by F P Adriani
The café part to the place used to be the more dominant part, but now I wondered if that had changed too. My memory started coming back even more, and I remembered this building was on a big lot with quite a bit of space behind it, empty space for adding even more bedrooms….
In my mind, I both sighed and groaned, feeling disgusted and somewhat dirty, and not liking the feeling. That Tan chose just that moment to step right beside me and flash me his own brand of disgusted look again—that didn’t help matters.
He, too, had put up his helmet, but I could still clearly see his eyes, could see how shocked they suddenly looked.
I knew my having run in here was risky. The whole thing, the letters, still could have been a trap. But, if it was a trap, what choice did I have except to trigger it? If I didn’t, it was possible the person would come after me anyway when I wasn’t expecting it. At least wherever I expected it might happen, I’d have my guard up, as I did now….
“Can I help you?” someone called from the bar at my right.
I turned that way and then my feet began moving toward the voice even before my brain thought I should go there.
The narrow red bartop was on the small-side, was more like a counter with a few chairs along it and a computer cash-register on top. A man stood near the register; he was loading some glasses onto a black glass rack behind him.
“Thanks for asking,” I said to him now as I opened my helmet more. I rolled my eyes and made an annoyed sound. “Actually, I’ll be honest: I want to know about a guy, my boyfriend really. I think he’s come here with someone else. My cousin here said he saw them,” I motioned over to Tan, “but I want to be sure. I’m supposed to be getting engaged to the guy!”
The bartender’s big brown eyes were down on his big brown hands as they laid another glass in the rack’s plastic cylindrical holders. “You know how many people come in here?”
I looked to my left, and then over my left shoulder, my eyes sweeping along the crowd of adults—and they were a crowd, a big one, practically wall-to-wall human bodies. Some were eating, others were laughing; and still others were half-locked together, looking very ready to rent the bedrooms.
“I see what you mean,” I said, turning back to the bartender.
“When it’s crowded here, I wouldn’t even notice my own mother walking in.”
I frowned at him a little. “It’s just that this is really important. I know you have a register for the back rooms….”
He laid the glass in his hand onto the bartop a little too hard, and his brow dropped over suddenly thunderous eyes. “What is this—a raid? There are NO kids in here. I’m very careful about checking ID when people look very young.”
I shook my head fast. “No—no raid. Please! Do I look like that?”
His hand motioned toward my helmet. “What’s with the head-gear?”
“I’ve been here before, but I’m not from here. It’s nerve-wracking—no atmosphere out there!” I kind of shivered, and then I reached up and lowered my helmet off my head, flashing him a little smile. “Guess maybe I’m too paranoid.”
“So is your cousin.”
I glanced at Tan, who’d sat down at one of the tables and was in the process of taking a drink from a server’s hand, while his helmet was still down. “Oh,” I said, “he just does whatever I do. He’s a little younger than me, and we’re like brother and sister. His father’s married to my aunt. Anyway,” my head went back to the bartender, “can I maybe speak to the owner here?”
“You are speaking to the owner here.”
I flushed a little. “Oh. I thought I remembered a woman….”
“My wife,” he said. And then he added, “Who are you looking for exactly?” There was something about his eyes; they glared the word SKEPTICISM. Clearly, he didn’t believe a damn thing I’d said to him.
At first I felt a bit embarrassed, as if I were losing my touch. But then I decided to use his shrewdness to my advantage.
“I don’t know. I’ll know the person if I see him. Or her.”
“I can’t help you,” he said.
I leaned toward the bar more, half-sitting on one of the high stools. “What about a price? Do you have one?”
“No,” he said in a firm voice.
I frowned again and started leaving my chair.
“But,” he added then, “I’m willing to be persuaded. Who knows how much might win me over?”
I laughed, but he didn’t smile back at me or anything. He straightened up more and seemed to be waiting for whatever my next move—or offer—was.
My ass slid back to the chair. I lowered my voice till it (hopefully) was audible to only him. “How much do you charge for one of the bedrooms for the night? I’ll double that for an hour in your office to look at the register.”
*
There was a big red door between the café and the back rooms, and once the owner had taken Tan and I through the doorway—under the guise that we were renting a bedroom—he pulled the hall door shut on the noisy café crowd.
“I hope this isn’t a mistake,” he said.
“It isn’t,” I replied.
He motioned for Tan and I to go in through the open doorway of his office on the right.
Then he joined us inside, closed the door—and locked it. “Give me the money. I’ll pull out the books; then you’ve got an hour. I’ve got a camera in here, by the way, so if you snoop on anything else, I’ll know. Let me see your ID too.”
I showed him my Stacy Space Passport; Tan showed his Frank Space Passport. And then the guy flashed us dubious eyes. Really, with his instincts, he should have been working for the UPG. Or, for all I knew, maybe he had worked for them, or he was working for them now. But I wasn’t about to query him on that….
