by Jean Rabe
She remembered that this past August he’d come knocking on her door, and she pretended to be out, though she’d almost caved. Maybe should have. Dear God, he still had that gorgeous face. She hadn’t opened her door to him in…what…fifteen, sixteen months? And before that she’d opened it way too often—back in the days before he became the poster child for malnourishment.
“I’m working a case, Tal. I’ve been busy.”
“A case.”
“The Cross Slayer.”
“Well, that’s a holy-dooly. So, you have some nuyen, right?”
Fraggin’ mooch.
Neither said anything for a few moments, letting the sound of the rain take over. It had let up a little, the drops smaller.
“Yeah, I have some nuyen,” she said finally. “You hungry?”
“Starvin’. Starvin’! I’m so hungry, Ninn. I ’aven’t eaten since—”
“Spring rolls do?” She gestured at the restaurant door. If she’d gone in the moment she’d thought about it, he wouldn’t have noticed her on the sidewalk.
“Anythin’, Ninn. Sooooooooooo hungry.”
“You can order whatever you like, take it back to your place, and—”
“I...don’t have a place, Ninn. Well, not a solid place right at the moment. And the homeless shelter…. Well, there was a problem there, and the guy that runs it said—”
The sidewalk trembled from a wave of thunder. What if the storm had more mana left in its cloudy innards? What if it still wasn’t safe to be outside?
“So you’re alley flopping?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t have a box somewhere?”
A nervous downward glance. “Yeah, I got a box, sometimes. Not now, but sometimes. And sometimes I stay down by the bridge by the pilings. Don’t need a box at the pilings, there’s some dry spots. Stinky Stella lets me crash with her sometimes. But the gangs are getting worse, meaner, and—”
“You can stay in my office.”
“Oh, Ninn, you’re a lifesaver! I love you love you love—”
“For tonight. Only tonight, Tal. Because of the storm.”
“One night only.” He nodded vigorously, the snarled strands of hair wiggling like snakes, and then looked hungrily at the restaurant door.
“Just tonight, Ninn, I understand.”
“Just tonight, Tal. We’re going to the resale shop next door first. You’re not raunching up my office with those rags. Shop first. Then we’ll pick up some spring rolls to take back and eat at my desk.”
“Whatever you say, Ninn. Been a long time. Too long.”
Mordred whispered into her head, as much as it was possible for him to whisper: “You got a history with this walking piece of refuse, Keeb? Or are you just being untowardly kind?”
She wondered if the gun could see her glare.
Eight
Like Old Times
Ninn sat in the high-backed chair at her desk, towel wrapped around her head, reveling in the strawberry scent from the soap she’d been so liberal with and imagining how much more intense the smell would be with the nose filter.
She’d washed up in the office bathroom and put on some new clothes—new to her via the discount aisle at the resale shop, a pair of gray linen slacks that were the perfect length but a hair too loose, and a black short-sleeved blouse that must have been pricey the first or second time it was on the rack. She thought she looked fragging nice in the ensemble—a multi-purpose garment she could wear for business or to a funeral. The other outfit she’d bought was more casual, could pass for tourist garb; just couldn’t help herself for liking the style. She had the nuyen to buy new, but the resale shop was one of her favorite haunts. Besides, bargain hunting left her more to put toward enhancements.
She’d bagged up the clothes lying around her office, and paid a service to pick it up and launder it all. Her wardrobe would be back late tomorrow afternoon.
Talon had washed up, too. She hadn’t given him a choice. If he was going to stretch out on her couch—which he was doing right now—he was going to be reasonably clean and as bug-free as possible. She’d bought him a pair of khakis and a long-sleeved shirt, both of which hid all the ropy scars…except for the one on the side of his neck. Dressed in the new clothes now, and under a light blanket, he snored soundly. His other clothes were history; the shirt had fallen apart when he took it off, and his shoes had been soleless. The loafers she’d bought him sat by the door, which she intended he leave by first thing in the morning. She had to get him out of here, before she started liking his company again.
