Jake came over to dinner one night when I was still married to Mary-Ellen; we’d gotten off a messy job, full respiratory system, both lungs included, and I’d invited him home without first asking the wife. But we were still in our honeymoon phase, so she was reluctant to cause a scene when I walked in the house with a friend at my arm.

“You remember Jake,” I said, ushering him through the door, suddenly not sure if the two had ever met. “From the Union…” I wanted to point out that I’d also known him nearly my entire life, that we’d spent an entire tour together in Africa, but I’d already gotten the signals from Mary-Ellen that the military lifestyle was an off-limits conversation. So I settled for, “…and earlier.”

“Of course,” she nodded. She may have been covering up. She was good at covering up. “Come in, I’ll set another plate.”

Dinner was a civil affair, I remember, full of bland talk about movies and politics and religion and all the casually safe topics, but it was afterward, during dessert and coffee, that someone threw a match into the fireworks factory. Jake started talking about work, about some client he’d recently deprived of a bladder or something, and Mary-Ellen started in with her questions, peppering him with jabs, swinging the occasional roundhouse:

“You don’t mind killing these people?”

“How can you go home at night and sleep?”

“Do you take a lot of showers to wash off the filth?”

“Where is your sense of decency?”

“Are you even human anymore?”

I didn’t bring home any houseguests after that.

But Jake took it all in stride, answered every question Mary-Ellen threw at him, and the quieter I got, the more the two of them sunk into the fight, sparring back and forth. Jake would get backed into a corner, and then rise up and battle his way back to victory before tackling the next niggling point. It was exhausting, watching these two go at it, and by the time three hours had passed, I’d passed out in the easy chair, a beer on my lap and a pillow over my head.

Later that night, after Jake had gone back to his flat and we were all alone, I apologized to Mary-Ellen for letting things get out of hand. “I’m so sorry,” I said, figuring I’d never be allowed to bring another buddy back to the house. “You must have hated him.”

She was getting ready to go to bed, I remember, pulling back the sheets, and she stopped for a moment, comforter held in one hand, turned to me, and said, “No. No, I didn’t hate him at all.”

I was surprised. “Even though everything he said about the Union, and—”

“He had passion,” she explained, tucking herself into bed, pulling the sheets up under her chin. “It was poorly guided passion, but it was burning in him, and I can respect that.”

“So he didn’t disgust you.” I wanted this firm, on tape if possible.

“Passion never disgusts me. Apathy disgusts me.”

Wow, I thought. She’s coming around. This marriage might work.

It wasn’t until the lights were out and we were already on the verge of sleep that I thought to ask, “What about me? How do you like my passion?”

No answer came. She must have been asleep.

He was also there for the birth of my son. I’d been working twenty-hour shifts, trying to work in a sweep of the Big Hundred, cracking down on the worst of the deadbeats. Dragged myself into the hospital when I got the call, groggily watched Melinda push Peter out into the real world. As I mopped down her forehead with damp towels, three jobs came up on my pager, informant tips on client sightings.

It’s a good thing Jake was there, too. We asked if he wanted to be the godfather to Peter, and as soon as he accepted, I charged him with the duties of taking care of my wife and newborn son until I could get back from the office. It was a busy, busy week.

When Harold passed away, Jake was the one to speak at the small military funeral. I’ve never been too good in front of an audience, and Jake was the only other guy I could think of who’d known Harold for longer than four or five months. The new recon unit had flown him down from Northern Africa—he still couldn’t tell us what he was doing up there, but we imagined all manner of intrigue and suspense—and into Namibia for the day, just so he could see his friend’s ashes off properly. The military had stuffed them into a small ceramic jar, though Tig admitted that they were not entirely sure that it was solely Harold’s mortal remains inside there.

“There were three men in that tank,” he told Jake and me as we walked to the makeshift tent-cum-chapel. “And it was all one ugly mess. We had to take a guess, consolidate, and divide.”

Jake’s speech at the service was quite moving. He talked about love and honor and the brotherhood of men, about discipline and training and the knowledge that Harold had done his duty to self and to country.

