Triptych

by David Castlewitz

  "Well?" she said, coming to the middle of the room, stopping at the plastic coffee table in front of the couch across from Potter. She smoothed the sides of her short red dress. She didn't have the long legs and sleek ankles to make the outfit attractive. Her soft face and limp brown hair ruined everything.

  "What're you up to?" Potter said.

  "I've an interview?"

  He narrowed his eyes, as though that might help him clarify what she'd said. "What about Carol? You going out? What about -- "

  "Kyle! She's at school. Don't you notice anything? She's not around, is she?"

  He shrugged, mumbled, "Guess not." He blinked. "What sort of interview? You haven't held down a job in twelve years. Not since..." His voice trailed off. Not since Carol was born? Or before?

  Lydia glared at him. She'd transformed somehow, morphing from a dark-haired middle-aged woman with shiny chocolate colored flesh and sultry brown eyes into this ragged and tired monster trying to look pretty in an old dress.

  "There's a retro-bar," she said, "looking to hire hostesses and waitresses instead of using service-bots."

  Potter snickered.

  "I applied," she added. "I've got an interview."

  Potter remained silent. He wanted to ask, Where's my partner? My wife? The woman who'd grown older with me and mothered our child? It hurt to think of the change he saw in front of him.

  "We have to do something," she whined.

  "I'm taking day work, temp jobs."

  "It's been weeks since you had anything. We've got maybe three or four weeks left and then we'll be out on the street. They'll send us Outside. You and me and our daughter. If I can get a job -- "

  "Go." Weeks? he thought. The days had passed and he hadn't noticed. Every day he looked for work.

  "I'm doing this for us."

  "Go." Yes, he agreed, and let the fright seep in, bathe him. Weeks now without work, his grace period withering.

  Lydia moistened her thin lips. A light shone in her eyes and she again smoothed the sides of her red dress. Its lacey hem danced across the tops of her knees. Her black shoes glistened in the light coming in through the window. Sparkles glanced off the beads wound around her thin wrists.

  "I need ogres," she said. "The taxis and trams, all they take are plastic tokens now."

  Potter let that sink in, a quizzical look on his wide face, the splotches in his complexion glowing pink around the tops of his flat cheeks, just beneath his eyes. If the municipal services wanted tokens, then that meant there'd be an automatic head tax coming soon. It had happened before. Every virtual wallet got lighter. All accounts were hit with a one percent fee.

  "We've been living off those tokens," he said, though he knew it was more lie than truth. Unemployment income still flowed into their family bank account every two weeks. It was only a portion of his former salary, but it paid most of their bills, including the rent on the house, which was no longer free as part of his municipal compensation.

  "I need a few ogres," Lydia said.

  Potter motioned for her to sit. She lowered herself to the sofa. He went into the spare room next to their bedroom, removed the framed photograph of their daughter when she was an infant from its place on the wall, and unlocked the built-in safe. He took a handful of plastic ogres for himself, counted out six for Lydia.

  "Do I look okay?" she asked.

  Startled, he slammed shut the safe's door and spun around. Lydia stood in the doorway. He gave her the six tokens, pushed past her into the living room.

  "I really should have the combination," she said. "If I'm working, I'll need -- "

  "Big if," Potter said, annoyed that she still insisted on prying into what had always been his domain. He controlled their finances. She'd always been content to let him pay her way, but in the past few weeks she'd brought up the safe more than a dozen times. Always the same lament, the same demand. As if she couldn't count on him.

  He rubbed his cheeks. Red and white stubble scratched back. He lowered himself into the chair across from the sofa, on the other side of the low table. How many days had passed since the last job? More than two weeks? He cringed when he thought of what he'd done that last time. Armed with a pop-pop, he sprayed a crowd of demonstrators outside a factory. No one cared about the robotic workers inside, but the dozen or so humans, the factory's managers, deserved to be rescued from the mob.

