She hesitated at the door to Caro's apartment. She knew she was groveling, and knew as well that she didn't deserve to grovel.
But this was her only hope. What choice did she have?
She knocked, and when there wasn't an answer she knocked again. She heard a shuffling step inside and then Caro opened the door and blinked at her groggily through disordered strands of hair. She was dressed as Gredel had last seen her, bare feet, naked under her dressing gown.
“Why didn't you just come in?” Caro said. She left the door open and withdrew into the apartment. Gredel followed, her heart pulsing sickly in her chest.
There were several bottles lying on tables, and Gredel recognized the juniper reek that oozed from Caro's pores. “I feel awful,” Caro said. “I had too much last night.”
Doesn't she remember? Gredel wondered. Or is she just pretending?
Caro reached for the gin bottle and the neck of the bottle clattered against a tumbler as she poured herself two fingers’ worth. “Let me get myself together,” Caro said, and drank.
A thought struck Gredel with the force of revelation.
She's just a drunk, she thought. Just another damn drunk.
Caro put the tumbler down, wiped her mouth, gave a hoarse laugh. “Now we can have some fun,” she said.
“Yes,” Gredel said. “Let's go.”
She had begun to think it might never be fun again.
Perhaps it was then that Gredel began to hate Caro, or perhaps the incident only released hatred and resentment that had simmered, denied, for some time. But now Gredel could scarcely spend an hour with Caro without finding new fuel for anger. Caro's carelessness made Gredel clench her teeth, and her laughter grated on Gredel's nerves. The empty days that Caro shared with Gredel, the pointless drifting from boutique to restaurant to club, now made Gredel want to shriek. Gredel deeply resented tidying up after Caro even as she did it. Caro's surging moods, the sudden shifts from laughter to fury to sullen withdrawal, brought Gredel's own temper near the breaking point. Even Caro's affection and her impulsive generosity began to seem trying. Why is she making all this fuss over me? Gredel thought. What's she after?
But Gredel managed to keep her thoughts to herself, and, at times, she caught herself enjoying Caro's company, caught herself in a moment of pure enjoyment or unfeigned laughter. And then she wondered how this could be genuine as well as the other, the delight and the hatred coexisting in her skull.
It was like her so-called beauty, she thought. Her alleged beauty was what most people reacted to; but it wasn't her self. She managed to have an inner existence, thoughts and hopes entirely her own, apart from the shell that was her appearance. But it was the shell that people saw, it was the shell that most people spoke to, hated, envied, or desired. The Gredel that interacted with Caro was another kind of shell, a kind of machine she'd built for the purpose, built without intending to. It wasn't any less genuine for being a machine, but it wasn't her self.
Her self hated Caro. She knew that now.
If Caro detected any of Gredel's inner turmoil, she gave no sign. In any case, she was rarely in a condition to be very observant. Her alcohol consumption had increased as she shifted from wine to hard liquor. When she wanted to get drunk, she wanted the drunk instantly, the way she wanted everything, and hard liquor got her there quicker. The ups and downs increased as well, and the spikes and valleys that were her behavior. She was banned from one of her expensive restaurants for talking loudly, and singing, and hurling a plate at the waiter who asked her to be more quiet. She was thrown out of a club for attacking a woman in the ladies’ room. Gredel never found out what the fight was about, but for days afterward Caro proudly sported the black eye she'd got from the bouncer's fist.
For the most part, Gredel managed to avoid Caro's anger. She learned the warning signs, and she'd also learned how to manipulate Caro's moods. She could change Caro's music, or at least shift the focus of Caro's growing anger from herself to someone else.
Despite her feelings, she was now in Caro's company more than ever. Lamey was in hiding. She had first found out about it when he sent Panda to pick her up at Caro's apartment instead of coming himself. Panda drove her to the Fabs, but not to a human neighborhood: instead he took her into a building inhabited by Lyones. A family of the giant flightless birds stared at her as she waited in the lobby for the elevator. There was an acrid, ammonia smell in the air.
