by Dan O'Shea
Kathi stood up. “I was talking to her first.”
“You grabbed her first, you mean.”
“She doesn’t need to be on a diet.”
“Like you’re an expert.”
“Having an eating disorder doesn’t make you any more qualified.”
Barbara reddened. “I have an eating disorder? This from someone who downs a fucking boatload of carbs every day?”
The smell hit Kathi as she was thinking of a comeback. Stale urine. It came wafting from her would-be customer, who’d just been standing there, mouth open, during the exchange. Kathi looked at her again. Wadded-up newspapers jutted from the hem of her sweater.
“Holy shit,” Kathi said. “She’s homeless.”
“What?”
“Look at her shoes. They’re taped together.”
Barbara followed Kathi’s pointing finger. “She must’ve just wandered in. This city’s thick with them.”
“Christ. Where’s security?”
• • • •
Kathi sat alone in the Moscone’s crowded food court, knocking back a second Heineken over a bowl of expensive dan dan noodles. Too expensive: she had less than a hundred dollars tucked away in her aging Gucci.
For the past week she’d been living with Barbara and her husband Will in their RV, parked outside an Oakland Wal Mart. Will had agoraphobia and never left the vehicle. Kathi spent her nights sleeping on the floor, waking to the sound of Barbara’s careful puking.
Don’t think about it. Don’t spiral.
But she couldn’t help thinking about it.
Breathe into your manipura chakra.
Another beer would help. Keep her from contemplating turning forty with nothing to show for it. Twenty pounds heavier, tits sagging, and the only thing she’d been able to bank against the future was fucking Koan Tones.
You’re spiraling now.
Okay, she was spiraling. Fat tears streaked down her face. No one sitting nearby paid any attention, which somehow made it worse.
And then she saw him.
He stood in the burrito line. A little older, of course, some lines around his mouth, but he still had a full head of sandy-brown hair. His blazer looked new.
She called out and waved, wondering how she’d gotten so upset in the first place.
• • • •
Fifty minutes later their reunion had been consummated.
“That was wonderful,” she breathed into the pillow, though in truth Jeff had lost his erection about halfway through. She blamed the garlic from her dan dan noodles. What was wonderful, though, was being in his hotel room, a decent one with a mini-bar.
“Has it been awhile,” Jeff said, “since you’ve been intimate?”
“Too long.”
“When you walked over I wasn’t sure if you were going to say ‘hi’ or slap me.”
“I forgive you.”
“Just like that?”
She snatched a mini-bottle of Stolichnaya off the nightstand and downed it. “Forgive and forget.”
“You still haven’t asked me what I’m doing here.”
“Alright. What are you doing here?”
“After our, ah, split,” he said, propping himself against the headboard, “I checked myself into this rehab in New Mexico. Amazing place. The staff there explained I had multiple addictions. Sex. Love. Money. Acceptance. The drugs were just the outer part. But they also taught me I’d been denying the most essential addiction of all.”
“Which was?”
He raised a finger and rotated it to point down at his hairless chest.
“I don’t get it,” Kathi said. “You’re addicted to yourself?”
“I’m supposed to be. Everyone is. But they deny it with a host of distractions, like cocaine or heroin. I denied it. Not anymore.”
She wasn’t really sure what he meant by that, but she nodded anyway. Vodka always made her agreeable.
“Take a look at this.” He slid off the bed and returned with a book. YOU: THE ESSENTIAL ADDICTION. The cover was a picture of Jeff pointing at himself. His wrinkles had been airbrushed.
“This looks great.”
“It’s why I’m at the expo. I’ve got a signing this evening.”
She flipped over to the back cover and read the biography. A couple words had been misspelled, plus Jeff claimed several degrees she knew were bogus. “Who published this?”
“A big company.”
“And it’s selling?”
“Kathi, sales have been through the fucking roof. My agent’s trying to get me on the talk show circuit. He’s saying Oprah’s a definite possibility.”
