Mona Lisa Overdrive

11 - Down on the Drag

Mona woke as they were landing.

Prior was listening to Eddy and nodding and flashing his rectangular smile. It was like the smile was always there, behind his beard. He'd changed his clothes, though, so he must've had some on the plane. Now he wore a plain gray business suit and a tie with diagonal stripes. Sort of like the tricks Eddy'd set her up with in Cleveland, except the suit fit a different way.

She'd seen a trick fitted for a suit once, a guy who took her to a Holiday Inn. The suit place was off the hotel lobby, and he stood in there in his underwear, crosshatched with lines of blue light, and watched himself on three big screens. On the screens, you couldn't see the blue lines, because he was wearing a different suit in each image. And Mona had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing, because the system had a cosmetic program that made him look different on the screens, stretched his face a little and made his chin stronger, and he didn't seem to notice. Then he picked a suit, got back into the one he'd been wearing, and that was it.

Eddy was explaining something to Prior, some crucial point in the architecture of one of his scams. She knew how to tune the content out, but the tone still got to her, like he knew people wouldn't be able to grasp the gimmick he was so proud of, so he was taking it slow and easy, like he was talking to a little kid, and he'd keep his voice low to sound patient. It didn't seem to bother Prior, but then it seemed to Mona that Prior didn't much give a shit what Eddy said.

She yawned, stretched, and the plane bumped twice on runway concrete, roared, began to slow. Eddy hadn't even stopped talking.

"We have a car waiting," Prior said, interrupting him.

"So where's it taking us?" Mona asked, ignoring Eddy's frown.

Prior showed her the smile. "To our hotel." He unfastened his seatbelt. "We'll be there for a few days. Afraid you'll have to spend most of them in your room."

"That's the deal," Eddy said, like it was his idea she'd have to stay in the room.

"You like stims, Mona?" Prior asked, still smiling.

"Sure," she said, "who doesn't?"

"Have a favorite, Mona, a favorite star?"

"Angie," she said, vaguely irritated. "Who else?"

The smile got a little bigger. "Good. We'll get you all of her latest tapes."

Mona's universe consisted in large part of things and places she knew but had never physically seen or visited. The hub of the northern Sprawl didn't smell, in stims. They edited it out, she guessed, the way Angie never had a headache or a bad period. But it did smell. Like Cleveland, but even worse. She'd thought it was just the way the airport smelled, when they left the plane, but it had been even stronger when they'd gotten out of their car to go into the hotel. And it was cold as hell in the street, too, with a wind that bit at her bare ankles.

The hotel was bigger than that Holiday Inn, but older, too, she thought. The lobby was more crowded than lobbies were in stims, but there was a lot of clean blue carpet. Prior made her wait by an ad for an orbital spa while he and Eddy went over to a long black counter and he talked to a woman with a brass nametag. She felt stupid waiting there, in this white plastic raincoat Prior had made her wear, like he didn't think her outfit was good enough. About a third of the crowd in the lobby were Japs she figured for tourists. They all seemed to have recording gear of some kind -- video, holo, a few with simstim units on their belts -- but otherwise they didn't look like they had a whole lot of money. She thought they were all supposed to have a lot. Maybe they 're smart, don't want to show it, she decided.

She saw Prior slide a credit chip across the counter to the woman with the nametag, who took it and zipped it along a metal slot.

Prior put her bag down on the bed, a wide slab of beige temperfoam, and touched a panel that caused a wall of drapes to open. "It's not the Ritz," he said, "but we'll try to make you comfortable."

Mona made a noncommittal sound. The Ritz was a burger place in Cleveland and she couldn't see what that had to do with anything.

"Look," he said, "your favorite." He was standing beside the bed's upholstered headboard. There was a stim unit there, built in, and a little shelf with a set of trodes in a plastic wrapper and about five cassettes. "All of Angie's new stims."

She wondered who'd put those cassettes there, and if they'd done it after Prior had asked her what stims she liked. She showed him a smile of her own and went to the window. The Sprawl looked like it did in stims; the window was like a hologram postcard, famous buildings she didn't know the names of but she knew they were famous.

Gray of the domes, geodesics picked out white with snow, behind that the gray of the sky.

"Happy, baby?" Eddy asked, coming up behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders.

"They got showers here?"

Prior laughed. She shrugged out of Eddy's loose grip and took her bag into the bathroom. Closed and locked the door. She heard Prior's laugh again, and Eddy starting up with his scam talk. She sat on the toilet, opened her bag, and dug out the cosmetic kit where she kept her wiz. She had four crystals left. That seemed like enough; three was enough, but when she got down to two she usually started looking to score. She didn't do jumpers much, not every day anyway, except recently she had, but that was because Florida had started to drive her crazy.

