Soul Junkie

Approx.  97,000 words

Letter

My dear Miu-Miu,

I have written to you before but you did not reply. This is the last time I will try to reach you. I believe I have the right person but if I do not, please destroy this letter. It can do no good to anyone else.

We met thirty five years ago in your village, so small that it had no name, somewhere between the border of Cambodia and Laos. I robbed 40 children of their souls that week for the price of a sack of rice and a US passport. You were the youngest—not quite four. You went by the name Miu-Miu—I never learned your given name although I understand that you go by Lucy today. Not a day has gone by that I have not regretted my actions. After the operation, I was consumed by guilt. Years later, I hired someone to locate you. Through a "foundation" I paid for your school and I arranged for your image to be manufactured when you were old enough. But I am unable to find peace. And I don’t suppose I ever will.

But, there is something I must tell you. I never sold your soul. I am not sure why. I cannot explain it to myself nor others. I preserved it all these years, even while in hiding. Today, I am protected by the great corporations I worked for, though I imagine not for long. I cannot repair what I did but I at least want to return what I took wrongfully from you. What will it give you? Perhaps a memory of childhood. I don’t know.

I am hidden this time in Rio de Janeiro, under constant guard, in ------. I am moved every week to a different location, sometimes in the state of Rio, sometimes outside. It isn’t hard to find me, I am either in …favela, or ....polis on the other end of Rio, in a gated community. I don’t know the exact house but I do know that it is guarded so heavily that a person could not walk simply through the doors. I don’t think you should come—forgive me for this presumption, I feel I know you well after all these years—after all I had all your school reports sent to me. I realize you are apt to come tearing down to Rio yourself, but it’s too dangerous. Send someone who knows how to negotiate with corporate militia and who keeps his mouth shut and, I hate to say this but I must, knows how to use a gun. Use a reliable local militia or ex-police—they are usually well connected. When you find me, I will return to you what is yours.

At the end of the operation, while sitting on my lap, you admired a postcard my wife had sent to me from our native France. I gave it to you, but a few days letter, your parents returned it and accused me of lying to them. How sad I felt! I had never intended to mislead anyone and their words still sting. Maybe for that reason, I kept the postcard, your little wet thumb (you sucked on it throughout extraction, even though I was so gentle I could not have possibly hurt you) smudged the ink right over the signature and you can see the print quite clearly. Despite all the years, I think you will remember this moment. I send the postcard with this letter so you know that I am whom I say. If you send a messenger, have him/her bring this letter and the postcard so I can be sure I reached you. I have many enemies, my employers cannot protect me forever and I will not last long. Whether I am found by the authorities or killed by my enemies, your soul will be destroyed or lost in storage while court cases rage. Come before that happens, it will happen sooner or later and I want nothing more than to return your soul to you.

I have written to you twice before; you did not reply. Please understand that I am not writing to ask forgiveness. What I have done, nothing and no one can forgive. I am only seeking to reunite you with your soul.

Augustin M.

Chapter 1: New York City, January, The Present and Two Years Ago

I think of this day often. You see, I am mourning and mourning requires you to let go. But I am not ready to let go. So I revisit this beginning over and over. Some might call me obsessive and they wouldn’t be wrong. In any case, I have not much else to do but think, regret, and play already-solved mind games like an obsolete computer.

I paused on the corner of 17th and Park Avenue, just beyond the rush. A month after the war ended, soul trade moved to New York City. New Yorkers became rich again and it showed. It was 7:55 a.m. The sun was cold. Shivering, I watched elegant men and women hurry to work, impatient with the ice that impeded their progress and confident that their shoes would never let them down. I had no presence at all, a slender figure buried in dark winter clothing, wedged between two thin birch trees.

