The Forever Watch by David Ramirez Page A

and look him in the eye and whisper, “I trust you, Leon.” And you can trust me.
    We do not get any work done that day. Mostly, we sit next to each other in silence. Sometimes, we talk. He tells me about growing up, all these fights, the many times he was this close to getting Adjusted. I tell him about Holmheim, about how, once, I thought I loved him. He talks about Callahan, his teacher at the academy, the only reason he was able to graduate. Callahan found out about his other side, taught him how to discipline and channel it. I tell him about my recent splurge on experiences of this woman pampering a dumb, lazy cat named Minnow. He goes on about Callahan’s fascination with the strange, with the out-of-place, and how a hobby of looking into urban legends and rumors on the Nth Web grew into an obsession that got the old man willingly transferred to Long Term Investigations, the better to look into these imperfections in the system. I tell Barrens about being another of those women he’s known, devastated and emptied out by Breeding Duty, just holding it together and pretending.
    â€œAll these stories heard by a friend of a friend, someone going missing. And they call them Mincemeat stories ’cause that’s all they find. I never took him serious, you know? And then whatever he or it was got him .”
    The way he says it causes me to shiver. Yes, there is this between us, and there is also that, a mystery of blood, a secret that should not be.
    â€œThis thing’s gotten in my head, and there’s no way I’m letting it go,” I say with a confidence that is not, that shakes and quivers. “Anyway. So. What I’m saying is I’m with you.”
    He pulls me close again, and I forget feeling scared. He talks into my hair, soft, shy. It feels so good, the way he holds me, the raw need, desire thrumming in that power, a waterfall standing still in midair.
    â€œYou’re a fine woman, Administrator Dempsey. I … like you.”
    I squeeze him back, and my arms don’t go all the way around that massive, barrel torso. “I like you too.”
    Eventually, we have dinner together. I walk him to his little coffin-size apartment and stay the night.

5
    He is gone when I wake.
    The neural Implant superimposes a blinking light onto my field of vision, just visible out of the corner of my eye. A message for me. I focus on it and subvocalize the command to open it, and there is the thought unfolding. I feel Barrens’s lips on my cheek, his voice in my ears, apologizing for having to leave for an early shift. He has also left some files for me to look at, when I have the time. A thick envelope is on the pillow next to me. I take it with me.
    It is a thirty-minute train ride back to my own high-rise unit. The rush-hour crowd pays me no attention, but I imagine that they are all looking at me, and when I shift my feet from side to side, balancing as the monorail curves, a delicious remnant of an ache is down there, and my cheeks are aflame. I imagine their eyes on me, wondering where this policewoman with a badly fitting overcoat is going, and what she was up to the night before.
    There is no respite yet even when I reach the building. A woman with thick ankles and a flower-print bag as big as my torso eyes me in the elevator and, after taking a barely audible sniff, backs away, gently redirecting the children in her care behind her. She gives me a look that would set the hair on the back of my head on fire, if she had the talent for it.
    I should have showered first. I pretend not to hear the kids asking questions. The girl is just old enough to have a knowing smile on her face, reflected off the elevator console.
    When I am finally in my rooms, I lean against my door, drop Barrens’s package, press my hands to my face, and hold in the squeak that wants to pop out.
    There is no time to think and cogitate and savor and blush and giggle. I rush through my shower and