Omega(92)

                             “He wanted it to be over, didn’t he?” Janus stared out the gap in the curtains. “I spoke to him, you know, before he went to the Andes. He was a man slipping, obsessed, trying to get hold of whatever was left for him, focused on one thing and that only.” He looked back at her again. He’d seen a million like her in his life, perhaps more, yet had never lost his appetite for them. Blonds. Brunettes. Redheads. Yes, please. The younger the better, though at a century, this one is older than my usual taste...and yet delicious nonetheless.

                “I’m not all that worried about him now.” She shook loose the sheets that gently entangled her, exposing herself to him totally, as she made her way across the dim, cheap, thin carpeting of the motel, away from the comforter and bedspread. “I wasn’t then, either.”

                “That is because you could not remember him before.” Janus felt in his pocket for the cigarettes he hadn’t carried in over forty years, the things he had quit. “You watched him die and you had no memory of who he was.”

                “Still don’t,” the voice came, empty. “I mean, I see it, now, like I see so many other things-like a movie on a screen, but there’s no texture, no emotion, no caring.” She shrugged her bared shoulders and made a mischievous smile. “I doubt he knew that you had been keeping me as your woman while you were trying to bring back my memory.”

                Janus shrugged, and felt her hand run across his shoulder, felt the touch of youth and energy in it. “I doubt he would have cared, so long as he got you back. But, oddly, I didn’t hear you complain. In fact, I believe it was you who initiated...”

                “It was,” she said, and kissed him. What a bawdy old man am I, Janus thought. Anyone who saw the two of us in here would know instantly what to think, a thousand judgmental thoughts—and every one would be right. Old man, young girl. A laugh sounded in his head.



                             “Careful,” he said, and tugged away from her, feeling her touch against the cloth of his suit.

                “Still worried about me?” she asked, with a twinkle in her eye that warmed his...well, not his heart, that was for certain.

                “Not you,” he said. “I believe you, I see the truth and heart of you. Still skeptical, though, if you’ll forgive me. Erich Winter is no fool, and although it delights me to see you, dear girl, and overjoys me to have you in my bed once more, I must ask...do you know why you are here?”

                “Because you found me,” she said, and he saw the coyness. “Because I remember now.”

                “Oh?” He seated himself in the chair by the window, an old, red one with gold tones in the threads, worn by time and age and people sitting in it. “What do you remember?”

                “I remember why,” she said, kneeling down and resting her chin on his knee. “Why Omega. Why I was with you. Why I lost my memory. For a good cause , of course,” she added.

                “Of course.” He took a deep breath and reached for the water in the little plastic opaque cup he’d left on the end table by the bed. “I always wondered if the next time you lost your memory, the serum we gave you would work. It was always experimental, you know, but supposed to keep everything there, a layer under the surface, so that when the life drained out of you from overuse of your powers—your good heart, you never could keep from using too much of yourself—it’d be like shuffling your personality to the bottom of the deck. And now, back to the top again.” He took a sip of water, felt it roll around on his tongue, cleanse his palate. “Back to yourself.”