I murmured softly into my phone and it began dialing, the stiff press tones slightly out of sync with the actual speed. Across the street, in Union Street Park, a pathetic demonstration was unfolding. I recognized the colors on the flag with derision—The Pure Family Movement. A group of toddlers were running in a circle, shouting excitedly, singing some version of Ring a Ring of Roses. The women held a variety of signs, Deport the Deformed, No Soul-No Citizenship, Out Keno Immigrants, and then rather obscurely, Stop Him! The Pure were a group of bored urban housewives who espoused some homegrown marriage of Christianity and monotheistic Hinduism, and who practiced intolerance and cruelty as their way to a purer soul.  I wondered why they were demonstrating in this part of the city with no willing audience.

Ada answered after five rings. “Last chance to do the right thing,” I said shouting into the microphone. The demonstrators were teaching their children another nursery rhyme with the inspiring words deport, punish, and prison popping up now and then. “We shouldn’t meet. It will just tangle things up.” The soul donor and buyer never met. It was common sense. When you sell your soul, it is best not to know who craves your humanity and why. And when you buy a soul, it’s best not to know what your addiction takes from fellow humans. Simple.

“He insists.”

“You understand that this meeting is strongly discouraged under industry ethics?”

“Is it illegal?”

“Not precisely.”

“Then please make your way over.  He is waiting.”

        A car bounced over a puddle and I tucked my feet in to avoid the splashing water.

It’s a tiny useless detail but in my captivity, I remember how straight I used to stand. How quick and graceful my movements were. The scene continues but I don’t skip over the details.

On 17th street, the Rizzoli-Cohens lived in the penthouse of what most people would consider an impressive townhouse. But I knew they needed money desperately. This was more or less still the rule in New York despite its vast fortunes—all appearances are costlier than most people’s means and the Rizzoli-Cohens were doing very well in their appearance-to-debt ratio.  

My back to the demonstrators (and it felt unsafe even though I scorned them and their silly rhymes), I headed towards the Rizzoli-Cohens. My phone rang shrilly. I answered with relief, thinking it was Ada cancelling after all. But it was the last person I wanted to speak to—my lover Maithri. I winced and bluffed, “Middle of a business meeting, call you back,” I said cheerily. I don’t remember what she said. I hung up nervously and stuffed the phone deep into my pocket. I would not have been able to explain to her what I was doing that morning. Why I wanted to buy this soul so badly.

I think of Maithri all day long. We haven’t spoken in—what is it, a year plus? I’m waiting for her to find me—she’s my only hope left.  Did I treat her carelessly? I treat myself carelessly. So I suppose I did.

I crossed the road carefully, the ice piled up in dirty mounds. At the surface, my yearning was really very simple—no psychologist had yet surrendered his soul and I wanted Dr. Cohen’s soul. But unlike the early years of soul trade when you really only could buy the poor, the sick, and the desperate, these days, the market was jammed with professionals. Doctors had given in a long time ago, even those with curiously obtuse information like engineers had a small but strong market share, —but there were no psychologists, at least not the kind you’d want in your head. The old boy’s guild, the American Psychological Association had even gone to the trouble of banning the practice of psychology without a soul. Which had effectively killed the supply of psychologist souls in the market. If I managed to get Claude’s soul, it would be the first real psychologist since soul trading went public, other than the variety that lost their license for screwing clients and needed the money. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to brag about it. Regardless, for me, a soul junkie extraordinaire, it was worth the risk of fraud charges. And tomorrow when it was all done, perhaps the perspective of such a famed psychologist would illuminate what made my soul addiction so different from everyone else’s.

I entered the Rizzoli-Cohens’ building—the unease increased sharply. After the discreet brick exterior, the lobby seemed to be a tangle of tables and chairs, scattered rugs, and a peculiar birdcage with a dusty copper sink inside it. Before I could put my finger on why it didn’t work, the elevator door opened into the apartment. Ada Rizzoli, the wife, eyes sparkling with rage, was on the other side. I had spoken with her several times to negotiate the purchase of her husband’s soul but on screen, she had always been dispassionate, business-like. Right now, she was flushed, her thick blonde hair, slightly out of order, her thin green silk dress askew around her shoulders. She was not my type but even in disorder, it was easy to understand why Claude had lost his head at an age when men were supposed to be wise.

