The Glamour Thieves

by Donald Allmmon

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Austin’s eyes changed color, the gold expanding. “And then he made me come.”

  “Shit,” JT said, entranced.

  Austin closed his eyes, and his lips brushed JT’s, soft and hot as a fever. He ran his tongue along JT’s lower lip, turned his head and brushed his cheek across JT’s stubby tusks, sucking at them, left and right. “So what are you going to break?”

  Acceleration like coming: lasting forever and over too soon. Only six seconds and the ’Vette topped out at six twelve. Probably JT could nudge it further. If a polarity switch mistimed and they spun out, he could probably recover. So he pushed it up, KPH by KPH, all his senses hyper-tuned to the transmission spin and the quantum-timed switching, in a zone-like sexual thrill, ready to respond to the slightest bit of stutter. How long had it been since he’d piloted such a beautiful machine? Since he’d taken an apprentice? And then the unwanted thought: what if Dante pulled some stunt like this?

  Well, shit.

  He eased the acceleration. They coasted along, the ride so smooth and the land outside so flat, it would have barely seemed like they were moving at all if it wasn’t for wind slick over him like warm oil. Yeah, six twenty-six would do just fine.

  JT adjusted himself, the pinching too uncomfortable to ignore. Austin watched him shift his junk around, grinning that sly, sleepy grin he had when he was horny. “I could do that for ya.”

  “We got traffic coming up.”

  “Computer can handle it.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Is it working?”

  Well, of course it was working. Goddess, Austin was beautiful. Two years, and JT had forgotten how beautiful Austin was, and JT’s half hard-on went to three-quarters and was pinching again.

  They hit traffic, and JT slipped through it, hopping magnetic lanes like a boat hopped waves, a small stomach-lurching thrill each time. The car swung and bobbed, and vehicles flashed around them and disappeared. But all JT’s and Austin’s attention was on each other.

  “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about?” JT said.

  “Sex.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Really, this isn’t working?” Austin cast an analytical glance to JT’s crotch. “Because it looks to me like this is working.”

  “It’s not working enough.”

  “Christ, a hot car, me, how much more do you want?” Austin huffed, sat back, and looked out the window. “I need to borrow a few drones.”

  “No. What for? No.”

  “I’ll pick ‘What for?’”

  “I meant no.”

  “For a good cause.”

  “How much money turns something into a ‘good cause’?”

  “This job ain’t about money. Look, I’ll buy them from you. This car for some drones.”

  “This car’s stolen. And you can’t pilot drones anyway.”

  “Oh, you’re right!” Austin snapped his fingers with mock realization. “So I’ll need you too.”

  “No.”

  “I thought we’d moved past negativity and had a bonding moment here. Tell me this doesn’t feel good, letting go a little? Tell me you don’t want to know what it’s like to have sex in this car at six hundred kilometers per hour?”

  What would it be like? JT would last about half a second before he nutted all over the leather seats, that’s what it would be like. JT said nothing, not trusting himself to say what he should.

  “Fine,” Austin said. “I have a protection job. Not just a bodyguard walk-around-and-look-mean kind of thing: a serious protection job.”

  “I’ll put you in touch with Duke. He runs a merc outfit in Greentown. You can hire—”

  “This ain’t a merc kind of job. It’s an Austin-and-JT kind of job.”

  “You mean it’s illegal.”

  “I mean it’s for a friend.”

  All our friends are dead, is what JT wanted to say, but the two of them had managed to make it an hour without any mention of Roan, Grayson, Bell, or the lab job, and he’d be damned if he was going to start now. “What friend?”

  “Buzz Howdy.”

  JT first saw Buzz Howdy in the winter of ’70. Roan had run with two gangs: Bell Anderson’s team along with Austin, Grayson, and JT; and a group of hackers called 3djinn. 3djinn had been mostly anonymous foreign handles except for Buzz Howdy, who’d been an SF local and Roan’s roommate for a while. JT and Austin had been parked curbside at Roan’s Mission flat. As she climbed into the truck, she’d waved up at the second floor of the Edwardian and there he was in the window: a shaggy-cut redhead, cute as can be.

