The Peripheral

90

He was in the shower, off the Gobiwagen’s master bedroom, when Rainey’s sigil appeared. “Hello,” he said, eyes closed against shampoo.

“Is it still true,” she asked, “that you don’t know who you actually work for?”

“I’m unemployed.”

“I do,” she said. “More or less.”

“Do what?”

“Know who you work for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our last date, so to speak.”

“Yes?”

“Your friend.”

“Lev?”

“The one I met.”

“I don’t work for her.”

“But you do what she tells you to.”

“I suppose I do,” he said. “For obvious reasons.”

“So would I, if I were in your situation.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t want to know. I made a few discreet inquiries. Now anyone I asked about her, however privately, no longer knows me. Retroactively. Never have. Some have gone to the trouble of scrubbing me from group images. As metrics of caution go, that one’s telling.”

“It isn’t something I can discuss now. Not this way.”

“No need. I’m calling to tell you that I’ve tendered my resignation.”

“From whatever new version of the project?”

“From the Ministry. I’ll be looking at the private sector.”

“Really?”

“Whatever it is you’re doing, Wilf, it isn’t good to know about. But I don’t, so I’ll keep it that way.”

“Then why call me?”

“Because in spite of myself I still give a shit about you. I have to go now. Whatever it is, consider getting out of it. Goodbye.” Her sigil vanished.

He waved his hand, stopping the shower, stepped out, groped for one of Lev’s grandfather’s thin black linen towels, dried his eyes and face.

He looked into the bedroom, where Penske had left the dancing master lying perfectly straight on the huge bed, like the carved lid of a knight’s sarcophagus, hands crossed upon its chest.

“‘Whatever it is,’” he said, quoting Rainey. Surprised to discover that he missed her, and that now he supposed he would have cause to continue to.