“Good morning,” I said politely. She looked me over hard, frowning, her eyes eventually settling on my face. I wondered what she saw in this final countdown. I was tall, my hair dark and short, my skin pale, dressed in penitential colors. If one looked twice like Ada had just done, there was a clear trace of the West, in my nose, in my light brown eyes, but mostly the undertone of my skin--a cream that tans easily. I think my father is Caucasian but I don’t know. People are always curious about my bloodline but whatever it was that struck Ada, she didn’t say.

“Let’s get it over with,” she said finally. “Claude is nervous, please be sensitive.” She leaned in, her soft lips brushing my ear. She whispered, “He’s obsessed by why you want to buy his soul, why you’re the right one. Tell him you’re an important collector and his soul will be the rarest and on display for all your wealthy friends. You MUST tell him this or he’ll reject you.”

I pause at this moment and look to my friend who is listening in. You see, I am not quite alone. My friend once knew Ada very well. He objects. We discuss the retelling of Ada and her anxieties. Of course, my memory isn’t accurate but I stick to my story that this is exactly what she whispered to me. We argue, laugh, we continue.

Ada went in without saying anything else. I followed her awkwardly into the airy living room painted a middle-class yellow, muted, and comforting. At the end of the room, which narrowed into a hexagonal alcove, a withered man sat in a wheelchair. He was looking outside, the window open despite the cold. He turned slightly towards me. I smiled and approached.

“Did you see demonstration?” he said fretfully.

“I’m afraid there’s no way to miss it.” That’s when it hit me—they were protesting Dr. Cohen’s much publicized statement that he would donate his soul to science. A lie of course. After it was extracted and before it could be donated, it would be “stolen” in the dead of night for a very large sum of money. Which is what this meeting was about—buying a soul on the black and then faking its theft for a generous insurance payout that would go to the surviving wife.

“It’s so ugly,” he said. “Can the government really allow such disrespect? I thought we were beyond it. That 2000 years of genocides had taught us the value of all life.”

It took a long time to cross the room; the floors creaked and the old dark wood gleamed, as if recently mopped and barely had time to dry. Impending death, it seemed, did not upset housekeeping. "They’re harmless," I said. “Except to their poor children who’ll be deaf by the end of the hour.” I offered my hand. He strained up and gripped it.

I review this scene in my head over and over. It’s an important sentimental moment for both Claude and I, the moment we first met. I didn’t know anything about wheelchairs then, I barely noticed his. Later today, I will complain to my captors that left wheel of my chair keeps listing when I move. It makes me nauseous and then I can’t work for a few hours. That should scare them into fixing it.

         “You’ll have to forgive me for not standing up,” Claude said, his eyes bright, alert. His voice was gently accented. “I’m afraid most of me doesn’t work these days.” He turned to Ada, the movement costing him another breath, but he said in the same gentle voice, “Would you give us an hour please?” Her face darkened with the echoes of a continuing fight, but she nodded after an infinitesimal pause. I was surprised when she threw on a vivid coat, much too thin for the weather and too gay for the occasion, and left the apartment, a streak of angry spring colors in the heart of winter, surprisingly no perfume—just simple shower soap passing me and then out.

The door slammed behind us. She must have taken the stairs. “You don’t seem to be dying,” I said turning back to him. It was the alertness in the eyes, I had imagined that impending death would have clouded them or somehow made him less sentient.

I blush at my words today, at the arrogance, the naiveté.

Claude was making tea with a deep intensity. He looked up at my words and smiled, “They’re giving me a week. Nothing works, not my stomach, my nether regions, only my head. I have only my head.”

“You have your soul.”

“True, but I want it to go to the right person. I don’t want to mess up this opportunity. Dominik—are you the right person?”

Ada’s whisper hadn’t done its job—I remained unprepared. I suppose if I were dying myself, I would get straight to the point. Still, this was an unanswerable question—like asking right before marriage if the person at the altar will love you forever or worse, if you will stay in love with them. “It’s the wrong question to ask,” I said, glancing around at the collection of Japanese nudes. Half of them looked like Japanese Adas, lush, alive, pouty despite the more restrained painting conventions. Everyone has a type, his apparently transcended medium.

