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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Nov 2, 2014 22:46:36 GMT -8
NAW... Last year I had a story I could tell in sequence easily enough. This year's story is going to need to be worked up fractally from disparate pieces or it won't happen at all. Maybe I post it when it's done, but no more blow-by-blow.
Fear is not the best motivator. Check out the shivering guys who fear god so much they break his laws with perverse passion. The fear compels, but also wracks your mind, makes you do things that don't make sense. Things that lead you straight to the thing you're running from.
So I was coding for a living, off and on, about twenty years. It was great money at first - I went a little crazy, got cleaned up, took care of some surgery, whatever. But when investors woke up from the dream of magic computer money, the money in my life started to suck.
First thing to happen was we all lost our jobs. I do interview well, so I was one of the lucky half that managed to squeak into something new. But now they were paying maybe sixty percent of what we used to get, and expected to do twice as much work.
And the companies were all unstable, prone to big layoffs, buyouts, and collapses. So we became like migrant laborers, moving from office to office every few years and - if we were lucky - making only ten percent less money for twenty percent more labor each time we changed bosses.
The smart thing to do in that situation would have been to spend my spare time learning everything I could about programming in the latest greatest languages, but who has the energy for that? As my skills became less current, I became less desirable for employment.
And this is where the fear came in. To give myself the time and energy to do that homework, I had rented a fancy new apartment downtown. With work within walking distance, I could add hours of commute time back to my days. But the rent was outrageous. I could afford it, but I'd need to stay employed. It was a gamble and the fear grew.
This whole time, the coding language I knew best was being supplanted in the industry by something completely different. I could probably have limped by as a coder if I just learned that one new standard.
But my mind was wracked. Every night, I'd get home and do nothing. Hell, maybe I was forgetting the things I already knew. I was never a genius about that stuff in the first place. So when the office switched to the new standard, I knew I was ruined before it was even made official.
What happened next is hard to describe. But I think you'll understand, because it's about the world you know. It's about the crap you're living through, the things that are running your life invisibly, making themselves felt so powerfully without making themselves known. Fuck it, here goes.
* * *
I got home from work early again. Last week, no question. I was doing myself up more than usual because I wanted to remind anyone who might be in a position to save my ass of whatever my charms were. I know a few dudes at the office fancied me or whatever their idea of me was. But as I walked through the revolving door, the shoes were killing me and I knew this was all for nothing.
The white sun disintegrated within a few feet of the giant bulletproof windows, leaving the overgrown slate tiles to be illuminated by a ceiling of nuclear-powered next gen LED lights. Spiders of light grew and shrank on my glasses as I went into the office. The door was propped open.
I did the move where you put your face in like a cartoon character, seeking permission to enter. The manager had her back to the door but there was no one else present, so I assumed I wouldn't be interrupting anything. As I came in, said "hello" and took a seat, she didn't bother to turn around.
"Just a package, take your time," I said. I'd been checking to see if my new phone was in yet. By now it was a bit of a laugh because I knew I couldn't afford the bill for continuing its service. And wouldn't it be hilarious if it arrived just after my evicted ass hit the street?
As I enjoyed the relief of not standing on heels, a whiskery white man appeared at the door in a dull grey-blue uniform and tool belt. When the manager didn't turn around for him - what the hell was she even doing back there? - he looked to me.
I can't not be pleasant. Most of the time, there's a smile for anyone who has the temerity to look straight at me. "Hello, how are you?"
"You sign for thees." He passed me a clipboard. I accepted it, but I tried to hail the manager again.
"Um..." What was her name? I still don't remember. She'd been there only a week, part of a parade of faceless people who clearly found something intolerable about the position. So I took the pen off the clipboard and signed it with an indistinct squiggle. "Dank you. Here is keys. You use them now. All the old ones are no good." He handed me a sub-shoebox-sized brick of cardboard and hastily turned around.
"Uh, thanks?" My mind was still reeling a bit as he walked out the door, but I put the box on her desk. I'm sure they wouldn't want me messing with that.
Finally the manager turned around, coming up with an orange packing envelope that she tossed on the desk irritably.
"What is that?"
"Keys, I guess. Looks like, uh, Eversure Secu-"
"Why did they give them to you? That isn't good security."
"He must have assumed I work here."
She looked off to the side. "You want to work here?"
An uneasy shiver of unexpected hope rose in my stomach. "What?"
She looked back to me. "Just kidding. It was a package? Who for?"
The hope left and I wished I could be upstairs in my bathroom. I sat on the discomfort stiffly. "Courtney Marquez. 1203."
"OK." She glanced back without leaving her seat. "We don't have it."
"OK."
My feet didn't like walking again, but I was glad to be out of there. The slow elevator dragged me to the dozenth floor and I went to my lost apartment.
The place was meant to be a condominium. During a housing bubble when all these amazing tech jobs were supposed to fill the city with rich youths, developers crunched their numbers and somehow decided that meant it was go time for multimillion dollar condos the size of one bedroom apartments. Now, either because there weren't as many jobs as advertised, or because value-conscious tech people decided to live in the suburbs, or because the jobs weren't paying what was expected by naive market researchers, dozens of the buildings had to be converted into luxury apartments.
It was a good time to be me when that happened. My own jobs had been so unstable I couldn't afford to be locked into a mortgage, but an apartment was much easier to walk away from - and I earned just enough to afford the place. It was half the size of what I had for half the money in the 'burbs, but I was single and spent too much time working to have a hobbyist's possessions. My worldly belongings fit neatly into the small, sterile environment.
But then I found that everything was more expensive in the city. Every. Damn. Thing. Need rubber bands? Three fifty. Need toilet paper? Ten dollars. Need to eat? Get used to hunger.
So I was living on the margin, no savings to speak of, and a job less than a week from collapse. I left the heels at the door and lay down on the couch, eyes looking past the TV into the void of blue sky.
The tall glass windows were all this seafoam green color and the thermal properties kept daylight from penetrating far. It suffused the room with a soft blue light, but no warmth. That was fine. My body pressing into the thick cushions was raising enough warmth.
Those clean, slick new windows, with a color like eroded broken bottles on the beach. When I first knew I was going to be able to afford a luxury apartment, I was hoping to get into one of those multi-colored deals that look like they're made of legos with a designer color palette. But the only thing close enough to work to justify the move and still in my price range was this beast, with those plain green windows on a monolithic building with a brushed steel exterior. One face of the building had no windows at all, just a dull brutalist edifice. It looked like the kind of place you'd send old people to be converted into soylent green. In The Future!
I actually liked it there, despite all the trauma, the general lack of welcome, just for no good reason. Maybe it was being in the city, where there are so many people, where I felt more at home on my feet than in the car-dependent endless parking lots of the 'burbs. Maybe it was that the smallness felt right, like the amount of space my small life should occupy.
So I cried.
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Nov 4, 2014 23:10:39 GMT -8
I don't cry energetically. My eyes just run everywhere and a I gasp a little. My eyes roll in my head sometimes, which is weird because they are closed. I think it's like when someone lies and you can supposedly tell because they glance up and toward the creative side of the brain. My eyes are trying to find a thought that will save me from sadness.
My mind was a blank, so it just played over recent events, but in my imagination I was crying the whole time. Crying walking home from work, coming through the revolving door, sitting in the office. Crying when the locksmith guy gave me the box of keys.
He had assumed I work there. I thought my creativity was spent, in the blank hours fear had me wasting. But this idea came all at once. At first my mind was treating it as a joke.
