Howie stuck around for a little longer but in the end headed back to the bar in search of peperoncinos. I sat in the glow from the lamp and cleaned my gun for a long time. It didn’t really need it, but it seemed like the thing to do. Then I got a couple more cheeseburgers sent through and munched on them instead.
Later, I heard a knock on the door behind me and turned to see Nearly standing there with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“I’m not going to try to talk you out of it,” she said. “I just thought I’d make sure you went off to certain death with a hangover.”
“You look nice,” I said. She did. She was wearing a long dress, and when I ran my eyes over the pattern I realized it had to have come from the same store where Suej’s first and only piece of clothing had been bought. I started to say something, but she interrupted me, the words coming out in a rush.
“Actually, I lied. I am going to try to talk you out of it, and this is how I’m going to start. Jack, don’t do it.”
“Sit down, Nearly,” I said. She came and perched on Howie’s chair, placing the wineglasses in front of her on the table. She left the bottle there for a moment, and when she saw that I wasn’t going to open it, reached forward to do it herself. She tossed the cork away and poured two glasses, filling them right to the top. Then she lit a cigarette, sat back in her chair, and looked at me.
“So?” she said, after a silence. “What are you going to tell me? That Maxen deserves to die, and that you’re the man with the God-given task of making sure he does?”
“There’s no point in us having this conversation, Nearly.”
“There isn’t if you’re just going to sit there and patronize me. I can get that from clients.”
“So why aren’t you working tonight?”
“Because I don’t fucking feel like it, okay? You’re not big on explaining your motivations. I don’t have to tell you jack shit.”
I sighed. “It’s late, Nearly.”
“Drink some wine, dickweed,” she said, and her eyes flashed dangerously. I was actually a little frightened of her. Having her in the room, in this mood, was like being corralled with an interesting but imperfectly trained wild creature.
“I don’t want any,” I said.
“Drink it,” she said sweetly and with utter seriousness, “or you’re not even going to make it through to tomorrow morning.”
I’d finished my beer. It was simpler than walking to the fridge to get another one. I picked up the glass and drank a mouthful of wine.
Nearly winked at me humorlessly. “Great,” she said. “The training session’s going well. It’s almost like you understand every word I say. How long before I convince you that trying to kill Maxen is a stupid thing to do?”
“You don’t understand.”
“So explain it to me,” she said, and now her face was different again. Open, vulnerable: the face of someone who was genuinely trying to see into my mind.
“I should have done it a long time ago,” I told her. “It’s either that or keep running forever.”
“Bullshit!” she screamed, catching me unaware again. The hubbub from the bar in the background seemed to dip for a moment, as if her voice had carried all the way out there.
I shrugged. “That’s the way it is.”
“So explain it to me properly,” she said. I looked away irritably. “So explain it to me,” she repeated, implacably, and then a final time at wall-shaking volume. “SO JUST FUCKING EXPLAIN IT TO ME.”
I found I was talking then, without meaning to.
“The brain’s a mistake,” I said, and she snorted derisively. “It’s an evolutionary disaster. The mutations bit off more than they could chew. Yeah, we can oppose our thumbs and make marks on paper, but along with that came gaps and interstices, horror pits and buried emotions, concentration camps, Hitlers, and men like the Maxens. They’re created by the fact that the real world and The Gap just never got along.”
“Jack, I think too many slices of processed cheese have addled what’s left of your brain. You’re going to have to unpack that for me or I could go away thinking it’s just meaningless bullshit.”
I wasn’t even talking to her by then, I don’t think. I was talking to myself, or perhaps to Henna.
“The genes with their random quirks created the human brain like a child building a MegaMall from a kit. It looks like a plane, it sounds like a plane, but don’t for fuck’s sake try and fly in it. In the wings and the engine, in the hold and the seats, there are parts which don’t quite fit together. Screws which weren’t tightened enough. Things fall through the gaps and don’t quite go where they should. Doors swing shut in the wind and suddenly you find yourself not recognizing anything you feel, running on collapsing code, and not remembering what it meant.
“We live in huge hotels, full of hundreds of shifting rooms. Our emotions are the tenants—some fleeting, short-term, others long-term residents. Some treat the house well, some don’t; some lock the doors and windows after them, others leave them open. A good tenant will leave the key under the mat when he leaves, so that new people can come in every now and then. But sometimes something will happen that seals the doors shut, leaving you with whatever happens to be inside.
“I’ve had a long run of bad tenants, the kind who spill stuff over the walls and put cigarette burns in the carpet and leave the windows open for the wolves to come in. Sometimes they go, without paying their rent or cleaning the kitchen; leaving the mess for the next bunch of barbarians to build upon. Sometimes they stay, glowering in corners, refusing to forward people’s mail and fighting spring-cleaning to the death.
“I’d like to believe there’s some good tenants in there too, but they’ve been forced up into the attic, hiding in crawl spaces and never coming out. I never get to see them because there’s too many thugs at the front door who won’t let me in.
“I’ve never been a very strong landlord, and I felt it was finally time to collect some rent. I needed to evict some of these guys, to have my life returned to me. Finally closing the book on Arlond Maxen seemed like the only way of getting the house keys back.”
