Faye fidgeted, no longer able to make eye contact with either woman.
Penny chirped up. “You could babysit… Walk dogs…”
“Oh yeah… Me, babysit?” Anna slapped herself on the thigh. “Parents would take one look at me and lock their doors.”
“Or ask who’s babysitting you while you babysit their kid.” Faye squinted at her. “Don’t call me Twee.”
“P’raps they wouldn’t if you got off the shit… I think you keep half the corner-chemists in London in Armani.”
Anna sighed, looking at Faye. “It’s not an easy thing to let go of.”
nna smiled at the fond recollection of Faye cuddling the teddy bear in her sleep. She had slipped out of bed and left the girl undisturbed before tiptoeing out of the apartment. At a touch past noon, several dozen people crowded around the base of the tower, collecting by massive grills made of old cinderblocks and rebar.
Spawny knew how to tap the municipal mains to bring electricity into the place through the abandoned sewers. It was a task he repeated every few months when the Power Authority located the splice and fixed it. The wind played with the quasi-edible scent of purloined meat burned black by electric elements from industrial water heaters.
She cut the line and swiped something masquerading as a hamburger patty, smiling and waving at a couple guys whining at her for cutting. Gah, they sound like schoolboys. She munched on it, navigating The Ruin on her way to the police checkpoint.
Anna prepared herself for the usual ‘against-the-wall,’ but she had no zoom on her, no contraband, and felt altogether too strung out and fatigued to put up a fight. Today, the constables watched her go by without even speaking. Something about their stares made her uneasy, as if they were afraid of her. Not wanting to garner more scrutiny, she averted her eyes and walked faster.
Four blocks into the city, she mingled into a disreputable crowd at the end of a back street and waited her turn to talk to Everybody’s Friend.
EF was of mixed African and Indian heritage, and around nineteen. His hands slid among those of the people, passing credits and chems and returning gestures of respect. Most of his head hid beneath a floppy cloth cap, his clothes oversized and too expensive for someone who spent so much time in an alley like this. Within the great hooded mass of maroon cloth covered in a repeating pattern of beige fleur de lis, he had what she needed.
“The Pixie…” He smiled when she reached the front of the line. “Sex on legs… You lookin’ for Faerie Dust?”
“Got any of the usual?”
“Naa, girl. All out of the zoom. Been a run on it lately.”
Anna shivered into herself, stuffing her hands in her jacket pockets. “Got anything close?”
“Closest I got is a couple o’ smileys.”
“Need somethin’ that’ll keep my head in a fog… keep me Zen. Nothin’ too rough though.”
“Delicate.” He brushed his fingers over her cheek. “Couldn’t sleep if I broke the wings off the Pixie.”
With a wink, he produced four small yellow spheres, each about the size of a pea, letting them rest between his index and middle finger. Opaque and waxy, black smudges gave the impression someone had attempted to turn them into smiles. He had managed to get them all to line up with their faces pointing at her.
“Looks like balled up ear-wax.”
“These don’t give the kinda light show you’re used to, but they’ll keep your head out of the now just as well.”
The shakes were minutes away. “Fine, smileys it is then.”
“Eighty.”
Her credstick and the pills moved through his ornate hand-play, somewhere between a palm rub and a shake. Within the finger ballet, he plugged it to a metal box in his pocket and the beep of a transaction preceded it flowing back to her. They exchanged a grin and she turned back to the street, one of the smiles dissolving under her tongue. A hint of lemon lurked among a flavor like well-worn floor.
Bristol City sat dark and quiet, a scarcity of light leaked from the ceiling lamps. Lawrence glanced at her from the bar, his preparatory work coming to a halt as his head tracked her glide through the room. Her scuffing boots thundered through the stillness.
Beyond a door into the back hallway, the air vibrated with the chaotic din of a dozen girls chatting about this and that, a feminine sound that slipped out from under the distant frenetic shouts of Sanjay, the club’s owner. He railed at the VidPhone again, yelling about an uptick in the price of synthetic beer.
