All Tomorrows Parties
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Next page were supposed to say that: please. It was on Mr. Park's notebook, and anyway when you asked somebody for their bag, you were admitting you thought they might shoplift, so you might as well be polite about it. The security man narrowed his eyes. He put the bag in a numbered cubicle behind his station and handed Rydehl a Lucky Dragon logo tag that looked like an oversized drink coaster with the number five on the back. It was the size it was, Rydell knew, because it had been determined that this size made the tags just that much too big to fit into most ~ pockets, thereby preventing people from pocketing, forgetting, and $~ wandering away with them. Kept costs down. Everything about Lucky Dragon was worked out that way. You sort of had to admire them. 'You re welcome Rydell said He headed for the ATM in the back Lucky Dragon International Bank He knew it was watching him as he walked up to it pulling his wallet from his back pocket -- - "I'm here to get a chip issued," he said. Identify yourself please Lucky Dragon ATMs all had this same voice a weird uptight strangled little castrato voice and he wondered why that was But you could be sure they d worked it out probably it kept people from standing around, bullshitting with the machine. But Rydell knew that you didn't want to do that anyway, because the suck- - - ers would pepper-spray you. They were plastered with notices to that effect too, although he doubted anyone ever actually read them. What the notices didn't say, and Lucky Dragon wasn't telling, was that if you tried seriously to dick with one, drive a crowbar into the money slot, say, the thing would mist you and itself down with water and then electrify itself. "Berry Rydell," he said, taking his Tennessee driver's license from his wallet and inserting the business end into the ATM's reader. "Palm contact." Rydell pressed his hand within the outline of a hand. He hated the way that felt. Bad cootie factor with those palm-scan things. Hand grease. He wiped his palm on his trousers. "Please enter your personal identification code." 89 Rrdell did, working through his mremonic to the two cans of 7-Up. "brocessing credit request," the thng said, sounding as if someone were queezing its balls. l4,rdell looked around and saw thathe was pretty much the only customei aside from a woman with gray lair and black leather pants, who was 'iving the checker a hard time in what sounded to Rydehl like Gernan. "Iransaction completed," the ATN said. Rydell turned back in time to se~ a Lucky Dragon credit chip em~ge from the chip slot. He shoved it parway back in, to see the availablecome up on the screen. Not bad. Not a~l at all. He pocketed the chip put his wallet away, and turned towad the GlobEx concession, whid also doubled as the local USPO. Likethe ATM, this was another purpose-built node or swelling in the sam plastic wall. They hadn't ha~ one of these on Sunset, and Prai.egod had had to double as GlobEx clerk and/or USPO employee, the litter causing her occasionally tofrown, as her parents' sect identified ill things federal as aspects of Sitan. tIe who hesitates, RydelI's father had taught him, is safe, and Rydell had tried hard, in the course of his ife, to practice that sort of benign prOcrastination. Just about everythin8 that had ever landed him in deep shit he knew, had been the result of not hesitating. There was in him, he udn't know why, that which simply went for it, and somehow at the wort possible time. Look before you leap. Considerconsequences. Think about it. He thought about it. Someone had taken advantage of his brief but unvilling sojourn in Selwyn Tong's VR corridor to convey the suggestior that he should pick up his credit chip from this particular ATM, anc then check GlobEx. This couk most easily have been Tong him-sell, speaking as it were through a hack channel, or it might have been soneone, anyone, else, hacking intowhat Rydell supposed was scarcely a world-class secure site. The hook of the change that had been wrought for Rydell's benefit, though, had ~ad hacker written all over it. In Rylell's experience, hackers just couldn't resist showing off, and they terded to get all arty. And, he kne~w, they could get your ass in trouble an usually did. ~~~LLIAM~BSON He looked at the GlobEx bulge there. Went for it. It took him less time than it had to get the credit chip, to show his license and get the hatch open. It was a bigger package than he'd expected, and it was heavy for its size. Really heavy. Expensive-hooking foam-core stuff, very precisely sealed with gray plastic tape, and covered with animated GlobEx Maximum Express holograms, customs stickers. He studied the waybill. It had come from Tokyo, looked like, but the billing was to Paragon-Asia Dataflow, which was on Lygon Street, Melbourne, Australia. Rydell didn't know anybody in Australia, but he did know that it was supposed to be impossible, and