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“Look, mom!” Electra calls out. “No teeth!”
The agent she’s just facially decimated drools blood as he is carried away to the medical bay. I’d be more concerned about his physical state if I didn’t know why he’d been put in the ring. Apparently, he thought it was acceptable to pick on female agents and take sexual advantage. Electra is being used as a form of natural justice in this case. She doesn’t mind one bit.
“Your daughter is a handful.”
The Head smiles at me, her steel eyes glittering. From time to time, I wonder if she truly was testing me when she propositioned me in her false Arctic, or if there is some desire in that woman’s indomitable loins for a man of her own. If there is, all sign of lust has been wiped from her being. She is back to being the self-contained ice queen.
“She is,” the Head agrees.
Sometimes this feels so natural I almost expect her to ask me to call her mom. Then I remember that she still hasn’t graced us with her first name. This is as formal an arrangement as is humanly possible, so formal it is effectively inhuman, but I am beginning to become comfortable with it. Or maybe it is just that I accept the lies, the danger, the very real chance of losing the woman I love more than anything, as well as the presence of the Head, who is still as unpredictable and untrustworthy as ever.
She continues to use Electra in ways which are utterly incompatible with her becoming more civilized. But I keep bringing Electra closer to the world beyond, even if she doesn’t know it.
She’s learned to read. She no longer cowers away from television. She likes cooking shows, and, inexplicably, home renovation shows, which just goes to show that having an opinion on putting in new granite counter tops is some kind of universal human urge.
The Head works her work, and I work mine. Much as we might try to form her in our respective images, Electra is ultimately, absolutely and unashamedly herself, and for that I love and adore her.
“So, do we get that leave? Twenty four hours on the mean streets of the city?” Electra asks, her smile broad and a little bloody.
“Streets which only get meaner when you’re there? Yes,” the Head says. “I’ll not send any extraction squads to bring you back until tomorrow twelve o’clock.”
Electra beams at me with excitement. She considers a day pass the ultimate freedom. She doesn’t have any idea what it means to be truly free, to never have to answer to anybody besides, occasionally, the state when they want their taxes. Her freedom is my prison. I never thought I could conduct a relationship in this environment, but for Electra, I make it work.
“You need a shower,” I tell her when we get back to our apartment, which is still located on the fourth floor. “You’ve got blood all over you.”
She shrugs, but she does as she’s told, stripping her training clothes off and leaving them for me to pick up. Apparently, that’s one element of civilization she isn’t quite able to grasp – or doesn’t want to. I do the honors instead, dropping her discarded clothing into the laundry hamper next to what I now also call the watching machine.
Electra allows herself to be strange with me in private, letting all her little institutionalized oddities show, but later, we’ll walk hand and hand down by the canal. I’ll buy her flowers, and stop her from pushing a passerby into the water. We’ll laugh, drink wine, and make love, and for a little while, things will almost feel normal.
“Tom!” Electra pokes her head out of the shower. Water drains from her curls and pools on the floor where she has not put a bath mat down.
“What is it?” I inquire.
“Do you still love me?”
She asks me that question every day. And every day, my answer is the same.
“I love you always.”
Her smile lights up my heart. “I think you’re going to say no, one day.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because, Mary told me that you have a house, like, in the suburbs.”
“I used to. I sold it.”
There’s no need for me to keep ties with the civilian world. The Head hasn’t managed to take me to the Arctic, but my love for Electra has moved me outside the realm of the common man and woman forever.
“Did you have to sell it because of me?” Her question is shrewd.
“I sold it because I don’t need it anymore.”
She wrinkles her nose as the puddle outside the shower becomes a full grown pool. “I never got to see it.”
“I guess you didn’t.”
Electra gives me a sad look and retreats back into the shower. I know better than to let her go. I know sometimes she forgets what it is to be loved, and needs to be reminded.
