Virtual Light

13. Tweaking

Let me go.”

“No way. I got you this job. You’re gonna blow it, I’m gonna know why.” He slammed his other palm on the black foam around his bars, killing the music.

“Please, Sammy, I gotta get up to Skinner’s—”

He let go of her arm. “Why?”

She started to cough, caught it, took three deep breaths. “You ever steal anything, Sammy Sal? I mean, when you were working?”

Sammy Sal looked at her. “No” he said, finally, “but I been known to fuck the clients.”

Chevette shivered. “Not me.”

“No” Sammy Sal said, “but you don’t pull tags all the places I do. ’Sides, you a girl.”

“But I stole something last night. From this guy’s pocket, up at this party at the Hotel Morrisey.”

Sammy Sal licked his lips. “How come you had your hand in his pocket? He somebody you know?”

“He was some asshole” Chevette said.

“Oh. Him. Think I met him.”

“Gave me a hard time. It was sticking out of his pocket.” “You sure it was his pocket this hard time sticking out of?” “Sammy Sal” she said, “this is serious. I’m scared shitless.” He was looking at her, close.

“That it? You scared? Stole some shit, you scared?”

“Bunny says some security guys called up Allied, even called up Wilson and everything. Looking for me.”

“Shit” Sammy Sal said, still studying her, “I thought you high, on dancer. Thought Bunny found out. Come after you, gonna chew your little bitch ear off. You just scared?”

She looked at him. “That’s right.”

“Well” he said, digging his fingers into the black foam, “what you scared of?”

“Scared they’ll come up to Skinner’s and find ’em.”

“Find what?”

“These glasses.”

“Spy, baby? Shot? Looking, like Alice ‘n’ all?” He drummed his fingers on the black foam.

“These black glasses. Like sunglasses, but you can’t see through ’em.”

Sammy Sal tilted his beautiful head to one side. “What’s that mean?”

“They’re just black.”

“Sunglasses?”

“Yeah. But just black.”

“Huh” he said, “you had been fucking the clients, but only just the cute ones, like me, you’d know what those are. Tell you don’t have that many upscale boyfriends, pardon me. You date you some architects, some brain-surgeons, you’d know what those are.” His hand came up, forefinger flicking the corroded ball-chain that dangled from the zip.tab at the neck of Skinner’s jacket. “Those VL glasses. Virtual light.”

She’d heard of it, but she wasn’t sure what it was. “They expensive, Sammy Sal?”

“Shit, yes. ’Bout as much as a Japanese car. Not all that much more, though. Got these little EMP-drivers around the lenses, work your optic nerves direct. Friend of mine, he’d bring a pair home from the office where he worked. Landscape architects. Put ’em on, you go out walking, everything looks normal, but every plant you see, every tree, there’s this little label hanging there, what its name is, Latin under that…”

“But they’re solid black.”

“Not if you turn ’em on, they aren’t. Turn ’em on, they don’t even look like sunglasses. Just make you look, I dunno, serious.” He grinned at her. “You look too damn’ serious anyway. That your problem.”

She shivered. “Come back up to Skinner’s with me, Sammy. Okay?”

“I don’t like heights, much” he said. “That little box blow right off the top of that bridge, one night.”

“Please, Sammy? This thing’s got me tweaking. Be okay, riding with you, but I stop and I start thinking about it, I’m scared I’m gonna freeze up. What’ll I do? Maybe I get there and it’s the cops? What’ll Skinner say, the cops come up there? Maybe I go in to work tomorrow and Bunny cans me. What’ll I do?”

Sammy Sal gave her the look he’d given her the night she’d asked him to get her on at Allied. Then he grinned. Mean and funny. All those sharp white teeth. “Keep it between your legs, then. Come on, you try to keep up.”

He bongoed off the curb, his Fluoro-Rimz flaring neonwhite when he came down pumping. He must have thumbed Play then, because she caught the bass throbbing as she came after him through the traffic.