Wetware (12 page)

She continued to play. Jack looked out the window. The shadows of the birds flitted around the room, across the wall, over her hair and hands, through the sounds that lingered in the dusty air. The bits of dust turned in the light and flashed now and then, just small flecks of gold in the otherwise dreary room, but which seemed to suggest the ephemeral and piercing quality of the notes she played.

She stopped. The sound of Stone’s weeping filled the room.

“I am afraid,” he said, looking up, shamelessly showing his face, “that I didn’t recognize that last piece. Perhaps I’m getting old. Perhaps an old man forgets things, but I can’t place it. Mozart, maybe, but too muscular for Mozart. So, can you tell an old man what it was?”

“It’s just a little something I’ve been working on,” she said.

“A little something you’ve been working on, my darling, my
liebchen
?” said Stone.

He reached into his pocket and took the used napkin and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. Then he started crying again.

“So,” said Jack. “Do you want it or not?”

He gestured to the piano.

“It needs to be tuned,” said Kay.

“Of course,” said Stone. “I will have it tuned. Please. I will go downstairs and call the tuner. His name is Gotts. I owe him a little something, but I will fix that. I will call right now. A little something she has been working on?”

He blew his nose.

“Have you ever entered a competition?”

“No,” said Kay.

“And why not?” he said.

“I never had the chance,” she said.

“That’s the long and short of it,” said Jack.

Kay closed the cover over the keys.

“I don’t know why that made me so tired,” she said.

“I do,” said Jack.

“Well, we have something to talk about,” said Stone.

“We don’t want to waste time,” said Jack.

“No,” said Stone. “Not a second.” He blew his nose again. “I wonder if this is good for an old man? Well, that doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. What did you say your name was?”

“Kay Remilard,” she said.

“Jack Portman,” said Jack.

“Do you play too?” said Stone.

“A little,” said Jack. “But she’s got the talent.” He looked out the window. “I have other things I like to do.”

“Here,” said Stone. He gave Kay the key to the room. “You’ll need this. Take it.”

She put out her hand and cupped her fingers around the key. The shadows of the pigeons flitted over the floor, the walls, and then disappeared into the black of the piano top, as a shadow being absorbed by a shadow. The popping sound of their wings came in through the dusty window.

“You’ll have to trust me for the money,” said Kay.

“Money,” said Stone. “You want to talk to me about money when I have heard you play?” He made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Don’t bother me about money.” He took her hand in both of his.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Jack. “We appreciate it.”

“I’ll get this room cleaned up,” said Stone. “I can’t imagine why I ever let it get this way. It is easy for an old man to get cynical, you know, and he does. But then something happens and you began to think maybe you have gotten mean-spirited. And old. But the important thing is to care again, don’t you see? It is like waking up from a sleep.”

Stone sat down and started crying again.

“I don’t want to make a spectacle,” he said. “Give me a moment.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” said Kay.

“Liked
it?” said Stone. He spoke again to the imaginary person. “She says I
liked
it? Am I hearing right? Oh, my darling, ‘liked’ doesn’t do it justice.” He shook his head.

“Let’s get some air,” said Jack.

“Yes, of course,” said Stone. “Get some air. Take care of yourselves. Rest. Get some juice. Tea.”

CHAPTER 6

March 25, 2029

“THEY’RE GOING to lock us out of our room,” said Kay. “Unless we get some money.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Jack.

The erratic descent of the elevator in the hotel was so predictable that it didn’t worry Kay anymore. It was like the creaking of a floorboard in an old house. The cage itself was made of wrought iron with scrollwork along the top, and it had a worn green carpet on the floor. Usually the elevator was filled with the perfume that the women in fishnet stockings wore when they brought those silent men here. Kay thought of the cables in the shaft, the long, drooping shapes of them like creepers in a jungle. The elevator went down, stopping and starting in the shaft, the lights from each floor momentarily cutting into the darkness of the cage. Each of them had had two hundred dollars when they first found themselves in front of the hotel, and now only Kay had any money left, and it was just a few dollars.

The elevator stopped at the ground floor, and Jack pushed the bars of the gate aside. The lobby was deserted, although the ashtrays next to sofas were filled with sand that looked like the beach at the end of the Fourth of July. Cigarette butts, foil wrappers, half-eaten candy.

They stepped out of the elevator and Jack touched her arm and nodded toward the clerk, who sat at his desk. Blood dripped from the clerk’s yellow, nicotine-stained fingers, which he had cupped under his nose. The suddenness of the nosebleed left the clerk absolutely still, as though he were trying to be invisible. His eyes moved toward Kay. The blood spilled over his fingers and began to drip onto the desk’s green blotter.

“It’s just a nosebleed,” said the clerk. His hand was cupped as if he were trying to hold water to drink.

“What’s a nosebleed?” said Kay.

“It’s nothing,” said the clerk. “You bleed from the nose.”

“Does it happen a lot?” said Kay.

“No,” said the clerk. “I never get nosebleeds.”

“Here,” said Jack. He took a handkerchief from his pocket. “Lean forward. That’s the way.”