What if I just had the company re-key the apartment? The managers here change every month, so I'd quickly become unrecognizable and assumed to belong. No one here really knows each other, I never told anyone I was going to have to leave. Hell, I hadn't even told the manager. And they were having such a hard time filling apartments that I probably would not get surprised by the next tenant. I knew for a fact the rest of my floor was empty apartments, and some other floors besides.
Yeah, I could totally do that, haha. The company that built the place, whoever owned it now, they were running it with a skeleton crew. Just totally oblivious to what was actually going on in there, except insofar as it sent them a miniscule amount of money. Yes indeed, just me living there like nothing had happened. Nobody would be the wiser.
It was a joke, of course. No one gets away with that kind of thing. Well, there's always some random freak who pulls off an amazing crime and makes the papers. But that's never you. It's the exception, only a fool would gamble with trying to get away with crimes like that.
But my mind kept filling in the details - how I would do my laundry, whether I could keep the power on, how I could do the key trick without arousing too much suspicion. Dusk turned the sky a dark lavendar by the time I realized my eyes were dry and salty, and that this wasn't a joke. It was something I was going to do.
*** What does a manager wear? I looked in the mirror the next morning. I'd wear a pink baseball hat and a North Face jacket. Dark grey athletic pants, pink and black sneakers. Reading glasses around my neck, hair in a pony tail. Looking in that mirror before the disguise came together, I thought I just looked like a scared ghoul. My glassy eyes had the most serious dark puff beneath them, my skin had paled to a cream coffee color from years under fluorescence, the permed-in wave of my hair was combining with the dregs of yesterday's products to form a medusa bob. The couped snakes were still writhing in brainless death throes. I grimaced and admired the yellow forming near my dark gums. This ghoul needed some work.
An hour later, I made the phone call. Said my phone,
"Eversure Security."
"Mm, yeah, this is Mona Zapata from the Myrmidon Apartments. We want to order more re-keys..."
I decided it would be less suspicious - and point less directly at me - to re-key the whole floor. While I talked specifics I felt like something was trying to jump out of my throat.
"To come in? Oh yes, is he available today? Hm, I think after our office closes would be better for me. How late is he open?"
No, I would have to intercept him in the lobby while the manager was possibly still in the office. Or would I?
"Oh, listen. I have to run some money to the back on 6th right then. How about we meet partway? Have him catch me in the bagel shop at 9th and Stewart, then we can just walk around the corner."
"...OK."
Another hour later, I circled the block to make sure I was coming from the direction of 6th. I saw no one in a dull grey-blue uniform and tool belt. A waste of effort. I went into the bagel shop. No uniform there.
I'd need to make a purchase to stave off the awkward. A plain bagel with cinnamon cream cheese and a Snapple. I'm not sure what I expected that to taste like but it was horrible. I left the rest of the gooey thing on the table and sipped the tangy beverage while the big numbers of time ticked by on my phone.
It didn't take long for doubt to come over me. What if the person at Eversure had forgotten to make a note, or the guy in the pants had missed it? He'd be going into the office then without me to catch him.
At three 'til, I started to shake my head side to side nervously, like I was in strenuous disagreement with Claude Rains. Let 'em think I was crazy. At one minute, I leapt out of my seat and threw the remains of my nauseating purchase in a trash can on the way out.
Jogging up the block, I swiveled my head in hope of spotting him driving by. As I passed the alley behind the building, I noticed a van back there. I couldn't see the side. If that was him, did that mean he was already going around to the front? What if they'd confirmed the appointment by calling the office? Why hadn't I thought of the possibilities?
Just as I was about to leave line of sight completely, I noticed the van move. A little rock. I backed up, and jogged down the alley. It was a wide alley, to admit garbage trucks and large deliveries. The grey-white morning filled it with light. I veered close to the building on the far side of the alley until I saw the side of the van.
Eversure. I slowed my roll.
Whiskers from the day before was behind the van closing the doors when I saw him. He looked at me with a little start. This time I noticed his name tag read "Niko."
"Hello," I said, "I'm glad I caught you."
He was quiet longer than I would have preferred, then, "You ah... Mona Sapata?" He consulted a clipboard for the last bit of information, then looked expectant.
"Yes, Niko was it?" I offered a hand. He didn't know what to make of that, but stepped forward and obliged. It was the first time I'd intentionally touched someone in years, and felt sweaty and more dishonest than the criminal alias.
But I do interview well. He smiled. "Mona. Le's go. You want me to, ah..?"
"Come in the back door, it's closer." I let him in with my key - still technically a bona fide tenant at this point. He carried a large yellow-orange toolbox that smacked the metal door frame as he passed within.
The elevator in the open lobby was the only reasonable way up. Plain view of the office. This is where it would all fall apart, I thought. Walk on his right. As the gaping glass windows of the office come into view, always move between him and them. The manager was in. She glanced up to acknowledge me and I nodded back. My lips spasmed as I tamped down the reflex to make an insincere grin a little too late. I stood between him and her, his expansive movements and slow swing of the big toolbox no doubt making him as plain as day.
Glancing back at her as the elevator finally arrived, I saw she was looking down at her paperwork again. I braced myself against the elevator door until the man was inside, then slipped in with a deep sigh.
"Uh, a little... out of breath from... jogging back. You didn't get the message?"
"Message? Oh, bagel shop ting. I don' like to meet out of office. Not professional."
I stared at his eyes and he seemed not to notice. They were slightly yellow and marbled with pink veins, with big pale grey satellite dishes in the center. My throat was trying to turn inside out again, and I stopped talking until I could sort that out.
I stayed with Niko as he went from door to door. At each he started by taking a master key out of a tiny grey strongbox in the bottom of his tool kit which he'd use, then promptly return and seal. As he partially disassembled each lock, installed a new tumbler, and recorded unknown numbers and letters in a little yellow notepad, I acted like he was the most interesting thing in the universe. At first it was difficult to get him to say anything, but by the time he finished, I knew fifty new and useless things about Montenegro.
When he was finished, the office downstairs was still open. I followed him out, standing between him and the office again. Standing in the alley,
"How long before we get the keys?"
"They'll be delivered two, three days."
"Mm, can one of us pick them up instead?"
"...OK."
I didn't like getting that response from people at this company.
"Listen, I have some things to do in the neighborhood where your office is. I'll stop by at the beginning of the day after tomorrow, the day after that, right?"
"...I don't know why. OK."
I don't want you jerks calling the office and don't trust you to call an alternate number if I give you one. "It's no problem, and thanks for everything Niko."
Then I had to go find out where their office was located.
*** The next day I woke up in my then thoroughly rumpled disguise, head aching from immoderate consumption of Midori with grapefruit soda. I was an hour late for work, but my delusions of charming my way out of a layoff had sloughed away while I was playing hooky. I rolled onto my belly with my head hanging off the edge of the cushion, and slid my phone from under the table.
No. No call for them. No more of that. The stereo had worked its way through my grunge folder completely and was now into joke bands. Liam Lynch dared me to haul my bowling ball cranium off the couch. Not cool.
While my head thundered down the alley, I punched the off button and returned quickly to the couch. Strike. As the pins quieted down, I wondered about my friends. If you could call them that. When I was a child, friends were people you shared your soul with at three in the morning. All I had now were coworkers.
I liked a few of them well enough. Stephanie Kim admired me as a vision of her possible future - she just started transitioning while we worked together. But everybody had rubbed me the wrong way at some point or another, even Stephanie. A few months before, I overheard her having a weird racist conversation with some white dude about how Japan, Korea, and China were the great, classical civilizations of Asia. Like the rest of us were all in grass skirts sacrificing cattle.
