Rydell thought about it. You looked, huh?
Loveless nodded. In Mexico City. He left them in his room. He was never, ever supposed to do that.
But you werent supposed to look either? It just slipped out.
Lovelesss skin was running with sweat now, in spite of the cool. It was like his whole lymbic system or whatever had just let loose. Kept blinking and wiping it back from his eyes. Ive done my job. Did my job. Jobs. Years. My father, too. You havent seen how they live, down there. The compounds. People up here have no idea what money can do, Rydell. They dont know what real money is. They live like gods, in the compounds. Some of them are over a hundred years old, Rydell There were flecks of white stuff at the corners of Loveless smile, and Rydell was back in Turveys girlfriends apartment, looking into Turveys eyes, and it just clicked, what shed done.
Dumped that whole bag of dancer into the Coke shed brought him. She hadnt been able to pour it all in, so shed sloshed the Coke out onto the top of the can to wash it down, mix it around.
He had his shirt undone all the way now, the dark fabric darker with sweat, and his face was turning red.
Loveless Rydell started, no idea what he was about to say, but Loveless screamed then, a high thin inhuman sound like a rabbit with its leg caught in a wire, and started pounding the butt of his pistol into the tight crotch of his jeans like there was something terrible fastened on him there, something he had to kill. Each time the gun came down, it fired, blowing holes in the carpeted floorboard the size of five-dollar pieces.
Chevette Washington came off that console like she was on rubber bands, right over the top of the center bucket and into the cabin in back.
Loveless froze, quivering, like every atom in him had locked down all at once, spinning in some tight emergency orbit. Then he smiled, like maybe hed killed the thing that was after his crotch, screamed again, and started firing out through the windshield. All Rydell could remember was some instructor telling them that an overdose of dancer made too much PCP look like putting aspirin in a Coke. In a Coke.
And Chevette Washington, she was going just about that crazy herself, by the sound of it, trying to beat her way out the back of the RV.
Hundred years old, those fuckers Loveless said, and sort of sobbed, ejecting the empty magazine and snapping a fresh one in, and theyre still getting it
Out there Rydell said. By The Gap
Who?
Svobodov Rydell said, guessing that might do it.
The bullets came out of the little gun like the rubber cubes out of a chunker. By the third one, Rydell had reached over, deactivated the door-lock, and just sort of fallen out. Landed on his back on some cans and what felt like foam cups. Rolled. Kept rolling til he hit something.
Those little bullets blowing big holes in the whitewashed glass of the dead stores. A whole section fell away with a crash.
He could hear Chevette Washington pounding on the back door of the RV and he wished he could get her to stop.
Hey! Loveless!
The shooting stopped.
Svobodovs down, man!
Chevette still pounding. Jesus.
He needs an ambulance!
On his hands and knees, up against some low tiled fountain smelled of chlorine and dust, he saw Loveless scramble down from the drivers side, his face and chest slick and shining. The man had been trained so deeply, it occurred to Rydell, that it even cut through whatever the dancer was doing to him. Because he still moved the way they taught you to move in FATSS, the pistol out in both hands, the half-crouch, the smooth swings through potential arcs of fire.
And Chevette, she was still trying to kick her way out through the hexcel or whatever the back of the RV was made of. Then Loveless put a couple of bullets into it and she all of a sudden stopped.
At four oclock Yamazaki descended the rungs hed climbed with Loveless, in the dark, the night before.
Fontaine had gone, twenty minutes before the power returned, taking with him, against Skinners protests, an enormous bundle of washing. Skinner had spent the day sorting and re-sorting the contents of the green toolkit, the one hed overturned in his bid for the bolt-cutters.
Yamazaki had watched the old mans hands as they touched each tool in turn, imagining he saw some momentary strength or purpose flow into them there, or perhaps only memories of tasks undertaken, abandoned, completed. You can always sell tools Skinner had mused, perhaps to Yamazaki, perhaps to himself. Somebodyll always buy em. But then you always need em again, exactly the one you sold. Yamazaki didnt know the English words for most of the tools there, and many were completely unfamiliar. T-reamer Skinner said, holding up his fist, a rust-brown, machined spike of steel protruding menacingly between his second and third fingers. Now thats about as handy a thing as you can have, Scooter, but most people never seen one.
Its purpose, Skinner-san?
Makes a round hole bigger. Keeps it round, too, you use it right. Sheet-metal, mostly, but itll do plastic, synthetics. Anything thin, fairly rigid. Short of glass.
You have many tools, Skinner-san.
Never learned how to really use em, though.
30. Carnival of souls
But you built this room?
You ever watch a real carpenter work, Scooter?
Once, yes Yamazaki said, remembering a demonstration at a festival, the black blades flying, the smell of cut cedar. He remembered the look of the lumber, creamy and flawless. A tea-house was being erected, to stand for the duration of the festival. Wood is very scarce in Tokyo, Skinner-san. You would not see it thrown away, not even small scraps.
Not that easy to come by here Skinner said, rubbing the ball of his thumb with the edge of a chisel. Did he mean in America, San Francisco, on the bridge? We used to burn our scrap, before we got the power in. City didnt like that at all. Bad for the air, Scooter. Dont do that as much, now.
This is by consensus?
Just common sense Skinner put the chisel into a greasy canvas case and tucked it carefully away in the green box.
A procession was making its way toward San Francisco, along the upper deck, and Yamazaki instantly regretted having left his notebook in Skinners room. This was the first evidence he had seen here of public ritual.
In the narrow, enclosed space, it was impossible to view the procession as anything other than a succession of participants, in their ones and twos, but it was a procession nonetheless, and clearly funereal, perhaps memorial, in its purpose. First came children, seven by his hasty count, one behind the other, in ragged, ash-dusted clothing. Each child wore a mask of painted plaster, clearly intended to represent Shapely. But there was nothing funereal in their progress; several were skipping, delighted with the attention they were receiving.
Yamazaki, on his way to purchase hot soup, had halted between a booksellers wagon and a stall hung with caged birds. He felt awkward there, very much out of place, with the unaccustomed shape of the insulated canister under his arm. If this was a funeral, perhaps there was some required gesture, some attitude he might be expected to assume? He glanced at the bookseller, a tall woman in a greasy sheepskin vest, her gray hair bound back into a knot transfixed by two pink plastic chopsticks.
Her stock, which consisted primarily of yellowing paperbacks in various stages of disintegration, each in a clear plastic bag, was stacked before her on her wagon. She had been crying her wares, when she saw the children masked as Shapely; shed been calling out strange phrases that he supposed were titles: Valley of the dolls, blood meridian, chainsaw savvy Yamazaki, struck by the queer American poetry, had been on the verge of asking after Chainsaw Savvy. Then shed fallen silent, and he too had seen the children.
But there was nothing in her manner now that indicated the procession required anything more of her than whatever degree of her attention she might choose to afford it. She was automatically counting her stock, he saw, as she watched the children pass, her hands moving over the bagged books.