No Dogs in Philly (13 page)

Someone was killing blue-eyed girls, as if she
didn’t have enough problems. It wasn’t in the feeds, nothing
official, but the rumor was out and the walkers were scared. It
wasn’t your normal having-a-bit-of-fun killing or choke-too-hard
killing either. It was religious, freak shit, the kind of shit that
didn’t have a neatly tied shoelace ending. And that pig, sweaty Lou
or gassy Lou or whatever the hell they called him was out putting
bounties on her head—girls with great blue eyes, fantastic blue
eyes. Well shit. She paused to study herself in the cracked window
of an abandoned storefront. There goes your moneymaker. Men and
women had paid a lot of money—or what seemed like a lot of money,
more than she’d ever dish for a ride—to touch her while looking
into those eyes, to have her kneel and let them stare down and
dirty her. But who could say if it was an honest lay or a trap
now—some freak wanting to carve out her sins with a
knife.

She kept walking, wrapping her trench coat and
scarf tighter, ducking her head so the passersby couldn’t glimpse
her face. With any luck they’d think she was a leper and keep to
their way. She’d tried wearing sunglasses to complete her disguise,
but with the clouds and the dark she couldn’t see shit, kept
stepping in it and glass and syringes and tripping and potholes and
the last time she’d had a condom dragging from her heel for about
four blocks until the cashier at the liquor store pointed it out by
yelling in his angry foreigner language. But the real fear was that
she’d accidentally trip over an elzi and kick his implants. So she
ditched the shades. Contacts, micro lenses, ocular implants—those
were the answer. But that took money and she didn’t have any, or
not the four-digit kind that she needed.

Walking, walking, walking—where was this place?
It had been ages…was it even open still? But of course it was. As
long as there was a need there was a way, and everyone had needs.
She wondered what they would take this time, if she even had
anything left to sell. But there were memories there, good ones,
good fucks and weird fucks that she’d be glad be rid of—better to
give them to someone else, someone who could use them, and why not
make a bit of cash for herself?

There it was, the little wood door that wasn’t
wood, between the pizza place and the strip club—Pleasure Island.
She’d thought of getting gainful there but it rankled her to pay to
get paid and the cut they took was enormous. Besides, if someone
wanted to buy you and maybe keep you, well, there you were on
display like a supermarket turkey, bundled and plucked. Better to
wander, to keep moving, to be a little discreet and to only sell
when you really needed that fix. To live was easy, just go to the
Fish and the hips would look after you, give you their shitty
gruel, teach you to sit and think and sing songs to keep yourself
from dying of boredom. If you wanted a little luxury in life—and
who didn’t deserve luxury?—then you had to work for it.

Five knocks, two up, two low, and then one on
the third pressure point right in the middle, that rang the bell.
The door swung open and a tough opened the door, one she didn’t
recognize. It had been a long time. He didn’t smile, didn’t react
to her. But she could see him looking at her eyes, see a few
calculations. Was the price still on her head, still out there for
blue-eyed girls? Would he just conk her out and throw her in a sack
and drive her to Lou’s? Her hand tensed around the shiv hidden in
her bodice, so thin, so clever, no one ever found it till she had
it on their throat. She’d stick this tough in the groin, a
straightforward, small-distance motion—God he was big—easy as
ringing a doorbell.

“
What do you want,
whore
?”
he said, with the voice of a thousand cigarettes. She ignored him.
Why don’t you try it one day? Better than being stuck on your feet
packing ham or folding pants or smiling and sniffing ass in retail.
Better to have freedom, her own life, of her own choosing, that,
hell, no one would ever acknowledge or recognize or even treat with
a fair lack of judging, but goddamn it was her life, that she’d
made, all by herself, and she was in control of it.

“
I’m here to sell.” She tapped the
side of her head. “I’ve got some high-value material up
here.”

