Hotwire

by Simon Ings

  ‘All right,’ he yawned, too tired to argue. He slid his arm around her, his wrist against her back, and closed his eyes. So warm. So startling. So much like a human now, surrounded as she was by human things: streets, houses, a beach, a pier, sunlight, fresh air. He trailed his fingers down her back. Strange to think this wasn’t flesh but Dayus Ram-made stuff.

  She pressed her lips against his cheek.

  He started, pulled away. ‘Don’t do that.’

  Rosa shrank back against the pillows, hands extended towards him, pleading. He touched them, smoothing his fingertips over her sweating palms. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You surprised me is all.’

  ‘It’s wrong, I know,’ she said.

  He said nothing.

  ‘It is wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ he sighed, ‘it’s not wrong.’

  ‘I wanted to touch you.’

  ‘It’s not wrong.’ And though he knew it was – for them, there, at that hour – he didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. After all, it was only a kiss. She was only a girl. ‘Rosa, it’s not wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s just we’re not forever, love. Once you can cope, you’ll be far safer on your own.’

  Crying now, she took him in her arms, lifted herself on top of him, and laid her head on his chest. Her red hair spread fanlike across his face.

  She was all over him.

  He edged her off as gently as he could.

  Rosa dozed a while with him, then left the bed. Troubled by his calm, unquashable belief that they must one day part, she visited the beach. She needed distraction. More, she needed a sense of belonging.

  She steeled herself against tears. She had many friends at the beach these days. At least they weren’t so mean with their affection!

  Her feelings of resentment made her strong without her knowing it. When she reached the beach road and waited by the pedestrian crossing, the lights changed for her immediately. When she ordered café latte from a booth at the entrance to the fairground, the drink began to pour even before the serving girl put a cup under the nozzle. She crossed the boardwalk. Above her, the wires of the chair-ride trembled, humming uneasily as it picked up speed.

  ‘Hey, Rosa!’

  A young black man, short and thickly set, waved to her from the bank of phones opposite the big dipper entrance.

  She grinned and wandered over. ‘Darryl—’

  ‘Sugar, where’ve you been?’

  ‘My man’s been ill,’ she said. Darryl and his friends were always asking after Ajay, intrigued that they had not seen him with her yet. They wondered – some in secret, others less kindly aloud – if he was her uncle or her teacher or something: someone with whom she was not supposed to live. Or an old man maybe, with money, which was why she stayed with him. They couldn’t understand why a girl like her went home each night to some old invalid.

  A girl like her. But they had only the narrowest idea of who she was. They figured her for a poor-little-rich thing, because her smartcard credit seemed endless and she was always paying for things.

  ‘Hey,’ said Darryl, pointing at the boardwalk, ‘there’s one!’

  ‘One what?’

  ‘Grab it!’

  She looked where he pointed and saw a scrap of paper caught on a nail. She snatched it up. It was the same paper she had picked up, the night of her seafall. Thin and greasy like ricepaper, with a number printed on one side: 4115 466 2123.

  She handed it to him.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you do it. Brings you luck.’ He had a handful of similar papers and he was working through them, dialling numbers one after another. ‘Only connect,’ he said, each time he phoned, then cut the line, tore the scrap up, threw it away and moved on to the next.

  Puzzled, Rosa studied the scrap in her hand. The number meant nothing to her. On the other side, in pale red ink, there was a device: a box, unwrapped.

  She turned the scrap over again, studying the number: ‘A phone number?’

  ‘A different one on every piece,’ said Darryl, between dials.

  Rosa turned the paper over and over in her hand.

  ‘They got a computer,’ he continued, replacing the receiver at last, ‘prints them out at random. Bay Area telephone numbers.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’

  ‘You find a slip, you pick it up and dial the number.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘You wait for the connection, say hi, put the phone down.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then nothing. It’s all done.’

  ‘What’s done?’

  ‘The signal.’

  Rosa shook her head. She understood nothing.

  ‘Look,’ said Darryl, beckoning her to the phone. ‘Dial the number.’

  She dialled.

