Kill Process

by William Hertling

  A short kid, well, my height, opens the door. “Bill the Skinhead! Rooooga! dragon! Angel of Mercy!” He belts out our handles like he’s announcing us to the guests.

  “Death.” BTS is all cool calm. “Rad party.” With a nod, he walks in.

  People we know gather at the door to see us, and for a few minutes, we’re celebrities.

  The couches and chairs in the living room are filled, people arguing the finer points of the new Metallica album, the Amiga versus Atari ST, and whether baud rate is the same thing as bits per second. Conversation hiccups when I enter, and everyone stares at me. I scan the room without meeting anyone’s eyes. Three girls present.

  I run a Diversi-Dial. Install seven lines from the phone company, plug them into seven modems slotted into an Apple IIe, load the DDial software by cassette tape over the audio port because there’s no slots left to plug in a floppy disk drive, and presto: online chat system.

  There are four of these chat systems in New York City and about a hundred around the world. In 1986, if you’re the sysop of one, you’re hot shit. If you’re a girl online, you’re also hot shit. Combine the two, and I’m molten lava.

  By definition, everyone involved in DDial is a geek. You’ve got to be. You must own a computer, and terminal software and a modem, things computers don’t come with. You need to know someone in the community to discover the phone number, then puzzle out modem settings. Finally, you’ve got to choose to spend your time chatting online instead of in the real world.

  For whatever reason, it’s almost all guys.

  I hang out with Ruger, dragon, and BTS all the time, but the rest of these guys, I mostly chat with online. We hold parties every couple of months, usually when somebody’s parents go away for the weekend. dragon had a party at his place last summer, and burnt down half the kitchen. No more parties for him. It’s been nearly six months since the last major DDial party. Hence there’s been a lot of anticipation for Death’s party.

  I wander into the dining room, where they’re packing a bowl into a giant clear bong. Everyone’s crowded around the table, all chairs taken. Ruger’s there, and he pulls me onto his lap. Within a few seconds of sitting down, his thing pushes against my butt.

  I slept with him once, on his birthday. He’s cute enough, and I thought maybe I could be nice to him that one time. That was a mistake. We see each other all the time, and still he hopes for a repeat, even though I’ve told him no every time he’s asked.

  In the beginning, I was flattered by the attention, although it’s getting old and bothersome now.

  The bong comes around, and Ruger takes a long hit, the weed glowing red and sizzling. I lick my lips and swallow, anticipation growing. Finally, he hands me the bong. I inhale, the pot crackling, smoke bubbling up through the water, filling the chamber. I stop when the smoke hits my throat, exhale, and take a huge breath in, sucking as hard as I can. I let go of the carburetor halfway through, and a huge rush of smoke hits my lungs. When the chamber is cleared, I hold my breath. I smile with closed lips and pass the pipe to my left.

  “Damn. She emptied the bowl.”

  A round of cheers goes up.

  I stay for another round, then depart before things become too crazy. I’m not here to be falling-down stoned. I’ve got people to see.

  Ruger follows me into the hallway between the dining room and living room. He wraps an arm around my waist, and presses me against the wall.

  “Let’s do it,” he says. “We can go upstairs.”

  Ruger’s almost a foot taller than me, and he’s staring down into my eyes. He’s big, blond, and strong, and I used to imagine him as a Viking warrior, but in this moment he’s weak. His eyes plead with me, tell me he’d do anything to make it with me. This sad puppy thing is a turnoff. I want him to go away, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

  His body is hot against me. One hand slides down my shoulder, around my arm, toward my breast.

  He can, and has, lifted me into the air with one arm in the past. Today I nudge his arm aside.

  “No. That one time was it.”

  I shove against his chest, and he resists for a second. I push harder, and he turns sideways, lets me out. I walk down the hallway, and glance back to desperate longing on his face.

  I wander around, marveling at Death’s place. Granted, he’s the same age as me, and this is his parents’ apartment, but still, it’s amazing. The furniture is heavy, dark wood. The walls are decorated with carved wooden moldings, and there are paintings all over the place.