Now she could start tapering off, she decided, as she tapped a crystal out of the vial. It looked like hard yellow candy; you had to crush it, then grind it up between a pair of nylon screens. When you did that, it gave off a kind of hospital smell.

They were both gone, by the time she finished her shower. She'd stayed in until she got bored with it, which took a long time. In Florida she'd mostly used showers at public pools or bus stations, the kind you worked with tokens. She guessed there was something hooked up to this one that measured the liters and put it on your bill; that was how it worked at the Holiday Inn. There was a big white filter above the plastic shower-head, and a sticker on the tile wall with an eye and a tear meant it was okay to shower but don't get it in your eyes, like swimming pool water. There was a row of chrome spouts set into the tile, and when you punched a button under each one you got shampoo, shower gel, liquid soap, bath oil. When you did that, a little red dot lit up beside the button, because it went on your bill. On Prior's bill. She was glad they were gone, because she liked being alone and high and clean. She didn't get to be alone much, except on the street, and that wasn't the same. She left damp footprints on the beige carpet when she walked to the window. She was wrapped in a big towel that matched the bed and the carpet and had a word shaved into the fuzzy part, probably the name of the hotel.

There was an old-fashioned building a block away, and the corners of its stepped peak had been carved down to make a kind of mountain, with rocks and grass, and a waterfall that fell and hit rocks and then fell again. It made her smile, why anybody had gone to that trouble. Drifts of steam came off the water, where it hit. It couldn't just fall down into the street, though, she thought, because it would cost too much. She guessed they pumped it back up and used it over, around in a circle.

Something gray moved its head there, swung its big curly horns up like it was looking at her. She took a step back on the carpet and blinked. Kind of a sheep, but it had to be a remote, a hologram or something. It tossed its head and started eating grass. Mona laughed.

She could feel the wiz down the backs of her ankles and across her shoulderblades, a cold tight tingle, and the hospital smell at the back of her throat.

She'd been scared before but she wasn't scared now.

Prior had a bad smile, but he was just a player, just a bent suit. If he had money, it was somebody else's. And she wasn't scared of Eddy anymore; it was almost like she was scared for him, because she could see what other people took him for.

Well, she thought, it didn't matter; she wasn't growing catfish in Cleveland anymore, and no way anybody'd get her back to Florida again.

She remembered the alcohol stove, cold winter mornings, the old man hunched in his big gray coat. Winters he'd put a second layer of plastic over the windows. The stove was enough to heat the place, then, because the walls were covered with sheets of hard foam, and chipboard over that. Places where the foam showed, you could pick at it with your finger, make holes; if he caught you doing it, he'd yell. Keeping the fish warm in cold weather was more work; you had to pump water up to the roof, where the sun mirrors were, into these clear plastic tubes. But the vegetable stuff rotting on the tank ledges helped, too; steam rose off when you went to net a fish. He traded the fish for other kinds of food, for things people grew, stove alcohol and the drinking kind, coffee beans, garbage the fish ate.

He wasn't her father and he'd said it often enough, when he'd talked at all. Sometimes she still wondered if maybe he had been. When she'd first asked him how old she was, he'd said six, so she counted from that.

She heard the door open behind her and turned; Prior was there, the gold plastic key tab in his hand, beard open to show the smile. "Mona," he said, stepping in, "this is Gerald." Tall, Chinese, gray suit, graying hair. Gerald smiled gently, edged in past Prior, and went straight for the drawer thing opposite the foot of the bed. Put a black case down and clicked it open. "Gerald's a friend. He's medical, Gerald. Needs to have a look at you."

"Mona," Gerald said, removing something from the case, "how old are you?"

"She's sixteen," Prior said. "Right, Mona?"

"Sixteen," Gerald said. The thing in his hands was like a pair of black goggles, sunglasses with bumps and wires. "That's stretching it a little, isn't it?" He looked at Prior.

Prior smiled.

"You're short what, ten years?"

"Not quite," Prior said. "We aren't asking for perfection."

Gerald looked at her. "You aren't going to get it." He hooked the goggles over his ears and tapped something; a light came on below the right lens. "But there are degrees of approximation." The light swung toward her.

"We're talking cosmetic, Gerald."

"Where's Eddy?" she asked, as Gerald came closer.

"In the bar. Shall I call him?" Prior picked up the phone, but put it back down without using it.

"What is this?" Backing away from Gerald.

