“I have a lot of faith in Vincent,” Ophelia said. “But he’s not perfect.”
Wilkes laughed. “How come you never show anyone else but me this gloomy side of your personality?”
Ophelia didn’t answer, just made a slight harrumphing sound and then shared one of her resigned-looking smiles.
They moved through the main lobby like obedient tourist sheep, threading through an art display of children’s pictures of some terrible conflict. Wilkes hadn’t kept up on current terrible conflicts, having enough to keep her busy with her own. But the pictures were not encouraging. They did not exactly counter her sense of impending doom.
She looked up at soaring windows, at old Sputnik hanging there like a misplaced Christmas-tree ball. She had done a report on Sputnik. When was that? Fourth grade?
She saw a memory image of herself carrying her threefold cardboard display into class, setting it up, trying to act cool even then. But also feeling it would be nice if she got an A.
How had all that been just one life? How could she have ever been that little girl?
“You ever hit on Vincent?” Wilkes asked.
“I don’t hit on boys,” Ophelia said with an edge of disapproval.
At the security line they emptied their pockets into the tray and passed their purses through the scanner. Scanners did not detect the presence of biots.
The trick was to look entirely normal and average, something that was easier for Ophelia than Wilkes.
They saw the famous Chagall stained glass, a beautiful blue full of floating images of peace. Angels or whatever they were.
They saw the General Assembly room, a surprisingly intimate space, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a gathering place for the entire world. It reminded Wilkes of the planetarium her class had visited in what, eighth grade? Is that where she had let Arkady touch her boob?
And they followed meekly along when it was time to go downstairs to the bathrooms, the special UN post office, the café, and the gift shop.
They moved away from the group then. It was safe to do so now.
They sat together eating veggie burritos UN style—not very good, really—and drinking coffee and getting their nerve up.
The gift shop was just next door. It was not called Armstrong Fancy Gifts—unlike the ones in airports—it was just called the UN Gift Shop. Very imaginative. But it had the trademark AFGC products: supposedly homemade cookies in cellophane twists, the books selection that included a prominent display of the bestseller Nexus Humanus: The Next Step in Human Evolution, and the clever, throwaway handheld games that sold for three dollars and included accelerometers and multiplay and inline upgrades that made them the cheap impulse equivalent of expensive pads.
“So a lousy burrito is my final meal,” Wilkes said.
Ophelia looked at her, serious. They didn’t talk often, the two of them. Wilkes was more or less the diametric opposite of the graceful, reserved Ophelia.
“Are you afraid, Wilkes?”
“Hell yes, I’m afraid,” Wilkes said, talking around melted cheese and a dropped bean. “You know what’s weird, though. I’m afraid of never getting down in the meat again. That is weird, right?”
“You like it down there?”
“Better than up here sometimes,” Wilkes said. “Are we bonding like true BZRK sisters?”
Ophelia put her fork down and pushed her food away. “I don’t seem to have much appetite.”
“Hey, the condemned person is supposed to have a choice of meal. Right? Like guys on death row? They always order a steak.”
“I don’t think they grill steaks here.”
The light, that’s what was so desperate about the scene. The glaring fluorescent light that turned their flesh to some color between bathroom grout and paper pulp. And the wobbly round tables and the terminally bored cafeteria workers.
A hell of a place to get your nerve up for a suicide mission.
“I always wanted to go to one of those fancy steak places,” Wilkes said. “It’s not about loving the steak all that much. It’s just you see those places in movies, and you think, wow, that must be kind of cool—to be one of those people who don’t really give a damn about anything but a fat, juicy steak. Maybe a martini, even, you know. Or those other ones? I forget their name?”
“Margaritas?”
“No, I know margaritas,” Wilkes said, suddenly cranky.
Ophelia smiled tolerantly. “I don’t eat meat. But I would join you in a margarita.”
“You’re a vegetarian? I tried that for a while. It didn’t take. Is it a Hindu thing?”
Ophelia shrugged. “For some of us. For me it’s more of a health thing. Also my parents are vegetarians. I don’t want to disappoint them.”
“Me, I worry I’ll disappoint Vincent. That’s stupid, isn’t it? Why the hell should I care? He’s not offering me heaven and a bunch of hot guy virgins, or whatever. That’s what you guys get in heaven, right?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I would remember that. I’m Hindu: we just get reborn. Although I think I like your idea better.”
“A couple girls, too, maybe, just because life is short and try everything, right?”
Ophelia chose not to answer that directly. “Vincent does generate a certain degree of loyalty, doesn’t he?”
Wilkes looked at her, very serious, eye to eye, or at least eye to eye-dripping-with-tattoo-ink, and said, “I’d die for him. I don’t think he even likes me, and I would totally fucking die for him.”