Love Machine

by Chris Lowry

  Lust was real.

  The feel of a woman under him, or on top of him, or next to him and sometimes flipped and reversed, depending on how much credit he had to spend.

  Not that there had been too many, he lifted the empty glass to his lips and pretended to sip.

  There had been a lot of attempts and a lot of money lost, and too many drunken stupors where he woke up pressed against a beautiful woman very interested in him leaving, sure, but he was pretty sure he had more than his fair share of trysts.

  His bank account reflected it.

  “I love you,” he banged the glass of his teeth with a painful sounding crack.

  She smirked, cocked her hip to the other side. He couldn’t help but stare at her chest, pressed up high in the halter over her crossed arms.

  He was pretty sure she had gorgeous eyes.

  Anyone who could wear leather pants like that had to have gorgeous eyes and wavy blonde hair.

  He let his eyes dart up to double check and slip back down to drink in the rest of her.

  Yep, blond and beautiful and watching him with a smirk on her face.

  “Pheromones,” he explained and tipped the empty glass in her direction.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Of all the bars in this station, you had to walk into mine,” he grinned and suppressed a giggle.

  “It’s my bar.”

  “Then let me compliment you,” he said. “Can I?”

  “Compliment me?”

  “I love you,” he whispered again just loud enough for her to hear. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

  “You’re stealing drinks in my bar,” she stamped a foot.

  It sent things jiggling.

  Her hair. Her chest. The creases on her skin tight leather pants.

  “I’ve got chills,” he confessed. “They’re multiplying.”

  He stood up as the bar swirled around him.

  “Do I need to call the cops?” her lips made words he heard down a long tunnel. “Or an ambulance?”

  Tinker started to turn in the opposite direction of the room. He had heard somewhere that worked. The counter balance effect when the world around you started spinning.

  He bounced off the wall, tumbled into the pool table and felt up one of the women playing pool.

  She cracked him between the legs with the thick end of the pool cue.

  It should have hurt.

  Instead, it spun him around to face the vision in leather and curls.

  “You’re the one that I want,” he fell to his knees.

  It didn’t work out quite like he wanted or planned because once he hit his knees, he kept plowing forward and landed on his nose.

  He felt a throbbing in his crotch, and wondered if it meant a new bruise from the lady with the stick or something far more interesting with the woman with the eyes.

  He wanted to roll over and see which, but nothing was working. Except his eyes.

  He could see a pattern in the hull decking, pitted steel with plastic tile over coating that was slick with grime, spilled drinks and he didn’t know what else.

  Lucky for him, it started to go black as the room kept spinning.

  He was glad when he passed out and everything stopped.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “What happened?” Tinker sat up and held his head between his hands.

  He remembered the room spinning. He recalled a set of eyes and curly hair and an angry lesbian banging his balls with a pool cue when he felt her up.

  “You roofied yourself,” someone said next to him.

  He shook his head and searched for the voice.

  The woman with curls stood over him as he laid on a vinyl coach in a small room. He could hear the sound of voices and noise from the other side of the door, bar sounds of people talking, glasses clinking and the low throb of dull music.

  Or that might have been his headache.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Stealing drinks?” she said.

  The smirk was still there, but he wasn’t as attracted to her now. Not at the moment at least.

  At the moment, he was more concerned with the music, which jangled against something in his inner ear that made him want to throw up and curl up into a ball at the same time.

  “Could you turn the tunes down, maybe?” he begged as he rubbed a heel into his crusty eyes.

  “What music?”

  He tilted his head in confusion and pointed toward the closed door.

  “The drums out there are driving me mad.”

  “We’re watching a game,” she said. “There’s no music.”

  Tinker tilted his head back and stared at the bare ceiling.

  “What was in that drink?”

  “We’ve got a ring of traffickers around here,” she said. “Kim’s been trying to kill them off, but they keep popping up. You must have picked up one of their drinks.”

  He moved one leg off the couch, and when that was successful, let the other one follow.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed and passed him a glass of clear liquid. “You could be in a pleasure room right now living out a fantasy for some poor fool.”

  He eyed the glass.

  “Are you trying to drug me again?” he asked before taking it.

