by Reiss, CD
“Get away from the river!” Catherine roared at one of them, her gentleness turned to fire.
The kid in question froze then spun away from the tall reeds.
“She’s got a wild animal inside her,” I said to Harper, who had just straddled the bench next to me with a plate of tacos.
“Yeah. With the kids especially.”
“Thought you were over tacos?”
“I changed my mind.” She tilted her head to get a taco to her lips. Hair dropped over her cheek and threatened to dive bomb into her lunch.
I flicked it back and over her ear. She had the taco in her mouth when her eyes went a little wider in surprise. The gesture was too intimate. I knew it before I got the hair all the way over.
Harper wasn’t the only one looking at me as if I’d just shit my pants. I couldn’t swear every single eye was on me, but Catherine and Johnny, who was flat on his back in the bed of his truck, had their heads tilted our way.
“Sorry.”
She spoke around her chewing. “I’m sorry, actually.”
“Really?”
The afternoon wind was picking up, and she pulled another lock of hair out of her mouth before I could.
“Yeah. We have a deal. You put out, and I didn’t pay up.”
“Way to make a guy feel like a whore.”
She shrugged. “You’ll live.”
“Well, I’m sorry I broke into your room… but not really.”
“You know the saying about the snake?”
“The one that bites you because… what did you expect? It’s a fucking snake?”
“That one.” She faced into the wind, blowing her hair away from her face.
I took the last bite of hamburger. A triangle of tomato fell out and landed on my shirt. Harper took a napkin out of her pocket and wiped me.
“Stop.” I took the napkin. “This is the cleanest thing that’s touched this shirt all day.”
She smiled, chewing a wad of taco in one side of her mouth. She had a charming, unself-conscious efficiency about the way she chewed her food and spoke volumes with her expression at the same time. She was an open book written in a code I was just starting to understand.
I could have watched her eat for a long time, but a cry came out from the second floor.
“Barrington ladies!” It was Damon, who I’d seen in passing by the dumpsters. His tattooed arms leaned on a second-floor ledge, and the sun made two reflective dots on his sunglasses.
Harper shaded her eyes and turned his way. Her body was curved to click into what mine wanted. It was like math. Only exact figures balanced the equation.
“What?” she called.
“The office is locked,” Damon shouted.
“So?”
“Did Daddy give you the key?”
The word daddy had a venom I hadn’t heard all day. It burned with acidic meaning and was thick with leisurely intent, yet it was subtle enough to pretend you didn’t hear it.
“I’ll be right up!” Catherine called back. She was as sweet as always but with an edge of impatience, as if she was telling Damon not to fuck with her.
Harper sighed as Catherine walked away with a ring of keys. “I’d better go too.” To me, she said, “You finish eating.”
When she walked away, her ass swayed and her hair flew in every direction. With her curves and the way she moved them, I had no choice but to follow. I could eat later.
XXXVI
Hacking real life was at least as good as finding weaknesses in code. Once Keaton and I had learned how to pick a lock, opening doors became as much of an addiction as building profiles. We’d find a single piece of information about a person, tack it onto another piece we found on a Tor site, grab a birthday from social media, uncover an address from the mortgage rolls. We skimmed just enough to not get caught, only buying things where our marks bought things. I didn’t excuse it. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.
Until the pure code hacks, which were sexier, more difficult, and got the most esteem from the boys in the hacker forums.
I hacked my dad first but didn’t take anything. The pure rush was being able to do it. I had power over him. In retrospect, that moment where I looked at his bank account without him knowing was the moment I became a man.
Life was a problem to be hacked. It was never about money. It felt good.
As soon as I saw Catherine struggling with the dozens of keys on the ring, I wanted to cut the shit and hack the problem. But Damon, Harper, two other guys, and myself just watched, quickly alternating between impatience, anticipation, hope, and disappointment, in that order.
I knew the lock, and I knew the type of key. It would be a Kwikset with the three triangle cutouts on top. But she went through every single one.
“Come on, princess.” Damon’s face was clammy, and he kept rubbing his hands on his jeans.
“Hang on.” Catherine isolated a silver key. The last one, and it was a Kwikset.
Anticipation, hope, impatience, disappointment as the key didn’t turn the lock.
She dropped the ring.
“You are so useless.” Damon scooped up the keys and gave them to her.
I didn’t know Catherine, but I wanted to punch Damon.
Harper snapped at him before I could react. “There’re no loose Fentanyl bottles in there, if that’s what you’re after.”
“Fuck you, you rich little cunt. You don’t know shit about—”
He had me at cunt. I had the advantage of surprise, pushing my forearm against his throat and his head against the dirty wall. “What did you say?”
The pressure on his esophagus didn’t temper his hostility, which was fine with me. I wasn’t ready for the apology Harper deserved.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Taylor.” Harper’s voice, behind me. Far, far away.
“Don’t talk to her like that.”
He pushed me hard against the opposite wall.
“Damon!” Catherine, miles away.
“You push a broom and think you’re one of us?”
