Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

No, it wasn’t any of the above. It was the simple fact that she’d agreed. Agreeing was a little like acknowledging there was a problem in her life. Agreeing was a lot like admitting the very thin condition of the ice she skated on.

  So maybe agreeing wasn’t the greatest idea.

  But if that was true, then why was she so damned excited… ?

  104-106 Broadway was a fairly old building; nowhere was that fact more evident than in the service elevator. Its caged-in walls and nonexistent ceiling gave an open-air view of the elevator shaft itself. She could see the ancient cables and greased mechanisms that were hefting her upwards. She’d seen such things before.

  What she hadn’t seen were the interior walls of the shaft, covered as they were with posters from all over the world. With every floor, the motif changed: Two to Three was China, Three to Four was India, Four to Five the Caribbean. Travel posters alternated with works of native art, all neatly spaced and heavily stressing their native esthetic charm.

  “Wow,” Katie said, staring at the ascendant imagery. “Who did this?”

  The black man smiled with pride, like he’d been biding his time for a long while, just waiting for somebody to come along and notice. “Let me put it to you this way. Ah spend round ‘bout sixty hours a week in this thing, jus’ goin’ up and down. By itself, that ain’t no way to see the world.”

  Katie turned to look at him. “So you did this.”

  “Little bit at a time. Got a niece, she works for American Express Travel Service. She sneaks em to me.”

  At the sixth floor, it ended; a flat expanse of dirty gray walls and doors concluded its trek to the vanishing point.

  “Looks like you got a ways to go yet. Still,” she told him, “I have to say: this is the finest elevator shaft I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well, shoot.” He laughed. “You do what you can, so long as you’re here.”

  “The best of us do, anyway,” she said, then caught herself subconsciously before she could go on. Colin’s voice was in her head, sardonic as ever, saying it’s nice to be nice to the nice, isn’t it, dear? She hated his snotty inbred British cynicism, but she had to admit, there came a point where she tended to lay it on a bit too thick.

  The elevator man seemed to sense it, had the grace to ride the last two floors in silence. “Good luck to your friend, sunshine,” he said at last, braking them at the ninth floor doorway. “I got a good feeling about you.”

  ” Predate it.” She beamed. “I hope you’re right.”

  He threw open the door.

  “Thanks again…” she began, stepped out onto the floor, and then stopped in mid-thought, staring.

  At the loft.

  It wasn’t the largest she’d ever been in; she’d seen, and slept in, a few that would put this to shame, both in fixtures and cubic footage. But that didn’t diminish the fact that it was huge; and no one, but no one, had ever actually offered her a shot at anything comparable that didn’t involve a whole lot of bending over.

  The central room was sixty feet long by thirty feet wide, with wide-plank hardwood floors and smaller renditions of the same Corinthian columns that graced Bayamo’s cavernous expanse. In the far corner, a kitchenette—evidently somewhat of an afterthought—nestled near what appeared to be a short set of stairs leading up to the bathroom. Lots of plain white shelves on a plain white wall, all in need of a good cleaning and a fresh coat of paint. There were quite a few boxes and garbage bags sitting around, a few empty St. Pauli’s and Classic Coke bottles, a half-eaten sandwich adrift in its wrapper. Otherwise, the east end of the loft was functionally nondescript, and demanded little more than her passing attention.

  Unlike the other side, which consumed her entirely.

  The wall was ablaze with light. The sun’s westward descent tracked straight across the main room’s three huge windows, and it put on a helluva floor show: brilliant golden fire, shining through to warm the exposed brick walls, the rich wood of the floors, and Katie’s heart. She felt a sudden rush of peaked anticipation; Bob Fosse couldn’t have timed it better. This place got sunlight, alright. God, did it ever. It would be great for her plants. It would be great for just plain basking in.

  She’d taken another five steps in the room, transfixed, when a voice came from behind.

  “You came. Great.” The girl bounced off the bathroom steps and made for her, hand outstretched. It was the one from downstairs, alrightee: Meryl something-or-other. “Yesyesyes. I desperately need your help,” she whispered, shaking Katie’s hand.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused. But I still need your help.”