“And I only wish,” he concluded, shooting me a sly wink, “that when it is my time to leave this green Earth, that I, like Harold, will be surrounded by my friends in death as I was in life.”

We all said amen.

Melinda was cremated, I believe. Peter never told me where the funeral was. He didn’t even try to call—I know, because I picked up the phone on the first ring during those lean days, just in case a sweepstakes manager or lottery announcement was on the other line. The last words I ever heard him say to me were and that’s always been the problem, just moments before he stormed out of the local Snack Shack. After that, nothing. I wonder if he’ll attend my funeral. I wonder if he’ll take the call.

But I remember a conversation I had with Melinda during the good years. Peter wasn’t even born yet, wasn’t even conceived. It was after a particularly furious bout of lovemaking, and we were having a little pillow talk, the nightly gab shows not having started up yet.

“Do you think there’s sex in heaven?” she asked.

I grunted affirmatively.

“And do you think you need your body for it?”

I shrugged and fiddled with the remote control. “Always need your body.”

“But in heaven you don’t,” said my wife. “It’s just souls, no bodies.”

“If there’s no body,” I said, “there’s no sex. Sex organs are on the body. Mouths are on the body. No body, then no sex organs, then no point to sex, no point to anything.”

But Melinda disagreed. Propping herself up against a pillow, naked breasts firm against the sheet below, she leaned over and conked me on the head. She always did this lovingly—at least during the happy times. It was her sign to me that I was being a numbskull, that I hadn’t thought things through. “You don’t get it, knucklehead. The body’s just there to support the rest of us. What you do for a living—dealing with those artiforgs—it’s all just a support system. A cottage industry for what really makes us tick.”

I like to think that she was right. And I would have responded, but soon our talk show came on, and we stopped worrying about ourselves and each other and started worrying about celebrities.

My artiforg, in a nutshell:

Oh, yeah—I forgot the most important statistic.

Months delinquent: Enough.

They tell you all about the late payment penalties and the pressure and the possibility of eventual repossession up front—that’s the law, after all—but most clients are so elated once they find out they’ve got the loan that they’re ready to sign most anything put before them. Still, it’s better than the old days, when poor slobs with liver damage had to put themselves on a list and wait for some other poor slob without liver damage to die in some horrible yet liver-preserving way, so that they might be matched up for a human-human organ transplant that eight times out of ten was rejected by the host body anyway.

During the repo training seminars, they threw a basketful of statistics our way; out of the thousands that fell out of my brain as soon as they entered, one managed to stick in there: At any given time during the days before the Credit Union made widespread artiforg implantation possible, there were 120,000 people in the United States alone waiting for someone or another to die off and give up the goods. And despite the impressive methods with which many folks knocked themselves off during those years, there were never enough donors to meet the requirements, so a staggering number of citizens—some good, some bad, all dying—got sent on their way for want of a few organized cells.

But my point is that this is an anachronism; today, only the very poor or those who have abused their credit to the point of criminal activity are unable to secure loans for their artiforgs. Some cut-rate houses even cater to those with less-than-stellar credit histories, attaching their material goods as collateral. Heard about one place overseas which lends out Jarviks by the boatload, and all you have to do to get one is sign a note of indentured servitude of ten years. Decade of work for a new lease on life—that’s not a bad trade.

So when the Credit Union people approach with a ream of paper and a pen, the instinct is to clam up and sign, sign away. That’s what I did.

Two caveats:

• A) I had no illusions. I knew the penalties for not paying. I knew them when I signed the forms, I knew them when I stopped sending my checks, I know them now that I sit in this abandoned Laundromat.
• B) I didn’t have a choice.

Propped up in a hospital bed, on a steady, lovely morphine drip, my new Jarvik–13 implanted by a team of doctors who made the decision for me, without me, as I lay dying on a gurney. Jake and Frank standing there, smiling, bearing flowers, glad to have me alive, glad to have me back on the team again. The artiforg was in me, full implantation, and what was I to do? Rip it from my chest? I was out of practice.

Bonnie just came into the back room to tell me she’s heading off to bed for the night. I told her, “Okay.” She said that she was feeling tired, and that she’d be better after a night’s sleep. I said, “Good idea.” She stood around for another second, and then said that the floor was cold, but she’d find some way to stay warm. I offered her the use of the tarp. Bonnie sighed and left.

