Synners (44 page)

"I didn't do nothing!" Valjean looked hurt but no less wild-eyed.

Gina took another step toward him. "Okay, okay, I just know you guys, you know? I been on a tour bus once or twice."

"I've
never
been on a tour bus," Valjean said, proudly.
"All
video.
All
the time."

"Yah, sure, that was before your time. I'm speaking symbolic. Like the context of a tour bus, get it?"

"Get it."
Valjean stared at some point over her head. Now the knife hand was moving slightly in a twisting motion. "Get it? Get it." He pulled the knife away from the woman and scratched the side of his face with the hilt. "Someday everybody's gonna get it."

"Never mind, I said that out of context. Listen, Val, I know about the context, and I know about the stranger on the stony shore, but I don't see where the knife comes in." Gina nodded at it. "What about that? You want to let me see it?"

He looked down at it as if he'd never seen it before. "I was thinking. . . something. I was thinking when you fall. . .when you cut through the air ..."

The woman sagged in Valjean's grip, looking past Gina with pure hopelessness in her face. "Oh,
shit,"
she groaned.

Gina turned around. Clooney had just stepped out onto the terrace, smoothing his clothes and puffing himself up. "All right, Mr. Valjean or Canadaytime or whatever you call yourself," he said loudly, stumping toward him gracelessly, "you put that knife down and let go of that woman or you're in
big, big trouble."

Just as he was about to pass her, Gina grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and pulled him back. "Yah? What the fuck are you gonna do, tell Rivera on him?"

Clooney blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

"He doesn't work here, asshole, so you can't have him fired."

Clooney jerked away from her. "We'll cancel your video contract!" he yelled at Valjean. "You'll never work in this business again!"

"I
am
this business!" Valjean announced with a mad joyousness in his voice.

"Val, listen, let's trade!" Gina said quickly, grabbing Clooney's arm. "This guy for the woman you got! Go for that?"

Valjean looked from her to Clooney and back again before he took a firmer grip on the woman. "Get real. You'd rush me."

Clooney was glaring at her with self-righteous fury. She ignored him. "Val. Keep looking at me." She moved as close to him as she dared, within arm's reach of a security guard on her left. The guard caught her eye and discreetly patted the holster of his stun pistol. She gave one small emphatic shake of her head no and raised both hands to keep Valjean's attention. Context. The fall. Signature image. The stranger on the stony shore. Somehow one of those was the royal road into him. "This context thing. Are we talking music or video or what?"

"Video," Valjean said breathily, not really in answer to her question. He rested the side of his face on the woman's head. "Gina, you been in there. In where the video is, right?" He tapped his head with the handle of the knife. "Chinese fucking boxes, one in another in another in another. We been to the next box
in,
but now we gotta get to the next box
out.
That's the
context.
And see, if you're
in
the video, you're
not
the video, you're just
in
it."

The woman winced as Valjean sat himself farther back on the rail. The shadows on the cape were pulsing more quickly and unevenly, the rhythm stumbling now and then. The shapes looked like stones moving as quickly as clouds in a storm.

"See, Gina," he said suddenly, "you got a bottle, say, and the bottle's got something in it. You're either the bottle, or you're something in it, but you're not both. Right?"

Gina nodded. "I'm with you that far. So?"

He made a frustrated face. "Well, don't you
hate
that?"

"Sure, hate it to fuck-all. Where does the stranger come in?"

"You can be a bigger thing," Valjean said. "You got a thought, and the thought wants to be more than it is, so it becomes a concept, and then pretty soon it's part of you. So like this, like now, I'm a thought. I wanna be a concept, and I wanna be the bigger thing that can think thoughts. Thoughts like me. Before the stranger on the stony shore turns and sees me and makes me stay just like I am."

Gina let out a breath. "All right. Now what's that got to do with hanging off a terrace twenty floors up holding a knife to somebody's throat?"

"When you cut through the air . . . when you fall a long, long way, you have to fall fast, before the stranger on the stony shore turns around and fixes you there, fixes you right there, and you'll never get away. And, oh, Gina"—he gave a shaky laugh—"I'm a bad,
bad
thought, and I gotta get into context."

