Solitaire, page 27
She stopped outside Estar's gate for a few uncertain moments, shuffling in the cold air that was spiced with jasmine and the mélange of muffled music from within. Then she rang the bell, waited, rang again. Finally she went on.
Solitaire was unusually full, and she wondered if she would find a place to sit. She checked upstairs: Estar wasn't there, and she didn't want a dark corner to herself. But it seemed that celebrity had its rewards: back downstairs, two strangers each stood her to a beer, and someone else gave up his stool so that she could sit and talk to Scully in half-sentences as he bustled up and down the length of the counter. She wanted to tell him about the interview, but the crowd made her shy, and he was busier than a grove of grasshoppers.
“And here's another offering from a fan who prefers to remain anonymous. They don't know whether to throw themselves at your feet or run away,” he said, placing a third beer before her.
“Scully, this is weird.”
“You're used to being famous.” He didn't sound very sympathetic.
“Okay, maybe I am. But I'm not used to being Most Admired for Casualty Rate, or whatever it is these people are goobing on.”
He said, almost jovially, “You committed the second biggest mass murder of the last forty years. You're a six-year VC veteran. You're establishing a rapport with the most notorious solo on the books. They wonder if you're going to turn out like her. I wonder too.” He went on before she could respond, “And then you turn around and perform a small-scale humanitarian act. It's the combination that's got them excited. If I could get you to take your clothes off and dance on a table, I'll bet my business would double for a year. Or maybe you could punch an obnoxious tourist. Didn't you break some guy's nose once? Blood on the floor, then we'd see some real money. You can be my secret retirement plan.”
He chuckled and went off to serve the next ten people in line as she stared at him, open-mouthed and dismayed. He must have sensed it, because he turned back, pointed a just-a-moment finger at the would-be drinkers, and leaned one arm on the counter to say, “Jackal, either you take this stuff with a sense of humor or you take it totally seriously—the VC, the aftershocks, the violence, the disaffiliation from most of society, the complete fuckup of your life. So you choose whatever you want; I've been thinking about it a lot today, and I choose to laugh. And thanks again for talking to me, and for listening, it really helped. Hey, do you want to have some coffee and cheesecake after the bar closes? I promise, you don't have to do any work. It would be nice to have the company.” He took her hand and held it for just a moment; then he went back to the line with some cheerful comment for the next customer.
Yeah, well, you sure weren't laughing last night, she almost said to his back, and felt a thick, choking dislike for him. She looked around at the crowd: the solos like matchflames, blazing brightly but so small; the watchers, their clever knowing eyes measuring the burn. And then there were the tourists, thrilled by a dash of danger in their lives. She understood in a cynical flash where the power was in this room. They make us real, she thought, it's because of them that we're solos and mysterious and exotic. Without them we'd just be a bunch of criminal failures with parts of our brains turned to cottage cheese; and so they get to eat us little by little, like moose at the salt lick. She realized that each person in the room had positioned themselves so that if she moved, they would notice. They had oriented themselves to her the way she'd seen them do with Estar, with Duja McAffee who had horrible scars on his arms and neck from one of his own napalm devices. Did that explain the odd look that Duja had given her when she said hello? Was she in some kind of misunderstood competition for the top slot on the solo “A” list? It made her claustrophobic: what a miserable thing to be doing with her life.
She turned to slide off the stool and met the eyes of one of Razorboy's retinue sitting quietly next to her, a young latina with bad acne and shocking pink hair. “Drake, right?” Jackal guessed, and the young woman's eyes widened with surprise and wary delight.
“Tell me something,” Jackal said, leaning a little too close, “when you die, are you going to look back and think gee, I wish I'd spent more time at Solitaire watching broken people huddle in corners trying to hold on to some semblance of a life? Or are you smarter than that? How old are you anyway?” It was a rude question, rudely asked, and she didn't care: she was full of heat and ready to howl. “How old are you?”
“Um…twenty-two?”
“Twenty-two. You know how old I am?”
Drake shook her head: no.
“Yeah, I'm not sure either anymore. But let's pretend that I'm old enough to tell you that this isn't a life you're having here, this is just a pale reflection of something you should run screaming from. Life is out there. Go get some.”
Drake looked at her blankly. Jackal sighed. “Forget it.” She had one foot on the floor when Drake put out a hand, not quite touching Jackal's arm. “What?” Jackal snapped.
Drake pulled her hand back and circled it in front of her as if it would help her find the right words. “I…you…no, wait. Please, I really want to say this to you.”
Oh hell, she'd said please. Jackal sat.
It seemed that Drake had used up her courage in the one moment of eye contact; she looked at the floor and spoke so softly that Jackal was forced once again to lean in.
