“Is touching me really that bad? You seemed to enjoy it.” When his words didn’t get a rise, the grin fell from his face and Wayne rose as well to tap her chin. “Buck up, dollface. No need to have such a somber look on that beautiful brow. You did some finework.”
“I did.” That much they could agree on. “But. . . what does it really matter? What does any of itmatter?”
“Don’t go second-guessing on menow.”
“I’m not,” Jo said firmly. But the conviction loosened some with a sigh. “I’m not,” she repeated, mostly for herself. “It’s that, the world is so big. People die every second. Every moment we breathe, someone suffers. There’s not enough time to fix themall.”
“Which is why you can’t worry about them all.” It sounded cold, detached.Almost likeSnow.
“How long does it take until I can feel that way?” Jo looked out the window. The city had never felt more full than when she imagined all the needs within it that wentunanswered.
“Hard to say. . .” Wayne shrugged. “I think for me it was the second World War. . . watching the inexcusablecarnage.”
Jo pressed her eyes shut. Being a mostly helpless spectator to the horrors of war was an impossible thing to fathom. She wanted to think about anything else. “What year are youfrom?”
“I was born in1910.”
“1910. . .” she repeated, trailing off in thought. He’d been in the Society for nearly a century and a half. “How do you doit?”
“How do I do it?” He seemed startled by thequestion.
“Live, without living? Watch the world get spliced apart and stitched together wish after wish?” It was ineloquent, perhaps poorly put. But judging from the shadow on his face, he heard the true depth of thequestion.
Wayne looked out the window for a long moment and Jo left him to his thoughts. She’d let him have all the space he could gather to form the answer; it was an impossibly hard question, but one she had to ask all the same. Eventually, he stood, wordlessly, and walked out onto their rooftop terrace. “This is an answer best given with a view to cut its grimnature.”
Jo followed behind, listening closely as hespoke.
“The cheap and easy answer is that you get used to it,” he started, finally. “Because, eventually, as with all things, time and habit win out. And the more time that passes, the less invested youbecome.”
She stared at the Eiffel Tower in all its orange-gold, illuminated glory. Jo would always worry for her mother and Yuusuke. But what about Lydia, the little girl who would’ve been Jo’s sister? She couldn’t find much more compassion for the child than any other. With enough time, enough generations, she could see losing all connection to the realworld.
“You make do with the time you have, though. Maybe even realize good ways to spend it, if you’re willing to get an earful every now and then from Snow. And, well, Eslar. . . he really is an intolerable suck-up, but the rest of the crew isn’t so bad. There’re worse people to spend eternitywith.”
“At least we’re not alone,” she agreedthoughtfully.
For a long moment, they simply shared each other’s companionable silence. Jo leaned against the railing of their terrace balcony. It was such a beautiful night, such a beautiful moment. If only she could make it stretch into infinity, escape the heavy knowledge that the two of them would be heading back, likely soon. They’d finished their mission, and it would certainly be time to face the consequences ofit.
With a soft sigh, Jo turned away from the mesmerizing sight. Wayne’s thoughtful expression caught her attention, a distant and almost wary look in his eyes. Slowly, Jo shifted a little bit closer to him, angling herself to catch his blankstare.
“Wayne?”
Almost as if blinking himself out of a haze, Wayne turned his attention away from wherever his thoughts had wandered and back to her. She could almost see the veil lifting from hiseyes.
“Hm?” He tilted his head at her, smile soft andquestioning.
“What was yourwish?”
Wayne stilled. Another distant look at something she couldn’t see. Another long silence. Long enough that Jo began to feel awkward, unsure if the man would even answer at all. Perhaps he couldn’t find the words. Perhaps he didn’t wantto.
“You know, that’s not something you just askpeople.”
“I’m not some random person,” she needlessly reminded him. “And you already knowmine.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You know, you’re right, so I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you. But don’t go asking any of the others, allright?”
Jo nodded, andwaited.
“The Great Depression seemed like it was going to last forever. There was no end in sight. . .” His voice had dropped to a thick whisper. Not heavy and husky with lust as she’d heard earlier, but weighted with longing. “I was a stockbroker, you see. Best of the best. Called me Nickel Boy, because I took a nickel and turned it into an empire. Then, I lost itall. . .