And the rest of them, mostly white guys, just full of themselves in a culture that held them up as the avant garde of human existence. Tech culture would change the world. Startups were the innovators that would bring on the technological singularity and whatnot. Or at the very least, they would be the next Microsoft millionaires - as if that was something that ever happened now.
That wasn't even so bad. I got along well with most of my team. But the way they were acting during this upgrade situation... The solemn judgmental nods. The talk about how easy the new code was. Fuck those guys all to hell.
Which left me with nothing like friends. But that's how it always was between jobs. I'd just never let myself slip out the door like this before. It felt different, and much more final. I was turning into a shadow, voluntarily consigning myself to an existence outside of the human race.
Then my bladder came knocking, reminding me what being human was really all about.
*** The day after that, I ventured out of the house shortly after dawn. I was in my cleaned-up disguise again, headed for the corroded bricks of the other side of downtown. Eversure was in one of those buildings, low to the ground with bars over every tiny window. I never went anywhere without using the street view in map software, so I knew what I'd see when I got there.
I ate a donut with a small cup of coffee before heading to the bus stop. It was cold enough to make me shiver, but I knew that wouldn't last. I listened to Jane's Addiction while I waited with a random assortment of people. The slowest to get on used the bus lift to get his cart full of oddities on board. He parked it in a wheelchair area.
On the slow ride through downtown I managed to avoid thinking pretty well. Noisy music in the ear helped. I had memorized so many songs in my life, but I still tracked the lyrics every time. The sun slipped between buildings blinding us every few hundred feet. I disembarked at 2nd and Cherry and walked through bright shadows infested with pigeons.
When I came to Eversure, it was still locked up tight. I had been too conservative, come too early. The nearest corporate coffee place to hide in was surely blocks away, and I wanted to be here before any pesty secretaries started calling offices.
I surveyed the streets. The sidewalks were wide and irregular, with triangle islands from ill-planned diagonal streets. Sign posts and power and light poles were all a bit short and power wires for old-fashioned hybrid buses hung between them apathetically. The world was dotted with organic and inorganic debris, tatters of paper and pigeon feathers and gum and more. Several people just within line of sight were trying to sleep late on spread cardboard boxes in the doorways of temporarily or permanently closed businesses. There were several services for the poor and the homeless in this neighborhood. Plus art galleries.
So no place comfortable to wait. Across the street, there was an empty bus stop with a bench. At any moment it could start to draw some shady customers, but it would do, I thought. Traffic was weirdly sparse for a weekday at this hour so I jaywalked behind an SUV and planted myself.
Red Hot Chili Peppers now. What was that even doing on there? How long had it been since I wanted to listen to them? I fished for something else before settling on Built to Spill.
The shady customers came from the famously roach-ridden disaster of an apartment building nearby. I was asking somebody from a short-lived startup a few years before that had been in an adjacent brick office building and he told me all sorts of creepy stuff about it.
Well, no one would live there if they had a choice and I didn't want to have rude thoughts about anyone who did. He was a white guy shaped like an emaciated fire hydrant or a kokeshi doll. He was wearing a threadbare and discolored Sonics jacket. His head was all irregular stubble and small scars and a healthy-looking mouth that alternated between unexplained grins and tight scowls.
She was in his shadow, short and no doubt malnourished despite being fat. Asian, Pacific islander, native, I couldn't say, but she had a presence as intense as it was different from her creepy man. She had an oversized frayed denim jacket, a stained tropical-themed hair band holding back large frizzy black hair, big earrings, and makeup that looked like it was applied at gunpoint.
She looked at him for cues of how she should be, with her eyes frequently darting back to me to nonverbally assure me of... what? That her dude wasn't going to kill me? Before either of them said a word I knew that she was the kind of person who spent most of her day trying to brunt the damage he caused to himself and others. Her eyes sparkled brightly. He was probably a bit younger than me, she could have been my child in another world.
So I looked away and turned up the music. The world has ten billion problems and we all know we can't do shit about them. It was probably a relief to her that I wasn't looking at him.
I was looking at the forest green door across the street, recessed into the cracked brick surface, bars across its tiny window, fake gold paint signage on it barely legible at this distance. Doug Martsch's ennui was too mellow for this scene and just turned into meaningless noise. In the irregular quiet moments of the songs, I could hear the man talking fast, indistinct, and raspy like Tom Waits on meth. Who was he talking to? Don't pay attention.
Someone inside the door took a cover off, revealing a trace of artificial yellow light back there - must have come in through a back door. I practically jumped out of my seat and stomped through the street. I slowed a third of the way to let two cars slip by and then hurried to the other side. I glanced back through my sunglasses and fire hydrant man was looking pissed. I ignored.
Inside there was a bunch of outdated looking hardware on the walls for show, daylight punching blazing stripes through the barred windows, yellow electric light barely filling in the gaps. The lobby was too thin and long, a tall counter near the door making it feel more like a hallway. To the left the lobby terminated in a door, to the right it curved around to unknown areas.
I brought my face game, but the lady at the counter did nothing to set my mind at ease. I was coming back tomorrow.
So back on the street, the closest place to catch the bus back was exactly where I had just fled. Fire hydrant was making a manic smile again. He waved at me and I curdled inside. My own fake smile could not be controlled, and I started walking north for the next stop. Fuck that scene.
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Nov 5, 2014 0:10:24 GMT -8
***
That night I was running through the problems in my head. Power here was metered and would reveal my presence to anyone paying attention. But might they not? I couldn't know yet.
More immediately, any time now I could be discovered by the damn locksmiths calling the office for some random communication. With luck, the message would be confused in the manager's mind by the recent business she had done with them. If not, trouble I couldn't bring myself to imagine. Walked out of the building in handcuffs, at least.
And there was a not-so-random communication imminent as well - the bill. I quickly thought of a way to get rid of that problem - to simply pay for the order myself. Maybe they'd see a receipt afterward, but they'd be too lazy to investigate if it didn't indicate money owed - maybe even assume it was a redundant copy on the last work done. But that would be thousands of dollars I didn't have. More crime to pay for it? I drank more Midori and grapefruit.
The sun came up and Liam Lynch woke me again. Nice timing. Even as an unemployable criminal I was utterly predictable.
Out the door, minimum food, kill some time drawing all money out of the bank on the chance it could cover the bill and delay my doom, bus again, Babes in Toyland in my ears.
I waited next to Eversure's door rather than risk bus stop company. The two of tragedy came out of the broken gate at the entrance of the horrible apartments and took up their posts at the bus stop.
She stood still, eyes following him with care. He paced, spit, and worked his jaw. Was I invisible in the slightly shadowed doorway? I hoped. He seemed angry with her and whenever his attention came back, she looked down like a dog. I put my hand over my face and let angry women screech in my ears from a decade long past.
Suddenly a few loud barks cut through the din, and I looked up to see him shouting at me. When he saw that he had my attention, he made a kissy face and grabbed something in his sweatpants.
I wheeled around to see the cover being taken off the window from the inside. The lady was startled but opened the door to let me in.
I turned off the music hastily and leaned on the wall. She had started saying something to me, but stopped when she realized I wasn't ready to hear yet. She walked around to her side of the counter and waited. I shook off the horror and stepped back up to my game.
"Sorry, do you have them today?"
She looked sympathetic. "I'll look." While she checked something out of sight she kept talking. "Man, what a creep. I'm sorry. I guess you're too classy for this neighborhood."
"Oh, how much did you hear?"