"You're a bad thought, and you have to get into context," Gina said.

"Prima,
girl. You
know."

"Don't call me a girl," she growled at him.

"I'm a bad thought." Valjean looked down his nose at her.

"Just not in front of the asshole." She jerked her head at Clooney.

"Right. Sorry."

"Okay. Bad thought out of context. You're gonna cut through the air and take her with you, but you got no idea about what the context is."

"How can I, if I'm out of context?" He suddenly bent the woman backwards over the rail. Her feet dangled above the tacky grass green outdoor carpeting. Valjean held the knife above her, ready to stab down. Gina noted with a growing feeling of absurdity that it was a steak knife.

"Val, what if you get into context and you find out you're supposed to be a good thought?" she said quickly.

He looked up from the woman, exasperated. "Bad is bad."

"But if you don't know what the context is, how can you know if you're supposed to be bad?"

"What the
fuck
are you
talking
about?" Valjean yelled angrily. "You think
you
know something, you think
you're
the stranger here?"

"You don't know what you're supposed to be if you're not in context," she insisted. "You remember when I did your video, the fall, the bungi cords, all that?" She waited for him to nod. "Take that fall out of context, and what is it?"

"It's a fall," he said suspiciously.

"You think so? I coulda got the same effect going up in a jet and taking a power dive, or strapped a cam on a rocket and shot it up, then run the footage in reverse. Any of those methods would have given me the same kind of rush. All I had to do was make the image move the right way. It's supposed to be a fall in context. Out of context it's just pictures going real fast." She licked her lips, swallowing hard on a dry throat. "What did you ask for—fucking
pictures
going fast, or a stone-home
fall?"

Valjean frowned hard. "You're making me confused now."

"It's not me," she said, forcing a blase tone into her voice. "It's being out of context. But you got to know your context, because you're only gonna get one shot at getting into it."

He paused, thinking it over. "How do you know that?"

"When I make a video, and something doesn't work, I take it out and throw it away. No use for it, doesn't fit the context. That's okay for footage, but what about thoughts? You're not gonna be any kind of thought sitting in the cosmic trash barrel, and if you don't know the context, that's where you could end up."

There was an eternal moment when nothing happened at all, and then Valjean let go of the woman. She teetered, recovered, and slid down onto the carpeting in a heap, looking dazed. Gina waved a finger at her and she crawled away, out of Valjean's reach.

Valjean stayed on the rail, the knife in both hands and his face all puckered up. The stone shapes were racing on the cape, more like meteors now. She had a brief thought about falling stars as she took another step toward him, and then another, until she was within reach of him. He seemed to be unaware of her, even as she leaned forward and put one hand on his shoulder. The patterns on the cape began to fade in and out in spots, flickering, wavering. She watched his face carefully as she took a firm grip on him and started to pull him forward. His left eye was bloodshot; more than bloodshot. It was starting to fill up with watery pinkish tears. Gina pulled at him a little harder, and for a moment he resisted. Then he slid forward off the rail, still holding the knife in both hands as if he were praying.

Gina took the knife from him slowly and carefully. Valjean gave her a searching look and started to say something, but the guards were suddenly all around them, pulling him away from her.

"I'll
take that knife."

Gina turned to Clooney, holding the knife between two fingers. "Don't tempt me, asshole, you're on my shitlist."

"I'm the ranking employee here." He snapped his fingers and held his hand out.

Gina flicked her wrist and the knife suddenly blossomed in the tacky green carpeting between his feet.
"Oops,"
she enunciated into his outraged face. One of the security guards clamped a hand on her arm.

"Remove this woman," Clooney said, rolling his eyes. "Obviously she's as disturbed as her rock'n'roll buddy here."

She twisted away from the guard easily. "I can remove myself. Fuck you very much, stooge."

Two of the guards removed her anyway. As they marched her past Ludovic and the Dinshaw woman, Valjean was singing "Coney Island Baby." He was flat.

