by Kyle Harris
And that made Chaz angry.
Attention. The bastard thought she was doing it for attention, like being gay was a fucking vogue. And someday she would grow out of it. Until then, she was the family insult, an inhuman joke, an unholy disgrace. And Pruitt wanted the whole fucking city to know it.
Chaz lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the screen. It ain’t gonna be pretty between me and you, she thought. Just try talking shit to me. See what happens.
After her temper was ebbed by the nicotine, she brooded over the job.
Lots of assumptions had been made, not the least of which being that Lilibeth was in the market for a relationship and that Chaz would be her type. Kennedy had talked about it like it was a recipe for stew—throw in two single lesbians, mix in the powers of attraction, and stir well. Leave over heat for scissoring. Easy.
It had been over a year since Beverly. Chaz still casually reminisced on the sex when a sim wouldn’t do the trick. But the rest of Beverly? Clingy, crabby, mushy. Teenage girls had more in common with stray dogs than humans.
Chaz remembered the last time Beverly had bawled her eyes out—she’d just received news that her uncle wasn’t on the latest colony transport ship bound for Trident. Chaz didn’t know the man, couldn’t give one flying fuck either way. But that’s what girls did—they dragged you into their problems, like your existence was merely a shoulder for them to sob into. The relationship had crumbled shortly after that.
To gain access into the Pruitt household, Chaz would have to get close to someone again. She had no choice. Infiltrating the place on her own was beyond risky. But unlike other girls, this one came with a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus.
She’d almost be a girl for that amount of money. Almost.
Her tasker chimed—notification that the tether-feed was online. Facial-rec had been confirmed on Freeman Avenue, retail strip, 1.71 kilometers from her current position. Camera 356M-18A, a Metro surveillance feed. The vantage point was from up above, probably a rail platform or column strut. A woman in a puffer coat walked with the crowd below, her head enclosed in a green rectangle. Chaz watched as the target went into a shoe outlet, interrupting facial-rec. A peek at a city map showed it to be Empress Shoe Emporium.
While waiting for Lilibeth to reemerge on the tether, Chaz felt Donny brush up against her ankles. She reached down and scooped him up. After he had uncurled out of his defensive ball, she scratched his pink belly. The indolent little fucker looked like he was smiling.
A few minutes later, Chaz’s tasker chimed to let her know Lilibeth had left the shoe store.
“What do you think?” she asked Donny, consulting his infinite hedgehog wisdom. She rotated him so his dark little eyes could see the tasker screen. “I could make a lot of money very quickly, but that means I have to date this girl. I have to pretend I like her.” She pointed Lilibeth out. “You think it’ll work?”
Donny’s stubby legs wiggled like he wanted down.
“But,” said Chaz, putting her mouth close to his ear, “I also hear this Lilibeth fucking hates hedgehogs who can’t lose weight. You hear that, you little brat?”
She plopped Donny on the floor, at which point he made an instant beeline for his cage—to eat.
You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Following Lilibeth on the city’s CWS feeds made this feel like a standard looker job—watching routes and activities, eavesdropping on conversations through boosted audio, jotting down mental notes of anything suspicious for further investigation. Over the next few minutes, Lilibeth entered a women’s clothing store and a fast-food joint.
Chaz rubbed her eyes. Playing voyeur got old fast. But putting together Lilibeth’s routine could be an advantage. If she shopped at the same stores, ate at the same restaurants, Chaz could “accidentally” bump into her. Start a conversation, become her friend, and presto.
Ugh, it sounds dumb.
Worse, it might require days and weeks of tracking her. Even with a script to automate recordings. Kennedy hadn’t been clear on when he wanted the job done, but there was no way to rush this.
New chime. The perspective was an alley. A plot of the coordinates placed the camera adjacent to the fast-food joint.