“Then tell me what the right question is,” Claude said affably. He poured me some smoky oolong without asking, another middle-class habit—the flavor, not the tea. I smelled orange when I sipped the tea and realized with irritation that it was the wax that Ada had used to polish the floor. My senses were playing tricks on me again. I shushed it and tried to drink the oolong as it was designed to be, smoky, not citrus.

“It’s a straightforward business transaction,” I said. “Best thing we can do for ourselves is to treat it that way.” The way soul trade had been since the surgeons had made their discovery almost fifty years ago.

With an unexpectedly charming smile, Claude asked, “Are you married or is that another wrong question for this winter day?”

“It’s an impertinent question but yes, I’m in a relationship, off and on,” I said smiling back despite myself.

He sighed, a long rattling sigh, and then said, “As is obvious, my wife is a good bit younger than I am. We have two children and I am leaving her without anything. Not even this apartment that was supposed—well, it isn’t. I didn’t expect to die at seventy-three and I think it’s reasonable for her to be angry. So yes, it is a cold blooded business transaction, but it’s also curiosity. About the journey.”

“It’s a misplaced curiosity,” I said. “If I were you, I would die intact. Keep your soul. Ada will figure it out.”

“If I leave her penniless, Ada will make my last days a living hell,” he said without rancor.

“Deservedly but you still die intact.”

“Why is dying intact so important? Even the church has come around to seeing the soul as a mere physical organ. You’re not superstitious are you?” He shifted his body restlessly.

“Ask your medical advisors.” He had been a tall elegant man with clear sharp features and a thick head of hair. Traces of his beauty lingered, in small gestures, the way he poured the tea, the way he crossed his withered legs.

“I did. They said swift and painless. Not a damn thing to worry about.”

“Horrible and empty is more like it,” I said gently. I liked him despite my best intentions to treat this as business. “You’ll die without knowing who you are fully. You won’t be able to reconcile your past, conjure old feelings. Or remember with tenderness the important moments. It will be the worst week of your life, your worst hour. Not worth it. Not even for an angry wife.”

“You tell me not to do it. Yet you want my soul. Why?”

Because when you wore a soul, it never stopped feeling like a living thing, soft and close to your own self, like a gentle second skin that glittered and trembled but didn’t speak. But how do you tell an anguished man that his amputation will be your pleasure? I said lightly, “A third wrong question. Three times and you’re a felon.”

He laughed outright. He sat up, eyes gleaming, “It’s my reward,” he said. “Ada gets money, you get my soul. I get to ask you questions. Fair?”

He said it so triumphantly, so playfully, that I had to smile. It was enough encouragement.

 “How will I feel when my soul is gone? And when we meet, will we be connected psychically?”

“We can never met again,” I said firmly but with a little regret. “Once you’ve reported the soul as stolen, it won’t be safe for us to be seen together.  Just look outside. It will be a mob in three days.”

Claude jerked up in his chair. “But we must meet,” he cried. That’s part of why I agreed to sell. I want to understand how it will feel to live without a soul and I want to know what you are feeling when you wear me. It’s a golden opportunity for analysis of the deepest kind.”

“You won’t like it,” I repeated patiently. I was glad that Ada wasn’t here—I was doing the worst job possible of convincing Claude and I had no idea why. I wanted the soul; his unhappiness was no affair of mine.

“My medical officers say that it’s a little hard at first, but then you adjust.”

         “It takes years to adjust. You have a week, maybe two. Your medial officers are lying leeches,” I said bluntly.

“Ada probably bribed them,” he said mournfully. “You seem to know a lot about this,” he added curiously.

I hesitated. Talking about my personal life always made me feel unclothed, unsafe. But, I thought, what harm could it be with a man soon to be dead. It was just conversation. “My girlfriend is a Keno.” I used the short form for Kenosis, the official census term used to designate anyone who had sold or lost their soul. “The world is a flat, autistic place for her; it’s a terrible place to be. Whether you sell your soul willingly or it’s stolen from you, you never get over it.”