  “Boyfriend?” JT asked her.

  “Buzz? Just a friend.”

  “He’s cute.”

  “He’s brilliant. He’s also quiet and nice and you wouldn’t like him.”

  “I like quiet and nice.”

  “No, you don’t.” She’d shot a pointed glance at her brother in the backseat, evidence to the contrary.

  “What’s he do?”

  “He forges identities for people who want to be someone they aren’t.”

  “He’s cute.” JT smiled up at the guy, as friendly as he could, because you never know, some day. The guy saw all those teeth bared at him and drew the curtain.

  “Buzz is harmless. Who’s after him?” JT said.

  “The Electric Dragon Triad.”

  And that was a death sentence. It seemed unfair, and the news hit harder than he’d expected, twisting his stomach. He tried to hide it as best as he could because Austin didn’t know anything about him and Buzz, did he? And he didn’t want Austin to know. The elf would just tease him. “Buzz is as good as dead.”

  “Just me alone? Yeah, he would be. But you and me both? We can get him out of town.”

  They coasted a while more, and JT finally turned off the external sensors that let him feel the wind on the car. He flipped the car’s magnetic breaks and jumped a few channels to the outside track.

  “We turning around? Is that a yes?”

  Did he and Buzz count as friends anymore? It didn’t really matter. He owed Buzz for this life. And here was his chance to apologize for that kiss.

  “Don’t make me regret this, Austin.”

  “You can’t go,” Dante said. “We got a meeting with Suborbital on Friday. Duke has been working on getting us in the door for months. You can’t ditch it just to run off with that . . . that . . . that . . . elf.”

  Austin had gone into the house, a one-story bunker of a building, and JT had gone to break the news to Dante. He’d found the kid in the lab programming the industrial 3-D printer. The control booth for the printer looked like it could have launched the Mars missions: eight 210-centimeter monitors in banks, holo projectors glowing blue, sim receivers, interface gloves and crowns, and cabling everywhere, all mounted on a half-cylindrical frame of matte-black carbon alloy and plastered with skate-punk decals. The decals were Dante’s contribution to the decor. She’d even found an antique Misfits one somewhere.

  JT said, “The meeting’s two days from now. It’s just San Francisco. I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

  “We have a meeting with the banker tomorrow.”

  “You can handle it.”

  “Are you insane? Caldwell ain’t gonna take me seriously. I’m seventeen!”

  Seventeen going on forty, JT thought.

  Four months after JT had arrived in Greentown, Dante Riggs had caught his eye. The kid had been looking at JT’s truck the way JT had once looked at trucks: paying too much attention to security systems, sight lines to the driver’s-side door, and surveillance cameras.

  Two days later, she tried to steal it. Duke’s boys had beaten the hell out of her, but JT wouldn’t let them call the cops. Honor among thieves, he supposed. And damned if the kid didn’t come limping back, except this time she wanted to talk: “They tell me you built that truck from scratch,” she’d said, eyes still bruised and one tusk broken of
f short. “3-D printers and nano shit. Teach me how to do it.”

  “Fuck off,” JT had told her, and hit her again so she understood he was serious.

  JT said now, “You’re just reviewing affidavits for Friday. You’re not asking him for money. You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t own a tie.”

  “Caldwell wouldn’t recognize you if you wore one.”

  “He’s going to fuck up your life again!”

  Ah, there it was. Out of everyone JT had met since he’d moved here, he’d only told Dante the truth. It wasn’t the business Dante was worried about—it was Austin. Well, that made two of them. “It’s only one day, and it’s only this once.”

  “Yeah, I’ve said that about a lot of things too.”

  “And so have I. But I got things to come back to this time.”

  After JT had told the kid to fuck off, Dante had camped out at the gate to JT’s place like she was petitioning for training at a Shaolin Temple. JT had managed to hold out a week before he brought the kid in.

