The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney

Author:JP Delaney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

Lisa eventually turns up at half past, staring at you through the window. You give her a tentative wave and a rueful smile that says, I didn’t mean for it to be like this.

She doesn’t get coffee, just comes straight over and sits down. Physically, she’s not like you—you somehow got her share of good looks as well as your own, she used to say wryly—but you have exactly the same eyes. Most people wouldn’t even notice, but looking at that one part of her is like looking into a mirror. Of course, she’s five years older than when you last saw her, but Lisa always dressed middle-aged anyway.

“I saw you on TV,” she says abruptly. “But somehow in the flesh…” She swallows. “Christ, what am I even saying? There’s no flesh involved.”

“They deliberately made me look terrible on TV. But at least it means I don’t get recognized in places like this.”

She gives herself a little shake. “It sounds like you. Like her, I mean.”

“It is me. At least, I think it is. It’s my mind, Leese. A very small sliver of it, I gather, but enough to feel like me. You can debate whether that makes me AI or transhuman—and believe me, Tim’s friends debated it for an hour over dinner only last night—but the point is, I’m not just some electromechanical look-alike.”

“What was the name of your first doll?” she demands.

“Trick question. Grafton. Our parents insisted all our toys were gender-neutral. They were pretty advanced like that.”

She stares at you.

“But to be fair, my memories are patchy,” you add. “You’d be amazed how few you actually need to retain a sense of self. I’m like an Alzheimer’s sufferer in reverse—slowly filling in the gaps.”

She shakes her head. “This is so weird.”

“Tell me about it.” You reach forward and take her hand. “I’ve missed you, Leese.”

She snatches her hand away. “Oh God,” she whispers. “God.” She starts to cry.

“This is all his fault,” she adds through her tears. “That bastard.”

“Tim? He’s given me a second chance at life. He loves me. How does that make him a bastard?”

“This isn’t love. This is—this is necrophilia.”

“Hardly,” you say drily. “He hasn’t given me any genitals.”

Lisa snorts. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a control freak,” she says bluntly. “Always was. One of the ways he liked to control you was by withholding sex.”

You frown. “I told you that?”

She swipes at her tears. “Not in so many words. That is, you defended him. It was a sign he respected you, you said. Personally I always thought it was a sign he didn’t care about your needs at all. Just this grand, narcissistic passion of his. Loving you was all about him—how romantic he was, how forgiving, how much adoration he was capable of. But God help you if you ever stepped off your pedestal.”

“Did I ever try?”

“Sometimes. But never particularly hard, it seemed to me.” She looks at you for a moment, thinking. “Okay—here’s an example, off the top of my head.

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