“Why do you want it?” I start to laugh. I can’t shake the image of a big, dark hole where the kidney used to be. I don’t know why I’m laughing. It isn’t funny.
Tosca swats a piece of hair out of her face in a pissed off way. “None of your business, asshole.”
I stop laughing. Tosca breathes in and out through her nostrils. Neither of us says anything. She doesn’t leave, though. She walks along beside me with her hand fisted over her pocket like she thinks I’m going to take her precious kidney.
Then we’re in the fetus room, surrounded by what look like shriveled brown monkeys in glass cases. Some are the size of a real baby. Some are just little fish with bulging eyes and a lumpy tail instead of legs. Tosca stands still in the middle of the room, like she’s forgotten I’m even here. For the first time, she looks like she wants to bolt. She looks the way I feel.
I should say something, but I just cough and scratch my head. One of the fetuses was born with his organs outside his body. He didn’t live, obviously. Next to him, there’s one with a half-formed head, like a pencil. Like an abandoned art project.
Tosca puts one hand over her stomach and trails the other across the glass. “Where do they get these?”
“Unclaimed bodies from China. I think.”
“They just take them, huh? No names, no families.”
“I guess.” I rub the bridge of my nose where my glasses keep pinching me. Tosca’s smears of color and the babies in their glass wombs come back into focus.
“What if the soul doesn’t leave the body when it dies?” Tosca rolls a thumbnail between her lips. “What if they’re watching us right now?”
“That’s fucked up.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Maybe it’s peaceful, you know?”
I shake off the panic bubbling in my stomach. I used to have dreams about dying and being stuck in my body. Like it was this heavy, wet thing clinging to me. Everyone would carry me to the cemetery, and I couldn’t feel or move very much, but I could see. I’d try to say something, to tell them, “No I’m still here.” But all I could do was watch.
Tosca waits for me to agree with her. I say I don’t know, and we start walking again like nothing happened. She’s watching me, though. I pretend not to notice, but I can feel those greyhound eyes scrutinizing me.
Finally she says, “So why are you here?”
“I wasn’t aware I needed a motive.”
“I know you have one.”
“No reason.” I rub my hands on my pant legs and pretend to be interested in a Teratoma. It looks like something you’d find in the sink drain, but uglier and with teeth. I don’t know why I’m here. It wasn’t my therapist’s idea. It was mine, but now I can’t remember why. Probably because Mom told me not to go.
Tosca snorts, but doesn’t smile. “Cut the shit, Jacob. You came here same as me. Same as the rest of the world with their heads shoved so far up their asses they’ve forgotten what they’re even doing here.”
“And what exactly is that?”
“You’re the intellectual. You should know that.” She grins and does a little skip away from me. Her skirt flies up, and I duck my head before she turns around. “Here we are, Jacob, in our comfy little universe, breathing, fighting, fucking, and we ask ourselves what our purpose is. But we know. We all know, we just don’t like it.”
Tosca circles the exhibit like a dancer. Bits of hair come out of the pigtails, down around her face, and the kidney in her jacket pocket flops back and forth. “From the second that egg puffs up and starts splitting, we’re going somewhere. But where? Wealth? Fame? Love and enlightenment?” She pauses at one of the bodies and touches his hand. “No. When you scrape away all the bullshit, what’s left? Intentions don’t mean shit. When all is said and done, what’s the one thing we’re here to do? To die, probably.”
She rubs his fingertip against hers, and for a second she has that same expression she had when her hand closed around the kidney. My blood’s thudding in my ears and I feel sick, but I don’t know why. She glances at me.
“What do you think of that?”
“I think that’s a pretty sick way of looking at the world.”
“Can I feel your hair?”
“What?”
“Your hair.” She steps too close again, and looks me full in the face. “Guys always have the best hair. I mean look at yours. I bet it feels awesome. Can I?”
All I get out is, “Um,” before Tosca has both hands in my hair.
She’s on the very tips of her toes to reach me. I never noticed how tiny she is. I glance from her shoes to her face. A skinned knee. Creases in her jacket. A faded band shirt stretched across the little hills of her stomach and breasts. I get to her face, and a jolt of fear goes through me when I see her expression. She’s studying me. Like a bug tacked up to the wall. Like I’m one of the bodies.
Her fingers snag a knot and I jerk a little.
“Ow.”
“Hey Jake.” She twists the bits at my temples around her fingers, and purses her lips. “Want to touch it?”
My mouth goes dry. Then I realize she’s talking about the kidney. “Oh.”
“Want to?”
“Not really.”
“Feel it. It’s cool.”
“No thanks.”
“Just touch it.” The next thing I know, the kidney’s out of her pocket and in my face.
“Holy shit!” I shove her and jump back. “Get away from me.”
It was harder than I’d meant to push her. She stumbles back and almost falls. For a second, I see the surprise on her face, but then it’s replaced by something else.
“Oh my God. I get it.”
I stare at the ground and mumble, “Just put it back.”
She puts the kidney away, but she’s grinning like an idiot. Like it’s all a game and she just won a microwave. “I fucking get it. This is some weird kind of therapy for you, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Look at you, you’re terrified.”
“I just don’t want to touch your stupid kidney, okay?”
A security guard passes us, and I shut up. Tosca waves at him like they’re old friends. He gives her a look.
Once he’s out of earshot, I say, “You do know they have security cameras.”
“Oh they’re not going to find out. Stop worrying.”
“Fine. Just don’t implicate me in your psychotic endeavors.”
She sighs. “Jake, do you have insomnia?”
“Not really.”
“Nothing works, does it?”
I laugh and look around the room. Organs, systems, and the bodies with their bizarre props. They’re posed to look like they’re playing fetch with a puppy, or writing a sonata, or some other bit of everyday life we take for granted. Like they don’t know they’re dead because someone forgot to tell them.