Up the stairs was a waiting room—that always
made her laugh—just like a real doctor’s office. Plain beige walls
with a flower print, with your standard ugly chairs, a television,
even, for the scum like her not plugged in, and a few magazines.
She sat next to a nervous young man who couldn’t stop wringing his
hands. His clothes were nice, fancy even, must’ve been a mechie or
an embyay—they were the best, self-important, insecure, liked to
feel big and got a real high from tossing bills. She guessed he’d
done something foul he wanted to forget, maybe he’d seen some shit
on the Net, wandered into a bad neighborhood, or maybe his
girlfriend had left him. But the way he twitched it looked like
guilt, or at least a knowing that he’d done something other people
thought was bad. Probably he’d run over an elzi and thought he’d
killed an actual person.

She flipped through
Living with Less
,
and read an article on a cake she could bake if she had an oven,
that used Gaesporan flour to actually burn the exact number of
calories you were cooking. It was under the title “Zero Sum
Sweets.” Delicious. How nice to be so swimming in cash you could
eat yourself to death. That was an actual problem that people had.
She was glad she wasn’t people, didn’t want to be people, didn’t
want a house she had to paint, with cabinets that needed to have
all the right fucking handles to match the wallpaper, glad she
didn’t live on a track of five different stops: work, home, work,
restaurant (well, that would be nice), and home again. She was glad
she didn’t have to fuck the same guy every single night and dance
around with him for fifty years. She tossed the magazine on the
pile and picked up one about celebrities. They had the right
idea—lie, and fuck, and lie, and be an asshole and everyone loved
them. She could be a celebrity.

A nurse came out and called a name. The man
next to her got up and went through the door to the operating room.
She watched the television, but it was just thirty seconds of news
crowded by ads. The ads pissed her off—they were loud and flashy
and up in her face, and if they were people doing that they’d get
beaten sideways. They were always trying to sell her stuff, but she
didn’t have any money so it was just a big fuck you. Buy this. You
need this. You are nothing without this. This thing, right here,
look at it, it’s got colors and music. You fucking need this. She
walked over and turned off the TV, glaring around to see if anyone
would challenge her. No one said anything. They were mostly girls,
like herself, reading magazines, or nodding off, or head in hands
staring at the floor, and that one bitch in the corner was pregnant
and sobbing and she didn’t even want to know that story.

She sat back down. The dog had taken the young,
nervous man’s seat. It was looking around but seemed relaxed, and
she took that as a good sign. Here, at this very office, she’d
tried to have the dog removed, but the doctor couldn’t find a thing
that would be causing it, and short of a lobotomy there wasn’t
anything he could do. Ever since the run-in with that monster on
the subway (had the others made it?) she’d felt, not affection, but
a sense of tolerance towards the dog. Real or not, the dog had
tried to do something, warn her, hide her, and so it was protecting
her in a way. She would have preferred the fire in that case—hide
from assholes, burn the monsters—but she was still alive and that
was something, something she couldn’t count on day to day anymore.
The thing to do was enjoy herself more, drink more, buy more sky,
find some men that she wanted because the future was looking less
rosy every day.

“
Ria…” the nurse frowned when she
saw the last name. Ria didn’t have one so she always put the
filthiest thing she could imagine. She got up and followed the
nurse through the door and into the operating room. The best part
of coming here was the bathroom; it was so clean, impossibly clean,
and sterile. She loved that smell, that alcohol smell of clean; it
gave her a rush. The nurse didn’t want to let her go but she
threatened to piss herself right then and there so the nurse gave.
Ria took her time and then cleaned herself up nice. Then she went
and lay down on the operating table; it was so comfortable, she
could just drift off. Dr. Alloche came in, a wrinkly old man like a
prune stuck on a body made of toothpicks. He was hairless except
for big white caterpillar eyebrows that gave out everything he was
thinking.

“
Hello, Ria, it’s been a while.
Seven months since your last visit,” he said. God he was smart. He
remembered her name, remembered everything about her, didn’t even
glance at his records. Of course maybe he had them all digital,
plugged into his brain, but she didn’t think so. There was no
pause, no flicker of access—it was like he had them on the tip of
his tongue, like he’d been thinking of her the whole time. Why was
he here, operating in the Libs just shy of the Assistance Zone,
between a caesarian-scar strip club and a saltine-ketchup pizza
parlor? He should have been a TV doctor, in a big white hospital
with sexy young nurses, running back and forth with his lab coat
blowing behind him, driving a sports car. But they didn’t let you
do the kinds of things he liked in a real hospital.