  Katie was somewhat stymied. She’d never seen anyone drink two Devil’s Tails and retain basic motor control, much less be lucid. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you …”

  “Shhhhh, they’re coming.” Meryl-girl gestured to the front room, and Katie saw the telltale vapor trail in her movements. She held it well, but she was lit, no two ways around it. “Listen, be a pal, huh? Just say you’ll take it.”

  “What?” Katie wondered what the hell she was talking about. She heard voices, coming from what looked like the bedroom.

  “I give you the tour and offer you the slot,” Meryl-girl said. “You say you’ll take it. Simple.” She slurred her sibilants, just a bit. Katie was about to press for more information when the voices rounded the corner.

  And Daddy Bigbucks reentered the picture, beaming as a squeaky voice squealed “… ooooooh, this is just wonderful!”

  He was busy showing the apartment to a girl that filled a definitive type-slot in the city, particularly that section of the Village dominated by New York University: perfect hair in a perfect little ponytail, perfectly clear skin, perfectly straight teeth shining out from behind perfectly tight little lips. Body by Nautilus. Brain by Hostess. The kind that would marry well and age badly, fighting off the march of time by stretching every character line down at the Park East clinic until her cheeks were tight enough to bounce a quarter off of. She saw a lot of them in the restaurant, sucking back five-dollar margaritas all night long and talking about their last trip to the Caribbean or their next trip to the south of France. She could see that Dad approved. She was not surprised.

  She could also see, for what it was worth, that Meryl had about as much in common with this princess as a Ming vase had with a Skippy jar. One good look at Meryl and Katie knew that Daddy was about a million miles off the mark. His little girl was a different one indeed.

  Not just strange; strange had become a way of life for Katie. Strange was normal. Strange was boring.

  It was just that Meryl was different in a way Katie had a hard time putting a finger on, something that had nothing to do with her hair or her clothes or her attitude. Maybe it was her mouth, the way the corners turned down in that peculiar kind of inverse smile that looks almost like a frown and makes the smiler appear privy to some very private punch line. Maybe it was her voice, which was a throaty, melodious rasp that she could scarcely believe coming from someone so young. It sounded, slurs and all, like the voice of an old soul.

  It sounded like a voice Katie wouldn’t mind getting to know.

  Enough so that she hung around for the next sixty seconds, which counted among the strangest in her life. It reminded her of a John Cage performance, lining up two different marching bands playing two different scores on opposite ends of a football field and marching them toward each other. Because Meryl-girl grabbed her by the arm and started touring around the place, in full view of Dad and the princess.

  “This, of course, is the living room, and over here is the kitchen,” she said, with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for a Catskills condo timesharing salesman. “It gets lots of light, as you can see. Used to be a studio of some sort. Great for plants. You like plants?”

  “I, uh—”

  “Great. Now if you step over here,” she whipped Katie around like a passenger on the Coney Island Tilt-A-Whirl and pointed her at a doorway. “This you’re g
onna love.”

  Meryl turned and leveled a pointed stare at Dad and the princess. “This,” she said, not slurring at all, “is your room.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Katie was sliding back down the greased shaft. The elevator operator, whose name was Lee, smiled as she got on but otherwise kept to himself; the mark of a true New Yorker. Be nice, or butt out. Whichever way the wind blows.

  As it was, Katie’s head was spinning, trying to figure out exactly what just went down. Was Meryl-girl really offering her a place? Or was it an elaborate ruse? For that matter, was she really even looking?

  The facts and figures were a blur. She’d given her name and number, and of course they knew where she worked. They promised to contact her within the week.

  Meryl seemed really biased in her favor, much to the twinkie’s dismay; come to think of it, Daddy didn’t seem too terribly upset, either. She wasn’t really surprised by the turnaround, the way he kept feeling her up with his eyes. But he’d be in Boston. She could handle Daddy just fine. Yes, the smaller bedroom would be fine. Size was relative; small here was downright gargantuan compared to her current accommodations. There were already bookshelves in the room. Four hundred a month? Are you kidding? And a big closet. And exposed brick walls. She could handle anything. Phone in Meryl’s name? No problem. At last, a sanctuary.