  “If I wanted to do anything to you, I had six hours of you passed out on my couch to do it. It’s just water.”

  “Did you?” he sipped from the glass.

  She snorted and made a sound with her lips.

  “As if.”

  “I don’t know,” he massaged the ache between his legs. “My balls hurt. Kind of like they’ve been used hard and put up wet.”

  “You wish,” she said.

  “I do wish,” he said and leaned back on the couch with his legs spread. “Want to help me work out the ache?”

  She laughed out a quick guffaw.

  “Does that ever work for you?”

  He sat up and took another sip.

  “All the time,” he answered.

  “Really?”

  “Well, sometimes,” he amended.

  “You’re telling me,” she took the glass from him, and handed him a damp rag. “That the women you encounter fall for that crap.”

  He wiped his forehead with the rag.

  The cool dampness brought the throbbing musical headache down a notch, and he ran a sandpaper raspy tongue across the roof of his mouth.

  She handed him a refill of water and he drank it all down again.

  “No one yet,” he grinned. “But I’m holding out hope.”

  He was starting to feel normal again, or at least a version of normal. When he tried to stand up, someone messed with the gravity generator and he stumbled back onto the arm of the couch.

  “You need to sit here for a little while,” she said.

  He started to argue, but the throbbing hitched up a notch and he decided that she was giving good advice.

  “Okay,” he said. “The lady wants me right here ready for her, I’m staying right her and I am more than ready.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows, but the movement almost made him throw up.

  “You look like crap,” she said.

  “And you look gorgeous.”

  “Thank you,” she answered and he thought she sounded sincere. “What’s your name?”

  “Tinker,” he held out a limp hand.

  She shook it.

  Her skin was warm, smooth and electric. If his balls didn’t hurt so much, he’d give in to the tingling feeling that made other things want to stir down there.

  “Jewel,” she shook out her curls. “I’ve got to check on the bar. Stay here. I’ll think about not selling you to the sex trade.”

  He watched her walk out of the door and heard the sounds of fans cheering a game. The music was all in his head.

  He hoped she was kidding.

  She seemed like she was.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Set ‘em up Joe,” Tinker s
ang out as he poured amber liquid from a glass bottle into a glass.

  He slid it down the bar as if he’d been born to do it and gave the man who caught it a nod as he lifted it up and took a sip.

  “Good catch,” the pilot turned bartender said as he moved his hands out of the way.

  A cleaning robot the size of a hockey puck whizzed by in a circling motion, sweeping up fallen crumbs, drying drips and making a small buzzing sound that competed with the murmur of faint conversation.

  “Good pour,” the man grimaced.

  He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a thick cigar and a wooden match.

  Tinker watched him flick a thick thumbnail against the head of a match and hold the flame to the tip of the cigar as he puffed.

  The end glowed orange when he was done. He held out a second one to Tinker, who took it and stuck it inside his leather bomber pocket.

  “Saving it for later,” said Tinker.

  “When life gives you gifts, you should take advantage of them at the time,” said the man as he sipped on the end of the stogie and pushed a thick cloud of cloying blue smoke toward the overworked air scrubbers.

  Tinker pointed over his shoulder.

  “There’s a game later,” he pointed to a table in the back where a trio played Texas Hold ‘Em with a bored looking dealer. “I’ll enjoy it then.”

  The man tipped up the glass and emptied it.

  “This,” he indicated the empty. “Is not as good as this.”

  He wiggled the cigar in Tinker’s direction.

  “Yeah,” said Tinker as he poured another few fingers into the man’s glass and made one for himself. “I learned how to make the world’s finest hootch on my way here, but I need some ingredients to get it started.”

  The man eyed him for a moment.

  “You’re not supposed to drink on the job,” Jewel slapped the back of his head as she passed by and began making a tray of drinks to deliver to the poker table.

  “It’s a perk,” Tinker told her.

  He downed the glass fast though, just in case she decided to take it from him.

  She had been nice enough to offer him a job when she found out he was broke and stranded and he was poor enough to say yes.

  Tinker figured he could at least make a few credits while he decided what to do next.

  But she didn’t pay for two weeks, so he was thirteen days away from his first paycheck and the promised tips didn’t seem like they would go far split between her, him and another waitress.

