Corpus Chrome, Inc.

by S. Craig Zahler

  “But he’s alive and you guys have a bond of some kind, ’cause that’s how it is with fathers and sons. You can make it better if you want to—you’re a grown-up now. A lot better than harassing your ex-wife.”

  A red light blinked on the dashboard.

  “Shit on shit,” exclaimed Mikek. “Only people filling a canister this time of night are drunk kids puking and pissing in it.”

  Surprising both himself and the driver, Champ said, “You’re right. I should see him.”

  * * *

  The garbage man sniffed the armpits of the K!RaZee t-shirt that he had snatched from his locker, smelled nothing awful, exited the foam-rubber cab and stepped onto the raised sidewalk, upon which u-shaped vine trees stood in small plots of lavender grass. Yawning, he walked toward a thumping façade, where an animation loop of a wrecking ball that was embossed with a frothy beer mug smashed into a fat man’s head (which was made out of bricks).

  Seated upon a buoyed stool to the right of the entrance was a hugely muscular Asian doorman, clothed in a maroon suit, who watched a petite girl half Champ’s age press her fingertips to the black glass of the identification placard. The device’s approval light turned green, and the fleximetal door slid into the ground. Music and the bolstered mirth of inebriation roared through the portal, sending a terrified turkey pigeon into the air. The petite girl tightened her vermillion slip and walked into the establishment.

  Champ pulled his long hair behind his ears as he approached the Asian doorman.

  “One hundred globals,” said the edifice of muscle.

  “Really?”

  “Are you a policeman or a fireman?”

  “No.”

  “A woman? I’ve been surprised, but the placard will let me know.”

  “I’m a man.”

  “One hundred globals.”

  “Why so much?”

  “Deters losers.”

  “Seems expensive for a bar. Are the drinks really expensive?”

  The Asian man shrugged. “I get mine free,” he said, dusting a pectoral muscle as if it were the fender of a valuable car.

  Champ sighed, fingered his identification, acknowledged a liability waiver and accepted the debit (from which the Global Senate got their twelve percent). The fleximetal door slid into the ground. Cheers, laughter, polyrhythmic music, malt beer and cinnamon assaulted him.

  The garbage man walked inside and winced as the noise overwhelmed his ears. His pupils gradually adjusted to the dim red and blue lighting of the nightclub, a place seemingly designed to confound the senses.

  Cautiously, Champ proceeded. He observed a dance area, which had mote footprints (to aid the uncoordinated) and buoyed dummy partners (both muscular and voluptuous), and, two meters above head level, he saw the floating circular booths that orbited the large establishment. A new song (louder than the last) shook the walls, and a titanic Asian fellow slammed into the garbage man, revealed a (golden-stitch) lion skull chest tattoo and roared.

  Champ backed away and accidentally elbowed the young woman who had preceded him into the club. “Sorry about that!”

  “Leave me alone!” she replied, reaching into her koala bag for something that would hurt strangers.

  The garbage man retreated.

  Five girls who were trying to look much older than they were crossed his path, their progress linear and connected, like that of a locomotive. He made eye contact with the caboose and received a frown. A moment later, six jackals in suits whose eyes were agleam with imagined penetrations followed after the quintet.

  Champ surveyed the slowly orbiting booths until he descried the mannequin in one that floated on the far side of the establishment. Eagle Sappline wore fireman’s neon green and had his arms spread across the bare shoulders of two dark-haired young women. Also at the table were Potato O’Boyd, Bagel Butch, Pedro Cheung and a black couple.

  The garbage man plowed through onlookers, dopes and drunkards and eventually reached the shadow of the buoyed booth.

  There, Champ titled his head back and yelled, “Dad!”

  Potato O’Boyd looked down his russet proboscis, saw nothing and returned his gaze to the re-bodied man, who appeared to be telling an anecdote.

  Champ strode beneath the floating booth and shouted, “Potato!” at a volume that hurt his throat.

  The oldster looked out, surveying the crowd, as if some long-forgotten memory or spouse had resurfaced to accost him.

  “Down here!” yelled the garbage man, waving his arms. “Look down here!”

  Potato O’Boyd looked down at Champ and squinted.

  “We’ve only got room for girls up here,” said the Irish American.

  “It’s Champ! It’s Eagle’s son! I’m Eagle’s son.”

  Potato O’Boyd leaned over to Bagel Butch and said something to him. The Jewish man leaned over the edge and looked down at Champ.

  “It’s the garbage man,” said Bagel Butch, nodding his head.

  The Irish American said something to the mannequin, and the re-bodied man responded. Champ circumnavigated a shoving match and returned to his spot beside and below the orbiting booth.

  “It’s too crowded to use the rope ladder!” yelled the Irish American. “Sorry!”

  Champ said, “Okay,” and felt melancholy suffuse his blood. His efforts (and one hundred globals) had led to yet another disappointing experience with his father. The garbage man wondered whether he should wait at the bar for a little while or just leave the place altogether.

  Leaning out, Bagel Butch pointed to the right. “We’ll get you over there when we swing around.”

  Champ looked in the indicated direction and saw a ramp that he had not earlier noticed. To the Jewish man he said, “Great. Thanks!”

