Keeping It Real (5 page)

'No problem
.
I was a bit offish before. Sorry. We get a lot of shit about that, y'know?' He passed her

a menu as the waitress handed them out.

'I know.'

'Yeah, you read those letters?'

'Yes.'

"Think they're real?'

'Luke,' Jolene broke in rather sharply. 'Can we not talk about it now?'

T was only asking,' Luke said and gave a glance at his menu before tossing it down.

'No, I want to know too,' said Poppy from the end of the long table.

'And me,' Viridia chimed in. 'After all, we're the ones who are in the firing line. Well, maybe from some

angles.'

Lila glanced at Zal, braced for some sarcastic or otherwise difficult response but he picked that second

to take his coat off and didn't meet her eye. She looked back at Luke and then at Poppy. "They're real.

Doublesafe has put on extra security at all hotels and venues. I'll be with you all the time.'

Jolene rolled her eyes and gave Lila a thanks-for-nothing stare.

Lila tried to reassure her, 'You shouldn't worry about it. That's my business.'

'Easier
said,
man,' Luke said. 'D'you have a gun?'

'Several,' Lila assured him.

'Where?' he leant back and stared at her chest. Viridia kicked his ankle. 'Ow.' He laughed and kicked

her back.

At that moment the waitress returned
.
Everyone except
Zal and Lila ordered beer, Lila skipped on

drinks, not
wanting any distraction. Zal drank water. She guessed it wasn't because he was trying to stay

sober because he smoked some funny cigarette of Sand's and she could measure the dilation of the pupils

in his eyes enlarging by the second. Jolene made a few comments, but he paid no attention to her.

They talked amongst
themselves as though Lila wasn't there for the most part. She preferred it that

way. It let her watch them closely because she didn't have to concentrate on finding things to say. Poppy

excused herself just
as the food came and Lila tracked her idly as the

humans all tucked into pizza or burgers. The fey ate strange set jellies, and honey from the comb and big

lumps of sweet
milky pudding
.
Zal did something Lila couldn't
believe she was watching at all.

She hadn't
thought
he could sing but
she'd been dead wrong about
that.

She'd expected him to treat her with contempt
but, whatever he was treating her with, it wasn't that.

Now she was sitting opposite an elf with unmistakably high-caste features, who could have easily

passed for High Snot
of the Brother-hood of Ultimate Superiority, a member of an entirely vegetarian

species,
watching him eat raw steak.

Beside her Luke snorted and said through a mouthful of fries, 'Like watching Bambi eat Thumper,

innit?'

Zal looked at him and he went quiet. Zal looked at Lila, a glance not unlike the way she'd once been

looked at by a lion in the zoo at feeding time, the sort of glance you didn't
want to linger in. She shrugged

and went on with her sandwich. Until that
moment
she'd really begun to imagine that
Zal had stepped out

of Alfheim one day and decided to act
on a temporary whim for a taste of the lowlife. Surely there must

be traumas that elves could suffer that
could allow them to be as messed up as any human rock singer or

songwriter? And they must
have rebellious sons and daughters with a yen for travel? Or maybe he was

born with an unusual talent
that
had never had any outlet
in Lyrien and the wider elf nations? But
now she

had to put
all those theories on hold. Even in situations of starvation she had never come across any

evidence of elves eating flesh. They would rather die.

After a few more minutes Lila excused herself, checked that the room was secure, scanned outside

the building, and went to the Ladies. She found Poppy already in there waiting for her.

Poppy chattered excitedly about the coming tour, her hopes of finding handsome groupies, how fun it

was going to be having Lila come along, as she fixed her makeup. It was the kind of gush that didn't need

a response; fey friendly goodwill, like their badwill, came in seemingly random scattergun blasts that

claimed anyone in range.

Lila looked at
her own face - she looked clean and her metal didn't show. She looked away again. She

didn't like the sight
of her new face. In recreating it
the surgeons had made her well, even reasonable to

look at, but the face wasn't hers. It felt like it from the inside, until she saw the outside.

m

gf Lila had once had soft features, round cheeks, a pretty face. Now

she was not pretty and she didn't
know the word for her look these

days. Her hair had grown back auburn on half her head and scarlet

elsewhere, because of the magic that
had stained her to the bone. They

washed it
out
eventually, but
bits of her were gone for ever and in their

place was this machine, strong and restless and ill at ease with the flesh

that was left. They were growing into each other, her Al-self and her

real body. It would take years, they said, but one day the joins would

become invisible.

'Gods, I know I shouldn't say this,' Poppy said, beginning to floss her pale-green teeth, 'but Zal

really
really
likes you.'

'How d'you figure that
out?' Lila said.

'He watches you like
all
the time. Hadn't you noticed?'

'No,' Lila said honestly. Had he been?

'No you wouldn't,' Poppy said, ripping a new length of floss. 'Not to worry. It's a magic thing. But

I can tell.'

'Hey,' Lila said, feigning interest, though she didn't know what to think. She had the sense that

Poppy was one of those girls who very quickly become girlfriends who like to fix up their other

girlfriends with their friends and have coffee shop fantasies about the whole thing.

'And Zal doesn't like anybody like that really,' Poppy added. 'Not like that, you know. Especially

not. . .' She paused. 'Well, not.'

'No, go on,' Lila said, lounging against the sink as if she had all day, as if they really were friends

already.

'People of non-magical extraction,' Poppy said as fast
as she could. 'Sorry, I know that's really not

the right thing to say.' She covered her mouth with her hand.

'No, no,' Lila assured her. 'It's fine. Who likes everyone? Anyway, I'm an employee.' So, like all

the others of his kind she'd ever met, he was racist
.
Figured.