  JT clapped her on the shoulder. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

  The kid worried her broken tusk with her tongue—everyone learned their habits from someone—shoved her hands deep in her pockets, and hunched her shoulders like eighty degrees was cold. “Yeah . . . well . . . when you come back, lose the elf.” She looked out across the yard at the black space where the Corvette sat. “But keep the car.”

  Kitchen, dining and living rooms were all the one room. On the dining table, Chinese takeout was unpacked, white boxes everywhere like blown-up origami. Austin had opened everything to make sure there was no meat in his, and he’d arranged the too-many packets of soy and duck sauce in letters: EAT ME.

  He was on the couch, and the big-screen was going at the same time he had the VR glasses on. He absentmindedly worked chopsticks on vegetable lo mein. He didn’t even look at the damn box or have to readjust the sticks every minute like JT had to. He never dropped a bit of it or had to fish around to find something easy to pick up. That was his left hand.

  His right hand flicked and twitched in the control glove, and Nazi zombies died.

  “Are you cheating?” JT asked.

  “I only cheat in real life, when it’s actually fun. The kid not eating?” He ate and killed zombies.

  “Nah, she’s eating by herself tonight.” He’d set Dante up in a room over the printer lab when the kid had moved in, and Dante retreated there when she needed her space or JT needed his.

  “Tonight? But doesn’t she eat with you usually?” Austin asked, implying something, but JT didn’t want to play games, so ignored him. JT speared orange chicken with his chopsticks. The container of rice sat untouched. Rice was elf food. “She could be useful,” Austin said. “Maybe—”

  “Maybe nothing. I brought her here to give her a way out of that life, Austin, not a way in.”

  Austin turned just a bit and slid the glasses down his nose (and still his hand flicked, and zombies died, and he didn’t), and ran his eyes up and down JT. “You make a cute daddy. I approve.”

  “Fuck you. I’m just doing what I can.”

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” He went back to his game and his food. “That’s what makes it cute.”

  JT started in on the Szechuan chicken, upending the take-away box to his mouth and using the sticks to shovel the food in. He watched Austin play his game and eat.

  “Shouldn’t we be planning this protection job?” JT asked.

  “What’s to plan? We need to move Buzz from the place he’s holed up in San Fran to Tahoe and his rendezvous with 3djinn. The quieter, the better.”

  “Route? Gear?”

  “You’re the pilot. As far as gear, I’m bringing a bow, some arrows, and you. Really, JT, this isn’t a break-in. It’s just deliver-the-package. Except the package is Buzz. Pick a car; pick your drones; and we’re good to go.”

  That was just too much blitheness, even for Austin. This was a triad they were messing with, not some street gang. Something was up.

  “So what’s the story? Why’s the triad after Buzz?”

  Austin shrugged. “He stole something.”

  “Software?”

  “Something. I don’t know. He calls me—”

  “He’s got your contact info?” JT didn’t even have Austin’s contact info.

  “It’s not that hard to find.” He gave JT a pointed flick of a glance. “If you wanted to find it. So he calls me and says he’s in trouble and needs to get out of town and over to Tahoe. He’d been working for the Electric Dragon Triad and found something, and, well, he might have taken it—”

  “So he didn’t just steal from them, he betrayed them?”

  “Suppose you could see it that way.”

  “I can guaran-fuckin-tee you that’s how they’re seeing it.” The Electric Dragon was going to be excessive in their vengeance. But it was like Austin had said: they just needed to move Buzz quiet, not a shot fired. “So he never said what it was he took? Must have been something pretty damn amazing to throw your life away for it.”

  “Must have been.” Austin stopped playing his game and took the VR glasses off. “Things like that exist, JT.”

  “Like hell, they do. And you still don’t think we need a plan.”

  “I got a plan. You.”

  Hours later, drones all folded up sleeping in the truck bed, software all loaded, and fuel cells charged, JT came back into the house. Austin was still up, still plugged into the VR, but doing what JT couldn’t tell.

  JT crossed to his bedroom door. “I’m getting some sleep. You can crash on the couch. I’ll get you some blankets.”

  Austin took the glasses off. “What’s wrong with your room?”

