The First Read online

  "She's only doing her job," Cynthia said.

  "Don't get smart with me, bitch." The man raised the wine bottle as if he were going to swing it. Army Jacket stepped forward and grabbed his wrist, taking the bottle with his other hand. The man grunted and the aroma of vomit and cheap booze wafted across the room. He struggled free and headed for the door, the blonde following.

  At the door, the man paused and squeezed the bulge in his pants. "Got something for ya next time," he said. The blonde pulled him cussing toward the street.

  Army Jacket placed his coffee cup on the counter.

  "You get a lot of weirdoes on this shift," Cynthia said.

  "I already said that. When do you get off work?"

  They had breakfast in a little sidewalk cafe. Cynthia ordered coffee and butter croissants and scrambled eggs. Army Jacket was a vegetarian, but he said he could eat eggs. Cynthia thought that was strange, because eggs weren't vegetables.

  They reached Cynthia's apartment just before noon. "So, where's this bed of yours?" Army Jacket asked.

  Cynthia had a few boyfriends in high school. After the beggar had started sleeping under her bed, she'd quit dating. But now that Army Jacket was in her apartment, she decided that she'd been foolish to face the fear alone. She'd give Army Jacket what he wanted, and then she'd get what she wanted.

  She led him to the tiny bedroom. She half-suspected that the beggar crawled from beneath the bed while she was gone, to sleep between cloth sheets and dream of being human. But the beggar belonged to dust, the dark, permanent shadow of underthere. The blankets were rumpled, just as she'd left them.

  "You don't mess around, do you?" Army Jacket said.

  "It's only dust," she said.

  "I didn't mean that kind of mess," he said, looking at the dirty laundry scattered on the floor. He sat on the bed, Cynthia watching from across the room, waiting to see if the gray hand would clutch his ankle.

  He patted the mattress beside him. "Come on over. Don't be shy."

  She looked out the window. "Looks like cigarette weather."

  Army Jacket took off his army jacket. Without the jacket, he was just a David. Not a protector. Not some big, brave hero who would slay the beggar.

  "Come on," he said. "This isn't a spectator sport."

  She crossed the room, crawled onto the bed beside him, mindful of her feet. They undressed in silence. David kissed her, then clumsily leaned her back against the pillows. Through it all, she listened for the breathing, the soft knitting of dust into flesh, the strange animations of the beggar.

  David finished, rolled away. "Where are the cigarettes?"

  "I don't smoke."

  "What's this about 'cigarette weather,' then?"

  "The man with the anaconda face said that."

  "Huh?"

  She put her arm across his chest, afraid he'd leave. She scolded herself for being so dumb. If David left, she'd be alone again when darkness fell. Alone with the beggar.

  David kissed her on the forehead. "Ocean eyes like ice cream," he said.

  She tensed beside him, sticky from the body contact. "Did you hear that?"

  "What?"

  "Under the bed. A noise."

  "I don't hear anything." David made a show of checking the clock on her dresser.

  The soft choking sound came again, the painful drawing of an inhuman breath. The beggar stirred, fingers creeping like thick worms across the floor. He was angry, jealous. Cynthia should not have brought another man to this bed. Cynthia belonged to the beggar, and always had.

  "He's coming," she said.

  David sat up and looked at the door. "Damn. Why didn't you tell me you had a boyfriend?"

  "Only crazy people talk to mirrors."

  David reached off the bed, grabbed his clothes, and began dressing. "You're crazy, Alice."

  "Who's Alice?"

  David ignored her, teeth clenched in his rush to pull up his pants. "I hope to hell he doesn't carry a gun."

  "Shhh. He'll hear you."

  David slipped his arms into his jacket. Now he was Army Jacket again, just another one of them, a hollow man, a mound of dust surrounding a bag of air. None of them were real.

  Except the man under the bed.

  Army Jacket struggled into his shoes. Cynthia leaned forward and watched, wondering how far the beggar would let Army Jacket get before pulling him into the velvet.