The spring rolls had been surprisingly tasty, and they’d each eaten two full orders, washing it all down with a bottle of Shiraz. She had stronger stuff in her desk drawer, but she wanted to make sure Talon was indeed asleep, and not pretending. Ninn wasn’t going to share old scotch or her slips. Talon had asked her a half-dozen times after dinner if she had slips—or anything else mind-altering or questionable. She said she was out, that she was cutting back, trying to quit. She didn’t usually lie to him, but he also didn’t used to be so pathetic. Besides, it wasn’t all a lie; she intended to quit.
Maybe she should keep him around for a while instead. Not wanting to end up like him, he could serve as an incentive for her to get clean. Put him in her orbit again so she could climb out of the “lower deep.” Milton’s ancient words sprang into her thoughts: “…And in the lowest deep a lower deep, still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”
“So, are you going to spill?” Mordred made a tsking sound. “About this guy? Because clearly you knew him before we hooked up. And he’s sleeping on your couch. Where are you going to crash, Keebs? Couch ain’t big enough for both of you unless you get creative and have a naughty. So spill.”
“I’ve known him a while.”
“Obviously.”
“We were a couple once.”
“The Odd Couple, 1968. Herb Edelman played Vinnie.”
Her thumb went back and forth over a clear spot on the desk, like the surface was a worry stone. She looked at the clock: closing in on midnight.
“All those scars. Looks like someone practically butchered him, Keebs. You going to spill?”
“Talon just—” She turned off the smartlink.
Talon was her first real friend in the Cross, and her first and only romantic interest since leaving the States. Met him right after she’d been drummed out of AISE, moved to this neighborhood, and applied for a PI license. He’d worked part time in the clerical office, where she had to file her credentials. He’d asked her out.
She’d accepted.
He was beautiful after all, the most striking-looking elf she’d ever seen. And she needed a distraction after the AISE disappointment, and before that the crushing loss of her sister. Depression snowballing in her life, she was searching for something to lift her spirits, and he worked…for a time.
He was an incredibly beautiful distraction.
Talon had also been a great asset in her new line of work. He decked—or used to—and had a state-of-the-art datajack and could interface with practically any cyberdeck to trip through the Matrix like a dust mote riding the wind. A true wizard at surfing data streams in all the telecommunications grids, he’d tap calls for her, retrieve important files, sneak remotely into computer systems for vital tidbits, and make her life as a PI easier. He wasn’t a “legal” decker with gainful and legitimate software employment. No dataslave. His part-time clerical job was a front where people contacted him for runner gigs, usually corporate espionage plays. He made his real money in the shadows. It was serious nuyen. Had been serious nuyen.
Ninn let herself get close to him, closer than she’d ever gotten to anybody in a decade, and she even entertained the “happily ever after” notion. But the longer she knew him, the more troubling aspects surfaced, namely that his shifting makeup of runner companions were a bad influence on her. Ninn came to covet the augmentations some of those runners ha
d, and she started going under the knife to get them, a couple of times at street docs they recommended, but more often at reputable, licensed places, where the tech was more reliable and came with nuyen-back guarantees. She could afford the reputable places back then.
She’d never really been into drugs until moving to the Cross, fearing it might impair her police work. But Talon shared and she caved…Crystal Dream, Jazz, BTLs, Tempo, Deepweed, mood enhancers, performance enhancers, psychedelics…caved again and again, silencing random voices she heard and intensifying ghost sounds. Amazing. Was going to cave in a few moments, the slip of graypuppy sitting on her fingertips. Addicted to slips? At least a little, she admitted, got the shakes if she went too long without one. Graypuppy was her favorite. Might follow it with a scotch chaser. An alcoholic? At least a little on that account, too. A cyber-addict…hell, yes on that score, approaching a vatjob. She’d lost her sister, lost her AISE job, lost self-respect and self-control, lost Talon—dropped him actually—and gained one bad habit after another after another, collecting them like a spinster collects cats. The more she lost of herself, the easier it was to embrace bad habits.