“Holy shit.”
“You want to come along for the ride?”
She grabbed another Stoli off the nightstand. The universe was proving its beneficence at last.
• • • •
Her temple pounded.
The digital clock on the nightstand read 5:03 P.M. She’d woken to a darkened room; the lights off, curtains drawn. And no Jeff.
But her panic didn’t last. She found a note next to the bathroom mirror, with the time and location of the book signing. Jeff had left early to set up.
“Things are finally happening,” she said aloud, slipping into the shower. The hot water felt glorious. Barbara had her on a strict two minute limit when showering in the RV, because the tank was so small.
Christ, but it’s going to be nice, telling that skinny bitch I’m leaving.
• • • •
By evening most of the vendors at the expo had closed their booths. The Moscone Center seemed practically empty. Kathi looked for Barbara but couldn’t find her, so she wandered down to the speaker’s platform where Jeff was due in twenty minutes.
Only one other person waited in the sea of folding chairs; an older woman, sitting ramrod-straight. She wore diamond earrings and an evening dress. Kathi smelled money. If she was still peddling Koan Tones she might’ve tried to chat her up, but the woman glared when she sat nearby, and besides, she didn’t have to hustle anymore.
Minutes passed. No one else came shuffling up to sit. Funny, considering how well the book was supposed to be doing. Kathi thought the place would be packed. Heaps of YOU: THE ESSENTIAL ADDICTION had been piled on the trestle table near the front, waiting to be signed.
At 6:30 exactly an expo official in a red blazer walked up, flashed a nervous smile at Kathi and the older lady, checked his watch, and walked off.
Ten minutes passed. Still no Jeff.
“Excuse me,” Kathi asked the woman, “but have you heard if the signing’s been delayed?”
“I haven’t been informed of anything like that.”
“Do you know the author?”
Her smirk made creases in her heavy makeup. “I should think so.”
She didn’t elaborate.
At 6:45 the woman stood up. “That little shit.” She crumpled her program and hurled it at the floor, before stalking off.
Kathi watched her leave. A suspicion was forming, making ripples in her stomach. She tried to fight it. At 7:05 the cleaning crew arrived and began folding the chairs.
Not again.
Her hands shook as she opened the Gucci purse.
The last of her money was missing.
• • • •
“We’re going to have a long talk, about your staying with Will and me.”
Barbara stared straight ahead as she drove, navigating the traffic on the Oakland Bay Bridge. The sun had just gone down and Kathi could see the lights of Treasure Island winking in the distance.
She knew what the talk would be about. She didn’t care. After finding Barbara at the expo and getting into her Buick for the long ride back to Oakland, she’d been crying non-stop.
Barbara pretended not to notice.
• • • •
As soon as they got inside the RV Barbara headed straight for the bathroom.
Kathi parted the old bed sheet tacked to the ceiling and entered Will’s “half” of
the vehicle. He was lying naked on a foam slab, head propped up to watch television. He made an inquiring grunt at Kathi, but didn’t move to cover himself. He didn’t have to. The mass of his hairy gut drooped down to enfold his penis.
“There’s gangsters outside,” she told him, “in the parking lot. Crips, I think.”
His face animated. “What?”
“Where’s your gun?”
“Under there.” He rolled to a sitting position and pointed at the couch. “How many Crips?”
Kathi felt under the cushions. Her fingers brushed cold metal and she hauled out a revolver. Before Will could object, she bolted through the partition and snatched the Buick’s keys from where Barbara had tossed them. Retching sounds followed her outside.
She rushed over to the Buick. Will appeared in the RV’s doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist. He yelled her name. But he couldn’t leave the vehicle; his body froze as if touching an invisible wall.
She wheeled the car towards the expressway. Back to San Francisco.
• • • •
“All I can verify, ma’am, is that the room had been reserved by a credit card belonging to Ms. Jonquil Teague. She called about fifty minutes ago to report the card stolen.”
