by F P Adriani
The shots gave me the energy I needed for the rest of the afternoon, which wound up a busy one.
First we had to go shopping for the red-and-black suits—or at least Nell and I had to go shopping. Jamie flat-out refused to wear a suit.
But while we were standing in the lobby, getting ready to leave, I told him, “I don’t want us to stick out so much. So if you’re coming with us around here, you’ve got to wear one.”
“I don’t have to do a damn thing. Maybe I’ll sit this one out. The short crotches on the pants hurt my nuts.”
I laughed now. “By all means then, don’t wear one.”
“On the other hand…what if you need me to translate?”
I just looked at him.
*
“God damn my damn nuts,” Jamie said as he picked at the crotch of his new suit-pants.
Armed with my case, two fake itineraries and a patched-together fake ID for Jamie, the three of us were now walking down the block where the refinery was.
As we moved, I said to Jamie, “I’ve seen men all over here wearing the suits. What makes you so special?”
“They don’t have my nuts,” he said.
I laughed under my breath as I glanced down at the bulge of his crotch. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but he was making me wonder for chrissake….
Suddenly he pointed farther down the block. “Where did you say this place was—on the corner?”
“Yeah.” I looked up, saw the huge building ahead—the huge building with the boards over the big front door and windows, and the For Sale sign on the small grassy area out front. “Crap,” I said, feeling my chest burn with anger and disappointment. “Another fucking dead end.”
“What about the scanner?” Nell asked fast, pulling the Osier box out of her red jacket. “Can’t I use it?”
“I guess we could go closer, but what’s the point? I know both John and probably Millie’s been here too. But there’s no one around now. And the place looks like it’s been closed up for a long time.”
I watched Nell’s face quickly deflate. So I said fast, “All right. We’ll take a look around. Use it on the front-door boards. I’ll take a walk around the back.”
*
The scanner turned up nothing and neither did we. As I’d said: a dead end.
“Goddammit,” I was grumbling as we got back on the train. I felt very red in the face.
“Well, what else can we do?” Nell asked, flashing me a confused frown.
“I could randomly go place-by-place, looking for her. Maybe I’ll turn up something.”
“But that would take forever!” Nell said.
“I’ve got to find something about Millie—that she’s fucking alive—and bring that back with me at least.”
Jamie tapped me on my arm. “You got a picture of her I could use? Maybe she’s staying somewhere local. I could check around the hostel and a few other places I know.”
I didn’t respond at first. Then I looked at him and said, “That’s a good idea. Just be careful.”
*
While he was searching elsewhere, I decided to check the hotel Nell and I were staying at.
First I flashed a computer printout of Millie’s picture at the concierge’s desk, doing my best with the Moonspan, at least I hoped I was. Then I mimed about her to a few members of the hotel’s cleaning crew. But once again I turned up nothing.
“I feel like my head’s going to explode,” I said to Nell as we left the hotel and walked toward a smaller one.
“If this is detective work, I’m glad I’m not a detective,” Nell replied.
I grunted, noticed her frowning face. “I should have told Jamie to stay with you in the room. You look too tired!”
“I’m all right. But for now, I can only do this one more place….”
We wound up only needing to do the one.
When we reached the front of the smaller hotel, we ran into Jamie, and while he was relaying to me that no one had seen Millie at the student hostel, I noticed a Temporary Kitchen Help Wanted sign taped to the hotel’s front window.
We went inside as job applicants and made it all the way back to the kitchen, where I said to the head cook and Jamie translated, “A friend of mine told us about the openings here.” I pulled out Millie’s image and flashed it at the cook.
“Oh, es Millie,” he said then.
I almost shouted HOORAY! And out of the corner of my right eye, I could see Nell’s feet shift excitedly.
Now I told Jamie to tell the cook that Millie was supposed to meet us here today and introduce us to the hotel’s staff, but she never showed up.
Jamie did as I’d asked; then the guy told him in Moonspan that she was only a part-time kitchen cleaning person, wasn’t scheduled back to work for two days, and he didn’t know where to reach her.
Jamie said something else to him, and then he told me, “He says at night she sometimes goes to The Flamingo, a bar nearby.”
I swallowed back my excitement at all this news as I pulled out my Ginger Meek itinerary to make us look legit. Then I told Jamie to ask the cook for job-application forms.
As soon as we’d walked out the back door, Nell’s happy voice said to me, “We found something!”
“Yeah, but we need more than that. We need to hang out at that bar. Tonight.”
*
Back at our hotel, we all went to eat in the restaurant there; then Jamie disappeared for a little while Nell and I went up to our room. Then Jamie came back, and Nell dozed while Jamie watched TV. Then he dozed and I played around with some things in my case. I might not wind up needing them for this trip, but you never know….
“How you going to lug that case everywhere here?” Jamie suddenly asked me.
I didn’t respond directly at first. “You think I should leave it in the safe downstairs?”
His head shook at me. “No. I don’t.”
“Neither do I. But no worries if I decide to. This is a special case; it’s coded to me. If it’s not opened by me and only in a certain way, all the paperwork inside starts breaking down via chemical reactions.”
