by Atkins, Dawn
It was too much. She had to stop, like putting her foot to the floor to keep the room from spinning when she used to get drunk.
Gage smiled. “You see God again?”
“I don’t know what I saw, but it was good.” She couldn’t even pretend otherwise, even if that would be smarter.
“You warm enough?” He held her tightly against him, as if to warm her up, but the bag was steamy with heat and it smelled of skin, of sex, of Gage and the green of outdoors.
“I’m warm. I’m fine. I feel…like I’m dreaming.” Gage’s hair seemed to blend with the immense blackness around them, like pixels about to be erased by a screen refresh. That frightened her a little. To be sure of him, she wiggled her feet against his, shifted her hips, ran her hands down his back.
“Something the matter?” he asked. “You’re wiggling.”
“It’s just weird being out here at night with no protection.” She hated how silly that sounded.
“Any predator would have to chew through me first.” He held her even tighter, wrapping her up in his arms. “You’re safe with me.”
And she believed him. She really did. She felt as though she could rest her weight, not have to fight and focus and guard her thoughts.
“So your parents never took you camping?”
“My parents? Are you kidding?” She laughed, picturing first her hooker mother, then tech weenie Bingham out in the woods. Or Tiffany, the trophy wife, if she’d stuck around. In the photos, the woman looked flawless.
“What’s the deal?”
In the dark, in the cocoon of the sleeping bag, safe in Gage’s arms, feeling not herself at all, she told him. “I was adopted. The woman who drew that picture of me you saw? Her name was Tiffany. She was my adoptive mother. The way it worked was she wanted a baby so my father bought her one. Me.”
“That’s an odd way to put it.”
“Not really. Motherhood was a hobby, too. She got bored and took off with her personal trainer.” She managed a laugh.
Gage didn’t laugh back. “What about your father? Weren’t you close?”
“He was busy with his business. He rarely saw me. I hung with the help—the nice ones anyway. My favorite was our driver. Riley was his name. He took me to dance lessons and whatnot. He taught me how to whistle.” She put her fingers to her lips.
“No thanks. I’ve heard that already.”
She laughed. “Anyway, Riley always smelled like baskets. Weed, I figured out later. He would nod off at stoplights, so I had to stay alert if I wanted to get to class. It’s green, Riley, go, go, go.” She laughed again. “He ran lots of errands, so I guess he was dealing, too.”
“Sounds kind of hairy for a kid.”
“I was happy enough. Then, when I was eleven, Riley got fired for borrowing the limo for his errands. I missed him like crazy.” She’d been heartbroken. After that came her uncle and things got so much worse.
“Did you ever try to talk to your father?”
“No point really, and it turned out fine. I learned to count on myself. We all have to do that.” Bingham’s neglect was a gift. In a way, so was her uncle’s assault. It had led her to Lara Croft and her courage.
Gage was watching her too closely.
“For God’s sake, quit staring at me like that. I found the Life, so it’s all good. What’s your story? You said your mother was a junkie, right?”
“They gave her pain meds after she got beaten up by a boyfriend. After that she was either out of it or mean as hell. She died a couple years back.”
“Were you an only child?”
“I have a sister. We lost touch.” He clearly didn’t want to say more.
“It happens,” she said, relaxing into him. “My birth mom was an alcoholic and a hooker. A social worker found out for me.”
“You met her?”
“She died when I was five. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d met her.” She’d felt so empty at the time, she’d hoped the story would fill her up. It hadn’t.
“You’d have asked her why she gave you up, for one.”
“I figure I cried too much or was too ugly or got sick a lot.”
“Or maybe she wanted a better life for you than she could give you.”
“That’s the fable they tell all adopted kids.”
“Maybe it’s true. Where’s the harm in believing it?”
“I don’t know.” Oddly enough, she felt a twist of deep-down hurt loosen and let go. “Maybe I’ll start thinking that.” Where was the harm? It had never occurred to her not to assume the worst. Hmm.
Gage was stroking her face now, as if to soothe her, and it felt so good she didn’t stop him. His fingers snagged on the small scar at her scalp line. “What’s this from?”