Lamey was in a small apartment on the top floor, with a pair of his guards and a Lyone. The avian shifted from one foot to the other as Gredel entered. Lamey seemed nervous. He didn't say anything to Gredel, just gave a quick jerk of his chin to indicate that they should go into the back room.
The room was thick with the heat of summer. The ammonia smell was very strong. Lamey steered Gredel to the bed. She sat, but Lamey was unable to be still: he paced back and forth in the narrow range permitted by the small room. His smooth, elegant walk had developed hitches and stutters, uncertainties that marred his normal grace.
“I'm sorry about this,” he said. “But something's happened.”
“Is the Patrol looking for you?”
“I don't know.” His mouth gave a little twitch. “Bourdelle was arrested yesterday. It was the Legion of Diligence who arrested him, not the Patrol, so that means they've got him for something serious, something he could be executed for. We've got word that he's bargaining with the prefect's office.” His mouth twitched again. Linkboys did not bargain with the prefect, they were expected to go to their punishment with their mouths shut.
“We don't know what he's going to offer them,” Lamey went on. “But he's just a link up from me, and he could be selling me or any of the boys.” He paused in his pacing, rubbed his chin. Sweat shone on his forehead. “I'm going to make sure it's not me,” he said.
“I understand,” Gredel said.
Lamey looked at her. His blue eyes were feverish. “From now on, you can't call me. I can't call you. We can't be seen in public together. If I want you, I'll send someone for you at Caro's.”
Gredel looked up at him. “But-” she began, then, “When?”
"When I want you," he said insistently. “I don't know when. You'll just have to be there when I need you.”
“Yes,” Gredel said. Her mind whirled. “I'll be there.”
He sat next to her on the bed and took her by the shoulders. “I missed you, Earthgirl,” he said. “I really need you now.”
She kissed him. His skin felt feverish. She could taste the fear on him. Lamey's unsteady fingers began to fumble with the buttons of her blouse. You're going to die soon, she thought.
Unless, of course, it was Gredel who paid the penalty instead, the way Ava had paid for the sins of her man.
Gredel had to start looking out for herself, before it was too late.
When Gredel left Lamey, he gave her two hundred zeniths in cash. “I can't buy you things right now, Earthgirl,” he explained. “But buy yourself something nice for me, all right?
Gredel remembered Antony's claim that she whored for money. It was no longer an accusation she could deny.
One of Lamey's boys drove Gredel from the rendezvous to her mother's building. Gredel took the stairs instead of the elevator because it gave her time to think. By the time she got to her mother's door, she had the beginnings of an idea.
But first she had to tell her mother about Lamey, and why she had to move in with Caro. “Of course, honey,” Ava said. She took Gredel's hands and pressed them. “Of course you've got to go.”
Loyalty to her man was what Ava knew, Gredel thought. She had been arrested and sentenced to years in the country for a man she'd hardly ever seen again. She'd spent her life sitting alone amid expensive decor, waiting for one man or another to show up. She was beautiful, but in the bright summer light Gredel could see the first cracks in her mother's faзade, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that the years would only broaden. When the beauty faded, the men would fade, too.
<
br /> Ava had cast her lot with beauty and with men, neither of which would last. If Gredel remained with Lamey, or with some other linkboy, she would be following Ava's path.
The next morning, Gredel took a pair of bags to Caro's place and let herself in. Caro was asleep, so far gone in torpor that she didn't wake when Gredel padded into the bedroom and took her wallet with its identification. Gredel slipped out again and went to a bank, where she opened an account in the name of Caroline, Lady Sula, and deposited three-quarters of what Lamey had given her.
When asked for a thumbprint, she gave her own.
When Gredel returned from the bank, she found Caro groping with a shivering hand for her first cup of coffee. After Caro took the coffee to the bathroom for the long bath that would soak away the stale alcohol from her pores, Gredel replaced Caro's wallet, then opened the computer link and transferred some of Caro's money, ten zeniths only, to her new account, just to make certain that it worked.
It worked fine.
I have just done a criminal act, she thought. A criminal act that can be traced to me.
Whatever she may have done before, it hadn't been this.