The dressing area door let off a loud squeak as she shoved it to the side and walked into a garish pink space with benches, lockers, and a dozen other women in various states of dress. The club did not open for another hour, so they sat around killing time chatting, fussing with costumes or makeup, or lost themselves in cyberspace on portable sens-rigs.
Anna set her bag at the end of one of the benches before taking a seat next to it and pulling her boots off. Her feet seemed whiter against the hot pink tile floor; the cracked and chipping blue polish on her toes needed a new coat. As much as she dreaded letting the police have their way with her, in two hours’ time, she would be prancing about for anyone who happened to be in the room. The smiley lacked the punch of zoom, but got her feeling mellow enough to ignore humiliation. After slipping her shirt over her head, she stuffed it in the bag and removed her skirt. She had showered before leaving home, but the reek of Coventry had seeped into her clothes.
She stood like a zombie in one of the exposed autoshowers, ignored by the other girls. Soon, a spritz of cheap jasmine whore replaced the reek of her life outside the club, some knock off perfume Sanjay, the owner, had added to the rinse cycle.
When the tube released her, she plodded back to the bench, dry and smelling like sin.
The hologram rig landed cold on her back before she tugged the metal bands into place and clicked the clasp closed beneath her breasts. She didn’t turn it on yet, that would wait for her to be on the floor. The only question would be if Blake would put her back in the cage or send her to the poles today. If he was still angry, he might make her wait tables naked, or worse yet―lock her in one of the back rooms to wait for the sort of client who doesn’t care what the girl looks like.
Anna gripped the bench, staring at her toes. The mere thought of Blake caused her to throw up a little in the back of her throat. I don’t want to be in that cage again. I’m going to tell him to get fucked if he tries. A wave of mortification came on, and she crossed her hands in her lap. Where did that come from? Stand up to Blake? He’ll beat me to death. She bit her lip, daydreaming about her old life with Mr. Carroll and what she would have done to Blake if they’d met under different circumstances. Deep in the bowels of her mind, the image of a man twice his size begging her not to kill him surfaced for a second.
Her head sagged like a stone atop her neck; she fought to keep it upright as the smiley’s effect crept into her mind. It magnified her mood. The disgrace that had up until this point tiptoed past her consciousness flung off its clothes and pranced in front of her. She bawled, bending forward and hugging her legs.
Hands touched her back. She looked up; two of the other women had come to investigate the outburst. Seeing their concern, she brimmed with gratitude and love and hugged them like long lost sisters.
The smiley was working enough to keep her electrokinesis from running away with itself, though it was a lot weaker than her usual fix. Zoom gave her hallucinations impossible to differentiate from reality. The smiley shoved her emotions along the path of least resistance, but with the knowledge the drug did it. She watched the ups and downs as though she stood outside of herself, but cared not to do much about it.
She chatted for a while, alternating between casual and paralyzed with humiliation for sitting around nude. The girls were friendly enough, save the two veterans jealous for no other reason than her being half their age and looking five years younger than that. Anna lost herself in a giggling fit when they teased her about her height. She did not
have the heart to give away her ‘diet secret’ as the simple truth of being too poor to eat, and bragged her boobs were natural.
“Anna… Come here please.”
A pall of silence fell over the room as Sanjay broke the din. He stood at the door, smirking at the assembled women. If not for the power he held over them, the image of the dark skinned man in an overlarge peach-colored suit and pink shirt would have made them laugh.
The newest, Brittany, gasped at the presence of a man entering the room. Anna stumbled to her feet, teetered across the room, and hugged him with a big grin.
Sanjay remained statuesque, indifferent to the nudity of the woman draped around him. His cigar-sized Nicohaler migrated from one side of his mouth to the other, and the end flared blue. Red-tinted glasses rode up the bridge of his nose, driven by one fingertip. He frowned at the sight of the glaze in her eyes.