Five minutes later, I figured it out. I hit myself in the head, but it just wasn’t the same.

After Harold’s death, the war was a long string of non-events, one after the other. We never got to storm a city, to lay waste to a village, never committed any of the terrible war atrocities that show up in the news magazines or heroic war efforts for which they throw city-wide ticker-tape parades. The tanks rumbled across the desert, gobbling up space, advancing the American line by sheer force of inertia, and day by day, the enemy was kind enough to retreat without putting up too much of a fuss.

One night in April, I drove the tank over two snakes and an unidentified furry creature. Those were my confirmed kills for the week. My tankmates threw me a party.

Meanwhile, that same night, 8,000 miles away, Father was putting his feet up on the green corduroy ottoman in his paneled den, a brandy and milk in his fist, settling in to watch a flick on the late show and fall asleep before the second round of commercials even started when a large blood vessel in his brain chose to burst and send him packing on a one-way trip out of our dimension. Mother was in the kitchen, fixing up some decaf. She didn’t hear when he dropped the remote control on the hardwood floor. When she found him two minutes later, he was brain dead. By the time the ambulances arrived, so was the rest of him.

They shipped me back overseas for the funeral, though I would have preferred to stay in the desert. It’s not that I didn’t want to see my pop off—we loved each other, in our own modernly dysfunctional manner—but I felt out of place back in the old hometown. Where was the sand? Where were the frightened locals? Where was my control chair? This bed was too flat, too simple—where were the buckles to hold me in place?

Sam Jenkins worked with Father down at the office; he was a middle-aged guy who would hold donuts with one hand and diet sodas with the other and always had some story to tell me about his twin daughters that wasn’t in the least amusing yet had to be repeated at least three times. Before the funeral service, he came up behind me, slapping a meaty hand down on my shoulder. His breath reeked of carbonated saccharin.

“How you holdin’ up?” he asked, squeezing as he spoke.

I said, “I’m fine, sir.”

“Good lad. What’ve they got you doing out there in the desert? Killing some baddies for us?”

“Some,” I said.

“Good lad.”

Held it together through the next few hours, sitting patiently as they said nice things about Father, making a show of fighting back tears when they lowered him into the ground, holding onto Mother when she needed holding. But after the funeral, when the line of well-wishers grew so long I couldn’t see the end of it, something in me snapped at all the measured words and polite phrasing.

“Honey,” drawled my great-aunt Louise, who, eight years later, would come into a fair bit of money in the stock market and have every plastic surgery operation ever devised, “it’s sooo good to see you.” At this point in time, pre-surgery, she was fast approaching disintegration, her skin sagging beneath too many years of sun worship and questionable skin cleansers. “Honey, I want to know what they’re doing to you out there.”

“They’re not doing anything,” I swore. “It’s just a job.”

“Ach,” she spat. “Such a job, hurting others. You’re not hurting others, are you, honey?”

And there it was, out of my mouth before I could stop it. Then again, even if I’d given it six days, thought, I probably would have said it anyway. “With my bare hands, Auntie. Every chance I get.”

I was able to convince the military to send me down to San Diego before they shipped me back overseas; I told them there were funeral services going on down there for a cousin who had coincidentally died on the exact same day, and that I had been conscripted into pallbearer duties. Even went so far as to scour the obituaries and find a dead guy who matched up with my story.

Soon as I stepped off the plane, I corralled a taxicab and had them take me into the Red Light District. I was dismayed to find that my palms remained dry, my heartbeat steady. All the allure I’d always felt on the trips to the Red Light, the ticklish knots in my bowels—they were gone. During the day, I could see all the chipped paint and cracked skin. The neon was just a series of tubes, empty, meaningless. For all of my so-called marriage to Beth, I’d never really been to her place of employment during the day before; the few times I’d gone to see Beth when the sun was up, I wasn’t quite there there. I was Beth there, which meant most of me was off in some other world that smelled like lilacs and kissed up a storm.