  I compare this to the tiny, bare apartment I share with my mom, where we never know if there’s going to be hot water. Worse is Ruger’s basement, with his broken walls, countless stinky-ass cats, and the pile of empty soup cans by the sink he can’t be bothered to throw out, or even to have heated up in the first place.

  I’m sure when Death steps into the shower limitless hot water pours out.

  There’s one room on this floor with a closed glass door, two heavy armchairs blocking the doorway, like maybe Death doesn’t want anyone to go in there. It’s dark in the room, and I can’t see through the door. I push one of the chairs aside, and go in. I fumble for a switch in the dark. When the lights come on, I’m in a library, an actual library, with books on every wall from floor to ceiling. Many are leather-bound, titles gilded on their spines in metallic leaf, their titles unfamiliar. There must be . . . I do a quick estimate, count the books on a shelf, then count the shelves, and multiply. More than two thousand.

  A desk occupies the middle of the room, a huge thing with wooden inlays all over, smelling like polish, battered and aged. Two stacks of unbound paper occupy the middle of the desk. I come around to see neat handwritten script, each page numbered. I lean closer and read something about a war.

  “Hey, nobody should be in here!”

  My heart jumps in my chest, and I glance up to see Death.

  “Oh, it’s you.” His voice softens.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “My father’s next book. The famous fucking writer. He’ll kill me if he knows anyone came in here.”

  Death is the opposite of Ruger, scrawny where Ruger is strong, short not tall, nervous, almost trembling in my presence. But he’s also the opposite of Ruger: rich, not poor, smart, surrounded by books. He has everything.

  I walk up next to him, and his eyes flare as I approach. He’s barely an inch taller, and as thin a stick, maybe smaller than me, wearing a black Megadeath T-shirt and black jeans. He’s frozen, like a frightened animal. I want to do it with him, with this rich boy in his fancy apartment.

  “What’s your favorite?” I say, gesturing toward the walls.

  “In here?” he says. He shrugs. “I like science fiction, but my father would never have that in his library.” He looks around, then points to the opposite wall. “The Prince, by Machiavelli.”

  “What’s it about?” I carefully place a hand on his waist.

  “It’s about ruling, and . . .”

  He’s distracted by my hand, and I edge my fingers up under his T-shirt until I touch bare skin. He trembles slightly. I lean in close, inches from his face, and he gets the hint. We stand there in his library, French kissing, and he wraps me in both arms. His chest presses up against mine, my boobs tingling at the touch. After a few minutes of this, his hand tentatively works its way up my side.

  “Let’s go up to your room,” I say.

  He’s speechless, but nods and takes me by the hand.

  Now we must wind our way through the party. It suddenly feels like everyone knows what we’re going to do, and I’m afraid of the snickers and snide remarks that will inevitably come later. Everyone wants to do it, yet the few girls here will likely still condemn me behind my back.

  Death was nervous in the library, but at this moment, he’s got a grin on his face. I wonder if he’s more excited to bring me to his room, or to be seen bringing me to his room.

  We turn the corner to go upstairs, passing the kitchen wh
ere BTS and Ruger chuck bagels at a pyramid of beer cans stacked on the kitchen counter. Death’s hand is wrapped tightly around mine, pulling me upstairs, suddenly forceful. I close my eyes and pray Ruger doesn’t see us going upstairs.

  I’m a little surprised to find Death’s bedroom is covered with posters like mine, a huge Iron Maiden The Number of the Beast poster dominating the wall at the head of his bed. I thought his room would be like downstairs, fancy, expensive. He locks the door, and the next thing I know, we’re on his bed, and he’s groping me, then pulling my shirt off.

  “Do you have. . . ?”

  He nods and reaches into a drawer.

  There’s a stereo on a shelf next to the bed, and I paw through his cassettes for something suitable. I open the cassette door, slip the tape in, and press play. The button engages with a satisfying thunk, and there’s a slight hiss, the recorded drop of a needle onto vinyl between tracks, and Tendencies’s Subliminal comes on.