“Hi Sanjay,” she purred. “You look hot today.”
He grasped her by the shoulders and pushed her back. “No point in your being an arse-lick, girl. You are being stonkered again, aren’t you?”
“Just had a smiley.” She covered her mouth with both hands, unable to stop giggling.
“Blake tells me you spent all day Friday night hanging there like a turd in the pool.”
The giggle fit ended with a confused grimace. “All day… night? What?”
He slapped her, not hard enough to knock her to the ground, but sufficient to turn giggling into cowering. “You spent more time blowing chunder than dancing. I am not making money from chunder.”
“I’m sorry, Mister Sanjay. I was in a bad way… The filth took my zoomer and I started crashing. I would’ve been fine if Blake let me get more, but he threw me in the cage. Won’t happen tonight. I promise.”
One of the old jealous bitches muttered under her breath with a spot-on exaggeration of Sanjay’s accent. It escaped his ear, but Anna burst into snickering again.
He wagged his finger at her. “You are damn right it is not happening again! You are all ballsed-up? You keep showin’ up three sheets to the vind. I do not need whores that can’t function. I do not need chunder! No one vants to be shagging a sack of varm meat that doesn’t even know its own bloody name.”
The smiley jumped on Anna’s emotion and rode it into an enormous crater. She sniveled like a six-year-old being grounded. “But, Sanjay… You can’t give me the sack, the boys like me. What’ll I eat?”
Why am I crying? I want this. I want out.
“The customers like a girl that can dance, not a druggie slag who is not capable of even moving.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Look… You clean yourself up and I think about putting you back out there. Vhile you’re still on the shit, you’re being no good to anyone.”
He walked off, leaving her slouched there clad only in tears. Blake leaned in from the shadows by the door with a leering grin. Anna offered him a pathetic glance, but he seemed amused by the situation.
She could not contain the whimpering sniffles as she removed the holo-rig and got dressed. Cloth slid over her skin, easing her nerves and feeling like armor. The girls offered their condolences while the older ones smiled at having one less pretty twenty-something to compete with. She plodded to the door, hanging her head as she trudged through the club’s main room to the exit.
A patch of flickering green by the door caught her eye. The board always contained announcements: people trying to sell an old bike, concert promotions, coded messages for where to obtain drugs, and other random ads. From a battered emitter, plastered over with a Dead Ballerina sticker, an ad that had been there for weeks caught her eye. She never looked up at the board before, never caring to see what went on outside of her miserable existence.
An offer of a hundred credits made her take a step closer. The holographic poster hung two inches from the wall, shimmering with falling dust and flickering every few seconds with the sputter of a faltering circuit. It was an advert looking for models for an art class at the university. Two hours of posing nude in a room full of people for a hundred credits. She wiped her cheeks dry while reading it, committing the address to memory. The money wasn’t great, but it seemed less sleazy.
I guess those University types are smart. Where else would they find someone willing to do this?
Dust filtered through shafts of sunlight entering between angled wooden slats over ancient glass. One of many thoughts drifting through her mind debated how old the place was; the blinds might be real wood. The scent of polish, paper, and age swam thick through her senses.
She perched like a Greek goddess on a wooden pedestal, exposed to the room. Crumpled white cloth bunched around her hips and over her right thigh, extra folds draped over her perch. Two dozen university students peered from behind easels, sketching with fervor upon giant pads of actual paper. Professor Gresham, a purist, insisted his charges learn the rudimentaries of art before they moved on to modern things like holographic tablets, light pens, and digital animation. A living anachronism, he made her feel like she had gone centuries back in time. This was much different than dancing.
The only thing she had to do was remain as still as possible―a task easier contemplated than executed.
Heavy footfalls echoed over the fervent scratching of charcoal sticks as the instructor paced around. He passed close behind her; a wisp of cologne emerged from the ambiance for a fleeting moment. Every so often, he would pause to comment on someone’s work, sometimes complimenting, but most times suggesting adjustments to the technique.
