The Aperture

Chapter 10

You're Not My Type Anymore

MacGregor turned the key to the lock and pushed open the apartment door, allowing it to swing open with its own momentum. “Ta-da!” he said.

Alyndia peered through the doorway. The room was full of flowers of all shapes and colors tied with silver and white ribbons. On the largest was the message in bright, green letters, “Welcome Home, Connie!” The flood of color was a sight to behold. The sweet, delicious scent of flower nectar filled her head.

She walked in, taking in the beauty of the flowers. “These are lovely,” she said.

“Where did they come from?”

“I bought them for you. Do you like them?”

“Yes—Yes, I do.”

“I’m glad, because they cost a fortune.”

Once they entered the apartment, MacGregor closed the deadbolt the door behind them. Alyndia stood at the entrance to the living room and looked. Sans the multitude of flowers, she found she was able to visualize what the room looked like earlier, which came as a relief to her. It was tastefully decorated in light blues and whites. Across from a white marble fireplace was a glass-topped cocktail table set in front of a plush-looking white sofa with three-toned blue stripes. The cocktail table and the sofa sat on a huge, circular blanched-white fuzzy carpet. Afternoon sunlight shone through the sliding glass doors, lending the room a cheerful countenance. They were on the twenty-first floor, and their view of the cityscape was spectacular. It was all quite cozy and nice.

“So this is where we live.”

“Yep. Just you and me,” MacGregor replied as he passed into the kitchen. “You don’t think I’d find someone else already, do you?”

“We’ve lived together for a while now, haven’t we?”

“Four years already. I was thinking that myself this morning. I know—it sure doesn’t seem like it.” he said from someplace in the kitchen. She heard him rummaging through the kitchen, and then the tinkle of glass.

“Are we betrothed?”

“What?” he asked, poking his head from the kitchen. His eyebrows were raised. He seemed genuinely surprised at the question.

“Are we married?” she rephrased.

He popped his head past the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. “It’s funny you should bring that up just now,” he said with a mischievous smile.

“So, we’re not?”

“Of course not.” He ducked back into the kitchen.

That’s a relief! she thought. Then something caught her eye. On the cocktail table in plain view was a black, leather holster containing a dark metal object. She picked it up, unsnapped the leather strap on the holder, and withdrew the object. This was a gun. Although she knew what it was called, its specific purpose escaped her. She cradled the object in both hands; it was heavier than it looked. She raised it to her nose and cautiously sniffed it; it smelled of oil and steel. The item felt good in her hands, and it gave her positive emotions. Apparently, Connie had known this particular item well.

Will was still busy in the kitchen, so she examined the gun further. On one end was the barrel, which consisted of a hole bored deep into the depths of the gun. She wondered what went into the hole at the end. She looked inside, but it was too deep and narrow to see anything. She shook the entire device. Nothing came out. Within a loop attached to its underside, she found a metal lever. The name of the lever was at the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t find the word for it. Something in her memory told her that this lever activated the device. She held the gun by its handle and looked inside the barrel to see what might come out. She pressed on the lever to activate the device, but it wouldn’t move, and nothing happened.

She noticed a small catch on the side of the object. This was called the safety. She knew that word at least! She flipped the switch. Again, nothing happened. Now she was really curious. For a second time, she looked down the barrel of the gun and placed her hand on the trigger. She was just about to squeeze it when MacGregor appeared at the entrance to the kitchen holding two elegant-looking glasses of light yellow liquid.

“Connie!” he shouted.

His sudden reaction started her, causing her thumb to accidentally push another lever on the weapon. A fully-loaded, steel cartridge popped out of the handle and fell to the carpeted floor.

“What are you doing?” Mac Gregor asked.

“I’m looking at my gun—and look what you made me do!” she said, referring to the cartridge on the floor between her feet.

Before she could make another move, MacGregor rushed over and snatched the gun from her hands. Immediately, he pulled back a lever on the gun. A single bullet fell out of the weapon and to the floor. He stared at the gun his hands for a moment before he slowly raised his eyes to hers, obviously shocked or confounded by something.