  "Green licorice. Frightened of storms?" Army Jacket asked, his breath shallow and rapid.

  "No, only of him."

  "Razor in the closet since yesterday." Army Jacket tiptoed out of the room, paused at the front door and listened.

  "He doesn't use the door," Cynthia called out, giggling. The beggar would slide out from under the bed any moment now, shake of the accumulated dust of his long sleep, and make Army Jacket go away.

  The phone rang. It had to be Mom. Seven rings before Mom gave up.

  Army Jacket swallowed, twisted the knob, and yanked the door open, falling into a defensive crouch. The hallway was empty.

  "Allergies," he yelled at her, then slipped out the doorway and disappeared.

  Cynthia fell back on the pillows, sweat gathering on her brow. The beggar hadn't taken him. The beggar had not been jealous. The beggar was too confident, too patient, to be jealous.

  She clutched the blankets as the afternoon sun sank and the shadows grew long on the bedroom wall. She should have fled while it was still light, but her limbs were limp as sacks of jelly. Fleeing was useless, anyway. He'd always had her.

  Dusk came, dangling its gray rags, shaking lint over the world.

  Under the bed, stirrings and scratches.

  Under the bed, breathing.

  Cynthia whimpered, curled into a fetal position, nude and burning and vulnerable. Waiting, like always.

  The hand scrabbled along the side of the mattress. It clutched the blankets and began dragging the body that wore it from the vague ether. Cynthia closed her eyes, tight like she had as a small child, so tight the tears pressed out. She trembled, her sobs in rhythm with the horrible rasping of the beggar's breath.

  She could feel it looming over her now, its legs formed, the transition from dust back to flesh complete. Cynthia held her breath, the last trick. Maybe if she could hold her breath forever . . .

  The hand touched her gently. The skin was soft, soft as velvet.

  Cynthia almost screamed. But she knew what would happen if she screamed. Because Mommy might hear and things like this are secret and it's okay to touch people who love you but some people wouldn't understand. Bad girls who scream have to be punished. They have to be sent into the dark place under the bed.

  And they have to stay under the bed until Daddy says it's okay to come out.

  So Cynthia didn't scream, even as the hand ran over her skin, leaving a trail of dust.

  She didn't make a sound as the beggar climbed onto the bed. If she was a good little girl, then the beggar would go away after he finished, and wouldn't drag her into the underthere.

  The dust settled over her, a smothering blanket of velvet.

  If only she could hold her breath forever.

  ###

  TELLERS

  Hey, you.

  Waiting for the lift, are you?

  It’s late, but what’s time, right?

  There’s an old saying you hear once in a while, usually from the mouths of fazzed-out wireheads. “Time is money,” the saying goes. That’s an absolute laughtrack. Anybody with half an idea stuffed in their blatherhole knows that time isn’t money.

  Time is time.

  If you don’t believe me, just slide your card into any Teller. Watch your chrono digits counting down, the seconds ticking away, your account heading for the Big Zero. If you still believe that life is cheap, if you’re feeling generous, then you won’t mind dumping a few of your numerals into my account.

  I like spending time, as long as it’s somebody else’s. I’ve survived more clocklaps that you can imagine. And I’ve
done it the old-fashioned way: by peddling the juice that you downtowners value even more than your next breath.

  Yeah, I’ve helped people plug into all the sweetest junk. You want some Hell’s Sunshine? How about some Funeral Party? Or, if you’re in the mood for a real highwire act, I’ve got some Happy right here in my coat pocket. Of course, Happy will set you back about seven weeks.

  And I could use seven weeks. My account’s down to about three hours or so. And I’ll bet you got a few years to spare. You can’t be more than, what—twenty-five?

  Okay, twenty-seven.

  I’ve been that age about six times already. You can’t tell by looking, but right now, I’m just a geezer kicked down to my last dime. And you’re my only hope of ever seeing twenty-seven again. I don’t have enough minutes to catch the lift downtown, so I could prowl the smuggered-up alleys where all my favorite junkies hang out. I can’t suck time from any of my customers. But you, you’re here, and you got time to spare.

