Corpus Chrome, Inc.

by S. Craig Zahler

  A black man, whom Alicia had not noticed, grabbed the handle of her attaché case and pulled it from her grip.

  “Give me that!”

  The woman reached for the purloined item, and the thief swung it beyond her reach; she swept her open palm at his face, and he retreated to safety.

  Suddenly, the black fellow pointed something at her face and said, “I am a pol—”

  Alicia lunged at the man. A light flashed in her eyes, and a screaming headache erupted in her skull. She stumbled into darkness, unable to see anything but the luminous blue skull that shone in her mind’s eye.

  “You fucking lanced me! What the—”

  “I am a police officer acting within full jurisdiction of the law,” said the black man. “The migraine pen I lanced you with was set on one skull. If you come at me again, you’ll get two skulls. That’ll put you on the floor and make you soil yourself.”

  Alicia’s sight returned, but the skull seared into her retinas was superimposed over what she saw. She looked at her squat assailant: He wore a black uniform and a police badge that transmuted from a clenched fist to an outstretched helping hand twice each second. His grips were tight upon her attaché case and the migraine pen.

  “The afterimage will go away in about twenty minutes,” informed the officer.

  “I can’t believe you lanced me. That attaché—”

  “Any attempt you make to reclaim this property will result in an obstruction charge, and any physical contact with me not initiated by me will be considered an assault.”

  “On what legal grounds can you seize my goddamn attaché case?”

  The rasped reply came from the other side of the room. “The attaché case is property of your firm, as are the documents therein.”

  “They transferred the rights to you?”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Why?” asked Alicia, rubbing her temples.

  “I accused your firm—and you in particular—of obstructing the deal,” said Cutthroat Cheung. “Your firm denied my allegations and yielded control of all related documents as a show of good faith. You may call your colleagues if you doubt me.”

  Alicia did not need to check with the firm. “You could have simply asked me for it.”

  Cutthroat Cheung did not respond to this suggestion.

  “I have personal property in there as well,” she essayed.

  “What property?”

  “Personal.”

  “Is it imperative that you retrieve these articles directly? If so, the officer and I will sort through the contents, and you can identify your—”

  “Forget it.”

  From the divan across the room, Cutthroat Cheung rasped, “Please join me,” as if a dim sum cart were about to roll by with steaming bundles.

  Alicia strode across the Grecian rugs. The sunshine that lit the enclosure poured through the ceiling aquarium in rippling veils, and the shadow of a stingray drifted alongside her like a bat familiar.

  Cutthroat Cheung motioned for her to sit upon an uncomfortable wooden chair opposite his luxurious divan.

  Pallid and uneasy, but with hate in her eyes, Alicia sat and faced the rasping lawyer.

  The Chinese fellow, supine upon the divan, observed her coolly. His dark green collarless suit emphasized the red scar that laterally bisected his neck, and his narrow, gruesomely pockmarked face admitted no identifiable human emotions. He was a very rich man and could have fixed his epidermal anomalies, but he chose not to—perhaps for effect, or perhaps because he did not at all care about his appearance.

  “Why are you so protective of your attaché case?” he asked.

  “The Chinese own too much already.”

  Cutthroat Cheung did not reply, but instead looked to the far side of the parlor. Alicia followed his gaze. Near the entrance of the room, the officer placed her purloined property upon an antique table, dialed a code into the lock and twisted the release nodule. The attaché case buzzed discordantly, flashed red lights, honked eight times and burped.

  “She changed the code,” explained the policeman, rather unnecessarily.

  Cutthroat Cheung looked at Alicia. “What’s the code?”

  “There are only ten trillion possibilities.”

  From across the room, the officer inquired, “Should I try to get this thing open?”

  “Do not. Forced entry would jeopardize the contents.” Cutthroat Cheung returned his attention to Alicia. “Do you refuse tell us the code?”

  “It’s not all ones or zeros.”

  The rasping lawyer leaned over and pulled a legal sheaf from an accordion folder. “This is the contract I drafted this morning,” he said as he placed the document into the woman’s hands. “Screen sixty-three shows the most significant change.”

  Alicia dialed to the aforementioned page. The faulty clause had been replaced: There would be no window for the state to seize the inheritance.

  Cutthroat Cheung rasped, “If your documents are unavailable, we may use this contract to close the deal.”

  Alicia said nothing. The shadow of a swordfish slid across the floor and over Cutthroat Cheung’s folded hands. In the passing darkness, a partial afterimage of the migraine pen shone in Alicia’s mind—the skull’s giant white teeth.

  For twenty-six minutes, she scrolled through sheaf screens, carefully and expertly reading every word. The document was precise. Everything seemed in order, until she reached page seventy-eight.

  “This isn’t what my client agreed to.” The division of the Dulande estate had been altered: Corpus Chrome, Incorporated was to receive ninety rather than ninety-seven percent.

  “Those are the terms of the new contract,” said Cutthroat Cheung.

  “CCI will not agree to this.”

