching your sessions like it was yesterday. Everything—everything is just so vivid when you’re under, isn’t it?” Cassandra says. “You know, the worst part of it all was that, by the end, I could completely understand why my ex was so enamoured with you.” The stim smoke clouds her face for a second. Her teeth flash in a grin. “Still divorced him, of course.”

Marcia grips the edge of the island. A Happy Sleep career never ends, Richard had said once. They’d been eighteen and the sight of the open sky still excited them.

Cassandra keeps speaking. Her voice frays and then fractures, glass-sharp at the edges. It presses up against the walls of Marcia’s chest and for a moment, she holds her breath and doesn’t exhale until Cassandra’s hand is on her arm again, and Marcia pulls herself back into her body.

Belatedly, she feels it—a stripe of heat licking the side of her index finger.

“Gosh, Mrs. Harting! Are you all right?” asks Cassandra, brows furrowed. It’s the only crease in her unwrinkled face, in her store-bought beauty. Concern doesn’t suit her. It doesn’t suit either of them.

Marcia stares at the spot where she’s nicked her skin. “Oh.” A line of blood blooms into a burn, stinging from the lime juice. Her hand loosens around the knife. She remembers to smile. “I’m just fine, thank you.”

•••

The Happy Sleep™ tech wasn’t a Harting Corp creation, but it was their innovation that made it what it was—premiere entertainment, like stepping into a movie. Thousands of experiences could be made real in those lounges, and when Harting Corp launched a whole line of them, it didn’t matter that the experiences were fake. 

All that mattered was that anyone could have them.

Marcia Bell was a natural. There wasn’t a session director in the New Americas who didn’t say so. People said it took more than talent to make it. But talent was all Marcia had when she stepped into her first recording, and it was all she needed.

She never complained about the cold, dark recording rooms, or the bundle of wires tethering her spine, neck, and head to the terminals. Those bug-eyed cameras dangled from the ceiling like overgrown spiders, and she didn’t bat an eye when they were shoved in her face, capturing her every laugh and smile.

I’m Marcia. Marcia Bell.

Bell? That a stage name?

Sure. Like the flower.

She fell into the name as easily as people fell into her voice—into her round face and sleepy eyes, always blinking slowly as if waiting for you to say something exciting; her black hair like a roll of silk, her skin just the right shade of warm.

This is what people want from their Happy Sleep performer, she heard from any industry rep who’d had the pleasure to meet her. A question, an answer, or an escape. And you’re all of them in one, Marcia Bell.

A friend, harbouring their darkest secret.

A lover, tracing your finger along their wrists.

An outline of a fantasy, coloured as a memory.

It was only fitting, therefore, that the most beloved Happy Sleep™ performer of the modern age would go on to marry the young Harting Corp heir.

Don Harting was destined for great things, and Marcia Bell was a great thing.

•••

Marcia goes under-plate to Iris’ lounge, her face buried in a scarf. There’s a customer in the entrance when she slips inside.

“The feed’s skipping,” the customer grumbles. “I want a refund.”

“Nah.” Iris is scrolling through news headlines and doesn’t look up from her comm screen. “I checked it just this morning.”

“You’re calling me a liar?”

“I’m calling you cheap.” Iris waves him away like she’s swatting a fly. “You want glitz and glamour, go upstairs.”

The customer spits something under his breath, then marches off. When the door slams closed, Iris swings her feet off the counter, grinning. “Look who it is. Marcia Bell in the flesh.”

“Hey, Iris.”

“Richard said you’d be coming in for something hush-hush. What’s that about?”

“Boring stuff. Business good?”

Iris laughs. “Like you care! Mrs. Harting.”

Marcia cares, but that doesn’t matter now. It was Iris who’d landed her her first Happy Sleep™ audition, coached her through the basics when Marcia knew less than nothing, and Marcia had thanked her by running away and never looking back.

“You’re selling rips now?” asks Marcia. It shouldn’t surprise her. It’s how most places down here stay afloat. But Iris has always had a righteous streak.