“Why did she sell her soul, if I may be so bold to ask?”

“She didn’t have a choice,” I said shortly. “She’s a survivor.”

        A brief silence while he adjusted to my response. “Kenosis--what a terrible misuse of a term, what an unkind joke,” he said softly. “Especially for someone who was raped—robbed of her soul. I’m very sorry.” He looked down at his withered legs. They quivered and jerked like thin wires. He uncrossed them with some difficulty and the twitching stopped. “Do you know what Kenosis means?” he asked?

        “Place in India where soul extraction began?” I was serious.

        “Quite the opposite. It’s Greek. It means to willingly give up your divinity, to be emptied of your will like Jesus did, and surrender to God’s will or the will of the universe if you prefer.”

And Keno, your little diminutive, simply means to empty. So, am I surrendering gracefully or am I a constantly gaping hole? I suppose it depends on which side you’re on.” He winced.

        “You seem to have spent some time on this.”  

“I want to die elegantly,” he said. “With understanding.”

These words haunt me still. Claude didn’t die elegantly. I won’t either. Unless Maithri finds me. My friend dislikes this memory, we speed it up.

 “How do you communicate with your lover?” Claude said his curiosity overcoming his pain. “Isn’t the divide between the Kenos and ah, well junkies, if you’ll forgive the term, unbridgeable?”

My answer was brief and careful, my face a freshly painted wall. “My mother is a Keno.”  I might have said, I grew up with it, or more defensively, the language of the Keno is rich, you just need to enter their world, or more sentimentally, Maithri completes my world in a way an intact person couldn’t. All of these were true in some way but I wanted him to understand without my saying it. A test from my end if I were to buy his expensive interior landscape.

 “Yes and therefore? I get it even less if your family has suffered,” Claude said. “How do you reconcile that you use souls when your partner has sold hers? Or your mother? Isn’t it like the slave owner releasing his slaves on the one hand to keep up appearances, and then trading slaves in a distant port to keep up the riches?”

 “I don’t reconcile it,” I said flinching as if he had stung me. “You’re dying,” I continued in a tight voice. “You’re choosing to sell. No one is forcing you. But you can take the moral high road if you prefer and be critical of your buyers—the ones who will supply you with money that you need.”

He hurt me. I wanted to offend him but he laughed with only a hint of bitterness. “Ah Dominik, you’re not used to speaking to people are you? You’re so prickly. I’m not judging, just trying to make sense.” He fussed over something on his lap, a thread perhaps from his sweater. It was faded, worn. Unlike Ada, he had not dressed for this meeting.

 “Can we move to business and leave my motives and relationships out of this?”

Claude nodded, looking thoughtful. “Your relationships—yes, you’re right. Not my business. But motives—, I’m sorry Domi. I need to know why. Why do you want my soul?” he asked looking straight at me.

I faltered at his bluntness. We junkies, spent hours with soul curators telling them our darkest needs before we fitted our next soul. Soul curators were glorified shopkeepers but they were also the new priests, they listened, they nodded, they absolved you with a new soul. They never asked you why; it was bad for business.

“Because psychologists are rare,” I said after a moment of internal freeze-panic. It was true. I wanted Claude’s guidance for a very particular reason but I could hardly tell him why.

 “I see. I’ve become a collector’s item. I suppose it’s charming in its own way.” He shuffled, trapped by his own decaying weight, and then said with touching shyness, “Do they feel alone, these souls, when they lose their bodies? Will my soul miss me?”

I said sternly, “All souls freeze when we extract them. They stop feeling. You don’t, but they do. They become prints of your past. They don’t grow, don’t feel; they’ve been deleted from your system.” Souls died the moment they left the host body and that was what terrified Claude. They froze, became photographs, templates of what you had been, unchanging, a layered web of your entire life, in all its complexity but inert and incapable of communication.  

“What if I change my mind and want my soul back?”

“It’s a one-way street,” I said. “Soul death is permanent.” I felt a jump inside me and then a dull but steady pounding. Ill-chosen words, I realized but too late.