"Not much, or it just sounded like grody grunting. I saw him perving out though. I guess he doesn't know."
I almost asked, "Doesn't know what?," but then I figured out what she meant and sucked in my face like a snail. Jesus christ. I managed to say nothing at least.
The lady came back into sight with a cardboard box and put it on the counter. I zipped it into my backpack as we finished the deal. "What's the invoice like?"
"Mm, looks like $1209.14. Bill ProperCo, right?"
I squeezed my eyes behind the sunglasses. "No, I happen to have it on me. Is cash OK?"
"No problem."
Outside I was about to start speedwalking north past the cardboard sleepers when I noticed my reappearance had stopped a punch from landing on the poor girl. He had been mid-swing, but stopped to look back at me. I was paralyzed in the doorway, staring at this awful scene across the street. I wanted to imagine it was performance art.
He pushed her aside and she fell down. Then his attention was on me. You can't save her, I thought. But it would be nice if I wasn't aware of a beatdown happening while I walked away. Maybe if I hypnotized his creepy ass somehow, he'd be in a good enough mood by the time I got on the bus he'd forget about hitting her for now. As I slumped back against the door to try to steel myself, I bumped into something awkward and remembered the box full of keys in my backpack. My eyeballs rolled to find a thought, found nothing, and I crossed the street.
I walked down to the sidewalk to do so, to buy myself a little more time to think. I remembered what I looked like at the moment - plain dark clothes, concealing jacket, minimal makeup, sunglasses, twenty years older than the girl. What the hell was so hot about that? Just being skinny? Maybe his eyesight was bullshit. I left my headphones around my neck but pushed play anyway. It was louder than I expected. Kat Bjelland was being snide on the penultimate track of the album.
As I approached the stop, the young lady had gotten up to the bench. The man kept his attention on me. I smiled thinly at him and sat down next to her. He stood by my end of the bench, continuing his rap.
This was the first I'd heard his words without the filter of headphones. It felt like being punched in the ears. "Yeah yeah yeah, haHA! What a morning, yeah, y'know? How ya doing? Yestaday, man, I saw you yestaday, didn' I? Shit, shit yeah that's a fact. Wassup, baby?"
He was close enough to smell and that wasn't good. I held my cheek for a moment to steady my nerves for the hypnotism. I hoped my eyes were invisible behind the shades.
"Nothin' m-much. I think I remember you. Wassup with you?"
I didn't look at the girl at all, much as I wanted to know how she was, help her in some way, the only option right then was engaging the pit bull.
"Just checkin' out your form, it's cool. I got a girl there so it's not like I'm gonna fuck with you, just letting you know how fine you are, girl."
"Oh? Um, thank you. I try to stay in shape." The music went quiet for the last track - a grunge-styled slow jam. The song was lost beneath the gruff aggression in the air.
"Shit, hahaHA, you just keep doin' what ya doin' girl, keep doin' what ya doin', hell. You got an ass like a twelve year old boy, yeah. Cuz that's like, all slim and tight, not cuz I'd fuck with boys or nothin', shiiit."
"Uh, that's good to hear, I guess." Clearly his eyesight was failing him, but I couldn't be sympathetic in the situation. He scraped his sneakers on the sidewalk while stamping his feet like a cartoon bull. My mind reeled. How could I get him in a good mood? Pretending to reciprocate his feelings at all would be a really bad idea, though it would certainly make him happy for a minute or two. I needed the bus to get there.
"Hey, you mind if I check when the bus is going to arrive?" I pulled out my phone.
"I don't mind nothin', a sexy girl like you can write your own ticket, knowwhatahmsaaayn?"
"Mm, thank you." I wanted to hop into my phone and disappear through the internet. The bus arrival app told me it would be there in two minutes. I looked back up at him. "Should I say hi to your girl too?"
A note of agitation, of course. "What you wanna do that for? She don' wanna talk to no one today."
"Oh? Just, introduction is all."
"Shit, say hi, Momi. What's your name, boo?"
"What a coincidence, my name is Momi too." I looked to her. "Hi," I said, followed by a quick whisper of "you need help?"
"HahaHA, what? Momi? Bullshit, you're pulling my chain."
While he was barking, she shook her head, not knowing how to respond. I turned back to him and hoped I could keep him off balance for another minute or two. But I despaired of not being able to help her - I had no idea how I could avoid leaving this volatile bastard in a worse mood.
"No, it's the truth. My name is Momi Nasser. I'm Egyptian."
"What? What? Haha, what?" He didn't know whether to be amused or to start flipping out. He flicked his feet at the ground and shifted his weight precariously. "Naw, naw, fuck that, you should tell me your name. It's for respect, y'all, like, if you afraid of me, you don't respect me. Show me respect. Don't be a bitch, bitch."
I was too still, arms frozen in place as I tried frantically to think. "Of course I didn't mean any disrespect. My name really is Momi Nasser. I was born in Cairo and raised between San Diego and here. I'm a moslem and everything."
He stopped moving his legs and twisted his head like a curious dog. "What? Really? Huh. I didn't know. Shit, I guess you're kinda dressed like a terrorist. What's in the backpack, bitch?"
Suddenly, Original Courtney started singing from my headphones. "When I was a teenage whore, My mother asked me, she said, baby, what for?"
He looked down at my neck angrily then back up. I could hear a large commercial vehicle slowing as it approached. My eyes were wide and I moved very slowly.
"Mm, just lady things, hey, you guys catching this bus, maybe we can keep talking, huh?" I kept my eyes on him but reached back to clumsily help Momi to her feet.
"Yeah, shit, why not? I don't give a fuck what bus we catch cuz they all go down 2nd far as University."
The bus pulled to a stop with a hiss and pop from its hydraulics, and the door slapped open. He gestured grandly to our carriage. I helped Momi onto the bus, then stepped up behind her. I whispered to the bus driver, "Close the door, he's harassing us!"
I couldn't see through her sunglasses any better than she could see through mine, but she believed me. She closed the doors behind me and shifted into drive.
Immediately the cursing and beating on the bus began. I turned around to face and saw the door bow inward under his fists. "FUCKING BITCH! CUNT-ASS SAND NIGGER BITCH!" The glass was cracking.
I grabbed the rail with a bloodless hand and pushed from the inside of the door with my foot. I felt the shock of his fists as the door started to pull out, the bus driver adding to the shouting in the air, "COOL YOUR DAMN JETS, BOY!"
But he probably didn't hear that, never letting up with the shouting and beating as he ran alongside the bus. She kept driving. "Bes' get your ass behind the yellow line. It's illegal for me to be in motion while you up here."
I nodded as I got to my feet and walked back. Momi was at the other end of the bus waving to the brute. She wasn't shouting - probably mouthing something though I couldn't be sure - aware that he wouldn't be able to hear it.
She turned and slumped into the back seat and I came up to her quickly. She was shaking her head. I said, "You don't have to be with that man. He's bad for you."
She came to her wits enough to remember the training that had been beaten into her. "I... I can't. He needs somebody, he needs me. I have to get off at the next stop."
The bus was one of the shorter ones and the driver heard her. "NO WAY I'M STOPPIN' AT THE NEXT ONE. Don't want that damn asshole to catch up to us."
I put a hand on her shoulder for just a moment, then quickly pulled it away. Maybe she'd feel like I was trying to coerce her, I know I'd be bothered by a touch like that. "Um, I'm sorry, I really am, but just because he needs somebody doesn't mean it has to be you. He needs to go to fucking Western State."
"No, no, I... I need him too, I don't have anybody, let me go."