  When he saw the poker table set up, he knew he had an answer. The cards were always kind to him, he just had to build up a nut to buy in.

  And it looked like that might take two weeks the way folks were tipping that night.

  “Give Gerald one for free,” said Jewel as she passed back onto the floor.

  Tinker silently cursed. Nobody tipped on free.

  “Right away, boss,” he called after her and poured another glass.

  “Watch him, though,” she said with a half grin on her pretty face. “He’s a theif.”

  Tinker sat the glass in front of the man.

  “What kind of thief?”

  “The kind that doesn’t talk about it,” he said.

  Tinker leaned across the bar and lowered his voice.

  “I was a smuggler a couple of times,” he indicated the bar with his hand. “Before this.”

  Gerald picked up the glass and hid his lips.

  “What did you move?”

  Tinker shrugged.

  “Stuff that needed moving. Sometimes I didn’t even ask.”

  “Where’s your ship?”

  “A thief took it,” Tinker said. “No offense.”

  “I’m not offended. I didn’t take it.”

  Tinker poured himself another one and refilled the empty glass of the man across from him.

  “I caught a ride here looking for it,” he said.

  “Nobody deals in stolen ships on this station. That’s all done off site.”

  “Yeah, I know who does it. I know where he does it. I just have to get to him.”

  “I know people,” said Gerald. “You tell me who you’re looking for and pour me another one, maybe I’ll know how you get there.”

  Tinker didn’t pause to consider it. He sloshed out a generous portion and grinned.

  But first he checked to make sure Jewel wasn’t looking.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The dark corridor wasn’t crowded at this time of the night. The bar shut the doors and let the last of the patrons quaff whatever was in front of them, playing an old song from earth about closing time.

  Tinker had heard it at a hundred places across the routes, an anthem to drunken hook ups and regretful nights.

  He was regretting the advice of Gerald.

  The thief had grown more grateful after every glass, sharing details about his work and the men who helped him once his work was done.

  Tinker learned where his ship might be kept, a chop shop station that orbited not too far from where they were now.

  He even had a few things to say about Banner that would have curled the short hairs of any other man, but Tinker wasn’t afraid.

  Much. Things had a way of working out for him.

  Gerald told him to mention his name, and Tinker tucked that bit into his back pocket in case he needed it.

  He also tucked the credit from all the tips into his back pocket when he left the bar without telling Jewel.

  He really regretted that part, but when he suggested they loan him the money to get into the poker game, she and the other waitress, Sanya had both laughed.

  Tinker thought their faith was misplaced.

  Still, he had a plan.

  Get his ship back, pull a job and return to the beautiful curly haired woman with double what he borrowed.

  That would pay her back for her kindness, for the unintended loan, and maybe even buy her forgiveness.

  Besides, he thought. One night of tending bar was enough.

  He enjoyed being on the other side of it too much.

  Another thing Gerald shared was the name of a pilot who would ferry him to the chop shop station for a low price.

  He winked at Tinker as he said it and smothered a giggle.

  Which found him in the half lit corridor, watching the shadows around him and shifting from one foot to the next like a nervous feline.

  There was an airlock on the end, a small docking port set away from the main section of the space station.

  It was just the kind of place Tinker would hook up the NC 17 when he was on an eyes only run.

  That’s what he called the clandestine meetings where he acquired certain goods or delivered the same.

  “Who the hell are you?” a man said as he approached.

  Tinker gulped and tried not to sound too startled as he introduced himself.

  “What the hell do you want?” the man stopped in front of him, his nose almost touching Tinker’s.

  He almost stepped back, but he didn’t want to show fear or weakness to the man he was about to ask a favor from.

  That was part of negotiating, he thought, the violation of personal space. Well two could play at that game.

  Tinker leaned forward and pressed his nose against the chin of the taller man.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The guy reached up and wiped his chin.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “I thought it was how you said hi,” said Tinker. “You know, how they kiss cheeks in the European station?”

  “So you wiped your boogers on my face? Gross man.”

  “I didn’t have any boogers.”

  “Snot then,” the tall thin man scrubbed at his chin with the corner of his jumpsuit sleeve.