  “That is the only contract I have.” The Asian fellow looked meaningfully at her attaché case upon the table. “Provide another one or I will submit this to your firm while you concoct reasons why you are here without a contract.”

  Alicia knew that she had no option but compliance. Quietly she said, “I’ll open the case.”

  The woman stood up and walked across the room, where the officer leveled his migraine pen at her face while she typed the code, twisted the nodule, opened the attaché case and selected the corrected document.

  Instantly, the policeman claimed the other contract.

  Alicia walked over to Cutthroat Cheung and put the amended sheaf in his hands. He scrolled through the screens in half the time it had taken her to peruse his contract, fingering the ropy scar on his neck in a way that seemed almost sensual. Upon the rug between them slid the shadows of three eels swimming in tandem.

  Cutthroat Cheung set the contract upon his lap, nodded and extended his right hand; the policeman handed him the other sheaf.

  “That’s the previous draft,” she said weakly.

  The rasping lawyer scrolled directly to the faulty clause and looked at it for the duration of time that it took him to caress his scar twice. “Both contracts are locked and ready to print,” he said, “and both bear today’s date.” The Asian fellow looked up at the woman and asked, “Do you wish to utter more lies, or shall you end it there?”

  Alicia knew that her career was over. “Fly in somebody else to witness this deal—I won’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Fine.”

  Cutthroat Cheung, unconcerned, leaned his head back, looked at the fish in the ceiling and double-tapped his lily. “Connect me to Steinberg, Goldman, Shabiza, Taliq and O’Brien.” The shadows of tiny fish slid over his face like bacteria seen through a microscope.

  Alicia rose from her chair and turned toward the door; her stomach sank at what she saw.

  Recumbent in a magnetica
lly buoyed bier at the parlor entrance was Mrs. Francine Junille Dulande, the withered, one-hundred-and-six-year-old matriarch of the sprawling estate. An attendant in medical green stood on either side of the transport.

  Alicia looked away from the ancient woman, circumvented the bier, strode into the hall and there looked for the skiff that had carried her hither. The craft was absent.

  “I called Olaf: He’ll be here soon,” the old woman said from behind Alicia. “May I speak with you for a moment? Please?”

  Alicia turned around, and the attendants spun the bier so that the old woman faced her directly.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Dulande.

  Alicia said nothing. She would neither accept the apology nor display her anger—either reaction would give the ancient enemy some satisfaction or relief or closure, and Mrs. Dulande deserved none of these things.

  Inscrutable and removed, Alicia observed the dying woman.

  Upon the bier’s gelatin cushions, and beneath an aerating plasma blanket, which had been decorated with a giant cursive D, lay Mrs. Dulande, curled on her side like a cold animal, her compressed spine bent like a cane, her skeletal right hand clutching the rail, and her other digits secreted in the front pocket of her silken blue robe, the surface of which had a sheen similar to that of her sagging skin, which was itself two dozen times pierced by autonomous fluid engines that inhaled her old blood, spat it through twenty levels of filtration and returned it to the green veins that wound through her tissue and muscle into her pale head, which had bright blonde hair, ears that had been cut and reshaped to hide the woman’s age, a corrected nose, and an almost imperceptible coating of sheer facial fuzz.

  The crone shivered.

  Agonized blue dots shone within the congregation of wrinkles and focused on Alicia. “I’m sorry about what just happened to you,” creaked Mrs. Dulande. “What happens to a person of integrity in this world.”

  “I’m uninterested in your sentiments.”

  The buried eyes appraised Alicia for a moment. Three fluid engines sucked blood from the woman’s right shoulder and spat it back into her body. A valve upon her downy nape hissed like a locomotive engine.

  Mrs. Dulande shuddered and then cleared her throat. “I understand why you think harshly of me.”

  Alicia turned away from the grotesque thing that lay before her and looked up the hall for the summoned skiff.

  “You have a child of your own,” said the ancient matriarch. “A four-year-old girl, correct?”

  Alicia was surprised that Mrs. Dulande knew anything about her.

  The dying woman continued, “Every mother makes an exception of her child. That is what it means to be a mother.”

  Alicia faced her adversary. “Your son is an abomination.”

  Bones clicked as Mrs. Dulande nodded her pale head in agreement. Two fluid engines withdrew dark blood and returned it to her system, bright and medicated. “You have no idea how Derrick’s crimes have burdened me,” whispered the old woman, her blue eyes sparkling.

  “If you’d mothered him properly, this might not have happened.”

  “I know.”

  “And Jessica Reynolds-Tam, Lana Pearlman and Rena Takahata might still be alive.”

  “I know.” A tear plopped upon the gelatin cushion beneath the old woman’s head, and a feeble anger constricted her right hand. “My-my Derrick…he was…a terrible person.”

  “Then why are you bringing him back?”

  “People change and—”

  “He didn’t,” said Alicia, indisputably.

  “I doubt that there could be a more transformative experience than dying.”

  Alicia saw the skiff speed up the hallway, guided by the handsome hands of Olaf.