“What’s going on here?” he asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“You had a loaded gun pointed at your head with the safety turned off and a bullet in the chamber.”

“So?”

“What am I supposed to think of that?”

“It’s my gun. I can do what I want with it.”

Alyndia did not like the way MacGregor was looking at her. She gathered from his behavior that she had been handling the gun incorrectly, but she could not fathom exactly how or why he should be so worked up over it.

“Don’t you think I know how to operate a gun?”

“That’s not the point. You were aiming it at your head.”

“I was just looking at it, I told you.”

“Bullshit, Connie! What kind of fool do you take me for?”

“I don’t appreciate you talking to me in that tone of voice.”

“Oh, you don’t?”

She reached for the gun in his hand, but he moved it out of her reach.

“Give that back to me. It’s mine.”

“No! Absolutely not!”

He flicked on the safety of the gun, then knelt at her feet to pick up the cartridge and the bullet. “I can’t believe it. Connie. What’s gotten into you?”

Alyndia sighed. Even though she didn’t think his gruff behavior merited giving him an apology, she gave him one anyway just to keep the peace.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? That I stopped you?” He snapped the loose bullet into the cartridge and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. “You stay right there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He took the gun into the bedroom. Then, from the couch, she heard some sounds from the room, like moving wooden panels or something to that effect. He returned without the gun almost a minute later, looking as though he’d regained his composure somewhat.

“I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see what I did, and we’re going to start over.”

“What’s the point of starting over when everything I do upsets you?”

“Are you angry at me because I took the gun away from you?”

“You snatched it out of my hand as though I were a child.”

“What did you expect me to do? I come out of the kitchen, and I see you pointing a gun at your face with your finger on the trigger. And then I find you’ve got the safety off and a round in the chamber.”

“I was being careful.”

“Not when you’re pointing a loaded weapon at your head.”

“A weapon?”

Alyndia felt acutely foolish for not knowing she’d been handling some kind of weapon. It also meant that MacGregor may have been prudent in taking the gun away from her, fearing she might inadvertently injure herself with it. But hers was an honest mistake, arising more out of ignorance than foolishness, as the gun did not look like any weapon ever she’d seen before. She then wondered why the gun had been left lying out in the open if it was really as dangerous to handle as MacGregor suggested by his behavior. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, but his brusque manner irritated her just the same.

“Just be more polite to me next time. I’m a lady, after all, and I want to be treated as one.”

“A lady? That’s funny. That’s the first time I’ve heard you call yourself that.”

She shrugged.

“Fine. I’ll do my best to be more polite, just as long as I don’t see you do that again.”

She noticed a trace of wetness in his eyes as he said this. She didn’t understand why he should feel so emotional about the matter with the gun when it was he himself who overstepped his bounds. She thought that perhaps he felt guilty over the way he’d reacted toward her. Her thoughts turned to Gerald. Will said his organization had incarcerated him. She wondered how they could do that to him. He was innocent, after all. He had told them the truth. And how she herself longed to hear his voice—his natural voice in his native language—without having to use the Box of Tongues. But most of all at that moment, she sorely wished she were with him where ever he was, incarcerated or not, instead of with this ruffian she shared an apartment with.

MacGregor sighed. “You know, babe? When I brought you home today, I certainly didn’t expect this to happen. I had some other things on my mind—completely different things. And now—” He paused. “Jeeze. Now, I don’t know.”

“Know what?”

He did not answer. From his faraway expression, she surmised he was doing some heavy processing.

“Will, I did something foolish with the gun, and I apologized for it. What more do you want?”

“Connie, what do you say that we just do a reset? I mean, forget about everything that’s happened since we got home and start fresh. What do you say?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Okay.”

MacGregor walked back to the table, where he had set down the two glasses of wine from the kitchen. Most of the wine in the glasses had sloshed out when he went to take the gun from her, so he went back into the kitchen to refill the glasses. He managed a smile for her as he returned to the table where she sat. From the look in his eyes, which were no longer moist, she could easily tell his mind was still in other places.