Chaz squinted at the screen. The feed was underexposed, but the tether was solid. At some point inside the fast-food place, Lilibeth had changed her clothes and dumped her bags. She was still wearing the same puffer coat, but now it was open at the middle, and it looked like she was wearing a black dress. She walked barefoot down the alley, a pair of heels held in her hand.
And where are you off to?
Chaz didn’t have to wait long to find out. The tether cycled to a new lens, showing Lilibeth conversing with some blubbery dude who appeared to be guarding a door. She gave him something, he stepped aside, and she mounted the steps and entered. Music could be briefly heard.
The map marked it as a club—Diatomic Vibrations. There weren’t any windows to see what was happening inside, but the club’s website had snaps of a packed dance floor and a menu of what was on tap. Along with private dining areas, VIP booking, weekly specials—all the conventional attractions.
Hold the fuck up.
Chaz returned to Lilibeth’s social media profiles to confirm her suspicion: she was still two years out from being the legal age. Procuring a fake ID wasn’t too hard, but why go through the back? Unless she was worried someone might recognize her.
Also, it was a club—a club. She might be there for a couple hours.
Chaz spun in her chair, tapping her fingers on her legs. What better place was there to meet someone? Lots of people, noise, an atmosphere purportedly conducive to making friends. So the rumors said.
Shit, it might fucking work. Even if she didn’t introduce herself, she could run some quiet reconnaissance and get an idea of what kind of girl Lilibeth had the hots for. It was better than watching hours of surveillance footage.
First, a shower. Then, decide what the hell to wear.
About fifty meters from the club, Chaz stopped outside a coffeehouse—which touted 100% HUMAN STAFF and smelled of roasting beans—to check her appearance in the glass.
The plaid button-up shirt was a couple years old; still smelled off the rack and not yet chemically detoxed from machine wash. But the fit was good. And the design meshed well with skinny denims. With a clip-on tie she’d purchased for five bucks at a store a couple blocks back and a one-size-too-small sports bra to keep everything in the front flat, the vibe she got from the reflection was more boy than girl.
Handsome.
It was remarkable how slick-backed hair could emphasize her brow and eyes and sharpen some of the angles. It wasn’t that she looked like a totally different person; rather, the lighting and shadows had moved a little. Same contours, different contrast; a boy with girlish features, instead of a girl with boyish features.
Satisfied, she began heading in the direction of Diatomic Vibrations.
A quarter till five scarcely being the prime-time hour for clubs, only a handful of people were in the entrance line. The queue crawled forward until it was her turn, and she displayed her fake ID where she was a twenty-three-year-old Earthborn organ donor.
The bouncer glanced at her ID and looked at something on his tasker. Then he shook his head. “Flashing a fake card could get you thirty days in the coop.” His mouth puckered. “But…I’ll let you off the hook this time since you ain’t tried it here yet.”
“What are you talking about?” said Chaz. “I’m twenty-three.”
He emitted a sound like he was both choking and laughing. “Not according to what I’m seeing here, Ms. McCune.” He pointed back to a camera, small and hard to see, just above the entrance doors. “You still got a couple more years yet. Now get lost.”
Fucking motherfuck.
Chaz stepped out of line before being told to again.
She had misjudged Diatomic Vibrations. Lesser clubs weren’t known for their robust security, much less networked surveil
lance to facial-rec databases. But if the ID didn’t fool the pigs watching the doors, then how had Lilibeth snuck in without raising an alarm?
Unless…
Chaz found the same blubbery dude around the back. He had the shape of a pear, his pants and belt acting to push up his enormous gut. It looked like his upper half was starting to melt and droop over his lower half, like ice cream after sitting in the sun.
He saw her coming and pointed back to the street. “Main entrance is thataway, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Miss, I mean.”
“I just have a question,” she said, stopping in front of him.
His eyes searched over her. “What is it?”
“Whoever’s running the front, he’s an asshole.” She pulled out a wad of cash, held it so he’d see it in her hand. “Do you want to be my friend?”
“I’ll be anyone’s friend,” he said, smiling with a mouth that was too small for his broad face. His odor was strong antiperspirant.
