Then there was that matter of coincidence. Meeting Andy so soon after her brother's death, arriving at the apartment almost simultaneously...the events were too strange. Her gut said that Andy wasn't involved in David's death, but he was involved somehow. He had to be, unless she planned on becoming a connoisseur of coincidences. So she'd watch and listen and maybe he'd let something slip.
"You're staring at me," Andy said, worry coloring his hazel eyes.
"Trying to figure things out is all."
"Having any luck?"
"Some."
"Good. If you need my help, all you have to do is ask."
I'll bet, she thought. "I'd just as soon leave if we can." She stood and brushed the wrinkles from her pants.
"Are you excited?"
"That's a word for it. Maybe a little scared."
"I had Panchet run a check. Your grandmother is okay."
Just what she needed to hear. "Thanks, Andy."
"It's what we're here for." He headed towards the back door, then paused and looked back at her. "Are you coming?"
She'd been caught staring at the way his jeans hugged his legs and the curve of his behind. She blushed fearsomely, smiling to hide her embarrassment. "I'm coming. Are you?" She remembered the kiss she'd given him on the street and blushed even more deeply. She squeezed past him out the door, her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her.
Chapter 8
They caught a bus at Melrose and made their way west along Oakhurst, then went north to Sunset Boulevard. Buildings blurred past as memory and reality merged. Some styles were familiar from before her incarceration, but others were like she'd seen recently, either concrete industrial or neo-Japanese. This part of Sunset used to be known for its gauche colors and crazy architecture. From giant billboards to hotels like The Grafton, to the old Washington Mutual building which looked like a neon green flying saucer that had crash landed and was held captive by shrubs, all Rebecca's landmarks had vanished. Their absence reminded her that this was not her L.A. and yanked her from somnolent feelings of nostalgia. Even as she gazed out across the bowl of Los Angeles to Rancho Palos Verdes, she realized that hardly anything she'd known had survived.
Gone was the patchwork effect of the city streets. From Malibu to Venice, a glistening three hundred-foot wall of metal and steel shrouded the once famous arc of beaches, probably meant to stave off another tsunami. Where planes had been queued in the air from Palm Springs and waiting to land at LAX, the skies were now empty except for the air tunnels she'd thought originally to be ribbons of light. Now she could see the cars shooting through the translucent tubes heading towards the valley. Slums on a scale beyond imagination sprawled in the area she'd known as west of the 405, encompassing Inglewood, Compton, Hawthorne and slummier points east.
So many things had changed, from the little to the large. Back at the safe house she'd compared her predicament to Twain's famous book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Rebecca realized now she'd had it backwards. She hadn't gone back in time. She'd essentially gone forward. Like all of those B-movies she'd watched on cable as she'd grown up, she'd stepped in a machine and stumbled out twenty years into the future.
Only her machine had been a place called prison.
Rebecca shook her head and appraised her fellow passengers. They seemed like the usual bunch of POD people living their life elsewhere, mixed with some regular folk and some not so regular. A boarder leaned against the rail near the exit door. When his eyes met hers, he grinned.
She elbowed Andy and pointed at the boarder.
"Yeah," he whispered. "They're gonna be watching out for us for awhile. When you get a chance, look behind you. The one who's looking at you is Scoundrel. He's the one who helped me yesterday. The one behind you is Pony. You've already met."
She stared at Scoundrel for several moments, noting his colors and his rail thin frame. Of Hispanic origin, his olive skin was weather-worn and creased, like the skin of a much older man. Rebecca wondered what his motivation was. Why would he volunteer to be a server? It couldn't just be the free drugs. Well, it could, she admitted to herself, but she couldn't believe it was that simple. She smiled to acknowledge him, but he'd already looked away.
The bus stopped and a voluptuous young woman stepped aboard. Every seat was filled, so she slid down the aisle, then languished near where Rebecca sat. The young woman wore a sleek silver body suit that fit like a second skin. As she grasped the overhead bar, many of the male passengers admired the way the fabric hugged her skin, shimmering from her neck, across her breasts, down her flat stomach and both legs. The scent of sweat and pumpkin spice wafted from her like it came from her breath.
