“How many notches did you put on your Lens today?” Yael asks Dez.
Dez holds up a single finger.
“Ouch,” Simon says, his arm slung around Esther’s shoulders. “Have you ever heard of beinggood not great? Maybe you’re getting in your own way.”
“You’ll get there, Dez,” Esther says. “Some assignments just take longer. I only finished two today.”
“Really?” Dez says, buoyed by Esther’s solidarity.
“With all due respect, no,” Yael says. “Dez has to speed it up.” She turns to Dez. “I’m here if you need me.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Dez says.
“Who else is saying that?” Yael’s voice is like a whip.
“Rafe promised to be around more,” Dez says, trying to avoid the question, knowing Simon shouldn’t hear of her conversation with Jet at the bar. “I think he’s busy working on something with the frags.”
“I heard about the latest one.” Simon wrinkles his face. “The one that was … not so dead?”
“And I heard yousensedit right before it fell on Rafe,” Esther adds, sounding intrigued. “How’d you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Dez says. “Actually, there is one thing I could use some help with.”
Yael brightens, leans forward in the booth. “Anything.”
Dez moves closer to her roommates. “I’m having the same problem I had with my brother’s film. Like a scene is missing in the Vault.”
“What scene?” Simon asks, licking salt from the rim of his glass.
Dez is thinking of the pier in Ventura, the day she’d spent with Asher. But there’s no way she can tell them that she was looking through a Lifeline that wasn’t even assigned to her.
“The birth of a child,” she says carefully, thinking of Iris’s film. “And I looked everywhere. Obviously, she had a son. She did give birth. I saw her pregnancy. I saw her raise the kid.”
“You’ll find another scene, Dez,” Simon says kindly.
Esther reaches across the table and squeezes Dez’s hand.
Dez nods and finishes off her drink, but inside, she’s certain of something she can’t say aloud to her friends. The missing scene in Asher’s Lifeline is the only scene of its kind.
She needs to know why her day with Asher has vanished. She needs to know where it went.
Yael points at their empty drinks. “Who’s getting the next round?”
Dez casts her gaze toward the bar, sees that Jet’s gone and Eri is cleaning and polishing his glass, turning it round in a dishcloth so that its cut crystal edges catch the light.
“Me,” Dez says, and rises from the table.
At the bar, she places the empty glasses down.
“Another round?” Eri asks.
“And something else,” Dez says, steeling herself.
Eri puts down the glass she was polishing and drops her voice. “What can I do for you?”
“Missing scenes. Can you tell me anything?”
Eri lets out a low whistle.