I took off the sunglasses. "Please, you can go if you want, stop after this, like thirty seconds but please, don't. You don't have to go to him. You don't need someone who will abuse you. You can do anything."
She shook her head, the big hair only swayed slightly in the motion of the bus, frizz suspending all the strands pretty well in place. Up close I could see the little scars on her face. "People always say that, it isn't true." Her voice was almost too quiet to hear above the bus engine. And Original Courtney.
"...I've seen your repulsion and it looks real good on you, I don't want to live what you had, you have put me through..." "You're half right, but ... You can go somewhere he'll never find you and it won't cost you anything. Somewhere clean and safe, I swear to god."
I was clearly making this up as I went along.
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Nov 10, 2014 4:37:05 GMT -8
*** I went in the back door, the short hall to the lobby, past the fishbowl office and the distracted manager of the week, into the elevators with a stranger. Momi didn't say anything. Maybe she noticed I had gone quiet, sensed this was a time for stealth.
The elevator opened onto my floor. The lights were softer than the industrial fare in the lobby, still a similar shade of cold color. The walls were pale beige, the grey carpet tight and thin with those curled-in threads. White light from outside made the ends of the hall glow. I led her to my apartment.
I went in and held the door open. She looked behind nervously then stepped in, but was too scared to step past the front hall. "This is where you live. You won't want to live with me. It's too weird. I should have st-"
"No, no, you won't stay here. Maybe just for the night - if that, but I had something else in mind. Come, sit." I gestured grandly to my couch and she moved into the living room with trepidation.
From inside, the green of the windows was only visible at the edges. The panorama of the world outside punched its way in easily, leaving only a colorful frame of the pane's color. Right now the sky was murky silver again - the kind of light that made seagulls look black.
I turned back to Momi and she was sitting on the thick cushions, the corners flipping up around her. She looked miserably awkward.
"I'm Courtney. This is my apartment, but I can't afford it, so, uh... I decided to steal it." I unslung the backpack, pulled out the box, and let the bag fall to the floor. "This has keys for every room on this floor. When you pick a room, you can have the key for it." My face felt tense as I smiled.
"What do you mean, you're stealing it? How can you? How can you do that? They'll know! They have cameras! This is stupid, oh my god." She held the sides of her face in her hands.
I shook my head, gently dropped the box to the floor, and sat across from her on the coffee table. "They really don't have cameras. Not up here. They have them in the lobby but they don't even have security guards. The building was a terrible mistake on the part of the developers, right? They thought it would sell as condos real quick. But it didn't happen, so they had to turn it into apartments. And even as apartments, no one can afford them, so they're almost all empty. Most of the tenants are on higher floors. I picked this one because of the cost, and there is no one else on this floor, or the eleven below it. They won't notice us because there's no one paying attention. They are trying to run it with a skeleton crew of, like, four people. It can work."
She was shaking her head slowly. "No no no, this is soo crazy."
I smiled more easily this time, not sure why. "It's OK. If it doesn't work, it's not like they're going to kill us. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Meanwhile, have you ever imagined you could live somewhere like this?"
My apartment had three rooms. There was this living room, with a kitchen only sectioned off from it by an island of counterspace. Then there was my bedroom and the bathroom off of it. The living room had almost floor to ceiling windows along one whole face of it, looking out into a sky uninterrupted by buildings. It looked like the damn astral plane. Inside, the floor was highly polished fake darkwood tiles below, soft cornflower blue accent walls, a very pale grey ceiling with three curved racks of spotlights pointed to the paintings on the walls. The furniture and dentist's office-styled paintings came with the place, all unified with a pale beige sparse tweed theme. I saved my personality for the bedroom - out here it still looked like a showroom.
"Never." I could tell she was starting to get into it, and a tingle ran up from my heart. This is what it feels like to have a criminal conspiracy, I thought, so much more fun than being a lone wolf. Her eyes took on a different light and her thick black eyebrows relaxed.
I wiped an invisible tear from each cheek, I dont' know why, and tried to tamp down my excitment. "Um, so, we need to do everything we need to do. Tie up loose ends. Did you have anything important at your old place?"
She looked like she was coming out of a dream, thinking of painful things, and then shrugging them off. "No, no..." She was quiet again.
"Good. You'll need clean clothes, something to eat later, to take a shower or bath... OK, um, You can use my bath and I'll wash the clothes you have on." The washer and dryer were off the kitchen. She could have some privacy in the bathroom while I worked.
"Uh, I don't know, how..?"
"Um, you can... Leave your clothes in my bedroom on the floor, go into the bathroom and shut the door. I'll come get them and start the wash. When it's clean I can put them on the floor and knock, then I'll come out in the living room while you change. It will be a while to wash and dry, you can take a long bath and relax, huh?"
She considered everything carefully, probably still unsure of the criminal new living arrangement. I took her hand and led her to my room.
There was no door between my bedroom and the living room, just a wide open passage. Beyond that, the bathroom door I gestured to. She looked around at my personal space and I tensed. Posters covered the bed side of the room, clothes were a mess on the floor, a small TV with a twenty year old game system sat to one side of the bed, a PC with a modest monitor to the other. She looked the other way, to the open closet where some clothes hung, the dresser drawers, the vanity. Shoes were a hazard, all over the floor.
"Sorry. Anyway, I can't see you from the couch. I'll let you go, Momi."
"Thank you, Courtney."
I hustled into the room and sprawled on the couch like a starfish, laughing inside. I had a partner in crime. I took off the hat and settled my head into the puffy armrest.
As the rustle of that motion died down, in the quiet and still of the apartment I could hear a tiny snap of elastic from her underwear coming off and felt a tinge of embarrassment and mirth. Then her feet padded away and a door closed. I got to work.
While the laundry ran, I took off the jacket, kicked off my shoes, and went to the vanity. I don't know why I did my makeup differently for the manager disguise. But I felt most comfortable with more eye shadow and darker lipstick, and applied it. I also put on some rings. I had maybe a hundred rings jumbled in a big box. Nothing expensive, but I just like to have all my fingers adorned. I think my hands look too big, the jewelry and nail polish help. I smiled at the mirror again, feeling goofy, and then headed back to the living room. I wanted to put on some music, but also wanted her to be as comfortable as possible, and my taste in music was a bit spiky for some. I just turned on the most boring ESPN channel and some golf to give my mind a distraction from this buzz.
Laundry later, door knocked, back on the couch, I could only hear traces of her motion between the random soft noises of the golf show. I sat with arms stiff and hands plunged behind the cushions and couldn't help smiling when she came back. "Hi. Have a seat." Her hair looked a lot more tame wet, but I could see the frizz trying to come back already.
She sat down as far as possible from me on the couch. I didn't mind. I put my elbow up and rested my head on my hand. "Momi. Is that Hawaiian?"
She nodded. "Short for Leimomi. You didn't use ta be Courtney?"
Annoyance, but maybe she'd recover. "Yeah, Antonio. I've been Courtney a long time, don't like to talk about that."
"Sorry. I don't know anything about that stuff. I didn't get out much when I was a kid. Then I was... You know. I'm stupid."
"No, no. You're just young. I'm old. Let's talk about something else."
She was hopeful, but lost. "What?"
"Oh, I know. Loose ends. I can give you some of my stuff, but we should get an extra blanket and more clothes for you. And toilet paper, food, more clothes... Do you know any charities where we can get that around here? I kinda used up all my money today. I just have, maybe a hundred thirty left? Don't know what else I'll need that for."
