Mona Lisa Overdrive

8 - Texas Radio

Mona could see the sun through a couple of rips in the black plastic they kept taped over the window. She hated the squat too much to stay there when she was awake or straight, and now she was both.

She got quietly out of bed, wincing when her bare heel brushed the floor, and fumbled for her plastic thongs. The place was dirty; you could probably get tetanus from leaning up against the wall. Made her skin crawl to think about it. Stuff like that didn't seem to bother Eddy; he was too far gone in his schemes to notice his surroundings much. And he always managed to keep clean, somehow, like a cat. He was cat-clean, never a fleck of dirt under his polished nails. She figured he probably spent most of what she earned on his wardrobe, although it wouldn't have occurred to her to question the fact. She was sixteen and SINless, Mona, and this older trick had told her once that that was a song, "Sixteen and SINless." Meant she hadn't been assigned a SIN when she was born, a Single Identification Number, so she'd grown up on the outside of most official systems. She knew that it was supposed to be possible to get a SIN, if you didn't have one, but it stood to reason you'd have to go into a building somewhere and talk to a suit, and that was a long way from Mona's idea of a good time or even normal behavior.

She had a drill for getting dressed in the squat, and she could do it in the dark. You got your thongs on, after giving them a quick knock together to dislodge possible crawlies, and then you walked over to where you knew there was a roll of old fax on a Styrofoam crate beside the window. You peeled off about a meter of fax, maybe a day and a half of Asahi Shimbun, folded and creased it, put it down on the floor. Then you could stand on it, get the plastic bag from beside the crate, undo the twist of wire that held it shut, and find the clothes you wanted. When you stepped out of the thongs to put your pants on, you knew you'd be stepping on fresh fax. It was an article of faith with Mona that nothing was going to wander across the fax in the time it took her to step into a pair of jeans and get the thongs back on.

You could put on a shirt or whatever, carefully reseal the bag, and get out of there. Makeup, when required, went on in the corridor outside; there was some mirror left, beside the derelict elevator, a Fuji biofluorescent strip glued above it.

There was a strong piss smell beside the elevator this morning, so she decided to skip the makeup.

You never saw anybody in the building, but you heard them sometimes; music through a closed door, or footsteps just gone around a corner at the far end of a corridor. Well, that made sense; Mona had no desire to meet her neighbors either.

She took the stairs down three flights and into the gaping dark of the underground garage. She had her flashlight in her hand, found her way with six quick little blinks that steered her around stagnant puddles and dangling strands of dead optic cable, up the concrete steps and out into the alley. You could smell the beach, sometimes, in the alley, if the wind was right, but today it just smelled of garbage. The side of the squat towered away above her, so she moved fast, before some asshole decided to drop a bottle or worse. Once she was out on the Avenue, she slowed, but not too much; she was conscious of the cash in her pocket, and full of plans for spending it. Wouldn't do to get taken off, not when it looked like Eddy had wrangled them some kind of ticket out. She alternated between telling herself it was a sure thing, that they were practically gone, and warning herself not to get her hopes up. She knew Eddy's sure things: hadn't Florida been one of them? How it was warm in Florida and the beaches were beautiful and it was full of cute guys with money, just the spot for a little working vacation that had already stretched into the longest month Mona could remember. Well, it was fucking hot in Florida, like a sauna. The only beaches that weren't private were polluted, dead fish rolling belly-up in the shallows. Maybe the private stretches were the same, but you couldn't see them, just the chainlink and the guards in shorts and cop shirts standing around. Eddy'd get excited by the weapons the guards carried and describe each one to her in numbing detail. He didn't have a gun himself, though, not as far as she knew, and Mona figured that was a good thing. Sometimes you couldn't even smell the dead fish, because there was another smell, a chlorine smell that burned the roof of your mouth, something from the factories up the coast. If there were cute guys, they were still tricks, and the ones down here weren't exactly offering to pay double.

About the only thing to like about Florida was drugs, which were easy to come by and cheap and mostly industrial strength. Sometimes she imagined the bleach smell was the smell of a million dope labs cooking some unthinkable cocktail, all those molecules thrashing their kinky little tails, hot for destiny and the street.

She turned off the Avenue and walked down a line of unlicensed food stalls. Her stomach started growling at the smell, but she didn't trust street food, not if she didn't have to, and there were licensed places in the mall that would take cash. Somebody was playing a trumpet in the asphalt square that had been the parking lot, a rambling Cuban solo that bounced and distorted off the concrete walls, dying notes lost in the morning clatter of the market. A soapbox evangelist spread his arms high, a pale fuzzy Jesus copying the gesture in the air above him. The projection rig was in the box he stood on, but he wore a battered nylon pack with two speakers sticking over each shoulder like blank chrome heads. The evangelist frowned up at Jesus and adjusted something on the belt at his waist. Jesus strobed, turned green, and vanished. Mona laughed. The man's eyes flashed God's wrath, a muscle working in his seamed cheek. Mona turned left, between rows of fruit vendors stacking oranges and grapefruit in pyramids on their battered metal carts.

