-1-
My glide board easily swerves through the Ft. Perch traffic, weaving in and out of the packed lanes. I was supposed to go right back home after installing Maxwell’s chip but it’s been a while since I’ve been out and I want to enjoy it while I can.
The shitty secondhand glide board doesn’t have enough power to go up the train station stairs so I dismount, flip the board into it’s magnetic holder on my backpack and sprint up the stairs of the elevated tracks. I splurge the extra ten dollars for the Hi-Speed Rail train and I’m in the outskirts of the desert in less than 20 minutes.
There’s a local shuttle to the Inferno West Daughters of Fury Garage—where Cheek’s is located-- but my board is just not shitty enough to glide across the sand and get me out there in less than 15 minutes.
It’s the middle of the day and the dimly lit restaurant and strip
club is nearly empty. A few of Cheek’s tables are dotted with the younger Furies
on their lunch break from the 24 hour body shop. I spot Holland sitting with an
off-duty waiter named Ulrich and another teen Fury prospect I don’t know.
They’re in one of the cushy circular booths with a stripper pole in the middle
of the table--a raven-haired female dancer wearing a sheer skin colored thong and black x-shaped tape over
her nipples spins on the pole above them.
Ulrich, Holland and the Fury are all laughing loudly and enthusiastically at something Holland is projecting from her syn. As I near the table they all go suspiciously silent and squirrely.
Holland calls away her projection.
“Awww, you look like fucking shit,” Holland pouts as a greeting.
“Hold me,” I respond and squeeze between her and Ulrich in the booth.
I wrap my arms around her middle and rest my head on her boobs. I liked to tease her that her gigantic tits are the top two reason she’s even being considered as an Inferno West prospect.
Holland encircles me with her arms and pets my hair. I missed having someone I could always reach out and touch when I needed.
Holland Ivor is the closest thing I have to a best friend. We’re not spend-all-our-time-together-rah-rah-besties but the girl gets me.
We met at Ms. Sara’s 72nd birthday party when I was 10. Holland had come with Luce’s sister Twyla and her girlfriend, Colette—who is somehow related to Holland. Holland had apparently just gotten out of a shitty home situation and they were taking her to stay with the Furies for protection. They’d stopped at Ms. Sara’s birthday party so she could chill for once and have some cake and ice cream.
Seeing as it was birthday party for a 72-year-old woman who hated both her birthday and parties it sucked even more than usual and I was psyched a kid close to my age was there. We played video games for a while and I showed Holland a black site I’d found that had codes for taking child blocks of R-rated games. It was fun and I didn’t learn until later she’d just escaped some real bad shit that day.
Holland was 18 now and had the kind of freedom I was jealous of. She dropped out of school last year when she got her advanced engine tech license and worked full time at the Inferno West garage. She’d been a Daughter of Fury prospect for a few months now and even lived at the clubhouse.
Whenever I spent time with Holland there were usually Furies or Fury prospects around and they were cool. But I’d been told I was too young and reckless to ever be considered one of them.
I also couldn’t ride a motorcycle.
Details.
“What were you guys laughing at so hard when I came in?,” I ask the group.
“Oh, we were playing this drawing game--,” the Fury I don’t know starts but Holland cuts her off.
“It was nothing.”
“I like to draw,” I remind her. “I’m the best drawer. I wanna play. Tell me what game--”
“Okay, so one person draws something like an arm or ear or like a dick or something,” the Fury giggles. “And then the next person adds something to it and then the next person adds something until you get a funny creature.”
“You mean…Exquisite Corpse ?,” I say with raised eyebrows
Holland and Ulrich stare at me guiltily. The girl who doesn’t know me looks oblivious.
“I taught you that game,” I remind Holland. “What ? Is it the name ? Sorry you don’t get to see me spaz out. Besides I should be really good at it since I’m the only one who’s seen an actual corpse.”
“Nova--,” Holland starts, her voice sounding all gross and motherly.
“Oh my god It’s been like over two months. I’m fine!” I tell her. “I want to have some fun while I’m free. Let’s. Have.Fun. Now!”
I bang my fists against the table to emphasis the last part.
“Body shots ?,” the Fury asks, raising her eyebrows at Holland who rolls her eyes in response.
