Virtual Light

28. RV

It was ten-thirty before they finally had to hit the street, and then only because Laurie, who Chevette knew from that first day she’d ever come in here, said that the manager, Benny Singh, was going to be showing up and they couldn’t stay in there anymore, particularly not with her friend asleep like that, like he was passed out or something. Chevette said she understood, and thanked her.

“You see Sammy Sal” Laurie said, “you say hi for me.”

Chevette nodded, sad, and started shaking the guy’s shoulder. He grunted and tried to brush her hand away. “Wake up. We gotta go.”

She couldn’t believe she’d told him all that stuff, but she’d just had to tell somebody or she’d go crazy. Not that telling it had made it make any more sense than it did before, and with this Rydell’s side of it added on, it sort of made even less. The news that somebody had gone and murdered the asshole just didn’t seem real, but if it was, she supposed, she was in deeper shit than ever.

“Wake up!”

“Jesus…” He sat up, knuckling his eyes.

“We gotta go. Manager’ll be in soon. My friend let you sleep a while.”

“Go where?”

Chevette had been thinking about that. “Cole, over by the Panhandle, there’s places rent rooms by the hour.”

“Hotels?”

“Not exactly” she said. “For people just need the bed for a little while.”

He dug behind the couch for his jacket. “Look at that” he said, sticking his fingers into the rip in the shoulder. “Brand new last night.”

Neighborhoods that mainly operated at night had a way of looking a lot worse in the morning. Even the beggars looked worse off this time of day, like that guy there with those sores, the one trying to sell half a can of spaghetti sauce. She stepped around him. Another block or two and they’d start to hit the early crowd of day-trippers headed for Skywalker Park; more cover in the crowd but more cops, too. She tried to remember if Skywalker’s rentacops were IntenSecure, that company Rydell talked about.

She wondered if Fontaine had gone to Skinner’s like he’d said he would. She hadn’t wanted to say too much over the phone, so at first she’d just said she was going away for a while, and would Fontaine go over and see how Skinner was doing, and maybe this Japanese student guy who’d been hanging around lately. But Fontaine could tell she sounded worried, so he’d sort of pushed her about it, and she’d told him she was worried about Skinner, how maybe there were some people gonna go up there and hassle him.

“You don’t mean bridge people” he’d said, and she’d said no, she didn’t, but that was all she could say about it. The line went quiet for a few seconds and she could hear one of Fontaine’s kids singing in the background, one of those African songs with the weird throat-clicks. “Okay” Fontaine finally said, “I’ll look into that for you.” And Chevette said thanks, fast, and clicked off. Fontaine did a lot of favors for Skinner. He’d never talked to Chevette about it, but he seemed to have known Skinner all his life, or anyway as long as he’d been on the bridge. There were a lot of people like that, and Chevette knew Fontaine could fix it so people would watch the tower there, and the lift. Watch for strangers. People did that for each other, on the bridge, and Fontaine was always owed a lot of favors, because he was one of the main electricity men.

Now they were walking past this bagel place had a sort of iron cage outside, welded out of junk, where you could sit in there at little tables and have coffee and eat bagels, and the smell of the morning’s baking about made her faint from hunger. She was thinking maybe they’d better go in there and get a dozen in a bag, maybe some cream cheese, take it with them, when Rydell put his hand on her shoulder.

She turned her head and saw this big shiny white RV had just turned onto Haight in front of them, headed their way. Like you’d see rich old people driving back in Oregon, whole convoys of them, pulling boats on trailers, little jeeps, motorcycles hanging off the backs like lifeboats. They’d stop for the night in these special camps had razor-wire around them, dogs, NO TRESSPASSING signs that really meant it.

Rydell was staring at this RV like he couldn’t believe it, and now it was pulling up right beside them, this gray-haired old lady powering down the window and leaning out the driver’s side, saying “Young man! Excuse me, but I’m Danica Elliott and I believe we met yesterday on the plane from Burbank.”

