The Damsel

by David Dixon

  Jade called to me from the kitchen.

  “Need a drink?”

  My stomach rumbled at the mere suggestion of alcohol.

  “I appreciate the offer, but no thanks. Last night was a rough one.”

  She laughed. “I know the feeling.”

  “Jade,” Carla called from a room somewhere behind me. “Is my green dress still in the laundry?”

  “I don’t know,” Jade answered as she came back from the kitchen holding a gin and tonic. “It wasn’t my week to do it, remember? By the way, your date’s here.”

  My head snapped around to tell Jade she had the situation way wrong, but she’d already disappeared down the hallway.

  “What?” Carla said, frustration in her voice. “He’s like thirty minutes early. Why the fuck is he here already?”

  “I dunno,” Jade called as she walked back around the corner. “But he’s cute enough.” She winked at me.

  I sat up a little straighter.

  “He damn well better be, showing up half an hour early.”

  I heard a door open and Carla walked around the corner. In the time since I’d last seen her, she’d re-dyed her hair, which was now a light blue that brought out her green eyes. She wore matching lipstick and earrings and carried a bottle of nail polish the same color. She had on skin-tight blue jeans and an emerald shirt with a plunging V-neck that came almost to her navel. I struggled to keep my eyes from drifting down her chest.

  Her face registered complete surprise for a second, before she broke out into a smirk.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Jade came back around the corner, fury on her face. “I thought that was your date?”

  Carla gave Jade a sidelong glance. “This guy? Ha. No. This guy’s nickname is Snake. He is not dating material. No. He is a business associate. Technically, an associate of a one-time associate. Besides, I thought you said he was cute.” She delivered the last line with a sly smile that raised the temperature of the room several degrees.

  “Get out, you son of a bitch!” Jade snapped at me, her earlier easy hospitality nowhere to be found. “Get out of my apartment.”

  I held up my hands but didn’t move off the couch. “Whoa there, Jade, calm down. I never said I was Carla’s date. You said that. As Carla said, I’m a business associate. And I was invited, kind of. The only reason I even know where to find her is because she gave me her apartment number.”

  “I told you not to bring what you do here, Carla,” Jade said. “That negative energy disrupts the sacred peace of this space.”

  Carla glanced at me and rolled her eyes. “You did tell me that. And I’m sorry, okay? But I had to be somewhere, and Snake and his boss had questions for me but something else came up, so I left the apartment number. Of course, they were too clueless to figure out that’s what it was, so they never showed up that night.”

  “I don’t care, Carla—he’s got to go.”

  Carla shook her head. “All right, all right, a deal’s a deal. I know. Just let me put some shoes on and I’ll take a walk and find out what he wants. Away from the ‘sacred peace of the space’ or whatever.”

  She disappeared back down the hallway and emerged a minute later. “Come on,” she said, motioning me to follow her. I needed no encouragement.

  “If my date shows up and I’m not back, tell him I’m handling a business matter and I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Sure, Carla,” Jade said, flatly. I could tell she still wasn’t over me coming to the apartment.

  “Hey, Jade,” Carla said with a frown. “I don’t have time to look for that dress, so I’m just gonna wear what I’ve got on. Looks good enough, don’t you think?”

  “Sure, Carla.”

  I made a show of looking Carla over. “If I was your date, I wouldn’t complain.” My eyes met hers and I gave her the winningest smile I had.

  “Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face and let’s get this talk over with,” she said, but there was a note of satisfaction in her voice.

  She chuckled, turned, and walked out the door. I followed and Jade slammed it shut behind us.

  “Jesus,” I said with a look at the door. “For being all about love and oneness, she sure is uptight.”

  “Jade’s like that about bounty hunting,” Carla said as she started off down the hall. “We go back a few years, and she’s known what I do from the beginning, but she’s never liked it. She’s just trying to look out for me. I got a lotta bad history in my line of work.”

  “I know how that goes,” I said as I followed her.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t always a loser gunner roaming The Fringe, barely eking out a living.”

  She turned to face me and rolled her eyes, no doubt ready for me to spin her some bullshit story of greatness. She’d played this game before.

  But so had I.

  “Nope, you shoulda seen me before,” I said, delivering the line in a haughty voice. “Because back then, I was a loser staying put in The Fringe, barely eking out a living,” I finished with a grin.

  “Glad to see you’ve stayed true to your roots, then,” Carla said dryly as she led me through double doors outside onto a communal balcony.

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m here, in fact,” I said, serious again.

  She leaned against the chest-high railing and looked down. I took a place beside her and did the same.

  “How so?”

  “I actually came here looking for a—”

  Carla’s right eyebrow went up, skepticism written across her face. “Looking for a what?

  “For a—”

  I hope you’re not about to say a date, because you’d be a loser there too,” she interrupted with a mischievous smile.

  “Har. Not the way I see it.”

  “What?” Carla asked. “Please. I think we both know I’m good at getting what I want—just like I got what I wanted from your boss. And then, out of everybody in this city—no offense—you think you’re the one who’s just gonna show up and I’m gonna go out with you?”