Blubbery wanted a hundred bucks to stay mum. Chaz passed him the dough, and she went up the steps and through the door, and the music swelled like it had been held captive inside.
Game time.
Entering through the rear exit seemed to put her next to a utility closet and some bathrooms. She made her way toward the music—it sounded like German metal, cranked up so loud that the ringing in her ears substituted the softer notes. Up ahead, lights strobed with the shock wave of noise, the floor switching from carpet to see-through panels over conduits that channeled color like flowing water. During the rapid-fire pulses, people in the hallway seemed to move like stop-motion characters.
She arrived at the dance floor, where there was a riot of exuberant bodies leaping around like it was all their legs could do. The place was built like a miniature coliseum with backlit lounge areas and pay-to-enter VIP party zones. There were second-level bars and seating, a sprawl of people covering the railings. Large screens flashed with images so fast they were probably graphical nonsense to anyone who’d had a drink.
She saw a spiral staircase in the back and moved along the fringe of the mob, eyes scanning the heads. She bumped past people when it couldn’t be helped. If they said anything, she never heard it.
Upstairs was more tolerable, the congestion replaced with gentle proximities and room to sit. She found an empty table in the corner and slid around until she had a whole view of the bar area. There were maybe a few dozen people among the serving girls, a fifty-fifty mix of genders, none of them Lilibeth.
Chaz retrieved her tasker. She had left the tether program running—no matches, which meant her target hadn’t left the club. It wouldn’t be any help now; the only lens to use in here was eyesight.
A serving girl waltzed over, her latex skirt undulating with neon-edged ripples. Chaz ordered a beer so as to not draw any unwanted suspicion. The girl had a rose tattoo on her upper arm that glimmered white.
When she hastily returned with the beverage, Chaz asked her about it: “That tattoo’s fucking amazing. Where’d you get it done?”
“A place called Black Hole Ink,” she said, almost shouting over the music. “Up on Fross.”
“You lived on Fross?” Chaz took a swig of the beer. If she were here for any other reason, she would’ve ordered shots—quicker results. “I hear that moon’s awful.”
“That’s why I came here three months ago, took anything I could get.” She turned so Chaz could see the shining ink job. Then she rubbed her hand across it, and the bright white faded to a mellower blue.
“Holy shit. That’s fucking lege!”
The girl smiled, bashfully. “The friction does that. So does hot water, like if I’m in the shower. I wanted to get my whole arm done, have vines and leaves wrapping around, but it wouldn’t have changed color.”
Chaz nodded. “It looks nice like that. It’s cool.”
The smiling serving girl walked off, and Chaz watched her tend to others at the bar and tables. She sat back into the foam padding and discovered an odd relaxation. During the short intermission between abrasive songs, the club was almost pleasant, the conversations carrying for those brief seconds. Around her was a contagion of people enjoying themselves, most accompanied by their friends or partners. They chatted and laughed, and it was a lively distraction.
Somewhere in that respite from the dissonance of what passed for music, Chaz might’ve smiled.
When the next track kicked in, there she was.
Lilibeth had come up the same spiral staircase. Her black dress was so snug it looked vacuum-sealed, projecting her slim physique to all eyes in the room. She didn’t hesitate at the landing; her gaze was on the bar, and that’s where she went. She found a seat and ordered.
She was right there.
Chaz dumped more beer in her belly, but it didn’t fight off the nervousness. For a few minutes, she did what she had come here to do: observe. Everything about Lilibeth’s posture opposed the energy in the club. The bartender served the drink, and she just stared at it. She never talked, she never looked around. The blinders were up.
Shit.
What if she wasn’t interested in dating? It wasn’t illegal to come to a bar and just have a drink. But then the whole job was fucked before it ever began. There weren’t any tricks in the bag to woo a girl who stared at a glass of liquor like she wanted to drown herself in it.
More minutes ticked by. The situation remained as it was. Turbo fucked.
