Part 16 (1/2)

131.

Chevette closed her eyes, saw a bunch of cops (whatever that would look like) standing around

Skinner's room. Opened her eyes and stuck her head up, eyes level with the floor.

Skinner was on his bed, his little television propped on his chest, big old yellow toenails sticking out of holes in his lumpy gray socks. He looked at her over the television.

'Hey,' she said, 'I brought Sammy. From work.' She climbed up, making room for Sammy Sal's head and shoulders.

'Howdy,' Sammy Sal said.

Skinner just stared at him, colors from the little screen flicking across his face.

'How you doin'?' Sammy Sal asked, climbing up.

'Bring anything to eat?' Skinner asked her.

'Thai Johnny'll have soup ready in a while,' she said, moving toward the shelves, the magazines.

Dumb-a.s.s thing to say and she knew it, because Johnny's soup was always ready; he'd started it years ago and just kept adding to the pot.

'How you doin', Mr. Skinner?' Sammy Sal stood slightly hunched, feet apart, holding his helmet with both hands, like a boy saying h.e.l.lo to his girlfriend's father. He winked at Chevette.

'What you winkin' at, boy?' Skinner shut the set off and snapped its screen shut. Chevette had bought it for him off a container-s.h.i.+p in the Trap. He said he couldn't tell the difference anymore between the 'programs' and the 'commercials,' whatever that meant.

'Somethin' in my eye, Mr. Skinner,' Sammy Sal said, his big feet s.h.i.+fting, even more like a nervous boyfriend. Made Chevette want to laugh. She got behind Sammy's back and reached in behind the magazines. It was there. Into her pocket.

'You ever seen the view from up top here, Sammy?' She knew she had this big crazy grin on, and Skinner was staring at it, trying to figure what was happening, hut she didn't care. She swung up the ladder to the roof-hatch.

132.

'Gosh, no, Chevette, honey. Must be just breathtaking.'

'Hey,' Skinner said, as she opened the hatch, 'what's got into you?'

Then she was up and out and into one of the weird pockets of stillness you got up there sometimes.

Usually the wind made you want to lie down and hang on, but then there were these patches when nothing moved, dead calm. She heard Sammy Sal coming up the ladder behind her. She had the case out, was moving toward the edge.

'Hey,' he said, 'lemme see.'

She raised the thing, winding up to throw.

He plucked it from her fingers.

'Hey!'

'Shush.' Opening it, pulling them out. 'Huh. Nice ones...'

'Sammy!' Reaching for them. He gave her the case instead.

'See how you do this now?' Opening them, one side-piece in either hand. 'Left is aus, right's em.

Just move 'em a little.' She saw how he was doing it, in the light that spilled up through the hatch from Skinner's room. 'Here. Check it out.' He put them on her.

She was facing the city when he did it. Financial district, the Pyramid with its brace on from the Little Grande, the hills behind that. 'f.u.c.k a duck,' she said, these towers blooming there, buildings bigger than anything, a stone regular grid of them, marching in from the hills. Each one maybe four blocks at the base, rising straight and featureless to spreading screens like the colander she used to steam vegetables. Then Chinese writing filled the sky. 'Sammy.. .'

She felt him grab her as she lost her balance.

The Chinese writing twisted into English.

SUNFLOWER CORPORATION.

'Sammy...'

'Huh?'

'33.

'What the f.u.c.k is this?' Anything she focused on, another label lit the sky, dense patches of technical words she didn't understand.

'How should I know,' he said. 'Let me see.' Reaching for the gla.s.ses.

'Hey,' she heard Skinner say, his voice carrying up through the hatch, 'it's Scooter. What you doin' back here?'

Sammy Sal pulled the gla.s.ses off and she was kneeling, looking down through the hatch at that j.a.panese nerd who came around to see Skinner, the college boy or social worker or whatever he was.

But he looked even more lost than usual. He looked scared. And there was somebody with him.

'Hey, Scooter,' Skinner said, 'how you doing?'

'This Mr. Loveless,' Yamazaki said. 'He ask to meet you.'

Gold flashed up at Chevette from the stranger's grin. 'Hi there,' he said, taking his hand out of the side pocket of his long black raincoat. The gun wasn't very big, but there was something too easy in the way he held it, like a carpenter with a hammer. He was wearing surgical gloves. 'Why

don't you come on down here?'

'How this works,' Freddie said, handing Rydell a debit-card, 'you pay five hundred to get in, then you're credited for five hundred dollars' worth of merchandise.'

Rydell looked at the card. Some Dutch bank. If this was how they were going to pay him, up here, maybe it was time he asked them what he'd actually be getting. But maybe he should wait until Freddie was in a better mood.

Freddie said this Container City place was a good quick bet for clothes. Regular clothes, Rydell hoped. They'd left Warbaby drinking herbal tea in some kind of weird coffee joint because he said he needed to think. Rydell had gone out to the Patriot while Warbaby and Freddie held a quick huddle, there.