Today we have an excerpt from Izzy Wasserstein‘s debut novel, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart. Due to be published by Tachyon Publications in a couple of weeks (March 12th), it’s a “a queer, noir technothriller of fractured identity and corporate intrigue”. Check out the synopsis…
In mid-21st-century Kansas City, Dora hasn’t been back to her old commune in years. But when Dora’s ex-girlfriend Kay is killed, and everyone at the commune is a potential suspect, Dora knows that she’s the only person who can solve the murder.
As Dora is dragged back into her old community and begins her investigations, she discovers that Kay’s death is only one of several terrible incidents. A strange new drug is circulating. People are disappearing. And Dora is being attacked by assailants from her pre-transition past.
Meanwhile, it seems like a war between two nefarious corporations is looming, and Dora’s old neighborhood is their battleground. Now, she must uncover a twisted conspiracy, all while navigating a deeply meaningful new relationship.
Now: on with the excerpt…!
*
I hadn’t seen Juan in years, not since I left the commune. When he showed up at my door, struggling to make eye contact, I knew that Kay was dead.
“Dora,” he said, his hands flexing and releasing at his sides, as if trying to grasp something that wasn’t there. “It’s Kay.”
An overdose, he explained. They’d found her this morning, unresponsive. I knew it was true, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Not that she used. I knew that. Between illicit drugs and street-brewed versions of the corporate stuff, most people were on something. But she’d always been precise. Careful.
“I’m sorry to show up like this,” Juan said into the silence. “I thought you should know, and I’d heard you live down here, now—”
He was apologizing for telling me my ex was dead. Because I’d left, and he’d honored that. Apologizing. I felt ill.
“No!” I said, too forcefully. “No, Juan. Thank you. I’d have hated to find out . . .” I almost said “too late,” my brain refusing to accept facts. Trailed off instead, then blurted out: “Can—can I see her?”
He flinched, then nodded. “Of course,” he said. No one would be pleased that I was coming back, including me. I’d made damned sure of that when I left.
I’d sworn never to set foot in the commune again. Kept that vow for years and never thought I’d break it. Never thought I’d outlive Kay, either. I didn’t want to face her body but couldn’t do anything else.
Juan led me to the commune, past apartment buildings, “neighborhood” chain stores, and the occasional pawn shop and hole-in-the-wall restaurant, under the overpass that marked the line between very little wealth and none. Late October, and the heat made every step cost. When I’d last seen the old neighborhood, it had been lively. Elders at their windows or on stoops seeking relief from the heat, dealers on the corners, children playing wherever they could find shade. Things between the neighborhood and the commune were occasionally tense, sure, but there’d been a community here, people who knew one another, looked out for each other. And predators, like in any community. But a real neighborhood, in spite or because of poverty and oppression.
Now it was a ghost town. No one was out on the stoops, no faces in windows hoping for a breeze. One person on a corner bolted as soon as they saw us. The quiet put me on edge. Where had everyone gone?
The front of the commune was a patchwork of red brick and plywood. Two guards on the doorway—so the commune wasn’t entirely ignoring security—were teens, maybe a decade younger than us. They looked at me with mild curiosity. The taller of the two said something in Tagalog and the other guard giggled and not-so-subtly shushed their comrade.
He knocked. A bolt clicked and the interior door opened. The common room was as I remembered it, once a restaurant for the rich, scarred and plastered over, furnished with scavenged and handmade tables and chairs. Seemed like the whole crew was there, clustered in small groups. At first, our arrival was greeted with mild interest. Then someone whispered my name, and tension rippled across the room. Someone I didn’t know called their kid over, clutched them tight. Soon every eye followed me, some wary, a few angry, none pleased. I burn bridges.
I stopped myself from yanking up my hood, just pulled my shoulders back, gave a quick nod to Samara and Samuel, who at least weren’t glaring, and followed Juan. I knew less than half the members, though I’d only been a few years in self-imposed exile. Through the kitchen, which smelled of yeast and sizzling vat protein, where more eyes stared, past what had been a courtyard and pool and was now the community garden, over to the personal rooms. Even before my memory implants, I couldn’t have forgotten the way, but Juan led me. For my safety, or the community’s? I didn’t ask.