You phoney! A voice inside me hissed, thick with spiteful amusement. Tell him why you really want him. He’ll love it. The old narcissist. He’s so scared of dying.

A third player has entered the scene. His name is Alex and he used to live inside of me although he’s been long gone. I slow down at this point, separating carefully what I said, what Claude said, and Alex’s annoying interruptions. When I’m confident, I return to the past.

Chapter 2: New York City, January, The Present and Two Years Ago

“You’re trembling,” said Claude. “Has my interrogation upset you? I’m sorry. I have so little time, I just ask what I feel. I made an oath to myself last month—no more bedside manners. It’s been my tyrant.”

I couldn’t answer. Alex was jumping around me and it was making me sick. I tried to steady myself. The questions stopped and Claude met my eyes met in a mutual protracted moment of appraisal. For a minute, I felt aware of everything in the room—the heat pouring out of an old fashioned coil that had a sulphurous smell; the window that was opened somewhere behind me and the cold that had entered; a man speaking loudly on the phone beneath the window, the words rising up but indistinct.

“I’m fine,” I said coughing from the internal fight. For the truth was, I had a soul living inside of me. An old soul who was always listening-- an internal spy embedded in my flesh, a tracking device I couldn’t disconnect. Right now, he was agitated and his agitation was fast leading to a migraine. His name was Alex, a forgotten political prisoner and once, a cherished poet. He had been tortured and then robbed of his soul in Bolivia forty years ago. I found him in a corporate broker’s mass catalogue during a routine security job. His suffering moved me and impulsively I hid him inside me and reported him as too decayed for future use.  His soul was illicit--he should have been destroyed or reunited with his body but I knew he would not have been.  Poet souls make good money for their owners. My corporate masters would have coerced me to forget and Alex would have been rented to college students and untalented writers in dingy backrooms who would steal his writing. I couldn’t bear the dishonor to this once beautiful poet.  

The sun sets every day

But it leaves me behind

I beg him, take me with you, why do you not see me?

But here, in this cruel land, even my sun is blind and deaf.

They broke his right fingers, stuffed him into a little cage, dropped him into ice water. But he was left handed. He kept writing. I kept Alex to give him some kind of funeral, to return some dignity to him. It’d been a mistake. I felt him stirring afresh just hours after the insertion, and once that happens, it becomes dangerous and emotionally impossible to remove the soul. I don’t know how to explain it to myself, let alone anyone else, but souls sometimes revive in me. I don’t know what the proper term is—reincarnate? relive? regenerate?—but what I mean to say is that they stop being inert and start being sentient. I don’t know why or how, and since I am the only one I know to whom it happens, it never gets clearer.

Alex was my tenth or eleventh living soul. And right now, he was burning with jealousy.  

Claude closed his eyes and sank back into his seat. Stop, I whispered internally to Alex as he jostled for a better view. You’re moving too quickly and I keep confusing your sniffing the floor polish with the tea. Alex giggled, delighted. I don’t know what he had been as a young man, before the torture, but in this incarnation he was mean spirited. Ada wants to impress you, he whispered back, although no one else could hear him. She thinks you’re sexy. She dressed for you and she polished the floor ten times. But she’s just an expensive hausfrau. And her damned soap is provoking my allergies.

Shut up. You don’t have a body. You can’t have allergies.

“Do you own many other souls?” said Claude suddenly, opening his eyes as if he had woken up abruptly from a dream.

“Like most New Yorkers, I have a couple.”

Liar, Alex spun up on his coils and hissed with demonic glee. Liar, wait till he finds out how many of us there are. He’s not that special.

        “How do you select which soul to wear?”

        “It depends on my mood.”

         “And when not in the mood, I go into storage? Claude’s voice trembled a little. “Into a little canister, into a rack, then locked into a temperature-controlled safe? Waiting until you are in the mood again like a pasha with his harem of wives?”

        “I respect and love my souls,” I said as gently as I could. “I can promise you that you won’t be in storage much, if at all.”

