"This how you get to night court?" she asked. "Go someplace you know the cops'll give you a ride from?"
He smiled, looked down the rise to where most of the jumping was taking place. The pickle stand was still in business, but the group had packed up their keyboards and motored; the music was coming out of a box now, but the kids weren't working out any less for it. She saw Clarence or Claw sweating in the middle of a frantic group of kids trying to peak before the cops got around to crashing the party.
"I got something might interest you," he said, after a bit.
"If I tell you what I know," she said. "Don't bother. I still don't know dick."
He looked at her speculatively for a long moment and then shrugged. "Would you tell me if you did?"
"What do I look like to you, General News? Pop-Cult Index?"
"Dear Mrs. Troubles."
She grinned. "Fuck you."
"I wouldn't rule it out."
Youwin the game, Mark had said once, as soon as you get them to say it. Then you do whatever you want. Which would have explained a lot, except she'd never said it to Mark, not once.
He waited, and she waited, and then he shrugged again. "Take a look." He set the cam on preview mode and gave it to her. She looked through the eyepiece and saw him sitting in the sand, leaning back on his hands and staring dreamily upward. "I took that tonight. From the state he was in, I'd say he's probably still there."
She gave the cam back to him. "Thank you."
He looked startled for a second and then covered it. "I thought you'd want to know. I did a little research on you. And him. It's kinda hard to do any research on one of you without getting the other. Tell me something, how did a soul sister come by a name like Ay-ee-see?"
"Eye-ay-see," she said. "It was easier than you'd think." She hopped down off Liberace's resting place and started to walk away.
"You want a ride?" he called after her. She turned around and looked at him. "To the Mimosa," he added. "You shouldn't be driving."
"Gotta drive." She grinned. "Too fuckin' toxed to walk."
He was on her in three fast strides, taking her to the gate. His hand on her arm said it was settled if she said so, but she could feel how he was willing to adapt to any changes she might want to make. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, sure, homeboy, you want that in any particular order?
Shit, she was old enough to be his mother, if she'd started a little young (just a little). So what was it? Her looks were an acquired taste, not popular demand, and they didn't make it a secret she was holding on for forty.
Then again, maybe it wasn't her; maybe it was him, all him. The gypsy journalist's urge to probe. Curiosity kills the cat, satisfaction brings him back, and brings him and brings him and brings him.
Nah. Mark was waiting on the Mimosa, and there'd been too many furnished rooms already.
She got there in time to see the Beater bending over him, looking harried and anxious, the slicked-back hair hanging loose now. Defiantly she knelt down next to Mark, now stretched out in the sand seeing miracles in the black sky.
"He got away from me," the Beater said. "I was trying to keep him detoxed. As long as you're here, you can give me a hand with him."
Mark's gaze slowly traveled over to her and stopped on her face. How come it always ends up like this? she asked him silently. Where are you, and what do you really do when you go there? Why did I ever want you, and why do I want you now? Because it can't just be the music, and it can't just be the video.
"Change for the machines," he said.
The Beater took one side, and she took the other, and they got him up on his feet. The gypsy got the footage of their leaving. What the fuck, he should go home with something, even if it was really nothing at all.
They took him back to the Beater's place and put him to bed on the couch. He was already asleep, or passed out, whichever. "They asked me to keep him clean," the Beater said, pulling off Mark's shoes. "So I told him you were gonna kill him and he could stay with me."
"I'd say 'fuck you' but I don't feel that friendly," Gina said.
"I didn't want him out loose where he could get into trouble. Rivera had him Purged once, I didn't want it to happen again."
She winced. "Christ, why didn't they just scour him out with a wire brush? That could have killed him."
The Beater nodded wearily. "Yah, well, I didn't find out till after the fact. I didn't find out a lot of shit till after the fact." He went to her and looked into her eyes carefully. "You keep this up, Rivera might Purge you, too."
"What's so fucking important that Rivera would Purge me?"
The Beater went past her into the kitchenette.
"What's going on?" she called after him. "What kind of sling is my ass in that I'd have to get Purged and I don't even fucking know it?"
He stuck his head out of the kitchenette. "You want some coffee?"
She stared at him evenly, and he dropped his gaze. "Maybe I should have let you take care of him." He pulled his head back, and she heard him fussing with the coffeepot. Son of a bitch was actually going to make fucking coffee. For real. She went to the kitchenette and stood in the doorway with her arms folded. The drip machine on the counter wheezed and bubbled as coffee poured into the carafe. Rediscovery Cuisine beverages. Little Jesus Jump-Up.
"First place you ever had of your own back in Boston had a real kitchen, with a table and chairs in it," he said. "I remember."
"That wasn't my first place. That was a few apartments later, by the time I met you. They all had kitchens, though."
He faced her in the tiny space. "Is it the tox, or are you just tired enough to have calmed down?"
"Maybe I'm getting old." She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "What's the fucking use. You gonna tell me all that whole lotta shit you found out after the fact now?"
"I can't. Not yet."
"And why the fuck not?"
"It's not mine, all right?"
"No, it's not all right, why the fuck would you think it was?"
The Beater ran a hand through his half-lacquered hair, wincing at the pull. "Christ, how many years was it? You think I'd let anybody hurt him now?"
"Galen would. Galen doesn't give a fuck about him. Neither does Rivera. And goddamn Joslin thinks Dachau was a fucking spa."
"It's something different," the Beater said heavily. "Whatever you're thinking, it's something different than that."
"Thanks for the juicy fucking hint." She pulled her shirt off. "And no, I don't want any fucking coffee." She headed toward the bedroom, shedding clothes.
"Gina!"
She stopped at the doorway and looked back.
"You better show for work tomorrow. You been gone three days. You got videos to do."
"Kiss me," she muttered. Stripped down to her T-shirt and underpants, she crawled into the Beater's bed. Sometime later she felt him slide in next to her. Old stuff; life is uncertain, catch bed space where you can get it. When she woke a few hours later, Mark was gone again.
15
They kept tripping over Jones's body in Rosa's tiny apartment, but there was nowhere to put him, so they had to leave him lying around. Human clutter; how did we reach this pinnacle of civilization, Sam wondered.
"I've got to stay away from him," she told Rosa. "Sometimes I'm afraid I'll just start kicking him, and I won't stop till there's just shit and blood, and I'll be kicking that, too."
"Life's so unfair," Rosa said. "You care about Keely, and he loves that pile of refuse."
"Keely's the brother I never had," she said shortly. But in spite of everything, it felt good to be back. Rosa split some gypsy jobs with her, mostly scut work, recalibrating automated inventory programs, whipping up a rip-off of the Dodge-M, cheaper, faster, and smarter than the Dive's clumsy, overpriced notion of a fooler loop, encrypting data for spenders who didn't care to answer too many questions as to why they needed encryption. The work kept them both in enough bearer chips to survive on. And it was good to be back on the net, popping around looking for Dr. Fish's Answering Machine to see if anyone had uploaded anything interesting lately, seeing what crazies had come on-line and which ones had crashed themselves. And going over to Fez's place to see if he'd gotten Keely's zap figured out yet.