“Yes,” Ulrich agrees loudly. “Body shots!”
-2-
Ulrich signals to the pole dancer who’d been spinning in slowly lazy circles at the top of the pole above us. She floats down the pole on one arm and lies down across the table. One of the older Furies, who’d been hovering at the bar, makes a line of salt on the dancer’s muscled stomach and places a lime wedge between the dancer’s red painted lips.
A small crowd of Fury prospects go one after another; throwing back a shot, licking a path up the salt from the dancer’s lower waist and taking a lime wedge from her mouth. A few of them start licking the salt a lot lower than the dancer’s belly button and make her squirm—including Holland.
It earns her a few cheers from the other Furies.
Holland told me that even though it was frowned upon by the officers, a lot of the prospects became fully patched members by sleeping with older members. I didn’t like the idea of her doing that because she was a badass bitch and that should be the only reason they take her in. She promised me she wouldn’t but I didn’t believe her because she’s also a lying bitch.
“Are you going to do a shot ?,” Holland asks me after she’s had her second.
I shake my head, looking at the growing line for body shots.
“I’d rather not catch the plague” I tell her and tap the side of my nose. “Besides…I told you. I have cash. Where is Joshua ?”
She laughs knowingly and holds out her hand. I give her forty dollars in cash. Cash was fucking disgusting. There were only two type of people who used it;
1. Egotistical paranoid washed up geriatric hacker cyborgs who didn’t trust the government and had to shop at black market stores and
2. (my favorite) drug dealers.
Holland hands my cash to one of the older Furies who takes half and then slips the rest to Joshua, the bartender. He bends down under the bar, gives the Fury a dusty coffee mug that she gives it to Holland. When it gets to me I peer inside and take out the bulging little bag of white powder.
Selling drugs was technically against the Fury bylaws but a lot of them had no trouble bending the rules as long as no one found out. Most of the staff in Cheek’s sell, but they won’t sell directly to me or Holland because were not official Furies.
I pull Holland with me over to an empty booth and make a few rails on the table with a butter knife. We take turns snorting with a rolled up dollar bill.
I feel a powerful rush the second it hits my bloodstream.
We play a few rounds of Exquisite Corpse with a varying groups, each making the final drawings as lewd as possible. The Furies hanging out with us get my humor and they always made me feel accepted.
At some point Holland leaves me to start making out on the bar with the dancer---which seems to piss some of the other prospects off. Holland was cute in a way with her mousy features and dirty brown hair. Tits aside, she was never going to be the hottest girl in the room. But she had a confidence that pissed off hot people who were used to getting everything because of their looks. She always left me to hook up with her losers. But I don’t let it bother me today.
I make new friends easily when I’m on high. By the time the sun sets and the bar fills up with after work regulars I’m grinding on the table between a curvy pink-haired Fury prospect and a hot male pole dancer in his 20’s and I have a group of new best friends who think everything I say is insanely amusing.
I’m having fun for the first time in weeks. I don’t think about Dad at all.
But it all comes to a crashing halt.
Every single person around me goes stiff and silent. The music cuts, the pole dancers scatter to other tables and the dancer making out with Holland walks into the back with her head down.
I turn my head to see Gia Santoro, the Inferno West charter president, coming towards us. According to Holland she never came into Cheek’s unless it was to lay down the law.
Confession; I’ve been in love with Gia Santoro forever. She was just over six feet tall, beautiful in a Golden Age movie star way, wore the shit out of a massive lipstick collection and could do the coolest tricks on her bike. Today she’s wearing tight jeans and a black leather jacket with the president patch on the right side.
Holland had told me Gia was super controlling with the newer generations of Furies. She’d been the one to take one look at me and tell me I was too reckless to ever join. And the way she’s looking at me as she walks across the bar tells me she sees me as an issue, not a future Fury. She looks around at the other Furies with disappointment and they quickly disband.
Gia turns her harsh gaze directly to me and I feel a little flustered. Her arms are crossed and her creamy burgundy lips are pressed in a stern line.
“Nova,” she says in a disappointed teacher voice, “You need to go home. Now.”
If it was anyone but her I would have balked or argued. I didn’t want to go home.