  Without thinking, he'd obeyed orders and fired at the angry demonstrators, leaving a few of them writhing in the street, victims of the sticky bullets that emitted electric shocks designed to incapacitate without killing. Some of the men and women jerked their limbs, rolled about with hands to their faces, and then stopped moving altogether. When ordered, Potter retreated to the safety of more heavily armed police, regulars from a municipal urban combat battalion.

  "I'm going," Lydia said, breaking his brief daydream of the riot and demonstrators and frightened factory managers.

  Potter nodded.

  "You could say something," she snarled. When Potter remained silent, she turned and marched out of the room, her cloth purse bouncing against her bare shoulders.

  "That's a party dress," Potter said when she was gone. He didn't care that it was too late to stop her. "You don't go to an interview in a party dress."

  But then, he thought, maybe she was right. For the type of work she intended to do, a party dress was exactly the thing. The thought made him laugh. An after-image hovered in view. Lydia stood stock still in front of him, chiding him with her eyes. Reluctantly, he paged through the job exchanges on his All-Pod. Nothing permanent in police work. No notices of day-work, either. All the riots and demonstrations had been put down, suppressed. People were weary, he reasoned. They'd gotten nowhere protesting the recent wave of layoffs. Discouraged, they'd given up.

  He shut his eyes. He missed the routine of assembling in a ready room for the day's work, the camaraderie of his precinct. As a cop, his life had reason and structure. Captains and lieutenants gave him orders, which he conveyed to his squad. He worked morning shifts and night shifts, sleeping little but full of energy, some of which he'd enhance with gummy pepper-uppers.

  He missed the orderliness of what he'd enjoyed for so long. What did he have now? A dull and monotonous wife who thought she'd actually find work and save the family from losing its residency permit? A green-eyed lover who loved him no more? And diminished prospects for himself.

  He looked at the block of text on his All-Pod screen. Just a jumble of letters, some of which made words, all of which made no sense. He wondered why the encryption scheme didn't hide the missive using a more intelligent method. A smart person -- not Lydia -- would know something hid behind the gibberish.

  He tapped the center of the screen. Two words glowed in response, one sequence of letters at the top and the other at the bottom. He'd done this before. Several times. But, this time, he followed up the first tap with two more, two taps at each of the glowing words, tapping quickly enough to be inside the time limit set by the decryption sequence. When an entry box yawned open, he used the on-screen keyboard to enter Ginny's password.

  The nonsense article disappeared. The screen cleared. In its place, a short message blazed in white capital letters across a black background.

  "Well?" Ginny wrote. "Do something!"

  He erased the message, annoyed by the strident and demanding tone to the words she'd written.

  #

  The desk clerk in the lobby waved and smiled. Potter had never taken notice of the man before and, now, wasn't certain this was the same man he always brushed past on his way to the elevator in Ginny's apartment house. But the clerk called him by name, using the title Potter had enjoyed for so many years.

  "Sergeant. Hey, up. She's gone."

  Potter stopped and looked into the clerk's dark face, the man's eyes wide and large, the whites bulging from deep sockets at either side of a flat nose. Furrows etched in his brow spoke of age and comfort, as did the gleam in his bald head, devoid of all hai
r, lacking even a fringe like Potter's.

  "Who? Ginny?"

  The clerk nodded, teeth flashing. "Since last night. All packed, sent to storage, I think."

  "Did she say where?" Potter asked, but then followed up with, "Never mind. I know."

  "She said you might come by."

  Nodding, Potter hurried from the lobby, out onto the steps to the building, where he stood, hands in his pants pocket. A cold wind bathed his face. His upturned coat collar clung to his thick neck.

  "Missed your chance."

  Potter turned in the direction of the voice. "You been waiting for me?"

  Crisp sauntered closer, a foot up on the bottom step. "Lots of evicts lately. This building especially." He pointed a boney finger at the structure at Potter's back and then at two more close by. One, taller than the rest, showed off cement patios and glass doors. A luxury building. Something Ginny always said she wanted in her future.

  "I still don't have -- whatcha want?"

  Crisp filled in the price. "Twelve hundred."

