Word Puppets Read online

  Elise looked at the paper again. Her hands were shaking and she could barely find air to breathe. Every nuance was the same.

  “Last question. Pick a number.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.” Dear God, yes. She had helped create one of these two men, but she wanted nothing more than to get out of the room. Even though she knew he might be her husband, the uncanniness of having the same conversation twice threatened to shred her mind.

  Myung fingered the end of his nose. “Very nice. Confirmed memory, subjective memory, and random.”

  A shiver ran down her spine. “What number?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Elise had to stop herself from gasping with relief. Had they chosen the same number she might have screamed. “Why seventeen?”

  “That’s the day we were married.” He shrugged.

  Something, a darkness flickered in the mirror of the room. It would be so much easier to drop into crazy than to keep thinking. “May I see you both at the same time?”

  Myung stood. “Sure. I’ll ask him to come in.”

  Forcing her mind into order, Elise folded her list of questions in half. Then half again, creasing the edges with her nail to crisp perfect lines.

  The door opened and the other Myung came in. Elise had met identical twins before, but no twin had the commonality of experience that these two men had. One was her husband, the other was a copy and she could not tell them apart. They had even printed the extra weight that Myung carried so both had identical little pot bellies.

  The clone carried microchip transponders in his body, and a tattoo on his shoulder, but neither of those were visible. As they talked, Elise slowly noticed a single difference between the two.

  The man to her right watched every move she made. His eyes were hungry for her in a way that—“You’re the clone, aren’t you?”

  She had interrupted the one on her left. The two men shared a look before nodding, almost in unison. The clone said, “How did you know?”

  “The way you look at me . . . ” Elise faltered. He looked at her like he was trying to memorize her.

  The clone grimaced and blushed. “Sorry. It’s just that, I haven’t seen you in months. I miss you.”

  Myung, the original Myung picked at his cuticle. “I told you she could tell the difference.”

  “But you were wrong about the reason.” The clone smirked. “She could tell because you don’t love her as much as you used to.”

  “That is a lie.” Myung tensed visibly, his fist squeezing without his seeming awareness.

  “Is it?” The clone shook his head. “Everything else is the same, why would my emotional memories be any different? The only difference between us is that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  “Stop.” Elise stood abruptly, her chair squeaking against the floor. She pressed her hand against her forehead.

  Both of them looked abashed. In stereo they said, “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her thoughts were fragmenting. The reflection in the window moved, a child trying to get her attention. Elise shook her head. “You brought me down to see if I could tell the difference. Now you know that I can.”

  Her Myung said, “But not when we were separate.”

  “No.” Elise fingered the paper on the table. “Which of you came in first?”

  “I did,” the clone said.

  They sat in silence, Elise tried to fold the paper into another square. “I think I’m ready to go home.”

  “Of course.” Her Myung stood, chair scraping across the floor.

  The clone leaned forward on his. “Won’t you stay for lunch?” His voice cracked as he asked, as if the request were more urgent than just a meal.

  Elise raised her eyes from the paper to his face. The way his brows curled in the middle. The way his eyes widened to show a rim of white under the dark iris. The way his soft lips hung a little open. All of the minute elements that made the whole of her husband pulled, begging her to stay.

  And the other Myung, the original, stood next to him, legs spread wide with a slight tension in his arms as if ready to protect her.

  No. Not to protect her, but to protect his right to have her.

  “Yes.” She put her hand on the clone’s, startled by the familiarity of the contact. “Yes, of course I’ll stay.”

  The smell of sautéing onions wafted in from the kitchen. Myung had offered to cook breakfast before going to work, his usual ploy when he felt like he needed to make up for something. Clearly, he had no idea that it was like a confession that the clone was right; Myung did not love her as much as he used to.

  That wasn’t quite true. Myung loved her the same as before, what had changed was that now there was a version of him which missed her all the time. Elise stretched under the covers and the cotton caressed her body like a lover. “I am the forbidden fruit.”

  Myung’s cell phone rang on the bedside table where he had left it. Rolling over, she picked it up. Caller id showed the office. Elise got out of bed, not bothering with a bathrobe, and carried it to the kitchen.

  Myung met her partway down the hall. He took it, mouthing his thanks even as he answered.

  Elise lifted the hair away from her neck, knowing that it would raise her breasts and make her torso look longer, daring him to choose work over her. His eyes followed the movement. Lips parting, he reached for her. Stopped.

  His face shut down. Myung put one hand on the wall and squeezed his eyes closed. Dropping her arms, Elise shivered at the sudden tension in his frame.

  “No. No, I heard you.” He leaned against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. “Did he leave a note or . . . ” His eyes were still closed but he covered them with his hand.

  Elise crouched next to him. Her heart sped up, even though there was nothing she could do.

  “No. I haven’t checked email yet.” Myung nodded as if the person on the other end of the line could see him. “I’ll do that. Thanks for handling this. Tell Jin not to do anything until I get in.”

  He hung up. Cautious, Elise touched his thigh. “Myung?”