Danica Elliott was this retired lady from Altadena, that was down in SoCal, and she’d flown up to San Francisco, she said on the same plane as Rydell, to get her husband moved to a different cryogenic facility. Well, not her husband, exactly, but his brain, which he’d had frozen when he died.

Chevette had heard about people doing that, but she hadn’t ever understood why they did it, and evidently Danica Elliott didn’t understand it either. But she’d come up here to throw good money after bad, she said, and get her husband David’s brain moved to this more expensive place that would keep it on ice in its own private little tank, and not just tumbling around in a big tank with a bunch of other people’s frozen brains, which was where it had been before. She seemed like a really nice lady to Chevette, but she sure could go on about this stuff, so that after a while Rydell was just driving and nodding his head like he was listening, and Chevette, who was navigating, was mostly paying attention to the map-display on the RV’s dash, plus keeping a lookout for police cars.

Mrs. Elliott had taken care of getting her husband’s brain relocated the night before, and she said it had made her kind of emotional, so she’d decided to rent this RV and drive it back to Altadena, just take her time and enjoy the trip. Trouble was, she didn’t know San Francisco, and she’d picked it up that morning at this rental place on sixth and gotten lost looking for a freeway. Wound up driving around in the Haight, which she said did not look at all like a safe neighborhood but was certainly very interesting.

The loose handcuff kept falling out of the sleeve of Skinner’s jacket, but Mrs. Elliott was too busy talking to notice. Rydell was driving, Chevette was in the middle, and Mrs. Elliot was on the passenger side. The RV was Japanese, and had these three power-adjustable buckets up front, with headrests with speakers built in.

Mrs. Elliot had told Rydell she was lost and did he know the city and could he drive her to where she could get on the highway to Los Angeles? Rydell had sort of gawked at her for a minute, then shook himself and said he’d be glad to, and this was his friend Chevette, who knew the city, and he was Berry Rydell.

Mrs. Elliot said Chevette was a pretty name.

So here they were, headed out of San Francisco, and Chevette had a pretty good idea that Rydell was going to try to talk Mrs. Elliott into letting them go along with her. That was all she could think of to do, herself, and here they were off the street and headed away from the guy who’d shot Sammy and from that Warbaby and those Russian cops, which seemed like a good idea to her, and aside from her stomach feeling like it was starting to eat itself, she felt a little better.

Rydell drove past an In-and-Out Burger place and she remembered how this boy she knew called Franklin, up in Oregon, had taken a pellet-gun over to an In-and-Out and shot out the B and the R, so it just said IN-AND-OUT URGE. She’d told Lowell about that, but he hadn’t thought it was funny. Now she thought about how she’d told Rydell stuff about Lowell that Lowell would go ballistic if he ever found out about, and here Rydell was the next thing to a cop. But it bothered her how Lowell had been, the night before. There he was, all cool and heavy with his connections and everything, and she tells him she’s in trouble and somebody’s just shot Sammy Sal and they’re gonna be after her for sure, and him and Codes just sit there, giving each other these looks, like they like this story less by the minute, and then the big motherfucker cop in the raincoat walks in and they’re about to shit themselves.

Served her right. She hadn’t had a single friend liked Lowell much, and Skinner had hated him on sight. Said Lowell had his head so far up his ass, he might as well just climb in after it and disappear. But she just hadn’t ever really had a boyfriend before, not like that, and he’d been so nice to her at first. If he just hadn’t started in doing that dancer, because that brought the asshole out in him real fast, and then Codes, who hadn’t ever liked her, could get him going about how she was just a country girl. Fuck that.

“You know” she said, “I don’t get something to eat soon, I think I’ll die.”

And Mrs. Elliott started making a fuss about how Rydell should stop immediately and get something for Chevette, and how sorry she was she hadn’t thought to ask if they’d had breakfast.

“Well” Rydell said, frowning mto the rear-view, “I really would like to miss the, uh, lunch-hour traffic here…”

“Oh” Mrs. Elliott said. Then she brightened. “Chevette, dear, if you’ll just go in the back, you’ll find a fridge there. I’m sure the rental people have put a snack basket in there. They almost always do.”

