Perhaps there should be something else to talk about when the working day was over, but they only ever talked about their research, occasionally about Kester's mother, sometimes about stuff they did when they were kids. Something was missing. What did other people talk about? When she saw couples in restaurants, with fruitful faces, gabbling as if they had so much to cover, what were they talking about? What could they be saying that was so interesting for so long? They weren't talking about work. But then she and Kester weren't a couple, never mind how much his mother acted like they were.
They approached the City checkpoint. Dee braced herself. Despite working in the City for one or two clients, she never got used to the place. It didn't seem to bother the others. They seemed comfortable enough there, even taking advantage of their passes to frequent the bars.
Kester walked through the barriers ahead of her, looking suddenly awkward as he always did when faced with security. He stopped on the other side and waited for Dee, giving her a series of exaggerated baffled looks.
'Where are you taking me?' he asked.
Dee shrugged, raised her eyebrows and shouldered past him towards the exit.
Out on the street she went onto automatic pilot, defocusing her eyes, seeing only the shapes of people as they approached, the fuzzed impression of their ad-splattered clothing, the occasional striking logo shining through. It was a dance; her shoulders swivelled back and forth, leaving skelfs of air between her and those she passed. Every now and again a quick skip and ball-change prevented a collision. She was aware of Kester bumping along behind her, apologising frequently. How he could handle all that interaction with the wearers was a mystery to her.
An image flashed into her head: her first meeting in the City. The client had been wearing an oral form of some newly modified virus and there were dry sores extending out of the corners of his mouth, giving him a sinister exaggerated smile. She could still feel it: his firm handshake pulling her forward; the scrape of the sores on her cheeks as he planted a kiss on one then the other; the rawness of her skin where that night she had scrubbed it with her nail-brush. If the City wearers had been anywhere near as extreme as the fukpunks and the S&M crew, their bits hanging out all over the place, she wouldn't have been able to come here.
The crowds gradually thinned as they gained distance from the checkpoint and Kester caught up and fell in stride with Dee. They walked in silence for a while, past St Paul's, down Cheapside, and then up Wood Street. A strip of bars had sprung up there for the City workers. Since the City had been securitised and in-living had become the norm, they were open 24 hours a day. The City was now a residential centre again and no longer ceased to exist out of hours; it was always alive, always exciting. The rumours about what went on there were wild.
'Can you believe it about Stark Wellbury?' Kester said, breaking the silence.
'What about them?' They were back onto screen-talk.
'What?' Kester broke stride and started skipping along sideways beside her. 'You didn't read the news this morning? It's finally out – what all that scaffolding was about.'
'What?' Dee remembered some gossip about the front of the Stark building.
'It's a wall of exchange booths, glass-fronted, facing out onto Toulouse square.'
'What?'
'They've gone all theatrical. It's like a massive marketing thing I think. I can't believe you didn't see the reports. It's like some crazed Harvey Nicks window display.
'Every member of staff has to be seen to have sex with a different partner, and a powerful partner relative to them, every day – and I mean literally seen. Think of the size of the offices – that's got to be ten booths across and maybe…I don't know how many up the way.
'Apparently the policy is that they can be used at any time, but every hour on the hour they all have to be occupied at once. That's got to be hundreds of couples at it in the side of that building, twenty-four times a day, seven days a week. How much sex is that? I can't even do that sum.'
Dee stopped and looked at Kester for a minute. He looked impressed by what he had just described. The whole idea of exchange booths, private never mind public, sent an acid burn to the back of her sinuses.
'No,' she said. 'No you're not feeding me this one. It's got to be a publicity stunt or – it's probably a hoax.'
'Come on, who would make this stuff up? It only just opened this morning, but it's already all over the net. It's there for anyone to go and have a gander. And get this – the hourly exchanges are all precisely timed so before and afterwards the rooms are steamed and super-heated all at once and the side of the building glows hell-red for a good thirty seconds. You'll be able to tell the time by it. Apparently.'