  Her husband slammed his head against the wall. Elise jumped at the horrible thud. Cursing, Myung threw his phone down the hall and it ricocheted off the floor. Tears glittering on his cheeks, he hurtled to his feet. “He killed himself. Sent us all a video. By email.”

  Myung was halfway to the office before Elise could pull herself together enough to stand.

  On the monitor, the image of Myung leans close to the screen.

  “This is the clone of Doctor Myung Han. I am about to kill myself by lethal injection. You will find my body in the morgue.

  “Before I do, I want to make it perfectly clear why I am taking this step. With the animals we tested, the next step in this process is dissection. We must do this to be certain that the cloning has no unexpected side effects and to fully understand the mechanism by which the consciousness transfer works. My original knows this. I know this. He will not do it because the experiment has been a 100% success. We are identical, more so than any set of twins. He sees terminating the experiment as murder.

  “Make no mistake, he is correct.

  “Which is why I am terminating the experiment myself. I am not depressed. I am not irrational. I am a scientist. The experiment needs to continue.”

  He stands and walks out of the room.

  Elise stood behind Myung’s chair, scarcely breathing. He reached to restart the video.

  “Don’t.” She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. It was bad enough seeing it once, but to dwell on it courted madness.

  Under her hand, he trembled. “I didn’t want this.”

  “I know.”

  He slammed his fist against the table. “If it had been me, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “But—” Elise stopped herself, not wanting to blame him.

  “What?”

  She saw again the clone begging her to stay for lunch. “He’s trapped in the
lab all the time. Were you ever going to let him out?”

  Myung slumped forward, cradling his head in his hands. After a moment, his shoulders began shaking with sobs. Elise knelt by the side of the chair and pulled him into her arms. The rough stubble on his cheek scraped her bare skin. She pressed closer to the solidity of him, as if she could pull him inside to safety. An ache tore at her center as she rocked him gently and murmured nothings in his ear.

  She had known the clone for a matter of hours, or for as long as she had known Myung depending on how you counted it. The two men had only a few months of differing experience. The bulk of the man who had died belonged to her husband. But the differences mattered. Even something as simple as a number. “Thirty-six,” she whispered. In that number lies the essence.

  As Myung went to the elevator, Elise stood in the door to watch him. She could not quite shake the feeling that he wouldn’t come home. That something about the place would compel him to repeat his clone’s actions. When the doors slid shut, she went inside the apartment.

  In the kitchen, Elise pulled out the matte black knives that the clone had given her and laid them out on the counter. He had known her. He had loved her. She picked up the paring knife, twisting it in her hands. It wasn’t right to mourn him when her husband was alive.

  “Elise?” Myung stood in the doorway.

  “Forget som—” Adrenalin threaded its way through all her joints, pulling them tight. He wore a plain white T-shirt and jeans; his face was smooth and freshly shorn. Myung had not had time to shave. This man was leaner than her husband. “I thought . . . How many clones are there?”

  He picked at the cuticle on his thumb. “Myung made just one.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” Elise gripped the paring knife harder.

  “I’m a clone of the one you met. Unrecorded. I started the process as soon as the building was empty last night.” He swept his hand through his hair and it fell over his eyes. “We have about ten minutes of different memories, so for practical purposes, I’m the same man.”

  “Except he’s dead.”

  “No. Ten minutes of memory and that physical body are all that is dead.” Myung—she could not think of him any other way—crossed his arms over his chest. “It was the only way to escape the lab. I had a transponder and a tattoo that I couldn’t get rid of. So I printed this body from an older copy. Imprinted it with my consciousness and then . . . that’s where our memories deviate. As soon as we were sure it was a clean print, he went to the morgue and I left.”

  She should call the office. But she knew what they would do to him. Insert a transponder and lock him up. “Why are you here?”

  His eyes widened as if he were startled that she would ask. “Elise—The place where the original and I differ, the thing he cannot understand is what it is like to live in the lab, knowing that I’d never be with you. He doesn’t know what it’s like to lose you and, believe me, knowing that, I hold you more precious than I ever did before. I love you.”

  The raw need in his eyes almost overwhelmed her. The room tilted and Elise pressed her hand against the counter to steady herself. “I can’t go with you.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you to.”

  “But you were going to ask me for something.”

  He nodded and inhaled slowly. “Would you clone yourself? So I’m not alone.”

  Elise set the knife on the counter, in a careful row with the others. She walked across the room to stand in front of Myung. The vein in his neck throbbed faster, pulsing with life. “Is it any different? Being a clone?”

  “There’s a certain freedom from knowing that I’m not unique. But otherwise, no. I feel like I am Myung Han.”

  Putting a hand on his chest, the heat of his body coursed up her arm. “I need to know something.”

  He raised his eyebrows in question.

  “After the accident . . . ” She did not want to know but she had to ask. “Am I a clone?”

  “Elise, there’s only one of you.”

  “That’s not what I asked. The original won’t tell me, but you—you have to. Am I a clone?”

  “No. You are the original and only Elise.” He brushed the hair away from her face. “Everything else is head trauma. You’ll get better.”

  She had braced herself for him to say that she was a clone. That she had died in the crash and the reason she couldn’t think straight was because the process had been too new, that she was a failed experiment.

