Content: D, N
I met Janey, of all places, at a Thornton's gas station buying coffee. I had just returned from a terrible vacation and needed to fill my car with gas, to actually get the few miles back home. I just had removed a liter cup and was about to fill it with Coke when I saw the nicest butt I’ve ever seen on the woman buying coffee at the cove holding the Starbuck’s counter. I’m not a fan of the over-priced coffee genre, but I made an exception this time. She was facing away making some kind of overpriced cappuccino wearing tight blue jeans and a long jersey shirt. Her blonde hair hung down her back with a few brightly dyed strips falling down the front. My mind wanted to tell me something else about her but I didn’t know what. I took a “tall” cup, and chose some random buttons. She swore at the machine when her “travel mug” overflowed. I said something like, “I hate it when…” and when I turned to see her face — ZANG! The parts of my brain that would be useful at this point said,“told you something was up” and decided to go out for a beer; leaving me with the skills I had in the sixth-grade, when girls started looking like women.
I was dumbstruck, seeing a Zooform at all was unusual enough back then, but one that actually looked good was almost unheard of. She grinned slightly and asked, I hope since her speech was so unfamiliar, for the napkins that were right beside my hands. I groped for one and came back with half the stack which she took with a clawed hand and thanked me. I wasn’t sure what to do. Somehow the cross of feline and human features her creator used worked, and she was actually beautiful and that made it hard for me to think. All of my good looking girlfriends, including the last one I had just taken and lost on vacation, were flukes. They always had to make the first move; I’ve never been able to properly explain myself around women. This time was no exception.
She had to say, “I’m Janey,” twice before knew she was saying her name and even then I heard it wrong.
“I’m, uh,” it took a while to remember my name, “Kavin.”
“It suits you,” she replied. I didn’t know what she meant. I was named after my father’s old college roommate and always found the name a little odd. After a moment she explained, “it means ‘handsome’ in Gaelic.”
Once again my cognitive mind failed me and I asked, forgetting it was Sunday, “What are you doing this weekend?” She laughed. A good sign … or was it? Some rotund woman tried pushing past to get to the Dunkin’ Donuts rack beside the coffee machine.
She squeeze against me to let the rotund woman get her grease and sugar fix, and said, “Why don’t you tell me?” Dear Lord that was quick! I thought. Not that she was being presumptuous about the answer, I was hoping for that one, but hooking her thumbs in my pant pockets right after we met was more than I expected. I wondered if this date would have a charge.
I didn’t know what to suggest. I didn’t want to blow this one-in-a-million chance, but the obsolete instincts said, “Maybe go see something like a, uh, movie …?”
“Why would I want to stare at a big screen for two hours?” she wrapped her tail around my legs. The rotund woman snorted in disgust at the gall of a Zooform propositioning a human, and waddled away. I remember twitching nervously and adjusting my feet, which is probably why her next question was, “Am I making you nervous?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice quavering.
“Sorry,” she said stepping back some, “I just get a little …” she trailed off like I should know what she meant. She smiled, bearing her sharp looking canines, “How about we go to the Molly Malone’s?”
“Where?” I probably sounded stupid.
“It’s a restaurant on Highway 60,” she laughed, a wonderful sound, “great food.”
“Oh,” I mumbled, “Uh, actually I was just …” I didn’t want sound like I was ditched her, but I was horribly tired. Her face fell. “No, no, I’d love to,” I stammered, “but I just got back from vacation …”
“I see,” she said indignantly and walked way.
“No, wait,” I chased her to the counter trying to remember her name, “Jenny!”
“What?” she snapped, turning on the ball her foot. Her tail swayed back and forth rapidly. The girl at the counter reached for the phone.
“Here,” I dug out a business card and handed it to her, “call me tomorrow. I would love to take you up on that.”
“I hope so,” she said taking it.
I spent the next day at work a nervous wreak. I had to leave the office and I knew that was when she would call. I was right, too. My voice mail had a message asking me to call “if I really wasn’t justing playing games”. I immediately called and that Friday we ate fish and chips while people watching and made rude comments about people’s fashion sense. I was in love.
It turned out Janey was only five years old; a wonder of nanotechnology, genetic engineering and neurological programming. Then as well as now the genetically altered Zooforms were given shortened lifespans — a twisted business decision — it meant she was really about thirty. The people who “bought” her were a middle-aged couple who couldn’t have children and liked cats. They knew she’d be physically and mentally an adult when they got her, but at least they had a child. They were wonderful people when I met them and grateful that she’d found someone.
When she met my parents, however, it was hell. My mother was pretty religious, a lot more than me, so she hated Jenny. We met for dinner without me telling my mother about what Jenny was. I knocked on my parent’s front door and pushed it open saying, “hello!”
“Kavin,” my mother replied smiling and we hugged. When we let go she say Janey, her face went slack and she said flatly, “who are you?”
“Mom, this is Janey,” I said hugging Jenny’s shoulder.