Talon obviously had embraced a few more than she’d taken on. What was the phrase? “On the metho,” that was it, and the elf had sunk so low he’d drink methylated spirit. She’d learned to identify a metho from the vague, glassy-eyed expressions, and the accompanying scent of a brewery horse’s hind end. The more drugs he did, the fewer runner gigs he got…which led to him doing even more drugs to soften his hard times. To support his escalating habits, he’d started selling his augmentations and enhancements, going to whatever street doc paid the most for ripping out his parts, and eventually had to sell his jack. No more tripping through the Matrix. The long, thick scars showed that the street docs were neither very good nor cared what marks they left behind.
It was where Ninn had drawn the line; she wouldn’t have some doc cut out anything she’d already had implanted—unless it was for an upgrade. She wouldn’t sell herself to fuel her addictions…she’d been finding just enough work to cover the next new tech, a packet of slips, and a few bottles of booze. God, how far down this hole had she dove?
Did she have some kind of death wish? Everybody died sometime, eh? No one should live forever. Why not hurry the process along, see if there was something on the other side?
Did she care that little about herself?
Ninn certainly wasn’t the same person who’d brought her sister to Sydney trying to save her, who’d joined AISE to stay in police work. Not physically. Not mentally.
Chicago?
She couldn’t go back there, not like this.
A passage from Paradise Lost slid through her mind as she put the graypuppy slip on her tongue: “Our torments also may in length of time become our Elements.” Her curse and her pleasure were all rolled up into one little drug. Had she lost paradise by imbibing, or had she found it?
Ninn felt her senses deliciously twist as the drug took effect and the walls in her office started to breathe. Chicago drifted ever farther away.
She couldn’t go home again, could she?
The voices started again, conversations that boogied through her brain.
Don’t listen to them. Never listen to them.
In the back of her mind, she saw her sister; vibrant, beautiful, a dance student with aspirations of signing with a prestigious ballet company. The fire at the hall had scarred her—third-degree, full-thickness burns over eighty percent of her body. It had nearly killed her—maybe should have killed her right then—and the docs suggested Ninn consider a medical transport to Sydney, where a biotech corporation had made incredible strides in regrowing devastated flesh. Ninn’s sister didn’t have enough viable flesh left for the regrowth treatments in the States.
Ninn left Chicago Lone Star, used all of her savings on the transport and initial fees at the biotech corp, and then watched as some measure of success was achieved, hope was pirouetting in her brain, and then something went wrong and wrong again, and despite the technicians’ best efforts, her sister died anyway.
All that pain—for nothing.
Her ties with Lone Star cut, her nuyen down to wala-lang, and so no ability to return to Chicago, she managed to get on with AISE and started rebuilding her life and finances. She lived in a high-rise down by the harbor then, her AISE salary enough to pay for a nice studio with an acceptable view of the once-impressive bridge. Ninn began exploring the city, learned which clubs had the best bands, and even got some culture by visiting trendy galleries. A hint of happiness had intruded.
Then the AISE gig was stripped away by charges of a bad collar that she stood by to this day. She hadn’t liked seeing the AISE officers in the alley behind Cadi’s, and fervently hoped she wouldn’t run into any tomorrow while she was looking through Ella’s dressing room, poking around Cadigal’s. It was clear Lieutenant Waller would arrest her for even the slightest infraction.
Adding a second graypuppy slip on her tongue to chase away the bad memories, she saw the drab colors of the office brighten and shift, spin and glitter. The walls had a pulse now, and the paint cracks turned into veins that skittered in random patterns, like the storm’s pink lightning. All the delicious flavors from Chicago’s big summer food fair rolled across her tongue, the scents of the Windy City’s arboretum filled her nostrils. The surface of her desk felt like expensive velvet, and she rubbed her cheek against it and inhaled more of the summer food.