I paid him the money I’d promised; then he pulled out six books that supposedly went back a year; then he left the room and closed and locked the door again.
Tan and I got to work. “I don’t know what you think you’re gonna find in here,” he said as I pushed one of the books toward him across the owner’s big desk.
“Neither do I. But I have to try.…” I lowered my voice. “Don’t speak anymore. Just read.”
We both just read, for the better part of the hour…and we didn’t see anything noteworthy until we had ten minutes left. And then what I’d seen really wasn’t that noteworthy….
It was an undercover name the courier file had said Dylan used; the name was in the May’s Moonrest register from two months before. If it was actually Dylan and not a name doppelganger, I didn’t think his having registered here was odd. He’d said he picked up women, and this was a good spot for picking up members of any sex. Of course this place was also in another colony from where Dylan’s shack was. But, I’d gotten the feeling from both him and his file that he traveled around….
Tan spotted my spotting Dylan’s other name, but Tan said nothing. His eyes fell on me, on my flushed face, then they slid up to my eyes, to my depressed eyes: the register examination had been yet another waste of my time.
And how much time did I have left when someone was still after me?
*
The owner showed up a few minutes later, and I told him we’d slip out the back.
“What kind of trouble are you in?” he asked me when we’d reached the back door.
I shot a quick glance his way. “Who says I’m in trouble?”
“I’ve owned this place for ten years. A lot of crazy stuff goes on in here, some I don’t approve of and when I find out, I put a stop to it. But, in all those years, no one’s ever asked to do what you have before. I let you because you look like you’re in trouble.”
His words made me very nervous: that I looked like I was in danger had in no way been my intention.
I suddenly realized that this whole shit had gotten to me even more than I’d thought, in an even worse way than I’d thought.
*
“You need to rest,” Tan said to me when we finally stepped outs
ide and I’d paused to look back at the building.
As I’d speculated, rooms had been added on to the back; the place looked wider and longer than I remembered. For all the owner’s talk, he must have approved of enough of the Moonrest activities because the back end of the business had clearly kept on growing.
Now I said to Tan, “I do need to rest, but how can I?”
“So what’s the alternative: keep looking over bullshit that gets you nowhere?”
He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me into his side. Sighing now, I lowered my head, feeling him plant a kiss right on the top there.
“We never even got anything to eat,” he mumbled against my hair as we walked.
“Let’s try that place again—the really crowded one.”
“All right,” he said on a sigh.
And the place itself actually turned out to be more than all right; a table was available for us this time, and once we’d sat down and ordered and tasted the food, at first bite I realized it was among the best food I’d ever tasted.
“Mmm…no wonder it was so crowded in here before,” I said around a big mouthful of a delectable vegetable lasagna. Supposedly, the dish had been made with locally grown vegetables, and I was shocked that anything grown on the Moon could taste so damn…normal.
But it did taste normal. And I so needed normal right now.
*
After dinner we went back to the motel, and as soon as I walked into our room, the day finally really caught up with me. I stood in the room’s center, and in a movie-like rush, I remembered everything bad that had happened. Over and over the events played in my head, and I simply couldn’t clear my head of all that shit long enough to see what my next move should be. I had wanted to discuss some things with Tan; now, just thinking of doing that made me nauseous.
“Tan, I’ve got to go to bed. My head’s spinning.”
“I’m sure it is. I can’t remember the last time I spent such a useless day.”
“Maybe you’ve got to spend one useless day for every useful one.”
He flashed me disbelieving brown eyes.
“Well, one can hope,” I said.
*
When I woke the next morning, I felt as if I’d never actually slept. I felt exhausted, with a capital E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D. Unnaturally so. My throat was dry again, only drier than yesterday.
I turned to my left in search of Tan, who had apparently woken up some time earlier. Bare-chested, he was half-sitting back against the bed’s cushiony headboard, his arm on my side wrapped behind his head. I reached up and stroked the silky tuft of his armpit hair.
His head angled down toward me. “Good morning.”
“Other than your beautiful armpit, I’m not sure how good it is.”
He grabbed my hand with his other arm. “You look too pale.”
“I don’t feel well, like maybe I picked up a virus or something.” I smiled gently. “But you looked so content a moment ago.”
His head turned away. “I don’t know…I was sitting here thinking I feel at peace today. I don’t know why. But maybe when you’re in bed resting, happiness doesn’t seem so impossible.”
I nodded at him, sliding my arm over his middle and planting a kiss above his belly button. “You know what? Fuck it.” My eyes lifted to his face. “Let’s get out of here tomorrow. I’m not looking for where danger is anymore. I think you’re right: everything’s blown over, and I got off easy.”
Nodding now, his arms closed around me tight, and then his concerned eyes fell down to mine. “How sick do you feel?”
“A little weak and achy….”
“That wouldn’t be surprising for anybody, considering we’re all crammed together here with no moving atmosphere to cleanse anything. You got fever?” His palm came up and pressed flat against my forehead.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Neither do I, but let me get the first-aid kit from the bathroom.”