In a split second, Damon and I were locked hand-to-face-to-shoulder-knee-in-stomach-defense-offense-defense-offense. He had worked with his body his whole life, putting me at a disadvantage, but he wasn’t just fighting me. He was fighting whatever made him sweaty and shaky.
Damon’s friend, whose name I never learned, just lit a cigarette. Catherine and Harper worked as a team, splitting us. I wound up against the wall with Harper’s hand on my chest.
I pointed over her shoulder at Damon. “I’ll pick this lock if you leave now.”
“You pick the lock?” Damon sneered. “Bullshit.”
“Get out of here,” I sneered back.
“I get it. Money sticks to money. Fine. Fuck it. Pick the fucking lock.”
“Just wanted to mop the fucking floor.” Damon’s friend regarded the tip of his cigarette then flicked off the ash.
I held my hand out for the keys. Catherine dropped them into my palm. I flicked through the club member cards, snapped the thickest one into the right shape, and was in the office in thirty seconds. There was nothing but an overturned desk and empty shelves. Huge windows looked out onto the halfway-clean factory floor.
I stepped out of the way and let Cigarette Man kick his wheeled yellow bucket through the doorway. Damon made a point to brush against me on the way out.
I almost shoved him, but Harper vise-gripped my arm. I snapped out of it.
“You dropped a bunch of stuff.” She pointed toward the hall floor.
I picked up my wallet, a pen, and the napkin she’d used to wipe tomato off my shirt. It had fallen open, revealing a row of numbers written in marker.
“You really should pay better attention,” she said softly. “You almost threw it away. And I wasn’t writing it again.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s—”
“I need your phone again.”
She handed me the black rectangle. When it hit my han
d, it woke up. I saw the wallpaper. Harper from just below, with her blowing hair, indecisive eyes, and the factory outlined against the blue sky behind her. She looked powerful, confident, the muse for a revolution.
“Oh, the code.” She took the phone and hit the glass with her thumb. “Here.”
She handed it to me, the photo safely tucked behind the keypad screen.
I wasn’t scared. Not that. But something closer to freaked out.
And not at her.
At myself. At how easily I handled her power over me and how badly I wanted her at the same time.
“I’ll use the one in the house.”
“Suit yourself.”
I kissed her without thinking then ran, but I had to make a stop at the lunch tables first.
XXXVII
Kyle scrubbed down the grill with a wire brush as everyone packed up the paper plates and leftover food.
“Kyle, I need you to watch Harper.” I told him what had happened with Damon outside the office.
“Saw him leave a minute ago. Probably getting a fix. But I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Thank you.”
I ran back to the house, pounding over the bridge, through the reeds, past the thorn garden, napkin crumpled in my hand, until I got to the kitchen, which looked like a culinary bomb had hit it. This must have been lunch central. I picked up the receiver and stared at the clear plastic circle.
What was Deepak’s number?
My grandmother had made fun of me one Christmas because I didn’t know any of the numbers in my phone. She then recited every number she’d ever learned. By the end of dinner, we were singing the number my mother grew up with. Grandma still lived there.
I dialed. It took forever.
“Hello?”
“Grandma?” She was pretty deaf. I had to yell. “Hi, it’s—”
“Taylor?”
“Yes. Do you—”
“What are you doing all the way out there?”
“What? I—”
“The caller ID says you’re—”
“Gram. Do you have my work number?”
That’s right. I didn’t even know my office number.
“Do you know you’re on the news?”
I was on the news? I wasn’t much of a news watcher and usually picked up what was happening by following media on Twitter. I hadn’t seen a TV in the house, and when I’d seen one in the bar, it had been on sports. So, no, I didn’t know I was on the news.
“What are they saying?”
“Your computers didn’t work.”
“They work, Grandma.”
“And you disappeared. Your partner. The Indian—”
“He’s from Bangladesh.” Why did I bother correcting my grandmother? She was close to eighty. She needed to be happy more than she needed to be correct.
“He was on Morning Joe. He said you were fixing it, but Maria Bardono didn’t believe him. Said you were running away with everyone’s money. Said you were a criminal. And I said, that’s the last time I watch you, Mr. Morning Joe. My grandson is no thief!”
She was sweet and loyal, but I’d been a prolific thief and digital trespasser since before her dotage.
“When did they say that?”
“Yesterday. But today Joe had a different guy on. Said you fixed it. I liked him, this second guy. Real handsome. Had a nice confidence on him and an English accent.”
She had a short memory for boycotts and a sharp eye for authority.
“Was it Keaton? The second guy? Keaton from Poly? Do you remember him?”
“Oh, I remember that boy. Could be. The tall one, right? Are you coming back here? Or going to California? Roger from the deli usually saves me the pig’s feet if you want me to make them.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Just tell me if you’re coming.”
Talking to Grandma had always been a commitment of time and patience. I was short on both.
“I will. Do you have my work number?”
“Your what?”
“My work number. I know. You were right. But—”
“You always ate them when you were little. You were the only one.”
“I know. I’ll come see you, Gram. Do you have—”
“It’s just pork, I said a hundred times. You believed me.”
“I did. And you were right. Do you—”
“Give me a minute. I’m getting the book out. I’ll have Roger save them for you. He gets a side of pork second Tuesday of the month.”