  A woman answered.

  ‘Connect is all,’ Darryl whispered, prompting her.

  ‘Hello?’ the woman said again.

  ‘Only connect,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Oh fuck off,’ the woman said, and slammed the phone down.

  Darryl chuckled. ‘One of them.’

  ‘Of who?’ Rosa demanded hurt. She didn’t understand the joke.

  ‘The ones who don’t believe the Bay thinks.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘The Bay’s a Massive, right?’

  ‘The Bay? You mean Presidio?’

  ‘No, not Presidio: the Bay. Oakland, SF the whole conurbation, see? It’s a thinking city, like New York. You’re from New York, you must know what I mean.’

  ‘A Massive, sure,’ she said, unhappily.

  ‘It’s just the Bay is new is all. We have to help it think.’ He tapped the paper in her hand. ‘You call this number on a phone. A connection is made. It’s like a synapse firing. A random synapse firing. Right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘The brains of little babies fire this way while they’re still in the womb. Lots of random flashes. Test signals if you like. That’s what we do.’

  ‘Test phones?’

  He put his hand over his eyes. ‘No,’ he said, trying not to let his frustration come through, ‘we test Bay Area’s brain. A brain that’s made of phones.’

  ‘The Bay – the Massive?’

  ‘Jesus wept.’ Darryl gave up a minute, losing patience with her.

  But Rosa had become intrigued. ‘So what does the Bay talk about?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When it’s on the phone.’

  ‘It’s not “on the phone”! It is the phone, all phones, all switching systems. The phone calls don’t matter. It’s the connections matter, nothing else.’

  Rosa nodded, sagely. ‘The receiving synapse cares nothing about the flavour of the electrical impulse it receives from the transmitting synapse.’

  Darryl blinked at her. ‘Again?’

  She smiled. ‘I’ve understood is all,’ she said. She had: he was describing Ma. She studied the paper again. ‘And everybody does this?’

  ‘Not everybody.’ He chuckled. ‘Some really get pissed off, they get a random call. Others, well, they get a deal more cranky than even me about the idea. Especially the Chinese. You should see them in SF. That box design, they chalk it on their doors. They say it wards off enemies.’

  ‘What enemies?’

  He looked at her, narrowly. ‘Where did you say you came from?’

  ‘From New York.’ She hoped her lie made sense. The trouble was for all she knew her lie might be more dangerous than the truth.

  Darryl and his friends had met her playing games on the beach. She was pathetically grateful for the least sign of friendship. They called her Trippy long after she’d learned how to run properly on the sand, and gave her an easy time of it at the volleyball net: they could see her co-ordination wasn’t that good.

  When they first met her she didn’t even know how to swim! The girl with strawberry-blonde hair showed her how, and they were surprised by how quick she learned.

  ‘Ajay tells me the water’s dange
rous,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Why?’ the blonde – Gina – asked her.

  ‘Because Presidio’s out there.’

  Gina laughed. ‘The Great White Whale.’ She struck out from the shallows into deeper water, heading for the end of the pier.

  Rosa paddled quickly after her. ‘What sort of whale?’

  Gina trod water, waiting for Rosa to catch up. ‘No whale,’ she said. ‘A phrase is all. Meaning Presidio’s just stories, “Here Be Dragons” stuff.’

  Rosa called to mind the dreadful orange behemoth. She kept her peace. ‘What of the seals?’ she said. ‘They’re dangerous. I’ve seen them. They have sharp teeth.’

  ‘They’re fun,’ Gina protested. She laughed. ‘Good fun, you get my drift.’

  Gina played at love with them and didn’t seem to care who knew.

  Rosa shook her head. Her legs were getting tired. She started swimming again – long, wide circles round her friend. ‘They scare me. I don’t like their fur.’

  A sharp crack made them turn. A ball of white smoke bloomed over Santa Cruz, a new-born cloud. From it white specks fluttered like snow.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ticket drop,’ Gina replied.

  ‘Who does that?’

  ‘Paper Rocket Society. Chinese in the main. But there’s no system to it, no dos and don’ts. Randomness is all.’