I stopped talking then. There didn’t seem to be any more I wanted to say. Nearly stared at me, her eyes wide open.
“Uh-huh,” she said, eventually, slowly nodding her head. “I suppose that was kind of interesting. Verging on the content-free, but interesting. I guess you had some slow evenings back there on the Farm.”
I shook my head at her. I didn’t know what I was trying to say, and didn’t want to have to try to explain any further. I was just marking time until tomorrow, when I could go and do what I had to do. I wanted to spend the intervening time just staring into space and cleaning my gun, doing a final inventory; maybe some Annual General Meeting for Jack Randall, Inc., where all the unfinished business was neatly wrapped up just in case the proceedings were adjourned forever.
Nearly cocked her head to one side and peered at me intently. “It ever occur to you that maybe you’re not the only one whose life is a bit fucked up, Jack?”
“It’s all in place,” I said.
“No, it isn’t There’s nothing in place. You have to listen to the past just as much as you fucking want to, no more. Things can change. Okay, so the spares died, Suej died—I’m going to miss her, too. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could, and it wasn’t enough. Sometimes it isn’t. Forget them, and forget Maxen, and forget everyone else. There’s new stuff out there to have.”
“Like what?” I said. I wasn’t asking in the hope of an answer, just putting words out into the air. Nearly paused for a moment, then abruptly refilled her glass.
“Well, like me,” she said, as she put the bottle back down. I stared at her, and she shrugged. “I mean, I’m beginning to think I must kind of like you or something, notwithstanding the fact you’re a fuckwit. Otherwise why would I be sitting here listening to you talking psychobullshit, when, as you charmingly point out, I could be out there earning money?”
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She looked up at me, chin thrust out belligerently, and for a moment I really saw her; saw the intelligence in her face, the clearness of her eyes, the perfect, animal way in which she sat in a chair. I didn’t see her as a friend, or a woman, as Howie’s employee or someone’s daughter. I saw her as Nearly, as an inexplicable, inimitable, irreplaceable person.
And then, just as clearly, I remembered sitting with my back to the wall of a room on 72, five years ago. I made a promise to Henna’s body. I have broken so many other promises, so very many. To keep that one was the least I could do.
I shook my head, and Nearly lunged forward and grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her eyes on fire and her face livid. She’d known exactly what I was thinking.
“She’s dead, Jack, and by the sound of it, that was your fault. It was your fault because you wouldn’t leave something alone, and now you’re going to do exactly the same thing and this time it’ll be you who gets killed. You think she would have wanted that? You think that’s going to make things better?”
“You have no right to use Henna like that,” I shouted, prising her hands from my jacket. “It’s none of your fucking business and Vinaldi shouldn’t have told you about her.”
“Fuck Henna!” she spat. “Henna’s dead. I’m not speaking on her behalf. I’m speaking for me. I don’t want you to die.”
“I don’t care what you want,” I said loudly, and heard the words drop like coins into a well without bottom.
“It’s because I’m a whore, isn’t it?” Nearly said. “Because I sell it to earn a living. We all like the idea of a woman who enjoys fucking but we don’t want them if they’ve ever been with anyone else, right?”
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” I said quietly, and I think I was telling the truth.
“Yeah, right.” She slugged the last of her drink down. “Well, hey, Jack—finish the rest of the wine by yourself.” She stood, snatched her cigarettes from the table, and then looked down at me, utterly furious. “Maybe it’s better you go off and play tomorrow after all,” she said. “Otherwise that’s all it’s ever going to be, Jack. Finishing the wine by yourself.”
As she walked toward the door I stood up, too, suddenly afraid.
“Don’t go like this,” I said, reaching out to grab her shoulder. She slipped out from under my hand and kept going. “Can’t we be friends?”
Her face was hard, and she looked like someone I’d never seen.
“Friends is no use to me, Jack. I’ve got friends. I don’t need any more. What I need is someone who’ll light up the woods so I can find a place to stay.”
I blinked. “What made you put it like that?”
She shrugged. “Who gives a shit? It’s just a phrase, like ‘Hey, we can still be friends.’” Her eyes ran over me, as if capturing something. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and dull. “No, I don’t want to be your friend, Jack. You’d be a lousy friend. For a start, you’re going to be dead, and dead people never return your cal Is.”
She grabbed my face in her hands, and kissed me hard on the lips. It wasn’t tender, or forgiving. It was fierce and uncompromising, the flip side of a punch in the mouth.
“Good bye and fuck off,” she said, and walked out of my life.
I sat in Howie’s office until six, then went into the bathroom. I stood in front of a mirror and shaved, and when I was finished with each itemi I threw it into the trash. Shaving cream, razor, comb, toothbrush. Then I examined my reflection for a while. I looked like an alien.
The bar droid told me Howie had gone to bed. I got it to serve me a coffee and drank it sitting at the bar.