  “And yet, here you are,” I said, gesturing to the streetlights and spaceport below. “Standing out on the balcony with me.”

  “Are your eyes brown?” she asked. “Because you’re full of shit, you know that, Snake?”

  “Yes, and yes.”

  We both laughed.

  “But seriously,” she said. “Why are you here? And what took you so long?”

  “Well, as you obviously know, your—or Jade’s, I guess—apartment number shares a number with a pretty damn famous song, so when the guard handed us that piece of paper, we were pretty sure you were just fucking with us, so we never bothered trying to figure out if you were serious. So that’s what took so long.”

  “I was fucking with you guys. I figured I’d already been more than helpful enough, and your boss seemed like the type for long goodbyes. I could’a made it clearer, but I really didn’t mind if I never saw you two again.”

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning as I remembered our feelings of rage and frustration that night. “We kinda picked up on that.”

  She chuckled. “Sorry, but considering you guys showed up at Joey Machete’s to ask me a million questions, can you blame me?”

  “For the record,” I said, “I wasn’t the one who had the hard on—pardon the pun—for tracking you down. I was perfectly fine with never seeing your ass ever again.” I shot a sidelong glance at her and took the risk. “Well, metaphorically speaking, anyway.”

  She pretended to frown, but her eyes gleamed.

  “How long you two been flying together anyway?” she asked, changing the subject to less exciting matters. “You two are a perfect team.”

  I searched her face for signs she was kidding, but she appeared completely serious.

  “I gotta say, I’ve never heard that one before,” I told her.

  “Yeah, I figure maybe you two’s overlapping
stupidity must cancel out or something,” she said with a straight face that cracked into a grin.

  “You know, just when I was starting to like you.”

  “Whatever. But seriously, how long have you two flown together?”

  I ran through the dates in my head. “Been about five years now, I guess. My previous gig had ended and I was looking for work and a way off Dunatis. He picked me up for a single run and I’ve been gunning for him ever since.”

  “It’s a wonder you two are still alive.”

  “You kid, but it’s a valid point. I wonder at it myself sometimes. He probably does too. But I’m lucky to have a job at all, all things considered.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, the first time we met I pulled a knife on him and he put a gun under my chin.”

  “Bullshit,” Carla said, incredulous look in her eyes.

  “Nope. Serious as a missile lock. Swear to God.”

  “And he hired you?”

  “Yeah. That was kind of the interview, actually.” I shrugged. “It’s worked out.”

  “Except for this last run, it seems.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah.”

  I knew I should have asked for the loan then and there, but I didn’t feel like bringing it up. I was enjoying the pleasant conversation about something other than how bad the boss and I were screwed, something that had been in short supply since we’d landed on Greenly.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m kind of sorry about how it turned out. Not like sorry enough that I wouldn’t do it again, but sorry like I wouldn’t laugh quite as hard, you know?”

  “I do, actually. I really do.” I had never heard someone put my life’s philosophy so perfectly.

  “Anyway, we can’t change what’s done,” she said with a sigh.

  “Yeah. Like you said, bad history. What about you? What’s your story, Carla?”

  “You know, the usual.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “The usual. Money trouble, relationship trouble. And despite knowing better, I always seem to fall in with the wrong crowd,” she said with a sly smile.

  Gunner that I am, I knew it was time to take the shot. “Well, I guess I should ask you out on that date after all. I am nothing if not a great example of ‘the wrong crowd.’ Trust me.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said with a chuckle. She looked over the balcony and her face turned serious. “But when I say ‘wrong crowd,’ I really mean one person in particular. And believe me when I say you’ve got nothing on him. But enough about that. My past is just that—mine. Nothing I want to go back to.” The tone in her voice told me she had gently but firmly closed that avenue of inquiry.

  “You sound like me talking about whenever somebody brings up my days on the Braxton.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “The Braxton? Like, the prison ship?”

  “Technically,” I said, repeating something the crew aboard had told us a thousand times, “the Braxton isn’t prison. You just wish it was. How do you know the name?”

  “My dad spent some time aboard when I was little. At least that’s where my mom claimed he went.”

  “If he was a long-timer, I may have known him,” I said, surprised to find myself discussing the part of my life I’d spent most of my time trying to forget.

  “Nah,” she said. “He only did three years or so. Once he got out, he came back home for a bit, took a job on a mining rig in the Thiessen Belt, and bit the big one in an accident about six months later.”

  “Shit.”

  She shrugged. “It happens.”

  Neither of us said anything for several minutes as we stared out at the city lights.

  There was a slight beep and Carla frowned. She tapped the top of the ring she wore on her right hand and a holo message popped up, presumably from Jade. I read it over Carla’s shoulder and smiled.

  Your date left.

  “Shit,” Carla said. “What time is it?”

  The holo display changed to a clock: 2138.

  She frowned at the display and tapped the top of the ring again to kill it.

  “Problem?” I asked, pretending I’d been staring off the balcony the whole time instead of reading the message.

  “Ah, kind of. My date left, it seems.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Damn. Sorry to hear that. His loss.”