“Here’s the Chardonnay,” he said.

“The Chardonnay?”

“Yes. The one you brought home for us last week. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, of course,” she replied, not even knowing what sort of beverage it was.

They sat down next to each other on the sofa. The sofa was soft, and she allowed her body to sink into the plush cushions. MacGregor sat closer to her than she felt comfortable with, but she said nothing. He handed her one of the glasses of Chardonnay, then he proposed a toast.

“To your homecoming.”

“Yes, to my homecoming.”

They clinked their glasses together. She watched MacGregor take a sip from his glass first, and then she did likewise. Her palate was at once immersed in a sweet liquid that was not altogether unpleasant but different from what she was used to. It tasted alcoholic. She made the connection that a Chardonnay was a type of wine, although quite different from what she sometimes drank in Cerinya with her meals.

“So how does it feel to be home?” he asked her.

“Strange,” she said. And this was the truth.

“So, you really do like the flowers I got you. Huh?”

“Yes. I already told you, and I know they were expensive. Thank you.”

Alyndia gathered that Will did not often go through such extraordinary romantic lengths for her and that Will knew that Connie knew this.

After taking another sip of the Chardonnay, MacGregor stood up and walked over to the sliding glass window that led to their balcony. He stood there for a moment, glass in hand, taking in the expansive view of the rectangular buildings.

“You know, Connie, while you were in the coma there at the hospital, I got to thinking about you and me and all the things we’ve been through. I thought about what you really mean to me and how there have been times when I really didn’t give you the attention you deserved.”

He paused to take another sip of his wine. Alyndia was still uncertain as to where this conversation would lead.

“You have to admit, we have quite a history together.”

“Was it a pleasant history?”

“No, it wasn’t all pleasant. You know that. We’ve had our ups and downs like any other couple. Good times, bad times, you know. I don’t think we’re any different in that regard.”

“I suppose.”

“I’ve always felt a deep connection with you, even though I didn’t always show it.”

He paused again. Obviously, the exact words he wanted to say didn’t come easy to him.

“Go on, Will. I’m listening.”

“As I was saying, while you in the coma, I got to thinking about what you mean to me and what my life would be like if you weren’t here.”

“And?”

“I’ll be honest: I think you and I ought to get married.”

Alyndia could scarcely believe what she heard. “What?”

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Will you marry me, Connie?” he asked, while gazing warmly into her eyes.

Alyndia was speechless. She had no idea how to handle this situation. She did not yet have a good feel for the kind of relationship Connie had with MacGregor. Neither did she know the customs of this culture or what the consequences would be if she refused his proposal. Would Connie accept if she were there? Was she obligated to accept? Her thoughts returned to Gerald. It would not be good for either of them if she agreed to marry this man—a man she barely knew and did not particularly find attractive. Gerald held her heart. She would be his sorceress and his only. She would make him very happy. Alyndia decided the best answer to MacGregor’s proposal was no answer at all. She averted her eyes from his.

“Will, I don’t know what to say.”

“I know this proposal is kind of out of the blue,” MacGregor continued. “But I think we can restart that fire we had a long time ago before the rat race turned us into a couple of roommates.”

His hand was drenched with nervous perspiration. The sensation of the wetness was queer and unpleasant to her. She withdrew her hand from his and placed it next to the other on the delicate neck of the wineglass.

“Why would you want to marry me if we already live together?”

“You asking me that makes it sound like you’re reluctant.”

“But there’s so much we don’t know about each other.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Why so?”

“Connie, we’ve been friends since we went through training together. We’ve been all over the world together. We’ve worked on countless assignments together. On top of that, we’ve been living together forever. How could we not know each other after all that time?”

“It’s possible to know a person for a lifetime and still not know everything that goes on in their soul.”

“That sounds like an excuse if I ever heard one.”