"Mm, OK. There's a place where I can get toilet paper and stuff a few blocks from here, but it's creepy. I'm never alone there."
"If you can get more than, say, thirty dollars worth of stuff there, I'll go with you. Let's do it now. Otherwise, I'll just get some basics with my money."
"Mm." She pulled a pillow up to her chest and smelled it. "Is my coat still going?"
"It'll be a while. It's heavy."
Everything about her was more broad and short than me, her fingers cute and pudgy on the big cushion. Her eyes were dark, sparkly and gentle beneath thick, fuzzy eyebrows. She deserved nicer clothes. I wished I had more money. It was going to be crime, charity, or getting back to work real soon.
I couldn't imagine work right then.
*** This time when we went out, I put on a knit beret and my puffy black faux fur coat, and took an umbrella. With her clothes cleaned, she looked about thirty percent less homeless. It was a start, and I felt a bit more confident leading her through the lobby.
She pointed the way and we went to a place I'd never noticed before, despite walking down the street past it on several occasions. Now I knew why there were often homeless folks smoking on that stretch of sidewalk.
It was a rented section of old storefront, in a neighborhood where old anything had become very rare. Apparently, it had a place for homeless people to shower, and provided amenities like toothpaste, toilet paper, and feminine products. When possible, they'd also give food, though it was far from a meal.
That day it was business as usual for the regulars, but I didn't belong there. Sunglasses a must. The buildings between the storefront and the sun were tall, the whole place in a cold windy shadow. I didn't pop the umbrella, just catching a few glistening drops on my shades. More hung in the fake fur like trembling rhinestones that winked out of existence when their surface tension failed. The ones in her hair were similar. A dark man with short hair and one of those marshmallow-smelling cigarettes smiled at us as we walked past. Smiled back.
Inside, my eyes had to strain to adjust and I felt the contact lenses on them, but I wouldn't take the shades off. Look cool, Courtney. Momi looked straight at the door volunteer a way she hadn't looked at me since the other day when she was trying to take my attention off her dude. Was she trying to keep attention off of me?
"Hey, I don't need a shower today, just need some stuff."
"Yeah, go right ahead."
Going ahead meant a line. We were as close as possible to a wall lined with low narrow tables full of cardboard boxes. Fluorescents hung clumsily from the low filthy drop ceiling. Momi glanced up at me and back down. She stood close to me but facing out, like American Gothic. We both tried not to look like we were noticing anyone in particular.
Some people were trying to be affable, having loud, slightly desperate-sounding conversations. Others looked like they were sitting on the kind of rage and sorrow that could best be expressed with a knife. Others - to me - looked like they were utterly blank. I knew they had minds though, and it was easy to guess they were just making like Momi and me but more successfully. There was bench back near the door where four rumpled people sat with cellphones tight in their hands, wires trailing to a power strip below.
The other direction, our line advanced. The electric glow was a little more intense behind the counter at the end, like we were nearing an underwhelming heaven. The wall behind looked like it broke apart into sheetrock and lumber as it neared the warped plastic boundary of the drop tiles. Below that silhouetted heads labored. Affable desperation got a little louder as we neared, then we were upon them.
"Good day and god bless, how are you doing?" "OK, uh, yeah" "Hohoho, that's good, the standard toiletries for two?" "Yeah" "And sign here, sweety, doesn't this rain just make the city shine?" "Yeah" Someone else gave each of us a brown paper bag full of goods. "We got the good paper today, but just one roll each. Still that's nice." "Yeah" "Have a blessed day, sugar!" "You too"
A dirty guy in a frayed jester hat bumped into me and I bumped into my new friend. Hello down there. We walked out with our goods and heard, "Momi."
We froze in our tracks and turned the heads back slow. A woman with lank straw blonde hair long and splayed over her oversized fatigue jacket like a shawl, she was back lit by a random patch of bright sun that made the random drops of rain look like a magic spell. "How's Walter?"
I fake smiled and Momi stepped in front of me. "Oh, you know Walter."
Lady didn't move, still in dripping light of the spell. Clearly, she was an illusion. "That I do. Girl, you are joined at the hip. Almost didn't recognize you without him."
"Uh huh. I gotta go, Brenda."
"Uh huh."
We left the illusion and headed back to the apartments.
*** We stepped into another one. The main difference between one and the next was the view, and the extent to which sunlight hit or missed it at different times of the day. This one was the shadiest one yet, with tall office buildings blocking direct sun. The layout was a mirror of my own - nothing remarkable, new, spare. It smelled very faintly like a new car.
Two things really gave this one a very different feel from my own. One, facing the opposite cardinal direction meant the light was falling completely different outside of midday. Two, the view was obstructed by those office buildings.
I never actually used my view for what it was intended - looking down at the city below, the water beyond, feeling important. It was just the portal to the uninterrupted sky. Here, that sky was shot through with monoliths. You couldn't see the bottom or the top of them unless you stepped right to the window, giving the feeling they could extend endlessly up and down.
Momi worked her sneakered feet across the floor, sat unceremoniously in the clone of my couch that anchored the living room. She bunched her coat around like a blanket. "I'm tired. I'll take this one."
"Rah!" I did a short running jump over the back of the couch and landed next to her like a bird of prey. "You should be having fun, girl! I mean, y'know... Breaking the law." After the initial start, she didn't seem impressed with my foolery, and I curled into a ball opposite her own. "OK."
She felt the need to explain, "You know, just in case. I don't wanna be havin' fun and then go out to jail, with people saying mean stuff to me."
"No, I get it." I inhaled deeply and blew it off to the side, let my head sink. "Why this one?"
"It's closest to you, and the elevator."
I nodded and smiled. "OK. It's yours." I reached out and dropped the keys into her hand. She held them between her hands, closed her eyes, and put them into her coat pocket. "Let's move you in."
*** I worked the spam out onto a paper towel intact, knocked it on its side, cut it into little strips. A third went into a plastic bag, the rest into a hot frying pan.
I just gave it a few minutes before dropping it back onto a paper towel. The water nearby reached a boil, I emptied two ramen packs and some green onions into it and scooped the eggs out with a spoon before replacing the lid.
I suck at peeling eggs. I ran cool water over them to keep my fingers from being burned while I was at it. The clumsy numb digits managed to push off all the dinosaur shell & back into the ramen they went. A pork flavor pack here, stirred with my egg removin' spoon, used the lid to hold in noodles while I poured excess water out in the sink, added the spam back in.
Usually there's just one bowl out. I had to go into a seldom used low cupboard and pull out a cardboard box to get one more. Compulsive check that the stove or water was still on. With the food loaded and precariously balanced on my arm, I stepped out into the hall. I locked the door and slipped the key into my bathrobe pocket, then walked down a little way to Momi's.
My knock was weak as the bowls had me off balance. But after a moment, I heard her walking to the door. It was very quiet through the well-sealed new door. After the motion of the locks, she opened up. "Oh, dinner! It looks too good."
"Thank you." I handed her a bowl and we went in.
She led me to the dining table near the kitchenish part of the room. All this furniture was the same as in my apartment, a testament to how little I had that was actually mine. The tall chairs were halfway to bar stool dimensions and her feet were well off the floor. My toes could touch the floor if I felt like it, but instead they were tucked over a crossbar.
"Oh, what about drinks? You want anything?"
She shook her head. "Don't get up. The broth is enough, the food isn't dry."
"Heh, but the broth won't get you buzzed. I have too much wine and some liquors."
She smiled but clearly had some big feelings about the subject. "Maybe later."