'You're talking out of your arse, Kester. I've never heard such –'
'I can't believe you haven't heard about it.'
'Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.' Dee looked up and saw that they had reached their destination.
He wouldn't be expecting this. She turned off towards the bar and walked through the scattered, empty tables that sat out in the cold. Kester stopped behind her.
'You really don't believe me? You know, after what I've seen –'
'Does it sound like I believe you?' Dee asked. He was spoiling it already. 'I mean I know that some pretty weird shit goes on in the City, but walls full of shagging people? Come off it.'
'I expect they do have to get quite a lot of cum off it.' Kester braced himself to get hit.
'Kester!' Dee made a disgusted face and took a swipe at him with her bag.
What a shit he was. She allowed herself a small laugh. It brightened her mood again. They stood looking at one another for a minute or so. He was so transparent. He was thinking of telling her something, saying something else stupid, confessing something maybe, but he didn't. With a small shake of his head it was gone and she pretended she hadn't seen it.
Dee looked up at the entrance to the bar: a flaming archway enclosed in glass. Inside was a mosaic of logoed shirts, coiffured hair, and hands holding glasses of champagne. It was just like any other bar, she told herself, hot air, laughter and jostling movement.
'We're going in here?' Kester asked.
Dee nodded and smirked.
'Are you trying to teach me some lesson?'
Dee ran back to him and grabbed his hand. A shiver ran up her arm to her throat as their palms slotted together. It stayed, a fluttering thrill in her gullet. If it helped him to see the grotesque nature of the world he was headed for, it would be worth spending some time close to the wearers.
She dragged him almost at a run through the doorway into the stifling air of the bar, weaving under armpits and squeezing between sweaty backs. Everyone in the place was wearing. There were rashes, sores, shadowy eyes, red eyes, tufty hair. It was like midsummer party in the plague ward. She held her breath as they made their way to the back of the bar. There, the crowd cleared a little. She led Kester through an archway into a small back-room.
They were met with screams and hollers. Tucked around a circular table, clambering up, running towards him, were their friends from the department, silly on champagne and dressed up in shirts and ludicrous ties. They all sported faked symptoms: Betta had a big red nose, John had his hands painted purple, Sienna had bright red spots all over, and Calvin wore a swimming-cap with tufts of his hair pulled through. Kester burst out laughing.
Betta ran over. She kissed and hugged him.
'We thought we'd let you know what you're in for!' she squealed and pushed a glass of champagne into his hand. 'Enjoy it.' She laughed and took a gulp out of her own glass. 'This represents the whole of the tea and biscuits collection for the next six months, so you'd better be grateful!'
Betta lurched and Kester put an arm around her. He looked round at Dee. She shrugged and smiled.
'Dee.' He reached out a hand towards her. 'You?'
'My plan, but everyone really. Dressing up was John's idea – surprise.'
They both glanced over at John. He was sw
aggering and talking loudly about some imaginary deal he'd done.
'My god, how long have they been here?'
'Well I was trying to get you out of the café for the best part of two hours.'
'And where's your costume?'
'Aha!' Dee beamed. She unfastened her heavy coat, turned away from him for a moment, and then turned back, her shirt unbuttoned to her cleavage, revealing her boobs covered in stick-on scabs. 'Ta dah!' she said proudly. 'I brought you some scabs too.' She looked down at her boobs and saw that they were starting to peel. 'Oh balls – they're falling off.'
'Don't pick!' Kester said, smacking her hand away from her chest.
Dee laughed and picked up a glass of champagne for herself.
'This is it you see,' Kester said. 'It's all so ugly, funny, pathetic, but it doesn't have to be. I can make them beautiful.'
Dee acted as if she hadn't heard him and gave him a squeeze.
'Come on. We've designed some special games for you to play, with lovely forfeits.' She pulled him over to the table and sat him down.