  The garbage man hastened to and up the ramp, and as the floating booth glided alongside the platform, he hopped onto its carpeted floor. Looking over, the old men and the black couple waved greetings at the new arrival.

  “This is my son,” said Eagle, addressing the young raven-haired women who were underneath his arms. “Of…a bitch…brother. This is my son-of-a-bitch brother, Champ.”

  The swarthy pair smiled and mouthed greetings that were inaudible.

  “This one’s Gina,” informed the mannequin, squeezing the shoulder of the girl on his left, “and this one’s Nicole,” he said, clasping the one on his right. Both ladies wore yellow and indigo camisoles and matching webwork along their arms and necks.

  “They’re curious girls,” explained Eagle.

  “Hello,” said Champ, nodding to the women and embarrassed by the envy that he felt. He then took a seat next to the oldsters, across from the mannequin, his dates and the black couple, who were having their own private conversation.

  Gina sipped an oily pink and green cocktail.

  “How is it?” asked Eagle.

  “It’s transporting.”

  “Looks weird. What’s in there?”

  The woman took another sip, savoring the flavor. “Vodka, infused with lemongrass, lemon peel, star anise and lilac.”

  “Can I try it?” asked the re-bodied man.

  Gina shared a funny grin with Nicole and summarily slid the drink in front of Eagle. The re-bodied man screwed a beaded, dark red thimble onto the tip of his right pinky finger and dipped it into the cocktail. Two tiny air bubbles arose from the extension.

  “Tastes like medicine,” said Eagle.

  “I like it,” defended Gina.

  A second pair of bubbles floated up from the thimble.

  “Like medicine and groin sweat. Hell, that shit’s awful.”

  The woman reclaimed her drink and sipped another kitten’s portion. “It’s transporting,” she reconfirmed.<
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  Eagle wiped his dripping thimble on his neon green FDNY shirt and raised it in the air. “Let me get something good on this.”

  Potato O’Boyd pushed a glass of Scotch across the table.

  The re-bodied man submerged his extension, and two bubbles floated to the surface. “Shit, this’s good. Is it the thirty-year?”

  “Yessir.”

  “This shit’s expensive.”

  “At my age,” Potato O’Boyd said, “there’s no reason to drink anything reasonably priced.”

  Leaving his left pinky inside the Scotch glass, Eagle looked at Nicole and nodded his head. “It’s time.”

  Excited, the woman shared a glance with her peer and then stuck a magnetic device that was shaped like a hockey puck on the side of the mannequin’s head.

  “Give it to me!” demanded Eagle.

  Nicole squealed, pressing the button that was in the center of the device. An icon that looked like a congregation of psychedelic amoebas blinked thrice.

  “Which tweaker is that?” asked Champ.

  “Paisley brain,” answered Pedro Cheung, cackling drunkenly. “He loves this one.”

  Eagle removed his pinky from the whiskey, wobbled against Nicole and slumped heavily upon Gina. Laughing, the women helped him sit upright.

  The mannequin looked at his son and shouted, “You should be drinking! You need to be drinking!” He activated the menu and typed rapidly.

  “Whoa!” exclaimed Bagel Butch, pushing his friend’s gelware hand from the screen.

  “Don’t go hysterical. My son needs—” Eagle cut himself short. “My suntanned brother needs to get wrecked. It’s…it’s imperative.”

  “I don’t think he needs thirty shots,” opined Bagel Butch.

  “I don’t,” agreed Champ. “I’ve got the morning shift tomorrow.”

  “Are you a fireman, too?” asked Gina.

  “I’m a garbage man.”

  “Oh.” The woman forced a patronizing smile.

  Champ said, “Our mother didn’t want both of her beloved sons risking their lives as firefighters, and I—unfortunately—lost the coin toss.”

  “That’s right!” yelled Eagle. “What do you wanna drink…hermano?”

  “Pick something you want to dip your thimble into and I’ll get it for us. My treat.”

  “The garbage man’s a big spender,” said Gina.

  The mannequin looked at the raven-haired woman, his gelware face neutral, devoid of expression.

  “Are you okay?” asked Bagel Butch.

  Eagle looked away from Gina and smiled at Champ. “I’d like you to get something with tequila in it. Always liked that flavor. Tastes like spring break.”

  The garbage man activated the embedded menu and dialed to the screen of tequilas, where he selected one that was more than half the cover charge, fingerprinting his authorization. A half-filled glass soon emerged from an iris in the table.

  Eagle played the gelware fingertips of his right hand along Nicole’s bare shoulder. “I looked just like Champ before they put me in the robot.”

  “I hope you dressed better,” remarked Gina.

  The mannequin withdrew his arms from the women, picked up their oily cocktails and threw them off of the floating booth. “You girls should leave at the next ramp.”

  “You’re kicking us off?” asked Nicole, incredulous.

  “I am.”

  “Gina was just joking.”

  “Saying mean stuff and calling it a joke doesn’t make it nice,” remarked Eagle. “I let it go before, but she hit her limit.”

  “You’re seriously kicking us off?” asked Gina.

  “I didn’t come back from the dead to hang out with stuck-up bitches.”