“I’ve worked with many soul junkies,” Claude said softly. “They consume souls like monsters in a bottomless well. They are driven by panic and craving. But you don’t seem like any of them. What do you really want Domi?”

I smile as the youngest jailer arrives with a huge box of tools. I can tell he doesn’t know what to do and he smiles stiffly back at me. I smile because it was the first time Claude had used my diminutive. It’s a tender moment for me every time. I ignore the jailer, I close my eyes.

         “None of these things will matter if you die a week after. Let it go Claude. You’re torturing yourself.”

“True. But humor an old dying man Dominik. My medical officers give me platitudes, my wife lies to me, I lie to myself. What do the Buddhists say? Forget thyself? But I can’t. You see, I have prided myself too long on the power of my mind, my intuition, on knowing somehow the unknowable. I am about to give up the most important thing I own. I can’t suddenly stop.” The effort cost him and he panted.

 “You do see the irony of your asking me for insight?”

He nodded, his lips moved, I thought saw him counting something. “Will you have access to my unconscious?”

 “It takes skill to get deep inside but, technically, yes,” I said. If you looked at a soul map on a projector its grid had trillions of netlike nodules with memories, information, plans, rules, decisions, and the emotions that had produced them or directed them or defined them. Sometimes, the unconscious was as flat as an artificial pool, useless. Sometimes, it was twisted, gnarled, forming rich meaty labyrinths. And from this emotional soul map, people sought guidance and pleasure that their own souls could not give them.

Claude started building a small pyramid with the sugar cubes that neither of us had touched. He knocked the pyramid over very deliberately with one finger and a few cubes went spinning onto the floor. “Won’t my soul start rotting when I die?” He shivered.

 “Eventually. But sometimes it can take years, five or more.” When you slipped on a new soul, your face took the reflection of its face, and a soul’s face degenerated along with the soul.

For the wearer, it was like a scratched record, the music fading with more and more interference until it was too unpleasant to keep wearing the soul, not to mention the ghastly melted reflection in the mirror.

        “So, you’re willing to pay half a million dollars for something that might decay almost immediately? You don’t seem like a gambler to me.”

        “All junkies are gamblers. I’m just more articulate.”

“You’re keeping something from me,” Claude said quietly searching my face. “Your story just doesn’t track. You don’t look like a crook who’ll rent me out for shits and giggles or a rich spoiled collector. Everyone else on the shortlist is. That’s why I wanted to meet you. Ada’s description of you didn’t make sense. And now that we talking, you make even less sense.”

“I’m a soul junkie, a soul addict. Our stories never make sense.” I wanted to keep talking. I wanted to tell him that I was a freak. Everyone else’s rental souls stayed inert in them, didn’t talk to them, didn’t fight with them, and didn’t fall in love with them. .

“Try. Tell me honestly why you want my soul.”

“Because I think we could connect at a deeper level.” It was true, mostly. The connection to a new soul went to my head like a bubbling drug. And if we truly connected, sometimes, sometimes, the souls regenerated, rather than degenerated. It didn’t happen often, not even yearly, which was a good thing. Regeneration wiped me out. It was as if my own flesh and blood become food for the inert soul as it came alive. And I loved it.  At the moment of regeneration, I felt alive in a way that must have prompted God to overpopulate the earth without family planning. It was a whole body feeling. Every nerve end twitched. I felt the weight of every blood cell. Every atom tingled, inside and out. But when they died, I too was like one dead for weeks, sometimes months. I felt limp, weak, listless, drained. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I wasted away. I’ve recovered each time but it has become more and more painful. But there was a flaw to all this, of course. Not one soul had lasted. All my regenerated souls have died in two or three years, but I had never given up that one might stay and be a long companion.

The pimply guard picks me up and place me on a divan, turns the wheelchair over and start dismantling the wheel. He is a fool. And he disrupts my replaying of the scene. I frown and keep going, I am like a crab without a shell, a collection of collapsed muscles, unnaturally pale, propped up by several cushions.

“What good is to me if I don’t enjoy this connection?” Claude asked.

“None at all. That’s why I am paying you.”

“Why do you want this connection?”