After Caro's bath, she and Gredel went to a cafй for breakfast, and Gredel told her about Lamey being on the run and she asked if she could move in with Caro so that he would be able to send for her. Caro was thrilled. She had never heard of anything so romantic in her life.
Romantic? Gredel thought. It was sordid beyond belief.
But Caro hadn't been in the sultry little room in the Lyone quarter, the smell of ammonia in her nostrils while Lamey's sweat rained down on her. Let her keep her illusions.
“Thank you,” she said. But she knew that once she was with Caro, it wouldn't be long before Caro would grow bored with her, or impatient, or angry. Whatever Gredel was going to do, it would have to be soon.
“I don't know how often Lamey's going to send for me,” she said. “But I hope it's not on your birthday. I'd like you and I to celebrate that together.”
The scowl on Caro's face was immediate, and predictable. “Birthday? My birthday was last winter.” The scowl deepened. “That was the last time Sergei and I were together.”
“Birthday?” Gredel said, in her Earth accent. “I meant Earthday, darling.” And when Caro's scowl began to look dangerous, she added quickly, “Your birthday in Earth years. I do the math, see, it's a kind of game. And your Earthday is next week-you'll be fifteen.” Gredel smiled. “The same age as me, I turned fifteen Earth years just before I met you.”
It wasn't true, not exactly-Caro's Earthday was in three months-but Gredel knew that Caro would never do the math. Might not even know how to do it.
There was so much Caro didn't know. The knowledge brought a kind of savage pleasure to Gredel's mind. Caro didn't know anything, didn't even know that her best friend hated her. She didn't know that Gredel had stolen her money and her identity only an hour ago, and could do it again whenever she wanted.
The days went by and were even pleasurable in a strange, disconnected way. Gredel thought she finally understood what it was like to be Caro, to have nothing that attached her to anything, to have long hours to fill and nothing to fill them with but whatever impulse drifted into her mind. Gredel felt that way herself-mentally, at least, she was cutting her own ties free, all of them, floating free of everything she'd known.
To save herself trouble, Gredel exerted herself to please Caro, and Caro responded. Caro's mood was sunny, and she laughed and joked and dressed Gredel like a doll, as she always had. Behind her pleasing mask, Gredel despised Caro for being so easily manipulated. You're so stupid, she thought.
But pleasing Gredel brought trouble of its own, because when Lamey's boy called for her, Gredel was standing in the rain, in a Torminel neighborhood, trying to buy Caro a cartridge of endorphin analog-with Lamey's businesses in eclipse, she could no longer get the stuff from Panda.
When Gredel finally connected with her ride and got to the place where Lamey was hiding-he was back in the Terran Fabs, at least-he had been waiting for hours, and his patience was gone. He got her alone in the bedroom and slapped her around for a while, telling her it was her fault, that she had to know that she had to be where he could find her when he needed her.
Gredel lay on her back on the bed, letting him do what he wanted, and she thought, This is going to be my whole life if I don't get out of here. She looked at the pistol Lamey had waiting on the bedside table for whoever he thought might kick down the door, and she thought about grabbing the pistol and blowing Lamey's brains out. Or her own brains. Or just walking into the street with the pistol and blowing out brains at random.
No, she thought. Stick to the plan.
Lamey gave her five hundred zeniths afterward. Maybe that was an apology.
Sitting in the car later, with her bruised cheek swelling and the money crumpled in her hand and Lamey's slime still drooling down her thigh, she thought about calling the Legion of Diligence and letting them know where Lamey was hiding. But, instead, she told the boy to take her to a pharmacy near Caro's place.
She walked inside and found a box of plasters that would soak up the bruises, and she took it to the drug counter in the back. The older woman behind the counter looked at her face with knowing sympathy. “Anything else, honey?”
“Yes,” Gredel said. “Two vials of Phenyldorphin-Zed.”
She was required to sign the Narcotics Book for the endorphin analog, and the name she scrawled was Sula.
***
Caro was outraged by Gredel's bruises. “Lamey comes round here again, I'll kick him in the balls!” she said. “I'll hit him with a chair!”