  I pull off my shirt and kiss him. Soon we’re naked, and he’s on top of me, doing his thing, which feels good, but I can’t help staring at his face. His eyes are closed, his face twisted up in concentration, and he’s panting slightly. This party was the biggest event of the last few months, and Death was surely looking forward to it, the clout he’d accrue online for the next few months, until the next bigger thing happened. Instead, what he’s going to remember about this night is not his party, but doing it with me. Everyone who was here, all of the events of this night, will pale in comparison to this moment. With nothing except a caress and a kiss, I’ve toppled the order of things.

  I lean up and kiss Death, then bite his lip. He grunts and spasms inside me. He’s sweaty, his breath hot in my ear, and then he’s kissing me again, the little afterward kisses that are supposed to mean thank you or you’re awesome, or something like that. Each touch of his lips is an electrical charge, power flowing from him to me.

  Afterward I pull the sheet around me as I find my panties and bra. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Wait. Let’s do it again.” He’s staring at me, adoration on his face.

  I lean down to kiss him and he grabs my boob. I push his hand away, and put my bra on. “Maybe another time. People will talk.”

  “So?”

  The same friends who will high-five him when he tells them we did it will turn around and say I’m easy, a slut, when I’m not around. When I am, they’ll try to make it with me, too. For him, it’s all upside.

  For a brief moment, I think it’s unfair. Then I recall that feeling in bed, of changing how Death will remember and think about this evening. That’s real power. Everyone else’s judgement only affects me if I let it. I smile at Death before I leave.

  It takes ten minutes in the bathroom to repair the damage. If Death had a sister, with actual girl stuff here, this would be much easier. As it is, I make do with lipstick and an eye pencil I had stuffed in my jeans, and leave the rest of my make-up alone. I wonder if people will smell the sex on me, and briefly consider dousing myself with Death’s cologne. One sniff of the bottle makes it clear that would be a mistake.

  I wander down the hall to see the person I really came here to spend time with. I head toward a greenish glow coming out of a doorway.

  In the room, I take in the dark figure on the couch in a glance, but let my eyes slide past. Play it cool, Angie.

  Half a dozen people crowd around two computers in the dim room. My mind reels. Two computers, and they aren’t even in Death’s bedroom. He’s got a dedicated room for them.

  I can sit on my bed and type on the keyboard.

  They—all boys I don’t know—are online, and a surge of pride runs through me, as both computers are connected to MercyStation, my DDial. They’re chatting with a girl named Stacey, trying to convince her to come to the party.

  I ignore them, and turn to the guy on the couch. The music is only a quarter as loud up here, and it’s possible to hold a reasonable conversation.

  “Nathan9,” I say, as flat and cool as I can manage, although my heart pitter-patters. He’s not Case from Neuromancer, but he’s pretty close.

  “Angel.” He tips his head in my direction, but he stares off toward nowhere. His seeing-eye dog is at his feet, carefully watching me. “Sit down.”

  I sit next to him on the couch. He orients his face in my general direction. He’s weird, his face misshapen, his eyes scrunched up small. This is so different than chatting online.

  “I told them Stacey’s not a girl,” Nathan9 says, “but they don’t believe me.”

  “Ha, they wouldn’t notice a real girl if one walked into the room.”

  We both smile at that.

  “Did you install the modz I sent?” He leans down, feels along his leg, and pats the dog.

  “Not yet,” I say, “I need to borrow a disk drive from dragon to read the floppy.”

  “No disk drive?” he smiles, like this is the most foolish thing he’s heard. “You’re a hacker without a disk drive?”

  I bow my head sheepishly, which is sort of pointless, since he can’t see me.

  “I had to sell mine. I needed the money.”

  He nods, as though this is normal, though it isn’t. Among my friends, they’re saving up to buy the next newer computer, not hawking off parts for dinner. The phone company wants payment for all my telephone lines, and the monthly membership people pay for access to MercyStation doesn’t quite cover the bills.

  “Well, the Hayes SmartModem will do 450 baud with the patch, which will be a nice upgrade. Install the patch.” He says the last part with emphasis.