“Oh Pia,” said Nell in a groggy but worried voice, “you mean when I had that on my lap, it was dangerous?”
“No—no! Not to people, just to paper. And it wouldn’t help the devices I’ve got in there. But I hope it never comes to that. Not that I couldn’t somehow get another one and do the inside contents over again.”
“Including the sperm-filled rubbers?” Nell asked on a laugh.
*
When it was time to go check out the bar, I decided to play it as safe as possible: I took my case with me. And Jamie took his case—the first time he’d ever shown up at any of our hotel rooms with anything other than himself.
Jamie’s case was long, thin, and blue, and he held it tightly under his left arm as we walked down the hotel stairs.
Now I asked him, “So what’s in your case?”
“You got your case, I got mine,” he said smugly.
I rolled my eyes a bit. “Excuse me for asking.”
He shrugged as he said, “You’ll see soon.”
And he was right—both about that and about something else he’d said once: when we stepped out of the stairwell, I saw neon signs plastered everywhere.
From all over the spectrum, the bright neon colors lit up the streets. Some colors were static, some were whirling. They decorated big, very realistically complex signs—still images of people and buildings, moving images of workers, and detailed scenery from the Heran landscape and sky. Taken together, the signs looked like an exact electrified duplicate of existing on Hera….
“Wow,” I said, my eyes kind of bugging out at all the colors peppering the impending night in the background.
“Yeah, it’s something else,” Jamie replied in a dry voice. Then he added in a wary voice, “Let’s keep walking.”
I glanced over at his profile. “Something worrying you?”
His eyes darted ar
ound, and one of his shoulders shifted up—a nervous gesture. “I don’t like it in Shiloh. The people aren’t trustworthy.”
“You know somewhere they are?”
“I meant in a relative sense,” he snapped nastily. Normally if a guy used that tone with me, I would have told him off, but he really did look worried. And he really was very young. Maybe his coming with us wasn’t fair….
“Look,” I said, “I think you should go back to your hostel.”
His head shook. “I’ll feel better when I get inside the bar. If they’ll let me.”
“If they’ll let you inside?”
“No. You’ll see soon,” he replied for a second time that night.
We finally stepped into The Flamingo. And, true to its name, inside I saw a lot of pink flashing neon, a lot of mobile pink lights. The place was pretty, but I couldn’t imagine working there, day in and day out. I’d have constant migraines.
Other than the lights though, it was just a standard nighttime bar, filled with many people looking to have a good time but looking as if they weren’t having as good a time as they’d expected when they walked in the front door.
Nell and I sat at a table, and Jamie went to talk to one of the bartenders. He was passionately gesticulating with his hands. I wondered what the hell he was doing: I doubted he was ordering for us because we hadn’t even said what we wanted.
I watched him for a moment; then he and the bartender disappeared into the back of the bar behind a big stage.
Nell must have been watching him too. “What’s he doing?”
“I have no idea,” I said, sighing as my head turned to check out the place more, to get a clearer picture of the individuals there. Making out faces wasn’t easy because of the eye-shocking pink halo around everything. But the more I stared, the more the pink seemed to disappear, and I could make out the lines of human features a bit better.
A server came up to us and we both ordered nonalcoholic drinks. I wondered where Jamie had disappeared to. But I didn’t have to wonder for long.
Some guy suddenly came out on the stage and grabbed the microphone there. “Folks,” he said, “it’s that time again—amateur hour at The Flamingo! Everyone give a big hand to the first performer tonight: Jay R, The Fiddler!”
Jay R for Jay Romero was the fake name I’d decided Jamie should use.
Both Nell and I glanced at each other with what-the-fucking-fuck? eyes as the people around us began half-heartedly clapping.
Jamie finally walked onto the stage; in one arm he held a long-and-sleek red fiddle.
When he lifted the instrument to his shoulder, some background music started up, and Jamie’s long fingers got to work. My mouth dropped open as I watched their tips dance over the strings as if they’d been born dancing there.
The half-psychedelic half-old-rock music coming from his fiddle lifted the pink dull place into a pink exciting place. I found my hands bouncing on the tabletop and my feet bouncing on the floor. And across from me, Nell’s rapt face was lit up in delight.
By the time Jamie had finished playing and began bowing on the stage, Nell and I were looking right at each other, both shock and humor making us smile widely.
“Who knew?” Nell said, loudly laughing.
An all-smiles Jamie walked over to us.
“That was so great, Jay! You really can play!” said an excited Nell.
“Thank you.” He grinned back at her and took a quick at-the-waist bow, before slipping into one of the chairs.
He laid his fiddle onto the tabletop. And I watched his fingers move again as he carefully returned the instrument to its case. “It really was fantastic, Jamie. How come you never said you were a musician?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered to anyone.”
“It matters to me,” said Nell, and I heard the catch in her voice. My head shot over to her, but hers was turned away, toward the stage, where the next performer was setting up his act. “Your playing reminded me of my little brother,” Nell added now in a softer voice.
“Cool!” said Jamie. “Is he a musician? What does he play?”
“He played the piano. He’s dead,” Nell said.