After a few rounds, Kester was starting to look more pliable. Betta and Sienna were at the bar. Dee could hear a booming voice over the rest of the babble offering to give Betta something 'real' to wear. Calvin had wandered off, presumably to the gents, leaving his swimming cap on the table this time and John seemed away in a world where conversation wasn't the thing. A great deal of the purple from his hands was now smeared on his face. It was time to go on the offensive.
'So, Kester,' Dee said, pointing into the main bar, 'look out into that pit of idiots and tell me why. Seriously.'
'Why what?' Kester asked, then realised that she was back on the subject of the job and made a face. 'I've told you already. It's not just the money – I'm going to have my own lab. I can use it for whatever I like as long as I get the work for the company done too. It's not like the Institute where everything you do is reliant on someone wanting to fund it. I'm going in at a high enough level that I can decide what to do…to a certain extent.'
'We were going to do it together,' Dee said. She must sound confident. 'So stay, let's do it.'
'Dee…I'm sorry. Maybe down the line if I get somewhere with it…'
Dee leaned back and shook her head.
'I might – I will, I promise you.'
Kester knew how much it meant to her; that was clear. And maybe he really meant to do it, once he settled in and got the measure of his new job.
'And I get to have fun creating new stuff for my job in the meantime.'
Then again, perhaps not.
'It's a stupid fatuous industry,' Dee said. Shocked by the venom in her own voice, she took a breath and tried to temper her tone. 'I mean fashion viruses, really.'
'It's not doing anyone any harm.'
'Isn't it? Look at all those young directors that keep dropping dead in the board rooms. Don't you think that might have something to do with the weird disease culture they're building up?'
'I think it's more to do with stress.'
'You do not – it was you that pointed it out to me!'
'Dee, the whole point of my viruses is that they'll be safe. I can make them cool without hurting people.'
'Great. Just what the world needs you to do with your genius – your genius and your sense of "cool".'
'But Dee, that's the fun part, that's not the whole picture. I can make a start on the screens, maybe even start testing – think of the limitless resources I'll have.'
'You think you'll have the time in between making designer diseases?'
'I'm not stupid, Dee, I've told you, I'm getting private lab time written into my contract.' Kester shook his head.
Dee wobbled in her seat, the drink suddenly catching up with her. They were going round in circles.
'Yeah, but they'll own your research,' she said.
'Better than the research not being done at all.'
'Hm,' Dee grunted in an unladylike fashion that made Kester laugh at her. 'Shut up,' she said.
'Show me someone who's going to fund a piece of research at the Institute that I don't have qualms about and I'll stay. Never mind the screens – anything at all.'
'And what next? Where do you go from there, Kester? Five years' time, seriously, where are you?'
Betta and Sienna sloshed a tray of shots onto the table and slid back into their seats.
'Jesus, leave some in the glass,' John said, the life flicking back into his eyes.
'Come on, Dee, five years' time?' Kester said. 'Christ, this is like going through another interview. I suppose I'm going to have to shag you too?'
'What?' Dee said. 'Don't be disgusting.'
'That's what they do,' John said, though it wasn't clear if he was talking to them as he was staring intently at the table.
'They do not. It's just big City talk. He's just being stupid. He's trying to avoid my question because he can't answer it sensibly – it was a serious question, Kester.'
'I'm telling you,' John said, 'you have to sleep your way in at the bottom before you can sleep your way to the top.'
'Oh shut up,' Dee said. 'Has it ever happened to anyone you know? No. So there. Anyway, he wouldn't have been going in at the bottom, they were going to give him his own lab.'
'Were going to?' Kester said. 'They are.'
John raised his eyebrows, impressed.
'You knew that already,' Dee reminded John.
He slurped down one of the shots in slow motion.
'Those are for the game.' Sienna tried to grab the glass from him, too late.
Calvin arrived back at the table, sat down quietly and closed his eyes.
'Ah,' replied John, a little behind in the conversation, 'but how many people do we know who've been interviewed at V?' He jabbed his finger on the table in front of Kester. 'Just one, huh? Just Kester. And I know what Kester's been up to!'