She entered a low, cavernous building that housed aisles of more permanent businesses: sellers of fish and packaged foods, cheap household goods, counters serving a dozen kinds of hot food. It was cooler here in the shade, and a little quieter. She found a wonton place with six empty stools and took one. The Chinese cook spoke to her in Spanish; she ordered by pointing. He brought her soup in a plastic bowl; she paid him with the smallest of her bills, and he made change with eight greasy cardboard tokens. If Eddy meant it, about leaving, she wouldn't be able to use them; if they stayed in Florida, she could always get some wonton. She shook her head. Gotta go, gotta. She shoved the worn yellow disks back across the painted plyboard counter. "You keep 'em." The cook swept them out of sight, bland and expressionless, a blue plastic toothpick fixed at the corner of his mouth.

She took chopsticks from the glass on the counter and fished a folded noodle from the bowl. There was a suit watching her from the aisle behind the cook's pots and burners. A suit who was trying to look like something else, white sportshirt and sunglasses. More the way they stand than anything, she thought. But he had the teeth, too, and the haircut, except he had a beard. He was pretending to look around, like he was shopping, hands in his pockets, his mouth set in what he might have thought was an absent smile. He was pretty, the suit, what you could see of him behind the beard and the glasses. The smile wasn't pretty, though; it was kind of rectangular, so you could see most of his teeth. She shifted a little on the stool, uneasy. Hooking was legal, but only if you did it right, got the tax chip and everything. She was suddenly aware of the cash in her pocket. She pretended to study the laminated foodhandling license taped to the counter; when she looked up again, he was gone.

She spent fifty on the clothes. She worked her way through eighteen racks in four shops, everything the mall had, before she made up her mind. The vendors didn't like her trying on so many things, but it was the most she'd ever had to spend. It was noon before she'd finished, and the Florida sun was cooking the pavement as she crossed the parking lot with her two plastic bags. The bags, like the clothes, were secondhand: one was printed with the logo of a Ginza shoe store, the other advertised Argentinean seafood briquettes molded from reconstituted krill. She was mentally mixing and matching the things she'd bought, figuring out different outfits.

From the other side of the square, the evangelist opened up at full volume, in mid-rant, like he'd warmed up to a spit-spraying fury before he'd cut the amp in, the hologram Jesus shaking its white-robed arms and gesturing angrily to the sky, the mall, the sky again. Rapture, he said. Rapture's coming.

Mona turned a corner at random, automatic reflex avoiding a crazy, and found herself walking past sunfaded card tables spread with cheap Indo simstim sets, used cassettes, colored spikes of microsoft stuck in blocks of pale blue Styrofoam. There was a picture of Angie Mitchell taped up behind one of the tables, a poster Mona hadn't seen before. She stopped and studied it hungrily, taking in the star's clothes and makeup first, then trying to figure out the background, where it had been shot. Unconsciously, she adjusted her expression to approximate Angie's in the poster. Not a grin, exactly. A sort of half-grin, maybe a little sad. Mona felt a special way about Angie. Because -- and tricks said it, sometimes -- she looked like her. Like she was Angie's sister. Except her nose, Mona's, had more of a tilt, and she, Angie, didn't have that smear of freckles out to her cheekbones. Mona's Angie half-grin widened as she stared, washed in the beauty of the poster, the luxury of the pictured room. She guessed it was a kind of castle, probably it was where Angie lived, sure, with lots of people to take care of her, do her hair and hang up her clothes, because you could see the walls were made of big rocks, and those mirrors had frames on them that were solid gold, carved with leaves and angels. The writing across the bottom would say where it was, maybe, but Mona couldn't read. Anyway, there weren't any fucking roaches there, she was sure of that, and no Eddy either. She looked down at the stim sets and briefly considered using the rest of her money. But then she wouldn't have enough for a stim, and anyway these were old, some of them older than she was. There was whatsit, that Tally, she'd been big when Mona was maybe nine ...

When she got back, Eddy was waiting for her, with the tape off the window and the flies buzzing. Eddy was sprawled out on the bed, smoking a cigarette, and the suit with the beard, who'd been watching her, was sitting in the broken chair, still wearing his sunglasses.

Prior, he said that was his name, like he didn't have a first one. Or like Eddy didn't have a last one. Well, she didn't have a last name herself, unless you counted Lisa, and that was more like having two first ones.