definitely was illegal, to ship anything internationally to one of these GlobEx pickups. They needed an address, private or business. These pickup points were only for domestic deliveries. Damn. Thing was heavy. He got it under his arm, maybe two feet long and six inches on a side, and went back to get his bag. Which he saw now was open, on the little counter there, and the guard with the pale eyebrows was holding Rydell's pink Lucky Dragon fanny pack. "What are you doing with my bag?" The guard looked up. "This is Lucky Dragon property." "You aren't supposed to open people's bags," Rydell said, "says so on the notebook." "I have to treat this as theft. You have Lucky Dragon property here." Rydehl remembered that he'd put the ceramic switchblade in the fanny pack, because he hadn't been able to think what else to do with it. He tried to remember whether or not that was illegal up here. It was in SoCal, he knew, but not in Oregon. "That's my property," Rydehl said, "and you're going to give it to me right now" "Sorry," the man said deliberately. "Hey, Rydell," said a familiar voice, as the door was opened so forcefully that Rydell distinctly heard something snap in the closing mechanism. "Son of a bitch, how they hangin'?" Rydehl was instantly engulfed in a fog of vodka and errant testos 91 terone. He turned and saw Creedmore grinning fiercely, quite visibly free of the human condition. Behind him loomed a larger man, pale and fleshy, his dark eyes set close together. "You're drunk," snapped the security guard. "Get out." "Drunk?" Creedmore winced grotesquely, miming some crippling emotional pain. "Says I'm drunk. - ." Creedmore turned to the man behind him. "Randy, this mo~herfucker says I'm drunk." The corners of the large man's mouth, which was small and strangely delicate in such a heavy stubbled face, turned instantly down, as if he were genuinely and very, very deeply saddened to learn that it was possible for one human being to treat another in so unkind a way. "So whump his faggot ass, then," the large man suggested softly, as if the prospect held at least some wistful possibility, however distant, of cheer after great disappointment. "Drunk?" Creedmore was facing the security man again. He leaned across the counter, his chin level with the top of Rydell's bag. "What kinda shit you tryin' to lay off on my buddy here?" Creedmore was radiating an amphetamine-reptile menace now, his anger gone right off the mammalian scale. Rydell saw a little muscle pulsing in Creedmore's cheek, steady and involuntary as some tiny extra heart, Seeing that Creedmore had the guard's undivided attention, Rydell grabbed his bag with one hand, the pink fanny pack with the other. The guard tried to snatch them back. Which was definitely a mistake, as the attempt occupied both his hands. "Suck my dickl" Creedmore shrieked, striking with far more speed and force than Rydell would've credited him with, and sank his fist wrist-deep into the guard's stomach, just below the sternum. Taken by surprise, the guard doubled forward. Rydell, as Creedmore was winding back to slug the man in the face, managed to tangle Creedmore's wrist in the straps of the fanny pack, almost dropping the bulky parcel in the process. "Come on, Buell," Rydell said, spinning Creedmore back out the door. Rydell knew someone would've hit a foot button by now. 92 "Motherfucker says I'm drunk," Creedmore protested. "Well, you are, Buell," said the heavy man, ponderously, behind them. Creedmore giggled. "Let's get out of here," Rydell said, starting for the bridge. As he walked, he was trying to stuff the fanny pack back into his duffel and trying not to lose his precarious underarm grip on the GlobEx package. A twisting gust of wind blew grit into his eyes, and, blinking down to clear them, he noticed for the first time that the waybill was addressed - - not to him but to "Cohn Laney." Cohn space Laney. So why had they let Rydell pick it up? Then they were in the thick of the crowd, headed up the ramp of the lower level. "What is this shit?" Creedmore asked, peering up. "San Francisco-Oakland Bay," Rydell said. "Shit," Creedmore said, squinting at the crowd, "smells like a fuckin' baitbox. Bet you you could get you some weird-ass pussy, out here." "I need a drink," the heavy man with the delicate mouth said softly. "I think I do too," said Rydell. - 93 22. VEXED FONTAINE has two wives. I Not, he will tell you, a condition to aspire to. They live, these two wives, in uneasy truce, in a single establishment, nearer the Oakland side. Fontaine has for some time now been opting to sleep here, in his shop. The younger wife (at forty-eight, by some five years) is a Jamaican originally from Brixton, tall and light-skinned, whom Fontaine has come to regard as punishment for all his former sins. Her name is Clarisse. Incensed, she reverts to the dialect of her childhood: "You tek de prize, Fonten." Fontaine has been taking the prize for some years now, and he is taking