Radiance

I didn’t want any part of their hallelujah, or, for that matter, anything the long, lurid, teardrop-shaped Talbot had to offer. I was nowhere near far gone enough for whoring, and I had no scratch for purchasing distraction. I turned up my collar. Houndstooth light stung my eyes like snow. I made a sharp left onto Tethys Road. A dark spit of nothing, is Tethys. All back doors, no front. Strictly corridor action, running from Caroline Street to Epimetheus ’Vard. But that bastard car ground on in after me over the snow. Its headlights swung round, pink whips against my back. I knew the drill: Sooner or later they’d get bored with lumbering after me in first gear and step on it, swing wide, roll down the window, and out would come the girl with rouge on her face and eyes practically spinning a merry-go-round with af-yun and King George’s Fumes. She’d offer to buy me or sell herself for the men in the backseat. I’ve lived in Te Deum for seventeen months of winter. It is a fuck of a long block I’ve been around.

That’s about how it happened. Before I could disappear into the All-Clear crowds on Epi ’Vard, the Talbot swung out in front and cut me off. Just sat there glowing like a hot coal. So dark a red as to be black, so bright a black as to be red. Steam coming off the cherry hood, fog on the smoky windows. Christ, it had to be so warm in there. Warm enough to sleep. Warm enough to lay down naked with that long leather bench seat—leather from a cow, not squeaky brownfalse imitation—under your bum. The driver kept the engine running. Mocking me. Even in this snap I bet you could fry a ham on that hood. Raise a Miranda pig in the boot, let it run wild in the acreage of the backseat, slaughter it in the passenger side, and fry it up on the hood.

The window stayed shut. The door swung open and a pair of long, long legs slid out. Legs like a pilgrimage. Silver stockings, pumpkin pumps, suit green as the salads I haven’t seen in years. Her scarf was a scrap of silk the same colour as the Talbot, disappearing down her cleavage—which, I’m happy to report, was both substantial and on display. The dame didn’t even get out. She leaned her elbows on her knees and plunked her sweet little face down into her hands. She was tall, but delicately built, like a moth. She had rouge on, but not a slut brand. The expensive stuff. The kind that comes in colours with names. The kind that comes from home. From Earth, where you can make anything as easy as tripping and falling. Lipstick to match her shoes. Eyelashes as long as my thumb, tipped in a soft fuchsia fringe. Nails to match her big violet eyes. I bet she had that shade done up special—the nails or the eyes; I wouldn’t know which. A classy piece by any measure. She smelled like accounts receivable. She looked like old money. The kind of money that can ship a Talbot all the way to the outer planets without chipping the paint.

“You’re late,” the dame said. Big, rolling voice. An American voice: round, hard, flat, open as Sioux country and twice as dry. Interesting.

“Not ‘late’ if I never planned on showing up,” I replied. My voice was not big, nor did it roll. My voice cracked. It crumbled. It shook. I never had what you’d call a leading man’s timbre. My voice starts coming apart as soon as it leaves my mug.

Lady pouted. Small baby-bird lips in her broad, curved face. Maybe some Chinese mixed in with the Sioux. Maybe not. Not too much call for knowing the American gene spread on the snowball.

“Now why would you want to hurt my feelings like that? And after my employer has been so generous with you. Anyone in TD would skip their rocket home for the tiniest hope of the faintest ghost of a meeting like the one you’re booked down for.”

She blinked demurely. The furry fuchsia petals on the ends of her eyelashes kissed her cheekbones. It was a gesture designed to unman. Lucky for me that job got done long before she came along. But this girl did have other weapons. Smells fired out of the cabin with precision, hit me with both barrels: cigar smoke and oily brown liquor and, Christ redeemed, bread. High-end labels on all counts. No callowmilk mix-ins, just applewood casks and tobacco fields in the sun. And wheat. I couldn’t believe it—couldn’t even understand it. There just isn’t money like that. It doesn’t exist. Drug money, mineral money, whore money, sure. But not bread money. Not here.