Vagabond Fugue Chapter 4: Prelude to a Revelation

VAGABOND FUGUE Gypsy D. Sideshow

The Vagabond Fugue Book One: The Xandromachia Chapter 4, “Prelude to a Revelation”

“Wait, now what?” Xander, realizing himself, covers up haphazardly while reaching for a towel. The woman leans toward him, begins to reach for his face, then blinks and looks away, turns out the door and strides to the kitchenette below deck.

“I didn’t mean to- I didn’t know you were-” a blush heats up Xander’s face. Still wet, goose bumps rising up his back, Xander dashes into the yacht bedroom and opens the closet door for the first time.

“Whoa,” he whispers, scanning a wildly diverse wardrobe both hanging in full formal outfits and sorted and folded in separate cubbies of casual wear. All, somehow for him.

“I hope I didn’t startle you,” Xander calls out while stepping into a pair of fresh cargo shorts, calling out loud enough for the woman to hear.

“No worries, Romero” she tells him, then sighs into a half laugh. “It’s not like I haven’t ever seen-” The woman appears at the doorway, looks in on him as he pulls a knitted tank over his scarred abdomen.

Those scars- even in their digital

form- she remembers the topography of those scars against her lips, He must have projected them into this world through his unconscious.

at him. Xander stares back at her, searching her face, her pupils growing smaller, her breathing increasingly shallow. Xander thinks he can almost feel the blood draining from her Xander’s face registers confusion, face. Her pulse, whirring and dizzy. looking at the woman. “Romero? No, I’m-” he pauses, touches the back of “So it’s true,” his skull. Her eyes travel from his she says finally. “Romero is lost.” She scars to the tubes at his head. She stops, looks to the floor. Xander begins to steel herself toward a rev- also lowers his eyes to the floor, tryelation of disappointment. “I am ing to mirror the woman’s emotions. not Romero,” he tells her. “The android woman called me Xander.” “Romero,” A long moment as the woman looks he says softly. “Romero must be my-”

“ F u c k ! ” the woman erupts, slapping her palms against the closed door, popping it open, then storms back to the kitchenette.

“Motherfucker!”

Xander freezes. What do I do? She is so upset! He feels like he can hear the thrumming of her pulse, gaining, pounding harder. Then yes, he can feel the painful heat of capillary refill rising in her palms where she slapped open the door.

Though keenly aware of her body, Xander feels helpless to soothe her.

It is happening again. A loss, a tearing away. Of what? He senses that he should know what he is losing in the stitches of his very body; even this borrowed digital body.

Then it happens, a swirl of light just beyond the showXander enters the kitchenette in er and over head.a glass tentative steps, his removes from a cabinet of tumblers, and fills it with water from the pump sink. He moves toward the woman, slouched on the bench seat by the kitchenette table. He places the glass of water near the edge, slides it slowly toward her while still clutching the glass. The bottom of the glass makes a weary

“Uhm...” the womwater trail across the table’s for surface. an says, waiting The woman watches the glass, looks Xander to from realize up Xander’s arm, his fingers to his wrist, his elbow to his shoulder, up his to his condition, eyes pleading for something... while also seeming lost and vacant.

“Xander? Fucking Xander? am I

“hello gonna havesailor...?” to go through all of this shit again?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Xander tells her, his eyes growing sad. “I am sorry that I don’t understand.”

“Goddammit,” she whispers then takes the glass, takes a sip of water.

“Are you the one the android woman told me about?” Xander finally asks, “the one who is meant to help me find my brother?”

The woman looks hard at Xander.

“What do you remember?” the woman finally asks him. Xander watches her raise the glass of water to her lips again.

tongue worries over each contour of each remnant of each detail...it seems the harder I try to remember, the faster the remnants melt away.”

“I remember lips like yours,” he begins.

“I remember glowing with desire. I remember swirls of wet peach light, and flashes buzzing, settling around my head. I remember what feels like fragments of dreams, vignettes, stories that may belong to me or not.”

Xander finally sits down on the bench seat across from her. “The android woman told me you could help me find my brother. My brother... Romero?”

“I mean,” the woman says, growing more irritated, “what do you remember about Romero?”

The woman looks at the water glass as the condensation begins to drip down the outside, these virtual world designers have thought of everything....almost everything. Romero, where are you baby? Her chin begins to tremble but her eyes flash in anger to usher away the grief.

Xander’s chest rises and falls, rises and falls, like a baby working itself up to cry.

“You really don’t remember what you did to him?” she asks him.

“I feel this absence,” he continues, “like a hollowing out in my Xander shakes his head. body, like an empty apricot pit of memory, an absence like a miss- “Convenient,” she says, absentminding tooth, and no matter how my edly fingering an ‘X’

into the condensation of the water glass.

“What have I done?” Xander asks her.

A silence, an absence of words like an accusation. Finally, without looking up, she tells him, “You convinced Romero to kill himself so he could follow you here.”