I sighed as I watched him slip out of the bed’s casing.
*
The first-aid thermometer confirmed that I didn’t have a fever, so we made a plan: we’d go get something to eat; then we’d find out when the next available space-passage off here and back to Earth would be.
I showered and redressed in my blue moon-suit, both of which activities made me feel slightly better—not exactly well, but not sick either, just like I was still on the verge of the latter and had more time to avert a full-blown illness. I’d find somewhere that served the freshest fruit juices, and I’d load up on the Vitamin C inside them—and on whatever vitamins I could find in the motel’s store beforehand.
While Tan got dressed, I organized our stuff in the room—that way we could leave pretty fast the next day. I’d have to make a flight reservation. I’d do that later.
Right now, I counted the Travelers Checks I had left, and it sort of felt like I was counting my blessings. I had a man and a life and a business and money and friends and my own agency to go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted. My life had turned out fuller and better than I’d ever thought it would turn out.
I suddenly smiled at that better life.
*
When we were in the motel store and I was paying for bottles of vitamins, the digital space-weather display on the wall behind the register began flashing a warning about neutron storms.
I felt a flush of worry move up my spine; radiation from the storms might affect the electrical equipment here, would probably delay any flights out, not to mention the health effects the storm could cause if a flight’s shielding failed right in the middle of a storm of radioactive particles. There was just no way we could fly out today if we had to, but we probably wouldn’t be able to fly out tomorrow either.
My earlier happiness deflated down into a hollowness in the pit of my stomach. Now that I was determined to leave, I really didn’t want to be stuck here.
Tan must have noticed the digital readout. “Crap,” he said loudly.
I wouldn’t look at his face. I didn’t want to see what was probably disappointment and worry there. And now I said, “What did you say about peace and happiness in bed before?”
I heard his groan; then his worried voice. “Do you think there’s gonna be a breach of the dome?”
“Probably not. But we might not be able to fly out tomorrow.”
“Great,” he said in a pissed-off voice.
The cashier handed me my change and said, “I wouldn’t worry too much. They happen all the time here.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t live here,” Tan said to her, and then he walked fast out of the shop.
I caught up with him in the hall, turned pleading eyes on him. “Tan, let’s just try to make the best of this. Let’s go back to that same busy café from last night—the food there was so good!”
A smile slowly spreading on his face, he took my hand.
*
When we got to the restaurant, the place was as busy as it had been the night before. We now had to stand in the lobby to wait for a table. I asked the host for a big glass of water so I could take my pills; then I chased a multivitamin with an extra Vitamin C pill, which I then chased with the whole glass of water.
I didn’t feel any sicker than when I’d woken up, but I still felt achy, especially around my shoulders, where I had an old injury. And my case strap running over my right shoulder and heavily digging into there even through my suit—that just wasn’t helping matters.
I sighed. I couldn’t wait to sit down and eat something because I suspected that would make me feel better….
My suspicions had been correct: when we were seated, had ordered and had begun eating our order, my throat began feeling less scratchy.
The meal, though, had taken a while to be cooked and served to us, and my bladder started feeling too full, probably because of all the Vitamin C.
“Ugh,” I said to Tan beside me on the red booth seat. “Think I’m gonna have to use the bathroom or I’ll burst right here.” Unfo
rtunately, to piss I’d have to go through the slow process of undoing my damn suit. I probably could have waited till the meal was over to take a piss back at the motel, but…yikes, I really had to go, and having to do that so badly in the middle of eating my food had begun destroying the meal for me.
I slid my case closer to Tan. “Watch this—I’ll be right back.” I gave him a quick kiss, which hit the tip of his nose.
We both laughed.
Then I rushed across the packed dining area. I moved down the long narrow back hall, which wasn’t so packed; apparently, everyone was too busy eating to be pissing in the bathrooms there.
I pushed open the door to one of the single-occupant bathrooms; then I locked the door, hung my jacket on one of the wall hooks, and began opening my suit.
Undoing the snaps took longer than my painful bladder liked, but eventually I got the damn suit open and was squatting and relieving myself on a grateful sigh.
Afterward, I did myself back up; then I went to the little white wall sink to wash my hands. When I looked at myself in the mirror above the sink, I wished I’d brought a brush in my jacket because the back of my brown hair was knotted. With my fingers now, I prodded the knots over and over again, trying to undo them. I succeeded with some, but then I was unhappy with my face, which had almost no color except a kind of graying fleshy shade. Bothering with make-up and other pamper-myself shit on this mission had seemed pointless. And that meant I wasn’t looking my best.
I sighed now as I turned away from the sink—and right at that instant, the lights went out.
Uh-oh.
I hadn’t yet touched the light-switch, so what the fuck had happened? It was pitch-black inside, and I hoped the hall wasn’t this way—shit, maybe it was the storm….
