On a hunch, she pulled up her Hoodie. Sure enough, a free local Veneer was available. She accepted it, and the space went even wilder. Now strange glowing cloud-animals drifted through the air above her head, dipping and diving, chasing each other. She dropped out of hoodspace again; she didn’t need the distraction from their sound.
This couldn’t be the same band she’d listened to on the drive. The fantastic live sound was nothing like the recording, which had been interesting at best. They deserved a larger audience than the group dancing in this room. She debated filming a clip, but didn’t want to risk it if she hadn’t managed to turn off the metadata the way she thought she had. Her description would have to do, packed with as many superlatives as she could provide.
Their third song sounded familiar. It took her a minute to recognize Luce Cannon’s “Blood and Diamonds” filled out and swung, the horn section adding something she wouldn’t even have guessed could be added. She forgot her professional reserve and screamed the words along with the others in the room: part of the song, part of the band, part of the moment. Part of other moments, too: the first time she heard “Blood and Diamonds,” in her mother’s car on the way to get ice cream a month before everything went bad; “Blood and Diamonds” playing hourly on the nurses’ station radio in the hospital, telling her she was stronger than she knew, strong enough to walk out someday soon. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t Luce’s original; this was a new version for the new Rosemary. She had room in her life for both.
Maybe this was why people risked arrest to come out to these shows. You could do the same thing at an SHL show, and if you’d never been in this room you might not even know the difference, but there was a difference.
Walking back toward her rented room after the show, she tried to analyze her exhilaration. She’d arrived here down on her job, but she could still take some selfish joy in the perks, when the perks involved spending her nights listening to amazing bands. Beyond how much she’d loved the music, she genuinely liked the idea of creating opportunities for musicians who had worked hard despite there being no end goal; they couldn’t be playing music in hopes of someone like her walking in the door. It wasn’t a money thing, either. They had to be playing because they loved to play, or believed in their songs, or something like that, which meant she got to ride in and change their world—not that they had any obligation to say yes when she offered it. This time, she’d find a way to do it right. She couldn’t fix what she’d done to Luce, but surely there was a way to get these bands attention without ruining what they had; there had to be a solution somewhere, if she could just think of it.
Someone called, “Hey!” from the darkness ahead, where a streetlight had shattered, the glass strewn on the asphalt below it. She looked up, assuming the voice was Sadie’s. In the moment she registered it was a stranger, someone else hit her from behind.
It wasn’t a hard shove, but she wasn’t expecting it, and it knocked her off her feet. She put her hands out to catch herself, jamming her left pinkie hard against the cement, a white flash of pain. She scrambled to stand, clutching her hand, but someone pushed on her head, so she sat.
“Stay down.” She couldn’t see the second guy’s face. He had his right hand in the pocket of an ancient jacket, denim with white leather sleeves, unless they were yellow. Hard to tell in the dark beneath the shattered streetlight. He had a logo over his heart, a jumble of letters she didn’t recognize. Her brain started untangling them because it didn’t want to think about the gun that he did or did not have.
“Cash, Hoodie, phone,” he said, as if placing an order.
“I don’t want any trouble,” she said, like someone out of her parents’ movies.
She dug in her pocket for the bills she’d wadded there in case she needed to pay to get into the show, and handed the money to him. He accepted with his left hand, the right still in his pocket. His hand was white, with short, dirty nails. She disentangled her Hoodie and passed that over as well. “I left my phone at home. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. Who said “I’m sorry” to a mugger? She sounded ridiculous to her own ears, and fought down the urge to apologize for the apology.
For a moment she worried he didn’t believe her, but then he shoved her to the pavement again and took off running in the direction she’d been heading. She sat watching until he was out of sight, then a little while longer. She had no idea how long. She didn’t see any sign of the first guy, either, the one who’d said “Hey.”
What were you supposed to do after a robbery? Nobody else was around, which meant nobody else had chosen this route. She hadn’t bothered to check the crime maps for this particular jaunt, after all her wanderings. She’d gotten cocky, or careless, or overconfident. Lucky, too, she supposed. He hadn’t shot her, or even taken her keys or wallet. No, he couldn’t have taken the wallet; she’d left it in the apartment. He’d only asked for the stuff he could wipe clean and use, or wipe clean and sell. Her Hoodie would reset if someone else put it on, so she didn’t have to worry he’d track her. Best possible mugging.
She didn’t want to walk down the same street they’d taken anymore, even if it led back to her room, so she took the next right, then a left to parallel the road she’d been walking. She wished she’d brought a jacket; her teeth were chattering for some reason.
Temporary noncomm. For this minute, putting one foot after the other, heading more or less in the correct direction to get herself back to her room, she was alone in the world. No way to call anybody. No way to check the safety maps if she wanted to, now, or summon a ride, or call the police. Joni’s way made more sense, carrying an emergency phone, but if she’d had an emergency phone they would have taken that, too.
A brightly lit diner sat at the next intersection, ten or twelve people inside despite the late hour. She swung the door open, searched faces for her mugger, or at least his jacket, and when she didn’t spot him, slid into the nearest open isolation booth and locked the door.
The menu was embedded into the tabletop. She expected offerings like Heatwave’s, but it was basically the same as a Micky’s. She ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, and hot chocolate, then pressed the panic button.
The response came quickly. “Do you have an emergency, Table Four?”
Was it an emergency? “I think I was robbed. I mean, I was robbed.”
“In your booth?”
“No. Sorry.” Apologies again. “On the next block over, before I came in. They took my Hoodie.”
“And your first thought was to order soup and a sandwich?”
It had seemed like a good idea. She didn’t speak.
The voice disappeared, then returned a moment later. “I’ve called the police for you. They’ll be here in five minutes. Is there anything you need, um, other than soup, sandwich, hot chocolate?”
“Nothing I can think of, thank you.”
She hugged herself for warmth and studied the menu. It felt strange not to have a phone or Hoodie to pass the time. How did noncomm people do it? Joni had carried a book. Maybe she should start carrying a book.
The hot chocolate arrived with so much whipped cream that the top sheared off in the pass-through. The server lingered longer than necessary. Gawking, probably, at the woman stupid enough to get mugged because she’d stopped paying attention to her surroundings.
The police officer arrived at the same time as the food—“Officer Selsor” and “They” read their badge and a pronoun pin—prompting an awkward moment as they squeezed into the booth opposite her, then turned and took the food from the staring server, putting it on the table in front of her. The officer was middle height, middle weight, acorn brown, with a shaved head and kind eyes of the exact same shade as their skin.