Rebecca's head lolled back along her neck as she searched the woman's face. So beautiful and sensuous. Lovely. Rebecca watched in shock and expectation as her hand rose from her lap and drifted towards the woman's rear end. She could already imagine the feel of her skin on the fabric as it traced the contours. If only she could—
Andy's hand snapped around her wrist and forced it back to her lap. He leaned across her and snarled at the woman in the aisle. "Turn it off, hook."
The woman flashed him a hate-filled sneer from black-coated lips and sauntered forward on the bus. She stopped about seven seats forward, and was soon moving her hands along the shoulders of a balding man. This time she had no complaints.
Rebecca swooned, feeling as if she'd drunk several glasses of wine. What the hell had come over her? "What happened?"
"He was a hook. Used pheromones to entice you. They're not supposed to do that in public." He grinned and shrugged. "Operating here on public transit, might mean that the cops are busy elsewhere. They don't usually come out in public, much less broad daylight."
"He was a hook? You mean that's a he?"
"Definitely."
"How can you tell?"
"If you look closely there's a tattoo on the web of his left hand with the letters B-G-C. Stands for Boy George Chameleon. Originally out of Europe, they're big on the West Coast. Think of the BGC as a union of sorts, and to be a member you have to have been changed."
"But she looks so perfect."
"Plastic surgery has improved since you've been in. Combined with hormone and stem cell therapy, almost anything can be done. Tails were the rage a few years ago. Folks paid handsomely to be just a little bit animal. Most have since snipped it off, since full removal costs almost as much as the original transplant." Seeing her look of disgust, he added, "Hey, since they transplanted an orangutan heart into a human back in the nineties, the door opened to quite a bit of interspecies transplantation. One time I saw a martial arts match where both fighters had some sort of tiger claws for hands."
Rebecca was horrified. "Isn't anyone human anymore?"
"Oh, yeah. Don't get me wrong—these types of people are the exception rather than the rule. Me, Olga, and your friend Kumi are the norm."
"But these... people seem to be everywhere."
"You're forgetting that you're in Los Angeles."
"Oh, yeah." Rebecca grinned half-heartedly. "How could I forget that?"
That made her thoughts move on to Kumi. She still couldn't get over how the woman had leaped forward to protect them. Last Rebecca had seen, Kumi was holding her own with the assassins. She was clearly more than she appeared. But where was she? As the government appointed representative, she was probably the one who'd sent the police after Rebecca. Or had the Hei Xin killed her? And what if the police thought Rebecca was the murderer?
Rebecca felt a special affinity for the diminutive Asian woman, even though she barely knew her. Perhaps it was because she was the bridge between her past and her future, her last link to prison. For all the bad things Rebecca could lament about, and for all the loneliness she could attest to, San Berdoo Max had been her home for the last twenty years. And like all homes, she missed it, no matter how crazy or pathetic that sounded. She likened it to the pride people from Watts, Hell's Kitchen or Compton showed for the
ir homes. They knew that where they lived was a hell hole. They knew that they'd lost the good place to live lotto and wore it as a badge of honor. The few times Rebecca had been in with the general prison population, she'd encountered the same thing. I'm from Chino. I spent time in Sing Sing. I did a stretch in Folsom. The cons were proud of their survival. They were proud of the memories they had. They'd earned them. But it wasn't just that. The prison had been their home. When a person walks down a sidewalk to the store every day, passing white picket-fenced yards, flower gardens bursting with roses, barking dogs, the smell of freshly cut grass in the air, and then moved away, they had memories of the good times, of the good smells, of the peace and beauty of the moments. Such was also the way of prison. In the joint, everything revolved around regimentation. Wake up, lights out, breakfast, lunch and dinner were all at the same scheduled times. She saw the same guards, passed the same doors. If anything, prison was a world in a microcosm. She sighed. Part of her even wanted to return.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Kumi," she said, unwilling to talk about what was really bothering her.