She agreed with his assessment, and she understood his pain, but there was no way for her to avoid hurting him in this situation unless she accepted his proposal, and that wasn’t going to happen. In a more positive light, he was feeding her valuable information about his and Connie’s relationship, and having better perspective on the situation, enabled her to build a more coherent argument for which she could refuse him.

“I don’t think it will work, Will. I like you as my friend, and that’s as far as it goes.”

“What about all the time we spent together? Was it all for nothing?”

“We had good times together.”

“But we were in love once.”

“Perhaps that’s all that was meant to be between us.”

“We can fall in love again,” he said. “You and me—we are like two shoes, like two gloves, a matching pair that go together.”

“Maybe this familiarity that you’re talking about is just stagnation. Maybe it’s a sign that our relationship has run its course, and it's time to move on to have new experiences, to fall in love again, but with someone else.”

He shook his head. “The way you talk makes you sound like you’re ready to break up.”

“I’m suggesting nothing of the sort.”

“But you’ve been thinking about it. And don’t tell me it ain’t true, because I can tell.”

“How?”

“Just by the way you talk, by what you just said.”

“There’s only you in my life and no other.”

“That’s not the vibe I get. There’s somebody else. I don’t know who it is yet, but there’s definitely somebody.”

Before Alyndia could reply, there came a strange fluttering, bell-like sound from behind MacGregor. The abrupt occurrence of this sound startled her, and she jumped to her feet. The sound played for a few seconds, then it disappeared. A few seconds later, the sound repeated again for a few seconds. The sound was coming from the end table behind him. He turned and picked up an ivory-colored, flat, rectangular slab from the table behind the couch. She then recalled seeing him fiddling with the slab back at the hospital. She had no idea what it was. He looked at the slab and cursed.

“Damn! Bad timing!”

“What is it?” she asked, referring to why the slab was making noise.

“Just a sec.” He pressed the face of the slab. The sound immediately stopped. He immediately held the slab up to his head and spoke, “Hello? Yes, chief…No, no. It's all right...” And then he proceeded to have a conversation with a tiny voice that issued from the slab.

That’s called a telephone! she thought. And that voice is from a person located somewhere else—fascinating!

Alyndia waited quietly while he spoke into the phone. She wondered whether she could contact Gerald by means of such a device. She took a sip from her wine.

“Yes, chief. She’s here. Just a moment.” MacGregor looked over at Alyndia. “It’s Chief Watkins,” he said. “He wants to talk to you.”

MacGregor handed her the telephone. She held it to her head as MacGregor had done. “Hello?” she asked into the device, and then she listened. She heard nothing. “Is somebody there?” Once again, no sound came from the device.

MacGregor sighed. Alyndia looked up at him.

“What?” she asked.

He took the phone away from her, turned it over, then handed it back. She held the phone up to her head again.

“Hello? Connie?” came a man’s voice inside the handset before she could speak.

Alyndia moved the phone away from her head and examined it in her hand, admiring the illuminated picture of a waterfall on it. Although Professor Layton had told her about telephones, she had never seen one in operation. He claimed that magic was uncommon in this world. For the mysterious technology behind it, the telephone definitely seemed enchanted.

“Yes, this is Connie,” Alyndia answered finally.

“Connie! How are you? Hey, I heard what happened to you...”

Alyndia followed Watkin’s verbal cues in the conversation, all the while relishing the opportunity to use the telephone. She told him affably that she was feeling fine, though a little disoriented, and that she thought she would be fully recovered in no time. He asked her about her disposition on the Layton case. She answered vaguely that she would be investigating it further, and would be following up on it in a few days. During this time, MacGregor watched her from the couch with keen curiosity. When the conversation ended, she handed the telephone back to MacGregor, who pressed something on it and placed it on the cocktail table in front of them. He resumed staring at her.

“Fascinating,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“I mean, the phone. It’s a fascinating device.”

“It’s only an iPhone 16.”

“Do I have one of these?”

