"You're Heads," She Says. "You're Tails."

As I look out the window at the third floor of the Bingham Building, I can just see another boy falling on the rocks of a rain-soaked highway. Independent, defeated. In shock, perhaps. She has no bags, but she travels permanently. Everything he owns is in his back or in his pockets - a cheap suit, two hundred dollars, and a bus ticket to Topeka.

It's all because, a few minutes ago, he read both of us - me and that other boy. Because he pulled out his magnifying glass and examined all the lines of our bodies and faces, looked us in the eyes, touched our knees, and checked how our hair interacted with our skin.

After the test, he pointed to me and said, as he always did, "You are the heads." He then pointed to another boy and said, as he did so, "You're a tail."

He says the decision is not his own. Just like you are a judge, calling out how the coin falls into the world. However, the tails must move while the heads are still in place. I'm always the Heads, even when I go back to the beginning. I’ve never been a tail.

I have to be the luckiest person on Earth.

"Come over here and see me again with those blue eyes again," he snarls, calling slightly from the other side of the lab.

The other boy had just disappeared down Euclid Avenue - heading for the town at Greyhound station, where he would catch an overnight bus bound for Chicago. That's where they always go first. It will be morning when he gets there, and then on, going west, outside and out and forgetting forever.

"Come over here," he said again.

I let the blind fall. He looks into my eyes and runs his hand over my hair, crying with joy.

"This is the last time," he promises. "In the end, you're perfect."

The first two weeks are always good. The new moon is growing into a full moon, and we are happy enough. She is happy enough. I have blue eyes now - those that are clear, sharp and binding blue eyes. They are the ones who take him out of the air.

However, as the full moon loses its tiny little shave on the path to reduction, there is a change. He still loves my eyes, but he gets that thoughtful look as he runs his hand through my hair. Do you think it can be soft or dark or healthy?

Sometimes, I feel he touches me as a scientist. We are still kissing, but he casually inserts his fingers into my hair, examining its properties. He wraps the lock around his muzzle and pulls. Later, I wake up in the dark and hear his sound as he breaks the notes into longhand.

I know what is coming, but I do not say anything. You think you're kidding me, but I don't mind. I drank wine, knowing I would wake up from that tank in the third story of Bingham Building. I drink wine, knowing it has a cure.

They say all the coins are a private affair, but I don't really believe it. Or I do not really believe that these are coins that are answered at all. In a sense, I was always the Head. I’ve never been a tail. All those thousands and thousands of flips, and the result remains the same. How can I imagine another outcome?

I crawl into the tank. I float in the liquid with a tube under my throat. I can already feel the numbness of my spine - the tingling that starts in my neck and ends in my tail bone.

Or my tail bones.

I have a tangle of legs under my skin, four of them. Two tail bones. The pelvis and spine that do not open and open the zipper, form two identical sets. It will still be a few days now.

As I go back to sleep in the tank again, I wonder how far I remember. Can I remember being the first simple planarian to set up a solution, direct it to regenerate asexually, direct its tail to separate, and its neoblasts to separate and divide?

Can I remember being a programmer - the same, but not the same, a transformed child raised by a parent, made better and more desirable by his or her intervention? Can I remember that first test, judged as the very first Head, a small animal that looks at the first Tail stuck in a pipe?

Going on, for thousands of generations, each one has been made bigger, more complex, and more perfect in its own eyes. Can I remember them all, each stage in my growing up from a flatworm to a human, each generation when I was a High Head and the other was a slightly modified tail?

I'm not trying. It is better not to do it.

I can't hear him very well when he points at another boy and says, as he never did, "You're the boss." I'm already shocked when he points at me and says, as he never said, "You're a tail."

It is impossible, unthinkable. After those thousands of episodes, I am somehow finally an incomplete repetition. One line out of place, a certain color is not so attractive, a certain little feature - he doesn’t say why, and I’ve never found one.

I don’t know how I end up in the quad, walking on my buttocks to Euclid Avenue and Greyhound in the city station. I turn and then go blind on the third floor of the Bingham Building.

I am a tail. Everything I have known for the rest of my life is over. I am a tail.

As I ride the Greyhound, the driver looks at me. "I didn't know he was coming back. Every month he's here, on this night bus to Chicago."

I agree and slide down to the open seat.

"Where are you looking at this time?"

I look down at my ticket. I don't even know. "Rapid City," I exclaimed.

"Let me guess," said the bus driver. "Are you going up the Tails again? Every month for years now I see you here like this. And you've never gotten articles. If you take my advice, friend, you'll never try again. Just look it always down."

I'm not saying anything. I'm lost in my thoughts and, I think somewhere in town, in that third-floor laboratory, you're probably looking for another guy right now. "This is the last time," he probably said. "In the end, you're perfect."

|

The bus driver shakes his head as he closes the door and puts the bus in gear. "But what do I say? I bet I'll see you next month, next month, and next month."

When the bus leaves, I think of that other guy again - that person who doesn't remember losing and who thinks he will always win forever. I look into the darkness and see the ground in my hands.

"I bet you do."