He was crafty, like an eel, circling around the main question that worried him—would his soul be important after he lost it or would it be merely a plaything for the rich? “I’m trying to understand”—I paused—“my lifestyle.” I said the last word softly.

“By lifestyle you mean your addiction to souls?” I nodded. “Why not just go to a living therapist? I can recommend a few who will survive me,” he said attempting to be humorous.

“It’s not the same. A therapist can’t get under my skin like a soul can.”

“Meaning?”

 “Your soul lens might see something in my internal landscape that I’m blind to. Your unconscious might talk to mine. I need an intelligent confidant, Dr. Cohen. Perhaps it will be your soul.”

I was afraid Claude would ask me why Maithri was not my confidant but instead he smiled rather sadly. “Ah, a perfect companion with perfect intimacy,” he said softly, and then looked directly at me, some of the old alertness back in his eyes. “I or rather my soul will get old, like any other lover. But I suppose you’ve considered that.”

“I don’t think I will tire of you,” I said honestly.

But you’re tired of me? So you want a new lover? An old cripple lech?

Shut up Alex, I said wearily. Just shut up.

Inside me, Alex exploded. He was swearing in Spanish and I didn’t quite follow everything but the message was clear. Fuck you Domi. You fucking ungrateful piece of shit…” 

Outside, Claude poured me the last of the tea. I was starting to think that the pot was bottomless but it was an elegant trick, the cups were tiny. “It’s probably over steeped.”

“Thank you,” I said and drank deeply. I wondered if I would care if my tea were bitter, if death were around the corner. And if did, would it be as hard to let go of life as it was for Claude.

“You motherfucker, you dogfucker, you facist anti-revolutionary pig. I’m always with you. I treat your every thought as if it were the most precious thing on earth. And it is, for me. You cold, ungrateful American bas—” I clenched my fists and struggled to keep my face placid. If Claude noticed my struggling, he didn’t say anything.  The chilling truth was that Alex had been forgotten, and he knew this. He remembered being alive, and then he remembered being extracted, and then he remembered blankness. He was so terrified of being put into storage again, that he was constantly invading my space. And he had exhausted me in less than a year.

I stood up jerkily. “I’d like the honor of being with your soul,” I said formally. “I promise to cherish you.” I was going to collapse if Alex continued like this.

 Instantly, I sensed a panic in Claude at my leaving and I placed my hand on his shoulder gently. I felt the press of time go through me. His body was lifeless under my fingers, it hurt to touch the withered flesh. “I fought with Ada because she wants half a million dollars for my soul, in addition to what the insurance will pay. It feels wrong to ask so much. And now that I’ve met you, it feels wrong to ask for any money at all. I don’t know why you want my soul but you’re not a common scoundrel.”

“Let your wife handle the money. You just decide whether I’m the right person to wear your soul.” Claude nodded and closed his eyes. The meeting was a mistake. Now I would have to live with these memories implanted in his soul, the memory of this last meeting, his rotting body, his restless living soul, but most of all, his sadness in giving up his own powers to die alone.

I did not linger a second longer than I had to. I left him by the window, shattered, a few steps closer to death. Outside, I ran into Ada, smoking.

 “Well?” she asked. She had been crying; her face was raw.

“It’s up to the two of you. I’m still in the market but I don’t want to see either of you again. It’s too risky. If you decide yes, call me. If you decide no, don’t contact me. The number I gave you will work for another week.”

Two men bring in a new wheelchair. A gleaming chrome model. You asked for an old sedan, they got you a Lamborghini, Claude sniggers. We laugh together. My captors leave, shaking their heads and looking worried. They don’t get me at all. Then, Claude asks me if we can revisit the scene where we first met. I agree although we have done it twice this morning. We return to 17th and Park. It will be a pleasant hour, two, if Claude and I disagree on the interpretation of things.

We are mourning together. To save me, Claude must go. I don’t want him to. My heart is breaking and I cannot hide it from him. He consoles me, he is patient and kind. We have a few days left together. We spend half of it preparing for my inevitable loneliness, half of it revisiting that first day.