  "Don't have it," Potter said.

  Crisp stroked his thin beard, his nails long and dirty, something Potter could see even at a distance. But were they painted black? An odd affectation, Potter thought, his attention drifting from the moment.

  "Apartment's gone anyway," Crisp said. "Back on the grid. Somebody'll get it. I got others. Cheaper. Better fit for your V-Wall?"

  "You don't know what I got in my wallet, virtual or otherwise." Potter stepped to the pavement, closed in on Crisp. The wiry man jumped backwards, his boney hands up in defense.

  Two burly men in long suit coats, their narrow lapels brimming with ornamental pins, appeared, seemingly from nowhere. Potter assessed his surroundings and saw alcoves in the sides of the nearby buildings where Crisp' henchmen probably waited until sensing danger to their boss.

  Both newcomers had the short-cropped air and clean shaven face Potter often saw among Jake Stern's employees, at least those that went armed and were charged with the old man's protection.

  "You work for Stern?" Potter said.

  "The old man gave me the franchise."

  Potter laughed at Crisp. "For what price?"

  "What do you care? Back off." Crisp motioned to his burly companions. They edged closer, each to one side of Potter.

  "Whatcha got?" Potter asked. "Whatcha got that's more to my liking? A better fit you called it."

  Crisp smiled, lips upturned, face contorted for an instant. "All over. five hundred, six hundred, somewhere in that area."

  "Cheaper."

  Crisp shook his head. "You want to put your girlfriend up, get her out of the museum's dormitories? You won't find anything cheaper than five."

  Potter bristled. The little man knew too much about his and Ginny's business. "Who told you she's at a dorm?"

  "She did. She's a chatty thing." A soft look came into Crisp's face. He mellowed for a moment. "She didn't want to move any more than you wanted her to."

  "Guess not," Potter said, tired now of talking to Crisp, disgusted with himself because he lacked the power to help the girl.

  "You can always find me at the Bazaar," Crisp said. "Get enough cash together -- V-Rings or ogres -- and we can deal."

  Potter put his hands in his pockets and started to walk away. Crisp kept talking, but Potter had stopped listening. He couldn't help Ginny. He didn't think he could help himself. Or Lydia and their daughter.

  A three-wheeled taxi with a single passenger seat behind the driver and a fringed awning of gold and white threads stretched across the top as protection against potential rain slowed in the street. The driver called out, "One ogre, wherever you want to go."

  Potter stopped. With that kind of price drop, the number of pedestrians willing to take private transportation must have plunged.

  "Metro Museum Place," he said to the driver as he climbed into the padded passenger compartment.

  "One ogre."

  "When we get there," Potter growled.

  #

  Ginny didn't see him and Potter preferred that she didn't. He kept himself hidden by staying within the crowd sliding along the smooth wooden floorboards on the observers' side of the glass while Ginny and several men and women dressed in period costume acted out a common ritual from a hundred-plus years earlier. No service bots brought prescribed boxes of food or measured bags or specific cans based on previous orders and known preferences. No scanners beamed into the crowd of shoppers -- the pretend shoppers of this exhibit -- as they strolled the aisles of a mid-twentieth century supermarket. Ginny, in the guise of a salesperson dispensing samples from a small three-legged table smiled and greeted her fellow re-enactors. There were even small children, all of them doing their part at playacting a common activity from the past.

  The Living History Museum drew crowds of school-aged kids. Potter expected to see his own twelve-year-old among the amazed faces. Casual sightseers mixed with the crowd, as did researchers and scholars and men and women somewhat like Potter, the curious people eager to learn more about the past.

  Potter kept his eyes on Ginny, curious only about her. A green ribbon ran across the top of her head, keeping her blonde hair in place. Same green as the cloth on her square tabletop. Similar shade, though not exactly, as the apron across the front of her brown trousers and thigh-length white shirt.