“No, yours was a ’14, but it got fried when you put on that bracelet. I took it to have it repaired. Couldn’t be done. I hope you didn’t have anything important on it.”

“How disappointing.”

She took another sip from her wine. She expected that Will would drink more of his, but he sat on the couch with his hands folded on his lap, staring at her with some inscrutable expression she could not read.

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I’ll just spill it out. I think you’re acting a lot differently than you used to before the coma.”

“Really?” she asked as if it were news to her. She wondered how she had been able to deceive him for so long. “How am I different?”

“Well, in lots of ways.”

“Such as?”

“Like the way you were talking to Watson. You always hated the guy, yet you just now talked to him like he was an old friend.”

“He wanted to know how I was. He was concerned. I was only being cordial with him.”

MacGregor lay back on the sofa and rubbed his eyes. “He wasn’t concerned with you, and you know that. He was obligated to call you because you report to him. In fact, you know as well as I do that he’d like nothing more than to boot you out of the service. The guy is incompetent, and he’s always known you’re on to him. You probably ruined his day that told him you were all right.”

“He was very polite. I say let bygones be bygones.”

“That’s another way you are different. You’ve gone soft. You’re not bitchy like you used to be before the coma.”

“You prefer that I act bitchy?”

“No, you are bitchy. I just mean you’re bitchy in a different way.”

Something about this statement coming from his mouth infuriated her. She suppressed an urge to punch him in the face for it.

“Okay. So let me get this straight: I’m a different kind of bitch than you’re used to, and I’m not the kind of bitch you prefer. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You’re twisting it around. And I didn’t call you a bitch.”

“Pretty damned close.”

“Connie, just forget I said anything about it. Just scratch it from the record.”

She took a long sip from her wine. “Ten minutes ago you wanted to marry me, and now I’m a bitch. But you like that, right?”

MacGregor’s telephone rang again. This time, he pressed the screen without looking at who the caller was. The phone went silent.

“Look, Connie. What I want to say is that you’re not acting the way you used to. Not at all, in fact. At this point, I’m starting to think that something bad happened to you at the hospital.”

“I feel fine, probably even better than I should considering the circumstances.” She clutched the bandage where the bracelet had burned her.

“That doctor said you hit your head when you fell. You might have injured your brain. Have you considered that?”

“I see. If I have cordial relations with my boss, it’s a sure sign that I have brain damage.”

“I’m not saying you have brain damage, but you hated Watson before you went into the coma. You told me yourself. What’s changed since you woke up? You haven’t even talked to him until now.”

“So I’ve become kinder person after receiving a bump on the head. You should be glad. Instead, you’re trying to convince me there’s now something wrong with me.”

“And then there’s another thing. All of a sudden you want to meet with your family.”

“My mother’s on her deathbed. Isn’t it right for me to go to her?”

“Of course it’s right. But that’s not the point. It was just surprising how easily and quickly you agreed to do it. You’ve always told me you didn’t care whether your family lived or died. And now your attitude toward them has reversed 180 degrees. Again, it happened right after you woke up from the coma.”

“Maybe I was doing some thinking about it beforehand and didn’t tell you.”

“Connie, in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve only heard you mention them twice. Why would you be thinking of them all of a sudden?” He shifted his weight on the sofa. “Look, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not you like Watson or want to visit your family. That’s your choice. But the radical change I’ve seen in your personality from before and after the coma worry me a lot.”

Alyndia did not like the way MacGregor was talking to her. It was as though he was trying to talk her into being evil—to be as rotten as Connie had been. Her bad behavior was the acceptable norm for him. She sorely wished she had a Silence spell handy to stop him from spouting his nonsense. She got up from the couch and stepped over to the sliding glass window. She sighed at the immense beauty of the city, unable to enjoy the view for the turmoil she felt inside. He continued talking to her from the couch, but she was no longer listening to him. Finally, he stopped, and long silence passed between them.

“Are you done now?” she asked after almost a minute of silence passed between them.

“Done with what? Done with you? Just about.”