  ‘Yeah, but who did that?’ said Rosa, pointing to the cloud. It had nearly vanished.

  ‘There’s a yacht anchored in the estuary, you want to check it out. Darryl knows him. Comes round every month or so, leafleting the coast.’

  ‘Let’s go back,’ said Rosa. ‘My back is burning.’

  They swam together gently back to shore and Gina rubbed suncream into Rosa’s back. ‘Don’t know why I bother though,’ she said, ‘you never burn.’

  ‘I was made tough,’ said Rosa.

  Sometimes, when they were bored of swimming, Rosa rode pillion on Gina’s motorbike and they sped round the city, Rosa whooping and cheering, the wind in her face, her whole skin tingling with the cold. Other times Gina took her straight home and played with her on the big round bed, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends. Once someone tried feeding Rosa ZB15. Only a little, so as not to frighten her. It had no effect.

  They all looked roughly Rosa’s age, and though physically they seemed more developed, their attitudes were strangely childish. Sex with them was odd and intimate and, well, funny. Not much different from volleyball, only in bed they gave her no quarter, they were on her the whole time endlessly. She enjoyed the hours spent with her new friends – Gina, and Gina’s boyfriend with his silver spoon and plastic sachets, Darryl and the others who came and went as the season took them.

  But still she missed the intensity of that first, one-sided conjunction with Ajay. Nothing since had come close to it. Nothing fulfilled her the same. Sometimes she avoided her friends and went to the pier, looking for the man who’d given her presents. Not because she liked him, but because he possessed, in a rather nasty form, the intensity she craved.

  She did not find him.

  ‘Coming, Rosa?’

  It was evening now; time for her to be home. Darryl had offered her a lift. He sat astride his bike, his dark muscular legs set off by the polished chrome of the engine. Looking at him, Rosa remembered such another place and time that for a moment she felt dizzy and disoriented.

  He walked the bike towards her. The engine, idling in neutral, puttered out. ‘Goddamn.’

  Rosa walked up to the bike. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Fucking ignition.’

  She touched the bike and closed her eyes, minding it. ‘Try again.’

  He turned the key. The engine came to life again.

  Darryl stared at her through his wrapround shades. ‘How did you—?’

  ‘Same way I do this,’ said Rosa, trailing her hand over the tank to his jeans, and in—

  He laughed, brushing her aside. ‘Yeah, yeah, climb aboard.’

  She straddled the bike. Darryl put it in gear and rolled them gently onto the road.

  They picked up speed.

  The street became a blur.

  A man in an emerald suit flashed by. She glanced round quickly to follow him – but he was gone.

  She couldn’t be sure it was him.

  One morning not long afterwards Ajay woke to sounds of sickness.

  ‘Rosa?’

  No reply: but from the bathroom, retching.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ajay, wait love!’

  Soon after he heard the pan flush, and her footsteps approaching the room. She appeared at the open door, grinning, ashen-faced.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Upset stomach,’ she shrugged.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You took your pill last night?’

  She came and sat by him, patted his hand. ‘Calm down, I’ll be all right.’

  ‘You’re not drinking caffeine?’

  ‘I told you, no.’

  ‘You’ve not been swimming?’

  She bit her tongue a moment, said ‘No.’ He had told her not to swim, but it was so good to feel the weight fall off her limbs, if only for a while—

  ‘What is it, then?’ he demanded.

  ‘Just a bad stomach. Nothing dreadful.’

  ‘Take your pill this morning, don’t forget.’

  ‘Sure. Now lie still. Breakfast’s coming.’ She left the room.

  Ajay turned to the window. It was bright outside. Light fell across the bed, warming his legs under the sheet. Something weak and new stirred in him. Some bud of fresh strength. He felt muzzy and luxurious lying here in the sunshine under the cotton sheet. He stretched. His limbs felt ponderous and huge: much of the muscle had wasted from them. He relaxed, feeling the bed accommodate his weight. It was like falling, quite safely, through some soft and cosy woollen space, down and down—

  He awoke. ‘Rosa?’

