Bone Dance

I chose understatement. “A market. I can get out here.”

I expected her to pop the hatch. Instead, she cast a leisurely eye over the neighborhood. I was close enough to see the shallow lines at the corners of her eyes, the dense black sweep of her eyelashes, the precise shape of her lips. Her earlobes were pierced, but she wore no earrings. No rings, no cosmetics, no ornaments at all; no personal touches, no sentiment. She reminded me of my apartments.

As if she’d heard the thought, she asked, “You live here?”

“No,” I said blithely.

When it became clear that I wasn’t going to add to that, she killed the engine and looked over her shoulder again. I smiled at her. In defiance of logic, I felt worse now that the noise and vibration had quit. “My heavens,” she said at last, “a fount of information. Loose lips sink ships.” I heard the latch over my head open; she lifted the roof off us, swung out of the driver’s seat, and offered me a hand. “At least, come tell to me your name.”

Likewise your occupation, and where and whence you came, I thought, my startled mind dropping the rest of the quote into place like a puzzle piece. Not mad — or at least, endowed with an interesting education, as well. I avoided her hand by pretending I needed both of mine to get out of the back seat. By the end of the process, it was true, and I leaned against the trike while my vision cleared. “Sparrow,” I said.

“Come again?”

“The name. And since you’ve had your will of me… ”

“Hardly that,” she replied, laughing. But I thought I saw a flash of pleasure in her face, to find that I knew the begi

“Do you think I was born with a name like Sparrow?” I said, pretending mild offense.

She swung her leg back over the front seat, her face good-humored and distant, and thumbed the starter. The tri-wheeler broke alcohol-scented wind, loudly, and came back to life. Then she looked up at me, her eyes half-lidded, her mouth half-smiling. “We’re all born nameless, aren’t we? And the name we end with has only peripherally to do with our family tree.”

I turned to go.

“Wait; I forgot,” she continued. “You were saying you’d pay me for this?”

Well, of course she’d remember. Things could only get worse, after all. “That’s the Deal.”

She took another up-and-down survey of me. “What’s that holding your hair back?”

It was a braided leather thong with a few jet beads in it. I’d forgotten it in my first inventory, but it wouldn’t have mattered — it wasn’t fair coin for a ride from the Bank. “It has a lot of sentimental value,” I lied, reflexes kicking in anyway. “I couldn’t part with it.”

“Yes, you could.” And she held out her hand, palm up.

Once again she’d chopped through the rituals of the Deal with brutal simplicity, razored the pelt of civilization off an already dubious exchange. I felt mauled. I yanked the thong out of my hair and dropped it into her hand. Her fingers closed over it with disturbing finality, and she nodded. “Just so. I’ll treasure it always. Goodbye, Sparrow, and watch out for the cats.” With another vivid smile, she closed the hatch.

I watched until she was out of sight, and even until the gravel dust had settled. Then I went carefully around the corner to Del Corazón, to cadge five minutes on the phone from Beano.

1.1: A surfeit of transactions

Del Corazón smelled of frangipani and leather and Fast Luck incense, and was suffocatingly warm. On any day but Friday, it would have been closed against the midday heat; but some business is best done when other people sleep. Del Corazón was open, if not precisely for me.

Beano was an animated wax statue in the dim light of the shop, gleaming from a fine, even coating of perspiration. Sweat darkened the front of his tight red tank top like blood. I asked my boon.

He laid both his clean white palms on the glass counter, between a tray of glow dermapaints and a rack of patent leather garters, and gave me a long pink look through ivory eyelashes. “Nothing’s free,” he said softly. Beano never raised his voice.

I felt a sudden, incautious relief. I had escaped out from under the fairy hill and returned to the real world, safe at last. Nothing was free. Even Beano was a danger I was used to. I gathered my strength and flung myself into the fray. “Well, and five minutes on the phone is nothing. I’m doing you a favor, in fact. Beano, mi hermano, if I’m on it, it can’t ring.”

“Ain’t but a hundred phones in the City. Don’t ring very often.”

“Yes, but I know how you hate to be disturbed on Fridays.” I twitched my nose like a cartoon rabbit. “Mmm. What an interesting new smell. Almost like… ” I let my voice taper politely off. Graceless, I thought, but functional.

Beano accepted three currencies: hard money, flesh and blood, and knowledge. He preferred the first two. I mostly used the third, often pointed in the opposite direction from the one he had in mind. Usually with a lighter hand, but I felt like the saint with all the arrows, and it was undercutting my judgment. (I’d given him money, too, when I had it, when I could afford it. But never the second alternative, never skin. Never.)

“Almost like what?” he said.

I pursed my lips. “No, forgive me, it couldn’t possibly have been. And if it was, I’m sure it’s perfectly legal.”

Beano leaned down and opened the back of the display case. I watched his hard white hands, their backs veiled with sparse but surprisingly long white hairs, their nails long and thick and filed sharp, moving delicately over the merchandise. It was like watching a cave spider. The fingertips passed over knives with blades inscribed in Spanish, over a necklace made from the stuffed skin of a rattlesnake, fangs intact, over a pair of engraved silver clasp bracelets welded together, back to back, their inside curves studded with little spines. I looked away.

“Here,” Beano said, and set something on the counter. I turned back. It was a little box, covered in dark red velvet and lined in black satin. Ranked neatly on the satin were six bone needles, their broad ends still flanged and rough and recalling the joint they’d once been part of, their long points polished bright. “Do you know what these are for?” Beano asked.

“No.”

“Do you want to know?”

I swallowed, because I couldn’t help it, even though I knew he’d see me do it. “No.”

He slammed the cash drawer and I jumped. He clenched his hands around the edge of the counter; the muscles in his forearm showed like rope. “Someday,” he said, “maybe I’ll show you.”

“Does that mean I can use the phone today?”

Beano smiled slowly. “Sure. Sure you can.” It’s possible to miss things you never had. Pay phones, desk phones, cellular phones, hot lines to Russia — they’re taken for granted in the old movies. Whatever it took to get a phone installed in those golden days, it must not have been as complex as the City’s system of influence, blackmail, and graft. And it must have resulted in something better than A.A. Albrecht’s collection of scratchy party lines.

The phone was on the wall of a room behind the shop, where the extra stock was stored. The thing on the front of the rack was made of paper-thin black leather and lined with rose-colored silk. The material was so light that it hung shapeless, unidentifiable. A garment, probably. But thin leather cords hung from it at intervals, and a strand of wire coiled down from one side. I tried not to look at it as I listened to the ringing of the phone on the top floor of Sherrea’s building. Eight rings. If no one answered — well, I could try again later. But that’s not how I felt. My pass with Beano seemed to have used up all my insouciance; suddenly it was desperately important to hear Sherrea’s voice, even if it was telling me to go to hell.