  Elise leaned forward to kiss him. His lips melted against hers, breath straining as if he were running a race. She let her bathrobe fall open and pressed against him. Myung slipped his trembling hands inside the robe, caressing her with the fervor of their first date.

  Parting from him burned, but Elise stepped back, leaving him swaying in front of her. She closed the robe. “When I’m well, if I can. I will.”

  Myung closed his eyes, forehead screwing up like a child about to cry. “Thank you.” He wiped his hand across his face and straightened.

  “They’ll notice that another body was printed and come after you.”

  “Not right away.” He picked at his cuticle. “I took my original’s passport from the office. Knowing me, it’ll take him awhile to realize it’s missing.”

  She felt herself splitting in two. The part of her that would stay here and see her husband tonight, and the part of her that already missed him. At some point, the two halves would separate. “Where are you going?”

  He tucked a loose hair behind her ear. “Yellowstone.”

  Elise caught his hand and kissed it. “I will see you there.”

  For Solo Cello, op. 12

  His keys dropped, rattling on the parquet floor. Julius stared at them, unwilling to look at the bandaged stump where his left hand had been two weeks ago. He should be used to it by now. He should not still be trying to pass things from his right hand to his left.

  But it still felt like his hand was there.

  The shaking began again, a tremelo building in his hand and knees. Julius pressed his right hand—his only hand—against his mouth so he did not vomit on the floor. Reaching for calm, he imagined playing through Belparda’s Étude No. 1. It focused on bowing, on the right hand. Forget the left. When he was eight, Julius had learned it on a cello as big as he had been. The remembered bounce of the bow against the strings pulsed in his right hand.

  Don’t think about the fingering.

  “Jules, are you all right?” Cheri’s voice startled him. He hadn’t heard the door open.

  Lowering his hand, Julius opened his eyes. His wife stood silhouetted in the light from their apartment. Her hair hung in loose tendrils around her face, bleached almost colorless by the backlight.

  He snatched his keys off the floor. “I’m fine.” Julius leaned forward to kiss her before she could notice his shaking, but Cheri turned her head and put a hand to her mouth.

  “No. Sorry. I—I was just sick.” A sheen of sweat coated her upper lip.

  Julius slid his good arm around her and pulled her to him. “I’m sorry. The baby?” This close, her lilac perfume mixed with the sour scent of vomit.

  His phantom hand twitched.

  She half-laughed and pressed her head into his shoulder. “Every time I throw up, I think that at least it means I’m still pregnant.”

  “You’ll keep this one.”

  She sighed as if he had given her a gift. “Maybe. Two months, tomorrow.”

  “See.” He brushed her hair with his lips.

  “Oh—” Some of the tension came back to her shoulders. “Your agent called.”

  Julius stiffened. His agent. How long would a one-handed cellist be of interest? “What did Leonard say?”

  “He wants to talk to you. Didn’t say why.” Cheri drifted away and began obsessively straightening the magazines on the bureau in the foyer.

  Julius let her. He had given up on telling her that the accident had not been her fault. They both knew he would not have taken the t
our if Cheri had not insisted. He would have stayed in the hotel, practicing for a concert he never gave.

  He tossed his keys on the bureau. “Well. Maybe he’s booked a talk show for me.”

  At the coffee shop, Julius felt the baristas staring as he fumbled with his wallet. Leonard reached for the wallet with his pudgy sausage fingers. “Let me help.”

  “No!” Julius grit his teeth, clutching the slick leather. “I have to learn to do this.”

  “Okay.” Leonard patted the sweat on his face with a napkin and waited.

  The line shuffled behind him. Every footfall, every cough drove a nail into his nerves. A woman whispered, “Julius Sanford, you know, the cellist.”

  Julius almost turned and threw his wallet at her. Who the hell was she? Had she even heard him play before the accident or had she only seen him on the nightly news? Since the accident, sales of his albums had gone through the roof.

  He wasn’t dead, but he might as well be.

  Julius bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood and pressed his wallet against the counter with the stump. The bandages bit into the still tender flesh, but the wallet stayed still.

  He pulled out his credit card with his right hand. It was stupid and it felt good and he hated it, all at once.

  As if it were celebrating, his phantom hand flicked through the opening passage to Vivaldi’s Sonata in F Major. Jules pressed the wallet harder against the counter, trying to drive out the memory of a hand with each throb of pain.

  Avoiding eye contact, he took his iced latte from the barista. He did not want to know if she was the type who watched him with pity or if she stared with naked curiosity.

  Leonard had already picked a table outside. Jules dropped into the chair across from him. “So?”

  “So.” Leonard sipped his mocha. “What if you didn’t have to learn to do that?”

  “What? Handle credit cards?”

  Leonard shrugged, and dabbed the back of his neck. “What would you give to play cello again?”

  Julius’s heart kicked against the inside of his ribs. He squeezed the plastic cup to keep from throwing it at Leonard. “Anything.”

  The older man looked away. His tongue darted out, lizard-like. “Is that hyperbole, or would you really give anything?”