Valjean finished singing and collapsed at the doctor's feet in a huddled pool of twitching patterns. It was the same tall doctor Gabe had just seen in Mark's pit arguing with Gina. Her face remained stubbornly impassive, even as she started to remove the cape and discovered the connections that Valjean had been so careful to camouflage running from the hardware in the collar to the sockets in his head. Gabe felt a wave of queasiness sweep through him as she bent down and instructed the semiconscious man to give the disconnect command.

Dinshaw nudged him, and he started guiltily; he had all but forgotten her. "Are you all right?" he asked her, but she waved the question away, pointing at the door. Manny was just coming out from the elevators, looking haggard and disheveled in a vague kind of way, as if he'd just been awakened from sleep.

Clooney rushed at him, starting to explain something about being the ranking employee and the call from Security bouncing to him because Manny had been unavailable. Manny seemed to endure Clooney without really listening, giving most of his attention to the doctor and the security guards. He turned briefly to look at Dinshaw, frowning when he saw Gabe standing beside her.

"You're probably going to get it for being on the scene again," Dinshaw said in a low voice. "How is it you always find your way up here when someone's going to jump?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Gabe said, feeling awkward. A guard came over to him with Valjean's cape and thrust it at him.

"Here. She's
your
friend,
you
give it to her."

Gabe didn't want to touch it. He balled it up quickly, making sure the connections that had been in Valjean's skull were well buried in the folds of material.

Dinshaw drew away a step, looking at it with distaste. "That's a real inspired piece of technology."

"Isn't it."

Clooney stalked past them looking miffed as the largest security guard eased Valjean's limp form over his shoulder and followed the doctor to the elevators.

"You weren't hurt, were you?" Manny asked Dinshaw. He was squinting at her strangely, as if he were trying to decide whether she was somehow at fault for all this.

Dinshaw shook her head.

"Good. That's good." He looked a bit puzzled as he went back inside. Gabe and Dinshaw stared after him.

"What's wrong with this picture?" Dinshaw said, rubbing her neck where Valjean had been gripping her.

"I don't know," Gabe said. He looked down at the cape. A last bit of residual energy sent a soft wave of grey through the white material, like an animal letting out a final breath.

White Lightning in a mason jar. If it worked once, it would work again. Except it didn't.

The level in the jar went down steadily, little by little, and it wouldn't come for her. It burned the way it was supposed to, but tonight she was fireproof.

Here it comes.

She tried to block the thought with another swig from the jar. Yah, and here
this
comes, now leave me alone.

Take a little walk—

—and here it comes—

Here
this
comes. Shut up, motherfucker. Too hard, it was too fucking hard to think about.

—a little walk with me—

—into the context—

Context
this.
The jar was half-gone now, and she felt nothing, nothing, nothing. The kid with the heelprint on his forehead was jumping again tonight. Christ, didn't he have someplace else to go, something else to do?

"We do"—
dit, dit, dit
—"what we do. We do it"—
dit, dit, dit
—"because we can."

Gina put her hand down on the sticks, capturing them. Flavia waited a moment and then slid them out again to play the edge of the table.

"Know
what you're looking for.
Know
it." Flavia pushed the mason jar aside. "Know you through the wire, know you for always."

Gina pulled the mason jar back in front of her and held onto it. "I don't think you're fucking ready to know me tonight."

That sharp-enough-to-cut grin. "Toxed enough yet?"

She shook her head slowly. "Not toxed at all. Should've known it would happen someday. I passed the saturation point, can't put a load on anymore. The only thing to do is get myself Purged and start over quick. Before the odometer hits six zeroes."

"Sure." Flavia whacked her on the cheek with one of the sticks. "Feel that?"

Gina gave a short, surprised laugh. "No."

"Toxed enough." Flavia beckoned to someone behind her. "Ready. A little traveling music, please."

Don't do it, she told them as they took her out. Don't fucking do it, crushed in the back of the rental with Claudio and his magic fingers. We do what we do, we do it because we can, don't do it, she said as they took her down into the cellar. Don't do it, Claudio laying her down on the mattress, arranging her comfortably, pausing to kiss her on the mouth. Struck by White Lightning, hope you like your barbecue extra-crispy. Don't do it. The connections were ready in Flavia's practiced hands. Don't do it, she said. Last time: don't do it.