I couldn’t.
But it was her. I wanted her to like me.
So, I leave.
***
-3-
It’s only a little after 8:30 PM when I make it to the cluster of close packed high rises in a shitty inner Sprawl neighborhood.
Home sweet home.
I take the elevator to the 19th floor and press my hand to the palm lock of our unit. I hear a low conversation on the other side of the door—which was weird because Luce didn’t like anyone in the apartment except his family and Hyacinth, the part-time caregiver Dad had hired for Luce when he got his prognosis. But Hyacinth never really talked--I think she was terrified of us.
The voices go quiet the moment the doors slide open.
Luce is sitting on the couch in a wrinkled tracksuit that had been tailored to leave room for the cables connecting him to his server. The black track suit was an upgrade from old boxer shorts and stained undershirts he’d been wearing the last two months.
Minnow Dory is sitting on the couch in a white shorts pantsuit and tall gold sandals. Sitting next to Ms. Minnow is younger bronze-skinned woman with back length braids. She’s also in a suit. They look so out of place in our shithole
“We should go,” Ms. Minnow tells Luce. She pointedly looks at me before turning to the woman with the braids.
“I can have my hackers send you more specs--,” the woman starts.
“Send it through Minnow,” Luce says curtly. “This isn’t a yes. My mother and I need to discuss if we’re doing…outside consultations again.”
The woman tries to extend a hand out but Luce doesn’t take it. She doesn’t seem bothered and she and Ms. Minnow head for the door, walking past me like I’m not there.
“Who was that--,” I start when the doors close.
“Where the hell have you been ?” Luce snaps.
“I was getting your shit and doing your dirty work!” I remind him, opening my backpack and throwing his bottle of whiskey on the living room table. “It’s called saying thank you. I can’t even walk into the door without you bitching at me. I did what you asked--”
I don’t mean to get so aggressive but he was already being a fucking asshole and I was feeling extremely anxious for some reason.
“I told you to go to the hospital, put that chip in Maxwell’s assistive machine and then stop by Luxor to buy me a case of whiskey,” he spits. “That doesn’t take eleven god damn hours. I know where you were. Who the hell do you think called Gia--”
“Fine,” I bite out. “If you know so much then why did you even fucking asking me ?”
I storm past him and into the kitchen.
I can hear him shifting from the couch to his chair to follow me so I pick up the portable ramp—the one thing that makes it easier for Luce’s chair to get up the steep lip that separated our open kitchen from our equally open living room--and carry it under my arm into the kitchen.
Ms. Sara is sitting in the darkened kitchen with earbuds in. She didn’t like talking to their clients. Or to anyone really.
I kick Luce’s wheelchair ramp under the kitchen table where he’ll never be able to get to it and kiss Ms. Sara on the cheek. She pats my arm and goes back to working in her Syn Glasses. She refused to get a syn but her granddaughters had finally convinced her to get syn glasses last year.
Her hundreds of tablets were still taking up space in the apartment. Luce and his mother were really weird about getting rid of old tech which sucked because there was no room for it. Our three bedroom plus upstairs loft apartment was small as it was and the open concept made me feel like I was always being watched.
“NOVA, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CHEAP SHIT ?,” Luce shouts from the living room.
I look briefly over my shoulder to see him holding the Bluegrass Finest Wiskee bottle. I’d picked it up that morning from the first discount liquor store I’d found that took cash.
“I gave you that cash to buy a case of Jack Daniels from Luxor--,” he continues.
“Yeah…I really don’t remember you saying that--,” I lie and notice a pizza box on the stove.
I’m suddenly starving.
“Where the fuck is my change?,” he shouts across the apartment. “This is cheap shit. Where's the rest of the money ?”
Ignoring his impending tantrum I flip open the pizza box.
And it’s empty.
“Hey, where’s my dinner--”
“What have I told you about steal—what the hell is wrong with you ? Put the fucking ramp back!”
“This is such bullshit,” I say, knocking the empty pizza box on the floor. “Why didn’t you leave me any--”
I hear him actually growl as he works the controls on his chair to get enough momentum to get it up the steep lip and into the kitchen.
It’s an unsuccessful attempt.