  After a while, the same couple returned as had been in front of Ginny minutes earlier. As did the children. As did the other participants. They kept repeating the same practiced walk and mannerisms, and Ginny repeated the way she held out a tray of samples. Samples of what? Potter couldn't tell from where he stood on his side of the glass. Something spread on crackers, he imagined.

  When the exhibit closed for what a booming voice announced as a "Break for our actors," Potter slipped away from the crowd, avoided being swept into the flow of spectators at another museum display, and ducked into a corridor marked, "Employees Only." A few steps took him round the corner. He brushed the green stripe decorating the cinderblock wall and stopped in front of the guard at a closed door with a "Private" icon emblazoned on its frame.

  Without his badge and uniform, he had nothing but his voice and manner to intimidate the guard into letting him pass. Head tilted back so he could aim an intense glare into the other man's steel-and-granite gaze, Potter rasped his demand.

  The guard shook his head, his mop of dark brown hair bouncing with the movement of his skull. A sharp protrusion in the man's neck lifted and fell when he said, "Nobody crosses without a permit. You got a museum permit?"

  "I want to see one of the actors. Ginny Rate."

  "Don't know her."

  Potter described her. Green eyes and pretty and blonde.

  The guard shrugged. "Get a pass. Show it to me. Then you get by."

  Potter reached for an imaginary baton, one he could flick to its full length, one of the telescoping steel clubs he liked to use. He used to come across deserving victims all the time, these toughs on the corners who didn't pay their dues, who needed to learn to respect Potter and his squad if they wanted to keep their corner as their own.

  No club. No badge or uniform. Nothing but a voice that, even to himself, sounded ineffectual, to the point that, in a few minutes, Potter's demand deteriorated to, "Please?" And then, "What's the price? Everybody's got one."

  The guard shook his massive head.

  Potter stepped forward. The flat of a large hand stopped him. The hand stayed on his breast, just above his left pocket, pressed into his thin cloth coat and kept him from advancing. Potter considered his alternatives. No doubt, the guard was as trained as he, as adept as he. A fight would result in a draw, which would be as good as a loss for him. Worse, it might bring other security people into this corridor, to the door marked "Private."

  The guard shifted his weight. Foot to foot. Jaw moving and eyes flashing. Potter recognized the symptoms of a man unsure of himself, uncertain of his own strength. He'd been wrong to think they'd be an equal match in
a fight. Potter didn't have to back down. More correctly, he didn't want to back down.

  He lunged, caught the sentry in a clumsy maneuver and sent him sprawling to the floor. The commotion, brief and decisive, left the door unguarded for a moment, and Potter took advantage. He shoved a shoulder against it, pushed down on the handle, and barged into the next room. To his left, a group of startled men, most of them in shorts and nothing else, greeted him. One advanced, but Potter waved him off and turned to his right, where a few women, most of them draped in towels but a couple nude and not bothering to cover up, glared at him. A youngster gasped and an older woman, soap suds in her stringy gray hair, shook her fist at him.

  Ginny stepped out of the crowd, a white robe encasing her slim body, her blonde hair dripping water. "Are you totally crazy, Kyle?"

  The guard from outside stepped into the room. Behind him, two other men hurried to help. They carried short batons. The kind that shocked and stunned, Potter realized, and prepared himself for a harder fight than the one he encountered minutes earlier.

  "I got this, Gene," Ginny said, hands up to ward away her would-be protectors.

  "No. You don't," one of the baton-wielding men snapped.

  Ginny countered. "It's okay. Go outside. He's an old friend."

  Potter moistened his lips, his hands clenching and unclenching. Part of him was amazed at how fast Ginny made friends with people like Gene and the guard and the other man. Her bright green eyes and welcoming smile did wonders.

  "Over here," Ginny said, and pulled on Potter's sleeve to guide him into an adjacent room.

  A narrow bench made of parallel strips of wood evenly spaced from one another ran the length of the room, from wall to wall. Wet tiles and tiny pools of water in the crevices between some of them caught Potter's attention.

  Ginny parted the plastic curtain separating this changing room from the showers. "Good. No one hiding here."