Chapter 3: Even more Terrah
This week's excerpt from my novel
Hey all. Thanks for sticking with all the Terrah material as we move through this sort of delicate part of the narrative. This week sees Terrah reaching a breaking point with Eden’s nonsense, after a brief cut back to her present-tense “meeting” / interrogation with Tuco.
Indeed, looking it over, this is the first time in the current manuscript where we return to one of the interview rooms, since the first chapter where each “handler” is introduced. I notice that I have Terrah say “I almost forgot he was sitting there,” and I often think of things like that as clues to myself that perhaps I’ve left something hanging for too long — like perhaps I, the writer, have forgotten that he’s sitting there. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case here, but I again will be looking at questions of pacing as I move through this.
Enjoy, and as always, if you know anyone who might enjoy this tale, please pass it on!
FOUR
The Meeting
“You never told me that story,” says Tuco.
I almost forgot he was sitting there. “When was I gonna tell you?”
“Seemed interesting. After you saw her more than once, maybe. Somebody like that. A clone?”
“A vat-grown,” I clarified. “She ain’t cloned from anyone.”
“Sure, whatever she was. Lab rat superhuman. You ever think I might be interested in something like that?”
“You ever think that’s exactly why I didn’t tell you?”
“Fair.” He leans back in his chair, looks at the ceiling. “Cold, but fair.”
“Yeah, well.”
He takes a minute. I can see him feeling all the stuff I feel now, all the stuff I felt then, about Eden, about him, all of it. I don’t fill the silence. I got all day.
“Well,” he echoes, finally. “Then what?”
“Well.” I let it stretch out a bit. I’m enjoying this, him needing something from me. Feeling his doubt. Us being on a level field. I take a sip of water, stall. Not too much, though. I know this street goes both ways.
“Eden fell deeper and deeper down in the next while. I didn’t like to watch it. I was used to you rotating me through clients so I didn’t get too used to anyone or too close. You knew how sad it could be, how scary, yeah?”
He doesn’t say nothing, just meets my eyes and then looks down. I make my voice a little softer. “Mostly you was just trying to cash in on stuff somebody was going to cash in on anyway, without all the ultraviolence. I appreciated that, you know? That you weren’t turned on by the junkie life, or hurting prostitutes.” I give a little shrug. “I guess at least you got that going for you.”
His head jerks up at that, looking ready to snap out a comeback, but he sees that I’m smiling a little and breathes out. I feel him feel that I’m just playin’. And that, the sort of cycle of feeling? It’s kind of a rush.
I keep my voice low as I confirm the next thing I know. “But this chick kept calling, asking for me, right?”
He can’t deny that, but he don’t answer either, just nods, a jerky little nod like it’s being forced out of him.
“Well. So I went.”
FIVE
Terrah
It went on like that for a while. It’s a weird thing, when you meet someone from completely outside your own context. Sometimes you find yourself telling them everything about you, your darkest secrets. I maybe didn’t so much want to hear it, but Eden seemed like she couldn’t help it. Something about me brought out the stories, the shit Eden had been trying to handle alone. The knowledge. That existential dread, you know?
And well...when she called, I showed up. What else was I gonna do? A job’s a job, money’s money. Lifelong friendships have been built on less.
She started out throwing in a little extra every time I stayed and talked for a bit. I started sending Cid off to take other fares when he dropped me off, rather than lose what tip I gained by paying it back to Cid to idle for me. Little by little, though, I noticed that extra starting to drop off, until a day when Eden only gave me the fee for the drugs, and even that was a couple credits short.
By that time it was awkward to mention it. We were nearly friends, now. I figured maybe this was how rich people made friends: keep paying people to hang out until hanging out feels natural enough that being paid for it seems weird? Anyway, I thought Eden was looking more and more strung out, and I was starting to worry about her.
I wouldn’t have called it that, then. I told myself I was getting concerned that what had been a regular if eccentric client was becoming steadily less solvent. But yeah. I was starting to care.
About two months after that first visit, I showed up at her place with the usual package and found the door swung open again. Again, Eden was nowhere to be seen in the part of the place I could see from the door: the big front room with all the leather and glass, the breakfast bar splitting it off from the kitchen, the hall to the left leading down to other rooms. The door to her bedroom was closed.