  “Can your screenreader keep up?”

  Nathan extracts his screenreader from his shirt pocket. “Not this portable one,” he says, holding the deck-of-cards-sized device in his hand. “At home, I have one built into my PC.”

  I nod, realize he can’t see me, and say instead “I see,” then worry maybe I shouldn’t say I see.

  “How do you get around at home?” I know Nathan lives by himself, but I can’t picture it.

  “Everything has a place, and I put everything back in its place. That’s about it, really. I avoid furniture with pointy corners.”

  “Wasn’t it hard to get used to?” I lean down to pet his dog, and the dog leans toward me.

  “Please don’t. If his harness is on, he’s working.” Nathan puts one hand on the dog, steadies him. “I was born this way. It’s as natural as can be.”

  We’ve never talked much about Nathan’s blindness online. But it’s different when he’s sitting right here in front of me.

  We hear a double-click of two modems hanging up their connections simultaneously.

  “Crap!” one of the guys says. “Booted off MercyStation at the same time.”

  I shake my head. “That shouldn’t happen.”

  The modems start their automatic redial in parallel. The buzz of the dial tone is followed by super rapid touch tones. Death’s got his modems configured for war-dialing, tweaking the speed at which they send the touch tone frequencies. The maximum pace for every phone line is slightly different, depending on your distance from the phone company exchange and the equipment the exchange runs.

  We never hear the squeal of MercyStation answering. In fact, we never even hear a ring. It goes straight to an operator recording. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

  “What the hell?” I stand, and for the first time, the guys notice me.

  “Angel!”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. We were talking to some chick.”

  “Is there a phone around here?”

  Death leans over, grabs something off the table with a long antenna sticking out of it, and hangs it to me. “Cordless telephone,” he says. “Switch it to Talk.”

  I take the phone dumbly. I’ve heard of a cordless phone, of course, just never expected to use one. I dial my own number, my voice line, to see if it’s somehow a problem with my computer.

  “The nu
mber you have dialed is no longer in service.” I hang up. Or rather, slide the switch to off.

  “Tell me exactly what happened online right before you got disconnected,” I say.

  One of the guys, wearing a dungaree jacket, answers. “We were talking to Stacey, and she asked for Angel of Mercy . . . I mean, you. We didn’t know where you were. We tried to convince her to come to the party, but she wouldn’t. She said she’d wait for you to come online.”

  “Did she say anything unusual?”

  “No,” the dungaree jacket says.

  “She did . . . when she first came on, she said ‘hi, you suck.’ ”

  Please let it not be HUS. “Did she spell it y-o-u?”

  “No, just the letter u.”

  “Shit, shit, shit.” HUS is the abbreviation we’ve been using for an unknown pain-in-the-ass who calls into all of the dials and says “hi, u suck.” I’ve been aggressively kicking him off whenever he connects, and he’s been threatening me for a while.

  “He tricked the phone company into shutting down your account,” Nathan9 says. “Not bad.”

  “It’s the middle of the weekend!” I scream. “Phone company won’t even take account calls until Monday. MercyStation will be down for days. My mother is going to kill me if her phone is out too.”

  Death and the guys at the computers stare uneasily at me.

  “You don’t need to wait until Monday,” Nathan says. “We fight back. We call, pretend we’re a lineman, and ask someone in the central office to flip the right switch.”

  I’ve heard of the trick Nathan wants to run. The problem is, I’ve never done any of this stuff, only heard Nathan and the other old-timers describe it.

  “Will you do it?” I ask. I don’t even bother fluttering my eyelashes, since he can’t see me.

  “I could, though it would be better if you learn how. I’ll tell you what to say.”

  Nathan outlines what we’re going to do, beginning with calling the phone company on an inside number, a line the public doesn’t have. I’ll pretend I’m an employee, a repairman who’s out on maintenance, who needs them to flip a few switches, enter a few codes. They won’t know what they’re doing, but if I sound confident and know the lingo, they’ll do exactly what I say. Except there’s no way I can pull it off.