Because of newly minted accommodation laws, and because Melina had an appointment, the OXO Tower security admitted them. Since they couldn’t go through the scanway, they were thoroughly frisked and sniffed. The search turned up a laser penknife and pocket simcaster, but since citizens had a constitutional right to such items, they were not confiscated. However, security did inform the Reed Sisters office of their arrival, and when the two coconspirators got off on the 350th level, the brokerage doors were locked against them, and two uniformed jerrys were waiting to escort them back down to the lobby.
Frustrated, the two women rode down in the elevator, bracketed by the jerrys. Melina was trying to take their failure in stride, but her friend wasn’t handling it so well. The woman was rabid. She huffed and puffed. To make matters worse, the jerrys failed to convert the elevator to express status, so it stopped every few floors to take on or let off passengers. At one stop, two brash young men got on, and one of them pinched his nose and said to the other, “Pee-yoo!”
It was a costly remark, for it caused Melina’s friend to snap. She straightened up and, staring Melina in the eye, bellowed, “Right here! Right now!” Melina swallowed hard. In her mind she was already booking fare to the Five Palms in St. Croix. So she was relieved when she reached into her handbag for the simcaster, and found a jerry hand in there already confiscating it.
Her friend was a little quicker on the draw. She had her laser penknife out and lit. She tried cutting her own throat with it, but the other jerry grabbed her arm. She kicked and clawed like a madwoman. She lashed out with her tiny weapon and would have cut the jerry but for his armored suit. She turned it on herself, but only managed to burn superficial gashes in her arm before he removed it from her.
This didn’t stop the woman. By now the other passengers were pressed against the door. The woman swung her cut arm at them, attempting to anoint them with her sizzling blood. Melina’s own jerry cuffed Melina’s hands behind her with plastic shackles. She was too intimidated even to think of resisting. Finally, the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and the passengers piled out. In a sudden move, Melina’s friend squirmed out of her captor’s hold and tried to flee the elevator. In trying to catch her, the jerry clumsily shoved her against the elevator wall where she struck her forehead.
The blow was enough to stun her. She stood quietly while the jerry cuffed her, but when he turned her around, it was apparent to Melina that mortal damage had been done. The woman’s forehead was swollen with a thick, steamy bulge the size of an egg. The jerry, calling for medical assistance, carried her from the elevator. She fought all the way, viciously banging her own head against the wall, against the door frame, against the jerry’s armored chest. The lump grew to the size of an orange. Still she struggled, and the other jerry let go of Melina in order to help.
Melina stood alone, numb, in the elevator, not sure what to do. The circulation in her wrists was cut off. When she noticed her simcaster on the floor next to her feet, she knelt down to retrieve it. She managed to get ahold of the simcaster, but there was no way she could raise it to her head. So she pressed it against her buttocks and said—without much conviction—“Right here, right now.”
Her finger resting lightly on the button, she watched her friend’s lingering suicide in the corridor. The lump had swollen until the skin could no longer contain it, and it burst in a gout of flames. The fire foggers went off, filling the corridor with a cloud of fire suppressant. But suppressant couldn’t quench seared flesh, and Melina heard the woman’s skin crackling as the fire spread across her scalp and down her throat. It was the worst kind of self-immolation. The seared always tried to kill themselves quickly, as Saint Wanda had, from the brain outward. But this poor soul was burning from the outside in, as her incendiary cells killed those underlying them in a chain reaction from skin to muscle to viscera.
Melina lowered her simcaster. Irradiating her own buttocks would have a similar effect, killing her from the bottom up and providing her plenty of time to regret what she had done. So, she left the car and tried to help her friend. She found her in the fog propped up against the wall. The jerrys had foolishly wrapped the woman in a fire blanket, which only increased her core temperature like an oven. It should have killed her, but only stoked her agony.
With her cuffed hands, Melina angled herself to press the simcaster against the charred head. She had never taken a life before, and she steeled herself and pressed the button. But a hand reached from out of the fog and pulled her away.
The hand belonged to a man who was not a jerry. He was a man who liked halibut, cod, or shark. He was a man who worked in an office on that floor. He tipped Melina over his shoulder and carried her to his private office under the cover of fire suppressant and shut and locked the door. The first thing he said to her was, “You don’t want to do that,” and he held out his hand for the simcaster.
She pressed it against her buttocks again and cried oh, yes, she did, but she was no more able to harm herself than before.
They hid in his office, barely speaking, until the commotion had ended and the scuppers had cleaned up the mess. Melina knew that the tower security was looking for her, and the man was unable to cut the tough plastic of the handcuffs. He accompanied her when she turned herself in.
FOR LACK OF evidence or institutional will, Melina Post was not charged with a crime. She was free to return to her supply closet, but the man (she never told me his name) wouldn’t let her go there. He gathered her up into his own home, a modest efficiency in an RT, and took care of her. He rented great lungplants in huge pots to purify the air. He wore nose filters at first but gradually went without them.
By coincidence, the man also worked as a wealth manager. He was an officer for a firm in competition with the Reed Sisters. He was successful in business, but like his apartment and his clothes, he was rather bland. He’d never been married and was, in fact, quite shy. He eagerly volunteered to help Melina Post try to recover her stolen property. He had a friend who had a talented mentar (mentars had recently begun to appear). Melina turned the broken pieces of her valet over to this mentar, and it was able to trace some of her former assets. Out of his own pocket, Mr. Bland hired a specialist in financial forensics, and before long they had uncovered enough evidence to implicate the Reed Sisters. There was a big scandal, more victims were identified, and the Reed Sisters offices were sealed pending investigation. Some of Melina’s assets were eventually recovered, with the prospect of more turning up and the promise of compensatory damages from the Reeds.
Melina Post, with a new lease on life, moved to Chicago and, unbeknownst to me, became my downstairs neighbor.
“HE’S GOING TO ask me to marry him.”
We had been talking for over an hour with no word from the tardy Mr. Bland, when Melina made this bold pronouncement.
To me it was a bucket of ice water.
“Yes,” she continued. “Oh, I don’t know that for sure, but I know it in my bones. We’ve been growing close these last few months. Call it an intuition.”
I had an intuition of my own, only mine was more like a bad feeling.
“He’s very tender,” she continued, “and spends all his free time doting on me or working on my case. I know he loves me, and I’ve grown to love him too. This morning he said that this was going to be a very special evening. It must be some extraordinary circumstance that’s keeping him. He’s taking care of my business now.”
I was almost too afraid to ask, “What do you mean taking care of your business?”
“He’s investing for me. And this morning I signed over power of attorney.”