She couldn't get much sense of him, in the squat. She thought maybe that was because he was English. He wasn't really a suit, though, not like she'd thought when she'd seen him in the mall; he was onto some game, it just wasn't clear which one. He kept his eyes on her a lot, watched her pack her things in the blue Lufthansa bag he'd brought, but she couldn't feel any heat there, not like he wanted her. He just watched her, watched Eddy smoke, tapped his sunglasses on his knee, listened to Eddy's line of bullshit, and said as little as he needed to. When he did say something, it was usually funny, but the way he talked made it hard to tell when he was joking.

Packing, she felt light-headed, like she'd done a jumper but it hadn't quite come on. The flies were fucking against the window, bumping on the dust-streaked glass, but she didn't care. Gone, she was already gone.

Zipping up the bag.

It was raining when they got to the airport, Florida rain, pissing down warm out of a nowhere sky. She'd never been to an airport before, but she knew them from the stims.

Prior's car was a white Datsun rental that drove itself and played elevator music through quad speakers. It left them beside their luggage in a bare concrete bay and drove away in the rain. If Prior had a bag, it wasn't with him; Mona had her Lufthansa bag and Eddy had two black gator-clone suitcases.

She tugged her new skirt down over her hips and wondered if she'd bought the right shoes. Eddy was enjoying himself, had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders tilted to show he was doing something important.

She remembered him in Cleveland, the first time, how he'd come out to the place to look at a scoot the old man had for sale, a three-wheel Skoda that was mostly rust. The old man grew catfish in concrete tanks that fenced the dirt yard. She was in the house when Eddy came, long high-walled space of a truck trailer up on blocks. There were windows cut down one side, square holes sealed over with scratched plastic. She was standing by the stove, smell of onions in sacks and tomatoes hung up to dry, when she felt him there, down the length of the room, sensed the muscle and shoulder of him, his white teeth, the black nylon cap held shyly in his hand. Sun was coming in the windows, the place lit up bare and plain, the floor swept the way the old man had her keep it, but it was like a shadow came, blood-shadow where she heard the pumping of her heart, and him coming closer, tossing the cap on the bare chipboard table as he passed it, not shy now but like he lived there, right up to her, running a hand with a bright ring back through the oiled weight of his hair. The old man came in then and Mona turned away, pretended to do something with the stove. Coffee, the old man said, and Mona went to get some water, filling the enamel pot from the roof-tank line, the water gurgling down through the charcoal filter. Eddy and the old man sitting at the table, drinking black coffee, Eddy's legs spread straight out under the table, thighs hard through threadbare denim. Smiling, jiving the old man, dealing for the Skoda. How it seemed to run okay, how he'd buy it if the old man had the title. Old man getting up to dig in a drawer. Eddy's eyes on her again. She followed them out into the yard and watched him straddle the cracked vinyl saddle. Backfire set the old man's black dogs yelping, high sweet smell of cheap alcohol exhaust and the frame trembling between his legs.

Now she watched him pose beside his suitcases, and it was hard to connect that up, why she'd left with him next day on the Skoda, headed into Cleveland. The Skoda'd had a busted little radio you couldn't hear over the engine, just play it soft at night in a field by the road. Tuner part was cracked so it only picked up one station, ghost music up from some lonesome tower in Texas, steel guitar fading in and out all night, feeling how she was wet against his leg and the stiff dry grass prickling the back of her neck.

Prior put her blue bag into a white cart with a striped top and she climbed in after it, hearing tiny Spanish voices from the Cuban driver's headset. Then Eddy stowed the gator cases and he and Prior got in. Rolling out to the runway through walls of rain.

The plane wasn't what she knew from the stims, not like a long rich bus inside, with lots of seats. It was a little black thing with sharp, skinny wings and windows that made it look like it was squinting.

She went up some metal stairs and there was a space with four seats and the same gray carpet all over, on the walls and ceiling too, everything clean and cool and gray. Eddy came in after her and took a seat like it was something he did every day, loosening his tie and stretching his legs. Prior was pushing buttons beside the door. It made a sighing sound when it closed.

She looked out the narrow, streaming windows at runway lights reflected on wet concrete.

Came down here on the train, she thought, New York to Atlanta and then you change.

The plane shivered. She heard the airframe creak as it came to life.

She woke briefly, two hours later, in the darkened cabin, cradled by the long hum of the jet. Eddy was asleep, his mouth half-open. Maybe Prior was sleeping too, or maybe he just had his eyes closed, she couldn't tell.

Halfway back into a dream she wouldn't remember in the morning, she heard the sound of that Texas radio, fading steel chords drawn out like an ache.