“I've been coming here for nine months and you're the first solo that ever knew my name. I'll bet you're the first one that ever even really looked at me, you know? You probably don't know what that's like 'cause you've been famous all your life, but it's really hard and all. I'm not trying to get you to feel sorry for me,” she rushed to add, with an intense, shallow dignity that Jackal recognized from her own last confused months as a Hope. And she did empathize, so she clamped down on the urge to say any number of ill-tempered things like, okay, I've seen you, can I go now? Or, are we getting to the point sometime tonight?
“It's just that you're different. So maybe you don't know that a lot of life is really lonesome and mean. I already get that, you know, I don't need to go back out and get some more. It's okay here. I fit in. I'm a watcher, I know how to act with solos, people respect me. I got a good web site. You're on it a lot. I don't know if you ever looked at it.” Now she was shy and vulnerable.
“I've seen it. It's nice.” She was glad it was the truth, because Drake asked eagerly, eyes up, “What did you like best?”
“I like that you talk about what you see but you don't make assumptions about what it means. You're really careful to separate out the facts from your opinions about people.”
Drake thought about that. “And that's good?”
“Yes, it is.”
Drake nodded. “Okay. Well, I'll keep doing it then.” Then she opened her fingers and grabbed handfuls of air as if the words she wanted were flying like moths around her. “See, this is what I'm trying to talk about. I thought you would say how you liked the design or the photos. But instead you talk about this other stuff.” She was bouncing up and down in tiny bursts in her seat, trying to catch the thoughts. “You're different. It's why I watch you all the time now. You're not like Duja or Estar or even Jeanne Gordineau, they're all more scary than you but it's like that's all they are. They just walk around being scary. But you know things. Last night when Scully went down, you knew exactly what to do. You bossed everybody around.”
“What I did wasn't special,” Jackal said gently. “Anybody could have done it.”
“Nobody ever has before,” Drake said simply. “I've seen aftershock like a million times and I never knew what to do. But next time I will. And I'll put it up on my site, too. I'll say to get the person in a safe place and try to make it so they'll be comfortable when they wake up, and then take over whatever they were doing if it needs to get done. Is that right?”
“That sounds fine,” Jackal said, still gentle, watching Drake work her way through to this new place.
“That's why I watch you most of all. You do things. You're not mean and you're not scared.”
Jackal made a face; Drake said, firmly enough to surprise Jackal, “If you don't act scared or mean then that's what counts to the people watching.” Then Drake surprised her even more by saying, “This conversation we're having, can this be private? I mean, just between us.”
“That would be fine.”
“Cy and Razorboy will want to know what we talked about. I'll bet they're dying over there, we don't know anyone who's ever talked to a solo like this. But I just want to think about it for a while.”
“I don't mind if you don't talk about it,” Jackal said. “You should do whatever you think is right. I have to go now, okay?” She caught Scully as he stopped to reach into a hanging basket for a banana and a lime. “I'll be back before closing. See you later.”
“Great,” he grinned, and she found that she remembered how to like him. She looked back at Drake, who was sitting up a little straighter on the stool with her pink hair blazing like a tuft of cotton candy at the summer fairs that Jackal had dragged her father to every year of her childhood. People are amazing, she thought, but to Drake she only said, “Thanks for talking to me.”
Drake smiled. “Sure. Maybe…” But her courage skittered away again and her eyes went down. Jackal was relieved. “Well, anyway, bye,” Drake said.
“Good night.”
Marginal Way was empty. An icy sodden wind from the canal chilled her hands and the back of her neck as she walked south toward Perdue. She passed Estar's gate; then she stopped and turned back to try the bell one more time. Was the music a bit louder? She was tired and knew that staying up late was stupid; her sleep cycle was already so far out of alignment that she would probably have to resort to melatonin. Did they sell that here? There was so much she still didn't know about the city, the NNA, this new universe to which she'd been consigned. She pushed the bell again. Damn it, I know you're there, she thought irritably, ignoring her own advice to go home and sleep and apologize to Scully tomorrow for standing him up.
The wet wind turned into light rain on her uncovered head. Perfect. She pulled up her collar; it didn't help much. Time to go back to her apartment before she was soaked through. But wait—there was a flicker at the edge of her vision, and she thought it was Estar come to open the door at last, to let her in to the warm, colorful heart of a place that was someone's home, to drink wine or coffee in front of a fire while it rained on other people, people who had nowhere to go. The vision was so clear in her head that she was already smiling as she turned. But no one was there. She frowned, and the flash came again, and she said, “oh, no,” and reached for the bell, but it was too late: the world pulled itself inside-out in the gray negative tones of aftershock.
18
SHE WOKE IN A SURGE OF LIGHT THE DOOR, A RUSH OF energy that propelled her from VC into the waking world between one eyeblink and the next, the door I, and Scully was leaning over her, saying, “What? What is it?” She wanted to exult, to open her mouth and let out the vast blue sky, the sea, the wheeling birds inside her. Home. Ko. Lost and found again. She wanted to shout, but she was so weak and she could only whisper, “…found the door, I found the door—”
Then she came fully awake and shut her mouth hard. She squinted up at him. “Nothing. I don't know. Oh, my head hurts.”