“A fight when I was little.” She’d hit her head on the corner of her uncle’s desk after she kicked him.
“I bet you didn’t cry when they stitched you up.”
“You got that right.”
“You’re pretty tough. For a girl.”
She pretended to punch him.
“Okay. You’re tough as nails.” He paused. “But you’re not too thrilled about the dark.” She stilled. “It’s no big thing. My sister got nervous at night. It means you have a good imagination.”
“That sounds like bullshit, but I’ll take it.” Gage knew some of her secrets, but she had the feeling he didn’t find her weak because of them. “So you had a sister? I always wanted one.”
“Someone like Lara Croft?”
“Exactly. Older and totally kick-ass. Lara Croft helped me through a rough time.”
“Yeah?” He was inviting the story, but she couldn’t tell it. Not yet.
“Games were a good place to hide when I was a kid,” he said. “They kept me from worrying about my mom.”
“We’re lucky that way. We found games, we found the Life, and it’s all… good…” She sighed. Her body felt limp and her mind went fuzzy. She was drifting to sleep, after all. Maybe animals would kill them in the night, but at the moment she felt almost as safe as she did in her Quarters in the Lounge.
…
Gage awoke to Rena moving against him, shifting him inside her. As if in a dream, they had wordless sex, urgent as two animals in the night. Seconds afterward, she softened and her breath deepened in sleep.
When he awoke, it was to birdsong and the chill of a gray dawn. Rena’s legs were tangled with his, her hip dug into his side, and she was choking him with her forearm. He shifted her body enough so he could breathe freely.
Rena’s eyes flew open and she looked wildly around. “We’re still alive.”
He chuckled. “No wonder the sex was so good. You thought it was your last.” He kissed her, but she kept it short, burrowing into the bag for her clothes. Jerking around, she kneed him in the groin.
“Easy there. You’ll need that equipment later.”
“Sorry.” She blushed pink again. Her face was soft from sleep, her eyes a pretty fog, her hair mussed, and there was a crease on her cheek he wanted to kiss away, but didn’t dare take the time.
Once they’d dressed, he heated water for instant coffee while she rolled up the bags. Declining his offer of coffee, she opted for Electrique. He noticed that her hands were shaking as she cracked the top. “Not to piss you off, but people don’t usually tremble before they get their coffee in the morning.”
“Would you leave it alone?” But she studied the can, reading its label, thinking about it.
Soon they were ready to take off. Before she climbed on behind him, Rena stopped and stood in front of him, serious and grim. “Last night was a time-out. Now we’re back to normal.” Her eyes lingered on him, and her frown was as soft as her lips.
“Got it. Back to normal.” But things had changed and they both knew it. He’d liked holding her in his arms, telling her stories. Making love to her had felt easy and right. He was glad he’d met her. Once he made sure Beth was okay, he’d do what he could for Rena, too. He’d li
ke to chase away the bogeyman from her closet, show her it was just shapes and shadows, nothing to hurt her. Maybe when Beth was safe, he’d do just that.
Chapter Eleven
“This can’t be right,” Rena said over her shoulder to Gage as she turned the Commando onto the street where the Seattle Lounge was located. They’d driven past shops with broken windows, an abandoned movie theater, a burned-out office building, trash on the sidewalks, graffiti everywhere. The air was chilly and she’d be glad to get inside and warm up, but this had to be the wrong neighborhood.
“There it is,” Gage said near her ear, pointing to a worn brick building. Real Life Lounge flickered in neon, grayed by the dusk.
“It looks awful.” This was the first Lounge ever built, so she expected it to look old, but classy old, not decrepit old. Gangster-looking kids leaned against the brick below graffiti tags. “We got what you need,” one of them called.
Gage shook his head and the kid sagged against the wall. Lounges were strictly no drugs. Why weren’t Watchers chasing these losers away?
“Maybe it’s better inside,” Gage said.
She certainly hoped so. Rena found the parking lot entrance and drove up to the barred window, where an attendant gave them visitor passes. They parked two floors down and took the elevator up.