  Mrs. Dulande continued, “That’s my hope—that he will be…better. Better than he was.” A fluid engine administered two cubic millimeters of dexaprine into her spine, and she nodded her head.

  At that moment, the inchoate plan in Alicia’s mind crystallized.

  “My hope is different,” the attorney said, her voice strong and clear. “My hope is that I can appeal this case on behalf of the families of the victims and have your son executed a second time.”

  Horror filled the mucoidal eyes of Mrs. Dulande. “You can’t. The courts—they will never allow it.”

  “There are no precedents for any of this, but I will do my best to set one.”

  Alicia turned away and boarded the skiff. When she was ten meters off, she heard the sound of the old woman sobbing, and found herself moved to tears despite her anger.

  Chapter VIII

  The Joys of Incest

  Lisanne stepped from a foam-rubber cab and strode toward the entrance of The Pinnacle, a one-hundred-and-ninety-floor turquoise and patina skyscraper that was located directly in the middle of Central Park. (Since the destructions of the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center, this structure and the Corpus Chrome Incorporated Building had become the two most recognizable parts of the Nexus Y skyline.) The surviving Breutschen twin soon arrived at the entrance, pressed her fingertips to the placard and walked through the central living wall, exchanging damp blue dusk for a mustard-colored lobby that was dry and smelled of lemongrass.

  She walked past the head concierge and six attendants (they did not greet her because she had informed them that she did not engage in small talk) and was surprised to see, seated upon a plush gelbench, the supremely beautiful American woman of Swedish and Indian descent who had walked out on her three nights earlier.

  Osa looked up and said, “Hi.” Her slickwax overcoat was beaded with precipitation from the flash storm that had swept through Nexus Y twenty minutes earlier.

  “Hello,” replied Lisanne, guardedly.

  Osa looked down at her fingernails. “Can we…um…talk?”

  “Of course. There are a number of bars and cafes within the building, and about twenty restaurants that—”

  “I’d rather go someplace private. It’s already awkward enough.”

  “We could talk in my apartment,” proffered Lisanne.

  The tall beauty nodded. “That would be fine. Is it the penthouse, or something like that?”

  The petite blonde owned three floors of The Pinnacle (two of which were recording studios) but did not want to seem pompous, and so said modestly, “I have a nice space.”

  “Okay. Let’s go there.”

  They traversed the mustard lobby and reached a bank of twenty-six elevators. Lisanne touched her fingertips to the wall, and a fleximetal door retracted.

  The quiet women walked forward and sat in foam-rubber seats that faced each other within the graduated glass elevator. Silently, the fleximetal door sealed the enclosure. Pseudopodia secured their waists, and a female voice with a light French accent said, “Resident L. N. Breutschen: floor one hundred sixty-eight. Rate of ascent: medium.”

  The elevator shook, and the green park fell away.

  “I’m sorry about running off the other night,” announced Osa. “I was just…overwhelmed. I had no real right to question you that way. To question your…your….”

  “Authenticity?”

  “I had no right. It was unfair to judge you like I did. And rude.”

  The canvas of tuffgrass outside shrank. Tall buildings encroached upon its perimeters like advancing armies.

  It was clear that Osa was not done speaking—her long fingers twirled in her lap continuously as if shaping invisible taffy.

  The two women transcended forty floors in silence.

  Looking at the park, the tall beauty resumed, “Lots of dykes I know started to explore women because of bad experiences with men—really awful shit—when they were little or teens or whenever. Your reasons for your feelings—fo
r wanting to connect with a woman—aren’t less legitimate than anybody else’s. Even if it seems a little weird, you’re self-aware and are moving toward something you miss—something positive in your life that’s now gone.”

  “You have thought about this.”

  “Yeah,” said Osa, as a score of buildings sank behind her shoulders.

  Lisanne remarked, “I thought it was sweet when you accused me of incest.”

  The window of Osa’s lips framed a smile. “Thank you for not being a bitch about this.”

  “I have been on very few formal dates in my lifetime—none with women—and I do not know how to go about it. I was probably too candid.”

  The sinking skyline was abruptly eclipsed by the woman of Indian and Swedish descent as she leaned forward and pressed her lips to those of Lisanne. Carrying the flavors of lime, cranberries and vodka, the tall beauty’s tongue slid into the petite blonde’s mouth. Lisanne’s ears crackled from the elevation change, and her entire body warmed. Reaching up, she touched Osa’s smooth cheeks with her fingertips. Hands that were both strong and delicate ran through the pencil points of her short blonde hair.

  When the women pierced the clouds, the chute turned white.

  * * *

  The mattress exhaled.

  Dressed in a black negligee and matching socks (her feet were always cold), Lisanne lay upon her side; the weight of Osa’s nude body pressed into her back, radiating warmth.

  The mattress inhaled air fragrant with the smells of spice candles, and the sleeping surface rose two centimeters beneath the recumbent women.

  Lisanne always had a difficult time falling asleep with a new lover beside her: She perspired inexplicably and was seized by odd itches throughout the night, as if her system was creating antibodies in an attempt to fight off a foreign invader.