Jamie’s whole face kind of sank into his neck. “Oh, I’m sorry, damn—I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” she said, her face twisting and looking on the verge of sobbing.
I quickly changed the subject. “Jay, did you go to school for music?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. And that’s one thing…you-know-who helped me with. Helped my family pay for it.”
“God damn her,” said Nell in an angry voice, as if Jamie hadn’t even spoken something positive about Hu. “People like her—what they do to Diamond. Why the hell are we here, P—Gin?”
I lowered my voice, told her to lower hers. “There’s some kind of danger, Arn—I told you. We can’t discuss this here. We—”
I was about to add more, but my eyes had fallen to behind Nell, to where some new people had walked into The Flamingo. I couldn’t tell if they were together as a group, but the posture of one of them seemed familiar to me.
She now stood at the bar as she ordered a drink. Her hair was short and red, and she looked a little too thin in her white top and black pants. She was also poised at an angle to me, so I couldn’t get a full-on view of her face. Plus, the place’s pink halo was still a pain in the eyes….
I stood up fast.
“What is it?” Nell asked, her head darting a look over her shoulder.
I slid my case to her across the tabletop. “Hang onto this and wait here.”
“What—why?”
I didn’t respond. The woman took her drink from the bartender; then she walked back toward the front door and slipped outside.
I was right on her tail.
When I got outside, I saw her standing in front of the next store over. Her head bowed a bit now, she held her drink in one hand as she smoked something in her other hand. The store was closed and the window looked quite dark, but her eyes seemed focused on whatever lay below her inside.
Out here, without the pink, I got a clearer view of her as I moved nearer.
“Millie,” I said in a hard voice.
Her head shot up. And, sure enough, I saw that shadow of a facial scar.
Now her eyes darted around to me wildly; then she dropped both her drink and her cigarette and shot off down the block.
I followed suit and she kept running and—goddammit, she was small but she was also very fast, like a human cheetah of the streets and alleyways. I wasn’t that fast, but I was persistent. Eventually, she ran out of streets and alleyways—or so much steam.
She ran behind a big cafeteria-looking place and now stood panting before a bubble door to the Heran outdoors. Momentarily, her body hesitated; then she glanced at me over her shoulder—and finally pushed open the door and shot through.
“AVISO!” a loud recorded voice said. “DAXON GAS TOXICIDAD! WARNING! DAXON GAS TOXICITY! AVISO! DAXON GAS….”
The dual-message kept droning on as I rushed up to the door. I hesitated longer than Millie had, staring out at her receding insane I-have-a-deathwish form; as far as I’d been able to see, she wore no protective suit beneath her clothing.
But her deathwish might also wind up being mine somehow, not just from the gas but from back on Diamond. Potentially no winning for me here.
“Shit!” I said, pulling my purple breather hood down over my face, then charging outside. As I ran, I grabbed for my suit-gloves inside my jacket pocket—but, apparently, somewhere sometime tonight, I had dropped one. So now I had to run after Millie with one hand bouncing in and out of my pocket.
And, wow, did we run. We ran and ran and ran, over the damp ground behind and through and under the outdoor mechanical workings for the indoors. I didn’t know for how long we ran, or where the hell we’d been going, but I almost didn’t reach her.
Then she finally looked over her shoulder at me charging at her—and lost her bala
nce, tumbling hard onto her knees. She spun around at me, sharp fear in her eyes. She began screaming a wounded-animal sound as she held up her right hand in front of her.
I rushed up to her and glanced at her hand, which looked like it had a gunshot graze-groove on it—I hadn’t shot at her, so where the hell….
Oh, I thought, suddenly understanding that it was no gunshot. It was a festering burn. On her bare skin.
*
She was whimpering a disoriented little cry as I grabbed beneath both her armpits and yanked her through the nearest doorway. My eyes scanned fast for a faucet somewhere. I spotted one on the wall of what looked like a restaurant.
I pulled her over there and turned on the water. She was still whimpering. I couldn’t tell if she was whimpering from the pain or because she was afraid of me.
“Let me go! Don’t hurt me!” she said now.
“What the fuck are you talking about? If I wanted to hurt you, I woulda left you outside. I don’t hurt other women. Put your hand under the water fast. It’s gonna hurt though—no way to avoid that.”
She did as I’d said, screaming again as the cold water hit her raw flesh. I winced at her agony, but washing the wound would help stop the burn from getting worse.
When I was finished with her hand, I pulled her along the alley until we reached a better-lit area, and now I realized that we’d somehow wound up going in a circular route; we weren’t that far from The Flamingo.
“My hand, my hand,” she suddenly whimpered, holding her hand forward. Yet the rest of her arm clung to her side, as if she instinctively wanted to nurse her wound but knew her own body touching the raw flesh would make the pain worse. “I’ve…got to throw up,” she said now in an agonized voice as she doubled forward and put her words into action.
“Lovely,” I said in a dry voice.
When she’d finished emptying her stomach, I pushed her along ahead of me. “Move. It’s just a little farther.”
“Where—where!”
“Back to The Flamingo. I left some people there.”