Paola catches a column off the sunlit plaza and lets herself spiral, pinions stretched, rising on heat. Her divided skirts barely flutter. Some of the people in the market below are pointing; go ahead, she thinks. Feed the pickpockets.
Out to sea. It’s a long flight, but the courier bag is light and the sun is soft. Paola decides to treat herself. A mile out on the water she kicks off her shoes, watches them fall. Cool air brushes her ankles. It’s the only thing that makes her heart beat anymore: the thrill, the utter sensuality, of flying with bare feet.
“School Boards United took a lot of downtown,” Standish reads off, “nobody expected them there, I guess, but they ceded the southeast suburbs to the Budget Committee. Can’t get a straight word from up north. Far as we know, Little Seoul and the other enclaves are still in dispute.”
“Not much time, Madam Commissioner,” says Milo, pulling his ear absently. “Is Planning and Zoning going to get in on the turf wars or not?”
Instead of answering, Beretta scoots her cup off the guardrail. Carp scatter from its shadow as it falls. Go ahead, she wants to tell them, breathe coffee.
Bosco starts dieting, and loses so many inches off his waist that his belt generates a Mobius paradox. Time skids on a corner around it; light goes weird as it tries to operate in space that’s traded its curve for a Mercator projection. Things warp.
Bosco has only a second to take a deep breath before he’s sucked headfirst through the singularity in his belly button. The warp implodes and tosses him out onto a white and alien prairie: blue suns, drifting helium beasts, a sharp whiff of chlorine. Bosco is humanity’s startled envoy to a new frontier.
Thanks to dieting!
“All the other kids have rocket skates,” Schutzie mentions one day, and “I could skip the bus with rocket skates” the next.
Berlin and Loretta exchange difficult glances. Loretta takes extra nursing shifts, and Berlin hocks his wristwatch. Loretta takes the L to work. Berlin skips lunch.
At last Berlin brings home the best he can find: shiny blue Goddard Inlines, with stabilizers and silver exhaust piping. But Schutzie’s listless at the velodrome, moony on the ride back. Berlin confronts him.
“I wanted red ones,” Schutzie mumbles.
“That’s what you’re moping over?” steams Berlin.
“Plus a mugger killed Mom,” adds Schutzie.
Cater sticks a Q-Tip in too far and some of her brains fall out. One piece goes under the couch with the Fritos. The cat eats another and learns to program the VCR. A third goes into the vacuum cleaner, and takes with it her daughter’s name.
They take her to the doctor after that one. “Plaques,” he says, and “probably,” “good” and “early” and “years left.” While they’re frowning Cater leans over from the papered table and borrows a few brains from the doctor.
“And it’s genetic,” says her wrung-out daughter, “Alzheimer’s?”
“Whose?” smiles the doctor, nodding along.
Clyde and Gerno rough the basics of the contract nude in the sauna. They argue options clauses through the hot baths, then international release in the cold pool. Oiled up and scraped down, they grit their teeth and talk bonuses; six men beat them with golf clubs until they agree on sheet music rights. They swap gigs for endorsements via electroshock screams. They stumble from the gauntlet spa bleeding, clinging together, and they are bonded men: shared survivors whose friendship no record exec can break.
Or anyway that’s how it should be, thinks Clyde, signing some clause he can barely read.
Fire Escape from Death Mountain!
“I just didn’t expect it to be a fire escape exactly,” mutters Bezel. “More an escape from a fire. Like on snowboards.”
“I can’t snowboard.” Antony follows down the rusty metal stairs. A few people are using the fire escape as a makeshift balcony, grilling out, watering window boxes.
“Also, the mountain is misnamed,” Bezel says.
“You think so?” inhales an aging woman in her bathrobe, outside on a smoke break.
“Yes,” says Bezel. “Where’s the death?”
The old lady points a shaking cigarette at him. “These things,” she says hollowly, “are going to kill me.”
She takes them out of the handkerchief one at a time, careful not to touch the edges: three shattered seconds, like puzzles that cut. Her left eye says they’re missing a few shards but fixable. Her right, through the loupe, says they’re ugly bad dark times: betrayal and sick fear, things that were broken for a reason.
The Summersmith looks across the counter at her patron, thirteen, too young to deserve these in his life. “Do you want them fixed,” she says, “or fixed?”
“Truth is beauty,” he says sadly, and the loupe shows her the galloping pulse in his neck.