"A medical examination," Gerald said. "Nothing painful." He had her against the window; above the towel, her shoulderblades pressed against cool glass. "Someone's about to employ you, and pay you very well; they need to be certain you're in good health." The light stabbed into her left eye. "She's on stimulants of some kind," he said to Prior, in a different tone of voice.

"Try not to blink, Mona." The light swung to her right eye. "What is it, Mona? How much did you do?"

"Wiz." Wincing away from the light.

He caught her chin in his cool fingers and realigned her head. "How much?"

"A crystal ... "

The light was gone. His smooth face was very close, the goggles studded with lenses, slots, little dishes of black metal mesh. "No way of judging the purity," he said.

"It's real pure," she said, and giggled.

He let her chin go and smiled. "It shouldn't be a problem," he said. "Could you open your mouth, please?"

"Mouth?"

"I want to look at your teeth."

She looked at Prior.

"You're in luck, here," Gerald said to Prior, when he'd used the little light to look in her mouth. "Fairly good condition and close to target configuration. Caps, inlays."

"We knew we could count on you, Gerald."

Gerald took the goggles off and looked at Prior. He returned to the black case and put the goggles away. "Lucky with the eyes, too. Very close. A tint job." He took a foil envelope from the case and tore it open, rolled the pale surgical glove down over his right hand. "Take off the towel, Mona. Make yourself comfortable."

She looked at Prior, at Gerald. "You want to see my papers, the bloodwork and stuff?"

"No," Gerald said, "that's fine."

She looked out the window, hoping to see the bighorn, but it was gone, and the sky seemed a lot darker.

She undid the towel, let it fall to the floor, then lay down on her back on the beige temperfoam.

It wasn't all that different from what she got paid for; it didn't even take as long.

Sitting in the bathroom with the cosmetic kit open on her knees, grinding another crystal, she decided she had a right to be pissed off.

First Eddy takes off without her, then Prior shows up with this creep medic, then he tells her Eddy's sleeping in a different room. Back in Florida she could've used some time off from Eddy, but up here was different. She didn't want to be in here by herself, and she'd been scared to ask Prior for a key. He fucking well had one, though, so he could walk in any time with his creep-ass friends. What kind of deal was that?

And the business with the plastic raincoat, that burned her ass too. A disposable fucking plastic raincoat.

She fluffed the powdered wiz between the nylon screens, carefully tapped it into the hitter, exhaled hard, put the mouthpiece to her lips, and hit. The cloud of yellow dust coated the membranes of her throat; some of it probably even made it to her lungs. She'd heard that was bad for you.

She'd hadn't had any plan when she'd gone in the bathroom to take her hit, but as the back of her neck started tingling, she found herself thinking about the streets around the hotel, what she'd seen of them on their way in. There were clubs, bars, shops with clothes in the window. Music. Music would be okay, now, and a crowd. The way you could lose it in a crowd, forget yourself, just be there. The door wasn't locked, she knew that; she'd already tried it. It would lock behind her, though, and she didn't have a key. But she was staying here, so Prior must have registered her at the desk. She thought about going down and asking the woman behind the counter for a key, but the idea made her uncomfortable. She knew suits behind counters and how they looked at you. No, she decided, the best idea was to stay in and stim those new Angie's.

Ten minutes later she was on her way out a side entrance off the main lobby, the wiz singing in her head.

It was drizzling outside, maybe dome condensation. She'd worn the white raincoat for the lobby, figuring Prior knew what he was doing after all, but now she was glad she had it. She grabbed a fold of fax out of an overflowing bin and held it over her head to keep her hair dry. It wasn't as cold as before, which was another good thing. None of her new clothes were what you'd call warm.

Looking up and down the avenue, deciding which way to go, she took in half-a-dozen nearly identical hotel fronts, a rank of pedicabs, the rainslick glitter of a row of small shops. And people, lots of them, like the Cleveland core but everybody dressed so sharp, and all moving like they were on top of it, everybody with someplace to go. Just go with it, she thought, the wiz giving her a sweet second boot that tripped her into the river of pretty people without even having to think about it. Clicking along in her new shoes, holding the fax over her head until she noticed -- more luck -- the rain had stopped.

She wouldn't've minded a chance to check out the shop windows, when the crowd swept her past, but the flow was pleasure and nobody else was pausing. She contented herself with sidelong flashes of each display. The clothes were like clothes in a stim, some of them, styles she'd never seen anywhere.

