Monicas copy of People was on the couch, open to a story about Gudrun Weaver, this actress in her forties whod just found the Lord, courtesy of the Reverend Wayne Fallon, in time to get her picture in People. There was a full-page picture of her on a couch in her living room, gazing raptly at a bank of monitors, each one showing the same old movie.
Rydell saw himself on the futon from Futon Mouth, staring up at those big stick-on flowers and bumper-stickers. Is it legal?
Hernandez slapped his powder-blue thigh. It sounded like a pistol shot. Legal? We are talking IntenSecure Corporation here. We are talking major shit. I am trying to help you, man. You think I would ask you to do something fucking illegal?
But whats the deal, Hernandez? I just go up there and drive?
Fucking A! Drive! Mr. Warbaby say drive, you drive.
Who?
Warbaby. This Lucius Warbaby.
Rydell picked up Monicas copy of People and found a picture of Gudrun Weaver and the Reverend Wayne Fallon. Gudrun Weaver looked like an actress in her forties. Fallon looked like a possum with hair-implants and a ten-thousand-dollar tuxedo.
This Warbaby, Berry, hes right on top of this shit. Hes a fucking star, man. Otherwise why they hire him? You do this, you learn shit. You still young, man. You can learn shit.
Rydell tossed the People back onto the couch. Who they trying to find?
Hotel theft. Somebody took something. We got the security there. Singapore, man, theyre in some kind of serious twist about it. All I know.
Rydell stood in the warm shade of the carport, gazing down into the shimmering depths of the animated waterfall on the hood of Hernandezs daughters Sneaker, mist rising through green boughs of rain forest. Hed once seen a Harley done up so that everything that wasnt triple-chromed was crawling, fast forward, with life-sized bugs. Scorpions, centipedes, you name it.
See Hernandez said, see there, where it blurs? Thats supposed to be some kind of fucking sloth, man. Some lemur, you know? Factory warranty.
When do they want me to go?
I give you this number. Hernandez handed Rydell a torn scrap of yellow paper. Call them.
Thanks.
Hey Hernandez said, I like to see you do okay. I do. I like that. He touched the Sneakers hood. Look at this shit. Factory fucking warranty.
Chevette dreamed she was riding Folsom, a stiff sidewind threatening to push her into oncoming. Took a left on Sixth, caught that wind at her back, ran a red at Howard and Mission, a stale green at Market, bopped the brakes and bunnied both sets of tracks.
Coming down in a hard lean, she headed up Nob on Taylor.
Make it this time she said.
Legs pumping, the wind a strong hand in the small of her back, sky clear and beckoning at the top of the hill, she thumbed her chain up onto some huge-ass custom ring, too big for her derailleur, too big to fit any frame at all, and felt the shining teeth catch, her hammering slowing to a steady spinbut then she was losing it.
She stood up and started pounding, screaming, lactic acid slamming through her veins. She was at the crest, lifting off Colored light slanted into Skinners room through the tinted pie-wedge panes of the round window. Tuesday morning.
Two of the smaller sections of glass had fallen out; the gaps were stuffed with pieces of rag, throwing shadows on the tattered yellow wall of National Geographics. Skinner was sitting up in bed, wearing an old plaid shirt, blankets and sleeping-bag pulled high up his chest. His bed was an eightpanel oak door up on four rusty Volkswagen hubs, with a slab of foam on top of that. Chevette slept on the floor, on a narrower piece of foam she rolled up every morning and stuck behind a long wooden crate full of greasy hand tools. The smell of tool grease worked its way into her sleep, sometimes, but she didnt mind it.
8. Morning after
She snaked her arm out into the November chill and snagged a sweater off the seat of a paint-caked wooden stool. She pulled the sweater into her bag and twisted into it, tugging it down over her knees. It hung to her knees when she stood up, the neckband so stretched that she had to keep pushing it back up on her shoulder. Skinner didnt say anything; he hardly ever did, first thing.
She rubbed her eyes, went to the ladder bolted to the wall and climbed the five rungs, undoing the catch on the roof-hatch without bothering to look at it. She came up here most mornings now, started her day with the water and then the city. Unless it was raining, or too foggy, and then it was her turn to pump the ancient Coleman, its red-painted tank like a toy submarine. Skinner did that, on good days, but he stayed in bed a lot when it rained. Said it got to his hip.
She climbed out of the square hole and sat on its edge, dangling her bare legs down into the room. Sun struggling to burn off the silvery gray. On hot days it heated the tar on the roofs flat rectangle and you could smell it.
Skinner had showed her pictures of the La Brea pits in National Geographic, big sad animals going down forever, down in L.A. a long time ago. That was what tar was, asphalt, not just something they made in a factory somewhere. He liked to know where things came from.
His jacket, the one she always wore, that had come from D. Lewis, Great Portland Street. That was in London. Skinner liked maps. Some of the National Geographics had maps folded into them, and all the countries were big, single blobs of color from one side to the other. And there hadnt been nearly as many of them. Thered been countries big as anything: Canada, USSR, Brazil. Now there were lots of little ones where those had been. Skinner said America had gone that route without admitting it. Even California had all been one big state, once.
Skinners roof was eighteen feet by twelve. Somehow it looked smaller than the room below, even though the walls of the room were packed solid with Skinners stuff. Nothing on the roof but a rusty metal wagon, a kids toy, with a couple of rolls of faded tarpaper stacked in it.
She looked past three cable-towers to Treasure Island. Smoke rose, there, from a fire on the shore, where the low cantilever, cottoned down in fog, shot off to Oakland. There was a dome-thing, up on the farthest suspension tower, honeycombed into sections like new copper, but Skinner said it was just Mylar, stretched over two-by-twos. They had an plink in that, something that talked to satellites. She thought shed go and see it one day.
A gray gull slid by, level with her eyes.
The city looked the same as ever, the hills like sleeping animals behind the office towers she knew by their numbers. She ought to be able to see that hotel.
The night before grabbed her by the back of the neck.
She couldnt believe shed done that, been that stupid. The case shed pulled out of that dickheads pocket was hanging up in Skinners jacket, on the iron hook shaped like an elephants head. Nothing in it but a pair of sunglasses, expensive-looking but so dark she hadnt even been able to see through them last night. The security grunts in the lobby had scanned her badges when shed gone in; as far as they knew, shed never come back down. Their computer wouldve started looking for her, eventually. If they queried Allied, shed say she forgot, blew the checkout off, took the service elevator down after shed pulled her tag at 808. No way had she been at any party, and whod seen her there anyway? The asshole. And maybe hed figure shed done him for his glasses. Maybe hed felt it. Mayhe hed remember, when he sobered up.
Skinner yelled there was coffee, but they were out of eggs.
Chevette shoved off the edge of the hole, swung down and in, catching the top rung.
Want any, youre gonna get em Skinner said, looking up from the Coleman.
Save me coffee. She pulled on a pair of black cotton leggings and got into her trainers without bothering to lace them. She opened the hatch in the floor and climbed through, still worrying about the asshole, his glasses, her job. Down ten steel rungs off the side of an old crane. The cherry-picker basket waiting where shed left it when shed gotten back. Her bike cabled to an upright with a couple of Radio Shack screamers for good measure. She climbed into the waist-high yellow plastic basket and hit the switch.