And shed been very lucky the time shed first wandered out onto the bridge, the lower deck, her knees wobbling with a fever shed picked up on her way down the coast. Everything hurt her: the lights, every color, every sound, her mind pressing out into the world like a swollen ghost. She remembered the loose, flapping sole of her sneaker dragging over the littered deck, how that hurt her, too, and how she had to sit down, finally, everything up and turning, around her, the Korean man running out of his little store to yell at her, get up, get up, not here, not here. And Not Here had seemed like such a totally good idea, shed gone straight there, right over backward, and hadnt even felt her skull slam the pavement.
And that was where Skinner had found her, though he didnt remember or maybe want to talk about it; she was never sure. She didnt think he couldve gotten her up to his room on his own; he needed help to get back up there himself, with his hip and everything. But there were still days when an energy got into him and you could see how strong he mustve been, once, and then hed do things you didnt think he could do, so shed never he sure.
The first thing shed seen, opening her eyes, was the round church-window with the rags stuck into the gaps, and sun coming through it, little dots and blobs of colors shed never seen before, all swimming in her fevered eye like bugs in water. Then the bone-crack time, the virus wringing her like the old man had wrung the gray towels he wrapped her head in. When the fever broke and rolled away, out a hundred miles it felt like, back out to there and over the rim of sickness, her hair fell out in dry clumps, stuck to the damp towels like some kind of dirty stuffing.
When it grew back, it came in darker, nearly black. So after that she felt sort of like a different person. Or anyway her own person, shed figured.
And shed stayed with Skinner, doing what he said to get them food and keep things working up in his room. Hed send her down to the lower deck, where the junk-dealers spread their stuff. Send her down with anything: a wrench that said BMW on the side, a crumbling cardboard box of those flat black things that had played music once, a bag of plastic dinosaurs. She never figured any of it would be worth anything, but somehow it always was. The wrench bought a weeks food, and two of the round things brought even more. Skinner knew where old things came from, what theyd been for, and could guess when somebodyd want them. At first she was worried that she wouldnt get enough for the things she sold, but he didnt seem to care. If something didnt sell, like the plastic dinosaurs, it just went back into stock, what he called the stuff ranged around the bases of the four walls.
As shed gotten stronger, and her new hair grew in, shed started ranging farther from the room on top of the tower. Not into either city, at first, though shed walked over to Oakland a couple of times, over the cantilever, and looked out at it. Things felt different over there, though she was never sure why. But where she felt best was on the suspension bridge, all wrapped in it, all the people hanging and hustling and doing what they did, and the way the whole thing grew a little, changed a little, every day. There wasnt anything like that, not that she knew of, not up in Oregon.
At first she didnt even know that it made her feel good; it was just this weird thing, maybe the fever had left her a little crazy, but one day shed decided she was just happy, a little happy, and shed have to get used to it.
But it turned out you could be sort of happy and restless at the same time, so she started keeping back a little of Skinners junk-money to use to explore the city. And that was plenty to do, for a while. She found Haight Street and walked it all the way to the wall around Skywalker, with the Temple of Doom and everything sticking up in there, but she didnt try to go in. There was this long skinny park that led up to it, called the Panhandle, and that was still public. Way too public, she thought, with people, mostly old or anyway looking that way, stretched out side by side, wrapped in silvery plastic to keep the rays off, this crinkly stuff that glittered like those Elvis suits in a video theyd showed them sometimes, up in Beaverton. It kind of made her think of maggots, like if somebody rolled each one up in its own little piece of foil. They had a way of moving like that, just a little bit, and it creeped her out.
The Haight sort of creeped her out, too, even though there were stretches that felt almost like you were on the bridge, nobody normal in sight and people doing things right out in public, like the cops were never going to come at all. But she wasnt ever scared, on the bridge, maybe because there were always people around she knew, people who lived there and knew Skinner. But she liked looking around the Haight because there were a lot of little shops, a lot of places that sold cheap food. She knew this bagel place where you could buy them a day old, and Skinner said they were better that way anyway. He said fresh bagels were the next thing to poison, like theyd plug you up or something. He had a lot of ideas like that. Most of the shops, she could actually go into, if she was quiet and smiled a little and kept her hands in her pockets.
One day on Haight she saw this shop called Colored People and she couldnt figure out what it sold. There was a curtain behind the window and a few things set out in front of that: cactus in pots, big rusty hunks of metal, and a bunch of these little steel things, polished and bright. Rings and things. Little rods with round balls on the ends. They were hung on the needles of the cactus and spread out on the rusted metal. She decided shed open the door and just look in, because shed seen a couple of people going in and out and knew it wasnt locked. A big fat guy in white coveralls, with his head all shaved, coming out, whistling, and these two tall women, black-haired, like handsome crows, all dressed in black, going in. She just wondered what it was.
She stuck her head in there. There was a woman with short red hair behind a counter, and every wall covered with these bright cartoony pictures, colors that made your eyes jump, all snakes and dragons and everything. So many pictures it was hard to take it in, so it wasnt until the woman said come on, dont just block the door, and Chevette had come in, that she saw this woman wore a sleeveless flannel shirt, open all the way down, and her front and arms all covered, solid, with those same pictures.
Now Chevette had seen tattoos in the Juvenile Center, and on the street before that, but those were the kind you did yourself, with ink and needles, thread and an old ballpoint. She walked over and took a good long look at the colors exploding between the womans breastswhich, though she was maybe thirty, werent as big as Chevettesand there was an octopus there, a rose, bolts of blue lightning, all of it tangling together, no untouched skin at all.
You want something the woman said, or you just looking?
Chevette blinked. No she heard herself say, but I was sort of wondering what those little metal things are, in the window.
The woman swung a big black book around on the counter, like a school binder except its covers were chrome-studded black leather. Flipped it open and Chevette was looking at this guys thing, a big one, just hanging there. There were two little steel balls on either side of its wedge-shaped head.
Chevette just sort of grunted.
Call that an amphalang the woman said. She started flipping through the album. Barbells she said. Septum spike. Labret stud. Thats a chunk ring. This ones called a milkchurn. These are bomb weights. Surgical steel, niobium, white gold, fourteen-carat. She flipped it back to the jim with the bolt, sideways through the end of it. Maybe it was a trick, Chevette thought, a trick picture.
Thats gotta hurt Chevette said.
Not as much as youd think this big deep voice, and then it starts to feel jus good