"I wonder what happened to her."
"I was wondering the same. She saved us, you know?"
"Oh, I know all right. I wished I could have been more help, but I don't do well in those situations." He held up his hands. "Afraid I'm techno-geek all the way. The last fight I was in, I was beat up by my best friend's sister."
Rebecca turned to look at him, the moment popping to the surface of her memory.
"Oh...that was you wasn't it, Bec?"
"I didn't beat you up!"
"Then what do you call punching and kicking me, if not beating me up?" His eyes sparkled as he baited her.
"I'd call it physical reminders that getting my brother drunk and leaving him in the front yard wasn't the smartest thing you'd ever done. And it seemed to have worked. Clearly you remember." She held an edge to her voice, but was actually enjoying the effects of the words on him. He'd been leading her around and in charge for far too long. He needed to be reminded of who she was and what she could do, even if it was all in jest.
"Well, I sure felt beat up when it happened."
"As you should have. But you can't tell me that you can't take care of yourself." She noted his biceps and his shoulders, clearly the musculature of someone who worked out. Back in her day techno-geeks were soft and heavy. Andy didn't have an ounce of fat on him. She could just make out his chest muscles and was willing to bet he had a six pack. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I can tell you work out."
He grinned, his left arm going right away to his right to grip the bicep. He seemed to admire it a moment, then gazed into Rebecca's eyes. "Glad you noticed. I'd like to say they came from years of training and dedication, but I've never even set foot in a gym."
"Then how?"
"I started with Tai Chi a few years ago, but it was slow going. I don't think I had the discipline for it. I got bored easily."
"I know Tai Chi too. It's what kept me sane in prison."
"Tai Chi was nice. A girlfriend taught me and until we broke up, we used to do it on the roof of our apartment building. Last year I switched to Lua. It's a Hawaiian Martial Art, emphasizing moves from Kenpo, Jujitsu, Kali Escrima, and Wing Chung Kung Fu."
She cocked an eyebrow. "I thought you said you couldn't take care of yourself."
"I can't. Or at least I've never tried. I learned Lua through osmosis. I wear PODs every night to receive my lessons. I wear electro-magnetic cuffs on my arms and legs. The stimulation trains the muscles for each specific maneuver." He flashed an embarrassed grin. "I've tried the moves in the mirror. They look pretty good." He spread his hands and shrugged.
She punched him in the shoulder. "So let me get this right. You're a deadly Lua martial artist, only you've never done any of the moves in public, only in front of your mirror. And instead of being taught by a mystical master like Pai Mei or Bruce Lee, you were taught by a POD?" She laughed. "While sleeping?"
He no longer smiled. "You shouldn't make fun of me."
She shook her head as she struggled not to laugh. "I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at the world. I'm laughing at what Nintendo evolved into. I'm laughing because it's far easier than crying."
Still he frowned, his eyes not quite smoldering. He had a hurt boy look, just the good side of petulance.
"Come on Andy. You can't get mad at me for that."
He stared at the muscles in his forearms for a moment, then nodded. "I'm just not used to being made fun of. I've spent a lifetime trying to change, you know." He grinned at her. "But I should have remembered. Back when I was a kid and you were the big sister, you were vicious with your retorts. Stung like nettles every time."
She grinned back as she remembered, then frowned. Was that a crack about her age? That sly dog. She watched Andy as he stared out the window. She was about to say something when he stood and reached a hand down to help her up.
"We're here."
She shrugged aside his hand and stood.
Chapter 9
Identical three-story flats lined the street like criminals awaiting an execution. None of them were older than a few years, but the quality of the material used after the tsunami was poor, creating a drab, weather-worn look. This part of Melrose used to be fancy, but after the fires raged through Beverly Hills, nothing was left but scorched and smoking rubble. Environmentalists, savvy after decades of the cycle of fire, rain and mudslides, had the hills removed so that everything west of Sepulveda was a wide flat plane that reached the ocean.