  She shrugged. “I never liked him much anyway. He was too much of a show pony.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Good-looking, but not too smart, and not much fun to ride.”

  I laughed. “Well, I can promise you I am definitely not a show pony, because—”

  “Are you about to tell me you’re good-looking, smart, and fun to ride? Because I’ve got demonstrable proof at least two of those things aren’t true.”

  “Well, that may be,” I said with a nonchalant shrug and a sly smile. “But you’ll never know about the third one unless you try, will you?”

  She laughed.

  “Besides, don’t get too ahead of yourself there, Carla. I’ve got some sense. I’m the one who told my boss not to take your mission, remember? Your feminine wiles have no effect on me.”

  She laughed. “I said you were full of bullshit before, but I now proclaim you the King of Bullshit Mountain. I see the way you look at me.”

  “I’m an artist, Carla. I admire the feminine form,” I said as seriously as I could.

  “Sure thing, Snake. Whatever.” She looked at the time again. “Here’s the thing. I’ve got reservations at Chateau de Feuilles. I’ve never been but it’s supposed to be the best food on all of Greenly. And reservations are hard as hell to get, so I don’t want to waste ‘em. Jade has a date tonight too, or else I’d make it a girls’ night. Which leaves you, unfortunately.” She smirked at me. “Unless you’re too busy.”

  “Nope,” I said, doing my best to suppress a triumphant smile. “Since you took us on the mission from hell and got the ship all shot to shit, my calendar’s pretty clear. More than happy to be tonight’s ‘wrong crowd’ you fell in with.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said, and led me to the elevator.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Later that night, both of us tipsy from the booze and—at least in my case—the company, we shared a cab ride back to Carla’s apartment building.

  “So,” she asked with an impish grin as she leaned against me in the back seat, “do you always make the girls pay for your food too? Is that some sort of tribal tradition in whatever backwater bumfuck place you grew up in?”

  I felt my face go red. My three-hundred credits hadn’t even lasted us through cocktails.

  “Let me tell you a story,” I said. “There’s this guy—and he’s already not a rich guy, okay?—but anyway, his friend meets this girl and she has this thing she wants him to do and the guy says ‘no don’t do it ‘cause our shit’s gonna get fucked up’ but the guy’s friend says they’ll do it anyway. Then they do it and all their shit gets fucked up just like the guy said it would and so they spend like all their money trying to fix their shit but they can’t ‘cause their shit is too broken and the girl who asked them to do the thing only paid them a little teeny tiny bit and kept all the rest of it for herself so she could sleep on stacks of cash or whatever the fuck she does with it, while the guy and his friend drink themselves to death out of sadness ‘cause their shit is fucked up. And then the girl comes along and makes fun of the guy for not having any money. The end. Sound familiar?”

  Carla laughed and leaned against me. “I’ve heard that story, yeah. But I heard a slightly different version.”

  “Oh? Do tell.”

  “Yeah, this story is called ‘The Luckiest Motherfucker in the Galaxy.’ Ready?”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “So, there’s this lucky motherfucker who thinks he’s a hell of a lot more clever than he is and he has a dumbass for a friend who agrees to do something for a smokin’ hot
badass who is waaay out of their league because the lucky motherfucker’s friend wants to bone the smokin’ hot badass, even though she’d rather fly her ship into an asteroid. But anyway, they somehow survive almost getting killed because they’re in way over their heads and then track down the smokin’ hot badass, only for the luckiest motherfucker in the galaxy to get stabbed and pass out right after the smokin’ hot badass tells him how tough he is, which makes her laugh every time she thinks—”

  “Hey, I’d like to see you try the knife to the leg thing and see how you like it,” I interrupted.

  “Shut up, I’m telling this story, Snake. Anyway, then the lucky motherfucker and his dumbass friend go back to their broken toys, which they blame on the smokin’ hot badass even though she’s the only reason they’re still around. Then, for some reason the luckiest motherfucker shows up on the smokin’ hot badass’ doorstep and she must have not been feeling all right in the head, because she invites the luckiest motherfucker to a dinner that probably costs more than his ship, and to top it all off, actually has a really good time.”

  “That was a long story,” I said as I gently rubbed her arm. “Does leave me with a big question, though.”

  She looked up at me, her smile visible in the light of passing streetlights.

  “So, as the luckiest motherfucker in the galaxy, do I get lucky?”

  I kissed her.

  When I pulled away, she shook her head.

  “He shouldn’t, but he is the luckiest motherfucker in the galaxy, so probably, yeah.”

  Our shirts were off before we hit the next stoplight and we were sprawled out naked in the backseat of the cab the stoplight after that.

  Thank God for automated cab drivers.

  We managed to throw on our clothes again just in time for the cab to pull up to Carla’s apartment where we ran to the elevator and proceeded to start undressing again. We ignored the elevator buzzer and gave quite a few people a shock on a floor or two, but everybody decided they could wait for the next lift. We did make it down the hall without causing too much of a scene—before we crashed into Jade’s apartment, where we knocked a painting off the wall on our way over to clear whatever decorations had been on the dining room table before we made our way to the couch, then to the floor, and finally to Carla’s bedroom.