Though I’d had them in my possession for months, I had yet to sign the divorce papers; something in me rankled every time I put pen to the red line, and even after a hundred tries, I wasn’t able to get the job done. My hand shook, trembled, and refused to make a mark.

But I had a plan. I brought the papers with me on my trip back to the States, and as I stepped out of the taxicab and into the heart of San Diego, I reviewed it all in my head like a general going over battle strategy: I would storm into Beth’s “office”—this is the term I preferred back then, her office—throw out whoever she was “meeting with” at the time, scoop her into my arms, kiss her with all the strength my lips could muster, and we’d laugh and rip up the papers together, her and me, my hand on one side, her hand on the other. Sunset, children, happy ending.

As the military would say, my mission was accomplished with a 5 percent success ratio. I definitely stormed into her office, no doubt about it.

And that’s where I found Debbie, a sweet eighteen-year-old from Texas who’d just started in the business. And that’s where I found the two beefy guys Debbie was servicing at three hundred bucks a pop. And that takes care of the second time I was ever knocked unconscious.

Never saw her again. Beth, I mean. Never saw Debbie again, either, though I hope the ugliness that went down in that room scared her off of the whoring for good. Beth’s apartment, I soon found out, had already been rented out to another tenant, and her usual hangouts were devoid of her presence. No one wanted to help me find her; obviously, they’d heard stories. Obviously, she’d made things up.

I trolled the city for two days and nights, casting out my net, showing pictures to everyone I came across. Most of the photos I had of Beth were of the boudoir variety, but I figured if anyone was going to recognize her, she would have to be au naturel. The tales they tell, if they tell them at all, of a deranged lunatic walking the streets of downtown San Diego flashing obscene photos at passersby were inspired by yours truly. I thought I caught a glimpse of her hair once, turning a corner and bobbing down a side street, but by the time I caught up, the road was empty, save for a small, withered bag lady who offered to jerk me off for an order of mozzarella sticks.

I signed the divorce papers on the plane back to Africa.

All these years later, I’ve forgotten what she looked like. I’ve got the basics, but it’s nothing more than a stereotype. Blonde, leggy, stacked. Hooker 1A, sans the fishnets. Beth hated fishnets.

I remember Mary-Ellen; at least, I remember Mary-Ellen’s long legs and Mary-Ellen’s arms and the way Mary-Ellen’s stomach dipped down after her ribs but then rose a little bit by her hips, a delightful pouch of flesh that I must have kissed a thousand times in the six months we were together, and I remember Mary-Ellen’s crooked chin and her pert nose and her blue, blue eyes, and even if I can’t put it all together, isn’t that just as good as remembering Mary-Ellen?

I remember Melinda, of course. I did, after all, see her somewhat recently.

I remember Carol, and the way she made me feel like I was the one who needed all the remembering. I remember how she’d pull me close in the middle of the night, then shove me away just as I was finally getting comfortable with the proximity. I remember Carol because she wouldn’t have it any other way.

And Wendy, who should have been the most memorable of them all, who took me half a lifetime to find and a few short years to lose, is rarely on my mind these days. I can call her up, examine her as I wish, but only one section at a time. If I try to take Wendy as a whole, I lose it and have to start all over again. I can pan up from her feet to her hair like she’s the ingénue in an old-time movie, or leer up and down from breasts to face and back again, but there’s nothing full-on, and it’s all fleeting.

And now there’s Bonnie, and that’s a mystery to itself. Bonnie’s just out in the other room, but even though she’s only 60 feet away, I’m having problems isolating her, separating her image from those of my ex-wives. It’s all a great process shot, a nose from this one, lips from that one, a merger woman gone awry.

There’s something about her that keeps drawing me back to my prior life, something that wants to help me connect her to the things I used to know and the things I used to do. It’s not there yet; I can feel it creeping up on me, but every time I chase after it, the memory runs away, like a child playing tag. I’ll get there eventually.

I could, of course, walk out to the other room and find out what Bonnie looks like in the flesh. Ask her why the hell she seems so damned familiar. I doubt she’d mind. I know I wouldn’t.

But it’s late. And I’m tired. And tomorrow is moving day.