As he reached ground level, the smoothness of the ramp was replaced by the rattle and bump of old blacktop. Rob hung a left onto 192nd Street. The streets were nearly deserted at this time of night. He’d have to crash with Beverly or his folks until he could find somewhere to live. Which reminded him—he’d put a block on his link. He removed the block and found six messages waiting for him. Three were from Mort. “Dickhead. Asshole,” Rob hissed. He’d better have left a damned sincere apology after scoping Lorelei’s little ambush party. On second thought, Rob didn’t care how sincere the apology was; there were no words sincere enough to forgive such backstabbing. He was tempted to delete the messages without watching them, but decided to see the first at least, just to satisfy his curiosity.
Mort didn’t sound apologetic, he sounded frantic. “Brother, hey, are you seeing this? You need to get back there. She’s ditching all your stuff. Shit. Not okay. Get back up there, okay?”
Ditching all his stuff? A sick dread crawled up his spine as he set his frame for one eye only so he could see to drive while peeping Lorelei’s bedroom, expecting that Lorelei had already blocked him. But she hadn’t. No, of course she hadn’t—she wanted him to see.
Lorelei was leaning out the window. Rob tried to maneuver closer, but a thousand frames were crowded around her, forming a porous, semicircular barrier. Rob peered between the cracks, his stomach clenching. Lorelei was holding a storage clip lightly between her thumb and forefinger, dangling it out the window.
“Adiós, photos age seven to twelve. Sayônara. Tot Siens. Da svidaniya.” She opened her fingers and the clip dropped toward the roofs of Low Town.
She transferred something to her right hand, from a stack in her left, held it up to examine it. “Early recordings: original compositions.”
Rob howled in fury as she extended her arm, the disk dangling loosely between her fingers. Some of this stuff he had backed up, but a lot of it…
Rob’s eyes flew open as a woman came off the curb, and he realized he’d taken the turn too wide. He slammed the brake, jerked the steering pads.
The woman, her arms raised defensively, disappeared under his Scamp. He felt the thud right into his teeth. The vehicle bucked violently once, then again, throwing Rob partially into the passenger seat as the air emptied from his lungs in a long, involuntary scream. The Scamp rolled on until it collided with a light post. Then everything was still, except for the feed from Lorelei’s bedroom.
Although he’d lost all interest in what Lorelei was doing, his left eye remained there.
“Arrivederci. Paalam na po.” Lorelei let another bit of Rob’s life slip from between her fingers.
Rob disconnected the feed. Lorelei winked out.
He wanted to remain just as he was—his head and shoulders crammed toward the floor on the passenger side, one leg twisted between the seat backs, the other stretched across the driver’s seat. He wanted to stay there forever, frozen, never to move forward in time.
The mournful wail of an ambulance rose in the distance. Rob straightened himself into the driver’s seat. He should get out, but he didn’t want to see the woman.
So he sat there, his breath coming in quick gasps, telling himself he had to move, had to check on the woman, try to stop the bleeding if there was bleeding, give her mouth-to-mouth if she wasn’t breathing, pull off his jacket and bunch it under her head. Act like a human being.
Outside, screens were popping up by the hundreds as word spread and virtual rubberneckers rushed to see. Two people ran past looking alarmed, shouting. Rob opened his mouth to tell the door to open. Nothing came out but a moan.
3
Veronika
Veronika took a break from feeding her client witty words to impress a guy who was totally wrong for her, and watched Nathan work. She liked to watch Nathan. Since he was sitting right across from her, Veronika hoped it didn’t appear as if she looked at him an inordinate amount of the time, though Nathan certainly didn’t look at her as much as she looked at him. So maybe she shouldn’t spend so much time looking at him.
Instead she surveyed the Donut Hole Caffeine Emporium, which was busy for a weekday afternoon, its cup-clutching clientele swirling around tables sprouting here and there like mushrooms, talking, working their systems, all of it silent because Veronika had muted everything. She and Nathan were at their usual table—fifth level, on the edge of the hole that ran right down the middle of the shop and gave it its name.
She looked back at Nathan. She loved how he worked his system, loved his vocal style, and the way he always seemed to have three days of stubble on some parts of his face, and only one on others. She also loved how his jaw and chin were chiseled and masculine, but his nose and dark, smoky eyes were soft and pretty in an almost feminine way.
Nathan wasn’t his usual high-energy, talkative self today. He seemed almost morose, which was supposed to be Veronika’s role. She took a sip of her almond bean brew. It was getting cold.
Work this into the convo, she subvocalized to her client. “Sometimes I’m baffled by how you can be so deep and so shallow at the same time.” Her client, Sylvie, barraged her with frowny-faces. Sylvie liked this guy and was hoping they’d escalate to Romantic Interaction Face-to-Face soon, and because of that she was getting tight, in danger of blowing it.
I’m telling you, you need to neg this guy a little if you want to keep his interest. Romance 101, Sylvie!
My friend Suk thinks it’s a mistake.
Does Suk have a master’s degree in Interpersonal Relationships from NYU? Veronika shot back. She didn’t like playing the degree card, because this job was so much about instinct, but the comment got her hackles up.
After a pause, Sylvie sent back, Give me something else. Something nice!
“Oh for God’s sake,” Veronika said aloud. “This bird needs to get out of my nest and flap her own damned wings. Too much longer and it’s going to be so obvious she had a coach when they finally meet in person.”
Nathan chuckled sympathetically, breaking the chuckle into two parts as he wove it around the subvocalized conversation he was having with one of his own clients. Nathan’s vocal style was a variation on La Lune—very jazzy, very sexy.
“I hate working in real time,” Veronika said, while feeding Sylvie a few flirtatious lines. “When you’re having a live screen conversation, you’re implicitly claiming all of your material is original. At that point using a coach is cheating.”
“It’s all cheating,” Nathan said. “Getting us to create their profiles in the first place is cheating.”
“It’s cheating, but it’s not dishonest cheating. It’s like nudging other people’s systems so you look ten pounds lighter and an inch taller to them. Everybody does it.”
Nathan didn’t take the bait. Definitely not himself; normally he couldn’t resist a good argument.
“You okay? You seem a little down.”