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She approached his glass desk, and as she sat down on the single chair next to it, she was grateful that she’d changed back into her normal, comfortable clothes. No hem to worry about. No cleavage showing. And she was keeping her parka on because she felt badly about disturbing the Brother.
“I won’t take long,” she tacked on.
“I’m good,” he said briskly. “I’ve been cleaning up a mess, but I think it’s finally taken care of.”
He leaned forward and tapped the cigarette into a glass ashtray. Everything inside the office, from the shelves that displayed all kinds of Victorian medical equipment, to the lighted tiles on the floor and ceiling, to that see-through desk, was glass. With the bright illumination streaming from all angles, it was as if he and his office full of computer equipment were being projected from a monitor, the Brother becoming the very technology he spent so much time with.
“You clean up a lot of things, don’t you.”
He nodded to the screens. “I’m like Farmers Insurance. I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.”
Bitty smiled, but she couldn’t manage to keep the expression going.
“Someone giving you a problem,” Vishous said in a low voice.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“You sure?” He put up his dagger hand, the one that was covered.“I won’t go behind your father’s back, but if you need something done and don’t want the person ripped apart, I can take care of things in a certain way. If you know what I mean.”
She tangled her hands in her lap. Looked around at the frosted walls of the office. There were screens that could be lowered inside what she suspected were dual panes of soundproof glass, and with them currently down in place, she wondered what he’d been doing in here that even his most loyal programmers and security personnel couldn’t know.
And she was glad no one could see in, even though none of his subordinates at those black desks and anti-glare monitors would be able to hear what was said. Sometimes you needed a little extra privacy because faces and body positions revealed a lot.
“You have… visions, don’t you.” When he didn’t respond, she risked a glance at the Brother—and couldn’t believe how direct she was being. “I’ve heard stories about them.”
Vishous tamped out his cigarette, pushing out of the way the butts of the others he’d smoked so he could find the smooth ceramic surface of the ashtray’s belly.
“What kind of stories,” he prompted as a new song started playing, the beat like that of an autoloader going off.
“They say you see only death, nothing else.”
“Who’s they.”
“People.” She cleared her throat. “So I just want to know…”
As she searched for the right words, he shrugged. “If I did see any visions—and I’m not saying I do—I wouldn’t tell them to anybody unless there was an outcome that I could positively affect. And if I didn’t happen to see anything about someone or, like, their parents, that is pertinent to health or longevity, I would tell them not to worry. So don’t worry, true?”
“Oh, that’s good. Thank you.”
“Not that I see things.”
“Of course.” She shifted in the hard seat—and wondered whether he’d deliberately chosen the chair because it was like sitting on coldcement. “That’s not why I came, though. I, ah, I want to know… what do you do if you don’t know why you were… shown something. Like, what if you were shown something that you knew was important, but you didn’t know the context. Or… something.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Vishous sat forward, his diamond eyes so intense that she felt as if she had a goose-necked interrogation lamp shining in her face. She even blinked like she was blinded.
“Bitty, do you see things?”
Flushing, she wished she hadn’t come. All of a sudden her private chaos was getting an airing, and boy, she wished she’d given more thought about who she’d picked to talk to. But like she could go to anyone else?
“It’s not visions exactly. Well, sometimes I see pictures in my head, but it’s more like reading a history book aloud.” She put her hand to her lips. “The words just come out of my mouth, but I try to keep what I’m shown to myself because I don’t want people to think I’m crazy. And I’m not, honest.”
Vishous reached over to a neat pile of hand-rolls, the little wrapped tubes of tobacco like cordwood stacked for a fire.
“How long’s this been going on?”
“Since… I was a young. I used to know when my birth father was going to beat mymahmen.” She pushed her sweaty palms up and down her thighs, the jeans catching and dragging. “I would see a snapshot, of the angle of her face, the arc of his palm. Sometimes, when there was… blood… I would see the droplets in midair. Frozen. And then the words would come out of my mouth. I would warn her, she would listen—but nothing ever changed.”
The Brother put a fresh cigarette between his front teeth and talked around it.