She turned to face MacGregor. “Maybe I don’t like the person I was before I put on the bracelet,” Alyndia said. “Did you ever think that this coma has been good for me?”

He let out a short, derisive laugh. “How could it have been good for you?”

“I think I now have a better perspective on what is most important in life.”

MacGregor stared at her, his mouth agape, dumbfounded. Finally, he brought his hand to his forehead and stroked the spot between his eyes. “Maybe we ought to take you back to the hospital and let the doctor check you out. I thought you were fine.”

“I am fine.”

He continued along his same train of thought. “I saw you weren’t yourself at the hospital, but thought you would start feeling like your old self again once you were back in familiar surroundings.”

“I’m not going back to that hospital.”

“I guess I can’t force you.”

“No, you can’t. And I’ll tell you something else: Things are going to be different from now on. The Connie Bain you knew is dead. I am the new Connie Bain. I am the improved version of her, and I’m going to fix the mistakes of the old Connie, and by doing so, I will fix mine.”

“Good Lord.”

“What? You don’t like that?”

She stared intensely into his eyes. “You think the new Connie Bain isn’t bitchy enough? Or is it that I’m the wrong kind of bitch? I still haven’t figured it out yet.”

He broke eye contact with her when she said that. She suddenly became aware of that sharp edge in her voice again. It was present both in the sound of her voice and what she said. It wasn’t like her to be so aggressive and predatory in the way she related to people in Cerinya. Now she saw the effect of this new trait and how effectively she had cowed Will with it. At once, a streak of pity for him rose up in her, a feeling that Connie Bain would never have felt at that moment. She ever felt slightly nauseous at the realization of how she had hurt him.

She took a deep breath before continuing. “Will, I’ve come a long way to be here,” in a softer tone, trying to modulate the edginess out of her voice. “Nothing happens by luck or chance. Everything happens for a reason. The way I see it, the gods have blessed me with this opportunity. I will therefore make the best of it. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

He did not reply. Unable to bear the sight of Will sulking and discomfited on the couch, Alyndia’s turned around again to face the city. Her thoughts returned to Professor Layton. She felt an aching in her breast to be rid of this clueless one and fall into his arms. She finished off the wine in the glass she held. The sweet liquid ran down her throat, imparting its alcoholic spell. She decided that the wine was very good. At least Connie had good taste in wine, she thought. She hoped that a list of good wines lay buried somewhere in the memories Connie left behind.

“I would like to set up a meeting with Professor Layton at the earliest opportunity. I have some questions for him. Can we arrange this?”

“Sure,” MacGregor replied. “Like I said, he’s already in custody. He’s not going anywhere.”

“How soon can I see him?”

“We can set it up for Monday, two days from now. That will give you a chance to rest and kind of clear your mind. And after all that’s gone on this afternoon, I think think you really could use that time you go back to the office.”

“Perhaps you’re right this time.” An image of Gerald smiling at her from behind the glass in his lab crept into her mind’s eye—an image of him on those sweet days when the rays of the sun married magic and technology, and a temporary aperture opened that allowed them to communicate and love to grow. She smiled at the pleasant thought that they now lived in the same world and would soon meet again. Alyndia sighed. “I do look forward to seeing him again.”

“Me too. And if you don’t kick the shit out of him, I’ll gladly do it myself for what he did to you,” MacGregor added.

Hearing Will say that raised her ire slightly. She suppressed the urge to lash out at him again. “Watch your tongue, Will. There will be none of that.” She broke away from the window and stood before him. “The first order of the day for us is to be polite to him. Respectful. You got that?”

“He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Let me decide what he deserves. Who knows? It might turn out that Professor Layton was telling the truth about ‘Alyndia the Enchantress’ coming to live with him here on earth. If that be the case, we have no one else to blame but ourselves for allowing this to happen.” She held up her bandaged wrist. “We might even have to let the professor go.”

MacGregor looked at her with a puzzled expression. She ignored it and held out her empty glass to him.

“How about some more of that delicious Chardonnay I picked out?”