But the aesthetic was gone. The street looked like parts of Baltimore or Brooklyn rather than Southern California. Even the palm trees had been removed. Rebecca had always loved palm trees. They grounded her, reminding her that she was in a sort of paradise. With all the problems, with all the negativity, she tried to imagine how bad it would be without palm trees. Although people didn't realize it, she'd always believed that the palms dressed up the city like a middle-class hooker in a sequined dress. Looking at the buildings, she felt the depression endemic to neighborhoods in those old industrial towns of the East Coast.
"What do you think?" Andy looked at the grime covering the front stoop. A mixture of white bird droppings and mystery grease, the steps looked far from inviting. "Do you want to go up?"
After the sterility of prison, the filth layering the concrete made Rebecca squeamish. To think she'd have to walk on that sent tendrils of let's get out of here through her system. She tried her best to ignore her inner voice. She'd come too long and too far to balk now. With a tight-lipped grin she proceeded up the steps without looking down. Once she reached the top she looked over her shoulder. "You coming, or what?"
"So I guess we're going up," he said, scampering to catch up.
The security door had been jimmied long ago and hung open an inch on sprung hinges. She opened it, strode through, passed the bank of elevators that read out of order and up the stairs.
The ascent was an orchestration of creaks and moans, each step evoking notes only a sick and dying building could make. Rebecca couldn't help but wonder at the true age of the building. If this was only a few years old as Andy had said, why'd it look so dilapidated? Why did it seem so old? New material shouldn't look this drab, nor should it break down so quickly.
She somehow managed to reach the third floor landing without falling through the floor. Only moments more and she found a door labeled O. Pavarnick.
She was barely able to wait for Andy to catch up, as excited as she was. But the second he stood beside her, she knocked. It'd been so long since she'd seen anyone. Andy was the only one from her previous history, and she didn't know him very well. But she and Olga had been best friends. Their every secret, their every wild desire shared, compared and filed. And she needed someone like that right now. So much had happened since she'd been released. She'd kept such a close hold on her emotions that at times she'd felt robotic, going through the motions and not t
rusting herself to show anything real. A part of her hoped that she and Olga would be as they'd been before, because she had some secrets to tell. She had some horrors to share.
She knocked again.
She had so many conflicting emotions that she hoped Olga could help her with. Her own low-level reaction to the death of her brother bothered her. She should be more distraught. She'd known people to withdraw into a cocoon for months after a family member's death. But here she was acting almost as if nothing happened. Who was she?
She knocked again.
Then there was Andy. She felt something, but wasn't sure what it was. He made her angrier than she'd felt in an age, but at the same time she felt titillation when he spoke or walked across the room.
She heard the scrape of metal on metal. She glanced nervously at Andy, then back to the door. Her heart bobbed in her throat.
The door opened inwards, stopping halfway open. She stuck her head in the room and saw a woman dressed in a bathrobe, bare feet and bed head staggering back to a couch that dominated the center of the room.
"Olga? Is that you?"
The woman didn't respond.
"Olga, it's me, Rebecca. Rebecca Mines."
The woman stopped with one hip thrust out. She seemed to teeter as she began to turn.
Rebecca stepped into the room and pushed the door open the rest of the way. The apartment smelled of soiled clothes, sweat and rotting food. She wrinkled her nose and turned to see if Andy was following. He was right behind her. He nodded, but his attention was entirely on the woman who, with excruciating slowness, finally turned. Whatever Rebecca had anticipated, this hadn't been it. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine this could happen.
It was Olga, all right. Her robe hung open revealing sickly gray skin and sagging breasts. Stained underwear hugged her crotch. Her mouth hung slack. A thin line of drool had made a permanent home at the corners of her mouth. Grimy PODs rested over each eye and the overhead light reflected off the lenses turning them green.
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