'Yeah, but
if you're like with us all the time you're one of us, right?'

Female faeries couldn't stand non-inclusivity.

'Right,' Lila said, smiling. 'Absolutely right.'

'Well, good, I'm glad we've sorted that
out.' Poppy smiled. She really was gorgeous, Lila thought,

feeling a stab of envy that
was as unwelcome as it
was unusual. She reminded herself strictly that
she

was lucky to be alive.

'Does Jolene have a thing for Zal?' she asked as she held the door for Poppy.

'Oh big style,' Poppy said. 'Who doesn't?'

"jS

Lila followed her back to the table. More beer had

arrived, more

fancy cigarettes. They were in it
for the long haul.

^<

IB

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It was three a.m. when Lila was finally alone in her room which adjoined Zal's in the enormous, empty

house on the hill. She sat
on her bed and stared around her at
the unimagined luxury of the place as she

listened to him moving around next door, her hearing filters deep in her AI processes grooming every

minute vibration as they searched for things that
shouldn't be there. Their apartments led off the

ocean-view room that
she'd first met him in. If she tried hard she could hear the sea. Its soft rhythm was

soothing after the night's activities.

After the restaurant
they'd gone to several bars. After the bars, two clubs. At
the Ebony Bar Luke had

tried to hit on her.

At Lazy Daisy's a group of fans had tried to mob the whole band.

At Voudou Zulu there was an almighty street fight between The No Shows' and another band's fans,

and Lila had ended up having to rush Zal through the cellars and out
a back alley after punching out
the

drunk minder of an A-list
film star who seemed determined that she'd started the entire thing.

Zal had been laughing so hard she barely managed to get him to walk. He'd asked her if he could drive

back. She said no. He didn't argue. She was disappointed at his lack of response and the sulkiness made

her angry and her anger made her resentful because it
shouldn't
have mattered that
he didn't care. She

rode too fast and nearly took them off the road and into a gully. By the time she'd got herself together

they were walking through the echoing hallway. Jolene, who had returned home before one a.m., had met

them and shown Lila to her room alongside Zal's with palpable irritation
.
Zal had politely thanked Jolene

for all her work - she was organising the whole tour after all - and Jolene had melted under his attention
.

Then Zal had

simply shut
his door on Lila. So she went
into her room and shut
hers with exactly the same finality.

A few moments later, as she stood in her own room, he'd opened the door that joined their two

rooms, stuck his head around it and said, 'Goodnight Ms Black,' and shut it again.

'Goodnight,' Lila had just said to the door and the satin bedsheets and the silk throws and the

platinum-coated bath taps in the Italian marble bathroom. She listened all the way out
to the shoreline,

and then set
her sentry senses on automatic, connecting herself wirelessly to the building's security

systems, so that
her Al-self could do the work and she didn't
have to stay awake all night. When she'd

finished that she felt the weight
of responsibility lift
enough to let
her relax a little.

Her cases had been placed at the foot
of the bed. Their security locks blinked green, untouched. But

Jolene had done her homework. The toiletries in the bathroom were the ones Lila always used. The robe

and slippers in the room matched the ones she last
bought
for herself -although the ones put out for her

here were of superior quality. A vase of freesias stood on the bedside table, and there was a

silver-framed photograph of Okie on the wall, his black labrador coat shining in last
summer's sun. Never

in her life had anybody taken so much trouble to make her feel at home. Now a perfect stranger had

done it because it was the business thing to do.

Lila folded the robe and put
it away with the rest of the gifts in the closet, even the picture of Okie. She

put the freesias into the huge bathtub that
she wouldn't
be using - the idea of lying naked anywhere

appalled her, even if she wasn't
visible to anybody, and besides, a bath was hardly the spot
from which

to spring into action. She took her own Berrypic from her innermost
pocket
and looked through her

pictures the one time that
she allowed herself each day. She was afraid that
if she let her mind turn back

any more often she'd never find the strength to get up and go forward again.

Lila's pictures: Mum and Dad and Lila and her sister Maxine stand-ing under the trees at
Windover

just
above the golf course that backed onto their garden. Everyone smiling. Rusty and Buster, the two

retrievers, standing at the front, tongues lolling in the heat. The sun out, making everyone pink.

Julia and Beatrix, her best girlfriends, at Lila's fifteenth birthday party. In the background Dad walking

out of shot holding a giant handful of balloons. Julie and Beatrix excited, holding their first

glasses of sparkling wine. On the table the hands of Bryan, Mike and Sophie from school, the rest
of

them cut
out of shot.

Buster on his own. He's just rolled in a lot of mud and is being given a bath. He is gleefully savaging the

hosepipe and water is spraying everywhere.

Rusty and Buster on the couch with Maxine's feet. Why did my family never manage to put
everyone in

the picture? Lila wondered. But
she'd taken this one, so she only had herself to blame.

Roberto at night on the porch, a couple of years ago, the flashlight all shiny on the cellophane wrapper

of the flowers he's holding and next to him . . . Lila skipped past that one really fast. She didn't need to

see herself in a ridiculous cocoa-coloured prom dress.

The last one was of the family garden. Nobody in it. It's summer and the roses are out. This is a very

bad shot of a nice rose gone all blurred in close-up.

Lila put
the slim wafer of the Berrypic back in her pocket. She closed her eyes and tuned to her

Al-self briefly. It trawled the Otopia Tree's domestic data drags for her on a nightly basis, picking out all

the news about her family and friends. Everyone was fine. Rusty was at the vet's for a thorn in his paw.