Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

nontechnicalexplanations of ParasiteNet. "I'll move all that stuff out."

  "Yeah," Billy said. "You should. Just put it in the basement inboxes. I've been watching you screw around with that wireless stuff andyou know, it's not real normal, either. It's pretty desperatelyweird. Danny's right -- that Kurt guy, following you around, like he'sin love with you. That's not normal." He flushed, and his hands were infists. "Christ, Adam, you're living in this goddamned museum and nailingthose stupid science-fair projects to the sides of buildings. You've gotthis comet tail of druggy kids following you around, buying dope withthe money they make off of the work they do for you. You're not justvisible, you're *strobing*, and you're so weird even *I* get thecrawlies around you."

  His bare feet slapped the shining cool wood as he paced the room, lamefoot making a different sound from the good one.

  Andy looked out the window at the green maple-keys rattling in thewind. "They're buying drugs?"

  Benny snorted. "You're bankrolling weekly heroin parties at twowarehouses on Oxford, and three raves a month down on Liberty Street."

  He looked up at the ceiling. "Mimi's awake now," he said. "Betterintroduce me."

  Mimi kept her own schedule, mostly nocturnal, padding quietly around hishouse while he slept, coming silently to bed after he rose, while he wasin the bathroom. She hadn't spoken a word to him in more than a week,and he had said nothing to her. But for the snores and the warmth of thebed when he lay down and the morning dishes in the sink, she might nothave been living with him at all. But for his constant awareness of herpresence in his house and but for the shirts with cut-away backs in thelaundry hamper, he might be living all on his own.

  But for the knife that he found under the mattress, compass set into thehandle, serrated edge glinting, he might have forgotten those wings,which drooped near to the floor now.

  Footsteps crossing between the master bedroom and the bathroom. Pausingat the top of the stairs. A soft cough.

  "Alan?"

  "It's okay, Mimi," he said.

  She came down in a pair of his boxer shorts, with the topsheetcomplicatedly draped over her chest in a way that left her wingsfree. Their tips touched the ground.

  "This is my brother Bentley," Adam said. "I told you about him."

  "You can see the future," she said reproachfully.

  "You have wings," he said.

  She held out her hand and he shook it.

  "I want breakfast," she said.

  "Sounds good to me," Brent said.

  Alan nodded. "I'll cook."

  #

  He made pancakes and cut up pears and peaches and apples and bananas forfruit salad.

  "This reminds me of the pancake house in town," Bart said. "Remember?"

  Adam nodded. It had been Ed-Fred-George's favorite Sunday dinner place.

  "Do you live here now?" Mimi said.

  Alan said, "Yes." She slipped her hand into his and squeezed histhumb. It felt good and unexpected.

  "Are you going to tell her?" Billy said.

  She withdrew her hand. "What is it." Her voice was cold.

  Billy said, "There's no good comes of keeping secrets. Krishna and Daveyare planning to attack Kurt. Krishna says he owns you. He'll probablycome for you."

  "Did you see that?" Adam said. "Him coming for her?"

  "Not that kind of seeing. I just understand enough about people to knowwhat that means."

  Trey met her at six, and he was paunchier than she'd remembered,his high school brawn run to a little fat. He shoved a gift intoher hand, a brown paper bag with a quart of cheap vodka init. She thanked him simperingly and tucked it in herknapsack. "It's a nice night. Let's get takeout and eat it inHigh Park."

  She saw the wheels turn in his head, meal plus booze plussecluded park equals pussy, pussy, pussy, and she let the tip ofher tongue touch her lips. This would be even easier than she'dthought.

  "How can you tell the difference?" Arthur said. "Between seeing andunderstanding?"

  "You'll never mistake them. Seeing it is like remembering spying onsomeone, only you haven't spied on him yet. Like you were standingbehind him and he just didn't notice. You hear it, you smell it, you seeit. Like you were standing *in* him sometimes, like it happened to you.

  "Understanding, that's totally different. That's like a little voice inyour head explaining it to you, telling you what it all means."

  "Oh," Andy said.

  "You thought you'd seen, right?"

  "Yeah. Thought that I was running out of time and going to die, or killDavey again, or something. It was a feeling, though, not like beingthere, not like having anything explained."

  "Is that going to happen?" Mimi asked Brad.

  Brad looked down at the table. "'Answer unclear, ask again later.'That's what this Magic 8-Ball I bought in a store once used to say."

  "Does that mean you don't know?"

  "I think it means I don't want to know."

  #

  "Don't worry," Bert said. "Kurt's safe tonight."

  Alan stopped lacing up his shoes and slumped back on the bench in hisfoyer. Mimi had done the dishes, Bill had dried, and he'd fretted aboutKurt. But it wasn't until he couldn't take it anymore and was ready togo and find him, bring him home if necessary, that Billy had come totalk to him.

  "Do you know that for sure?"

  "Yes. He has dinner with a woman, then he takes her dumpster diving andcomes home and goes to bed. I can see that."

  "But you don't see everything?"

  "No, but I saw that."

  "Fine," Adam said. He felt hopeless in the face of these predictions, asthough the future were something set and immutable.

  "I need to use the bathroom," Billy said, and made his way upstairswhile Alan moved to a sofa and paged absently through an old edition of*Alice in Wonderland* whose marbled frontispiece had come detached.

  A moment later, Mimi joined him, sitting down next to him, her wingsunfolded across the sofa back.

  "How big are they going to get, do you think?" she said, arranging them.

  "You don't know?"

  "They're bigger than they've ever been. That was good food," shesaid. "I think I should go talk to Krishna."

  Adam shook his head. "Whoa."

  "You don't need to be in between us. Maybe I can get him to back off onyou, on your family."

  "Mimi, I don't even want to discuss it."

  "It's the right thing to do," she said. "It's not fair to you to stay."

  "You want to have your wings cut," Alan said. "That's why you want to goback to him."

  She shied back as though he'd slapped her. "No --"

  "You do. But what Billy didn't tell you is that Krishna's out there withother women, I saw him today. With a girl. Young. Pretty. Normal. If hetakes you back, it will be as a toy, not as a lover. He can't love."

  "Christ," she said. "Why are you saying this?"

  "Because I don't want to watch you self-destruct, Mimi. Stay here. We'llsort out Krishna together. And my brother. Billy's here now, that meansthey can't sneak up on us."

  "And these?" she said, flapping her wings, one great heave that sentcurrents of air across the room, that blew the loose frontispiece from*Alice in Wonderland* toward the fireplace grate. "You'll sort theseout, too?"

  "What do you want from me, Mimi?" He was angry now. She hadn't spoken aword to him in weeks, and now --

  "Cut them off, Alan. Make me into someone who can go out again, who canbe seen. Do it. I have the knife."

  Adam squeezed his eyes shut. "No," he said.

  "Good-bye," she said, and stood, headed for the stairs. Upstairs, thetoilet flushed and they heard the sink running.

  "Wait!" he said, running after her. She had her hand on the doorknob.

  "No," she said. She was crying now. "I won't stay. I won't be trappedagain. Better to be with him than trapped --"

  "I'll do it," he said. "If you still want me to do it in two days, I'lldo it."

  She looked gravely at him. "Don't you lie
to me about this," shesaid. "Don't you dare be lying."

  He took her hands. "I swear," he said.

  From the top of the stairs then, "Whups," said Billy. "I think I'll justtuck myself into bed."

  Mimi smiled and hugged Alan fiercely.

  Trey's ardor came out with