It was early, but Rena wanted a shower and some sleep to be fresh for the morning meeting. Mainly, she wanted to wash away what had happened with Gage. All through the day, she’d felt part of him, chest to back, thigh to thigh, heart to heart, at one with him and the machine rumbling beneath them. She could feel him on her skin, for God’s sake.
They were different with each other, too. They spoke in softer tones and whenever their eyes met, they grinned, as though they shared some big, happy secret.
Like an idiot, she wanted more. He was like a new game she wanted to play until she’d beaten every level three times and felt done with it. She needed to erase the vibrations on her skin, the buzz in her heart. She almost hoped he would stay here, transfer to the Seattle Lounge, so she wouldn’t have to spend an extra minute with him.
Then she stepped inside the Lounge and wondered why anyone would work in this sad and neglected place. No wonder they were always short-staffed and eager for temp Lifers.
The heavy bass of hip-hop thumped through the arena instead of trance and the furniture was worn, the armrests spilling stuffing or gray with the grease of a thousand hands. There were big sections where the game stations had been removed altogether. Most of what remained was outdated, except for six stations with plasma screens and new equipment. Players were lined up behind those, looking sullen. The Dome was nothing more than mats and theater backdrops. The place even smelled depressing—like mildew and dust.
Gage went to check in with the shift manager and Rena hit the Roomer desk, where they gave her a voucher for an off-site motel since the guest Quarters were full. Gage would bunk with the temps on the barracks floor.
“I’m on duty until midnight,” Gage said when he returned to her.
She told him about the motel—Ruby’s Rooms, just up the road a mile.
“I’ll drive you there. You look thrashed.” He cupped her cheek.
She jerked away. “What are you doing, Gage? Act normal.”
“Right. Yeah.” But he didn’t seem a bit sorry. At some level neither was she. His touch made her heart jump and her stomach turn over. She should never have crawled into that bag, no matter how scared she got. Now she felt off-balance, uneasy, and confused, which was no way to approach her first multi-Lounge manager meeting. She needed her head straight and her focus clear.
“You want to go?” he asked.
“I should touch base with the Phoenix group and meet some people. Vans run to the motel ’til late. Thanks, though.” She had to escape the guy for a while, get her balance back.
Mingling with the managers, the first thing Rena noticed was that they were mostly men. Scanning the name tags for Lounge and job title, females seemed to be low-level managers, except for one GM in Sacramento. Rena seemed to be the only woman Dome Commander. Clearly they all could use some Girl Power. She hoped her speech would convince them.
When she felt she’d mingled enough, Rena took a van to Ruby’s Rooms with a few of the other overflow managers.
There was nothing wrong with her room, except the streetlight came through the thin curtains and the sheets smelled so strongly of Ivory they gave her a headache. Stupidly, she had the urge to call Gage. She missed his arms in that sleeping bag in the wild dark of the woods.
Story over. She pounded the pillow and tried to sleep, but it was no use, so she got up for an Electrique from her backpack. Cracking the lid, she felt a hot urge, an almost desperate feeling, for the first swallow. She looked at herself in the mirror. Was she addicted? She didn’t feel right until she’d had a dose in the morning and she needed one before bed, too. People who quit coffee got headaches, right? So it was a mild addiction. Big deal. Gage was full of it.
…
“L.E.? Yeah. I remember her. Mad drawing skills.”
Gage nearly dropped the back of the Asteroids machine he was working on when the tech guy answered his question with those words. The first folks he asked about L.E. were transfers, so they didn’t know many of the other Lifers. Then he got stuck doing repairs on the antiques, so he’d had to snag passersby to ask after her.
This tech was his first hit.
“You know her level?” he asked, trying to act casual, picking up the screwdriver to close the dead machine up.
“Nah.” He shrugged. “Haven’t seen her lately. She hung with Ruben.” He pointed to Blood Electric. “He’s a bartender. That tall, bald guy wiping glasses.”
“Thanks.” As soon as the tech manager was out of sight, Gage moved to the bar, intending to make himself useful. “How you doing for E?” he asked Ruben, who had morose eyes and a jaded expression that said he’d seen it all and done it twice.