  Somewhere to call home.

  Free of Colin.

  Free of anyone…

  Just before they hit the ground floor, Lee glanced over at her. “So what’s the good word? Think your friend’ll like it?”

  “I’ll have to ask her.” Katie smiled. “But I think she just might.”

  4

  COLIN’S WORLD

  It was a loverly evening for a knob-job. Colin felt, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle notwithstanding, that he could assert as much with very little danger of contradiction whatsoever.

  True, he’d had a bit of trouble getting his willie to stiffen: the downside of the cocaine. Fortunately, the drug had quite the opposite effect on the lovely little bird whose lips were now so lugubriously a-twitter at his loins. For girls like her, just the thought of that lily-white powder was a social lubricant nonpareil. When he cut the lines, her knees were already en route to the carpet; such a delightful display of causality in motion could scarcely be imagined.

  And so he had lain back on the bed, bearing his wand to her, abandoning himself to her pharmaceutically inspired ministrations. It seemed to him a quite benign way of wiling away the dreary hours remaining before his intended’s anticipated return. Certainly better than wanking off, which always struck him as a dreadful waste of perfectly good semen not to mention bath tissue.

  Colin Bates was a bit of a scoundrel, as he would be the first to admit. He would also point out, if pressed, that he failed to see much point in being any other way. It had been, after all, his great misfortune to spend forty-three years, seven months, five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes on a planet entirely too stupid for words. That came out to fifteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three days, plus the one thousand and twenty minutes ticked off thus far on today’s spectacular yawning stretch. All in all, a grand total of twenty-two million, nine hundred and thirty thousand, two hundred and twenty-seven minutes had been witnessed by Colin Bates thus far, most of them spent wondering why this wearisome accident had bothered to take place.

  So long as he was here on Spaceshit Earth, he had resigned himself to the task of remaining amused. As such, he had virtually no patience with that which failed to amuse him. And seeing as how it was an incredibly stupid planet, its social behavior governed largely by rules evolved over the centuries by apes who insisted upon the conceit of calling themselves a “higher” species—as if that meant anything at all—genuine amusement was painfully hard to come by. A handful of truly great works, generated all too rarely by a far smaller handful of truly great minds; beyond that, the seemingly endless drool that comprised the plebeian human stew.

  While he waited for another infinitesimally rarefied spark of brilliance to brazenly ignite in the undifferentiated goo, Colin had to console himself with what scant pleasures the earthly plane afforded. Mind-altering chemicals, for one: in quantity, whenever possible. As he was often wont to express, reality was for people who couldn’t handle drugs.

  Of late, cocaine was his controlled substance of choice; the insular numbness it provoked was in line with his preferred worldview. But he was also fond of the occasional psychedelic, the doorways of extraordinary perception to be found there. And tobacco was a mainstay time-waster, in a life filled with far too much time for the wasting.

  Sex was another of his favorite pastimes: as varied as possible, as often as possible. Though he not infrequently found it a dawdle, as predictable primate rituals go it was certainly one of the best. He liked the way it made the tick-tocking seconds run together into molten continuums, Daliesque clocks of jism and flesh. He liked the simple, pleasurable self-absorbtion that his stimulated member demanded.

  The moment at hand was a case in point. Whatever little else of note could be said about his companion of the moment, she certainly was an ardent little cocksucker.

  Her tongue had a way of darting thither and yon, rather the way he fancied a hummingbird might if enclosed in a mason jar. It seemed to be everywhere at once, lighting with feathery enthusiasm all about the length of his shaft. Of particular appeal was the amount of attention she expended on behalf of his cushy german helmet.

  This was not to suggest that she was in any way remiss with regard to the up-and-down pumping motion so important in such matters. To this task, she brought both hands to bear, and skilled little workers they were. In addition, she made quaint little mewling sounds which, he had to admit, added greatly to the overall excitement.