  I don’t believe you. Never done any Happy? No juice at all?

  Say, you’re not a Spirit Spy, are you?

  Hmm. I didn’t think so. You don’t look like Areopagan stock.

  To be oh-so-lutely honest, I don’t use juice, either. Who wants to slide a wire into his head, just to pretend that he's alive and not some figment of the Areopagus’s collective imagination? Me, I’ll take the bad air and the red sky and the grit under my feet any day. That’s what’s real. Not some wire trip.

  But you and me thinking the same way doesn’t help me solve my problem. Because we’re not equal. You got time, and I don’t. But I’ll tell you what. You might not want any of my juice, but I got something you need.

  It’s called blather.

  And because I like you, because you got eyes and can see that this whole world’s one big joke waiting for God’s punchline, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

  But it’ll cost you. A week.

  Come on, now, don’t play hardball. I need the time and you need the little life lesson I can give you.

  Don’t look at me that way. You know I’m desperate.

  Okay, okay. Three days, you cheapskate. That’s hardly an eyeblink to somebody as young and rich as you are, but it could keep me out of bankruptcy. And you know what happens when the Tellers zero your account, don’t you?

  I hope you never have to find out. But you will. Unless you give me your three days. Then I’ll tell you how to live forever.

  Deal?

  Okay, first the story, then you pull the transfer. Only, I have to hurry. Like I told you, I don’t have all day.

  This would have been a few hundred clocklaps ago, when it happened. In real days, you know, the sun passing overhead and all, it might have been a week. They say you used to be able to see the sun cross the sky, starting at one end over all those smokestacks, then rising up straight overhead before falling off the edge of the earth on the other side of the sky. The oldtimers say you could tell time that way, by where the sun was. Not like now, when it’s either day or night and nothing in between.

  I was standing in the mouth of a downtown bank. Over by the Genworks, where you can taste the sulfuric acid in the air. It was payday, see, and any juice pusher knows the best time to make time is when your junkies got time.

  You know how it works: the Areopagus dumps your time right into the Tellers. The wireheads work sixty and get credit for forty. A slow way to die, if you ask me. If I were one of them, I wouldn’t want to see the evidence of the government’s rip-off. But on payday, they all swing by the Tellers to check their accounts. Maybe it gives them a sense of personal accomplishment or something, as if anything matters besides staying alive.

  Business was brisk that day. I moved a dozen hits of Teenage Wasteland and a fistful of Gasm and even a dose or two of Yesteryear. The ladies, they usually go for one of two things: Gasm or Motherhood. Yeah, Motherhood, if you can believe it. Stick a wire in their heads just to believe a squirmy little bag of meat is filling up their guts. Like people get born, not made.

  Whatever. I don’t judge, I just deliver.

  I had my card in the Teller, in the Plus hole, and the junkies were making me rich. They lined up, hands shaking as they slotted their cards, their eyes already looking past the real world toward whatever trip they were taking. As creepy as their faces were, the Teller’s face was even creepier.

  You know how those rows of lights wink on, like they’re watching every move you make? Green to red to gold? Well, this one lit up like a jetcar crash, like it wasn’t pleased with me dumping so much time into my account. Some people say that the Tellers are wired straight into the Areopagus, that the government has nothing better to do than to keep track of how downtowners waste their time. Laughtrack.

  After my last customer headed for a dark place to juice up, I punched up my balance. I was thirty-five again. Not as young as I like to be, but I was two years better off than I had been before the feeding frenzy. I smiled and patted the Teller, and even the seconds counting down in red didn’t bother me too much.

  Except the Teller didn’t give me back my card.

  I pushed that little button beside the Plus hole. I pushed it again. Nothing.

  My heart was ticking like a junkie’s on a dose of Clockwork. I was afraid something had gone wrong, that maybe some of the numbers were mixed up. I know, I know, the Areopagus never makes mistakes, but we all hear those whispers, don’t we? One little bug in the Teller’s brain, and my account would be closed. The Big Zero.