“Hey, I have to survive, don’t I? The licensing fees—per session—they’re too much.” Iris throws her arms up in defeat. “Your husband’s charging organ prices out here. Talk him down and maybe I can be a goody two-shoes again.”

Marcia thinks, There’s no talking Don down from anything.

Out loud, she says, “Hypothetically—” She fiddles with the bandage coming loose around her finger. The smell of lime still clings to her hands. “If someone wanted to sell you a fabricated session—like you know, something a performer never actually recorded—you wouldn’t buy it, would you? I mean, you could get fined or sued?”

She half-knows what Iris will say. The wary look on her face confirms it. “I wish,” Iris sighs. “But the world ain’t that kind.”

“Have you bought any yourself?”

“Hell, no,” says Iris, and before Marcia can find any relief in that, Iris adds: “But I’m already losing business to the lounges that have.” There’s a sympathy in her expression Marcia doesn’t like. Iris doesn’t let it linger. Her eyes dart away—toward the door. “There you are, Richard. Kept a room open for you, like you asked,” she says. “Go on. Can’t have Marcia Bell seen in my damn lobby, right?”

“Thanks, Iris.” Richard steps inside with a rush of cold, rainy air from the open door. Marcia shivers. 

“Are you ready?” he asks.

Her body nods for her.

•••

The first and only time Marcia had seen a bell flower, Richard had stolen it from a top-plate nature conservatory on a school trip when they were both fourteen. He showed her, later, on the way home. The shuttle back down to the undercity took ten minutes and they were cramped, shoulder-to-shoulder, on a sweltering summer day.

“I’m going to make it up there.” She picked the grime out of her nails. “I’ll really do it.”

Richard looked over at her, his tortoise-shell glasses sliding down his crooked nose, and said, “I know.”

He rearranged his limbs so their shoulders weren’t touching anymore. He’d only just grown taller than her, and he didn’t seem used to it yet. Marcia stared at their arms, folded away from each other.

And then he reached into his backpack and fished out a sandwich bag, still dotted with the crumbs of his lunch earlier that day. Inside the bag was a single purple bell flower, with just enough air to keep it from being squashed flat.

“Here,” he muttered. “A top-plate souvenir.”

She reached for it slowly, pulled it from the plastic, and touched its thin petals. It lifted under her finger, then sagged back down. They grew like that, bent as if they were already wilting, and Marcia wished they still grew on their own, beyond the conservatory’s glass walls.

She nursed the flower in her hand, glancing sideways at Richard. “You’ll come with me,” she said. “I’ll need a manager, won’t I?”

“A manager?”

“A friend.” She paused. “Both.”

The windows blackened for a minute as the shuttle dropped past the midpoint. When it reemerged into the undercity, the shadow of the plate loomed above them, and her dream took shape like a promise.

•••

Richard’s hand is hovering over the terminal beside the stained couch. Like all undercity lounges, the room is too cramped for more than one body, the air vaguely doused with the tang of assorted liquor.

“You don’t have to watch it, you know.” His comm floats above his wrist, open with the anonymous message, waiting to be connected. The light from the screen casts a blue haze through the darkness. “We don’t have to do this.”

The nodes are cold against her temples. “I know. I want to.” She sinks into the stiff cushions. “To see it for myself, I mean.”

To see what they’ve turned me into.

“Just remember—” He grips the terminal, knuckles white. “When you’re in there—none of it is you. Even if it feels like it.”

She swallows. “Just start it.”

He starts it. The room folds inward—a photograph burning from all four corners.

When she opens her eyes again, the lounge room is gone. Her body is asleep and her mind is awake. As the session loads, she holds onto the truth while she still can: It is not her.

It is not her. It is not her. It is not—

•••

You are lying in cold satin sheets. You are weightless. Your bandaged finger is smooth and perfect. Here, you cannot bleed. The walls are made of pure bliss.

Marcia Bell stands robed at the foot of the large bed. Her smile is coy, all yours.

Marcia Bell drops her elbows down onto the mattress, curling forward like the neck of her namesake flower—frail and pretty. 

Marcia Bell unfastens the tie of her robe. Marcia Bell crawls toward you on her hands and knees.

