Burning Paradise

Winston Bayliss’s house—that is, the house at the address on the simulacrum’s license—was a small home on a street of similar homes. Like many of these houses it featured a wooden front porch in modest disrepair. The lawn had turned patchy and yellow with autumn. A faux-rustic peach basket, planted with geraniums that had died in the last frost, substituted for a garden.

Nerissa had opened the car door before Ethan could say, “Whoa—where are you going?”

“It looks like somebody’s still living here. Maybe it’s the real Winston Bayliss. I want to knock on the door and see who answers.”

“Why?”

But she didn’t answer, and he had no choice but to hurry after her as she strode determinedly up the driveway and onto the porch. She rang the doorbell, then pulled back the screen door and knocked.

Should have brought the pistol, Ethan thought—what if there was another sim inside, what if the house was some kind of sim factory?—but the door creaked open to reveal a stoop-shouldered elderly woman leaning on a walker. She peered at them through bottle-glass lenses and said, “I thought you might be Outpatient Therapy. But you’re not Outpatient Therapy, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” Nerissa said, apparently unfazed.

“No, of course you’re not. Therapy comes on Wednesdays. I’m sorry. So what can I do for you folks?”

“Maybe this is the wrong address. We’re looking for Winston Bayliss?”

“Oh! Well, not the wrong address, but the wrong door. Winston has a separate door around the side. He lives in the basement. He has his own apartment down there. He did the renovation himself.”

“Ah… is he home today?”

“Afraid not. He’s at a conference in Boca Raton and he won’t be back until next week. Something to do with his work. He explained it, but I don’t really understand.”

“You’re Mr. Bayliss’s landlady?”

She gri

“We’re from the Blue Horizon Insurance Agency. Mr. Bayliss contacted us a while back about the possibility of taking out a policy. We were hoping to follow up on that.”

“Well, that can’t be true,” Mrs. Bayliss said.

To her credit, Ethan thought, Nerissa didn’t miss a beat. “Really? Why not?

“I apologize, but it makes me tired to stand… will you come in for a moment? Though I don’t believe I’ll be buying any insurance from you.”

“Of course,” Nerissa said.

“I would offer you coffee, but I don’t drink it anymore. My doctor recommends I don’t.” Mrs. Bayliss frowned. “There might be some instant up in the cupboard. I could boil water, if you like.”

“No, ma’am,” Nerissa said. “Thank you all the same.”

Mrs. Bayliss’s front room was a time capsule in which no item of furniture appeared to be less than thirty years old. The pictures on the end tables bracketing the sofa featured a man who might have been the late Carl and a child who might have been Winston (if Winston Bayliss had ever really been a child). The room’s double-paned windows had been shut and the curtains drawn, enclosing a silence in which the ticking of a mantel clock seemed absurdly loud.

There was nothing to suggest that the house was anything more than the longtime residence of an elderly woman who had been widowed some years before. But that didn’t mean Mrs. Bayliss was necessarily any more human than the creature she claimed as her son.

“You said you doubted Winston would consider a policy with us,” Nerissa said. “May I ask why?”

Mrs. Bayliss looked at Ethan. “Do you talk at all, mister, or are you just for decoration?”

“I’m, ah, in training,” Ethan managed. “I’ll chime in if I’m needed.”

“Just wondered. Anyway, no. No, I can’t see Winston wanting to take out insurance. I assume it’s life insurance you’re selling? But that generally calls for a physical, and Winston won’t see a doctor for love or money. Thankfully, he’s healthy as a horse.”

“Well, that’s good,” Nerissa said. “I hope you’re the same, Mrs. Bayliss, although I see…”

“The brace I’m wearing on my leg? That’s why Outpatient Therapy comes by every week. I had a knee replaced in September. Arthritis. I think it’s wonderful what they can do nowadays. Not that it was such a breeze, the surgery I mean. The physiotherapy’s no fun, either. Though I do like the State nurse who helps me with it. She tries to sound tough, but she’s a sweetie.”

“Winston didn’t get his fear of doctors from you, then.”

“Nor from his father. But he’s had it all his life. That’s why I can’t picture him volunteering for a physical. Even when he was younger, back when he was in school…. but I don’t imagine you want to hear these stories.”

“I don’t mind,” Nerissa said. “Frankly, it’s nice to get out of the cold and chat a little. Just don’t tell my supervisor.” She chuckled, and Mrs. Bayliss laughed agreeably. “Every once in a while we pull a name from the wrong list and end up calling on someone who’s already declined our offer. Probably Winston is one of those. I’ll have a word with my boss about it. It doesn’t do us any good to bother people who aren’t interested in what we have to sell. Though I have to say, it’s an attractive policy package at the price.”

“I’m sure it is.”

The ease with which Nerissa told these lies surprised Ethan. He guessed it was a skill she had taught herself since 2007, the way he had taught himself marksmanship.

“Fear of doctors,” she said, “is more common than you might think.”

“Winston must have been born with it. Fortunately he was a healthy child. Maybe a little too cautious. He always disliked sports, or anything rough-and-tumble. But he seldom caught cold and never came down with anything more serious, even though he wouldn’t submit to vaccinations. The one time he did hurt himself—well, that was probably harder on me and Carl than it was on him.”

“How so?”

“He was walking home from school one day when a car clipped him. Winston was ten years old, and the car driver—we never did find out who it was, but I suspect it was one of those high-school boys—Adlai Stevenson High is just four streets away and I’ve seen how they drive, boys with their first license in their pocket—anyhow, Winston wasn’t badly hurt, but he was ski

“So he must have seen a doctor.”

“Well, no—not that we didn’t try to take him! I can’t even say for sure the bone was broken—I’m no expert—but he couldn’t use the arm right and there was a lump up above the elbow and real serious bruising, his whole arm was practically green with it. So I called the doctor and he said to bring Winston in, but while Carl was warming up the car—and this was in the dead of winter—Winston tore out the back door and ran off.”

“Ran off?”

“Disappeared for, believe it or not, three days. We had the whole town looking for him. It made the news. Lost boy, probably injured, out in the cold. Honestly, Carl and I were prepared for the worst.”

“But they found him?”

“In fact they didn’t. Winston came home all by himself. Walked in the door five days later as if nothing had happened. Of course, all hell broke loose. He said he’d been hiding in an old barn on one of the rural routes and that he kept warm by building a fire at night. And when we asked him why he’d done all this—and believe me, we asked him that question more often than he cared to hear it—he said it was because he didn’t want to go to the doctor.”

“Even with a broken arm!”

“Well… we sure thought it had been broken. But it was healed by the time he got back. So he must have just sprained it. And although it probably would have been wise to get him checked out anyhow, we didn’t insist. Does that sound foolish?” She shook her head. “Carl and I only had the one child and we probably indulged him more than we should have. Some days I think that’s why Winston never married. We coddled him into a lonely bachelorhood. But as my husband used to say, all you can do is the best you can do. There are no guarantees in this life. Not even”—Mrs. Bayliss smiled at her joke—“if you take out insurance.”