Someone else was helping her sit up: Estar. The two of them propped her up on some pillows. She must be in Estar's house: the walls were covered with dozens of overlapping quilts and tapes-tries and printed cloth hangings, and a cello cantata thrummed from hidden speakers, clashing only slightly with the faint sound of thrash rock from the next room.
“How are you feeling?” Scully asked. He looked genuinely worried, and she was touched, and sorry that she'd been grumpy with him earlier.
“I'm all right.”
“If you wished so badly to see me again, you could simply have called,” Estar said lightly. “These dramatics on my doorstep are not necessary.”
“I don't have your number, that's why I rang the bell,” Jackal said. “Ow, careful, I think I landed on that arm. Thank you for letting me in.”
“I didn't,” Estar replied. “Jane found you unconscious on the street and, being a sensible young woman, brought you immediately inside.”
“Jane? Oh, you mean…”
“Yes, you've met her, the one who is so competent with knives.”
“Oh.” She tried to work out why Jane was letting herself into Estar's house.
“She lives here,” Scully said, exchanging a look with Estar that Jackal could not interpret.
Now Jackal was thoroughly confused. She blurted, “Isn't she a little young for you?” before she thought about what she was saying and who she was talking to. Scully bit his lip. Estar, thankfully, only laughed.
“Don't be jealous, chacalita. That is her wing of the house,” Estar waved an arm vaguely off to the right. “She is an employee of sorts.”
“A kind of bodyguard,” Scully added. It took Jackal a moment to work out that he meant protecting other people from Estar.
“I didn't realize…I've never seen her with you.”
“Sometimes I don't tell her I am leaving the house. It is very wicked of me,” Estar said complacently. “Now, can you stand?”
“Oh, sure, if you need me to go I can—”
“Don't be so ready to slink away.” I wasn't slinking, Jackal thought, I was just being polite, but Estar had already continued, “You are clearly in no shape to leap up and run from my house. You should demand that I show you to a hot bath and then feed you, which is in fact what I am intending to do. Scully will help you into the bathroom while I find something that is passable for a late breakfast.” Estar looked at them, her head cocked to one side, and added in a curious voice, “You are both entirely too nice.”
“What did that mean?” Jackal asked Scully when she was sure that Estar was out of earshot.
“Oh, you know what she's like.” No, Jackal didn't, but she was all ears. “She thinks if you haven't sent someone to the clinic in the last three months, you must not be trying hard enough to assert yourself.”
The bath was the best she'd had in years, in a soaking tub with just the right slant at the back. She would get herself a bath just like this the next time she was in VC.
She had found the door. She had been in aftershock for almost four virtual days, and on the second day she had opened a door from her cell into Ko. It was as if she had developed some muscle during her confinement that had been easily rediscovered once it was needed. Just like riding a bike: she laughed and splashed some water around. She would know exactly what to do next time: there would be no moments wasted in that terrible gray box they had tried to lock her into. She had not lost Ko after all. It was inside her.
A knock on the door. “Breakfast in ten minutes,” Estar said.
“On my way.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, pushed herself underwater so that, for an instant, she floated free. Then she sat up warm and relaxed. And hungry; she sniffed, smelled ham and something baking which, when she got to the kitchen, turned out to be biscuits, along with an amazing gravy and slices of ripe cantaloupe.
“This is great,” she said around a mouthful of buttered biscuit and gravy. “I've never had anything like it.”
“It is called redeye gravy, a recipe from old-style United States Southern cooking. There are coffee grounds in it, if you believe such a thing.”
“If you say so. How'd you find the recipe?”
“My nanny was from that area, the recipe is from her grandmother.”
“Is that how you grew up bilingual?” She saw Scully's face. “I beg your pardon, Estar,” she said. “I'm certainly not trying to pry into your private life. I just…you're such an interesting person. Please feel free to tell me it's none of my business.”
Estar smiled. “And why should I take offense at interest so charmingly expressed? Eat your biscuits, Scully, and relax. We are three comrades having a lovely breakfast, and our Jackal may ask anything she likes.” She bit a chunk of melon in half, and a trickle of juice ran down the side of her mouth to her chin; she wiped it away and licked her finger clean. On someone else it might have been simply poor manners, but Jackal recognized it as performance and was charmed in turn. She enjoyed the other woman's precise flamboyance, her assurance, her gusto; Estar was so definitely herself. She remembered watching Jordie and Jeremy and the others the first day of the workshop and wondering how they knew what they wanted to be, and now she understood: you knew what you wanted to be when you saw someone else being it.
“I speak five languages,” Estar said matter-of-factly. “I learned my Spanish in Spain and English from my mother, and French and German and Italian at school. My mother believed that children should learn languages and so we did. Between us my brother and sisters and I spoke fourteen of them. My mother got these notions from reading too many fantastical novels. We all had names that she found in books. It was a great difficulty when we moved to Spain, the children laughed at my name.