  The floating booth stopped. Scowling, the two raven-haired women stood up, squeezed between the table and the men’s knees and strode onto the platform.

  Gina called back, “Go to hell, you dumb old men.”

  Bagel Butch replied, “Old-fashioned Hell or that new one with calamari?”

  The old firemen laughed, and the black couple chuckled. Champ grinned as the booth floated away from the ramp.

  “They should have planks on these booths,” stated Eagle. “And that flag with the skull and bones.”

  “I’d pay extra for those amenities,” remarked Potato O’Boyd.

  “Anemones?” inquired Pedro Cheung, who was far from sober.

  Champ sipped the tequila and pushed it across the table to his father. “Thanks.”

  Eagle stuck his thimble inside the glass. “I’m glad you came out.” Two tiny bubbles rose from his carmine attachment. “Kick the stars, is this shit good.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  The re-bodied man leaned in close to his son. “There’s a woman in the next one over who’s been watching you ever since you got here.”

  Casually, the garbage man glanced back. Two forty-year-old-women who wore bright cashmere suits looked away from him.

  “The one with the pink hair?” asked Champ, hopeful.

  “That’s her. Why don’t you invite her over? I’ll take her friend.”

  * * *

  The forty-four-year-old black man who had accompanied the septuagenarians (and, coincidentally, gone to the same elementary school as Champ) waved good-bye to his impressive wife Molly (who had twice eyed the garbage man in a somewhat suggestive manner) and stomped upon the jump pedal. Telescopic legs loaded with combustion relay springs shot the bright red fire wagon into the air above the station. Balconies and windows and billboards and roofs and antennas and float-ads and solar panels fell away, and the sky expanded, its dark canvas flecked with moon-limned clouds that looked like the strokes of hasty painters. Champ looked down and saw the city shrink as if it were a healing laceration.

  “This is so much awesomer than in my first life,” Eagle said to his son and the pair of forty-year-old Texas businesswomen who sat between the Sapplines on the air bench. (Potato O’Boyd and Bagel Butch were battling the undertow of sleep in the rear of the craft, occasionally admitting snores of defeat.)

  “My ears are popping!” Pretty exclaimed to Eagle, clapping her palms to the sides of her head. “It’s so fast!”

  “It’s great, right?” enthused the re-bodied man. “Hop into the sky and zip where you gotta go, and just drag along how much water you need. In my first life, we wasted tons of time stuck in traffic while people were getting burnt up. This’s way better.”

  Eagle leaned forward in his seat and said to the pilot, “Thanks for taking us up. I really wanted Champ to see this.”

  “My pleasure, Captain Sappline,” said Douglas.

  Doreen, the handsome admirer with pink hair, leaned her head against Champ’s shoulder. “This is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  The multicolored lights of the city were replaced by lunar rays, and the soft, cool luminance made the woman’s face look like that of a Grecian statue. Champ brushed pink bangs from two blue eyes that looked upon him with the intensity of floodlights. His heart thumped.

  “That’s quite a look you’re giving me,” said the garbage man.

  Doreen leaned into him; her lavender cashmere suit was impossibly soft and smelled of lilacs. “You look so handsome when you smile,” she said, “like an actor or somebody famous.”

  Champ had not been complimented so directly in years, and he blushed. The floodlights brightened, enthralling him. If this woman had asked him to get woolly mammoth meat or to move her antique cast-iron sewing machines or to grapple with a knife-wielding intruder, he would have complied. Whether this was a conditioned response or a genetic one or a type of mysterious energy two sibling spirits shared, he did not kno
w, but for three heartbeats, he forgot who he was and where he was, and all he felt was the magnetism of her.

  Champ kissed Doreen upon the lips, and she opened her mouth. Warm tongues played behind the fences of teeth. Hands slid across backs.

  The craft reached the apex of its launch, paused and began to sink.

  Champ’s heart rose toward his throat. Doreen’s tongue thrust urgently. The fire wagon fell, as did they.

  Douglas fingered the lift, and hull thrusters flashed. The craft stopped, jostling the couple apart and eliciting a giggle from each of them.

  Eagle leaned forward, a lopsided grimace warping his gelware face. Champ deciphered the expression as a congratulatory wink.

  “You two are meant for each other, I can tell,” opined the re-bodied man. “Total destiny.”

  Scarlet and pink, Doreen took Champ’s hand and asked, “Do you think…would you ever think about coming out to Texas for a vacation, maybe? A weekend? Something like that?”

  The garbage man presumed that the woman had asked him these questions because she did not want to sleep with a man whom she would never again see (and maybe also to find out if he thought that she was worth a trip). Regardless of her reasoning, a seat on a shuttle to Texas was well beyond his budget.

  Champ opened his mouth to respond in earnest when Eagle said, “Of course he’ll get down to Texas. We’re gonna go there soon and visit some friends. Get some hats. Have some rodeos.”

  “Really?” asked Doreen. “Which area?”

  “All around the whole darn thing,” replied Eagle. “We’ll just swing on by.”

  Doreen unfastened her pseudopodia, straddled Champ’s lap and kissed him like a succubus.

  Eagle chirped.