Virtual Light

19. Superball

Ski

“Look at that brace there.”

Discolored blobs of puddled welding-rod held the thing together, but it looked sturdy enough. He counted the mismatched heads of nine screws. The diagonal brace itself seemed to be made up of thin metal shims, lashed together top and bottom with rusting twists of wire.

“I made that” Ski

Yamazaki’s fingertips moved over hidden roughness.

“Shot, Scooter. Wouldn’t cut for shit. Why I used ’em.”

“I saw plastic?” Poising his wrists.

“Wait up. You start sawing on that crazy-goo, it isn’t go

Yamazaki froze. He looked back.

“You’re too close to the center. You cut through there, you’ll have a ring around each wrist and the suckers’ll still close up. You want to go through as close to one side as possible, get over here and get the cutter on the other one before it does you. I’ll try to get this open…” He bumped the case with his toes. It rattled.

Yamazaki brought his face close to the red restraint. It had a faint, medicinal smell. He took a breath, set his teeth, and sawed furiously with his wrists. The thing began to shrink. Bands of iron, the pain hot and impossible. He remembered Loveless’s hand around his wrist.

“Do it” Ski

The plastic parted with an absurdly loud pop, like some sound-effect in a child’s cartoon. He was free and, for an instant, the red band around his left wrist loosened, absorbing the rest of the mass.

“Scooter!”

It tightened. He scrambled for the toolkit, amazed to see it open, as Ski

“Blue handles!”

The bolt-cutter was long, clumsy, its handles wrapped in greasy blue tape. He saw the red band narrowing, starting to sink below the level of his flesh. Fumbled the cutter one-handed from the tangle, sank its jaws blindly into his wrist and brought all his weight down on the uppermost handle. A stab of pain. The detonation.

Ski

Yamazaki looked at his wrists. There was a deep, bluish gouge in the left one. It was starting to bleed, but no more than he would have expected. The other had been scratched by the saw. He glanced around the floor, looking for the remains of the restraint.

“Do me” Ski

Yamazaki tested the action of the cutter, knelt behind Ski

Yamazaki stared at the space where the restraint had been.

“Katey bar the door!” Ski

“What?”

“Lock the fucking hatch!”

Yamazaki scrambled across the floor on hands and knees, dropped the hatch into place, and bolted it with a flat device of dull bronze, something that might once have been part of a ship. “The girl” he said, looking back at Ski

“She can knock” Ski

Yamazaki didn’t. He looked up at the ceiling-hatch, the one that opened onto the roof. Open now.

“Go up there and look for the ’mo.”

“Ski

“Big fag buddy. The black one, right?”

Not knowing what or whom Ski

“There is nobody here, Ski

The rain came down in an explosive sheet, hiding the lights of the city.

Yamazaki withdrew his head, feeling for the hatch, and closed it above him. He fastened the catch, wishing it were made of stronger stuff.

He descended the ladder.

Ski

“Ski

Yamazaki knelt beside the bed. Ski

Yamazaki smelled the sour tang of urine above the acrid edge of whatever explosive had propelled Loveless’s bullet. He looked at Ski

He stood there for several minutes, uncertain of what he should do. Finally he took a seat on the paint-splattered stool beside the little table where he had so recently been a prisoner. He ran his fingertips over the teeth of the saw blades. Looking down, he noticed a neat red sphere. It lay on the floor beside his left foot.

He picked it up. A glossy marble of scarlet plastic, cool and slightly yielding. One of the restraints, either his or Ski

He sat there, watching Ski

Ski

“She isn’t here” Yamazaki said, his hand on Ski

“Hasn’t been” Ski

“Ski

“Time. That’s the total fucking mother fucker, isn’t it?”

Yamazaki held the red sphere before the old man’s eyes. “Look, Ski

“Superball” Ski

“Ski

“You go and fucking bounce it, Scooter.” He closed his eyes. “Bounce it high…”

20. The big empty

Swear to God” Nigel said, “this shit just moved.”

Chevette, with her eyes closed, felt the blunt back of the ceramic knife press into her wrist; there was a sound like an i

“Shit. Jesus—” His hands rough and quick, Chevette’s eyes opening to a second pop, a red blur whanging back and forth around the stacked scrap. Nigel’s head following it, like the counterweighted head of a plaster dog that Ski

Every wall in this narrow space racked with metal, debraised sections of old Reynolds tubing, dusty jam jars stuffed with rusting spokes. Nigel’s workshop, where he built his carts, did what shadetree fixes he could to any bike came his way. The salmon-plug that dangled from his left ear ticked in counterpoint to his swiveling head, then jingled as he snatched the thing in mid-bounce. A ball of red plastic.

“Man” he said, impressed, “who put this on you?”

Chevette stood up and shivered, this tremor ru

How she felt, now, was just the way she’d felt that day she’d come back to the trailer and found her mother all packed up and gone. No message there but a can of ravioli in a pot on the stove, with the can-opener propped up beside it.