We ate some. The silence was overwhelming. Every slurp or building noise was its own precious center of attention. "You need to get some music in here. I have an old set of really buff headphones and an mp3 player I don't use anymore, you could use them like tinny speakers when they aren't on your head."
"Why don't you use the headphones?"
"The foam cover is all blistered. It gets black plastic flakes on your ear."
"Mm."
She had the heavy vertical blinds drawn, but it was obvious the world outside those windows would be very dark. The indirect lights warmed her skin a delicate orange at the edges, but her face was shadow.
I wasn't an artist, but on a date at the art museum years ago I'd learned about how skin had very different reflective properties from the other elements our artificial environments because its partial translucence and the more. It stuck with me - ever since I'd occasionally been trapped in the beauty of human skin.
She was alive in a world of unliving elements. I felt bad for the way our world is so racist against the things that make people distinct. Her native features were strong. There's an invisible line extending down from the inside corner of the eye, according to white art standards the nose isn't supposed to go past that. The wings of her nose stepped proudly over that boundary, as did mine to a more timid extent.
She slurped at some noodles and glanced at me awkwardly. I ate some more so she wouldn't be the only one making embarrassing noises. We definitely needed music.
"So," I said, "Maybe we should get to know each other some. We're parters in crime now."
Her face did an uncomfortable but cute dance. "What? No, you are the crimes master and I'm just along for the ride."
"Hahaha, it isn't like that, really."
"What? How can you say that? You basically kidnapped me."
"No, see, I had just one idea. Getting the keys remade like that. I don't even know what to do next, but since you're here with me, and we're helping wach other now, we're partners."
Again the dance of expressions. Amusement, incredulity. "Um, I don't see it."
"I mean you're just as likely as me to come up with a plan that gets us out of some trouble, just as likely to be the person that does something amazing."
"You think you're really cool, huh?"
I thought about it. Maybe I was getting a big head, even while on another noisy level I was in a raw panic. "Maybe, but that means now you're really cool too."
She went a little red and waved her head dismissively. "You're a real weirdo, Courtney."
"Thanks, Momi. ...Hm, I guess that wasn't meant as a compliment. It's hard for me to not take it that way though, because I always like weirdos the best. I used to hang out with computer guys and stoners at my school. What were you like in high school?"
"...Nothing. I was just me. I didn't know anybody good."
I tried to wave away the pain with a swipe of a hand. "Pssh, nobody is any good in high school. I'm sure I have a very selective memory for my weirdos. Anyway, it sounds like you didn't have a chance to be you, or something. I think, maybe everyone needs to find a way to be comfortable with their self. So... What would you like to do, if you could do anything? How would you get fun out of life?"
She looked at the blinds. "I don't know... I'd make it so Walter was OK, so--"
"I'm not talking about magic wishes, or what you want for other people. I'm talking about you. You have any music you like? You like to dance? You ever make art? Any place you'd like to see before you die? Stuff like that."
She was quiet.
"I'm sorry. I just don't think it's any good to dwell on crappy stuff. You'll have plenty of time to do that when you're trying to sleep tonight. I want you to be OK, and that isn't going to help."
She was still quiet. I could feel my face burn.
"...So, oh, sorry, really. What music do you like?"
She finally looked back, out of the corner of her eye. "Don't make fun."
Big smile from me. "Promise. I bet I don't even recognize the names. I'm old and moldy."
"OK, I kinda like anything, but especially Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. I don't like songs that are too angry or gross."
"Now see, that's perfectly normal nowadays, isn't it? Why did you think I'd make fun? I like lady singers too, but they're kinda different."
"Heehee, yeah, I think I heard them on your heaphones. What is that?"
"I'm from a different time, you know? Do you know what grunge music was?"
"Like Nirvana?"
"That's right. I listen to stuff like that. And sometimes other things too. But I admit, it can be angry and gross."
She laughed. "It's OK, because you can't understand the words, right? I meant songs where people talk about gross sex stuff or are mean."
"Hm, what's mean? The singers I like are usually angry about people who abuse or exploit others, and are mean about it. But that's pretty reasonable, I think."
"I don't know what I mean."
"No, take your time. I'm sure you do."
"...OK, just when guys are being real angry or mean about girls I think. Like talking about pimping or beating them and stuff."
"Yeah, that's cool. Hey... I think I do have a song you might like, by Queen Latifah. Oh, I want to get my music."
"Mm, OK."
"Should I get some wine too?"
"Yeah, just a little bit."
I brought two bottles and played her "U.N.I.T.Y." and felt guilty as ever about it not really being for me. She got black flakes on her earlobes and I didn't say anything.
*** I was coming home from work again. I was coming into the building and to sit in the office, crying. My fingers were too long. I felt like a Conrad Veidt character.
Niko Whiskers came to me and knelt on the ground, holding up a cardboard box as a sacrificial offering. The shivering insect in the manager box was useless, so I accepted the offering, shook off my tears, and walked out of the fishbowl up, over, and down Niko's back.
Leaning in the elevator I looked down at the box. It was flapping, unsealed. I could glimpse the contents, dull silvery grey, and knew it was a mass of razors.
Why was I crying? I couldn't stay here. Another place that didn't want me. I wanted to turn the box upside down over my head and shake it out. But no.
There was somebody with me. She wouldn't like that. So we went to her apartment, but it wasn't hers yet. We had to let her in.
"Oh, that's what this box is for." We took razors into our fingers. It was bare blades, but at least they had a blunt side to grip.
I was taller than Momi so I started at the top of the door. I slipped the blade in easily enough, but getting it to touch the membrane - that was a trick. It kept wanting to hit a groove to the side and slip through without harm.
No, cutting was what we needed. I snagged the membrane and began to cut. It was a very faint proprioceptive sensation - the resistance so slight and smooth. But after just a few inches, it slipped away. I tried to get a grip on the blade to continue the work, but only pushed it through the crack to the other side of the door.
So I picked up another, and the number we had made sense. Momi was just losing her first one through the crack. I shrugged and passed her another one.
At last, fingers raw, we finished our work. I opened the door, and as it unsealed, we saw the tatters of the membrane dangling like some unappealing contents of a fruit. Our feet rustled through a pile of fallen razors like leaves.
The apartment smelled like the inside of a pumpkin or a latex glove. The city outside was roiling blue mist, the metal and glass monoliths across the way beamed spotlights that worked through the room, disappeared, and returned. I kicked off my shoes and closed the heavy blinds as quickly as I could.
I turned to see her. She was locking the door, over and over again. "You're OK," I said. Still, I had to pull her away from the door gently.
We turned on enough lights to ignore the strobe from outside and settled into the couch. We were at opposite ends facing each other, legs tangled.
"You're OK," I said. She nodded too eagerly. We waited and looked around with our eyes, but remained facing each other. Maybe we weren't OK.
"I'm warm. The couch is too warm," she said. I wasn't feeling it. But as she adjusted in her seat, I noticed the couch looked strangely puffed and red where her body had been touching it. Glancing down to the ground, I saw that the flooring where she had walked was bubbled and red in roughly foot shaped spots trailing back to the door. But it was only her feet, her body that provoked this.
I looked around more wildly. Something was wrong. Was it just us? The strobe outside made slivers of rise and fall, over and over. Momi shifted in her seat again and I saw the couch split like dry skin. Blood started to pool and the thought of it touching her disgusted me terribly.
I jumped to my feet and pulled her off the couch. "Let's get you to bed."
I tugged her toward the bedroom. Looking behind, I could see the bubbling again where her feet tread. Don't betray us, bed. I whipped the blanket off to reveal cool white sheets, grey-blue in the dark. She climbed into the bed.