  Colin raised himself up on his elbows, in order to better observe the proceedings. Her name, if he was not mistaken, was Abbie. Not that it made the slightest wisp of a difference. The names and faces of his many coke-whores had a tendency to run together, so interchangeable were they.

  At any rate, Abbie—or whatever her name was—was a jolly bit of fun to watch. Her cheeks bulged delightfully as she harbored his vessel. She was blessed with ample buttocks and breasts that wibbled and wobbled as she worked. Her dark and rather severe bangs fell over her eyes, which was to their mutual advantage, as he doubted that she would really want to know what the look on his face revealed with regard to his true feelings about her.

  It was in this state of recombinant contempt, amusement, and excitation that Colin found himself when he heard Katie’s key penetrate the front door lock.

  “Oh, bloody hell!” he blurted, jolting rather abruptly into a seated position. This came as quite a surprise to Abbie-or-whatever as well; she let out an undignified glorping sound as the tip of his cock hit the back of her throat.

  At the far end of the flat, the front door swung open. Colin’s nerve-endings, stimulated as they were, registered the skreee of the functioning hinges much as they might a hearty bite of tinfoil. It piqued the beginnings of his very foul temper, brought his bad back molars together in a grinding clench.

  He hated the mathematical imprecision of the compromised position, the fact that his meticulously orchestrated agenda could be so easily thrown out of whack. He specifically hated the inevitable cataclysm that he knew was now coming, as surely as her footsteps closed the distance in the hall.

  Most of all, in the moment, he hated Katie: for her chronic inability to hold to schedule; for the batty-eyed innocence with which it was done; for the way she would wilt as the damage unfolded.

  In short, for being herself.

  “Colin?” her voice piped up: Scarlet fucking O’Hara in Eighties regalia. The coke-whore hastily withdrew his digit from her dainty palate and looked up at him, panic as warm in her eyes.

  “Colin, honey, are you in?”

  “Just a moment, dearest,” he answered back. First things first: the honey, then the boot
heel. “Have a seat. I’ll be out in a jiffy.”

  Abby (or Tabby, or whatever she was) was upright in a flash, hastening to straighten her many many straps and buttons. Colin made the token gesture of pulling up his trousers; it was, he knew, far too late to manufacture the pretense of innocence, but it seemed the very least he could do. If he had to get caught in the act, he’d bloody well do it with dignity, not flagrant delicto, in foolish and full red-membered repose.

  The bedroom door squeaked open, and Katie-love was there: twinkling eyes and red lips smiling, no doubt in preparation for some quaint and cozy expression of how very much he meant to her. The gesture, whatever it was meant to be, transmuted with alarming speed into something far less flattering. He looked at her, but her eyes were no longer for him; they were locked, instead, with unblinking fixation, upon his little prick-attendant.

  “You’re early,” he said.

  Her attention snapped back toward him, then; he could see the flint where her anger would spark within the shock-dilated eyes. That moment had not yet arrived, however; if he seized it first, and kept her reeling, the battle could yet be his.

  “Whatever,” he continued, fastening his trousers in an absent gesture of utter calculation. “Katie-love, this is Abby… that is Abby, right? And this is Katie, the love of my life.”

  “Hi,” Abby muttered, still struggling with her raiment. Katie simply stood there, blinking, as if she’d just sustained a sharp blow to the head. It was difficult for Colin to conceal his amusement; the reek of absurdity was a tangible presence in the air.

  “At any rate, Abby just popped by for a quick quarter-gram. She’s got to scurry on now. Mustn’t you, dear?”

  “Uh, yeah!” She certainly was fleet of foot and wit. “Uh, thanks, Colin. Nice meetin’ ya. Umm …” And with that, she propelled herself out of the room at a pace just short of supersonic.

  Which left him alone with his long-suffering sweet, who had not yet managed to capture her breath. She resembled nothing more than a singularly lifelike statue, one of those animatronic amusements that were rumored to populate Walt Disney World. He contemplated her static beauty for a moment, felt a twinge of remorse that he promptly scuttled, and then went on with the charade.