  JT had known this was coming. “Floor’s a little hard in my room.” He didn’t crack a smile or make a friendly joke of it. Dante had been right, and JT couldn’t risk getting tied up with Austin again. JT had to draw a line, and that line was at his bedroom door.

  Austin looked away and worked his mouth as he stared at the ceiling. He looked back and said, deadpan, “Hey, no worries. I’ll find a motel.”

  JT didn’t watch him leave, not with his eyes. But every camera networked into his head tracked Austin, one camera after another. They tracked him as he stalked out of the living room, door banging closed behind him. Tracked him across the gravel yard and concrete slabs. Tracked him sliding into the stolen Corvette and spinning it around faster than he needed so the wheels sprayed up gravel. Tracked him, taillights red, down the road toward Greentown, and then kept watching the road after the taillights had been swallowed up by the night.

  Cheap motels aplenty littered the edge of Greentown. Austin kept driving. He told the nav AI what he wanted and it piloted him there.

  And while the low prefab buildings and neighborhoods slid by him, he tried not to think of anything—not Roan, not Grayson, and definitely not fucking JT. But you know how that works and he couldn’t think of anything else.

  So, yeah, what had he expected when he showed up two years out of nowhere? Had he really expected JT to drop his jeans right there and bend over ready for him?

  Well, yeah. Kinda, he had.

  What Austin’d expected: JT bent facedown over the Corvette’s endless black hood; tight green ass thrust out over the fender for Austin to take; those heavy, swollen nuts ripe to blow; cock shoved straight down so Austin could see the skin-covered head of it leaking in streams. And a few centimeters above all of that: muscle-tight cheeks spread just enough to show JT’s little puckered hole, just a bit pink, glossy with spit and twitching, daring Austin to open him up.

  Well, it wasn’t that crazy a thought, now was it? He’d brought him a damn car, after all.

  The district was called Party Town for obvious reasons. He found a good parking space, street side, only a few blocks away from the bar, and that was fine because the walk would do him good.

  Only a handful of humans or elves, but there were orcs everywhere, orcs going
in, orcs coming out, crowds leaving restaurants, queuing for clubs, jaywalkers, street musicians, panhandlers. Bumper-to-bumper cars crawling along, taillights on and off, headlights flaring.

  From the sidewalk, he fingered the car key (old-fashioned, not having any of the tech JT had) and popped the code on the security. Blue plasma arced over the Corvette and kept arcing like Borealis. Everyone slowed and gawked because it was just that pretty to watch. Just as pretty as Austin himself. Someone muttered, “Asshole,” jealous as fuck. Austin ignored them all, hands in his pockets. He sauntered along, small smug grin, their envy an aphrodisiac. Ignored the hate.

  The buildings here were low, two stories, and their windows were filled with holo-adverts and the air with a riot of overlapping noise. Somewhere a band played; he could feel the vibrating bass in the air. He wove through the crowd. Orc women (always punk haircuts, small-breasted, and built like world-class weight lifters) gave him a flick of their gaze, licked lips and tusks, and turned their heads back to their men slowly, letting them know they’d lost their attention to an elf.

  In one window he saw Roan: big-ass hazy crown of her afro, points of her ears sticking through, broad white smile against the brown of her face, butterflies in her hair. He stumbled, shocked.

  But it was only an advert, and it wasn’t her anyway. It couldn’t be her. Roan had been dead two years.

  Shouldn’t it have stopped after two years? Sure, right afterward, he’d thought he saw her everywhere, sure, right afterward. But now? Shouldn’t this have stopped, not grown even more common, nearly every day; common enough he worried he was going insane?

  JT had told him to let her go, but he couldn’t do that. How could he? And how could JT have even asked Austin to let her go? She’d loved JT too. Loved him like a brother.

  Austin saw half glimpses of her everywhere. Every dark-skinned woman with an afro became Roan. Every butterfly became the holo-decoration Roan had worn. He had gone insane, hadn’t he? And he watched the advert loop and loop again. But it still wasn’t Roan no matter how many times he watched it.