There’s a flicker of dead pixels at the edge of the room. You try to chase it. It’s the only thing you have in here—the last reminder that it is not you.

None of it is you. Even if it feels like it.

It is not you, not you, not—

You lift your hand up, but the pixels smooth over, slipping from your fingers.

Marcia Bell parts her red lips. Your mind gasps for air.

You thrash like you’re under water, but the session holds you in its wave, and whispers in your ear: I promise you’ll enjoy it.

•••

She resurfaces—screaming.

The session dissolves around her like dust. The lounge room sharpens, and Richard’s hands are on her shoulders, ripping the nodes loose, wiping the sweat from her forehead and neck.

“You’re back,” he says. “You’re all right.”

Marcia touches the lime-sting bandage around her index finger. “I’m back…” she says, then curls over the side of the couch and vomits.

•••

Before she was Marcia Harting, she was Marcia Bell. And before she was Marcia Bell, she was fresh-faced and nervous, sitting stiffly in a sterile top-plate office. 

On the wall above the casting director’s head, the official Happy Sleep™ slogan twirled in gold lights: IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN LIVE IT!

“So I just…” Marcia picked at the dried skin, hanging from the corner of her nail. “Sign here?”

“Wait.” Richard scooted forward in his chair. “She’s guaranteed at least three debut sessions, right? And promo in all Harting’s lounges?”

“It’s all written up, Richard,” Marcia said. She frowned, gripping the polished mahogany armrest.

Richard placed his palm over her hand and she stilled. “I’m just making sure,” he murmured.

The director stared between them. Marcia pulled her hand out from under Richard’s and pressed her finger into the comm screen hovering above the varnished desk. M-A-R-C-I-A, she looped her name onto the dotted line.

A-Q—

She stopped. Waved her last name blank. 

Replaced it with four swooping letters.

“Marcia.” Over her shoulder, she felt Richard’s question on the back of her neck. “Are you sure?”

“Marcia Bell!” The casting director closed the contract and grinned. “Now, that’s a superstar name.”

•••

She grips her knees, palms damp. “What are my options?”

The holo-bar is propped up above the fireplace. On the other side, there’s nothing more than a tinny voice, garbled through a million filters and back, and a wall of faceless grey pixels.

“Options? You don’t have any.”

She stands, barefoot, pacing circles in the living room. “Are you, or are you not, the best hacking co-op in the New Americas?” Her voice is shrill in her own ears. “Richard said you’ve hit Harting Corp servers on the sky towers before! And you can’t stop this?”

“As we said, we’ve tried everything. Unfortunately—”

“What about negotiation?” she asks. “What did you offer? We’ll go higher.”

Poised on the couch, Richard leans forward, elbows on his thighs, hands clasped as if in prayer. 

The voice crackles through the speakers, sharp and unfeeling. “These types—look, you pay up and they’ll release the session anyway. It’s not money they really want. What they want is to watch someone top-plate fall from the sky.” A pause. “But this is only a scandal if you treat it like one.”

“And how am I supposed to treat it?” she demands.

“Like an opportunity.”

She halts. “No.”

“Marcia,” Richard says, imploring.

“You are Marcia Bell,” says the voice.

“Harting,” she corrects.

“Harting. Exactly.” There’s a noise from the other side that sounds like a scoff. “We’d like to help you see the bigger picture here. People are already halfway to caring about this issue. If there’s a push for harsher laws and tighter regulations, Harting Corp will be forced to up the security around all Happy Sleep tech. That’ll go a long way in stopping more false sessions from being made, you see? Performers won’t be protected until there’s enough public pressure. 

“You’re the perfect kind of pressure, Mrs. Harting. You’re a victim. A famous, beloved victim.”

“But Donnie’s running for mayor…” She is lightheaded, breathless. “It’ll ruin—ruin his campaign if I…”

She recalls the cold satin sheets. She sees those red lips twisted in a cracked, candied-apple smile—Marcia Bell’s smile.

The voice says, “But your face behind the cause—”

She whirls. Her legs carry her toward the fireplace. The marble is cold beneath her feet, flames hot on her skin.