I put the blanket over her and lay down on top of it, an arm around the back of her pillow. "Let's get some sleep, yes?" The prospect of sleep felt as appealing as food when hungry - like a drug I'd been denied, but I couldn't tonight. Not while things were wrong.
She relaxed into the bedding and was asleep too quickly. I looked around, fearing where the next betrayal would come from. The walls began to bead with an unknown moisture. I noticed it was taking more shape, massing into green gobs. The ceiling looked like it was coming closer, but then I realized it was the bed's surface rising to meet it. The sheet below her swelled and seeped like an abscess, the blanket looked like a scab. Her face was peaceful and human, framed by glamorously full black hair sparkling in the darkness.
I knew the bed was full of pus, I knew we would fall into it and be ruined. The walls were swelling now too, and I couldn't fucking stand it anymore. Wake up.
*** I woke up wedged into some pillows, recognized the feeling of a half-assed clothing-as-blanket situation. My feet were jammed between cushions for warmth, my bathrobe pulled over my torso and up around my chin, head smashed in those tweedy cushions getting grainy impressions no doubt. I felt too cold to move and a category three hangover sealed the deal.
My first thought on waking up those early days of the situation was always, "What am I forgetting?" I probably needed to be implementing some clever scheme to head off the next chance of discovery, and pondering that gave me another excuse to avoid moving. The apartment here was much darker in the morning than on my side of the building, especially with the blinds still drawn.
Then she opened them. I groaned as I dragged myself upright into one corner of the couch. We definitely looked out of place in here, my old audio equipment marring the intended emptiness of the perfectly clean coffee table, the two of us dressed to snooze. She was wearing the same clothes I'd washed the day before, but with no shoes and a sheet pulled over her shoulders instead of the coat. Her hair was a fright wig and her face shy and miserable.
"What's the matter, Momi?"
"I messed up. I'm in here, breaking the law, and he's... He's out there, I know he's scared and alone."
I resisted the urge to get hot about that. The fucking bastard may well have been scared, that was possible. "Mm, I hope ... I hope when you wake up some more, you'll feel different."
She looked at me with trembling lights in her eyes. "I'm wide awake."
I didn't know what to say so I asked. "What can I do? What can I do? I ... I'm having enough tr-- I don't know what to think, to say, I'm just... Are you hung over? I am."
She wiped away the tears but more were coming already. "You drank most of it." The last word came apart into sobs.
I rolled my bowling ball head closer, and reached out tentatively. "Do you need..? Should I..?" She couldn't make words. I rubbed her arm. She jumped just a bit, but the sobbing was unabated.
I moved closer and put my arms around her, brushed the hair aside so I could speak without a mouthful of it. "Momi, Momi, whatever you want or need, anything I can do at all. If you want to go back to him, OK, we'll see about it, hell I don't know, I'm so sorry." She smelled like stale laundry and human salt and heat. Our mingled breath became uncomfortable in a moment, but maybe the oxygen deprivation would be calming.
"Really," I said, "I don't know you and you don't know me. We're just people who met at a bus stop, you don't owe me anything, I'll do anything to make you feel OK now, ugh." Well, then I was crying too. Useless.
But she didn't shy away, and I hoped my embrace felt safe. I held her and we cried for a while. She finally slowed to labored breaths and wet, quiet groans, her face making my chest warm and damp.
"Uh, h-hey, kiddo. You, uh, what do you... what do you want to do?"
She rubbed her face on my bathrobe and answered tiny. "Nothing."
*** In the week that followed, Leimomi helped me "move out" into her apartment, where we kept a vigil over doings across the hall until the cleaners had finished with it. Then she helped me move back in. It was a riot, and we spent a lot of time laughing and acting like fools. She was mostly OK, but complained that sometimes the floor rumbled. I had never noticed that, but surmised it could be the trash pickup or some other heavy mechanical action close by.
Meanwhile, we needed money bad. What we could use the most was an accomplice with a day job. I did my best to very carefully phrase communications on classified sites to avoid revealing much while looking for interest. Nothing quite worked out. I had two face-to-faces with people who turned out to be creepy or too square to consider revealing the situation to.
We ate scrappy food from charities, but had to be careful to avoid running into Walter. We did manage to get more clothes for her from a clothing bank, but they still looked like a homeless person uniform. She was suspicious coming and going, we kept using the back door.
One day after a foot-grinding trip to a free meal across town, we were sitting on the edge of the bathtub in my place, with our pant legs pushed up and feet soaking in warm water. She said something well-intentioned about how the guys must be all over me, and I remembered the few at the office that I knew of.
And then some pieces fell into place. I didn't want to live with a potential creeper, but one of them would be a nigh-perfect accomplice. "Grime" Wexell was a little too friendly to me, had radical class politics, was a prolific pirate of other kinds of goods and services, and - most importantly - whined about his rent on the regular.
That's how I ended up going back to work as a ghost. I put on some heels and glamorous clothes, my shiny black raincoat, and a cool umbrella, left Momi at home, and walked the blocks back to the corporate campus.
A few months before I left, the company had laid off its entire security staff of hundreds of familiar people, and replaced them with an army of naive crew-cut kids working for a much more military-styled company. I knew that if I was recognized by the wrong person, they'd sic the dogs on me and I'd have an embarrassing "Person of Interest" portrait hanging in the security office until doomsday. But it was hard to do a real disguise. People I had worked with found me easy to recognize even from far away, no matter what I wore. I'd just have to hope Grime was still eating the same food at the same time.
I hung out in the deli of the grocery store, across the street from the cruddy-looking new building I'd worked in last. One hour. I kept the sunglasses on, but still got looks of recognition from other people coming over for lunch - a building engineer, a receptionist, three old co-workers that I didn't know well. No return expression. Pretend to read Venus in Furs.
On the table, I kept my old cell phone and repeatedly swiped at it to get the time. When his lunch break began, I put it away and started paying extra attention to the masses.
Grime was with Shelley, Braden, and Seetha. Though they represented the slightly-less-classist, non-libertarian wing of the office, those dudes could be trouble. I resolved to let Grime notice me, rather than approach.
It was weird seeing him again after these few weeks, unchanged. Like I expected the whole world to have shifted into some weird new territory since I had. He was a little taller than me,thickly built, with round glasses and curly black hair in a pony tail. The hair had some random white patches and he wore an unappealing Tony Stark moustache/goatee combination. His rain-dappled t-shirt read, "KEEP CALM and SUPPORT LABOR."
They were talking vigorously, no doubt taking a lot on board with the code changeover. He was engrossed, and my hope for his notice wore thin. He was purchasing a sandwich. I moved to a different table to be right by the path he'd take out.
Sandwich in hand and Seetha beside him, he walked right past.
"Wait. You go ahead, yeah. Yeah, that was Courtney."
He came back and sat across from me. "Is this seat taken?"
"It is now. Graeme. How's work?"
"Oh you know. Didn't feel like sticking around for it, huh?"
"I've been keeping myself busy." I glanced around to be sure the others were gone. "Listen, my phone is out of service and I want talk to you."
His eyebrows edged up. "Oh?"
"Yeah, you have time to go somewhere else now, or later?"
Oh, he was feeling pretty good about himself right then. "Hm, well, how about Dahlia Lounge at ten?"
"You're paying." I smiled. I was so getting a couple of twelve dollar mint juleps. Though my smile faded at the thought I couldn't bring Momi - she didn't have a stitch to wear.
***
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