I banged my head on the doorway molding.
“Just tell me ahead, or that bitch on Chestnut gets them,” she said.
“Okay.”
“All right. Let me look. These letters get smaller all the time. B. E. G. Harden is H. H. H. Here you are.”
She read off the number. I snapped a pencil from a busted mug and wrote it on the wall.
“Thanks, Gram. I’ll come visit. I promise.”
“You better. I’m going to be dead soon, you know.”
“You have another twenty years. Easy.”
“Maybe, you little shit.” She said it with an abundance of affection and humor. “Maybe.”
We said our good-byes, I made promises I intended to keep if I ever got out of the middle of nowhere, and I hung up. I dialed the front desk at QI4. I should have been able to get Deepak’s extension right away, but naturally there wasn’t a touchpad. So I had to wait until a receptionist picked up. Then I had to identify myself, prove it, and growl like a lion before they’d give me Deepak.
“Where have you been?” he asked right away.
“Shithole, USA, with no phone. Do not ask.”
Calling the middle parts of the country a shithole was as natural as pissing standing up. Until that moment. In the shitholiest kitchen in Shithole, USA, I stopped feeling a fundamental truth in the word. The people here were all right, and they were mopping a factory floor to keep the town alive. That said a lot about the place. I was going to take that back—but not now. I read the code to Deepak.
KDQwOCkgNTU1LTEyMjY=
“I’ll head down to the cage,” he said. “This is base64. Did you translate it?”
I hadn’t even thought to look at how it would translate. “In my head? No.” I searched for something to write on besides the wall. “I’ll do it on a piece of paper if you can’t.”
“Hang on. I’ll do it on my phone.”
I heard the sounds of the office as Deepak walked through it. Ronald’s loud conversations about “this girl gamer on Twitch.” The hiss of the servers. The bird soundtrack in the hallway. The universal ding of the elevator.
I felt something I didn’t recognize at first because I’d never felt it before, but when the elevator doors in my office whooshed closed for Deepak, I realized what it was: I was homesick.
Deepak laughed and got back on the phone. “You know what it is?”
“What?”
I heard the elevator doors open.
“Our phone number.” Deepak rattled off a string of Bengali when the ID pad asked for his name.
“She’s such a fucking card,” I mumbled as if I was annoyed, but the truth was she was being thoughtful. She knew I couldn’t get my phone. She knew I’d have to use a landline. She knew I wouldn’t have shit memorized. So she gave it to me, knowing that I’d be able to scratch out the answer but not knowing I was in too much of a hurry to do it.
“She?” He interrupted my warm feelings. His chair squeaked, and computer keys clicked against the muted stillness of the cage. “Is it Harper Watson?”
“Who? No.”
Yes, but no. He wasn’t allowed to know about her yet. I didn’t want her accused, and I didn’t want Keaton flying his ass out here to torment her or scoop her up. Nope. I wanted her to myself. She was mine. All mine.
That makes no sense.
“Jack checked on her. Did you know we interviewed her?”
“For what?”
“The cage. To replace Walter.”
My skin tingled. My breath stopped. My brain went into complete shutdown while I tried to remember every woman we’d interviewed.
I couldn’t recall a single one.
But how many had been that hot? You’d think my dick would at least have a little recollection.
“I’d remember.”
“You were looking at your phone the entire time, but sure. You might remember her score on the coding test though.”
The test was a beast, and my guys in the cage were the best. None of them had scored under ninety percent.
“What was it?”
“Perfect. But, your dick.”
Was that true? Had I forgotten a perfect score? I mean, yes, I didn’t hire women. Very few small operations did. When I was as big as Google, I’d take the risk. Until then, I couldn’t afford a lawsuit or an HR debacle. Couldn’t deal with a work slowdown when we were hosed constantly. And the guys in the cage? We didn’t have a pill to manage the awkward social reflux.
“What the hell was Keaton doing on TV?” I asked, changing the subject. A group must have gathered around Deepak. I could hear the guys goofing off.
“He called off the Oracle meeting. Someone traced the blockchain and yada yada—he was unmasked.” Tap tappa of keys. “Why can’t we get you on video?”
“I’m on a landline. And bullshit. He wanted to be unmasked.”
A group cheer went up from the other side of the line.
“It’s up!” Deepak shouted. “‘Enter decryption code to boot OS.’ Like a boss.”
“Two more,” I said quietly.
I was in two worlds, thinking with two minds. The feel of her body and the comfort of my real life. Getting between her and Damon because she needed me. A way in. A path I was unreasonably afraid of losing.
But I didn’t know her. I only felt her in places I hadn’t thought I had. I didn’t know why she was doing what she was doing. Why she kept me here. Why she wanted me to teach her the fine art of fucking. If she just wanted vengeance for not getting a job, she would have stolen my system and sold the decryption keys to the highest bidder. So there was something more.
And Keaton was making a move. He was loyal and trustworthy, but not always in the way you expected. He’d be the first to do some damage to QI4 in the service of what he thought was the greater good. He’d act unilaterally and inflexibly.
