Virtual Light

She took the remote, blipped through a shaven head with a sun at the very top, planets orbiting down to the top of the ears, a hand with a screaming mouth on the palm, feet covered with blue-green creature-scales. “I said” she said, “Lowell bullshits about that, how he’s co

“No shit” Rydell said. “You ever see these guys?”

“You don’t see them” she said, “not like live. You talk to them, on the phone. Or like with goggles, and that’s the wildest.”

“Why?”

“Cause they look like lobsters and shit. Or some tv star. Anything. But I don’t know why I’m telling you.”

“Because I’ll nod out otherwise, then how’re we go

“It’s your turn” she said, and just sat there until he started talking.

He told her how he was from Knoxville and about getting into the Academy, about how he’d always watched Cops in Trouble and then when he’d been a cop and gotten in trouble, it had looked like he was going to be on the show. How they’d brought him out to Los Angeles because they didn’t want Adult Survivors of Satanism stealing their momentum, but then the Pookey Bear murders had come along and they’d sort of lost interest, and he’d had to get on with IntenSecure and drive Gunhead. He told her about Sublett and living with Kevin Tarkovsky in the house in Mar Vista, and sort of skipped over the Republic of Desire and the night he’d driven Gunhead into the Schonbru

About how Hernandez had come over, just the other morning but it seemed like years, to tell him he could come up here and drive for this Mr. Warbaby. Then she wanted to know what it was that skip tracers did, so he explained what it was they were supposed to do, and what it was he figured they probably did do, and she said they sounded like bad news.

When he was done, she just looked at him. “That’s it? That’s how you got here and what you’re doing?”

“Yeah” he said, “guess it is.”

“Jesus” she said. Sort of shook her head. They both watched a couple of full body-suits blip past, one of them all circuit-patterns, like they stenciled on old-fashioned circuit-boards. “You got eyes” she said, and yawned in the middle of it, “like two piss-holes in a snowbank.”

There was a knock at the door. It opened a crack, and somebody, not the man who jingled when he walked, said: “You having any luck picking a design? Henry’s gone home…”

“Well it’s just so hard to decide” Chevette Washington said, “there’s so many of them and we want to get just the right one.”

“That’s fine” said the voice, bored. “You just go right on looking.” The door closed.

“Let me see those glasses” Rydell said.

She reached over and got her jacket. Got out the case with the glasses, the phone. Handed him the glasses. The case was made out of some dark stuff, thin as eggshell, rigid as steel. He opened it. The glasses looked exactly like Warbaby’s. Big black frames, the lenses black now. They had a fu

Chevette Washington had flipped open the phone’s keypad.

“Hey” Rydell said, touching her hand, “they’ll have your number for sure. You dial out on that, or even take a call, they’ll be in here in about ten minutes.”

“Won’t have this number” she said. “It’s one of Codes’s phones. I took it off the table when the lights went out.”

“Thought you said you didn’t just steal things.”

“Well” she said, “if Codes had it, it’s stolen already. Codes trades ’em off people in the city, then Lowell gets somebody to tumble ’em, change the numbers.” She tapped the pad, held the little phone to her ear. “Dead” she said, shrugging.

“Here” Rydell said, putting the glasses down on his lap and taking the phone. “Maybe it got wet, or the battery’s knocked loose. What’s old Codes trade for these, anyway?” He ran his thumbnail around the back of the phone, looking for the place whtre you could pry it open.

“Well” she said, “stuff.”

He popped the case. Saw a tightly rolled mini-Ziploc wedged in there beside the battery. It had pushed the contacts out of alignment. He took it out and unrolled it. “Stuff?”

“Uh-huh.”

“This type of stuff.”

“Uh-huh.”

He looked at her. “If this is 4-Thiobuscaline, it’s a controlled substance.”

She looked at the bag of grayish powder, then at him. “But you aren’t a cop anymore.”

“You don’t do this stuff, do you?”

“No. Well, once or twice. Lowell did, sometimes.”

“Well, just don’t do any around me, because I’ve seen what it does. Nice normal people do a couple of hits of this, they go snake-shit crazy.” He tapped the bag. “Enough in this to get half a dozen people fucked up like you wouldn’t believe.” He handed it to her and picked up the phone, trying to get the battery back where it belonged.

“I’d believe it” she said. “I saw what it did to Lowell…”

“Dial tone” he said. “Who you want to call?”

Thought about it, then she took the phone and flipped it shut. “Guess there isn’t anybody.”

“That old man have a phone?”

“No” she sad, and her shoulders hunched. “I’m scared they killed him, too. ’Cause of me…”

Rydell couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He was too tired to flick the remote. Some guy’s arm with a furled Confederate flag on it. Just like home. He looked at her. She sure didn’t look anywhere near as tired as he was. That could just be being young, he thought. He sure hoped she wasn’t on any ice or dancer or anything. Maybe she was in some kind of shock, still. Said this Sammy had been killed, two others she was worried about. Evidently she’d known the guy plowed in Svobodov on that bicycle, but she didn’t know yet that he’d been shot. Fu

“I’ll try Fontaine” she said, opening the phone again.

“Who?”

“He does Ski

His eyes closed and his head hit the back of the couch so hard it almost woke him up.

“Smells like piss” Ski

Yamazaki raised his head from the table. The room in darkness. Light through the church window.

“What are you doing here, Scooter?”

Yamazaki’s buttocks and lower back ached. “The storm” he said, still half in his dream.

“What storm? Where’s the girl?”

“Gone” Yamazaki said. “Don’t you remember? Loveless?”

“What are you talking about?” Ski

“Loveless. He found me in a bar. He made me bring him here. I think he must have followed me, earlier, when I left you—”

“Sure. Shut up, Scooter, okay?”

Yamazaki closed his mouth.

“Now we need a bunch of water. Hot. First for coffee, then some so I can wash off. You know how to work a Coleman stove?”

“A what?”

“Green thing over there, red tank on the front. You go jiggle that tank off, I’ll tell you how to pump it up.”