  ‘Ajay?’ she answered, from the kitchen.

  ‘A water please. With ice.’

  Things have been worse, he told himself, and chuckled. So much worse!

  He was weak but well. His anus troubled him, it was so sore, the muscles of his rectum badly strained, his pants blood-specked. It showed how much he’d been put through, when he could call this ‘well’. But well he was.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Rosa asked him, coming in with the ice-water and his breakfast on a tray.

  ‘Stir-crazy, huh?’

  ‘It’s bright out.’

  ‘True.’ He sat up in the bed, drank the water and ate half a croissant straight off, without butter or anything.

  ‘How can you do that?’

  ‘Hungry.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  He thought of the town he’d so far only glimpsed through slats of pain. ‘You want to show me the beach?’

  ‘You’re up to it?’

  ‘I’m willing to try.’

  She clapped, delighted. ‘I’ll get your clothes!’

  She brought in bright shirts, short pants, sandals, shades.

  ‘Where did all this come from?’

  ‘You like it?’ she asked, eagerly.

  He stared at it. Garish, unsuitable. ‘It’s great.’

  ‘You like the socks?’

  ‘Paisley? Uh – my favourite.’

  ‘Not too “conspicuous”?’

  ‘Well, one thing at a time.’

  Rosa went away again and came back in acid-pink halter top, cut-off jeans, white shoes, and her hair in plaits.

  ‘Jail bait,’ he catcalled, grinning to cover his surprise. She’d taken lessons in vanity, shaving her legs and kohling her eyes. Her skin was tanned and unblemished, her limbs well-muscled. Her breasts seemed more full than he remembered, the nipples larger; they pressed up clearly through the halter top. She was, he admitted to himself, rather beautiful. She had the striking looks that make cheap clothes work. Which was just as well—


  She hooked her thumbs into her cut-off jeans, showing off a slab of smooth midriff. ‘“Jail bait”,’ she mused. ‘That’s good to be?’

  He thought about it. ‘Yeah. Why not?’

  He got dressed. Rosa led him outside.

  She’d learned to walk with comfort, he noticed. Pavement cracks no longer found her feet, nor did bare lots draw from her any eerie stares. This was her home now; it was familiar to her.

  ‘In there,’ she said, ‘I shopped for you. And there, that’s where I drink sometimes, but only water. I’ve been good.’ (Her immune system was new; he’d told her coffee and alcohol were bad for her.) ‘I like that church, the singing. I’ve been in. They’re very friendly.’

  ‘Been to church?’

  ‘Is that all right?’ she asked him, concerned, so eager to do the right thing—

  ‘I suppose. I don’t know.’ Ajay’s head spun. While he’d been ill he’d been content that Rosa had stayed with him. He’d been too taken up with pain to care what else she did. If she’d resisted me, he thought, I would have been more careful. He’d been careless, letting her have free rein. Then again if she’d resisted, what could he have done? Held her in the house at gunpoint? Tied her to the furniture? Not slept? Had she not cared for him, he’d surely have been lost—

  ‘Some children cycle in that park. They’re nice. They talk to me. One showed me how to ride.’

  More surprises still! From nothing, Rosa had made a life for herself. He was impressed. He looked around him at the park, the dusty lanes, the low, simple buildings, the bright colours. There were flyposters everywhere, and old people drinking outside a café, and kids playing on the corner of the street, and a couple of skaters blading past, racing.

  ‘It looks like a good place to stay,’ he said. It frightened him, how much he meant it. How tempted he was!

  They returned to find their landlord sitting by the back door. They let him in. Rosa offered to make him a coffee. He shook his head. He wouldn’t even sit down. He didn’t like them much.

  He came around this time each week, and he always said the same thing. An elderly man, he was dying of bowel cancer. He wanted everyone to know. He’d long since ceased to find any use for strangers’ pity; nowadays he used his death to threaten people he imagined depended upon him. ‘My grandson will be here soon,’ he said, ‘when I am gone. He’ll build a big glass tower here one day, no room for you!’