“I’m not a fucking cause!” The words rattle in their cage, demanding to break free: It is not me, it is not me, it is not— “Do you hear me?!”

The voice says nothing and static floods her living room.

She grabs the holo-bar in her fist, holding it above the flames. Smoke stings her eyes, the wall of grey pixels twitches in her grasp, and the static cracks, and cracks, and cracks, offering no more answers.

Richard stares.

A cry rips from her chest. She snaps the holo-bar in half.  

Her breath stutters. The silence burns.

•••

She pours Richard a glass of Don’s good brandy. Richard drinks it all before he looks her in the eyes for the first time that night. For the first time in a while, maybe.

“Don’t say it,” she sighs.

“Say what?”

She chuckles, and it hurts something just under her ribs. “Something reasonable.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she knows he means it. Richard never gives apologies unless it’s the only thing he has left to give.

His fingers curve around the cold glass. They stand there, in the too-large kitchen, bigger than both their undercity apartments combined, and she wonders if the path she took to get here really was the only one. You couldn’t be Marcia Harting without Marcia Bell, she thinks to herself. You’ve no reason to cry when you’re crying in a too-large kitchen.

The broken holo-bar lies crushed in the trash bin, flickering, twitching through radio stations. It jumps from a stim-stick ad to a talk show, to a sweet piano ballad, and then stays there.

Richard’s hand lets go of his cup, one finger at a time, until he’s holding it out toward her, palm up in invitation.

She hesitates. Then, slowly, she slides her hand in his, resting her ear against his chest. They sway like that for a while—off-beat, pressed together, piano skipping every eight counts. The music swells around them in a perfumed fog, and for a moment, they allow themselves to steep in the low ache of feeling that’s built a home between their heartbeats for years. They’re too old to be unsure of themselves, but that doesn’t matter tonight.

 She welcomes the pain. She likes it because it’s familiar—a wound neither of them have closed, ready to bleed at the slightest push.

In the end, Richard says something reasonable anyway. “You really could make a difference.”

Her face behind the cause. She already knows what that means. From shame to martyr and everything in between.

She turns her head and catches her reflection in the window, glimpsing the face that has sold a million things across the planet. Maybe it’s always been clear. The whole cruel truth of it. 

Marcia Harting can own everything in the world, but the world owns this—this face staring back at her in the dark, dark glass.

“I don’t want to make a difference, Richard.” She says it like a confession. “I want to fucking live.”

The piano dribbles to a halt. In the trash bin, the holo-bar sputters, then dies for good.

“So,” he says, his lips against her hair, “live.”

She lifts her head from his chest. He lets go of her. 

Live. In Richard’s mouth, it’s a statement.

Live? In her mind, it’s still a question.

Tomorrow, when Marcia Bell sinks and Marcia Harting steps into the jaws of the world to try and pull her out, she wonders: Who will be left to live at all?

•••

Later, as she tries to fall asleep, Cassandra Zeng’s voice cartwheels slowly through her mind, unraveling like a ribbon.

My birthday is the eighth of March. Don’s arm is draped over her stomach, rising and falling as she breathes. I hate sweet things. I like sunbathing. Nature conservatories…

She peels back the bandage on her finger and grazes the half-healed skin; first, with the pad of her thumb, then with her nail.

So, live.

The skin parts a little under her touch and she recalls, for a moment, an old name. A forgotten name.

Before she was Marcia Harting, she was Marcia Bell. And before she was Marcia Bell, she was—

A memory glimmers in the corner of her eye—a memory in the old sense of the word—one she’s never packaged and sold before, buried away a long time ago. It surges past the sinking bodies of Marcia Bell and Marcia Harting, crashing through the surface, as if it were there all along. Waiting for her to summon it again.

A rush of air rises out of her suddenly, lightens her, carries her into a laugh that makes Don roll over in his sleep. She lifts her hand up. She thinks she is bleeding again, but it’s too dark to say for sure.

The sun starts to curl through the cracked window, and Marcia Aquino waits for the light.