ONE
“So…” J.C. said, hands on hips as he regarded the building. “Anyone else worried that this doctor’s office is in a slum?”
“It’s not a slum,” Ivy said, extending her hand to help me from the back of the limo.
“Sure,” J.C. said. “And those aren’t crack dealers on the corner over there.”
“J.C., those kids are like six.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Starting early, are they? Nefarious little entrepreneurs.”
Ivy rolled her eyes, but Tobias—an African American man who was growing a little unsteady on his feet, now that he was getting on in years—just laughed a hearty, full-throated laugh. He climbed out of the limo with my help, then slapped J.C. on the back. They’d been joking the whole way here.
J.C. grinned, showing he was at least a little aware of his buffoonery.
I eyed the building. Though it was your typical, generic suburban office structure, it was across the street from a pawnshop and next door to an auto mechanic. Not a slum, but hardly prime real estate either. So maybe J.C. had a point.
I rapped on the front passenger window of the limo, which rolled down, revealing a young woman with short blonde hair. Wilson’s grandniece was shadowing him again. Right. I wished he’d left her behind today; I tend to be a little more … erratic when visiting with reporters.
I looked past her toward the tall, distinguished man in the driver’s seat. “Why don’t you wait here, Wilson,” I said, “instead of going to the service station? In case we’ve got the wrong location or something.”
“Very well, Master Leeds,” Wilson said.
His grandniece nodded eagerly. As comfortable as Wilson looked in his traditional buttling gear, she seemed awkward wrapped in a coachman’s coat and cap. Like she was playing dress-up. Had she been listening as I talked to my hallucinations in the back seat? I was used to Wilson, but it felt wrong to expose myself to someone from the outside. I mean, I was used to people seeing my … eccentricities when I was in public. But this felt different. An intrusion.
I turned and walked with my aspects into the office building, which had a familiar, sterile quality. Not quite like a hospital, but scrubbed often enough to give it the off-white scent of one. The first door to the right was number sixteen, where we were supposed to meet the interviewer.
J.C. glanced in through the side window. “No reception area,” he said. “Just one large room. Feels like the sort of place where someone grabs you the moment you walk in. You black out, and then … BAM … three kidneys.”
“Three?” Ivy asked.
“Sure,” J.C. replied. “They need unwitting mules for their illegal organ trade.”
“And exactly how unwitting are you going to be when you wake up with an incision in your abdomen? Wouldn’t you immediately run to the doctor?”
His eyes narrowed. “Well, the doctor’s obviously in on it, Ivy.”
I looked to Tobias, who was still smiling. He nodded toward a painting on the hallway wall. “That’s by Albert Bierstadt,” he said. “Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The original hangs in the Smithsonian, as one of the most famous works of the Hudson River School.” His calming tone was a relaxing contrast to J.C.’s jovial—but still deep-seated—paranoia. “I’ve always loved how the clouds part to illuminate the dark wilderness: a representation of the Creation through the lens of the American frontier. Our eyes are inexorably drawn toward that central light, as if we are being accepted into heaven.”
“Or,” Ivy observed, “perhaps the clouds are closing, and the landscape is dimming as God withdraws and leaves men in darkness.”
Startled, I glanced sharply at Ivy. She was usually the religious one, sticking up for all things Christian and holy. She shrugged and looked away.
I knocked, and the door opened to reveal a tall, mature Asian woman with a square face and prominent smile lines. “Ah! Mr. Leeds. Excellent.” She gestured for us to enter, and J.C.—of course—went first.
He ducked under her arm, deftly avoiding touching a real person, then looked around, hand on his weapon. Finally he nodded for the rest of us to enter.
The interviewer had set out a group of chairs for us, and she stood by the door a conspicuously long time for all of us to enter. She’d done her homework. Though she waited too long—she couldn’t see the aspects—her effort did help with the illusion, for which I was grateful.
Ivy and Tobias settled themselves while J.C. continued to inspect the room. Large windows to our right looked out on the curb, where Wilson stood beside my limo. The far left wall of the room was dominated by a large saltwater fish tank. The rest of the décor was in a “writing den” theme, with hardwood bookcases and deep green carpeting.
I stepped up to the window and nodded toward Wilson, who waved back.
“Three today, then?” the interviewer asked.
I turned around, frowning.
“I followed your eyes,” she said, pointing to the chairs where Ivy and Tobias sat, then to where J.C. had been standing—though he’d moved to search the bookshelves for secret passages.
“Only three,” I said.
“Ivy, Tobias, J.C.?”
“You have done your homework.”
“I like to be prepared,” the woman said, settling down in her own seat. “I’m Jenny, by the way, in case Liza didn’t say.”
This woman was Jenny Zhang, reporter and bestselling writer. She specialized in salacious pop-biographies that rode the lines between information, entertainment, and voyeurism. She had won awards, but really, she was just another hack who had fought her way out of the clickbait trenches and earned a measure of respectability.
I wished I’d never promised Liza the favor of doing an interview with one of her friends, but I was stuck. Hopefully Jenny wouldn’t keep me too long, and her eventual book wouldn’t be too painful.
She nodded toward the seats, but I remained beside the window. “Suit yourself,” she said, getting out a notepad. She pointed at my aspects. “J.C., Tobias, Ivy. Id, ego, superego.”
“Oh, great,” Ivy said. “One of those. Tell her we’ve been over this. It doesn’t fit.”
“We’re not fans,” I said to Jenny, “of that psychological profile.”
“Ivy’s the one complaining?” Jenny asked. “She’s a repository of your understanding of human nature—you’ve externalized in her your people skills and your understanding of relationships. She’s reportedly very cynical. What does that say about you, I wonder?”
I shifted uncomfortably.
“Hey,” J.C. said. “That’s not bad.”
“But you’ve also created a personification of peace and relaxation.” Jenny pointed her pencil toward one of the seats. She had them reversed, but obviously she meant Tobias this time. “You say he’s a historian, but how often does his knowledge of history prove relevant?”
“Frequently,” I said.
“That’s not what I hear,” Jenny said. “You claim to have limited ‘slots’ in a given team of aspects. Imagining too many at once is difficult, so you bring only a few with you at a time. Yet you always take these three. J.C.—your sense of paranoia and self-preservation—is a logical inclusion. As is Ivy, who can help you cope with the social norms of the outside world. But why Tobias?”