Sounded fine to Chevette. She undid her harness and edged back between her seat and Mrs. Elliott’s. There was a little door there and when she went through it the lights came on. “Hey” she said, “it’s a whole little house back here…”

“Enjoy!” said Mrs. Elliott.

The light stayed on when she closed the door behind her. She hadn’t ever seen the inside of one of these things before, and the first thing she thought of was that it had nearly as much space as Skinner’s room, plus it was about ten times more comfortable. Everything was gray, gray carpet and gray plastic and gray imitation leather. And the fridge turned out to be this cute little thing built into a counter, with this basket in there, wrapped up in plastic with a ribbon on it. She got the plastic off and there was some wine, little cheeses, an apple, a pear, crackers, and a couple of chocolate bars. There was Coke in the fridge, too, and bottled water. She sat on the bed and ate a cheese, a bunch of crackers, a chocolate bar that was made in France, and drank a bottle of water. Then she tried out the tv, which had twenty-three channels on downlink.

When she was done, she put the empty bottle and the torn paper and stuff in a little wastebasket built into the wall, cut the tv off, took off her shoes, and lay back on the bed.

It was strange, to stretch out on a bed in a little room that was moving, she didn’t know where, and she wondered where she’d be tomorrow.

Just before she fell asleep, she remembered that she still had Codes’ bag of dancer stuck down in her pants. She’d better get rid of that. She figured there was enough there to go to jail for.

She thought about how it made you feel, and how weird it was that people spent all that money to feel that way.

She sure wished Lowell hadn’t liked to feel that way.

She woke up when he lay down beside her, the RV moving but she knew it must’ve stopped before. The lights were off.

“Who’s driving?” she said.

“Mrs. Armbruster.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Elliott. Mrs. Armbruster was this teacher I had, looked like her.”

“Where’s she driving to?”

“Los Angeles. Told her I’d take over when she got tired. Told her not to bother waking us up when she goes through at the state line. Lady like that, if she tells ’em she’s not carrying any agricultural products, they’ll probably let her through without checking back here.”

“What if they do?”

He was close enough to her on the narrow bed that she could feel it when he shrugged.

“Rydell?”

“Huh?”

“How come there’s Russian cops?”

“How do you mean?”

“You watch on tv, like a cop show, about half the big cops are always Russian. Or those guys back there on the bridge. How come Russian?”

“Well” he said, “they kind of exaggerate that on tv, ’cause of the Organizatsiya thing, how people like to see shows about that. But the truth is, you get a situation where there’s Russians running most of your mob action, you’ll want to get you some Russian cops…” She heard him yawn. Felt him stretch.

“Are they all like those two came to Dissidents?”

“No” he said. “There’s always some crooked cops, but that’s just the way it is…”

“What’ll we do, when we get to Los Angeles?”

But he didn’t answer, and after a while he started to snore.

Rydell opened his eyes. Vehicle not moving.

He held his Timex up in front of his face and used the dial-light. 3:15 PM. Chevette Washington was curled up beside him in her biker jacket. Felt like sleeping next to a piece of old luggage.

He rolled over until he could find the shade over the window beside him and raise it a little. As dark out there as it was in here.

He’d been dreaming about Mrs. Armbruster’s class, fifth grade at Oliver North Elementary. They were about to be let out because LearningNet said there was too much Kansas City flu around to keep the kids in Virginia and Tennessee in school that week. They were all wearing these molded white paper masks the nurses had left on their seats that morning. Mrs. Armbruster had just explained the meaning of the word pandemic. Poppy Markoff, who sat next to him and already bad tits out to here, had told Mrs. Armbruster that her daddy said the KC flu could kill you in the time it took to walk out to the bus. Mrs. Armbruster, wearing her own mask, the micropore kind from the drugstore, started in about the word panic, tying that into pandemic because of the root, but that was where Rydell woke up.

He sat up on the bed. He had a headache and the start of a cold. Kansas City flu. Maybe Mokola fever.

“Don’t panic” he said, under his breath.