“If I don’t see your ass here at dinner time, I’m not spending my money on food for you--”
He just had to go there. Fuck him.
“IT’S NOT YOUR FUCKING MONEY, LUCE! IT’S MY MONEY!,” I remind him as loudly as I can.
When Dad died I found out he had a trust for me. The money was leftover from when he worked at a club. When I was born he’d had documents drawn that said I would get the trust when I turned 18 or if he died.
But when he got his prognosis he’d re-written my trust with new conditions. Luce was now in control of my money and for me to get the trust I was mandated to stay in Luce’s custody until I was 18. Then Luce got to make the decision if I could have it or not when I turned 18.
I loved Dad but I was so pissed at him for giving Luce control of the money he saved for me.
I open the fridge and it’s nothing but stale leftovers, ice water, beer, medication, more medication and expired milk. I slam the clear glass fridge door a little too hard. The cooling panel falls down and the lights in the fridge blink off. It feels good to slam something though and my hands itch to open and shut every cabinet in this shithole apartment.
“Damnit, what did you break now ?” Luce shouts from where he is still stuck in the living room. He’s breathing hard from the effort of trying to get into the kitchen. I don’t want him to pass out but it would also vastly improve my night.
I open and slam the fridge door again.
“THIS IS SUCH FUCKING BULLSHIT!”
“Stop shouting--”
“NO!,” I scream. “You motherfucking asshole! You have to fucking take care of me ! And feed me! There’s never any food in fucking apartment. I’m going to call the cops! IT’S NOT FAIR! Yougeteverything becausefuckinghateyouand—and—and—and—and—and-and--NO!—LET ME GO!”
Luce had switched from his chair to his crutches surprisingly quickly and made it up the lip into the kitchen. He’d grabbed me up by my shirt and boxed me into the corner of the kitchen between the stove and fridge.
“Are you high right now ?,” he growls in my face.
“No,” I lie as calmly as I can.
“You better not be doing chrome .You have cybernetics ! That shit could kill you--”
“I’M NOT ! GOD, WHAT FUCKING YEAR DO YOU THINK IT IS--”
Luce is breathing so hard I have no idea how he is still standing. He grabs my chin, tilts my head back hard and looks down my nose. I hope he doesn’t notice I’m wearing a new, more expensive nose ring that I’d bought with the cash he gave me this morning.
“Cocaine ? ,” he spits as I push him off. “This shit ? Again ? ARE YOU A GOD DAMN IDIOT ? YOU’RE ON FUCKING PROBATION--”
“Oh my fucking god I didn’t do drugs! And even if I did, which I don’t, cocaine is like from like a plant that makes like chocolate so it’s perfectly natural--,”
The palm of his hand cracks against my right cheek twice.
“Stop lying.”
The slap actually sobers me up a little bit.
I was 13 and stupid the first time I’d been caught with coke. Holland gave me some she’d stolen from a Fury. Idiot me brought it to school and some narc kid saw it. The school wanted to expel me but Luce’s niece donated money so they wouldn’t. I still had to go in front of a judge with a giant stick up his ass who’d given me a 5 year probation I was still on.
I wasn’t an addict or anything. I just liked to have fun that sometimes involved drugs. I’d learned to lie better and how to cheat on my court ordered drug test. It had been working so far.
“This.This shit is exactly why you don’t have your trust. If would go right up your fucking nose.” Luce barks. “I don’t know what to do with you, kid. You lie and cheat and steal--”
“I do not cheat or steal--”
“You stole and pawned Atsumi’s bracelet last week. Or are you too high to remember why I grounded you in the first place ?”
“She just left it by the bathroom sink,” I argue. “How was I supposed to know it was a gift from her mother--”
“How about you don’t take and sell shit that isn’t yours, Grayson ?”
“Why can’t you call me Nova--”
“I’ll call you the name your father gave you--”
“You just love that I’m named after you don’t you ? You sycophantic asshole---”
“Grayson, enough. You hear this, Ma ?,” Luce shouts to Ms. Sara. “Do you have anything to say about how he fucking talks to me ?”