“
So what do you have for me
today?” he asked. “Something interesting, I’m sure.”

“
Why don’t you poke around and see
what you like?” she said. “I’ve got no secrets.”

“
Very well.”

He placed a mask over her face and pumped in
that lovely gas…ah she should come here more often…it was like a
spa…like in the magazines…She found herself lying in the apartment
of a married man, the man himself licking her, doing a messy job
but she moaned like he was Christ reborn. The first time she’d gone
on a memory trip like this she’d freaked and panicked and jerked
herself out of it. When Dr. Alloche finally calmed her down and
eased her into it they saw her memories were so patchy that they
were useless. He still gave her a few bucks for the trouble, such a
nice man. Now she was a pro, probably better than most people at
remembering things. She made mental notes, walked herself through
each step of remembering to get all the little details that were so
crucial to getting off—the noises he made and the noises she made,
the sweat of their bodies, the wet slapping sounds, the hot breath
on her neck, the scratches she dug in his back and the smell of two
naked bodies forcing into one another. That was money.

She could see over the married man’s head, Dr.
Alloche in the background, projecting himself into her memory. He
looked around, nodded, and then the scene blurred and changed. This
one was darker, she knew that would happen, that’s what the men
wanted, what they would pay for, to see her hurt and put down. This
had started in the back of a van but he’d tied her up and dragged
her into the dirt, tearing her clothes to get to the prize and then
forcing himself in roughly. She’d cried—but only because that’s
what he’d wanted—and for all his show of masculinity he’d finished
in a few hard stabs. That had pissed her off—it made the memory too
short, less valuable. The doctor could shorten it, cut out the part
where he’d untied her and then helped her up and apologized (he’d
even kissed her on the cheek and blushed) but he couldn’t lengthen
the act with any technical wizardry. Dr. Alloche nodded and then
switched scenes again.

She was bent over a railing on a bridge in the
Fish. He’d hurt her, hit her too hard, brought up a bruise or two.
It hurt having her stomach pressed against the railing, hurt when
he wrapped his lumberjack hands around her neck and squeezed too
hard, hurt when he pulled her hair. She remembered the pain,
focused on it, gritting her teeth. It seemed to last forever. And
when he was done he’d thrown her to the ground, let her head clack
against the pavement and then sprinkled the bills around her,
laughing. She focused on that, capturing all the details, bringing
up the pain, the disgust, the self-pity. This was a good memory,
she knew, she was proud of this one, this was Hollywood quality
right here. She’d even remembered the aftermath, dragging herself
up from the pavement, the ache as she bent to pull on her panties
and dress herself, and the limp away. She’d thought maybe he was
going to snuff her that night.

“
Very good, exquisitely done,” Dr.
Alloche said. He was watching the scene, mesmerized, a connoisseur,
the perfect audience for her work.

“
Thanks, Doc,” she tried to say,
but of course she was just her memory self and could say
nothing.

“
Now what’s this…this is very
interesting here…”

She sat in front of a trash fire in the
abandoned subway station. The others sat there too, but they were
puppets, faceless, motionless bodies. She’d tried to blank them
out, didn’t want to think about their fates. She didn’t want to be
here, didn’t want him going into this memory, but of course he
would find it, so recent, so terrifying, so thrilling, so many
chemicals released—it was just what he wanted. Dr. Alloche stood in
the shadows next to her, face illuminated by the flickering
fire.

“
What’s this…?” he said. “So much
fear here…what is this? A rape?”

She tried to speak again, tried to tell him to
get away, to skip this memory. She was afraid now, afraid that he
wouldn’t believe it—who would?—and that he would think it was fake
or tainted by sky bliss and then he would think her other memories
were fake too and she wouldn’t get anything for them. The quality
of this memory was all off…the dog hadn’t been sitting next to her,
he’d been standing out on the platform, hovering like a ghost.
Could the doctor even see the dog in her memory? Had he seen it
lurking in the shadows when she was beaten on the bridge? What
would show if he went far back, back years and years to when the
dog had burned that john alive? Would it just show her in the car,
would it look like she had killed him? Would that be worth
anything?