Maybe the dating angle was the wrong way to go about it. They could just be friends. Friends talked. Friends went over to each other’s houses. Hell, they already had something in common: they were each sitting alone.
Yeah. Go over there and be her friend.
Chaz felt confident enough to stand. With one last chug of beer to unruffle the nerves, she started walking toward the bar.
The music was such a roar that she couldn’t hear herself contemplate what she was going to say, and the short trip seemed disorienting and thoughtless. Her hands were sweaty and trembling.
She took the seat next to Lilibeth, put her hands on the bartop, and looked straight ahead, feigning that the assortment of alcoholic beverages held her complete and undivided attention.
After ten seconds (a conservative guess—it felt much longer) the blare of the club split into its individual elements of voices and music again. Chaz looked as far as her peripherals would allow. The bartender was occupied with someone else, and she was relieved for that. She didn’t know what she would’ve ordered, never even considered the chance of being asked.
Okay, stop being a pussy.
She slowly turned her head to look at Lilibeth from the corner of her eye. The girl had not moved, had not changed her pose in any way. No victor had yet been decided in the staring contest between her and the liquor.
Then, a change. She slowly looked up and over at Chaz.
Chaz’s heart thrummed. She quietly cleared her throat and opened her mouth.
“Hey.”
Lilibeth turned her head toward the guy who’d spoken. He was short and had a big nose, and he wore his silk shirt with the top two buttons undone like his clumpy patch of chest hair would impress the ladies. A gold cross dangled from his left earlobe.
She gave him a sober “Not interested” before turning back to her undisturbed drink.
Schnoz didn’t take the rejection well. “You think I want to fucking dance with you?” he barked over the music. “You think anyone here in this whole fucking club wants to dance with you?” He poked her in the shoulder. “The only place lesbians go is hell!”
Lilibeth pretended not to hear.
Chaz watched on, stupefied by the scene.
Schnoz wasn’t finished. “Hey everyone!” He shouted it to the attendants at the bar and anyone behind him within earshot. “Lilibeth Pruitt is a lesbian! Did you all get that?” Then he leaned in close, his hand clamping her shoulder. “Everywhere you go. Remember that. Even in here, you can’t escape.” And he took her drink and poured the alco
hol on her head. It soaked through her hair and streamed down her face. Drops pelted her shoulders.
Schnoz put the glass back on the bartop and applauded himself.
Chaz realized a voice was coming out of her throat: “Hey! You! Asshole!”
He’d taken a step back but hadn’t turned away yet. He looked at Chaz, his vague expression shifting in the club’s strobing lights. “Who the hell are you?” he said. Then, before she could say anything: “Mind your own business. I just had to remind this girl that she and her kind are abominations. This world would be a better place without the gay freaks. Isn’t that right, Lilibeth?”
Chaz locked her jaw. “Leave her alone. And apologize.”
Schnoz cupped a hand to his ear. “What?”
“Go back to her and apologize!”
That just made him grin. “I have a friend who once told me he heard voices in his head. And they told him to do crazy things. Like one time he said they ordered him to chop up his goldfish and eat it.” He laughed. “I’ll have to tell him about this voice that wants me to apologize to a lesbian.”
Chaz stood from her seat and got in his face before the impulse to do so had even registered. He had to look up at her. The people around them had already spread out, giving them space. They knew it before she did.
“You go back to her and apologize,” she demanded, breathing in his spicy aftershave. “Or you’re gonna fucking regret you ever walked into this place.”
Schnoz stood his ground. “Or what, dyke? I figure you are; you’re dressed like one. And you were sitting next to her. Filth only attracts filth.”
The way he said it was meant to rile her up, make her do something stupid. He probably thought he was the first. Fucking idiot. Looking at him, she pondered what he might weigh on a scale and how much of that square-shouldered pose was bluff. Then she smiled and took a step back.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re cool.”
The man loosened up, nodded. “Thought so.”
Not.