it again today, Clansse standing angrily before him with a shopping bag full of what appear to be catatonic Japanese babies. These are in fact life-sized dolls, manufactured in the closing years of the previous century for the solace of distant grandparents, each one made to resemble photographs of an actual infant. Produced by a firm in Meguro called Another One, they are increasingly collectible, each example being to some degree unique. "I don't want them," Fontaine allows. "Listen up," Clarisse tells him, folding her dialect smoothly away, "there is no way you are not taking these. You are taking them, you are moving them, you are getting top dollar, and you are giving it to me. Because there is no way, otherwise, that I am staying where you left me, cheek by jowl with that mad bitch you married" Who I was married to when you married me, thinks Fontaine, and no secret about it. The reference being to Tourmaline Fontaine, aka Wife One, whom Fontaine thinks of as being only adequately described by the epithet "mad bitch." Tourmaline is an utter terror; only her vast girth and abiding torpor prevent her coming here. "Clarisse," he protests, "if they were 'mint in box'-" 94 "These never mint in box, idiot! They always played with!" "Then you know the market better than I do, Clarisse. You sell 'em." "You want to talk child support?" Fontaine looks down at the Japanese dolls. "Man, those things ugly. Look dead, you know?" "Cause you gotta turn 'em on, fool." Clarisse sets the bag on the floor and snatches up a naked baby boy. She stabs a long emerald-green fingernail into the back of the doll's neck. She is attempting to demonstrate the thing's other, uniquely individual feature, digitally recorded infant sounds, or possibly even first words, but what they hear instead is heavy, labored breathing, followed by a childish giggle and a ragged chorus of equally childish fuck-you's. Clarisse frowns. "Somebody been messing with it." Fontaine sighs. "I'll do what I can. You heave 'em here. I'm not promising anything." "You better believe I leave 'em here," Clarisse says, tossing the baby headfirst into the bag. Fontaine glances into the rear of the shop, where the boy is seated cross-legged on the floor, barefoot, his head close-cropped, the notebook open on his lap, lost in concentration. "Who the hell's that?" Clarisse inquires, noticing theboy for the first time as she steps closer to the counter. Which somewhat stumps Fontaine. He tugs at one of his locks. "He likes watches," he says. "Huh," Clarisse says, "he hikes watches. How come you don't have your own kids over here?" Her eyes narrow, deepening the wrinkles at their outer corners, which Fontaine desires suddenly to kiss. "How come you got some 'spanic fatboy likes watches instead?" "Clarisse-" "Clarisse my butt." Her green eyes widen in furious emphasis, a green pale as drift glass, DNA-echo of some British soldier, Fontaine has often surmised, on some chose Kingston night, these several generations distant. "You move these dolls or you be vexed, understand?" She spins smartly on her heel, not easily done in the black galoshes she wears, and marches from his shop, proud and erect, in a man's long tweed overcoat Fontaine recalls purchasing fifteen years earlier in Chicago. Fontaine sighs. Something weighs heavy on him now, evening coming on. "Legal, here, be married to two women," Fontaine says to the empty, coffee-scented air "Fucking crazy, but legal." He shuffles over in his unlaced shoes and closes the front door, locks it behind her. "You still think I'm a bigamist or something, baby, but this is the State of Northern California." He goes back and has another look at the boy, who seems to have discovered the Christie's auction. The boy looks up at him. "Platinum tonneau minute repeating wristwatch," he says. "Patek Philippe, Geneve, number 187145." "I don't think so," Fontaine says. "Kind of out of our bracket." "A gold hunter-cased quarter repeating watch-" "Forget it." "-with concealed erotic automaton." "Can't afford that either," Fontaine says. "Look," he says, "tell you what: that notebook's the slow way to look. I'll show you a fast way." "Fast. Way." Fontaine goes rummaging through the drawers of a paint-scabbed steel filing cabinet, until eventually he comes up with an old pair of military eyephones. The rubbery lip around the binocular video display is cracked and peeling. It takes another few minutes to find the correct battery pack and to determine that it is charged. The boy ignores him, lost in the Christie's catalog. Fontaine plugs the battery pack into the eyephones and returns. "Here. See? You put this on your head. . 96 23. RUSSIAN HILL THE apartment is large and has nothing in it that is not of practical use. Consequently, the dark hardwood floors are bare and quite meticulously swept. Seated in an expensive, semi-intelligent Swedish workstation chair, he is sharpening the knife. |
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