'He's right. It's true,' Kester said, and then laughed, eyes on the table. 'She made the others leave the room, she dropped her culottes and we did it right there on the desk. All part of the process.' He laughed again, shaking his head.
'What?' Calvin shrieked, his eyes snapping wide open.
'Stop lying!' Dee slapped Kester hard on the arm. 'You're just trying to shock me.'
'Just telling it like it is,' he said. 'That's how I roll now.'
All of them burst out laughing except for Dee. This wasn't going right. He was making a fool of himself.
'That's how you roll?' Sienna scoffed. 'You need to sort out your vocabulary. You need to be using words like Target! Achievable! Succeed! Make sure you say them all with an exclamation mark on the end. Oh, I love this song,' she interrupted herself and started singing along to the music.
Dee narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion at Kester. If she played along, he would stop it.
'Don't be mad,' he said.
She added a pout to her expression. She should be mad. He was glorifying everything she hated with his bogus boasts and the others were hailing him for it.
'You're not mad at me are you?'
'You're the one who's mad,' she replied. At least he knew he was in the wrong. 'You're a pig and you know it.'
'I have a new drinking game!' John announced.
'Oh yeah?' Kester puffed his chest out.
Dee knew that look. He had passed the drunk-awareness barrier and believed that he was perfectly fine. The idea that he'd have a hangover the next day would seem impossible to him.
'Yesss.' John listed to the side for a moment and then seemed to perk back up suddenly, as if he'd briefly switched off. 'It's Drink or Dare!' he announced proudly. 'We dare you to do something and if you don't do it, you have to drink.'
There was a pause while everyone looked at each other, and then Dee burst out laughing.
'A new game John?' she said. 'That's the oldest game in the book.'
A deflated looked flitted across John's face, but he brightened again instantly.
'Aha! But it's new to this table.'
'OK, John, since you suggested it, you have to show us how it's done.'
'Nono,' John slurred, pointing at Kester, 'the birthday boy has to do it.' His finger jerked in the air as he pointed to Kester, as if he was riding a train. Kester hawked with laughter.
'My god he's drunk,' Dee said. John failed even to register that she was talking about him.
'Okayokay,' John said, 'here's my dare, birthday boy.'
'Leaving boy,' Kester corrected him.
'You're leaving! Oh oh I know, I knew that.' John smiled slyly to himself as if he had a drunken secret. 'Here's your dare. Kiss! Or drink!'
'What, are you five years old?' Dee asked.
'I am…I am thirty-five years old.'
'You are not,' Kester said, shaking his head, 'you just don't remember your thirty-sixth birthday.'
'Kiss! Or Drink!' John repeated, then began chanting, 'Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!'
'Oh god, shut him up will you,' Betta said.
'OK.' Kester leaned across the table and, pulling John towards him by his tie, kissed him on the lips.
'Tuh!' John slumped back down in his seat. 'Not me, chickenboy – one of them.' He swung an arm out towards the bar.
'Well, you're not getting lucky tonight John, not in that state, so take what you can get, eh?' Sienna laughed. She wiped her hands across her face, smearing her spots.
'Your turn John, your turn,' said Calvin.
'OK. What's the dare?'
'I've got one already,' Calvin said. 'You have to get one of these guys' ties off them.'
'Oh no,' Dee said.
'Oh yes,' shouted John. 'I'll have to do it! If I drink any more I shall surely die.'
'Don't do it, John,' Dee said, but he was already half on his feet, holding onto the table while he got his balance.
As John walked out into the bar, it was as if he had a repellent forcefield around him. The crowd seemed to collectively sense how drunk he was and parted around him, forming a two-metre wide circle of disgusted glances which moved as he moved, shifting like a bait ball.
'Hi, oh hi.' John waved to the circle around him. 'Hey, nice tie.'
'Thanks,' replied the object of his concentrated gaze, unsure how else to respond.
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