She just adjusts her ear plugs and keeps working. I'd caught her wrath a few times when I made Dad mad but whenever Luce is yelling at me Ms. Sara. usually just ignores it. Sometimes if it was really bad she’d go to her loft upstairs, darken the glass walls surrounding it and puts earplugs in.
Ms. Sara was nice to me and I loved that Luce got all pissy
when she didn’t help him scream at me.
I’m so fucking over this. I pick up my backpack and head for my room.
“You’re going back to school tomorrow,” Luce says in his normal tone which is still bitchy as hell.
“No, I’m not--”
“You need structure back in your life. Ma and I might start taking consultations in the apartment and you clearly can’t be trusted outside on your own. If we don’t pick up on work we’re going to lose this place--”
“I don’t care. I’m not going to school. I’m not ready---”
I’d been forced to go to this ridiculous rich kid day school in Ft. Perch that required physical attendance. I hadn’t been back to school since Dad died. I hadn’t even started the piling up assignments and lecture recordings I was supposed to be working on.
“You either go to school tomorrow,” Luce says. “Or I call your parole officer. Either way your ass is not going to be here all day tomorrow.”
I turn my back on him and walk away. When I pass the glass bottle of whiskey on the table I knock it over. It falls over with a satisfying thunk on the glass coffee table. But then a small crack forms on the table’s glass surface and the whole things crashes to the ground
“Grayson,” Luce growls through gritted teeth, his face turning red. “Go to your fucking room. Now.”
I don’t know why I hated when he bossed me around. I wanted to go to my room. My high was wearing off and I was tired as fuck. But I just could never let him get the last word in.
“No. I--”
“Now.”
“I--”
“I’m giving you to the count of 3”
“I’m not a baby--”
“1…2-”
I pick up my backpack and walk away.
-4-
I have a sinking feeling Luce is going to want to "talk to me" later so instead of going to my own bedroom I go to Dad’s bedroom and slam the door.
Luce hadn’t gone back in the bedroom he’d shared with Dad since
he died. He'd been sleeping and working from the couch for two months, which made it infinitely harder to sneak out.
Ms. Sara insisted we go through and get rid of Dad’s personal items. Luce couldn’t do it so she’d been doing it. Ms. Sara knew a lot about how to live after someone died. Both of her husbands, her son and her son's father and her daughter-in-law had died. Holland liked to joke that she’d killed the men. I wasn’t so sure it was a joke though.
I slam the bedroom door behind me, take my shoes, pants, shirt, contact lenses and glasses off and crawl into the king bed. Nobody had touched the bed since the morning we left for the trip and when I roll over to Dad’s side of the bed it still smells like him. Some of his long stray hairs are still on the pillow.
My stomach growling makes it hard for me to get to sleep. I start looking around for food. I know better than to open the locked drawers but I find a stash of gummy pandas in Luce’s nightstand that is going to be my dinner.
Now for a drink.
They’d moved the liquor cabinet in their bedroom closet last year because they thought it would stop me from getting into it. The lock is almost too easy to bypass. There isn’t anything good inside but I take an unopened bottle of pink champagne and pocket a few of the cigarettes tucked in the back. I didn’t even feel like smoking, I just wanted to take something that was Luce’s.
I carry my new discoveries and Dad’s pillow to their bedroom window and climb out on to the fire escape. There would be a decent view from up here if there was anything to look at besides buildings. I press myself into the corner of the fire escape landing with the pillow to cushion my back.
I’d never had champagne and it turns out the bottle is a bitch to open and it taste like soap. I light up the cigarette and take a long drag.
Sleeping was hard. When he was home, Dad and I had a nighttime routine. Sometimes we’d talk or he’d read to me but if he was too tired we’d listen to music and he’d rub my back until I drifted off.
I cue up a video on my syn from a few months before he’d died. It was late and I’d been making a super inappropriate video for Holland when Dad had walked in. I forgot to turn my recorder off, so it was nearly an hour of us talking until I fell asleep. I have hundreds of pictures and videos of him but this one was my favorite because it was the most real. Neither of us knew it was recording so there was no smiling or pretending for the recording. We just talked about stupid shit that didn’t matter.
I put the cigarette out on the metal railing, close my eyes, lean back into the pillow and let the recording play and ,for a few minutes before I fall asleep, I can just pretend.