When I get back home, Em is in the bathroom, leaning back in the tub with her eyes closed. Make-up floats around her in greasy slicks, glitter trapped in soap bubbles. She opens her eyes and smiles at me, her head cocked to the side like a cat listening to a whistle.
“What are you grinning about?”
“How was your run?”
I shrug. “The Other David doesn’t do much to stay fit.”
I strip down and kick my clothes into the corner, sliding into the still-warm bathwater while Em dries her hair in the mirror. I close my eyes and let the chill of my late autumn run sink away. Life is good.
“Does it look like I’ve gained weight?
I don’t bother opening my eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“We need to get a new scale.”
“Oh, come on. Even if you ate every day for two people, you wouldn’t get fat.”
“What?” Emily stomps her foot. “You knew! How did you know?”
I squint my eyes open. She’s waving something at me. “Know what?”
“Dave, I’m pregnant.”
A warmth deeper than any bathwater suffuses me.
Instead of spending the next morning in bed, Em and I go out to the fabric store. It’s late October and we’re picking out costumes before Halloween. We’ve decided that Em will be Dr. Frankenstein and I’ll play her slightly hunched assistant.
After we’ve already gotten what we need, we wander around. Em picks out sheets of chenille and chiffon, several yards of silk and seersucker, all of it in soft pastels.
“What if it’s a boy?” I say, brandishing a roll of flannel. Em rolls her eyes, but doesn’t mock me for being old-fashioned. The flannel goes in the cart.
“Do you think we should move?” Em says on the way back home. “I mean, are there any good schools near us? We should give this baby a good life.” Em went to college, but I wasn’t so lucky. My Other’s life went into disarray after the asteroid hit, and it was only by a lucky mix of libraries and loneliness that he learned to code. That I learned to code. We shared that much, at least.
“We have lots of time before the baby has to go to school, Em.” I try not to think about what might happen when Em and I are sucked back into the nothingness that claims us every month. I try not to think about the Other David, the Other Emily. Outside, maple leaves are turning red. Autumn is burning away the foliage, leaving crisp dry air. I shiver once and try not to think about what might happen to the baby.
*
I don’t question Emily when she takes the cigarette out of my hand and burns it in three hard drags. I just flip open the pack and offer her another.
“I’m pretty fucked, David.” she says.
“Not much to do now that they’ve registered the pregnancy. We’d just end up serving time if we tried getting rid of the baby. You know how the courts are about Vectors.”
She snorts. “How are we supposed to afford this, do you think? The Vectors can’t afford it on their own. Do you think they’re planning a move? So help me god, if we end up moving again, I’ll kill myself.”
There was a time when the idea of Emily offing herself might have thrilled me with pleasure, but our shared injustice on the issue of the pregnancy offered a cease-fire. I opted for something mildly comforting.
“We’ll figure something out. Even if we can’t abort it, the state still offers adoption programs.”
“Only if we go to court. Who’s going to pay for that?”
Emily finishes her smoke and looks at me expectantly.
“That was the last one.”
She smiles, sweeter than I’ve seen her try for in years. “I’ll go get more if you drag the couch out to the balcony. It’s still warm enough, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh come on. We can both sleep out here tonight. We’ll just smoke and talk and lay together until we fall asleep. Like old times. When we were kids.”
While spending the whole night talking with Emily isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, I can’t turn down a free pack of smokes. I stand up and stretch.
“Ok.”
As I drag the couch out, Emily strips the wax off a bottle of Maker’s Mark.
“Should you be drinking?”
“Not my problem.” She shrugs. “They can make abortions illegal for couples with Vectors all they want, but they can’t stop me from drinking. Might as well just lock me up.”
“They do that, you know. One of the girls I grew up with got a Vector. She went down to the co-op and picked up a couple pounds of pennyroyal. Spent a couple days brewing big pots of tea and the pregnancy cleared right up. Her Vector reported her. She’s still serving her sentence.”
“Well, like I said, it’s not my problem. I’m just enjoying some bourbon.”
*
I drop another cup of kale into the blender and pulse it with a frozen banana and a handful of blueberries. Em is at the clinic. She set up the appointment as soon as we were back. She’s worried about the baby, and for good reason. I hauled almost twenty empty bottles outside to the curb. It’s out of control. And yet, we’re worried about filing a report. Technically, we’re protected from our Others by law, but it isn’t that simple. Prison holds a lot of consequences for Vectors too, even though we are theoretically allowed to go free when we take over. Problem is, it’s not easy to keep track of who’s who.
