I came to him. Yes, that had to be the reason he had filmed my joy. I began to cry.
When my image blurred and disappeared, then another woman, Italian perhaps, came walking toward the camera, happy, welcoming, younger—then blurred, and another woman followed, Japanese, equally excited and pleased, open, fresher and younger, and then—
“It’s Lucy Hastings,” I exclaimed. She, too, approached the lens, her face happy with unmistakable anticipation. “His assistant. Your assistant! The other Lucy.” Something detonated with a dull thud in my chest.
Lucy Hastings was quickly replaced by yet another welcoming woman. Gabriel touched a button, and the series sped up. Dozens of ever more beautiful women came rushing toward the lens, their lovely, intelligent faces aglow, arms lifting for embrace. I was speechless. And there I myself appeared again, and Gabriel slowed the speed to that of real time. I was in bed now, wearing a favorite nightgown, lime green, holding out my arms, happy, willing, alive, the camera coming closer. And then the Italian woman wearing black lace lying on gleaming sheets—
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop! Were they all named Lucy? Were they?” I felt hysteria rising.
“At first,” Gabriel said. “Later Thom just called them the Lucys.”
“My valentine,” I sobbed. I jerked the flash drive out of Gabriel’s machine and stood up. “You betrayed me,” I yelled. I had not been enough for Thom. Then I sobbed out the impossible words “Thom betrayed me,” but now I was whimpering and gasping.
“Give the flash drive to me, Lucy.” Gabriel closed the computer and slipped it back in its case.
“Why? To smear Thom’s name?” I retracted the tip of the memory stick and placed the cord over my head. It pleased me, despite everything, to feel the familiar metal against the skin between my breasts once again. “It’s a fraud. Those women couldn’t have happened. It’s something you already had in your computer. It’s an illusion, a computer trick.”
As he stood up, Gabriel said calmly, “You recognized Lucy Hastings, I believe.”
“She was your girlfriend. You could have made that video.”
“Actually, we shared her. Thom had a very small camera built into the corner of his glasses. Did you ever notice how carefully he positioned his glasses on the nightstand—as though they were looking at you?”
I thought of the heavy frames of Thom’s glasses, but the lenses were also thick and heavy. He had needed a durable frame.
“I’ve watched the videos. In the next sequence you and Thom are making love. And then the others and Thom—”
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop, stop, stop!”
Gabriel did stop. My chest heaving, I stood and stared at Gabriel, watched from my own detached distance the two of us standing in the tangled jungle, confronting each other. He held the computer; I closed my hand around Thom’s memory stick.
“Why would he?” I demanded. My mind whimpered, We were happy! My body whispered, I trusted him.
“Thom lusted after an integrated life; he liked to keep his best equations near his private life.” Gabriel watched me with remote curiosity. “Thom was a risk taker, a gambler.” Gabriel spoke in a dry, informative way. “It excited him. It spurred his thinking to have astrophysics and earthy sex dangerously cohabiting on his drive. He was so much older, Lucy. It made him feel alive, his collection.”
I marveled at Gabriel’s coldness. No. He looked slightly amused, disdainful of Thom and of me. “I won’t give it to you,” I said.
“I’m sure there’s something scientifically important there on the file. Something beyond the briefcase notes you gave me. Thom always finished preparing his lecture just before his presentation. Did you realize that, Lucy? You two would have lunch or dinner; then he would take the flash drive from you. I’d be sitting across the room from you—shop-talking with my colleagues. He’d open his laptop, take the flash drive back from you, fiddle around for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour at the table to claim the brilliant conclusions that were always there waiting for him at the edge of his brain. You’d have a chocolate dessert.” Gabriel chuckled with a sneer. “Thom never ate dessert. He wanted to keep his youthful figure.”
“Just like you,” I added, glancing up and down his lean, fit body. He was a serpent.
“Of course you hadn’t opened the flash drive before you came back. You’d been shopping, visiting a museum—”
“The Anne Frank House.”
“He liked the risk—suppose you’d lost the flash drive or were delayed?”
“No. He trusted me. I was trustworthy about punctuality.”