The hotel clerk folded his hands over the desk.
“You don’t have a contact number for Jeff? An address? Anything?”
He shook his head. “Just the card information.”
Kathi’s knees shook so hard they rubbed together. She wobbled away from the desk and sat down in the hotel’s front lobby, the Gucci on her lap. The gun was inside.
Think. You’re Jeff and you’ve just gotten your hands on a hundred dollars. What would you do?
Try to score, of course.
Kathi remembered when she’d been heavy into coke and stuck on a four hour layover at the Denver airport. The jones had hit her so bad she’d asked a skycap where a lady in a hurry could cop some blow.
Wasn’t that complicated, it turned out.
She hustled outside to find a taxi.
• • • •
“Your friend’s looking for a shooting gallery, he’s just as likely to start here.” The cabbie pointed a yellowed finger at a tenement building. The windows on the ground floor had been smashed out and replaced with plywood. “Mind, this is the Tenderloin district and it’s night, so I’d be careful if I were you.”
“I appreciate it.”
He turned to look at her through the bulletproof plastic. “Nine bucks. The advice is free.”
“Of course.” She fumbled with her purse and the cabbie released the door locks. Outside, she pointed the gun at him through the passenger side window.
He drove off without a word.
• • • •
She found him a block away from the tenement building, in an alley between a Tandoori house and a martial arts supply store. He’d already been rolled. His blazer was gone, probably ripped right off him, and there was a swelling over his left eye. Not that he seemed to care. He looked up at her from the filth of the alley’s floor and tried a smile.
“Kathi.”
“I suppose that’s all my money you’ve got in your veins.”
He shrugged.
“Was any of that shit real? About the book?”
“I wish it was.”
She took the gun out of her purse. He didn’t seem frightened.
“If you’re going to shoot me,” he said, “do it now, before I come down. Otherwise, give me the gun so I can pawn it.”
She contemplated swallowing the barrel herself. Then her phone went off inside her purse, and though the singing bowl was muffled by leather, the rich, drawn-out sound seemed to reverberate off the alley walls and slide deep inside her consciousness.
Enlightenment.
THE AWAKENING: From the Cyborg Lesbian Vampire Chronicles
Steve Weddle
Three, but I couldn’t get a clean shot at any of them. Sure, you hear, “We need you to take care of a trio of cyborg lesbian vampires,” you figure it’s going to be a good week. Not so much, it turns out.
The scope I’d gotten last week off a pantheloid grok pulled their soul signatures through the crowd. Or rather, their lack of souls. I put a message in to Luke’s holo: “Can’t get a shot. You clear?”
He got back to me in half a minute. He couldn’t see anything at all. Of course, I didn’t know then that he’d had his eyes plucked by one of the vamps. He could have told me that, I guess, but that would have ruined the little conspiracy they had working, their plan to get me out in the open and shove my pecker down my throat and then dance on my grave.
Vampires were bad enough, but this group of cyborg lesbians was going to be the death of me, I figured. But not tonight.
They moved through the market, smelling, scanning. I had the latest kauke on, a level three scent mask I’d gotten from a guy at the central armory who’d used it for hunting sniffs. I caught the lead vamp in the scope. Purple sash. Chainmail. A sielasword she’d taken from the freshly dead Count Zalingas. He should have known. Whatever you think is going to happen, never ever let a cyborg lesbian vampire undress you in the back garden of your estate. That’s the kind of mistake you don’t make again. I liked her. Taut. Pointy. Regal. I’d save her for last.
When I put a sidabro-bolt through the neck of the shortest one, the other two vamps smoked away. I was reaching for a scanner when I heard the door behind me open.
I spun in time to catch one of them in the throat with a tamsablade. She reached for it, gurgled, drifted into dust.
A blink and the last of the three was on me.