The room was almost empty, just a lone couple sat at a table in the corner, come in for an early coffee on the way to work. They were holding hands, and something told me they’d just spent the night together for the first time. The girl’s hair was still wet from its morning wash, her normal routine disrupted; his cheeks were pink from using a razor found lying around in her bathroom, feeling oddly unsettled, wearing yesterday’s shirt and smelling of someone else’s deodorant. Neither of them seemed quite sure what to say, how to be, as they struggled to deal with suddenly widened perceptions of someone they saw every day at work. Confused memories of the night before; of the shock of so much skin.
The cat I’d pulled from the abandoned Farm was also there, curled up asleep in one of the corners. I was glad it had found a home. It would never want for peperoncinos, at least.
A little while later the young couple stood up, hesitated, and then held hands as they walked out the door.
I thought about leaving a note for Howie, but I couldn’t find any paper and I didn’t know what I would say. Seven o’clock, I left the bar and walked to an xPress elevator. There was very little life on the streets. The only place doing business was a Chinese restaurant with a variety of tired-looking dishes sitting in hot plates in front of the window. The restaurant was called the Happy Garden, but it didn’t look like a Happy Garden. It looked like a Pretty Miserable Garden. It looked like the kind of place Schopenhauer would have enjoyed during the period when he had a bad urinary infection.
At 100 I showed my fake pass to the guys standing there. Their eyesight wasn’t as good as the one who’d stopped me with Vinaldi, or maybe they just cared less; either way, I got through and made it up to 104.
Golson was still half asleep when he opened the door, but woke up rapidly on seeing me.
“Whoa, big dude,” he said. “You’re turning into a regular feature.”
“You got someone with you?”
“Yeah,” he said, smirking. “Sandy came back for some more.”
“Get rid of her,” I said, shouldering past him into the apartment. It was beginning to feel like a second home. Golson scuttled after me as always, making small and unimportant bleats of disagreement.
“Hey, man—I can’t do that. I promised to take her to the Memorial as my guest. That’s why she came with me last night. She kept her side of the bargain—she ain’t going to leave now for no man.”
Sandy was sitting up in bed as I entered, looking fetchingly disheveled. I twitched the sheet off, then pulled out my gun and racked it
“Sandy, go home,” I said. “There’s a danger this man may only be after your body.”
I walked into Golson’s kitchen and started nuking some coffee. It was cinnamon apple, but I reckoned if I smoked heavily enough I could mask the taste. Gotson stayed in the bedroom and watched with bewilderment as Sandy gathered up her clothes and left in a way which underlined her chagrin, slamming the door hard enough to shake the city to its foundations. I smiled. Everybody I knew seemed cursed to do the same thing again and again: The if-then loops go on and on until you find some way of breaking out.
I was sipping my first cup when Golson stomped in. “Hey listen, dude,” he began petulantly. “That was beyond. I mean it. Okay, so I got laid already, but the service starts at nine and how am I going to mobilize someone foxy enough to be my guest by then?”
“You already got a replacement guest,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” he said, hopefully. “Who?”
“Me,” I said. “Get dressed.”
The great and the good, the talented and the important, the cream of New Richmond’s gene pool.
No, actually. Just the richest. I guess some people of merit probably made it in through the side doors, invited to make the memorial service even more appealing to the media circus. But the autocameras and talking heads were kept firmly away from the event itself, and buzzed excitably around the lobby on the 200th floor. I’d like to think they were kept out through respect for the dead, but I suspect it was just to pique their curiosity. The cameras, droid-operated fliers, seemed to be remaining calm, but their human front people were almost exploding with excitement.
Everybody else was led up an enormous spiral staircase all the way to 203, where we stood buzzing in a room the size of a small European country. This, we w
ere given to understand, was the chapel’s anteroom. It was two stories high, and the ceiling had been entirely painted in the style of the Sistine Chapel. Storyboarded by the West Coast’s finest, the ceiling celebrated the exploits of that most durable of action heroes—God. Religion never really went out of fashion for the rich, maybe because it’s the easiest pretense at humility they could find. All the people around me, themselves the most well-heeled in New Richmond, stood trying not to be obvious about the fact they were wondering how much it cost to have a mile-square Renaissance cartoon daubed over a ceiling—proving that pretense was all that it ever was. The room could dwarf five thousand guests, and so the four or five hundred who stood huddled in its middle were left in absolutely no doubt as to their relative status to the person who owned it.
I stood with Golson to one side of the group. It wasn’t that I particularly valued his company; there just wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. I didn’t have a plan of any kind. I was waiting to see what I would do.
The area around us was alive with a low murmur of anticipation. Golson was utterly entranced. His eyes flitted over the assembled company with a fervor that seemed almost religious itself. These, I could tell, were his gods; the wrinkled old and glowing young, all slick with money and four-dimensional with status. CostSlots were sewn into almost every sleeve, trumpeting the garment’s worth to anyone who gave a shit. Most people, it appeared, gave a shit. A very few of them had cannily eschewed these public announcements of value, and I could see the other guests trying to work out whether this was because their garments were a little cheaper than theirs, or even more expensive. From the furrowing on some of the brows around me, I could tell this wasn’t an easy judgment to make. I don’t mind the rich, really I don’t. It’s just that they’re so boring.
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