BJshook his head. “Lost Empire basically had only a couple of dozen tradeable commodities, that and armor and weapons and magic stuff. The real world has fifty million times as much complexity, and real-world economies have more mechanisms for correcting themselves.” He grinned. “Believe me, Charlie and I discussed this. We had all sorts of fantasies about conquering the real world the same way we conquered Lost Empire.” He shrugged. “But you know how the agents we unleashed on the real-world markets turned out. They’re good, they’re making money for Charlie and everyone who rents one…” He laughed. “Nobody owns the planet yet.”
“Guess not.”
Twelve point three billion, she thought. But even that wasn’t enough to bring down a large, diverse, robust economy like that of Chile.
Chad, maybe.
Something else was going on.
She thanked BJ for listening, paid for both meals, and took the 101 back to the valley. She worked past ten o’clock, at which point the thought of a swim in her apartment’s pool began to creep softly into her mind. Doing laps in the pool alone in the night, as she’d done in Indonesia. She began to think of the weightlessness, the water caressing her skin, the silence. The eerie glow of the underwater floodlight.
Eventually she couldn’t concentrate on work any longer and drove home.
She parked in front of the ginkgo trees in the parking lot. As she got out of the Prius, the scent of the rotting fruit stung her nostrils, a disgusting combination of vomit and semen that was like a fraternity the morning after the homecoming party, and she stepped away from the smell. She walked to the iron apartment gate and prepared to give the lock her thumbprint. A shadow moved quickly toward her from the darkness between a pair of SUVs, and Dagmar’s nerves gave a shriek.
She tried to get her heart under control and briefly considered flight-no, she realized, he’d probably catch her. If she tried to open the gate, he could pin her against the iron bars. And so-adrenaline booming in her ears like kettledrums-she hastily adjusted her car keys in her hand so the keys were protruding from between her fingers, improvised brass knuckles.
Her reactions had improved since Jakarta. If this guy tried to attack her, she was going to do her level best to fuck him up.
Unless, of course, he was a Russian assassin with a gun, in which case she would die.
The man stepped into the light, and Dagmar saw it was Siyed.
“Shit!” she said. “You scared the piss out of me!”
“I had to see you, love,” Siyed said. His pupils had shrunk to pinpricks in the floodlights. “Dagmar,” he said, “you’re all I can think about.”
“Are you stalking me now?” she demanded. “Go home!” She pointed at the street and talked to him as if he were an overaffectionate dog. “Go home!”
“I can’t!” Siyed staggered toward her. He was a tiny man, only two or three inches over five feet. Once Dagmar had enjoyed the lightness of his frame, the delicacy of his hands and wrists, but now she just wanted to throw him across the parking lot. He wore chinos and a white cotton shirt, and in the glare of the floodlights his dark eyelashes were black commas drawn above and below his eyes.
Her grip on her keys loosened. She couldn’t be afraid of a man shorter than she, even if he was barking mad.
“Dagmar, I love you!” he croaked. “I only want to be with you. You’re like night and day and moon and sun-”
She interrupted before she could become any more cosmic than he had already made her.
“Siyed,” she said, “you’re fucking married! Go back to your wife!”
“I can’t!” he said again. He blinked up at her. “Oh my God,” he said. “You’re so dazzling.”
He fumbled for her hand. She pulled away from him. The stink of the rotting ginkgo fruit lay in the back of her throat like a coating of phlegm that she couldn’t hawk out.
“Go home!” she said again. And then, more gently: “This is California. You can get arrested for this kind of behavior.”
“I can’t go home.” Siyed’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I told Manjari about us. I told her we were in love!”
“We’re not!” Dagmar cried. Out of sheer frustration she waved her fist, and Siyed jumped back at the glint of the keys in her hand.
“There’s no obstacle now, love!” Siyed said quickly. “We can be together. I’ve got it all arranged…”
“Did you think to ask me about these goddam arrangements first, whatever they are?” she demanded. “Did you think to ask me whether you should tell your wife anything about me?”
“I did it for you!” Siyed said. Tears spilled down his face. “It’s all for the two of us!”
Dagmar turned from him and jabbed at the gate with her thumb.
“I see you around here again, motherfucker,” she said, “I’m having you arrested!”
“But Dagmar…,” he moaned.
Dagmar swung the creaking iron gate open, then shut. Siyed stepped close to the gate, and the shadow of the bars fell across his face.
“Dagmar!” he cried.
“Go away!”
She stalked toward the stairs, then up and to her apartment, where she had to restrain herself from slamming the door behind her and waking any of the neighbors who hadn’t already been roused by all the shouting.
She didn’t turn on the lights. Instead she went to the window over the sink and looked out to see if Siyed was still in the parking lot.
He was gone, at least from the patch of asphalt she could see through the gate.
He could still be skulking outside her view, though. For a moment she fantasized about calling the cops, and then decided she was too tired to wrangle with Siyed and the police.
Dagmar’s gaze shifted to the pool, glowing Cherenkov blue down in the courtyard, and she felt her energy level subside, swirling into emptiness like the pool draining away.
She wanted to use the pool, but she didn’t want to give Siyed the pleasure of watching her swim, assuming that he was still lurking around.
Goddam it.
Instead of swimming, she opened the refrigerator, and in its light she ate half an eggroll that was left over from a take-out Chinese meal two nights before. The cold grease was rancid on her tongue.
Then, still creeping like a bewildered ninja around her own apartment, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and went to bed.
In the middle of the night she woke up with a sudden understanding of everything that had happened.
BJ was wrong, she thought. And Charlie is riding a tiger.
Poor man, she thought. He can’t get off.
And then: None of us can.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE This Is Not a Refuge
Dagmar knew what was going on, but she couldn’t do anything about it. Not now, perhaps not ever.
And furthermore, she was trapped in her ordinary life. The next day was Saturday-for Great Big Idea a workday, with Briana Hall scheduled for another update, complete with a live event in London that would begin at 8 A.M. California time. Dagmar was in her office by seven, gulping coffee and digging through Siyed’s employment records from Curse of the Golden Nagi.
She found that she wanted to clear herself with Manjari. She didn’t want to come clean, exactly-if she could manage this without having to admit that she’d actually been to bed with Siyed, that would be fine with her-but she wanted Manjari to know that, despite what Siyed had told her over the phone, she wanted no part of him now, that whatever romantic fantasies Siyed was spinning were entirely a product of his own unhinged imagination.
It occurred to Dagmar that Manjari might well be skeptical of whatever claims her husband’s lover might make.
I don’t want him. Please take him back.
Was that convincing or not? But why wouldn’t it be convincing?
She didn’t want Manjari’s husband, right? Why wouldn’t Manjari believe that?