  And once a Teller’s eyes burn you into dust, then the words “internal error” don’t mean a whole lot.

  So I freaked, I starting kicking the thing, jabbing the little buttons, clawing at the metal lips that had swallowed my time card. No good. All I got was sore hands and proof that even a pusher bleeds. The display blinked off, and I couldn’t see my account anymore. A message came up on the screen: “Ring For Assistance.”

  I knew right away what that meant. But I was so desperate I had no choice. I’m used to being desperate, anyway. We all are. Hey, I didn’t set up the rules, I just play by them.

  I pushed the little red button, and the Teller’s lights went crazy. I’ve heard that some machines are on the juice themselves, that they can be rigged for wire trips. I was afraid maybe this was one of them, that some Johnny Zoid had played metal games and dosed the Teller with some Flower Power or Big Sleep. Who knows what you get when a machine is tricked into thinking it’s human?

  While those lights were flashing, shining so bright that they probably were visible outside the bank, I heard a scream. Sometimes you hear screams from the alleys, at least in my part of downtown, where the junkies huddle up and slip their favorite wires in their skulls and pretend that they’re alive. Being alive makes anybody want to scream, but most of us stay too busy hustling hours to look past the end of our noses.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, the lights were so brilliant. I felt like a Juvenator had dug its claws into my brainbox. I must have fallen to my knees, because when the voice came, it was above me, like a speaker grid on God Day blathering out Areopaganese.

  “What’s the problem?” the voice said.

  My eyes tricked themselves open. Above me stood a man dressed in white chrome. His hair was gray, the color of the true rich. He was smiling and, believe it or not, he had wrinkles on his face. My first thought was “Spirit Spy.”

  I struggled to my feet and sucked enough air into my lungs to speak. “Teller ate my card,” I said, acting dumb.

  “Don’t take it personally,” he said. The Teller’s lights bounced off of his suit.

  “It’s personal if that thing”—I pointed toward the hulking frame of the Teller—“zeroes out my balance.”

  “You’ve gone around the clock a few times, haven’t you, Mister Gustavo?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  The man ignored me and went to the machine. He took a tool from one of his pockets and worked at a panel underneath the Teller�
�s eyes. The lights went cold. We stood in the dark hollow of the bank for a moment, me glad to be alive, the man in white looking at me as if waiting for something.

  “Can I get my card back?” I asked.

  “Depends,” he said. “How much is it worth to you?”

  If he was a Spirit Spy, I didn’t know what I could offer. I thought he wanted a piece of the action, maybe a few extra weeks, though he already looked rich enough to live forever. Then it came to me. Even those who work for the Areopagus are human, as least that’s the buzz on the street. And if this man was human, he probably craved escape as much as any of us dirt-poor downtowners did.

  Since he knew my name, he probably knew I was a juicer. Maybe this was one of those people who live on the upper levels, so high in the sky that they can see the sun above the smugger. Maybe he was so rich that he could afford to waste time looking through the eyes of Tellers. Maybe he saw how ordinary people threw it all away for artificial dreams, silicon lies, and small-time deals.

  Or maybe this was a test. The Areopagus didn’t like people who were as lucky as I had been. I’ve heard of people half my age who mysteriously disappeared, probably at the business end of a Teller’s stare.

  “What do you want?” I asked, afraid to make the first move. On juice deals, I set the terms, but none of my customers have as much bargaining position as a man who might have just saved my life. Or is getting ready to zero it.

  “You’re a pusher,” he said. His eyes were strange, not accusing, just curious.

  The Areopagus could zap me anytime it wanted. So why play blather games? I told him, “I know how to get things.”

  “I’m looking for an experience,” he said.

  He looked like the type who could use a thrill. And could afford it. “How about some Gasm?” I asked. “Makes you think it lasted a month, but only sets you back two weeks.”

  He gave me that weird smile, a smile that didn’t smack of the desperation that all us downtowners taste with every single breath. “I don’t want a wire,” he said. Then he pushed the hair away from his temples.