“Forget about it,” Gredel said wearily. She didn't want demonstrations of loyalty from Caro right now. Her feelings were confused enough: she didn't want to start having to like Caro all over again.
Caro pulled Gredel into the bedroom and cleaned her face, and then she cut the plasters to fit Gredel's face and applied them. She did a good enough job at sopping up the bruises and swelling so that the next day, when the plasters were removed, the bruises had mostly disappeared, leaving behind some faint discoloration, easily covered with cosmetics. Her whole face hurt, though, and so did her ribs and her solar plexus where Lamey had hit her.
Caro brought Gredel breakfast from the cafй and hovered around her until Gredel wanted to shriek.
If you want to help, she thought at Caro, take your appointment to the academy and get us both out of here.
But Caro didn't answer the mental command. And her solicitude faded by afternoon, when she opened the day's first bottle. It was vodka flavored with bison grass, which explained the strange fusil-oil overtones Gredel had scented on Caro's skin the last few days. By mid-afternoon, Caro had consumed most of the bottle and fallen asleep on the couch.
Gredel felt a small, chill triumph at this. It was good to be reminded why she hated her friend.
Next day was Caro's phony Earthday. Last chance, Gredel thought at her. Last chance to mention the academy. But the word never passed Caro's lips.
“I want to pay you back for everything you've done,” Gredel said. “Your Earthday is on me.” She put her arm around Caro.
“I've got everything planned,” she said.
They started at Godfrey's for the full treatment, massage, facial, hair, the lot. Then lunch at a brass-railed bistro south of the arcades, bubbling grilled cheese on rare vashe roast and crusty bread, with a salad of marinated dedger flowers. To Caro's surprise, Gredel called for a bottle of wine, and poured some of it into her own glass.
“You're drinking,” Caro said, delighted. “What's got into you?”
“I want to toast your Earthday,” Gredel said.
Being drunk might make it easier, she thought.
Gredel kept refilling Caro's glass while sipping at her own, and so the first bottle went. Gredel took Caro to the arcades then, and bought her a summer dress of silk patterned with rhompй birds and jennifer flowers, a jacke
t shimmering with gold and green sequins, matching Caro's hair and eyes, and two pairs of shoes. She bought outfits for herself as well.
After taking their treasures to Caro's place, where Caro had a few shots of the bison vodka, they went to dinner at one of Caro's exclusive dining clubs. Caro hadn't been thrown out of this club yet, but the maitre d’ was on guard enough to sit them well away from everyone else. Caro ordered cocktails and two bottles of wine and after-dinner drinks. Gredel's head spun even after the careful sips she'd been taking; she couldn't imagine what Caro must be feeling. Caro needed a jolt of benzedrine to get to the dance club Gredel had put next on the agenda, though she had no trouble keeping her feet once she got there.
After dancing awhile Gredel said she was tired, and they brushed off the male admirers they'd collected and took a taxi home.
Gredel showered while Caro headed for the bison vodka again. The benzedrine had given her a lot of energy that she put into finishing the bottle. Gredel changed into the silk lounging suit Caro had bought her on their first day together, and she put the two vials of endorphin analog into a pocket.
Caro was on the couch where Gredel had left her. Her eyes were bright, but when she spoke to Gredel her words were slurred.
“I have one more present,” Gredel said. She reached into her pocket and held out the two vials. “I think this is a kind you like. I really wasn't sure.”
Caro laughed. “You take care of me all day, and now you help me to sleep!” She reached across and put her arms around Gredel. “You're my best sister, Earthgirl.” In Caro's embrace, Gredel could smell bison grass and sweat and perfume all mingled, and she tried to keep a firm grip on her hatred even as her heart turned over in her chest.
Caro unloaded her med injector and put in one of the vials of Phenyldorphin-Zed and used it right away. Her eyelids fluttered as the endorphin flooded her brain. “Oh nice,” she murmured. “Such a good sister.” She gave herself another dose a few minutes later. She spoke a few soft words but her voice kept floating away. She gave herself a third dose and fell asleep, her golden hair fallen across her face as she lay on the pillow.
Margaux (dread empire's fall) Page 5