“I don’t know what causes it,” said the clerk. “Just happens, I guess. There’s a tenant here who has fits.” The clerk shrugged.

“Why don’t you go wash up?” said Jack. “Isn’t that your apartment there?”

He pointed at a door behind the clerk.

“Yeah,” said the clerk. “But what if someone comes in and wants a room?”

“I’ll watch the desk for you,” said Kay.

The clerk looked one way and another. No one else was around.

“Thanks,” he said. He held the handkerchief to his nose and stood up and then looked around again, just to make sure. Kay had never seen a ferret or a mongoose in a trap, but she recognized the motion. An anxious movement from side to side.

The clerk went through his apartment door, closing it quickly so that Kay couldn’t see his sad, mismatched furniture and the posters he had on the wall, large ones from a model airplane convention. With the door open just a crack, he said, “It won’t be a minute.” Then he closed it.

On the papers in front of Jack, and on the floor too, there were a series of red circles about the size of a coin. Jack looked at them with the particular interest a trapper or hunter would have in blood spoor. Outside, people walked past the glass door of the hotel, bent forward, pulling their coats together. The sky was clear, but it had gotten colder.

Kay watched a woman in fishnet stockings who was walking up and down in front of the hotel, looking one way and then pacing again, her movement, her gestures, all suggesting impatient hunger.

“Maybe you can stand out here and then we’d go to a hotel with some guy and we’d just take what he had.” Jack looked out the window. “It’s got possibilities.”

“I don’t want to do that,” said Kay.

“Why not?” said Jack.

She shrugged.

“I just don’t want to,” she said. “All right?”

“Have you got something against killing one of these jackasses?” said Jack.

“And then what do we do?” said Kay.

The clerk came out and said, “Thanks,” and Jack looked at him, thinking it over. Kay said, “Come on, Jack. Let’s go.”

Outside, the stars appeared in the sky like a couple of blue sequins on a black dress. At the horizon there was a smear of red from the crimson lights of the city. Kay reached over and took Jack’s arm.

“Come on, Jack, we don’t have to be that way, do we? Not to each other. That’s the important thing.”

“I’m just worried about the money,” he said.

“No one is a friend to you like me,” said Kay. She turned her face up to his and tried to catch his eyes, but he was too ashamed to return her gaze. Instead they walked along for a while with Kay holding his arm with both of hers.

“You know, Kay, if anyone tried to do anything to you, why, I’d . . .” He made an economical gesture, not violent so much as like a butterfly collector putting a specimen into the killing jar.

“I know,” she said.

“No one is going to get by me where you’re concerned,” he said. “You can trust me about that. I’m here to make sure no one bothers you. So don’t worry. You can really trust me. You know, I’m devoted to you. Like a brother.”

They walked a couple of hundred yards before stopping in front of the gaming parlor. The place was filled with people who hung around looking for a sucker—usually a recreational player, or someone who hadn’t spent the time to keep up with each new release of the current games. A really good game had the intricacy of life about it, not only the complexity but the brutality too. Winning was like being able to escape fate’s most cherished and hidden details.

A brass bell that had come from a nineteenth-century sailing vessel was hung in the doorway of the place. It had been used to call out the first dog watch, the second dog watch, the morning watch, and now it had ended up here as a prop, just an antique. Jack stood under it, eyes on it, but still drawn to the bell as though seeing something he had always thought to be beautiful or romantic. He imagined the coast of Africa or South America, the creaking of a sailing ship in the light airs of a hot afternoon: What could be more attractive than a coast with peaks and dark vegetation visible through shreds of cloud?

“Hey,” said Kay. “How about him?”

She smiled at a man who had short hair, a face scarred by acne, and who wore glasses like a student, although it was obvious he hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom for a long time. Beautiful white teeth, which, Jack supposed, were false. Jack wondered how the man had lost the real ones.

“It’s your funeral,” said Jack.

The man came over like a fish rising through polluted water.

“Hey,” said Kay. “Do you know how to play these games?”

“Oh, I’ve played a few of them,” he said.

“They all look about the same,” said Kay.

“Yeah,” he said. “You know one, you know them all. Yeah. That about sums it up. What’s your name?”

“Kay Remilard,” she said. “This is Jack Portman.”

“Where are you from?” said the man.

“Here and there,” said Jack. “What’s the difference?”

“No difference,” said the man. He looked from one of them to the other. “Okay. My name is Hart. Do you want to play?”

“She does,” said Jack.

Hart had a checklist he usually went through before playing with a stranger: age, experience, reflexes. Sometimes he’d drop something on the floor to see how fast a mark really was. Instead he just looked at Kay. As nearly as he could tell, she had a faintly academic quality, or the manner of a woman who had spent time in a convent. Or a conservatory. Maybe she played the violin. Frankly, though, he didn’t have much time to speculate about it, since he was playing on what was known as “deep margin”; he couldn’t say why he had been losing recently, but he guessed it was part of the cyclical nature of gambling. Every player knew this aspect of the life. Hart was borrowing the money to play and paying a high interest rate, calculated not in weeks or even days, but hours. He dropped a key chain, a little promotional piece of junk that was being given out for a new game, and it hit the floor with a click. Kay bent down slowly. When she picked it up, she dropped it and then made a grab for it and missed. Hart reached down for it.

