Free Song Of Time by Ian R. MacLeod Page B

should get him to a clinic. There’ll probably be scar tissue. What I’ve done is nothing like enough. A little dizzy, I straighten up. “We’re finished.”
    “Thanks.”The towel drops entirely as he stands.
    “Didn’t any of that hurt ? I thought you were being brave.”
    “No.” Another half shrug, which looks, with him standing there so beautifully naked, like the archetype of all the half-shrugs which humankind has ever made. “I just feel numb. It’s odd. Look…” He gestures beautifully towards the scissors I used to cut open the pack of artificial skin. Stupidly, I hand them to him.
    “This…” He grasps the handle. With slow but relentless pressure, he begins to push the tip into the palm of his left hand. The flesh tents inwards as the steel sinks down, and the scissors’ point vanishes in a bead of blood.
    I let out a small groan. “You can’t…”
    Then, just when I’m convinced that he’s going to drive the thing through his hand, he relents, and the flesh bounds back with the elasticity of youth. It’s scarcely a wound at all, although a crimson droplet dangles at the tip of the scissors as he hands them back to me.
    “ That didn’t hurt?”
    “I could feel it. But it’s as if it was happening to someone else.” Now, at last, and as if he’s just realised the implications of what he’s just done, he gives a coltish shudder.
    “Let’s get you dressed.”
    Morryn stirs with new presence. Our shapes turn against the windows, our shadows fall across the walls, and I can feel myself breaking through fresh layers of intimacy as I creak open wardrobes in my bedroom. Claude’s black evening suits, his ruffled shirts, still have the whiff of applause about them—a spotlight gleam to the silk. I can’t dress him in those, but here, in a drawer beneath, lie my husband’s working clothes. Old denims. Sweats and tees. Oil-stained, snagged and holed and frayed, and then washed grubbily clean so he could dirty them again as he worked on his precious car, the DB5. I lift them out in a loose pile and hand them to my drowned man. Socks and underwear will be more difficult, and I’ve got rid of all of Edward’s old stuff, but already he’s pulling things on, bending with delicious ease, hopping toe to toe. He catches sight of me watching him just as his head disappears into a frayed crew-neck still flecked with ghosts of sump oil, the black stars of welding burns. Glancing away, I give a happy shiver—thinking how, despite everything, I’m no longer alone.
    He’s finished dressing. The faded denims are baggy around his waist. Much though he detested it, Claude plumped up through middle age. I hand over a belt. Adam takes it almost gingerly. His gaze is intense as he works it through the loops.
    “Well,” I say, “Can I call you Adam? I mean, I know it’s probably not your name.”
    “Adam…” He shrugs, still searching for the belt’s innermost notch.
    “I’m sorry this stuff is so old. I’m not used…” I swallow. “You’d better put on these, too.” I catch a small, sour pungency as I pass him old trainers, their doggy tongues hanging out, and remember Claude, humming Figaro , his hands busy with their laces.
    “You must be hungry—and thirsty.”
    “I suppose I am.”
    “But first—perhaps you’d like…” I lead him mutely towards the upstairs toilet and he nods his understanding as goes inside. The facilities are antique, like so much of Morryn, but it seems that he knows how to lift a toilet seat, and use a flush—taps and towels, even—in the old-fashioned way which I still prefer.
    There’s a dog-like obedience to the way he then follows me back downstairs when he’s finished. For all that mannish strength, he’s timid. Yes, I think, as I steer him towards the night-segmented iron and glass claw of my new kitchen, perhaps he has been imprisoned, brutalised, hurt. It’s easiest to think of him as some kind of escapee. Why, other-wise, would I be