She ignored the information flowing through his nerves, and felt the tissues themselves. Carpal Tunnel was new to her. The nervous tissue was badly swollen, its expansion constrained by the lines of muscle, bone, and blood that crowded the wrist. Under the stress of his brutally quick and nervous qwerting, Freddie's nerves had bloated and were starting to die.
The mass of the damaged tissue was small. She was glad of that. She could spare the tissue. She always made her hands overly sensitive. The healing required no direction, happening at the edge of consciousness. Slender strands of her tissue spread through his, exactly tracing the swollen nerve paths. A network of her nerves slowly built up that shadowed his own, gradually replacing his damaged tissues. With a more conscious effort, she took control of his excess tissue and drew it out bit by bit into the salty spaces between their skin, where, disconnected, it writhed and died. An hour went by in this dreamlike exchange.
When it was done, her nervous tissue that remained in him drew back of itself. She was taken by a small shudder of surprise when the last connection faded and her body was again distinct and alone.
Her bitten lip was sore. She wiped blood off her face with her left hand. Through the front room, the light blue of early morning was visible. Freddie, who had REMed throughout the process, slipped back into a full sleep. She was exhausted. Setting a small time bomb of adrenaline to wake her in five hours, she curled into a fetal position in the corner of the futon. She tossed and turned, her brain buzzing with caffeine and the strange, disowned images that had slipped into it from Freddie's thoughts. She often wished she could control her mind as well as she could her body. At last she slept a sleep full of alien dreams.
When the natural alarm went off and pushed her to the surface of consciousness, her eyes were strangely dry. She was still tired. Short sleeps were usually enough for her, but she never slept well in someone else's bed.
As she dressed, her right wrist hurt like hell. It felt weak and inflamed, probably close to what the symptoms of carpal felt like. She poured a glass of water and drank it standing by the sink. Then poured another. She went to Freddie and took his pulse from his right wrist. His arm seemed fine. The pulse was strong, and he was close to waking up. She sipped the water, flexed her sore wrist, and considered staying until he awoke. But she had no way to explain what she had done.
Before she left, she took Freddie's brace from the kitchen table and strapped it to her wrist. The Velcro pulled tight and supported the sore muscles. The wrist felt better, and she liked the look of the brace on her strange hand. Freddie wouldn't need it anymore, and her nervous tissue sometimes took days to regenerate. She smiled. She could add the brace to her collection.
She took Freddie's card from his wallet, locked the door behind her, and slipped it back under. It was an old trick for letting sleeping lovers lie.
Outside, the sky was cloudless, and there was a hint of morning chill in the air. She bought some orange juice at a Korean. It was painfully acid in her stomachs. Workday traffic choked the streets.
She decided not to take a taxi. Home was about thirty minutes' walk, and the possible routes were many.
Chapter 2
SNIPS AND SNAILS
Halfway home, a fine mist began. As she walked, it gradually shifted to sprinkling, and then a steady rain. The HARD plastic burn-off from the night before turned to mush in the gutters. It had the consistency of soggy confetti. She avoided 14th, where some kids were pelting each other with damp and heavy snowballs of the congealed ash. Rainwater pools formed over the sluggish drains on Houston, glistening with oily rainbow snakes. The downpour let up suddenly as she turned onto Allen Street, one block from home.
The elevator was working again.
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She threw the red jump pants onto the shower stall floor, hoping the harsh rainwater had faded them. She kneaded them with her feet as she showered. Squeezing the last of a tube of FDA Acid Rain Wash into her palm, she shuddered. You weren't supposed to use it on your hair. Her wrist was painfully sore. She dried her forearm carefully when she stepped out, then strapped the brace back on.
The rain hadn't diminished the humidity in her apartment.
She regarded herself, naked except for the brace, in the mirror. Among the disks strewn on the floor were two cans of illegal spray paint, one silver and one black. She considered spraying the brace silver, taping off a crosshatch pattern, and then adding the black. But the constant throb in her wrist reminded her that the brace wasn't decoration. Its dirty beige color, medical-looking and darkened a little by the rain, gave it a seriousness she liked.
She toweled her hair as dryas she could with one hand, then pulled the blackout blinds down over the open windows and tried to sleep. A hot breeze stirred the blinds occasionally, allowing scalene shafts of sunlight to probe the two rooms. She lay atop the sheets, limbs splayed to radiate her body's heat.
At the remote edge of her attention a faint buzz lingered, a leftover from her connection with Freddie. It was the hum of his amphetamines imprinted on her nervous system. Under the speed's airy echo was a deeper buzz: Freddie's inherent restiveness. It kept her off balance as she fell toward sleep. It would steal up just as she slipped into unconsciousness and jolt her awake. The shocks pushed her sideways from sleep, into a state where she floated with alien sensations; strange daydreams that pulsed to Freddie's unfamiliar rhythms. She had connected her nervous system with lovers before, but somewhere in the interchange of tissue, Freddie and. she had penetrated each other more intensely than she had expected. He was built of sudden ideas, instantly grasped meanings, jolts of emotion. He shifted to new perspectives unhindered by residue from the old. She reflected that in an era without computers he would probably be useless to society.
As she lost consciousness, the individual sparks of their connection coalesced into a single presence. She slept, again in his embrace.
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She woke to the mournful, staccato cry of heavy equipment moving in reverse. Surprised to be alone, she reached for one of the blackout blinds. At her touch it flew out of her hand, rolling up to reveal a sunset so red and mottled that the sun itself was indistinct. She'd read an article in the Times that said these sunsets were getting more common, and more lush. She put on dark glasses and placed a Rolling Rock in the freezer, twisting the ancient analog timer built into the stove to twenty minutes so the beer wouldn't explode. Waiting by the window, she watched shadows climb the new Kings County jail up on Houston.