Which made Fred think of the hinky Inspector Costa. No matter how much she may have resembled a lulu physically, she was no fun at all.
Fred closed his eyes and shook his head. Was he still obsessing? What was wrong with him? When he opened his eyes again, Reilly was studying him.
The two russes calmly contemplated each other for several moments until Alice said, “Stop that, you two! Why do you do that, that russ mind meld? It gives me the creeps.”
“I’ve noticed russes doing more of it lately,” said Peter. “I hear it’s related to the clone fatigue.”
Wes, miraculously, had overheard this and tore himself from the tournament long enough to declare, “That’s a racist statement, Peter. There’s no such thing as clone fatigue. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“It was a joke,” Peter protested, but Wes’s attention had already flown.
“What’s a racist statement?” said a new voice. Fred looked up and saw Shelley approaching the table.
Upon seeing his wife, Reilly crowed, “Petey thinks I got the clone fatigue, dear.”
“Lucky you,” Shelley said. “All I have is plain old body fatigue.” She sat on Reilly’s lap, only to rise again. “What is that?” she said, touching the exoassist brace under his jumpsuit. “And that smell?”
Alice said, “Our russes ran into some bad foo-foo today, but nobody wants to tell us about it.”
“Oh, Reilly,” Shelley said and sat in the chair next to him.
“It’s nothing, really,” Reilly said, which caused Fred to snort.
Shelley peered at Fred, and he fell instantly silent under the spell of her all-consuming scrutiny. Now, that was sexy, Fred thought. But Shelley did seem fatigued. Her shoulders drooped. Her smile sagged. What with her West Coast commute and all, she worked twelve-hour days. Ah, the price of success. He would have liked to discuss her job with her, but of course the confidentiality oath prohibited it. The only reason the gang knew where and for whom she worked in the first place was because her client broadcasted her life—or rather her drawn-out deaths—on her own Evernet channel.
Shelley took one of her husband’s big hands in hers, brought it to her nose to sniff, and kissed it.
Peter slurped the last of a daiquiri and started another. “Ah-hem,” he said. “The presence of a certain Fred Londenstane is requested on the dance floor. Paging Fred Londenstane.”
Alice squeezed Fred’s arm. “To be desired is Fortune’s blessing.”
Fred rose and threaded his way to where Mary was waiting for him. The dance floor was a maelstrom. Couples and triads progressed counterclockwise around the periphery in a variety of steps: the fox-trot, merletz, and waltz. Because each set of partners danced to the music of its own private orchestra, there were many collisions. Closer to the center of the floor were sets of cha-cha, zoom, and rhumba. Through all of this wove a conga line, led by the lulus. Another artifact of their History of Dance course.
Mary wanted to waltz. Because Fred couldn’t hear the music she chose, she hummed it to him, and he obligingly ONE-two-three, ONE-two-threed through the traffic. He did more steering than dancing, but it felt good holding Mary. He wondered what the world would be like if everyone danced to the same music for once.
Mary, meanwhile, was decorating a dance-floor-sized, many-tiered cake in her imagination, and she and Fred were waltzing on the topmost tier.
2.19
Justine and Victor Vole were explaining to Samson how Moseby’s Leap worked, but Samson wasn’t getting it. A young man, a hollyholo character, leaned over a distant parapet on the other side of the stadium.
“That’s a character named Moseby,” Samson said, “and he’s going to jump?”
“No, no, Myr Kodiak,” Justine said. “That’s Jason. There are no more Mosebys left anymore. The Moseby line is dead. There’s a lot of Jasons, though, and they’re having a rough time of it. This one may or may not jump today. It all depends. And there will be a lot of viewers tuned in to see which way it goes.” The topic of suicidal simulacra seemed to have loosened the old woman’s shy tongue.
“It all depends on what?” Samson said.
“On life,” Justine said, stroking her gray and white cat. “On love, forgiveness, redemption.”
Samson saw the patient look in Victor’s face. Apparently, he didn’t share his wife’s enthusiasm for the novellas. “So, what’s he doing now,” Samson said, “besides blubbering like a fool?”
“Yes, I suppose Jason tends to be emotional,” said Justine. “What he’s doing is waiting for his lady love, Alison, to arrive and talk him down.”
“What he’s doing now,” Victor added with a wink, “is waiting for audience numbers to threshold.”
Justine looked at her husband with pity. Two of the counterfeit children behind them began to squabble over a doll, and Justine leaned over her seatback to straighten them out.
Samson was glad he’d come here in secret, giving no one the chance to talk him down. He wondered if the worldwide audience for this novella foolishness would exceed that of his own more genuine swan song, and he wondered if this was Hubert’s idea of a joke—to bring him somewhere where sims deleted themselves, or if Hubert could even tell the difference.
“Mama,” said one of the little boys, “I have to pee pee.” He held his crotch and bounced in his seat.
“Who else has to go?” Justine said.
All their little hands shot up. “And I’m hungry,” said a little girl.
“Me too!” chorused the others.
“Ah, the bliss of family life,” Victor said to Samson and winked again.
He winks a lot, Samson thought. Or maybe it’s a nervous tic.
Justine sighed and lifted the cat off her lap. “Here,” she said, reaching around Samson to hand Victor the leash. She excused herself, unlatched her and the children’s seats, and retracted them to the loading gallery, leaving the men and cat alone, suspended over Soldier Field.
“Easy, Murphy,” Victor said. The gray and white cat was standing in his lap, its claws sunk into the fabric of his clothes. Victor tried to soothe the cat, but it climbed the cushion of his seat and perched itself on his seatback behind his head.
Murphy seemed oblivious to the sheer drop to the stadium floor. He sat on the seatback and meowed aggressively at Samson, regarding him with yellow eyes. The cat had a scrappy look to it, like an alley cat, and a vaguely Siamese-shaped face.
“Quiet, Murphy,” Victor said gently. “He doesn’t like strangers, our puss. He doesn’t like me, for that matter; only Justine. The kids he doesn’t even see.”
“Still, he must be a comfort to have,” Samson said. What Samson wanted to say was the cat was real at least, unlike the children. Samson still possessed a trace of social tact, but his curiosity was strong, and today of all days allowed no time for subtlety, so he said, “Aren’t your children those—I don’t know the brand name—”
“Fracta Kids,” Victor said.
“Yes, Fracta Kids. You buy a newborn and raise it like it’s real. Feed it, burp it, tell it bedtime stories. Send it to school. Loan it money. It grows up eventually and leaves home, sends you Christmas cards, etc., etc.”
“That about sums it up, yes,” said Victor. “Only these are orphans. We scavenged them out of recycle bins. My dear Justine has a heart as large as this arena, Myr Kodiak.”
At Moseby’s Leap, a female hollyholo joined the man at the railing.
“Uh-oh,” Victor said, “Alison’s here. Justine, dear, can you hear me? Yes, do hurry or you’ll miss it.”