Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(2)
I blinked at her a few times, an assortment of sarcastic replies clotting together in my brain like cars on the 405. I tried to remember my former Hollywood manners, then remembered that as a mental patient I had a license to say whatever the hell I wanted.
“Let me be sure I understand,” I said, reaching into the chest for the silicone suspension liner of my AK prosthetic and starting to powder the inside of it. “I flipped burgers for five years putting myself through community college, got fifteen grand into debt making a bunch of pretentious indie films about people trapped in rooms together, then bullshitted my way into what’s arguably the most prestigious film school in the world, when all I really needed to do to break into the industry was jump off a building?”
Caryl looked at me with the kind of aplomb that comes from dealing with the mentally ill on a daily basis. “No,” she said flatly. “You needed to do all that and then jump off a building.” There was nothing in her demeanor to suggest that she was making a joke, or even knew what one was.
I snorted at her, hiking up the leg of my shorts. I slipped the powdered liner onto the stump of my thigh as far as it would go.
“You used lotion to make the first seal and powder to make the second,” Caryl observed. “Why?”
I stopped and looked at her, but her face held only the same detached curiosity. “You just learn to do whatever works,” I said with a shrug. “Every amputation is different.”
I reached into the chest for the AK. AK stands for above-knee, but I liked that it sounded like an assault rifle. The silicone--only suspension fit like flesh, and with a twist of a knob the hydraulic knee gave the right resistance at anything from a stroll to a sprint. There are some occasions when a girl just has to splurge a little.
“So you think I fit some kind of qualifications?” I said, shoving my thigh and its silicone sheath into the socket of the prosthesis. “Now there’s a list I’d love to see.”
“Most of the list is confidential, but I can tell you some of it. I am looking for people with management potential, and your success as an independent filmmaker points to leadership skill and creative thinking. Then there is your diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and your willingness to accept and manage that condition, as well as your noted aversion to -psychoactive drugs, legal or otherwise.”
“Drugs don’t work on BPD,” I said defensively, squirming my way more firmly into the socket and wondering how the hell she knew I’d never tried recreational drugs. “It’s not a chemical imbalance.”
“Nonetheless, many Borderlines choose to medicate comorbid conditions such as anxiety or depression. Our project only accepts those who can function, at least minimally, without the use of controlled substances.”
I paused to sweep a hand pointedly around the room. “Is there something that makes you think I can function?”
“The twenty-five years of your life that elapsed before you did something colossally stupid.”
Indignation flared, and my thighs responded by trying to push me to a stand. But that’s exactly the sort of thing a prosthetic knee cannot do, and my weight was centered over both legs. So I just ended up lurching a few crooked inches off the seat and crashing right back down.
“Be careful,” said Caryl mildly.
One of the fun bits about BPD is a phenomenon shrinks like to call “splitting.” When under stress, Borderlines forget the existence of gray. Life is a beautiful miracle, or a cesspool of despair. The film you’re making is a Best Picture candidate, or it’s garbage. People are either saints, or they’re scheming to destroy you.
Caryl Vallo, thanks to the shards of pain jangling through my pelvis, had just found her way onto the latter list. But she was dangling a hell of a prize, so I pushed aside my sudden surge of paranoid hatred and tried to keep my voice as calm as hers.
“There has to be a catch,” I said. “Otherwise every starving wannabe in Los Angeles would be faking BPD to get this gig. So why aren’t they?”
“Because they do not know about it.”
She gave the words no more gravity than anything else she had said, but some intuition made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. I considered her stony face and her trimly tailored jacket. Aside from wardrobe color, she fit the Man in Black profile perfectly, and I didn’t have much to lose by sounding crazy.
“Does this job involve aliens in any way?”
“Not in the way you mean,” she said without asking what I meant. “There are, however, some aspects of the job that strain credulity, and they are better demonstrated than explained. Would you meet me tomorrow for an interview?”
“Sure, why not.”
“You can find me at the corner of Fourth Street and Hollister, in Santa Monica. There is a small park there.”
I felt a cold rush of fear that I quickly paved over with irritation. “I’m supposed to take a cab all the way from Silver Lake to Santa Monica?”
Caryl ignored my tone. “Tomorrow at noon. Pack and proceed as though you will not be returning to the hospital.”
“I beg your pardon?” I gaped at her. “How am I supposed to get a suitcase, a wheelchair, crutches, and a cane in and out of a taxi on my own?”
“The choice is yours. The terms are mine. If you do not attend the meeting, I will move to the next candidate on my list. You are welcome to refuse the opportunity, but you will be the first to do so in the ten years I have been with the Project.”