Anna chose an old stuffed owl on the wall in the corner to stare at, as he had suggested. Hearing his voice in her mind, she tuned out everything else in the world but for the mangy, timeworn bird. He told her to relax as if the only thing that could see her was the one object she picked.
Despite the placement of an advert in a seedy adult club, he spoke to her as though she had no experience exposing herself in public. She rather enjoyed being thought of as a Proper woman, and did not disabuse him of the notion she was anything but. The sheet tickled the small of her back with each breath; she wanted to close her eyes. Sitting still for two hours proved more tiring than dancing in a cage.
The footfalls of the professor mutated into sounds like great blocks of stone being dropped, a heavy metronome reverberating through her mind. She shivered, trying to keep her emotion on an even keel. Free of the club’s pounding music, the silence proved the hardest part. It left her alone with the rambles of her thoughts and the scraping of paper. Here she sat, still being paid to show her tits to the world. It felt different in a way, but a degree of indignity came hand in hand with it nonetheless.
Is this all I am? A pair of bristols?
Penny kept at her to quit taking drugs. Anna did not want Faye to start, and now even her ‘employer’ wanted her off the shit.
What nerve.
A pimp―what he essentially was no matter how he dressed it up―telling one of his ladies to stop taking drugs. Her knuckles whitened, clutching at the wood through the fabric, far angrier than she would have gotten without the smiley in her. Knowledge the drug did it let her keep the rage out of her face and maintain the placid stare of disinterest at the stuffed bird.
How fucked up am I that a bloody pimp tells me to lay off?
She felt the tears banging against the back of her eyes trying to get out, but held them in. Crying was only good if there was someone around to give a rat’s ass. She would have a good sob on Penny’s shoulder later; these people did not need to see such a display.
Perhaps it was a good thing that she had been fired. Every time she left the place, she felt a little dirtier and a little less human. Penny may have been right, she should try to watch tots or walk dogs. Maybe she could shake off the rust and go back to pinching things. No, too dangerous. That will draw the CSB. It was time to stop letting life give it to her in the bum.
The sound of people shuffling about snapped her out of her musings.
Who am I kidding? I’m just a tr
amp sitting naked on a box.
Professor Gresham approached, offering a grandfather’s smile and gesturing at the easels. “That’s all for today, luv. There’s some good work about. Can I interest you in coming back tomorrow, say another hundred for your time?”
She eased her weight off the wooden cube, stretching the stiffness out of her legs. Her clear lack of modesty brought a touch of crimson to his cheeks.
“That’s fine, guv’na.”
He turned away. She found his courtesy strange; it made tears rush to the brim of her eyelid to get a closer look at him.
“I’ll leave ya to get your kit back on then, lass. I’ll be in my office at the end of the hall when you’re ready to collect your pay.”
Motionless, she stared at the figure in the dull blue sweater and tan pants. He left without trying to sneak a look back at her, out of sight behind the dark chestnut door below the owl. When he had gone, she padded to the partition behind which she had stripped before class. What was the point of this? She frowned at the old folding barrier, gold-hued wood painted with white orchids. They’re goin’ ta see me anyway.
On a desk nearby, an old NinTek 900 sat under a layer of dust, collecting more. Two feet tall, three feet long, and half a foot thick, it now served as a bookend. She gathered her clothes from where she tossed them, staring at the archaic terminal. Before holograms or M3 jacks that plugged the brain into the net, it had been the latest and greatest. It had to be a hundred years old. The last time anyone turned it on was long before her dad was an itch in her grandfather’s pants.
Anna looked down and pulled her skirt into place, ashamed her only thought about such a thing was about how much it would fetch at pawn. The old prof had been civil with her; she would feel guilty swiping it. Not to mention its size, something like that would not be an easy lift.
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