Up the stairs of the apartments that made up the rear of the commune. The hand-painted swirls on Kay’s door were peeling like a tired metaphor. Juan put his hand on the latch, looked back at me.
“You ready?” he asked, more gently than I deserved.
“Not sure. But I’m doing it anyway.” Some things you’ve got to see, ready or not.
Sun sliced between the boards covering the wide window, thoughtless of its bright cruelty. Kay lay on her back. Someone had closed her eyes, wiped the vomit from her lips, mopped it up from the sheet as best they could, and put her on her back. Her brown skin was ashen. Can’t say she looked peaceful, but she was past hurting. I stared, even though I knew this sight would stay with me forever. I’d barely functioned before the memory enhancement, but the tech has a cost: I don’t forget, not even when I want to. I knew I’d never escape this last memory of her.
Maybe you only find a love like her once in your life. Who’s to say if that’s a curse or a blessing?
“She was always so careful,” I said. Careful about drugs, not about the commune. I’d told myself that’s why we’d split. Don’t think I ever really believed it.
“Careful isn’t always enough,” Juan said. As if I didn’t know.
I made myself lean close. Didn’t care that she was cold. I pressed my lips to her forehead, meaning it as our parting. It wasn’t enough. Tears weren’t coming, so I pulled her against me, mirroring the last hug she’d given me before I left. She’d always felt dangerously thin, one of many reasons I’d feared for her safety, even at those times when I hadn’t given a shit about my own. Even now I wanted to worry.
When I’d stormed out of the commune, cursing them for fools, all grief and anger and wounded pride, I told myself I was over her. Now I clutched her body like it would do any good. My hands clawed. The points of her shoulder blades were sharp under her worn shirt. Between them . . . something.
Carefully I turned her over, pulled down the shirt. No way anyone would have noticed the needle’s puncture if it weren’t for the bump around it, red and swollen, as clear an allergic reaction as you could ask for.
“Who found her body?” I snapped.
Juan stopped giving me space, came up to look for himself.
“Oh shit,” he said.
I asked again. Sharper.
“Ly. Lylah. When Kay didn’t come down for breakfast.”
“Tell me someone saved the syringe, Juan.”
Someone had. It was set in a box by the corner, next to the rag they’d used to clean up, waiting for safer disposal. I tore a corner from Kay’s cork-board. My contributions, a couple sketches of us, some bad poetry, and a tattoo design, had been purged long ago, replaced with mementos of other loves. I corked the syringe’s tip, carefully wrapped the whole thing and stuck it in my messenger bag. Pulled out my .38, confirmed it was loaded, and clipped it to my belt.
“The gun, Dora, really?” Juan asked, eyes wide. It wouldn’t win me friends in the commune, but I didn’t give a single shit.
“Someone here killed her,” I said. I could see he didn’t want to believe that, his eyes moving between me and Kay’s body. But he knew it too.
“Fuck,” he said. Our nightmares come to life. Kay killed, and it would be easy for this to tear the community apart.
Well. I’ve always been better in a crisis.
“Gather them up,” I said. “Everyone. I’m solving this.”
I’m no PI, but I’ve seen my share. Since I left the commune, I’d survived by selling my skill in operational security. I hadn’t set foot in the commune in years, which meant I was the only one who wasn’t a suspect.
“Are you sure you’re the right person for this, Dora?” Juan asked. As close as we’d been, now he didn’t want to say the obvious. They’d hate me for this.
“Who else?” I let him do the math. No one here, not the cops, who only came to the ghetto in force, and only then when the rich folks who ran the show demanded it. Not some PI the commune couldn’t afford. Me or no one.
“I’ll ask them,” he said. “You know I can’t make anyone agree.” Good luck making a few dozen anarchists agree on much of anything.
“Convince them. Remind them what it will look like if they refuse.”
He stared at me like I was a stranger. Or a fucking cop. When he left, I searched the room. Nothing more to see, just Kay murdered.
“I’ll find them, Kay,” I told her. As if that would fix anything. My specialty is breaking things.
*
Izzy Wasserstein’s is due to be published by Tachyon Publications in North America and in the UK, on March 12th.
Civilian Reader 