• • • •
I woke, tied to a chair. You always wake up tied to a chair. You never lose your light in a battle and wake up in a harem. Or tied to a refrigerator. Always tied to a chair. Hands behind my back, feet to the legs of the chair, dick dangling in front of me. At least they hadn’t castrated me, yet. Small favors, and all.
She walked in, the one from Tas Miestas. The pointy one. She’d ditched the chainmail and sash for some sort of sleeveless white robe. From one shoulder her flesh arm, white but heavily inked with round patterns folding in on the next. From her left shoulder, the mechanical arm, a pinker flesh covering it, but more solid looking. Clean. She had the hood on the robe up, but I could see her face. The deep eyes, the point of her chin.
She leaned in close. A tinge of vanilla, mingling with something I couldn’t place. Her robe, like burlap rubbing against my, well, my naked stuff. I focused, slow my breath, waiting for the threats.
Who sent you? What do you want? How would you like die?
“You have been misinformed.”
Fine. We’re going that way? We’re going to do the thing in which she says I don’t know who I’m up against. Don’t know what I’m dealing with. Fine.
If I could twist, I thought, I could use the tension of the ropes to snap the chair leg. Then I’d have a weapon. A weapon I couldn’t use.
I’d faced many people I could have beaten with one hand tied behind my back. But not two hands tied behind my back and my legs tied to the chair.
Break the chair. I could lean back, tilt the chair over, I thought. Would my weight be enough? Use my feet, press against the floor into a sort of hop, spin the chair, fall on my back, try to angle the crash.
“We know Kreivas sent you.” She crossed her legs, floated a few feet above the stone floor. I started to get my bearings. Small room. Some sort of castle or castle repro? Tapestries on the wall. Lions. Dragons. A steel door, flush against the edges.
I wondered how many people had died in this room. Where they’d been buried. Maybe they’d been burned. Bones. I wondered how many bones had been broken, marrow chewed. How many blood pints had been drained.
“Did I smell bacon on the way in?” I asked her. “I feel like there was bacon in the kitchen.”
She whirled, the robe flying about in a sort of circus swirling. “Do not toy with me, Sutemos.” She backhanded me, ja
gged ring opening my cheek. She looked down at my blood spots on the ring, then at my cheek, swiped with blood and loose skin. She leaned in again, the tip of her tongue against the mudding blood on my face. Then she pulled away, lifted her feet and floated a little higher than last time.
“So that’s a ‘no’?” I asked.
It was, it turned out, a ‘no.’
• • • •
Her name was Morta, and she seemed to be a lieutenant for the one they called Lyderis. She took me into the library of the castle. Tall bookshelves, floor to ceiling with spines of books, deep red, all with gold lettering in a language I couldn’t make out.
They’d found me some pants and a tunic, a big baggy for my tastes. Also, the dull colors really did very little to bring out the green of my eyes. Still, the cloth seemed well woven.
I was sitting in a high-backed chair across from Lyderis, who kept leaning in to me while he talked.
“Can I get you something to drink, Sutemos?”
“I’m not thirsty,” I told him. “But I seriously thought there was bacon here. Is there really no bacon?”
“Bacon?”
“Yeah. I could go for some right now.”
“Salted meat?”
“Yeah. You don’t know from bacon?”
“I can bring you a plate of cured flesh, if that is your wish.”
“Uh, no,” I said. “I’m good.”
“To business, then?”
“Hey, pal, it’s your place.”
He leaned back, cracked his knuckles. Thin bones under sagging flesh. Skin tight on his face. The same deep eyes of Morta.
He introduced himself as Lyderis, lost king of something or other I’d never heard of. He said I had taken life that did not belong to me. Then he looked at me. I mean, like he looked IN me. INTO me. You know that whole “the eyes are the windows to your siela” thing? Well, he was looking through my windows, all the way to the valyti box, and I had my pants around my ankles and was sweat-crapping the box full of every meal I’d ever eaten, every hairy, wet drop of meslas, every, well, you get the idea. I turned away, and he let a little grin ease from the corner of his face.