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“So you’re still the shining star.”
“I guess, but now it’s because of what I’ve done, not because of who I am. There’s a big difference.”
Una considers it. “You’re right, there is.”
“Of course, I don’t have Roberta to organize things for me anymore. Now I have an agent—and she’s almost as scary.”
Una laughs, which makes Cam happy. If he can make her laugh on this strange mournful wedding day, that’s half the battle. He takes a moment to look at the identical rings on their fingers. She sees him looking, and the moment becomes awkward.
“Anyway,” says Cam. “I’m going back to Molokai for a while. It seems no one knows what to do with all those rewinds now that the whole property has been confiscated by the state. They need someone to be their advocate, and to help them integrate themselves, mind and body.”
“You mean they’re just going to leave them there?”
“No one wants to deal with them, no one wants to admit they exist, and the public made a huge outcry when someone suggested they be euthanized.” Cam sighs. “Molokai was once a leper colony. It looks like the island will be holding to its tradition.”
Then Cam pauses. You fill the emptiness bit by bit, he thinks, and not alone. He takes her hand, rolling her ring between his fingers, and when she doesn’t pull away, he says, “I would like it very much if you came back to Molokai with me.”
She takes a long look at him. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I asked?” he says. “Because you want to?”
“I put that ring on your hand. But I didn’t marry the rest of you.”
“I know,” he tells her. “But the rest of me comes with the hand.”
She smirks. “Not if I get my chain saw.”
“Ah,” says Cam. “The good old days.”
Silence falls again, but it’s not as awkward as it was a moment ago.
Una flips her hair back from her face. Her tears from before have almost dried. “What’s it like on Molokai? Hot and muggy? What should I wear?”
“Does that mean you’ll come?” Cam asks, a little too eager.
Instead of answering, she leans forward and kisses him. Then she runs her fingers through his multitextured hair, and with the faintest of smiles, she regards his admittedly irresistible eyes, and she gently whispers, “How I despise you, Camus Comprix.”
Then she kisses him again.
78 • Connor
Once the grooms all leave and the residents of the Tyler Walker Revival Compound return to their business, the dusk is filled with the mild melancholy that follows any grand event.
“It’s Halloween,” CyFi notes, as he, Connor, Risa, and Lev help with cleanup in the main house. “So was today’s wedding the trick, or the treat?”
“The best of both?” Risa suggests. She takes Connor’s hand a little too firmly and he can’t help but flinch from the pain. “Sorry,” she says.
His seams are deep, and although the healing enhancers speed the process, there’s no escaping the aches of being rewound.
Lev shifts his clingy kinkajou from his waist to his back as he approaches Connor. “So what was it like?” Lev asks. No one has dared to ask Connor that question. Lev, however, having been to the edge of his own existence too, is one of the few who have the right to ask.
“Like . . . breathing out and never stopping,” Connor tells him. “While listening to disco.”
“No, not the unwinding,” Lev says. “What was it like to be divided?”
The only way Connor can see Lev anymore is to look right into his eyes. Otherwise all he sees are the names inked on his face. What he sees in those eyes is longing. A need to know so intense that Connor can’t look away.
“Did you go into the light?” Lev asks. “Did you see the face of God?”