Summer in Chicago had never been as hot as summer here. Ninn closed her eyes, and the colors intensified and cavorted, blue chasing green chasing red chasing a buttery yellow that melted to reveal a vibrant purple that took flight on magnificent butterfly wings. She opened her eyes and fished in her bottom drawer, her fingers coiling like baby snakes around the neck of the scotch bottle, easing the cap off, chasing the colors with a double shot. Or was that a triple?
One more slip.
When everything was gone, drank and inhaled, she’d quit cold turkey. But until then, she’d revel in this rush.
The ceiling light turned all silvery, slowly whirling like an antique disco ball to music that played in her head. Ninn drummed her fingers against the velvet desk in time with the rhythm, swore she could hear a woman singing, dulcet tones enhanced by vocal augmentation. It was Ella Gance crooning, floating across the stage. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Perfect pitch. Perfect face. The image shifted and still Ella sang, but this time out of the slit in her neck, her eyes vacant and dead dead dead, and her fingers stiffening with rigor.
Sometimes slips coupled with alcohol did that, transported her to an unhappy place.
Shouldn’t have had two slips. Or was that three?
Shouldn’t have had the scotch. One more swallow.
One more.
Drain the bottle; she could always buy more with Cadi’s nuyen. No, she wouldn’t buy more. Couldn’t…
One more swallow…
Should stop it all and save herself. Lose and find paradise.
One more swallow, then toss the empty. Quit for good after the last swallow.
Quit.
The colors shifted again, all the shades of red in the world, running like blood, pooling on the floor and soaking the loafers she’d bought Talon, running up the couch and over his beautiful face, smothering him, swirling in the center of the room until they formed a whirlpool that sucked everything down.
Down.
Down…
Nine
Stranger at the Door
Ninn awoke to a mammoth headache and a persistent tapping on the door. Her mouth was desert dry, and her head hurt like it was being squeezed by a very big troll.
Talon was up, sitting on the couch, looking slightly rumpled but handsome, hands wrapped around her best mug. A glance to the shelf—he’d brewed coffee. He’d found the real stuff, not the soykaf next to the machine. And he’d raided her larder; food wrappers were strewn across the counter.
“Should I get that
?” His eyebrows rose. “Or are we gonna ignore it and hope they go away?”
We. Ninn hated the sound of that.
Her stomach rumbled. She felt so hungry.
The knocking continued.
She pushed up from the chair, her legs stiff from sitting in one position for…how long? A glance at the desk chrono: 5. Five hours she’d been out. Great. Who the hell would knock on her door this early in the…then the p.m. registered, as did the fact she’d soiled her new pants. Hours she’d been comatose, seventeen hours when she did the math. She should have spent the largest chunk of that time investigating the murders. Cadigal hadn’t paid her to crash.
Definitely had to stop the slips or the booze or both. There were plenty of AA and SA meetings in the Cross, she ought to attend one before the addictions killed her.
Look up a meeting up after she solved the Cross Slayer murders—if she could keep her head clear enough to work the case. Not if. She’d have to stay clear.
What was in the big box just inside the door? When had it arrived? Sometime in the past seventeen hours. On top of it draped the hanging bags with her clean laundry; it didn’t look like all of her clothes had come back. Maybe the rest would come tomorrow. Maybe they’d lost some of her shirts—again. The label on the box said Malden’s Finest Magnesium Powder. Great, another wrong delivery. She’d been able to eat the last wrong delivery, a sub sandwich, cup of chili, and barbecue chips order from Sandwitches 4 U. Maybe Talon would snort the magnesium. Maybe she’d make a quick run to Sandwitches and quiet her stomach.
“Ninn…you all right? You look…fuzzy. You were out a long time. Almost thought you flatlined.” He pointed to the big box. “I had to sign for that, for the laundry too, talked the laundry into billing you. I’m still pretty good at forgin’ your siggy.”