I should've been here, she thought, I should've been here all along. Not on a catfish farm, not in Cleveland, not in Florida. It's a place, a real place, anybody can come here, you don't have to get it through a stim. Thing was, she'd never seen this part of it in a stim, the regular people part. A star like Angie, this part wasn't her part. Angie'd be off in high castles with the other stim stars, not down here. But God it was pretty, the night so bright, the crowd surging around her, past all the good things you could have if you just got lucky.

Eddy, he didn't like it. Anyway he'd always said how it was shitty here, too crowded, rent too high, too many police, too much competition. Not that he'd waited two seconds when Prior 'd made an offer, she reminded herself. And anyway, she had her own ideas why Eddy was so down on it. He'd blown it here, she figured, pulled some kind of serious wilson. Either he didn't want to be reminded or else there were people here who'd remind him for sure if he came back. It was there in the pissed-off way he talked about the place, same way he'd talk about anybody who told him his scams wouldn't work. The new buddy so goddamn smart the first night was just a stone wilson the next, dead stupid, no vision.

Past a big store with ace-looking stim gear in the window, all of it matte black and skinny, presided over by this gorgeous holo of Angie, who watched them all slide by with her half-sad smile. Queen of the night, yeah.

The crowd-river flowed out into a kind of circle, a place where four streets met and swung around a fountain. And because Mona really wasn't headed anywhere, she wound up there, because the people around her peeled off in their different directions without stopping. Well, there were people in the circle too, some of them sitting on the cracked concrete that edged the fountain. There was a statue in the center, marble, all worn-out and soft-edged. Kind of a baby riding a big fish, a dolphin. It looked like the dolphin's mouth would spray water if the fountain was working, but it wasn't. Past the heads of the seated people she could see crumpled, sodden fax and white foam cups in the water.

Then it seemed like the crowd had melded behind her, a curved, sliding wall of bodies, and the three who faced her on the fountain rim jumped out like a picture. Fat girl with black-dyed hair, mouth half-open like it stayed that way, tits spilling out of a red rubber halter; blonde with a long face and a thin blue slash of lipstick, hand like a bird's claw sprouting a cigarette; man with his oiled arms bare to the cold, graft-job muscle knotted like rock under synthetic tan and bad jail tattoos ...

"Hey, bitch," cried the fat girl, with a kind of glee, "hope y'don't think y'gonna turn any 'roun' here!"

The blonde looked at Mona with her tired eyes and gave her a wan grin, an it's-not-my-fault grin, and then looked away.

The pimp came up off the fountain like something driven by springs, but Mona was already moving, cued by the blonde's expression. He had her arm, but the raincoat's plastic seam gave way and she elbowed her way back into the crowd. The wiz took over and the next thing she knew she was at least a block away, sagging against a steel pole, coughing and hyperventilating.

But now the wiz was all turned around, the way it went sometimes, and everything was ugly. The faces in the crowd were driven and hungry-looking, like they all had their own private desperate errands to run, and the light from the shop windows was cold and mean, and all the things behind the glass were just there to tell her she couldn't have them. There was a voice somewhere, an angry child's voice stringing obscenities together in an endless, meaningless chain; when she realized who it was, she stopped doing it.

Her left arm was cold. She looked down and saw that the sleeve was gone, the seam down her side torn open to the waist. She took off the coat and draped it over her shoulders like a cape; maybe that made it a little harder to notice.

She braced her back against the pole as the wiz rolled over her on a wave of delayed adrenaline; her knees started to buckle and she thought she was going to faint, but then the wiz pulled one of its tricks and she was crouching in summer sunset light in the old man's dirt yard, the flaky gray earth scribed with the game she'd been playing, but now she was just hunched there, vacant, staring off past the bulks of the tanks to where fireflies pulsed in the blackberry tangle above a twisted old chassis. There was light behind her from the house and she could smell the cornbread baking and the coffee he boiled and reboiled there, till a spoon stood up in it, he said, and he'd be in there now reading one of his books, crumbly brown leaves, never a page with a corner on it, he got 'em in frayed plastic baggies and sometimes they just fell to dust in his hands, but if he found something he wanted to keep he'd get a little pocket copier out of the drawer, fit the batteries in it, run it down the page. She liked to watch the copies spool out all fresh, with their special smell that faded away, but he'd never let her work it. Sometimes he'd read out loud, a kind of hesitation in his voice, like a man trying to play an instrument he hasn't picked up in a long time. They weren't stories he read, not like they had endings or told a joke. They were like windows into something so strange; he never tried to explain any of it, probably didn't understand it himself, maybe nobody did ...

Then the street snapped back hard and bright.

She rubbed her eyes and coughed.