“You’re rummaging through my stuff without my permission.” He gestured toward the wall of small faces watching them. “In front of hundreds of people. And you think I should feel guilty for keeping a card from my ex-girlfriend?”
She put her hands on her hips. “A card? She’s stripping.”
He opened his mouth to defend himself, but most of the defenses that came to mind were lies. I forgot I had it. I never watched the video again, once I met you. He looked down at his private things, strewn on the floor like candy wrappers, or used condoms. Yes, he shared some of the blame here, but what Lorelei had done…
“This is just sick.” Rob waved the closet open and pulled out a duffel bag. Kneeling, he scooped a double-handful of his stuff off the polished granite floor, set it gently in the bag.
“I found the porn holos as well, by the way. How lovely. When did you find time to”—she cleared her throat suggestively—“use them?” Her words, cutting as they were, still came in that beautiful rhythm, Lorelei’s signature vocal style, injected with subvocalized asides to her friends that sounded like soft susurrations and gulped exclamations that she somehow made sexy.
“At least they’re convincing when they fake their orgasms,” he said, wanting to humiliate her in front of her viewers.
Lorelei grabbed the back of his collar and yanked, nearly sending him sprawling. “I don’t have to fake them when a man actually excites me.”
His anger boiling over, Rob sprung up, meaning to… what? Shove her? Hit her?
And then, suddenly, he got it. This was Lorelei’s climax, the finishing touch that would leave her viewers eager to return to witness more of her fascinating and tumultuous life. She didn’t care about Penny’s card; it was just a useful prop, a ratings boost.
He took a few deep breaths, willing himself to stay calm, just until he got out of there. He went back to packing. Lorelei had over eight hundred sets of eyes now; the room was teeming with screens. As he scooped another handful of his things into the duffel, he realized how pathetic he must look to all these people.
Rob stood, leaving the duffel where it was. “On second thought, I’ll pick up my things later.” Despite his best efforts to deny her audience the satisfaction of seeing how hurt and angry he was, his voice was shaking. “I’m out of here.”
The only things he grabbed were his lute, and a stack of his publicity photos that were sitting on top of the lute case. At the bedroom door he paused to take a last look at Lorelei, so absurdly tall (yet wanting everyone to believe no genetic trickery was involved), her face a perfect balance of Asian, African, Anglo, her jet-black curls rolling down her shoulders.
As he turned away, it occurred to him that Lorelei might have been planning this from the moment they met at The Skyview. Was it possible? Would anyone build a relationship and then wreck it solely to draw eyes?
“Why don’t you see if Penny will take you back.”
Rob felt something ricochet off his shoulder. He didn’t turn—he already knew it was Penny’s card. He kept moving, through the living room and down the glass corridor to the tube.
To his relief the door to the tube opened immediately. Breathing hard, arms at his sides, he glared at the sea of frames hovering outside the tube door, wanting a good look at the rube who’d just been disemboweled by super double-nifty Lorelei. He set a total block to keep them from squeezing into the tube with him as the door slid closed.
One, two, three, he counted silently to give the tube time to get moving, out of auditory range of the gawkers, then, as the familiar three-hundred-sixty-degree view of Manhattan’s Low Town spread out far below him, he screamed so loudly his ears crackled. He dropped the photos and his lute case, pounded the glass wall of the lozenge-like compartment, spun and slammed his back against it, pummeled it with his elbows, pounded it with the soles of his spear boots, which Lorelei had bought him. It felt good. He went on slamming the glass until he was exhausted, then, panting, he slid to the floor.
What had just happened? For the past eight months, everything had been skintight. No drama, their relationship exclusive but not escalating, everyone happy. Or so he’d thought.
Fortunately the tube didn’t stop at any of the other apartments spread out along the lift line, like beads threaded on a string, hanging from the underside of High Town. This was the last time he would take this trip, he realized. No, the second-to-last time—he still had to collect his stuff. Maybe he could get Gord or Beamon to do that for him.
If this was his last trip, he wished he could enjoy the view, drink in the rooftops below, dappled in sunlight filtering through High Town. He couldn’t, though. He was too hurt, too angry, too sad. He honestly wasn’t sure what he felt, whether he was glad to be rid of her or devastated to lose her. Both. Lorelei was brilliant in her own way, dynamic, utterly unpredictable. It was fun to be with her. He’d been aware of her cutting edge, had felt it graze him from time to time, but never thought she’d cut so deep.
Rob knelt, collected his photos scattered on the floor, and grabbed his lute as the lift opened onto Rogers Street—the shopping district. He stepped into bright sunlight, looked left and right, not sure where he was going. One of the photos slipped between his damp fingers. As he stood there panting, a twenty-three-dollar fine rolled off his account balance in the corner of his vision. In High Town the incivility cameras were always rolling. Rob flung the rest of the photos at the sky and stormed off, as several hundred dollars in fines thinned his balance further. He headed west, away from the garage where his mini was stored, toward Skyview. He needed a drink. No—he needed six.
Skyview was nearly empty. Ignoring the breathtaking view of the outer burbs provided from the tables, Rob slipped onto a bar stool, smiled at Ellie as she came over.
“What happened to you? You look terrible.”
Rob tried to wave away the question. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”
Ellie folded her arms. “Clearly it’s not, or you wouldn’t look like someone just stomped your favorite puppy wearing four-inch spiked heels.”
Rob surprised himself by choking up. He shook his head, looked down at the bar, felt Ellie’s hand on his shoulder. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you’re not having absinthe?”
A coarse guffaw escaped him. “No, no absinthe.” Absinthe was Lorelei’s drink. He’d gotten into the habit of drinking it, hanging with her. Suddenly it was way too expensive for him. This entire bar was suddenly too expensive for him without his girlfriend and her rich parents.
A vodka martini appeared directly below his hangdog face. “First one’s on me, sweetie. And don’t repeat this please, but I think you’re better off without her.”
“Yeah, I know. But even though I know that, even though she did something so”—he reached for a word to encapsulate the wretchedness of what Lorelei had done to him, but came up empty—“so shitty, it still hurts. You know?”
Ellie sighed, leaned on the bar. “I know.”
“I didn’t do anything to her. It was like she just decided to shit on me for kicks.” Rob lifted the martini and took a long swig.
2
Rob
Rob was going too fast when he hit the long, rainbow-curved ramp out of High Town, and his mini was slowed by the ramp’s governor. High Town, pulsing silver, teal, salmon, and lemon yellow on a backdrop of black night, slowly disappeared out of his rearview mirror as he descended.
He knew he was leaving High Town for good. Sure, he’d take day trips, maybe be lucky enough to play gigs up there one day, but he’d never live there again. Musicians couldn’t afford to live in High Town. Rob didn’t mind, though. As he curved back around, Low Town spread out before him, the fork of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers flickering in the mottled blobs of lamplight. In some ways he preferred the tightly packed, aging stone and steel of the old town to the shiny glass and carbon fiber of the new. It suited him. It felt more honest.