“What?” Jett asks. What James is telling him clearly confuses him. “Why didn’t you go with her?”
James huffs. “I wanted to. She said she’d wait for me to change, then slipped out the door while I was getting ready.”
Jett is quiet for a moment. “I see. Sounds like our Kate is off to make a new special kind of friend.”
“I know,” James growls.
“Oh my. You like her, don’t you?” Jett taunts. “I thought you were above it all. That you were trying to keep your distance to protect dear sweet Kate from—what was it? Themonstrous manyou are?” Jett quotes the article that got him into this situation and he’s loving it. Kate probably relayed the entire incident to him. Lessa and Oro1 too.
“What do you want me to say, Jett?”
“It’s fun watching you squirm. Is that so wrong?” Jett’s voice is amused now.
“Don’t you think that’s a little juvenile?” When Jett doesn’t respond, he presses, “Where do you think she went?”
“Tell me why you want to know,” Jett demands. Then, in a lower, conspiratorial voice, he says, “Tell me something juicy.”
“Why?”
“Because at my age, I have to find entertainment however I can.” Jett’s tone is indulgent. He evidently sees nothing wrong with using James’s predicament for his amusement.
“You’re younger than me,” James states, not wishing to feed into the sidebar.
It’s Jett’s turn to scoff. “Hardly. You’re what, thirty-five? I’m three times your age, James.”
“What the fuck?” James blurts. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope,” Jett says. “I’m being straight with you.” He’s silent for an extended pause. Then he says, “Oh boy, you don’t know how old your girlfriend is, do you?”
A strange dread blooms inside him. He knows future people live longer than in his time. Seem younger for longer. He knows all the routines and treatments they have must be doing something. Somehow, until now, he’s always assumed Kate was in her mid-twenties because she looks like she’s in her mid-twenties. Early thirties at the most, considering the treatments.
But she has a highly specialized job that puts her close to the top employee pay bracket. That must imply some sort of seniority. The kind earned with skill and time. The only way to earn more than the one above her would be to invent something and sell it, like a manupartner, since investing in the stock market or real estate isn’t an option any longer.
He only catches the tail end of what Jett is saying. “. . . birthday was the week before she got you. She turned eighty-six.”
“Eighty-six,” he repeats. “That can’t be possible. That means she’s fifty years older than me.”
“Welcome to the future, where medical technology has created the fountain of youth,” Jett says.
“But I thought she was in her late twenties. Are you sure you didn’t hear her say twenty-six,” he says.
“I’m sure.”
“Thirty-six?” James asks, because even that would be more plausible. Because, is it weird that he has a thing for a woman fifty years his senior? “She could be my grandparent. Great-grandparent, even,” he says offhandedly.
Jett jumps on the comment he now regrets. “Oh, she’s going to love that. Gran-Kate. No, that’s boring. What about Kate-ma?”
“Damn it, Jett. Don’t you dare.” James sighs into his device, warring with his rational mind. “She’s really eighty-six?”
“James, I’ve been friends with her for almost forty years and she was in her mid-forties when we met.” When James doesn’t reply that he’s convinced, Jett adds, “We threw her a party and everything. That’s when she got drunk, cracked, and ordered you. Tower Kate finally fell, proving she’s just like the rest of us!”
Kate has her reasons he wants to defend, not that he knows them. Either way, he can’t seem to muster a response.
“I always wondered how her parents made such a big impact on her in just twenty years,” Jett muses, seemingly more to himself than James.
The comment perks his interest, however. “Her parents?”
“Yeah, their epic love is the reason for Kate’s beliefs about companionship and why she never wanted a manupartner. They were a couple for almost two hundred years! She still thinks she can have what they did. She won’t stop searching for it and just be happy. Imagine searching for something that is impossible for as long as she has. I’d get tired.” Ice rattles in the background and Jett swallows. “I can see why she got excited when you turned out to be real, but then, the articles, you know?”