“Guess I could use a case. You new?”
“Temping from Phoenix. Name’s Gage.”
“Ruben. Cans are in the back room.” He shot a thumb over his shoulder.
A Watcher reading Playboy grudgingly unlocked the storage room so Gage could grab a couple cartons. Bounding back up the stairs, he filled the refrigerator, waiting for Ruben to finish pouring a beer-and-E for a black kid in an oversize basketball jersey snagged on the butt of a handgun in his pants. Lounges were weapon-free, but no one seemed to be hassling this dude. Supposedly, NiGo would open a dozen new Lounges as soon as EverLife II launched. Why would they let the first Lounge deteriorate so badly? He understood the news clip that suggested they were selling it to drug interests. The place was totally ghetto. No wonder they needed temps. Anyone who could would likely transfer out.
“Anything else you need, Ruben?” Gage asked.
“You could wash those glasses.” He nodded at a tub full of steins.
Gage started to work. “I heard you know a friend of mine. L.E. Pearl?”
The guy stilled, then slid the V-Trique glasses he’d dried into the overhead rack. “I knew her, yeah.”
“Knew?”
“She’s gone. About a week ago.”
Damn, damn, damn. Frustration made Gage want to smash every glass in the place. “You have any idea where to?” he asked as calmly as he could.
Ruben shrugged, but ducked his eyes. He knew more.
To find out exactly what, Gage became Ruben’s unseen shadow, watching for a chance to talk more, probe a bit. He got his chance at eleven, when they were taking out the garbage. When they dumped the last bag, Ruben sank onto the steps and pulled out a pack of Marlboros he extended to Gage.
“I quit a couple years ago.” The dirty alley was lit by a half moon and the single streetlight that hadn’t been busted out. The cold, damp air made him glad of his jacket.
“You’re smart. We can’t even smoke in Quarters anymore.” Ruben lit his cigarette, took a deep inhale, then blew smoke
in an upward stream. “You thinking of transferring here? We could use you. Some of these Lifers are lazy fucks. Half the time we can’t keep ’em long enough to jump levels.”
“Truth is I was hoping to find L.E. You have any idea what became of her?”
“Not exactly.” Ruben took a short puff and a quick blowout, one eye closed against the smoke. “You’re not the only one looking for her.”
“Yeah?” He went tight inside.
Ruben checked the deserted alley for anyone who could overhear. “Watchers have been asking around. Her boyfriend got booted and the next day, she’s gone, too. She left on her own, worried about him.”
She had a boyfriend? “I thought long-term hookups were frowned on.”
“It happens. The guy went by ‘Smurf.’ Had a blue Mohawk. He was smuggling beer into the Quarters. Drunk all the time.”
“Was that why he got kicked out?”
“That and all the bitching he did. Big whiner. I know L.E. was pissed when the health center didn’t help him.”
“What was wrong?”
“Bunch of hysterical paranoid crap. He claimed he’d been poisoned, it felt like razor blades under his skin. I don’t know what she saw in the guy.”
Hadn’t Cassie said she felt like she had broken glass in her veins? “Smurf got evicted, so L.E. left with him?”
“I didn’t get why she didn’t get kicked out, too. She complained more than he did. They sure as hell want her back.”
For her hundred grand, no doubt. Today was her birthday. Maybe she’d come to her senses, left the Life and would use the money to start over somewhere. That was his hope. His gut wasn’t so sure. If NiGo still had its claws in her, no telling what she’d do. “Where do they take Lost Lives?”
“They get a van ride home if they’re local, I heard, or a bus ticket if they’re not.” He let his cigarette dangle, arm resting on his knee.
“In Phoenix they get taken to a homeless shelter.”
Ruben smirked into the darkness. “Probably what they do here. There’s no budget for bus tickets. They tell us that shit so we don’t feel sorry for the losers.” He took an angry puff on his cigarette, then glared at Gage. “There’s a serious bullshit factor around here lately. One minute this Lounge is being sold for hard cash, the next we’re getting a community partner with funds. Is it that way in Phoenix?”