“You can get dressed right back there,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Kay.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

Kay walked through the smoke of the place, her hips swaying a little, like the woman she had seen on the street the first night she had looked out the window of the hotel. When Hart turned back, he found himself face-to-face with Jack. Hart said, “Nice night, huh?” but he was thinking,
Watch the bozo.

An attendant sat near the door of the changing room, but otherwise the place was empty. A bench went along one side in front of some small black metal doors. Closets? No, Kay thought, but they had something to do with storage. Lockers. Yes, that’s what they are. Sure.

Maybe, if she could get some money, she’d be able to control things a little better. For instance, she’d buy some clothes, new shoes, makeup, and then she could find out where Briggs lived. And yet she wanted to resist this; the obsessive impulse left her at once exhilarated and tired. Why couldn’t she just forget about him? But even as she considered this, she felt the panic of being without the desire for him, which left her with such clarity of feeling and purpose. She stood in the room, looking around. The first thing was the money. But even so, she let herself have the momentary pleasure of imagining what she would do when she found him, got him alone somehow, or maybe even came into his apartment when he was already there, sleeping maybe, naked under the sheets. She thought of standing there watching him breathe, of how she would slide a hand under the sheets, along his stomach. Then she shook this off and went back to thinking about the money.

Four shower heads were lined up at the end of the room, all of them dripping in a different cadence. Kay dropped her jumpsuit in front of the lockers and then turned to the mirror opposite them, where she appeared in a silver and flecked darkness: pale skin, her damp face, the shape of her ribs, the indentation of the backs of her arms where the thin triceps were defined. She looked around and, as discipline, she named the objects in front of her: mirror, bench, shower. Drip. Drop. Odors. Like dirty socks. Then she looked back at herself and thought,
Am I
attractive?

A drop of sweat fell from her forehead and splashed on her leg, the silver track of it disappearing along her calf.

Oh, darling,
she thought,
please
. As she stood there in the gloomy space, she was convinced that she could get relief from her desperation in only one way: in her lover’s touch, or his odor, or that look in his eyes which came from the fact that he wanted to have a child with her, and that this desire came not out of his sense of duty but because he loved her so much that he wanted to mix his blood with hers.
Oh, darling,
she thought.
I want to believe that is the way it will be.

“Which one are you going to use?” said the attendant, who came up with a small cart on which there were three suits. They all were of one piece and made of thin material, although two of them looked newer and were obviously better made. The better-made ones were actually uglier than the original models, since they were covered with long chaotic shapes and colors.

“The Burton, that’s this one,” said the attendant, “It’s the cheapest. Twenty-buck deposit. It hasn’t got the connections that the others have, like the Magnin, but if you don’t have the dough, it’s the best you can hope for.”

The attendant was about thirty and had dirty hair.

“I’ll take the Burton,” said Kay.

“That’s what I thought. You can’t fool me, although some of them try. Where’s the twenty?”

Kay’s jumpsuit lay across the narrow bench in front of the lockers, and Kay reached down to take the last of her money out of the pocket of it. The bill was damp.

“Here,” said the attendant. “One Burton.”

Kay rolled up the first leg of the suit and put one foot in, pointing the toe to do so, and then she unrolled the thin material, about as thick as a film, really, pulling it up over her calf and knee, doing the first leg and then the second, the material fitting her perfectly, molding to her knees, her thighs, her stomach. She stuck her arms in, too. Pulled the suit up to her neck. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. The sleek material took the light so as to define her in luminescent smears on her shoulders, her arms, her legs. The attendant said, “Come here.”

Kay stepped closer to him, and she took out a tube of clear electrolyte gel, which she put on the plug at the end of the belt of the suit.

“Sometimes the contact isn’t good,” said the attendant. “This helps. All right. There.”

Kay heard the sound of the water dripping. She swallowed and took a deep breath.

“All right,” said Kay. “Thanks.”

Outside, Kay and Hart stepped into a cubicle in which stood a couch about the size of a double bed. It had a disposable cover, and while it was not of the best quality, it still smelled clean. Hart stretched out and plugged his belt into the receptacle on the wall at his side. Overhead a small light glowed. Then it turned green: all set on his side. Kay plugged in too, feeling a little of the gel on her hand, a moisture that seemed familiar. Smooth on the fingers. Damp. The light overhead on her side blinked, a little longer than it did above Hart, and then it turned green. She guessed her connection was slower than Hart’s.

Her skin felt as though she had been sprayed with cologne and now stood in a slight breeze. This, she guessed, was the setup, the registration with skin chemistry. She and Hart lay side by side. His eyes were almost yellow, speckled like a butterfly’s wing. She had never seen a butterfly, but she knew that she wanted to. His pupils expanded. The cool thrill on her skin grew more uniform. As she waited, as she looked into the eyes of the man who lay next to her, she tried to make the necessary changes in the code of the game.

Looking for a way to do it was like a dream of a room where she had grown up. As she reached out to the top of a dresser, a brush was right there where she had left it. She felt the familiar heft, the balance. The code spiraled open.