“Oh,” my mother said and went into the kitchen without another word. I tried to smooth is over later with Jenny by reiterating how religious she was but we tried not to see them again.
We wanted to marry, but couldn’t. By then she was seven and wanted to simply go to a justice of the peace, but state law prohibited “natural born humans and artificially born persons with more than 0.01% genetic difference from normal humans” from marrying; effective this barred any Zooform from marrying a “natural born human.” We’d never even have a common law marriage since she’d die before then.
Jenny was more active that I ever could hope to be. Besides her intense love of physical activity, from a heighten metabolism she had explained, she had a zest for life. She only owned a car for the winter and often rode her motorcycle like a bat out of hell then anyway. We would take trips, almost at random, across the country with only a week’s forethought. The trips were great times. She and I would often camp instead of renting a hotel and those were tender moments. In Yosemite we climbed to the top of a smaller mountain and camped looking out over the higher ones. We lay, both nude and miles from anyone else, watching the sunset over the Sierra Nevada Mountains when she said, “I wish this never would end.”
I turned to look at her green eyes reflecting the oranges, reds, and violets, “So do I,” and held her tight.
“What would you do if it did?” She asked suddenly.
“What? The sunset?” I asked, unsure of what she meant.
“No this,” she said and kissed me. I didn’t know what to say. I knew it would, it always did, but for her it meant even more. She was only going to be twenty when she died and was already seven by then. Until then she had never mentioned her own death and didn’t again for a long time.
On the anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington we went there ourselves and two million others not only were we wanting all humans to be seen as equal we wanted everyone to be seen as equal. We fought hard to kill a constitutional amendment that would define what a person was under the eyes of the law. We camped outside the U.N. Building while they debated a treaty that would give Zooforms the same protections under international law as humans. We became activists in our own right by spreading our message to those who’d listen.
She never slowed down nor gave any sign of needing to. If I couldn’t do something she made me learn. She was my life. I didn’t care if people didn’t like her picture on my desk it stayed. When my old friends didn’t approve I told them they either shut up about it or leave. After two years together we cohabited and my parent’s cut off contact. That hurt the most, but I kept in contact with my brother, who was jealous of me with Jenny.
I stayed with her through absolutely everything.
One night in bed she cringed when I patted her leg. I asked what was wrong and she said, “My leg’s sore,” and she let it go as rheumatoid arthritis setting in early, but I still worried.
The next day I asked, “How’d your leg?”
“Fine,” she squeezed her eyes in pain as she sat, “okay, not so fine.”
“Where does it hurt?” I asked walking over to her seat on the couch. She pointed to just below her hip, “how long?”
“A few days,” she mumbled, I knew she was lying, her ears had turned back.
“How long?” I said again.
“About a month,” she said finally, “but it’s not bad.”
“It has to be getting worse,” I said sitting next to her, “you weren’t limping last week.”
“I know,” she looked at me with fear in her eyes.
“Why don’t we go to Doctor Inman,” I said referring to her doctor, “just to see.”
We did and it was osteoma — bone cancer — and it was malignant. Chemo worked even though she looked odd bald. It would have been funny if it weren’t so serious.
Then one of our Zooform friends called us and told us to turn on CNN. There was epidemic of a cancer that affected organ after organ very rapidly in some Zooforms her age who’s humans-side genetic design was done by Biodyne and she knew they had done some of her coding. We had her tested, since her genome would be on file, and when it came back we talked before opening the message.
“Janey,” I only used her proper name for such serious matters, “do you really want to know?”
“I don’t know,” she said with her voice faltering.
“I’ll open it only if you want to know,” I said, “do you?”
“No,” she whispered and said, what I knew was her motto, “The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.”
“And you have burned so very very bright,” I finished the thought.
In retrospect it was positive. After the osteoma she got pancreatic cancer. During that treatment they found ovarian cancer in her non-functional reproductive organ. After that we gave up and came home.
We tried to keep upbeat, we really did, but what could we do? Her body was breaking down ten years too young. One night we were lying in bed and she was whimpering. I asked, “do you want some more medicine?”
“No,” she whispered, “turn on that song we like.”
“Which one?” I asked since there were so many.
“You know” she said. I did and dialed up the song. When it began playing she said quietly “You always said that was me, Janey …”
“I know,” I said taking her hand.
“You never really thought about it did you?” She said facing the wall away from me. She was too tired to turn.
“What?”
“What happened to her,” She said, “in the song?”
“I’ve wondered about her,” I said honestly, “but I had you.” I held her through the night and I don’t remember if I slept, but by morning she was gone. I kissed her on her forehead when I knew and lay weeping listing to her song. I might have well died that day too.
The arrangements we had made were followed and she was cremated, as was her desire. We had talked, when she was still alive, about what to do with her ashes. She always said it was to macabre to think about while she was alive, so we never decided what to do. But in the end I did know. I took her to the top of our mountain, in the Sierra Nevada, waited for the sunset and spread her ashes against the wind.